[MUD-Dev] Gods, worshipers and the balance

[Richard Woolcock]

Vadim Tkachenko wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Today's flamebite follows:
> 
> - Universe should preserve the balance (hopefully).
> - Every time cleric prays to his/her God, they gain some energy which
> then can spend somehow.
> - From the balance standpoint, their God's energy level should decrease
> - which is meaningless from the religious point of view - all the
> history shows that the greater the number of some God's worshipers, the
> stronger that God
> - which means that energy levels of both God and worshiper increase as
> they interact
> - which throws the balance completely out of balance.

Here is how my Demons work:
Each Demon Lord has a number of lesser Demons.  These are initially
Demonic Champions, although they can later be promoted to Demon Princes.
Every time a demon kills something, it gains some energy (lots of energy
if they kill a player).  Demonic Champions and Demon Princes are able to
transfer this energy at will to their Demon Lord (assuming their Lord is
online), otherwise the energy just keeps building up.  Demon Lords and
Demon Princes are able to spend the energy to gain special powers - Lords
are also able to grant special powers to any of their followers with the
energy.  Thus the usual role of each type of demon is as follows:

* Demon Lord:  Gets him/herself as many special powers as possible with
  the energy they have, without pissing off too many of their followers
  (they don't want to loose their source of income).  Will usually grant 
  the most basic powers to their followers straight away at their own 
  expense, because they want their followers to be useful in combat (thus 
  gaining more energy for the Lord to spend).
* Demon Prince:  Tend to spend as much energy as they can on themselves,
  being careful to give a reasonable portion to their Lord every so often
  to avoid being demoted back down to Champion.  Demon Princes rarely get
  giving any further powers by their Lord.
* Champion:  Try to get as much energy as they can for their Lord, in the
  hope of being granted some special powers or - after a long duration of
  loyalty/killing - promotion to Demon Prince.

I suppose Lord/Prince/Champion could be related to God/Priest/Follower.
My system seems fairly balanced in practice.

> Okay, now my solution for that (I *DO* realize, not the only one :-):
> 
> - I should (well, at least I want) to preserve the balance.
> - Energy levels of both God and worshiper _should_ increase, in game.
> - to preserve the balance, I introduce anti-god - some entity which
> exists on the material plane and is the exact opposite to the given God.

So as the God's power increases, so does that of the anti-God?

> Now, the question is - 'what do you mean, opposite?' Well, that's a
> tough question, so far I was able to formulate that as 'opposite
> alignment' (which explains, BTW, why I pay so much attention to it) -
> actually, this message is a request for new ideas.
> 
> Then,
> 
> - no obvious link between the god and anti-god exists.
> 
> For example, given that the God is good, the anti-god is evil, it's a
> monster, and lives somewhere - this creates a funny possibility that the
> good worshipers of that good God will announce a quest to eliminate that
> evil abomination, and ...

All the followers get annihilated?  Or, if they DO kill the anti-god, will
they then work out that:

1) The anti-God is equally powerful to God, yet:
2) We just killed the anti-God, therefore:
3) We can also kill God, who is therefore NOT all-powerful like He said He
   was, and must therefore have been lying to us all along.

However, suppose the anti-God had sunk deep down into the earth, built 
himself a nice warm cavern (I'll refer to it as 'Hell' from now on), and
started collecting together a number of followers of his own.  Just like
God, the anti-God needs sacrifices to gain power, although he is more
direct (asking his followers for sacrifices) whilst God gets his followers
to run around killing followers of anti-God (another form of sacrifice).
Meanwhile, poor anti-God and his followers are trying to mind their own 
business, sacrificing animals (which they will later eat anyway) and the
occasional trouble-maker, while trying to avoid the 'evil' murderous 
followers of God.

KaVir.