Toma400
commented
1 year ago There's also one more idea, but it is truly edge one.
There could be permadeath being the only option in a game, but! after death you could interact with god of your request and ask them to bring you back to life. It's though absolutely risky, because this would require scrapping saving game in exchange for Minecraft styled "save when exit", but! without respawn. As the respawn here would be just a chance. If failed, you would possibly walk through afterlife corridors or become a zombie (?), but whatever, you see the issue here. A lot of heavy-featured stuff which can make game not controllable enough for this feature to be fun. Yet, some kind of afterlife and god-relations there would be indeed amazing. Just to figure out how this can be implemented, and if it is even possible.
Summing up this topic, as talking with slessav, it was a lot of informations I didn't yet put anywhere, and they should not be lost. This would be unique addition for BRPGS 3.0 which were not there even for 1.0, which makes this truly revolutionary, yet it needs a lot of subtlety to be properly introduced.
Motifs The premise behind adding religion to character creation is that religion, in general, is extremely overlooked element in RPG games. Most of the times, if even touched, it is made as just another mage guild, so you need to make quests and get specific position in the guild. Nothing to really make you feel connection to the religion itself. You are basically atheist doing stuff because it serves your purposes.
Implementation A lot of religion effects are meant to be hidden - I think this is good take on how to make all religions' advantages/disadvantages mysterious and kinda feeling like luck/good time/nice RNG, when in reality there would be algorithms working within. During character creation, there will be only principles of those religions listed - so, what followers believes in, and what are most crucial points to follow and avoid. During game, there will be list of gods and player's relation to them, kinda reminding "morality chart" from BRPGS 2.0/Dungeons & Dragons. The difference is, your relation with change only with gods you believe in (except if you desecrate altars or do some extreme profanity) and affect you depending whether you follow their teachings or not. This should be very subtle and rarely very "hitting", because we don't need to make players feel limited TOO MUCH, yet there are times when we could like to roleplay. The thing is to find a balance, and to not make it easy to cheese. So, although one god can - for example - require us to not kill anything (let's take extreme for easy example), we will need to kill sometimes. I guess. So, there should be a way to not make god angry by such rare events, and there should be a way to make him forgive, but not to the extent that you can "grind rituals" and make god happy to whatever you do. So rarity of misdoings, and some cooldown for rituals should be done. Possibly even too frequent rituals can anger the god thinking you use him for receiving rewards, or you are just joking from him. This is kinda nuanced thing which should be adressed the most.
I would also insist that religions should be able to perform weekly/daily rituals/holidays, so one can take part in such and if it is done frequently, receive some - again, hidden - bonus from the god for being faithful follower. This would make interesting point on locations, as there won't be temples for all religions in any place - so if you are, for example, ghloddish, you will feel most comfortable in Seiteh, where ghloddish temples are as frequent as ever. In New Baedoor, you will feel okay, but on Ansur, you will need to make daily prayers by yourself.
Last but not least, advantages given by god can be both for specific choices and instant, as well as more general. So, for example, if god likes pacifism, it can makes all your pacifistic choices have more chance to success (instant) or just give you some rewards if you choose them most of the time (general).
This idea is kinda inspired by Emperor and Desktop Dungeons, as well as Greek Fantasy mod for Minecraft. That said, I haven't thought of them too much, but they certainly influenced my thoughts here at least at some point.