Shattered Kingdoms

When I was involved in investing people a couple of years ago, I never invested anyone without getting their views of all the spheres and providing mine if we disagreed or they didn't have a good answer. I also made them take an oath, repeating line by line. This could take as little as 5 minutes if the seeker was quick and sharp with his or her answers.

Is that what you are considering the minimal RP that you are complaining about or do some people do even less?

If I had the ability to invest I would do it. Even if your investment was fast, that doesn't mean that your religion RP is over. You should still be able to call up a priest or HF and ask for a sermon or discussion. You can also interact with new seekers even if you can't invest. Simply RP with them, tell them that they need to speak with the HF and give the HF your opinion so they know to look out for the seeker.

Actually, the sphere-discussion and maybe a little oath-reciting was almost exactly what I had in mind, of course, give or take a few other methods concerning which religion it is, but that's the basic idea.

And yeah, I mean people do even less.

I was going to come in and defend Sadr, but I see I don't have to. The rest of you pick it up!

The problem with the sphere discussion is that it can lead to the high whatis not ICly wanting to induct the seeker. But OOCly, he has no right to object, unless the seeker is clearly role-playing someone who doesn't belong in the church. Induction is far more a right than a privledge.

I think Achernar has the right idea. The place for tasks is in appointing religion members to various offices. Even the least authoritarian of religions can pass out some sparkly titles as incentive and encouragement.

A ceremony is a good idea though. Even though the seeker doesn't have to offer much, he can at least see what the inductor is putting into the religion. Nothing like a good example to start things off right.

If you've tried your hand in a "couple" I'm not sure you're doing the majority justice by generalizing that to all of them =P. Also, are you playing clergy? I believe the players have been instructed to more or less autoinduct clergy, and trust them to engage in further religious RP as they establish their character.

I know that my char, who's never seen another inducted member of his faith and had to resort to praying on behalf of another seeker he met, still enjoyed a decent amount of religious RP with random people he met prior to induction, and a brief but high quality induction RP with a mob-priest courtesy of an attentive imm.

I know when I had a priest running around I awlays took time out to rp religionwise with any character wanting to join, even though he could not invest. I'd do the same with any other character if they were really into it.
I'm usually not to thrilled about having to rp for any length of time beyond ten minutes to get invested. Most of the time a character of mine gets a chance to join the religion he's been seeking, it's like 2 in the morning and it's going to be my "only chance" according to the investor.

Sadr has always been my favourite religion to join. I remember being given no less than ten in game books to read. When I finished with those, I went and read all the others I could find. There seriously should be a library devoted just to Sadr. Literate freaks, constantly writing. It's torture to spam through all those books! A lot of overlap, but it was fun to see other perspectives. I liked that I wasn't invested on the first or second day, forced to learn, explore and find out more about my choice of faiths. Waiting a month was a bit extreme, but I rolled with it. No ceremony to get invested into the religion lasted fewer than ten minutes.

The reason that Sadr has so many books, is because the easiest way to get HF status in Yenko (as was) was to write a book. Thus everyone who wanted favor wrote books.

When I led War, Krager and I would make people do hours of work and RP for a religion flag:)

The ceremony was just as long as all the work

I guess I was lucky, Aise did an awesome job.