#2950 Demigods: abstract worshippers v2 (species)
This is a more specific take on what was already in FR 2799595.
Let's use "piety" for DG as well. (Say it's a measure for belief in you.) We may not need to use the classical piety system where piety is harder to get when you have lots of it. Not sure.
Piety gain essentially for milestones:
* killing uniques (their HD or Xp vs player level)
* getting runes (each unique rune +10)
* getting the orb (+30)
* entering new branches (+5, not the Temple)
* killing whatever the other gods put in your way (1-5)
For all of these actions (apart from picking up the orb), the piety gain should come with a delay of 100-1000 turns (perhaps depending on how far away from D:1 the DG is).
Piety loss:
* fleeing from the other gods's minion (-10)
* over time
Feedback (what you read at the ^ screen):
"Nobody knows you."
"Your name is briefly mentioned in some [stories|songs|tales|fables]."
"You have a few dedicated followers."
"You are worshiped alongside the other gods."
"Your worshipers are legion."
More lines are welcome. They should come in a speech-like text file.
Messages when your piety level increases:
"Your followers began building altars to you."
"Your followers have managed to install an altar to you in a major temple."
"Your followers began burning heretics at the stake." (Fire Magic leading)
"Your followers began impaling all the heretics." (Polearms leading) etc.
"Your followers actively proselytise the heathens."
"Your followers have started a war in your name."
"Your worshipers are enthusiastic about seeing the [orb|golden fleece|holy grail]."
"Your worshipers have declared that you are the only god."
For loss:
"Many of your former followers now worship other idols."
"With beastly fury, worshipers of some unknown entity decimated your followers."
"Altars to you [crumble|wither away] unnoticed."
"[Pigeons|Animals|Little boys] defecate your altars. Nobody minds."
"Many of your followers succumb to somebody's proselytisation."
"Your followers break up in factions, bitterly fighting among each other."
"A schism among your followers causes a civil war."
More lines welcome.
Effects of being a popular demigod:
(a) In levels where random altars can appear, such an altar may be to the DG.
(b) There could be (random) uniques worshiping the DG. At any time, the player can send such a unique home (to D:1) as "an apostle", which leads to more piety or the unique will be an ally.
(c) The other gods don't like to see a mere demigod draw so many followers. But outright killing the DG would not look good. Instead, they try to prove the DG's inferiority by sending capable followers of their own after the player. These should be randomised uniques with access to the god's powers (random name and good equipment, including slots not used by standard monsters, e.g. a spellcasting unique might bring a book).
Killing such a unique will increase piety and net those items. Not killing the unique in an encounter (they disappear after a while) is a bad blow to your reputation.
Fun bit: all the gods watch your performance. Xom snickers if you bail out etc. (Messages like these are much rarer than the uniques themselves but they explain that _all_ the gods are unhappy about a newcomer like you. Only their ideas about dispatching you differ. In the Abyss, Lugonu doesn't like you either, since you try to get into the establishment, rather than smashing the establishment.)
(d) Variations on (c): instead of meeting random uniques (as other gods's minions), the DG could be sent to a portal vault facing something. Some players might want to challenge the DG (and hopefully prove the DG's utter incapability for godhood this way) in different ways: Elyvilon could ask the player to obtain a rune without bloodshed; TSO could ask the player to get a demonic rune as soon as possible although I lack an idea what happens if the player fails to fulfill the challenge.
(e) Once we have random/player gods, the chance for creating a player god modeled on the winning DG depends on final piety, of course.
For choosing which god sends a minion against the DG, we should track more conducts (this will also have other benefits). Gods who are offended most
will go first. For all of the conducts below, simply count each instance. We should provide weights, so that we can get numbers to compare.
* killing orcs (Beogh)
* destroying orcish idols (Beogh)
* cannibalism (good gods)
* spellcasting (Trog)
* destroying books (Sif)
* killing plants (Feawn)
* killing slimes (Jiyva)
* killing holy monsters (TSO)
* stabbing and other unchivalrous combat (TSO)
* use of poison (TSO)
* attacking/killing allies (Okawaru, Elyvilon)
* letting allies die (Okawaru, Elyvilon)
* using necromancy (good gods, Feawn)
* mutating (Zin)
* resisting a mutation (Jiyva, Xom, Nemelex)
and many more.
Note: If you play a very slow DG who barely gets three runes (and probably won't ever face a divine minion), your game will be just like the current one. That's intended: players are not forced at all to be ambitious demigods. The only real benefit of being an ambitious demigod in the above system are the items one can get from the minions. That's definitely enough to tweak things.
This looks really good, much better than the old write-up! I particularly like the messages, they bring up fond memories of Civilization and similar games somehow. (I always liked those "civil war", "plague", "drought" etc. messages.)
Your proposed system of gods being offended to your misdeeds sounds good and workable. AFAIK, POWDER uses a similar system (so that might be worth checking out), but I like that this behaviour would be specific to Demigods. (In particular, I don't think it should be extended to jealousy among the established gods, largely because I feel it would be stealing from POWDER and also because as a player I don't want to worry about divine interactions.)
jpeg: Thank you! I wrote it with you in mind :)
I do have other uses for the conducts in mind but they're all of the following sort: if you come near an altar of some god, that god will beckon or threaten you depending on your conduct. (Messages only.) If you escape with the orb, gods will mention their dislike if you behaved badly in their eyes (mostly messages). Wrath of a former god should be a bit harder if you now violate their rules. (And again, messages.) It would make the gods feel much more lively, akin to my 'active gods' idea (where they sometimes do things on their own, usually depending on tension).
Wait a minute. Are you saying, dpeg, that under your suggestions that it would be possible for players to worship and get benefits from previous players' demigods who managed to escape with the Orb and presumably achieve godhood?
That sounds really cool, but extremely complicated to impliment, given the great variety of characters that a functional demigod can be.
nobody: Yes, there are some ideas about this. But don't hold your breath -- this might take a long while (unless we get a patch that starts things). There are some ideas about player/random god design, however.
I expected to hate this but in fact it sounds very good. Will be happy to provide text.
Lemuel
Lemuel: what praise :)
By the way, those who wondered how any sort of information flow between the DG and the overworld can exist: well, the monsters must get their items from somewhere. There are uniques coming (and perhaps also leaving, who knows). The stockkeepers much get into the dungeon with their stock. And so on.
If one really wanted to, one could have a "traveling salesman unique" (yellow @, random shopkeeper name), who is about to set up shop somewhere in the dungeon. The player can kill him, getting stock and some money etc. I am just saying that the events already present implicitly could be made more explicit, if desired. Not that I think there is any need to do so.
Well, the godly challenge thing sounds cool but the rest is, as you said, messages. Nice reading/flavor is good and all, but when the bulk of demigodliness doesn't actually affect the game it might be a bit dull. Haven't seen your active gods thing.
I've never liked the idea of player gods, though. It seems like one of those ideas that won't work out unless you put lots of effort into it, and even then that time and creativity could probably have been put into better use improving and adding to the regular pantheon. Another of my concerns is the (essentially) procedurally generated nature of it - usually it ends up feeling bland and machine-made without well designed guidelines.
~Impaled
Impaled: Now, that's a nicely negative feedback. It would gel better if you could address the points at question in some other way. Should we just remove DG?
On player gods, I always said that this needs an outside patch. The idea itself, of a randomly generated god, is close to the essence of the roguelike genre, in my opinion.
No thanks, I like the idea of demigods. Actually, rereading that I do like the sound of the popularity effects (monster/other challenges, possible allies etc) and the god hate system quite a bit, must have misread something.
~Impaled
From the DG FR v1:
An idea by Lemuel from FR 2792832: a demigod cannot move onto or next to altars. This should be made clear by
displaying the eight surrounding squares of every altar in the altar's colour (no matter what's on them). This will be mostly flavour but can be used to interesting effect in the special deathmatch portal vaults.
Alternative (which I like a bit better for future Lugonu altar corruption purposes): you can move onto an altar but you will get hurt. I.e. you will trigger some wrath effect.
(Rationale: the gods don't want someone like you to touch their sacred shrines. Of course, one could to extend this to undead trying to step on/near altars of good gods.)
Interface: mark all squares adjacent to a 'hostile altar' in the colour of the altar. Put travel exclusions on the floor squares adjacent to the altar.
Big question: We don't have to extend the idea to undead players but if we do, should the same rule apply to monster undead?
By doing this, we could make some tactically interesting vaults, at least for demigods and undead.
Moved to http://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:content:species:demigod closing