Shattered Kingdoms

My current character I RPed out the search for a faith - A man coming of age and the world of possibilities it opened.

Sadly, the first HF that I came across invested me as soon as I said I wanted to talk about his god... Spent about 2 hours OOCly trying to get a hold of an Imm to be unfaithed.

Talked to the leaders/followers of the other gods and developed an understanding. I throughly enjoyed it until I had chosen a faith and it was about 2 weeks before I got invested - The high follower was on a long hiatus.

----------

All that aside, I think the point of this post has been made, with our lower player numbers, I think there should be an option at creation to chose a faith for those who have be "raised in the church" or something similar. Most characters already seem to be made that way. At least for the classes that require a faith to use their spells.

Being able to choose a faith out of the gate would kill a lot of neat RP.

I play it out usually. Seeing how others interact with my character, sometimes changing his views, etc.

Honestly, I think it's kind of weird to RP out "choosing" a faith, when you're a priest/paladin/hellion. How many people in the real world decide to be a religious leader, and then spend a few years deciding whether to be Christian/Jewish/Muslim/Buddhist/Hindu etc etc.

Unless your backstory is something like "My dad was a hellion of Sargas and my mother was a priestess of Algorab. I spent Thanksgiving with my mother's side of the family and we always thanked Algorab, but I also got presents from Sargas Claus every winter."

What I mean is, I would expect people to know what their religion was BEFORE they knew that they wanted to devote their entire life/eternal soul to the service of a deity.

Will I sound terribly flakey if I say that in the past I've chosen my religion based on visibility of high followers?

I'm in GMT so don't get to see too many people and I would really rather RP my investment rather than whining to an imm to invest me in the absence of an hf ... especially since I'm sure most imms are in US timezones too aren't they?

Naw, it's all good. The game is there to enjoy. As long as you take the faith RP seriously once you've settled on a religion and a backstory, nobody's going to object.

Aldric was originally meant for the Algorab faith lol.

If I choose a religion for a character, I know what religion I'm going to go in before I've even entered the name to create the character.

My only failing was never getting Alcedes into Aludra.

I would agree with you when it comes to every other class that does not require the character to find a god. However when you are a hellion, paladin or a priest it can get annoying when the players who have the HF flags are:

A) Absent..
B) Playing with their alts.
C) To busy to talk to you.
D) Different time zone.
E) ____________ (fill in whatever excuse here).

Right now choosing one's faith in the game is OK. It is not great and it is not horrible. However the ability for a paladin, hellion or priest to choose their god at the start, would solve some problems. This still leaves the character to chore to find the HF and get a symbol.

Actually I'm not quite in favor of having an initial faith. Some contact with a high priest is appropriate. I'm thinking of newbies here, and not just because they need interaction. While high priests are limited in who they can reject, sometimes they can talk a character out of a faith that's wrong for them.

The problem is that the induction has to be in person. Why can't a high priest invest a logged-off character based on notes or second-hand information? I can't remember any memorable induction ceremony, though I realize some exist. And in any case, keeping to the 1-week induction rule is more important.

I realize this wouldn't help truly dead faiths. But I'm a strong believer in IC consequences for IC actions. IC gods not interested in maintaining their churches don't deserve clergy. If that means my hypothetical uninvested cleric chooses to retire within 50 play-hours, I'm fine with that. I've already had fun with him, without even the pain of serious leveling. There's no shortage of cool concepts to play.