Organizational shrines would be shrines that are tied directly to the dominant philosophy of an organization, ie. the Light for Celest, the Taint for Magnagora, Wyrd for Glomdoring and so on. They have all of the powers of a normal shrine and are mechanically identical to a normal shrine except for the following:

-Organizational shrines are tuned against city/commune enemies. Shrine distort on a Serenwilde organization shrine only hits enemies of Serenwilde forest, for example.
-Organizational shrines can be raised by council members, using the syntex CITY ERECT SHRINE
-Organizational shrines can only be raised on organizational territory.
-Rather than running on divine essence, organizational shrines run on nexus power, at a suitable exchange ratio.
-The syntex is BESEECH FOR , rather than calling on a divine.
-Protectors are allowed to use personal shrine powers.
-Security can use all shrine powers, and extend the influence of a given shrine.
-City Champions stand in for Avatars/heralds for the purposes of the Herald power.
-All effects that would normally effect order members instead effect citizens.
-Organizations can't create invasion shrines.

Why should we do this? To divorce order membership from combat abilities, to allow both players and Divine more freedom in their roleplay, to allow organizations with inactive divine to maintain shrines for defense and to prevent order enemying for the use of shrine powers rather than for theological reasons and/or transgressions against the divine in question.

Thoughts? Comments? Booing?

While I'd love to see shrines taken out of combat, I'd rather do it by removing War shrines completely. Your method either removes shrines from orders or does nothing (if people want Invasion enough).

Mechanically, it's a great idea, and would be a nice improvement. Stylistically, you'd be hard pressed to come up with a convincing reasoning behind why organizations can suddenly have shrines. That's the part that's going to get this rejected, with hardly a second thought.

Also because it makes order shrines non-existent in org territories, and they're not worth the keep up anywhere else if anyone is gunning for them.

Faith in the Light is sufficent to provide divine caliber miracles! Likewise for faith in !

Orders will not be divorced from their associated organization. This has only been reinforced via mechanics that have been introduced over the past year or so. I don't think anything based in changing that will see much success. Which seems to be the entire point of this suggestion, as far as I can tell.

It totally should, though. What if I wanted to be in your Order? I can't because there is no way I'd be able to keep up with that much essence, man!

That is not what is being asked for at all, unless I'm misreading the OP very much.

Rather, it's asking to divorce order powers from city combat (since orders are RP orgs) and give these powers to cities, which has several beneficial effects:

1) Cities with small pantheons are no longer screwed when it comes to shrine-related conflict.
2) Orders can be used purely as RP orgs, and carry on as they do now in order v order conflict, rather than having to double as fancy weapons for cities.
3) Cities are no longer dependent on certain individuals in a certain order to be logged in in order to be competitive with those who do have people capable of shrines. This one is especially noteworthy because of #1 above, and because this is wholly dependent on how the god in question chooses to give out order rank/privs to his/her followers, leading to a potentially huge divide in power between cities that is not in the control of players.

Everything else regarding orders/cities would remain the same. Unless it's your intent that there be inherent imbalances between orgs caused by the number of active patrons for a city outside of what the god would themselves be doing directly for the city in the way of events, RP, helping leaders out with stuff and such.

Personally, I find shrines (war shrines, at least; no real experience with other types) to be pretty much revolting, and would much rather see them severely modified than open them up to cities as a whole. But I would certainly prefer this over the current setup, since so much is, best as I can tell, out of the direct hands of players.

If we aren't going to get rid of shrines then org shrines make some sense.

It adds an element of fairness too as defensively placed god shrines could be replaced with them and not require replacement ever again.

One change I might suggest is some interaction with the orgbixes, maybe a dae'Seren could have a once per month ability to help extend the influence or are allowed to beseech for personal powers?

I say this merely because I can see the epic quest item themes being used for the shrines, Serenwildes shrines would probably contain the blue fire of Glinshari for example.

Am I the only one who -likes- and thinks that the use of shrines in warfare is a -good- thing? I mean seriously, if an order has no mechanical impact on the game, why the frag should it exist? Go start up a clan and dance naked in circles and have tea parties in worship or something. Gods who are impotent, or at least never bother to intercede by granting boons to the mortal servants they've tied themselves to, and have a vested interest in their success, aren't really gods in my book. They're just someone with the ability to zap, maggot, whatever and have an ice cream club that likes discussing whatever philosophy they follow. Nobody wants a god that can't get it up, metaphorically speaking.

What you're really asking is: Can we please make divine interaction with mortals boring and pointless, and remove any impact that orders have on the larger scope of things?

Yeah. I have some choice words for you that I'm holding back right now. Seriously think about these sorts of suggestions, and what they mean.

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that 'RP orgs' without any real impact are the handicapped kids of the Basin and doomed to failure without constant propping up to keep them alive. RP is good and great, but the problem with RP that has no connection to IC 'reality' is that it's the neighborhood of fragging makebelieve. If your RP org doesn't have a tangible effect on the world in some way, you're just the creepy guy on the street with his cardboard sign that says "The End is Nigh!". Pure and simply, it's a joke.

So if that's really where you want to see one of the most important aspects of gameplay and roleplay for many players, right alongside city and guild go, be my guest. However expect me to be making rude gestures and trying my best to sabotage every effort in that direction you might make. It's a horrible idea, and right now I wish I had that image of Fry that says "Can't tell if troll, or just that stupid."

Shrines are not why gods matter, if the only reason why they matter is shrines then they should rethink what they are doing. Gods don't seem to really influence the use of their shrines from memory, except like... Elo banning war shrines.



I am unsure, but do you have any real experience with orders. From my experience they are primarily just another org that you join because it suits your characters rp. Often having influence around equal to a guild, if you are joining them because you want shrine powers and only that then that is actually an issue, people should be joining orders that make sense for their character.

Unfortunately this does not happen and I am curious to what percentage of the more popular orders members are just there for the powers.



It is rather cute but I feel that my response to yours is... well...

1) I'm sure that if you're an idealist, the pragmatic aspects of organizations don't matter. I'm sure you wouldn't mind much if your guild tutors didn't teach guildskills, because hey, the guild RP is fun.

2) You don't join for the powers, but the powers make the order relevant on the world stage. Otherwise, cute little social club.

3) I know you are, but what am I? Seriously man, you've gotta be kidding me.

The previous meme posted holds it seems.

Guilds provide us with abilities, orgs are generally the defensive force. An org without active gods can suffer on a few levels, lack of shrines is one of them. I see allowing org shrines as little more than balancing around demi and omni-trans, if we want to balance them, then we make them equally available. There will still be the benefit of more shrine availability with a larger pantheon, but this will also ensure that places where shrines are viewed as "necessary" can be expected to be covered and shrines balanced accordingly.



Not really, I got enemied to fain and was enemied to him for years. It made no difference to me, Fain didn't matter to me. All that it did was make Fain enemy status a "lol, enemied for shrines"



I'm thinking troll, but just not sure.

Yeaaah, at this point I'm gonna step out and stop posting in this thread. You've said enough to illustrate exactly where you're coming from that I don't really need to keep making my points.

Edit: Oops, I lied.

Play nice or I'll get the sour cream.

Actually, RP-centric organizations are kind of the "handicapped kids of the Basin and doomed to failure without constant propping up to keep them alive." See: old old Glomdoring, whose crazy-stifling-secretive-isolationist RP retained only a minuscule population (still do, actually!), and resulted in I forget how many summits by the Administration to help it grow, not to mention some shady mechanical changes that were brought about to help it "not suck" when it was constantly raided by Serenwilde or whoever decided to have a little stroll through its territories.

With that said, organizations and nexuses already project power through villages, guards, and discretionary powers. Defensively, yes, but they're there. Perhaps allow us to move battalions of guards to take over areas?

1. Delete war shrines.
2. Hire more Ephemerals more often.
3. After Ephemerals are trained and the ineffective ones weeded out, promote to Divine.
4. Balance org Pantheons.
5. Stop adding more shiny, new skills, artifacts, and systems for buffs. Start balancing all the things we have already.

Problem with that is that you do step 2 and then hope step 3 happens but step 4 is at the mercy of the other two. I think it has been pointed out multiple times that balancing out the pantheons is difficult because even if you make your decisions at step 2 based on the step 4 goal, things change. People who are happy to go to the orgs with inactive pantheons may not get through, so even if you accept people based on the second about what sort of divine they want to play it's not always going to work out.

This illustrates everything wrong with the dominant attitude of Lusternia right now. "If I can't use it for combat it's utterly worthless." At least attempt to hide your disdain.

By the way, Lusternia is an online text-based roleplaying game. Welcome to the neighborhood of fragging makebelieve.