Deity Relations

[Lynn1020]

J

Yes while everyone wants to have fun, party up and of course gain XP if you have chosen to play a cleric, paladin or especially a divine champion you need to be aware of your parties deity relations.

So before you travel with anyone you should ask them what their deity is?

Also how do you RP it if you don't know why your deity doesn't get along with theirs?  

[DMOE]

Well how you find out is up to you....My cleric does ask before she sets out with a party others try and have it come up naturally in conversation.

As for how you RP it.....your god, the 'person' you are so dedicated to that they grant you divine powers to reward your dedication has a problem with another god....Does it matter why?  Remember this is not 'modern religion' it doesn't have to be reasonable or completely explained.  My cleric's attitude is that Mist must have a good reason for feeling the way she does and it's hardly up to her to question the will of her Goddess.

[Lynn1020]

I don't think you understand what I was saying.  I'm not saying I question why they don't like another.   I just don't know how to RP it.

[DMOE]

Well Muir is not a people person so she tends to be rude, derogatory or get into philosophical debates....

She will not heal them, raise them or buff them unless she thinks it will cause them internal chaos or gain her and therefore Mist an advantage.

Others simply don't interact with them much.

All I can thing of right now but feel free to PM me and I'll help more if I can!

[Tanman]

 It is about how you RP this. I say again, yes everyone should be here to have fun but let's not forget that choosing to play a cleric, paladin or divine champion brings with it certain responsibilities that shouldn't be ignored totally for the OOC reason of wishing to gain XP.
 

 @Lynn1020:I think this is key here. The fun aspect of the game comes with the conflict that each characters have with one another. That’s what I feel is the main aspect of playing a religious character. Its one of the reasons why they have friendly, neutral, unfriendly, hate type reaction on LORE.  
 
DMOE is right in that its up to what your character personality would be. . . will determine how your character will act. My Aeridinite for example  realizing that he has met a Corathite cult member would act hostile and may threaten the person based on what the Corathite was doing, whereas if he found out about a Voraxian or perhaps Shadonite (and knew that they followed these deities) would tend to act unfriendly and perhaps snide.
   I think *its* ok to have a streak of anger, or cynicism, hostility or a certain personality towards something, someone. It’s what makes this world real and alive.

[Acacea]

Her question was really more about not knowing the reasons behind deity relations, and so having difficulty knowing what to say. Corath is simple for an Aeridinite - he's the extreme evil opposite. Two good deities that don't seem to clash too much can be confusing - what do you say? "My god hates you, go away!"

I was asked about something similar regarding Toran and Ilsare recently, where someone wanted to know if there was a story that could be told, or read, about why their attitudes towards one another are different. The same questions have come up  before regarding other deities, but many times the answer is no, there isn't a particular reason or incident that occurred to make it happen. It's usually a conflict of belief or race or yes, likely something completely arbitrary that will have reason invented backwards instead of reason coming first. A lot of things happen that way.

The thing is, for a divinely gifted character, you worship your deity and their gifts in all things, as DMOE said. If someone has been training and praying their whole life before setting out on the road, and then meets someone and wonders, "gee, why doesn't my deity like this person? Seems alright to me..." perhaps they weren't that into it. If thought is put into it and the need is seen to be that great, then that's different, but disregarding them regularly because a mortal is not clued into the mind of a god seems to imply that the god would simply give up and move on from that particular conduit.

When I joked in answer to the question that perhaps it was simply that Toran was a handsome, charismatic paladin, and Ilsare was a rebellious elven goddess of passion, I was only partially kidding. That's as good a reason as any, really. Sure, Ilsare is a goddess of love, and they're both good... but Toran is lawful, does not stray from his duty, would never want to lose himself to any heady emotions that might sway him...etc. Perhaps he (or more importantly, his church or individuals within it) consider her a temptress, or simply what many other people who don't understand her see - a flighty elf with few things sitting in her head for very long, spending too much time at music and play when Toran is a man of war, upholding all that is righteous and good in the world, while Ilsare changes her harp strings and sings about it.

For an Ilsarian it could be different - while Toranites are notoriously ...paladinish... they are nothing if not passionate about their paladinly LG ways, which Ilsare (or again, more importantly, her church or an individual character) may find endearing, as well as his tendency to make every cause something to be championed - unlike her elven kin who are notorious for not sticking their foot into anything. Many a song has been sung about the virtue and valor of knights, I am sure.

I didn't read it anywhere, and to my knowledge there is not anything written about a breakup between the two or anything of the sort - though something might be upcoming that was written in hindsight to the relationship. I just looked at the two deities and thought "what would a priest of mine make of the relationship between his deities?"

I know you'd think that the churches would teach their beliefs on why certain things are certain ways, but unfortunately that is not possible with the current information available. So we mortals are left to contrive our own

Edit - after being asked, I want to clarify that I wasn't saying her only question was "why don't they like each other?" but more I was talking about the difficulty some have in expressing conflict when they aren't even sure where the conflict comes from. It's easy with an Aeridinite and a Corathite, but if Aeridin were an enemy to say, Katia, a cleric may find it difficult to roleplay an enemy relationship with a Katian without being given some sort of reason regarding the source of the attitude. The precise reaction and implementation does depend on personality, but it what specifically was said would to some degree depend on why they were enemies, for most. I the event though, that you simply cannot come up with any reasons at all...remember they worship them so much that they are granted divine blessings. Even if one doesn't know why...one trusts in one's deity - clearly they know something that one's mortal eyes cannot perceive.

[AeonBlues]

I want to weigh in with a couple of points.

I think deity relations is much more significant between devout and devout.  Then devout and non divine casters.  I think typically, a cleric of Toran is going to have much bigger issues with a cleric that worships corath, then say a mage that worships Ilsare.  Lets face it, most non priests are only "easter" worshipers.

Another thing which applies mostly to the non divine casters, is that their character alignment does not necessarily reflect their deities.  For example, True N Kithairien druid might be better received by a cleric of Toran then a CN druid would be.

Personally I like running with a Toranite cleric.  She will always raise my character when he gets killed, which makes for a big incentive to keep him alive in the first place

AeonBlues

[Acacea]

Easter worshippers don't deserve to have the name in their deity field

[darby snails]

I do agree you have to keep true to your diety relationships (especially if you are a cleric or paladin or the like.)  On the other hand it should be a tool to lead to roleplay between characters instead of the reason to exclude people from adventuring together.  There isn't a reason why a Toranite and Prunillite (or whatever you would call her) to be travel partners, but really the reasons any of us come together aside from either need of CNR or wanting to see new places on Dregar are often pretty thin.  Even on quests (or especially on quests?) there's often no good reason why these six to ten people would be together, as they have as little in common as most people trapped in  houses on reality shows, but that's just an aspect of the game that has to be accepted.   There just aren't enough people playing right now to only stick with your own kind.  

Also not every conflict has to be pure hostility...  I'd love to see clerics trying to convert other party members, or going out of their way to demonstrate why their diety's so much mightier than the other (or more giving, or more evil, or whatever), or a hundred other things besides trading insults or worse, refusing to allow someone in a group based on their faith alone.  Of course it all depends on the cleric and their diety what they would do (some clerics are under no obligation to even announce they are clerics, of course) so I'm not saying every cleric should be doing this, but still.. If you're anything but purely hostile, there should be a lot more you can do besides act as sworn enemies.  "Neutral" and "Unfriendly" doesn't mean "hostile."  Which leads me to...

... I would hope the relations system would be reconsidered and possibly simplified a bit for the next version of layo. The shades of grey between "allied" and "friendly" make for great writing in LORE but might be just too complex in the game itself, especially when the reasons for diety relationships aren't often obvious and clear (this is much more so for the ones that aren't about good vs. evil, like farming or crafting dieties.)    I don't see why it can't be pure friendly/neutral/enemy, with good reasons why they feel that way.  I also think "unfriendly" is misleading, as I said above, because many seem to take it to mean they're enemies when I don't think that's the case.  Really I think a lot more dieties should simply be just agnostic to each other (they think the others are silly and misguided, but if they aren't a threat and have completely seperate spheres of influence, and there's not a known and written story in their history, then why would they be enemies?)  

I know this might be a bit of a rude thing to say but I just can't accept "because the handbook says so", because the handbook was written to facilitate our roleplaying in the game and if we as followers of a diety are stumped as to why we are supposed to be hostile to another (other than "our diety has her reasons and we have to trust her") then that is a serious roadblock to our creativeness as players.  When you don't know why you can't roleplay a discussion or argument, you can't explain to non-worshippers why it is so, all you can do is be hostile.

[Acacea]

I don't think anyone demanded hostility, really. It was said a few times that the way an enemy to the faith is handled would be character-dependent. DMOE's is, but that's because worships Mist and is a certain sort of woman that can't be properly identified on the forums. "Unfriendly." I guess. Muir-esque. The post is simply made because some regularly disregard the faith entirely when it comes down to it.

[DMOE]

No one said that people shouldn't travel together or that every interaction should be hostile....Just that nor should deity relations be completely ignored for the OCC desire to earn XP especially when it comes to using divine gifts on enemy/unfriendly deity followers.

I have only ever had my cleric thrown out of a party once for her religious beliefs, ironically enough because she refused to heal another party member who did worship an enemy religion.  My character wasn't nasty about it....Just simply refused.  She was told she wasn't welcome to travel with the party any more.  That's once....in many, many months of playing her.

As I said....It's not about the traveling or being hostile.....It's about the not ignoring it to ensure people get the best buffs and actually RPing it in someway....In fact the way you describe is a good example of how it can be RP'ed and still keep party cohesion.

[iceyfire]

My character never really played out a distrust of characters of a certain faith, mainly due to her wisdom being at a all time low she decided to be nice to all giving them all a fair go.

She was wrong, and she found out exackly how Corathians treat others, & as such is now completely distrustful of any who follow deitys of the same ilk.
Likely to bathe any in fire, althought they would probably like that hmm...

Anyway my point im getting at is, it really depends on who your character is, not their faith, think of your character as your first decider, then your deity.
Alas not all of us are religious zealots so we all take different paths to this area.

Personally my character warns the party first of potential flaying alive of Corathians, once she is satisfied she gives them her complete trust (She is not wise enough to see that trust is something to be earned rather then to be given).

Play it as you see fit, but one thing you can always do... If you feel the rp is offensive message the character with a pm, and most of the time you will find that they are just playing their character how they think is best.
We all cant dance around a bright rainbow together... deal with it.

I like making pointlessly long, & probably incoherent rants, no flaming please, just my 2cents at 2am .

[merlin34baseball]

Wait we can't all dance around rainbows together?  My Ilsarian Cleric/Bard thinks we can!

[Acacea]

iceyfire, it was really just directed at divinely blessed characters, I believe. So under that light, "deity first, then everything else" is just part of the character.

[darby snails]

Well to be true I was basing my post on when this was a bigger community, I doubt hostility and exclusion goes on as much now, but I did see a lot of it in the past (as a neutral good Prunilla druid getting just sheer hostility from Toranites)

But my real point to all this is that I really do think the dieties relationships should be reexamined before the new Layo comes out for the sake of new players.  If the friendly/unfriendly categories remain the same then I think 1, they should be mutual (no more I'm friendly to you, but you hate me), and 2, dieties whose alignments and spheres of influence arent at odds with each other should in general be neutral.. As in, they aren't enemies or threats, they just don't care.)

Or, leave it as is, but explain why the relationships that aren't apparent are the case.  Obviously Toranites hate Corath, but (going back to my example yet again, but there are many more) why Toranites should hold contempt for the halfing goddess of farming and motherhood isn't really clear to me.  This is what I really take issue with, is that we are told to be "unfriendly" but aren't given any backstory as to why; this is in my opinion not good at all for role play.  I am all for opposing factions and all that to spur arguments and role playing but it doesn't allow for much depth if all we have to go on is "our goddess has her reasons."

[Praylor Falcus]

Not "ALL Toranites do"

[Shadowblade225]

I would imagine that some of these deity issues and any rationale behind a few of these divine relationships will be touched upon in the updated handbook.  I can not be sure of that though as I don't have a role in writing it.  As for odd and unexpected relations between deities, I know that they're extremely complex and multifaceted as well as long-stemming (a few at least).  

Remember, with alignments there are two components -  Order/chaos, and Good/evil. No doubt for some relations at least, both facets play a role in the opinion or view of one deity toward another. This doesn't help I know.  It doesn't even answer the question.  But then, who knows the ways of the gods *thunderclap*. I think it also goes without saying.

As I'm sure has been said (I've only read the last two posts in this entire thread, so sorry), play your character as best you can, depending upon a character type, adhere to the dogma as best you can, take it as a case by case basis.  Sheer hostility of a Toranite toward a Prunilla-ite just due to her deity, is to me, despite the unfriendly status, a bit non-Toranish.  But that's my opinion.  If said Toranite was hostile based on her actions - a different story.  But then I'm not going into this.  Only word I can say (two words actually) - next handbook.