thusia_ooc | DISCUSSION: To Plot and Beyond

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DISCUSSION: To Plot and Beyond

Hey guys, your resident mods here with a... not quite a full-out discussion post, but we'd like to get some ideas and points of note out there and your feedback on the matter. Particularly involving the latest plot and currently running plotlines. There have been a few discussions on plurk, but we'd like to have something more formal to make sure everyone has the opportunity to read and get their input on things that'll affect them.

There's a few things we'd like to touch upon with this post, the main points revolving around current/past/future plots and how we as mods can make things more fun for you in the way we handle them. Also on our agenda are things like State of the Game, God Functions, Player Accessibility, and probably more. To keep things organized, we'll be using header comments to cover specific topics and linking them in the post for easy navigation, so once you see a topic linked here, feel free to jump right to it.

CURRENT PLOTS: Moving HQ | Bitey Dogs | Weres

Week of my Life Posts | State of the Game | Affecting the Gods | Nature

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Alright, I'll give you guys my god theorycrafting. I actually take god domains into consideration by natural forces. I use, actually, a mix of the above - both being created into the world naturally, having domains given or inherited, and developing them through the growth of society.

Coren, for instance, has plasma, birds, illusions, and oaths. Plasma has obviously always existed. It is his oldest and strongest domain, but for Coren it was not always his domain. I'll save the details for plot points in the future. If you consider Thusia as a planet, plasma would be one of those first things breaking into the cosmos to create it. His avian domain comes with the first creation of birds, the first sparks of life in feathers. The last two domains are a transition from pre-human civilization to human civilization. Oaths being absolutely one of his domains that exists only because humanity progressed into the concept.

I classify all gods by force and element, and then by their societal concepts (friendship, oaths, etc). Some gods naturally feel more evolutionary - effected by the world and gods themselves, and some, obviously, are influenced by humanity. In my opinion, there should be a good mix of evolution. There are a lot of gods who start with one domain, and gradually move into others as the world itself changes.

I've included in my own story that gods can be injured by other gods if the other god is more powerful at current. This puts more power into Thusian hands, but also, I've played that for the most part, you can't actively destroy a god completely. You can weaken it so much that it can't take form, and can't exist on the current plane, but to destroy a god would take some OOC plotting. To me, it's not impossible, but it's likely that you'll use gods to fight gods if you're aiming for that.

I'm not sure if I'm reading this correctly or not, but is the general idea here that gods preceded humans? Because I know for certain that kind of runs against the initial game mechanic we set up and it kind of eliminates one of the driving forces that most if not all gods have for keeping the current civilization alive, which is that the gods need the humans to continue 'living'. Otherwise, there's no IC reason why.

Theoretically, it's possible the gods believe they must have humans to survive.

If you take our world, and say put a greek god into the same situation and took out all the theory of 'do they really exist'. They weren't actually a being with a name known by us until a human created that name.

I guess, in my headcanon, they weren't at all the personified gods you know, but were rather generalized forces prior to humans making them so. I call what came before a primordial god in my head.

(Ugh internet stop dying).

Currently, Thusia has a god system where gods strongly rely on civilization to believe in them, but then it doesn't explain the nature gods and how they've existed if everyone died and how they've kept their powers up. It allows players to essentially attempt to write out a god if enough people change their belief.

My headcanon up there is kind of a mix. Like I said, it's all just headcanon. I do find it interesting at current that you can opt to evolve domains in a way, crash into other domains, absorb domains, because of the fluidity of gods interacting with gods and belief of humans.

Edited 2012-11-29 04:27 (UTC)

I think as long as the gods really do need human existence in order not to sort of dissolve back into the "primordial god" state (which I'm assuming sort of has low or no consciousness and is sort of just a.. natural force.. sort of thing?), this doesn't conflict with the foundation-mechanics of the world. If the Gods need humans in order to exist as they are, I think that still gives them a reason to be bringing people in.

Does that sound like it works with how you've been imagining Coren?

Yeah, that's pretty much the headcanon I use.

And if for some reason that the concept of the god vanished, it would either lose personification (if it's a general element or force of nature), and be very weak, or it would cease alltogether. So I imagine in my head that those gods who don't have a natural element to them actually have more at stake than those who do, but they're also a little less at the mercy of possibly being controlled because of similar elements.

Likewise in my overly complex headcanon, if humanity were to start believing a god or goddess had control over an element, they might birth a new god or goddess - pulling from existing gods or from the primordial soup as it were.

Oooh, I think this is actually still in line with what's been laid out on the mod side.

Could you elaborate on "but they're also a little less at the mercy of possibly being controlled because of similar elements."?

I'll use an example in existing gods.

Coren is plasma. Eizon is electricity, and then out there somewhere is a lightning god.

Eizon obviously sided with humanity. Lightning sided with nature. Plasma is a state of matter that both electricity and lightning fall under, but Coren is weaker than both of them. He did not choose to side with either at the start of the war. Lightning became more powerful than him and was able to injure him, and Eizon has obviously been around longer with the new Thusians regaining his power so in current standings, Eizon is more powerful than Coren.

Basically, they're very similar elements, but depending on how much influence they've gained and how much people are willing to help - they can be very weak even if their element should be powerful.

As for the headcanon that those with natural domains are more in danger, it's because they can easily overlap. Now, technically the personifications of emotion can do this as well - into more extreme emotions, but it's really not played that way. And people have less a chance of changing their perception of a feeling or emotional state than they do of an element.

An example of that would be how science in the real world keeps discovering new things, but we'd be hard pressed to poke out a new emotion. Emotions or non elemental facets are going to be a stronger constant overall. ( see Nature of Emotion Wheel for examples how they could be used similar to elements being overlapping).

Edited 2012-11-29 05:06 (UTC)

My head is kind of bouncing from jumping around in discussions on this post, but I think that headcanon could be really interesting. I'm pretty hugely iffy on gods existing as their own solid/shaped being before the beginning of humanity/its worship, but them being a... kind of goo that was molded together by humans seems pretty neat!

Hmm, I might have to tap Aviy for further detail, but by going with what we have on our god docs, it works in the way of 'power stores'. Towards the end, nature gods had really big power stores because the last of civilization was praying for them to stop, shocked into believing in them again, etc. Gods on the other side, who originally had a lot of power from before the war, were using that power to help people survive and it kind of dwindled as nature gods built up. Our general idea was that when the last humans died, some gods still had power that they hadn't used up to that point. They waited for the nature gods to stop paying attention to them, slowly losing power as they waited, then combined their residual power in a last ditch effort to start pulling people.

There may be some holes in this though that I can't see, so if anyone wants to stick their fingers in them it'd really help us out in figuring out how to better gear the gods.

Yeah, that's the impression I got in general by the docs and discussion. It feels like their powers are batteries with fixed limits, restored by humanity giving them belief.

HERP didn't see your edit--

See Ten's comment for the current reason why Nature gods have kept their power while civilized gods haven't.

Obviously we do want to make it so god-players really invested in keeping their god a certain way don't have to bow to attempts to erase them if they OOCly don't want to, but we do also want to be careful about not invalidating the basic motivations of the mechanics that keep the game working. If another mechanic can be worked out that's stronger that "they just think they need people" I think it'd be better?

Hrmhrm...

They think they need people is more of a plot twist mechanic.

Them actually needing people in order to stay as they are or grow stronger or take new domains - entirely true.

BRACE YOURSELF FOR LONG-WINDED-NESS.

OK, after rereading a bit and having other mods clarify a couple things for me, and noting you've mentioned this is just headcanon (which I assume means you’re posing all this to us as a suggestion?), I figured I'd work with you to try to reconceptualize some of those things as part of the Thusian world canon and talk about what options there are for people to shape their Gods. (IDK if this will result in too many spoilers so feel free to ask to move this somewhere private if you don't want too many details about your god floating around before you get to play it out).

So firstly, going over the founding mechanics (basically one of the Natural Laws of the Thusian world, like on the same tier as gravity): Humanity begets gods, and the oldest of gods are as old as the first humans. This is something established in the god docs and ICly where charas have asked about it, and it’s something we've asked everyone to adjust their god concepts around, so I think that's something that we don't want to move on. This doesn't mean, of course, that their domains aren't older than humanity, especially concerning gods aligned with nature.

I think, similar to your point about Greek Gods being shaped by humanity—but not quite the same—a Thusian God is like a personification of an idea or aspect. The collective energy of the "ideas" of humanity came together and gave them form, but it’s from an essence that is produced by human existence, not something that’s been there since the universe began. And from there they gained power over domains, either because of the aspects they were born out of connecting them to a domain the moment they came into existence (Dellen and Human Creation, Sv’x and Primal Fear), or they attracted or were attracted to certain domains because of their personality. Basically from there they changed and gained and lost domains through various means (evolving, devolving, splitting in two, affected by humans, the world, or each other, etc.) which we leave to the player to decide.

So like, the stuff that makes up a Thusian god originated from humans and humans (and as of the start of the game, any beings with a soul) produced that energy or essence by existing. This essence isn’t in the world unless people are in the world. This is the founding element that we’re really reluctant to change, especially after asking everyone to work within this framework and building some essential mechanics of the game around it.

Umm, you may be thinking at this point that this means Thusia isn’t a sandbox, since I’ve just presented this strict framework we’d like people to use, but I think the mods probably use the term sandbox in a slightly different way than I’ve seen others use it? Where by saying “sandbox” others mean absolutely anything is allowed, we mean we want players to be able to customize and grow in many directions while keeping in mind a few basic elements that keep the game cohesive. We have mechanics we’re willing to adjust and make better and as far as the development of the world and the things gods and charas can effect in the game and how they can grow and change we do want everyone to take things and build big and amazing stories out of everything we give people to expand on, but (to be metaphorical) in this case the box that holds everything in is still important, and no matter what elaborate, beautiful, crazy thing is built inside, it still ultimately started as sand (the unchanging elements of a sandbox).

SO THEN, if I haven’t scared you away—which hopefully I haven’t—what can we do? I think a lot of your ideas are great and I'm sure they'll be really awesome to see played out! Some of the others may need tweaking in order to fit in with the fundamental elements we’ve laid out for Thusia, but if you’re open to fiddling with things a little on your end from how you imagined it, we can see how the framework can be stretched a bit so they fit together.

For example I think that your classification system still works perfectly fine, even if you acknowledge that the Gods themselves may not have existed at the same time as their most basic or oldest domain was created. Your ideas for how Gods might shift, gain, or lose domains too seem perfectly within the bounds of our framework, especially with the changes we’re trying to implement to how a God can evolve, as listed in the top-comment. Gods fighting, and gods injuring each other is totally a thing that can happen and I think it’s a great aspect to consider when building a God’s backstory so I'm glad you have that in there. Your two comments about how lighting, plasma, and electricity domains might interact are also, I think, a great analysis of things that would effect various gods relationships with each other and how one God might get stronger than another at various times while sharing similar domains. And you're right that we're interested in a mix of methods that players can use to give their gods development.

As for the gods depending upon belief to have power, they do get power from it, and it’s a good boost, especially in times like now when society is less unified in their ideas about gods, but that’s not the only thing they rely on. As I mentioned earlier in this comment, humanity’s mere existence gives them power. How this works is that as long as a God’s domains have an effect on humanity, as long as their domain is a strong part of the human experience, then the god too continues to exist. The more that domain is a part of human experience, the more power a god would get from it. That’s why a god like Sv’x would be focused on having a lot of people fear him.

ANYWAY, sorry if any of this seems like I’m going back on some of what I said in above comments, I may not have been clear on what you were getting at, and since I wasn’t one of the founding mods I don’t always remember to reiterate their founding principles for the game either. But I hope this gives you an idea of what’s working and what parts might need tweaking if you want to move it from headcanon to canon for Coren!

Edited (Sorry, keep seeing things I wanna add.) 2012-12-01 03:14 (UTC)

OH YEAH, you're free to ask if you feel like you need any help seeing if something works or not. I think overall most of what you have does work, so it's not like it all has to be picked apart or anything. But that sometimes makes it harder to decide what might seem like it needs an adjustment so it's cool to ask me! Here or on a private plurk or anywhere you're comfortable with.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

DISCUSSION: To Plot and Beyond

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