I'll say it once more, gods should NOT run organizations.

These are examples of gods running organizations:
Gods making policy decisions (the protection of Merians (and other bashing areas, a gripe of mine), Celest as an organization has no real reason to protect them, they haven't pledged themselves to the light or anything... It's just what Terentia has ordered)
Gods punishing elected officials for making decisions without them. (Terentia zapping some Paladin, not sure exactly how it went, I just heard about her zapping him for signing a treaty without consulting her)
Gods towing the leadership behind them. (Old Viravain making a decision, and forcing the leaders to support her (like the seduction debacle))

Now, the game is advertised as being made up of player run organizations, where you can change the fate of the world.

Are they player run? I'll point specifically to Terentia, who is in my opinion the most controlling of the gods. What does Celest do but appease her desires. She crafts laws based on her divine vision of what Celest should be. Now, this could be a good thing, giving them direction, but the question I have is, should we have faith in the gods discretion? Or should we allow the players to actually run their organization?

Obviously, I feel like we should be able to form our own policy with a god overseeing us so we don't have any abuse of power.

Specifically, I don't think gods should be involved in politics at all. After all, they are supposed to be above such petty things right? Well Terentia seems not to be. Which is it?

Celest doesn't have a reason to protect its own kin, the race that the city is known for having?

Celest's hunting laws have been there for a loong time. It's not Terentia making those decisions. The city made them because innocent lives shouldn't be taken in the name of love and compassion and blah blah blah things you wouldn't care about. Not sure who told you about that one.

Right. Did they protect them before Terentia declared that they had to?

Protecting and not killing them are different things. Of course if I'm wrong about this, my point still stands in other areas.

Celestians kill tons of innocents. That really can't be their excuse for protecting the Arysian isles. What makes more sense is that they don't want gorgogs released because it interferes with the sands quest (much noob killings, yays). Some may have an afinite with merians, so it would make a quasi sort of sense to protect members of their race (though if there were merians in Serenwilde, I bet they'd jump at the opportunity to kill them ). But defense of the innocent sort of goes out the window when they kill innocents themselves.

From what I've been told, Terentia was in love with the Fish god, so her being prissy about his shards being killed off makes sense too.

Curious though, does Talkan still claim protection over the Aslarans (since he's a Taurian now?)

I would prefer if we kept this on point. The point being gods interfering with player run organizations/politics.

What kind of 'innocents' are you talking about? If it's tainted then it deserves to die, there is no innocence in the taint!

And Terentia was a lieutenant/captain/high-ranked officer of Meridian, I don't recall hearing about a love story.

Lots of speculation and not as many facts.

Edit: Sorry, I'll try to keep on track now. I just smelled another 'Whee let's all bash on Celest' opportunity in the background.

My opinion... Gods have lots of influence in their orgs, and whether that means they're controlling the city/commune or not can be on a blurry line. But I don't think so, not in any orgs (except maybe Glom in the past)

What Shamarah said... Merians pretty much founded Celest, and therefore, they must be protected - as in, making sure people don't kill them. Terentia's declaration only solidifies this policy even further, since people can be ‘tards and ignore their own rules. And before that rule was made, as a city standing for justice blah blah blah blah they have to protect "innocents". They are however, allowed to kill people who "aide the taint", i.e. Krokani at the Moors.

Sometimes gods have "interfered" when they should not have in Mag (just imo, and they probably have no idea/care how much it infuriated me as a player). I don’t think people realize how far a subtle or not so subtle suggestion can go.

However, Divine do like to RP, adding flavour to the Mud environment. Sometimes we probably don’t appreciate or acknowledge enough how difficult it can be balancing the right amount of involvement in organization-player relationships.

Might be before my time, but I'm pretty sure Celeste was trying to protect merians before Terentia was around (more?). I know I don't remember hearing anything about Terentia when Kharaen stepped out of the portal, but heard about her more after the Celeste/Serenwilde war. And since Kharaen's been around, Celest has been haranguing about the merians in the Arysian isles.

So I'm on topic, nyah!

Let me clear this up, this is NOT about merians, okay, is that all? Thank you.

Please stay on topic.. : (

I think gods should have nothing to do with politics, they should RP, and perhaps suggest things to players, but never ORDER people to do something for the org, and definately never punish someone for not following their suggestion.

Just an idea. Makes a clear line of influence. No, gods will not interfere with politics, yes, they will let their opinions be known, but with the knowledge that the mortals don't have to listen.

I do remember Hajamin once arguing that Merians weren't supposed to be protected according to RP needs because he had argued with Amaru that point. Do a search for that on this forum, you'll see the conversation.

Gods do have biases and their own personalities. However, they are under more restrictions than real players. You can get the same kind of corruptions from a cabal of player-driven power. Maybe Terentia prevents players from getting too out of hand, or keeps Celest from being uber-griefers. It's possible the gods need to be more active in this realm to keep conflict to acceptable levels.

I really don't know.

That's something I agree with. The instance(s) in Mag, I understand why from OOC wise they did it, but... I don't think they should have interfered . At all.

And please don't tell me you just said that bit Phred, about uber-griefers Bad example

I personally disagree, I like the high interaction that the gods have with the mortals. Keeps the game interesting.

As a member of Celest and having been leader of Celest and GM of the Paladins while in Terentia's order, I'm gonna have to say you really don't know what you're talking about. Terentia has never ordered Catarin to do something in terms of policy for the city or the guild. For the most part and in most situations she really does not seem to much care what's going on in terms of specific detail and is content to leave it up to the mortals to deal with. She generally only makes her presence known if the RP calls for it.

Celest isn't "ordered" to protect Merians. They're restricted from killing them and Terentia's order specifically take a more active role in protecting them for their own RP reasons as well as Terentia's fondness of them. Other Celestians do so for their own reasons as well. They're Merians. It's Celest. If you can't determine why Celest might care about them....

And Celest is hardly slavish to her will. There are plenty of actions Celest takes that she's not terribly fond of. You're basing your assessment off of hearsay it seems.

I agree that gods should not be running organizations but I don't see any gods that are. I do think gods provide a really nice RP meter for those that want it and some spice to life.

"politics" can refer to just about every activity in lusternia - what exactly do you think the role of gods should be then? and if you are going to tell them they can't try and enforce a set of beliefs how exactly do you think you are ever going to get people to be gods - and where would that leave game development?

Gods are supposed to try and bend mortals to their ways, and there are plenty of options for organisations that don't like the way a god is pushing them to dump them as patron/matron etc. Yes, occasionally they do things that aren't great and there are also mechanisms for dealing with that.

Overall the anti-god rants seem to fall into two categories of underlying motive - 1 "I can't do what I want because of some policy a God is backing" - for example not being able to harvest the ridiculously large amount of gold you can get each month from killing merians because celestines kill Gognigin to discourage the practice or 2. "I want everyone to do what I want, not what some god wants".

As your comments on Terentia, I think she adds substantially to the rp experience for the org's she's heavily involved in.

In summary - we want and need active Gods. If you lock them in a closet and don't let them try and influence anything happening in the world they won't hang around. Finally there are lots of people who like having gods interfere in mortal politics, it keeps things changing.

Ok, everyone knows how I feel about the "bender of light" ICly, so no point in pointing out those flaws. But before her time, gorgogs were released tons of times due to Celestians. But all in all merians were always on the no hunt list, along with aslarans. So this was not a strict law of theirs at all.

Now back to Ciaran's point. God influence should be somewhat involved. But not overdramatic. For example one of Magnagora's Divine DF'd or TDF'd Chade for removing him from Ur'Guard Patron. Chade's reasoning for this was strictly because the other god fit the Ur'Guard more or less. I do not think it deserved a disfavour of any sort though. (No offense to them at all, just OOC wise I didn't see a justified reason for it)

On the other hand, a Celest god flipped out when Malicia made a deal with Ixion to get her weapons back from him, their reasoning was that Malicia should not have made a deal with Ixion period, and that Malicia was not bound to her agreement to Ixion after receiving her weapons back from him. (Which is basically ordering a player what they can or cannot do too.) This god then zapped Ixion, and in retribution Fain zapped Malicia.... (both zappings I thought were unnecessary)

Now from an OOC standpoint I can understand why some gods choose to tell their Org's to let certain members join said organization (Munsia joining Magnagora/Narsrim joining Glomdoring for instance) I may not agree with it IC, but OOC, I can understand the reasons behind it.

What I would find horrible is if a divine ordered that someone were NOT to be admitted to a certain org under any circumstance. (Ex. If I were to want to join Serenwilde and Charune told the commune I was NOT to be allowed in for any reason) I would find that kind of harsh. But since that scenario has never happened (that I know of), I don't see a problem with that end.

But there are valid points to what Ciaran is saying, but also there are reasons behind some of the things the gods do. It is necessary from an OOC standpoint on some issues. On others there is no reason...... and I guess some of those things should be decided by the players, without the help of divine influencing.

I'm going to fully agree with Catarin here.

With regards to Terentia, Ciaran, you have no idea what you're talking about.

I'm gonna have to disregard you as terribly biased though... I mean, you are her fanboy!

If you could look at this on a larger scale it would be appreciated. It's not just about Terentia, she's just the one who comes to mind when I think of a god who intervenes a lot. I've never been in Celest, I don't deny that I could be wrong.

Now, I am hoping that you guys can step up and look at it as a problem (or not?) that all orgs suffer from to some extent. Personally, I see things like Viravain forcing Narsrim into the commune as something that was uncalled for. Narsrim made his enemies, why should a god care about ONE person? It doesn't make sense RP wise to me, as well as being annoying that anything people say is overridden.

Just an example, please, don't think I'm just trying to attack Terentia or anyone. Why must threads be derailed like this?

It's a problem, not a single god that I'm having trouble accepting.

I don't see this as a problem. I'm not a citizen of New Celest or Glomdoring (citing the examples that have been mentioned most frequently thus far), but I also don't see a widespread issue. My interactions with gods here have proven to be immensely satisfying, and I have yet to see evidence of absolute tyranny in which the poor mortals are unhappily forced to do the bidding of the gods. (One could argue the existence of Magnagora, but they seem to be rather fond of their particular variety of tyranny.) I don't see the gods as being overly pushy, or forcing too much down the throats of the players/characters, because I can easily see IC reasons for their behavior.

Using Narsrim as an example: I can think of a variety of reasons (barring direct divine intervention) that Glomdoring might've been willing to take him in: combat skill, intimate knowledge of the Serenwilde and its tactics, preventing him from siding with their enemies, or even just the old, "friends close, enemies closer" bit. Not everyone's happy with the decision, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was forced upon them. (Gloms, just using you as an example. I really have no idea, so feel free to confirm/deny any or all of these.)

Why do so many seem to see conspiracy and corruption in what appears to me to be perfectly legitimate behaviors on the part of the gods and their players? It's easy to accuse the gods of being overbearing and claim that they're stifling RP (Wasn't there already a thread for this?), that they have too much power, etc., but unless you reduce the argument to very broad generalizations there's not a lot of evidence supporting it. Even then, people have stepped forward to counter said arguments with facts and personal accounts.