Shattered Kingdoms

One of the more annoying facets of SK is that if I create a paladin, hellion, or priest, I still have to seek out a member of the church that has the permissions to allow me into it. Rather than in real life where you are born into a religion, a particular sect of that religion or whatever.

Religion for these three classes should be available upon creation. You don't have to get a symbol, you can go roleplay for that later or whatever, but especially when looking over the High Follower list, it's a huge handicap to want to join a church that has no active High Followers.

Wasn't this idea shut down, in the past, because the RP for joining the religion is something the staff want?
Also, a Christian has the faith. But there is an initiation process to officially become a priest, isn't there?
Your character can believe and follow the God. But to be an acknowledged member of the faith, there is a ritual. Right?

I think it would be more appropriate to have a quest line for each fair if someone wanted to join. Something that would add RP to joining the faith, instead of just "I was born like this."

You mean the, "Do you believe in this god and want to give your soul to him?"

"Yes."

Sort of RP?

That's really all that's required of RP to get into a religion.

On the flip side, if a church has no High Followers then if you want to get into it as a priest, then you're really SOL. You'd probably have to sit there throwing up prayers to hopefully catch whatever staff member is covering that religion at the time.



You're born in the religion you likely practice. Unless you're American. You're just going to continue going to whatever church your parents went to. It's not like one day a dog mauled your parents and you had a strong desire to get vengeance, so you sought out the church of Algorab because now you hate all dogs.

Quest lines are kind of the bottom of the barrel as far as RP goes. No one really wants to go on a fetch quest to prove their loyalty. They're either loyal or they're not. You're also not really engaging in a storyline. It's like getting served meat and potatoes every night. Sure it'll fill you up, but after a while it gets so routine, so basic, so boring.

So on the one hand, you have the current system which makes players go around begging for their spells, and therefore not actually doing anything. On the other hand, they'd be ready to go out and preach the word of their god. And PCs are not some Joe Schmo, they're supposed to be the movers and shakers of the world. They're actually interesting, or at least are supposed to be.

Specifically for those classes I don't see a problem. You've trained for the priesthood your entire life up until the point you officially set out. You were likely raised in or under the influence of the church and it's members. A hellion didn't at a young age just go "Oh hey I'm going to be a hellion." Most likely something they were born into, be it by family blood lines or otherwise. That human has probably known for the past decade of their life that they have been training to be a squire and then eventual Knight of "insert deity here." Same logic for priests and paladins.

this is long over due. it would be easy to add to the halls of creation. it could work like this (ur welcome):

https://jsbin.com/fajuwugufa/edit?output

I don't think this is necessary, and it would greatly diminish the depth behind one of the most RP intensive classes in the game. Yes, you will have to pray to get invested as a new character in a dead religion, but the amount of time required for that versus how long you should keep the character if you enjoy him should be completely immaterial.

The depth of:

"Do you want to serve xxx god and give your soul to him?"

"Yes."

invest xxx

I'd just like to add that if we ended up suckering someone into playing through clever marketing or something else during a bonanza, they roll up a priest, and have to sit the entire 3 days without a religion, they're just going to think, "man this game sucks." And then they're going to move on.

I'm siding with Ardith on this one.

I have to say that being able to choose a religion doesn't diminish RP at all. It just makes it a little easier for people to populate lesser played religion. Making things simpler for those of us that don't play and have all the OOC connections is a refreshing change that I feel will be necessary to keep the game vibrant.

Why not just tier the change from creation religion choice to full member?
Allow them to learn and use spells up through Apprentice, and cut off at Journeyman similar to mentoring.
They would need to seek out a high priest/follower at that point to become a full member and access the rest.