I have talked to Nezmar and we're getting things going in the same direction and on the same page.
Here's what we've come up with so far:

The current deity system will remain intact and in place for now. We will be redoing some of them in the future but not right now. There will be new gods added that are specific staff driven.

Staff who qualify and want to will be allowed to create a new NPC deity that only they will play. They will write the history, background, etc for it and only that one staff member will use it. The staff member will also write a temple area for it and decide where that is to go.

We came up with a couple of things we want the NPC to be able to do that isn't done now. Main one I want to see happen is that a follower should be able to get a prayer/message to their god somehow. Nezmar has some excellent ideas on how this can be implemented and it won't take much of his time.

I'd like to hear what else players would like to see a god do for them or how better to interact with the players. I firmly believe that NO idea is silly (just some are not as feasible as others) and now is the time to let the open communication and creative juices flow... We will come up with a much better 'product' if we all contribute and make this what we want it to be!

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Go vote!
~Myrrima
'If you think you can or you can not, you are right.'

One thing that never really sat right with me about the current god setup is that though the gods are all part of the same pantheon, the focus is on single god worship. You choose one god when you create your character and all other gods are supposed to become false heretics.

Hmm, I'm walking without a destination here...

... Maybe all these new gods that get created could be grouped together in their own, NEW pantheon of gods. Then we could have an old feud type thing between the pantheons, like the Greek vs. Roman kinda thing.

You know, I really like Baernov's idea.

Here's an idea on how we can redo the existing deities...

Remember the Egyptian gods? Probably not, but I do. Well I don't *remember* them, but I've studied them quite a bit. For example, we had a god dedicated to specific life/nature aspects...

Ra was the sun god.
Nut was the god of the skies.
Osiris was the god of the dead.
Isis was the goddess of magic.
Ma'at was goddess of justice.
...and so on.

Each person worshipped and respected each god and goddess for their own respective areas. They recognized Ra was the god of the sun and worshipped to please him because he brought not only life but also death (you can die in the desert heat pretty easily, you know...)

The same concept was used by other civilizations, it's just that I find the Egyptians most interesting

Perhaps we can adopt the same concept to the NPC pantheon that currently exists. In addition (running with Baernov's idea) we can have the staff-run NPC gods that also have their own specific thing... This one can be the god of trickery, this one can be the goddess of this or that. Something that really doesn't pertain to any elemental thing of sorts.

The current fully-NPC deities would be the elemental-type gods (Earth, water, death, sun, moon...) and the staff-run NPC deities would be of something non-elemental/natural (deception, war...) As far as tithing and death is concerned, perhaps anyone can tithe to the full-NPC deities (who wouldn't respect the sun god?) and if someone has no deity they 'follow', then maybe one of those can resurrect a dead player after a period. I've had a character with no deity and it was pretty harsh waiting for 3 hours to resurrect, it not happening, and having to IM a friend of mine who had a cleric

I can see this not only leading to a more flexible system as far as RP is concerned but also let the staff be able to wage their wars between religions, let them woo players over to their side and such.

Thoughts?

These are good ideas and something similar has been discussed some with a couple other staffers last night. This is all long term however, so please keep that in mind. We discussed having gods for specific races and specific classes. And it would rock if you could have more than one god you worshiped because one god really can't cover all things all the time. Makes characters very bland and one dimensional.

What staff is doing now is creating a deity they feel fully comfortable playing, regardless of race, align and class. This is our short term goal for now, to get some fun and excitement back into the RP - The other issues we're taking notes on and ARE listening, so please keep ideas coming, even if you don't see these items change now, they ARE heard!

Thank you!
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Now go vote!
~Myrrima
- You can risk it all or you can risk nothing, either way, you can still lose. It's all the same.

Hell, I'll write the initial NPC-only pantheon if we want to go this route. Just need to work out ideas and get them all aligned. I'll start building them in the forum (the "let's build together" one) so we can start fleshing out the long-term ideas for deities.

If we DO decide to run with what I've posted (or a variation on it) then I'll write some of the initial descriptions and whatnot and then we can all tweak them so they're the best they can be. How does that sound?

Actually, I'll write the elemental/general ones and post them in a little while for people to give thoughts on.