I think religion is already set in the Game, for every tribe.

Posted By ZombieSue at

What's your guys' thoughts on religions cropping up in the game? Think there will be ones already written in? Maybe we'll have to come up with our own, maybe using existing frameworks or fabricating entirely new ones? A player might even rise up and get godly levels of respect and reverence and become a religion unto themselves, similar to how Kelsier did in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series. What do you guys think?

There are already 4 confirmed religions for the game

https://chroniclesofelyria.gamepedia.com/Religion

Cults are also confirmed. IE variations of existing religions.

While you could create your own brand new religion the game \ npcs wont recognize it

but if you wanted to make a cult of a existing religion with some changes that the game can recognize, that could take on and grab hold even end up with NPC believers.

I may behind on my information but I felt there were 5 established religions (possibly 6 by now, one for each starting tribe).

Agnostic Virtori Qindred Faedin Two-Fold Queen

Only the original 5 (or 6) religions will provide any boost or benefit from their practice. Where other religions or cults may pop up they will be more for role play as they will not provide any benefit from following them.

I don't really count agnostic as a religion though. but the games version of it is listed on the wiki i quoted.

There are five religions in Chronicles of Elyria:

• Virtori
• Qindred
• Faedin
• Al'tifali (The Two-Fold Queen)
• Faithless (Agnostic)
(More information in the link provided by Blankwindow).

Religions will play an important role in the story of Elyria, and also one of the core components to the game. Some religions may be more accepting than others, while others could care less on what one follows in faith.

For creating a "new religion" the closest you can get to one is altering the behavior and setting a contract for whatever practices you can set and form a cult. Whether or not, it can be considered really something seperate to stand alone from the original source, it up for question.

I really dislike this aspect of the game a great deal and hope it doesn’t play an integral part in gameplay. There is definitely no demand for a fictional religious rpg. In my humble opinion it definitely isn’t worth dev time. I imagine it is some kind of Pillars of Eternityish storyline that will be an interesting story, but you play with fire here for sure. So the few characters that get crazy powers will be tied to the religions I imagine. Toying with these concepts sociological and psychologically is dangerous.

Posted By Talmanes at 9:30 PM - Tue Mar 13 2018

I really dislike this aspect of the game a great deal and hope it doesn’t play an integral part in gameplay. There is definitely no demand for a fictional religious rpg. In my humble opinion it definitely isn’t worth dev time. I imagine it is some kind of Pillars of Eternityish storyline that will be an interesting story, but you play with fire here for sure. So the few characters that get crazy powers will be tied to the religions I imagine. Toying with these concepts sociological and psychologically is dangerous.

Then it would be quite simple, if people don't wish to follow any in-game religions then they don't have to follow them. They can be among the Faithless who believe there are gods, and legends, but it has no impact on their lives.

It's the beauty of player's choice within CoE, and it won't dictate anyone's playstyle if they don't want for themselves. Whether or not it will effect them within the game is still up in the air, but I like to think it will give a chance to add more to their story. :)

I’m happy to see I can ignore that aspect of COE without issues with mechanics! I know games that have had to take action to avoid player worshipping cause it was becoming a problem, people can be amazingly odd and spectacularly malicious.

Would be great if certain actions led people to unlock their talents, I like the idea of the players writing the story through gameplay by discovering the secret gems hidden throughout the world. The idea that certain features could go undiscovered would be sad though. Wandered a bit.

Posted By Talmanes at 7:30 PM - Tue Mar 13 2018

... So the few characters that get crazy powers will be tied to the religions I imagine. ...

That's rather pessimistic. Is there some specific development post or general announced policy that leads you to this opinion, or is it just your rhetorical hyperbole acting up?

You’d have to have played Pillars to understand you took it the wrong way. Very cool/interesting story there with a lot of similarities so 2 and 2. I’m sure the story they want to tell is changing, but a story like Pillars would be epic to play through with an interesting take on fictional religions. But I’m not sure an RPG storyline will work planned out in that detail, unless they sought players specifically to fill a role (which they don’t intend to do from what I’ve read).

So I’d rather they took that aspect out basically making the canvas, setting up the paints and let the players make a wonderful mess of it without as much guidance. We want a cool play ground, we usually can come up with our own activities.

Posted By Talmanes at 11:05 PM - Tue Mar 13 2018

You’d have to have played Pillars to understand you took it the wrong way.

Which Pillars is this? I'm not really familiar with any of them.

Religions are in, because they are part of the cosmological backstory, and a couple of them are based directly on it. I don't think there are any plans to allow them to endow characters with super powers. An old hint from Caspian, et alii, says that one of the religions is "true", but we players can only guess which one until the story reveals itself via some in-game trigger. The lore of several religions, in turn, hints at some catastrophic event in the future. General game lore combined with the known celestial mechanics of the Elyrian solar system hints that the catastrophe will be celestial, or perhaps cosmological, in nature.

If characters somehow come to be personally involved in the omened catastrophe, I suspect it will be as tools of cosmic forces, and not entirely as willing participants on an ego trip. Magic as a means of enabling highly powerful characters is not supposed to be in the game. I take this to mean that religion will not be used as a conduit to highly powerful characters either.

I actually think that leaving religion out of the game design would be a bad idea, because it would prompt some players to attempt to create religions of their own using the existing game mechanic for associations or the like. Several players have proposed doing so, only to be informed that whatever they did would have to be in the context of the religions designed into the game. Religion is also ubiquitous in human culture, so leaving it out would be to some extent unrealistic.

Religion as it exists in the design right now does seem to have the classical function of being useful to those domain lords (Dukes and Kings) who know how to use it well, and so may help create more stable domains. It may be helpful for all lords to foster the religious beliefs of their subjects, so as to maximize their loyalty, regardless of a player's or character's personal beliefs. That may be unsettling, but it is also the way that human nature, upon which Elyrians' nature is based, appears to work.