Religion

PETERSR@ccc.govt.nz
Tue, 8 Sep 92 09:48:56 GMT+12:00

Carl Edman wrote

}I doubt that you or I or even the Great God Atnerks can write a
}program which manages to be as vain, malicious and petty as some our
}players manage to be :-). Program controlled gods would be just as
}hapless creatures as currently the various orcs, trolls and savages
}are.

}That is why the powers which at least I have proposed for gods are
}very limited and subtle. A god would not be able to strike anyone
}dead except perhaps his own followers. And if spiney norman became a
}follower of the player he killed he deserves what gets.

I could accept PC gods with limited and subtle powers (I think) but another
of my concerns is how much use is a god to the PCs. Whats the use of a god
if he won't answer your prayers. One solution would be for the GOD to automate
some HIS/HER powers/responses to prayer based on the petitoners level of
mana.

This would work in the following way:
If the petioners do not have enough mana then they will be put onto the
answering service or be ingnored totally. Othwerwise their prayers go
directly to god and he has the choice of answering them or not.

The format of the pray command could be thus

PRAY [666] 12
Locate 'Spiney Norman'.
C Please god tell me where Spiney Norman is so I can avenge
C my fathers death.
DONE

where [666] is the number of the GOD, and 12 is the number of days prayed.
the C means that anything following is normal text aimed at GOD. So if the
prayer has enough mana he will either have the locate command carried out
automatically or it will go to GOD [666] and he will have the choice of
answering it.

What also concerns me about having a PC god with only subtle powers is that
there is a very fine line between to subtle (i.e. gods effect is washed out
due to PC white noise) and not subtle enough (ie the gods effect is to
direct). As well if the powers are to subtle then the player running the
god will get bored and drop out due to lack of influence in the game.

}
} Carl Edman
}

Richard Peters
aka
[910] Son of Wulf

P.S. Sorry if I have just re-iterated previous opinion/statements but
I've been missing mail due to disk and router problems.


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