Religion (please read before jumping to conclusions)

[Iosyn]

Why would the religious trait need a downside if it cost creation points?

God help me, I laughed.

Anyway when I wrote that other post I added the weird disclaimer thing because I’d come back from the pub at 3am with no rest the night before either, I was smashed. Fun night out anyway. As to the no spiritual powers thing I actually kind of expected it, kind of a shame as I’ve always loved nethack though.

So, anyone recommend any decent churchy items for inclusion? Crucifix is a no brainer. Communion goblet? Maybe use them as a melee weapon on par with a wrench or hammer? You’ll have to forgive me I’m not really up to date on the paraphernalia of most other religions. The only other thing I can think of is that weird staff Buddhist monks carry which might make a nice weapon. Y’know, that thing with the rings on the end.

And as we’re thinking about religious stuff, it would be nice to beef up the evil cultist side of thing-- grimoires, skulls etc.
As to religious books and evil cultist grimoires, I can see them spawning in mansion libraries, those that have them.

[Hyena_Grin]

I don’t see any issue with real-life religions being represented in the game. Preferably with a distribution that mimics reality. At least in New England, christian places of worship should dramatically outnumber those of other religions.

I think that providing some kind of bonus just for being religious is a tricky thing. I’d be inclined to just have everyone get the same morale bonus from all holy books and just let the player decide which one (if any) their character reads.

Alternatively, if they put in the more advanced likes/preferences system that was talked about, you could handle religion with it by making a religious character prefer a particular religion’s icons and texts while disliking the texts of others. Or not have a preference at all (agnostic) or simply disliking them all (atheist). Assuming preferences are handled with point values or something similar, being an atheist would provide a preference point to put elsewhere.

My main concern really is that being religious might be represented as being flatly beneficial over being non-religious. I don’t like the idea of the game basically saying ‘if you’re religious then here’s some benefits for you! If you’re not religious, sorry.’ But it’s hard to think of ways in which atheism/agnosticism could be represented with bonuses that everyone would agree upon.

Edit: Heh. You could introduce Atheism as a ‘flaw’ that gives you points in exchange for not getting anything from religious texts. Essentially trading religion for skill. But I twitch slightly at the characterization of atheism as a ‘flaw.’

[FunsizeNinja123]

Well maybe some religons can have a bonus to one skill or something. Being atheist will give you… hmm…

[kevin.granade]

And this is exactly why people were shying away from it. There’s a cross-dresser benefit that makes you happy for wearing opposite-gender-specific clothes, so why not similar for being religious. shrug

[Elembis]

I’m fine with some more religious items in churches/cathedrals. But there’s no way there should be a Religious trait if all it does is give you a morale boost when reading a holy book. We wouldn’t make a Mystery Novel Fan trait just to provide that effect when reading a mystery novel, would we?

I think we’re grasping at straws for ways to make religious characters different. There’s no reason to do that. In a zombie apocalypse, you need water, food, and shelter just as badly no matter what your religious beliefs are. Maybe you’d pray between zombie-bashing – that’s fine. Maybe you’d urinate between zombie-bashing, too, but that doesn’t mean we need to model it in the game.

[Leper]

I don’t know, I think procedurally-generated random religion would break immersion for me.

I was thinking more along the lines of having real world (or unitarian (I honestly like the idea of a unitarian church with remnants of old religions still laying around)) religion present, but for (some) new factions to perhaps come with their own randomly generated beliefs. It was really just speculation for the future as I can’t see this being added even in the next year or two, especially not when factions and NPC AI are as bare-bone as they are.
I agree with the breaking of immersion, especially because I can imagine oddities cropping up with the random gen.

Just to clarify, I don’t mean that I want to see every faction in the game having a religion. I mean something that could be as simple as X faction might form a religion based around, let’s say, ants because they see the ants are doing just fine in the apocalypse. It could be even simpler than that, with more of a druidic nature worship going on (e.g. killing Triffids is a sin because it’s mother nature taking back the Earth).
The options are limitless, and people will believe almost anything.

On this topic it would also be really realistic (from what I’ve seen regarding human behaviour) for some factions to be little more than cults. An intelligent, possibly sociopathic, leader can manipulate people’s belief through sheer force of personality. It happens all the time in the real world. Heck, just the other day I was reading an article about a guy in Queensland claiming to be Jesus. We laugh, but he actually has around fifty followers that truly believe he is the second coming of Christ.

Once again though, its just speculation right now. All of this is very much in long, long term goal territory.

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:15, topic:2842”]0. Don’t say “I was tired when I wrote this, don’t hold it against me”, it’s pointless. If you knew you were tired and can’t stand behind what you wrote, don’t post it, and check that it’s worth posting when you aren’t tired or otherwise impared. That having been said, the disclaimer was also unnecessary because there’s nothing wrong with it.

1. Religious powers: NO
2. “Religious” or “Spiritual” trait, sure why not, but it needs down sides to go with the benefits, so it’s not just “take this for free morale”, this is simply a balance issue. The trait ittself should be religion-agnostic (see what I did there?
3. Religious iconography is fine, and feel free to add specific ones, such as the bible or the torah or whatever, I don’t see any point in pretending these things don’t exist, however they shouldn’t have any in-game effects attached to them specific to their particular religion. A caveat to this is that there’s nowhere specific* to spawn Torahs and such, since the religious buildings we have in-game are fairly specifically christian.
4. More (specific) religious buildings, yes please.

• Of course they’d still spawn in normal library collections, there’s just nowhere to guarantee their spawn.[/quote]

0. Noted.

1. Fantastic, and not surprising in the least.

2. This is the biggest hurdle in my opinion. I think I might take a week to jot down some ideas and refine them into something interesting. I feel the trait cost should off-set the negatives, but by the same token I also think that more traits should have a large effect on gameplay (for replayability reasons, amongst others) which really should mean that there should be an interesting and non-tedious downside along with a positive that’s more than just a morale or skill boost.
   I would also like it to be useful as a roleplaying/storytelling device, but it’ll take me a while to figure out what exactly should just be abstracted away for the sake of gameplay.
   Are there any other design criteria I should consider, aside from staying away from making this needlessly complex?

I should really also add that I have zero coding experience, so the trait will likely need to be handled by someone else. I’d still like to design at least some of the trait, but that’s mainly in the hope that it will spark the interest of a modder who sees this as a good use for their time.

3. I might be able to crank something out, but it will probably take a month or so due to real life obligations and lack of experience with .json. Thanks for the go ahead, that’s all I really needed to be willing to put time into this.

4. Awesome, this makes me happy.

So, anyone recommend any decent churchy items for inclusion? Crucifix is a no brainer. Communion goblet? Maybe use them as a melee weapon on par with a wrench or hammer? You’ll have to forgive me I’m not really up to date on the paraphernalia of most other religions. The only other thing I can think of is that weird staff Buddhist monks carry which might make a nice weapon. Y’know, that thing with the rings on the end.

Websites like http://usedchurchitems.com/ are great resources for this kind of thing.

Well maybe some religons can have a bonus to one skill or something. Being atheist will give you… hmm…

I think that a skill bonus would be fairly dull and gamey. I’d rather have someone choose the trait because it makes sense for the character they have in mind. The best part about Cataclysm is the way you’re experiencing a story unfolding.
For example, I consider it dull to pick Far Sighted for free points on a ranged character. I’d much rather think of it like “Okay, John Smith is Far Sighted from spending too much time on the computer, so let’s put at least one of those points into intelligence, or the computer skill.”

That said, I have no problem with other people doing that, it’s just that I honestly feel that a religious trait would be better if it was more… organic than a skill boost.

[quote=“Elembis, post:25, topic:2842”]I’m fine with some more religious items in churches/cathedrals. But there’s no way there should be a Religious trait if all it does is give you a morale boost when reading a holy book. We wouldn’t make a Mystery Novel Fan trait just to provide that effect when reading a mystery novel, would we?

I think we’re grasping at straws for ways to make religious characters different. There’s no reason to do that. In a zombie apocalypse, you need water, food, and shelter just as badly no matter what your religious beliefs are. Maybe you’d pray between zombie-bashing – that’s fine. Maybe you’d urinate between zombie-bashing, too, but that doesn’t mean we need to model it in the game.[/quote]

This is a perfectly valid opinion too. However, the same could be said for existing traits. Look at crossdressing for instance. Is there anything stopping you from just wearing opposite sex clothes without taking the trait? Not as far as I know.

It all comes down to whether I (or someone with a better brain than me) can design this to be an interesting AND fun trait. If that happens then why not put it in the game?

But yeah, I’m honestly more interested in the items and locations. Muh immersion.

[CarrierPrimoris]

I don’t think the themes of the game support in-depth religion. Horror is, more or less, diametrically opposed to comforting spirituality. However, I think it works well for NPCs and factions, though in more of a “I know it’s a flawed belief, but it’s all I have and I’m sticking to it” sort of way.

I imagine encountering the Amigara tunnels would be hard on anyone’s system of beliefs. Or physiology, for that matter.

[Iosyn]

[quote=“CarrierPrimoris, post:27, topic:2842”]I don’t think the themes of the game support in-depth religion. Horror is, more or less, diametrically opposed to comforting spirituality. However, I think it works well for NPCs and factions, though in more of a “I know it’s a flawed belief, but it’s all I have and I’m sticking to it” sort of way.

I imagine encountering the Amigara tunnels would be hard on anyone’s system of beliefs. Or physiology, for that matter.[/quote]

Hm. Priests and churches are pretty much a staple of some horror genres though-- but cata isn’t really a horror game, it’s an apocalypse/survivalish game.
Of course, you could say survival horror because of zombies, but I don’t really think anyone is afraid of zombies these days.
As to Nether and lovecraftian things… they’re more of a nod-on, though they should certainly have more interaction.

Entirely correct on anything remotely lovecraftian having a severe effect on a system of belief on a personal or even faction level. e.g

1. Player A contacts monster B. Average Joe Has a traumatic experience that such a thing can exist, horrified, he goes insane.
2. Player A contacts monster B. Priest McJoe Struggles with his system of belief and eventually triumphs, remaining sane while bashing the heresy out of it.
3. Player A contacts monster B. Atheist Survivor Joe is So jaded he just doesn’t care enough to notice. One more corpse to be butchered through a veil of paranoia.
   Just some examples.

Anyway, Leper thanks for linking that site. There’s a lot of interesting stuff there.
I must say you’ve put a lot of thought into this so well done. Fleshing out churches and cathedrals a bit more would be nice.

As to cathedrals, I think you should probably get a morale bonus just for being inside–
while I’m not exactly religious the architecture and art is quite pleasing to the eye. Maybe have some of those big artistic stained glass windows.
Might want to add candles as a spawn in churches/cathedrals too as I’ve not found any yet.

[Draconaes]

There’s some interesting ideas in this thread.

As for religious books and effecting morale: without a likes/preferences system mentioned above, it should give morale bonus to anyone that reads it, I would think. Currently, even if you imagine your character hating romance or fantasy, they will still get morale bonus from reading those books, so just don’t read the book if you think your character wouldn’t want to read it.

If/when there’s a likes/preferences system added, though, I’m not sure if morale gain should be tied so directly to religion. For example, I know for a fact that there are Christians that could suffer a morale penalty from reading religious texts: being inspired to feel guilty isn’t a morale plus. On the other hand, I’m sure a fair number of atheists would get a kick out of reading the bible or the qur’an or what have you.

Thinking about it, that might be an interesting self-imposed challenge: play as a religious person that feels compelled to read their texts and follow their rules etc. etc., but suffers morale penalties for these actions because of their outlook. Maybe penalties as well (guilt) for forgoing prayer/reading/etc. Actually this is sounding almost similar in mechanics to addiction.

Idea: possible to get addicted to religion? Yes/no?

[detahramet]

Calling it addiction, no, but becoming religious from consistent reading yes. Perhaps the lower your morale, the more likely you will be to become religious from consistent readings, and different levels of religiousness. “Withdrawal” would only really occur if you were a moderate follower, if you were only mildly religious, no real morale penalty. You just agree with what it has to say, but you don’t necessarily follow it. Given that the framework is already there, i can’t see it being too hard to implement. But, like most things, we should probably get modder to try it out first, see how that goes, before its implemented into the main game.

[CIB]

You have a Bible craving. Stop crafting? Y/n