Empire Blogging: Power
Religion Design Principles
- Power -
In terms of laying out the stall from the very beginning, this blog is not about detailing what the individual powers of priests or religious institutions are within the game. Those are still being developed and balanced against other game elements.
This blog is about design concepts and principles of Religious Power in a world where religion is not supported by the ability to summon a Holy Flamestrike either directly at a cleric’s call, or indirectly from a divine being.
In terms of underlying principles, one of the key ones has to be about the power of the individual and the group. Broadly in Fest LRP, a group of fighters (aka a mob) has proportionately more power than an individual with combat skills. Equally, a group of magic users (such as a ritual group) may be capable of performing more powerful effects than an individual mage.
So we aspire that this hold true for Religious Power also. An individual Priest needs to have meaningful interaction with others, but a group of Priests can be proportionately more powerful.
Another principle in LRP is that “power” must relate to something that Player Characters actually care about. The lowest common denominator tends to be Blood and Lammies. That is to say, most players can see the importance of character life and death, and the value of mechanical effects that aid them or hinder others.
Yet, in Empire, we are looking to capture additional elements that Player Characters care about. These include meaningful wealth, capital, prestige and also validation.
A common refrain when people hear that Imperial Religion has no interventionist gods, but that there are otherwordly NPCs called Eternals, is the claim that the Eternals will be worshipped as gods. It is actually irrelevant that the Eternals may not want worship, because the reality is that their approval, in whatever form, would constitute Validation of a character.
In both Maelstrom and Odyssey, the gods are capable of delivering blessings. However, the impact of these is not simply the mechanical effect of the blessing, but the validation that the gods have noticed and approve. This holds true even when the mechanical effect of the blessing may be negligible.
However, a critique of organiser-delivered divine validation is that it can be perceived as biased or ill-informed. In Empire, we aim to put the power of Validation in PC hands. It may still be perceived, rightly or wrongly, as biased or ill-informed but it will be so in an entirely In-Character and Uptime manner.
So, how can a non-interventionist religion compete with NPCs in terms of validation?
It does so by empowering Priests to reward the Virtuous and punish the Wicked.
The tools to do this will be skills for individual Priests and the powers of the Synod for assemblies of Priests.
Priest skills are important because they provide demarcation from other roles in the game, such as combat skills for warriors and magic skills for wizards. Although our stated intent is that they have no mechanical effect, this primarily relates to ‘buffing’ and combat resolution, and is not the same as ‘no effect at all’.
In a reincarnation-based theology, there are options around status effects and peoples’ individual passage from death to rebirth. A warrior may be able to kill a wicked person, but a priest may be able to ensure their spirit is never born again. Meanwhile, the priest will also have ways to recognise the qualities of virtuous heroes to assist in their attaining immortality.
As for the assemblies of Priests who compose the Synod, the Imperial Religion is a state-religion, which is not uncommon in empires. The Synod’s existence will be documented in the Imperial Constitution has powers under Imperial Law.
The crucial importance of Imperial Law to the game of Empire is a whole other topic/blog, but suffice it to say that interweaving Religion and Law means both have a vested interest in promoting and protecting one another. Consequently, we are not designing any religious legal powers that circumvent or undermine Imperial Law, but they will be able to affect and impact upon it.
However, as a guide to some of the powers of the Synod under discussion, there is:
- Rewards for individuals of a virtuous nature; both spiritual and material
- Punishments for individuals of a wicked nature; both spiritual and material
- Intervention in the Empire’s law-making process including, but not limited to, veto of the Senate
- Intercession in the judicial process
- Identifying, and taking direct action against, internal threats to the Empire, spiritual or temporal
All of these powers will be supported by the Imperial Law to empower the Imperial Religion to act for the Empire’s good. It will be possible to attain high office in the Empire without the support of the Synod and the Imperial Religion; but it will be far, far, easier to do so - and hold onto it - with that support.