LotN, Joinable Factions and Temple Ideas

[Wids]

Hello again.  It's another topic birthed from in-game chatter, yay! 

So there are a few factions or organizations that characters can join; so far, I've seen the Mercenary Guild and the Cloaktower (restricted to Arcane casters), and I understand that there's a Thieves Guild as well (and I think I know who that guild's contact is).  If there are more than these three, I hope to find out about them soon. 

But unfortunately, all of these factions have turned away my cleric Faustine, and I was chatting with Tails about what options there are for Clerics.  Joinable temples would be an obvious choice, and there are already temples to Tyr, Lathander, Loviatar, Yondalla and Tymora in the server world.  But with as many gods as there are in the Forgotten Realms pantheons, building and placing temples for each deity would be a pretty daunting task.  So perhaps shrine halls and temples devoted to multiple gods would be an answer; the gods themselves can be easily divided into temple-friendly groups, and some of them already have been:

• House of the Triad (Tyr, Helm, Ilmater, Torm, Siamorphe, Bahamut)
• The Deities of Fury (Talos, Umberlee, Auril, Malar)
• The Elemental Lords (Grumbar, Akadi, Istishia, Kossuth)
• The Orcish Pantheon (Gruumsh One-Eye, Luthic, Ilneval, Bahgtru, Shargaas, Yurtrus)
• The Drow Pantheon (Lolth, Selvetarm, Ghaunadaur)
• Goddesses of the Moon (Selûne, Sehanine Moonbow, Eilistraee)
• The Host of Banehold (Bane, Loviatar, Beshaba, Talona, Hoar)
• Gods of Death (Jergal, Kelemvor, Urogalan, Dumathoin, Segojan Earthcaller)
• Gods of Undeath (Shar, Kiaransalee, Velsharoon)
• Gods of Joy (Sune, Sharess, Lliira, Milil, Hanali Celanil, Trishina, Finder Wyvernspur)
• Gods of Thieves (Mask, Brandobaris, Erevan Ilesere, Abbathor, Urdlen, Vhaeraun)
• Gods of War (Tempus, Garagos, The Red Knight, Clangeddin Silverbeard, Haela Brightaxe, Arvoreen)
• Gods of Trade (Waukeen, Vergadain)
• Gods of Luck (Tymora, Garl Glittergold)
• Gods of Knowledge (Oghma, Deneir, Labelas Enoreth, Azuth, Savras)
• Gods of Artifice (Moradin, Gond, Flandal Steelskin, Dugmaren Brightmantle)
• Gods of Travelers (Shaundakul, Aerdrie Faenya, Marthammor Duin, Cyrrollalee)
• Gods of the Wildlands (Silvanus, Eldath, Mielikki, Rillifane Rallathil, Shiallia, Lurue, Baervan Wildwanderer, Nobanion, Relkath of the Infinite Branches)
• Gods of the Sea (Deep Sashelas, Valkur, Persana, Eadro)
• Gods of the Hunt (Solonor Thelandira, Gwaeron Windstrom, Thard Harr)
• Gods of the Farmlands (Chauntea, Yondalla, Sheela Peryroyl)
• Chief Gods of Good (Corellon Larethian, Moradin, Garl Glittergold, Yondalla)
• Chief Gods of Evil (Gruumsh One-Eye, Lolth, Tiamat, Laduguer, Sseth, Kurtulmak)

...and so on.

Not all of these groupings are 100% practical, of course; put a priestess of Lolth and a priest of Laduguer in the same temple and they'll spend most of the day trading icy stares.  But it's a start.

Of course, it is possible to create conversation scripts so that clerics or other NPCs can identify a character's Deity and open special dialogue options (and different stores as well).  One of my contributions to the Pirate Isles server was a temple of Umberlee built by my scheming Cleric of Umberlee (with a ton of enslaved or indebted helpers for labor) and staffed by a marel high priestess.  The marel would offer praise, a deep discount store and keys to sleeping quarters for other Umberlants.  Followers of Talos, Auril, Malar, Istishia or Sekolah got welcoming dialogue and a shop with lesser discounts.  Followers of Valkur, Deep Sashelas, Sune and Selûne were treated to cold, unwelcoming dialogue and a shop with an extra 50% (or so) tacked onto the standard prices.  Everyone else got the standard neutral (albeit a little disdainful) dialogue and a standard shop, with an extra dialogue snippet for followers of Ao the Overgod ("Oh...I was not aware that your sort even existed.").

Of course, the problems with that idea are 1) players who forget to fill in their Deity blanks, and 2) players who misspell the names of their characters' deities.  Pirate Isles and similar servers fix this by adding an extra "Choose your god" script during character creation, but with all of the deities out there, we can expect those scripts to get rather large.

Apologies if I've rambled here.  What do y'all think so far?

[TheMadPoet]

There are no temples that one can join per say, but there are some 'Temples' around. Sune, Myrkul, and I know there is a temple to Shar built at least. I believe there is at least some love for Helm, Torm, and Lathander at Westing Lokk despite it being closed. The Halls of Justice is for Tyrrans by default. Luskan will have a temple to Auril and Umberlee, as well as a small temple to Tempus.

Honestly I doubt a great deal of work will ever be done on the factions. They are simply under used. Joining the Cloaktower doesn't really get you much except access to a few useful items to buy, and a couple scrolls that are hard to get elsewhere. The Rogue's Guild has a better selection of scrolls I think. Personally I'd rather remove all the factions second tier areas all together. There is very little reason to have them since all the high level items are from loot drops anyway, and the guilds don't provide any content past the inital joining quest and the shop.

Of course it wouldn't be hard to setup some kind of basic guild support for clerics either. Forgotten Realms just has that endless freaking list of deities that I so despise.

I guess the real question, at least for me, is shy of having access to a shop with a few Deity specific items, what will adding church factions to the server give players that they do not already havem or can RP without requiring a faction to belong to?

Though I do support at least having shrines to all the 'Greater Deities' of Faerun somewhere in the server. Every tom, dick, and nobanion doesn't need a shrine after all.

[Wids]

Say what you will, but I prefer to see factions and alliances in a more positive light.

Even if the guilds are mostly just special shops with differing themes right now, I don't see that as a bad thing.  Wizards and Sorcerers have access to special wizard items, which further distinguish them from non-arcanists.  The same goes for Rogues and Arcane Archers.  The Mercenary Guild shops have a generic feel to them, but they're a catch-all faction, so that's to be expected; if, say, the City Watch were a faction with membership limited to Fighters, Weapon Masters and Dwarven Defenders, we could expect the City Watch's shops to have exclusive items for those warrior classes.

Plus, it's not just about the mechanics; there should also be potential for roleplay and potential for DM events.  Maybe if two player-characters bump into each other inside the Rogues Guild warehouse, they have a chance to "talk shop" and brag about their latest thiefy exploits.  Maybe an archmage has noticed a shift in the Weave, and the Cloaktower wants their members to investigate.  The possibilities are there, if people wish to pursue them.  Maybe a bit more popularity will finally earn the factions some special quest-givers and such.

But yes, the Forgotten Realms pantheons are huge.  I always completely ignore the ripped-off Egyptian Mulhorandi pantheon myself, and the number of characters from Chult, Kara-Tur, Maztica and Zakhara are probably small enough that we don't need to accommodate their pantheons either.  For the rest, we can just lump the deities into certain groups and shrine halls dedicated to them: Elven gods, Lawful Good gods and so on...within reason, of course.  Putting a shrine to Urdlen in a temple to all the gnomish gods is probably asking for trouble (unless the high priest managing the whole thing is really fair, impartial and powerful).

Alternately, we could leave the temples devoted to one god as they are (non-joinable) and come up with theistic alliances, consortiums or ecclesiarchies.  Good clerics, druids, paladins and Champions of Torm Divine Champions go here.  Neutral clerics and druids go there.  Evil clerics, druids and blackguards go somewhere else.  Or we could do the same thing for characters and gods of Law/Chaos/ethical Neutrality.  There's still potential for social chafing (since Tormites and Lliirans are bound to have their differences, and Cyricists, Talonans and Leirans still have plenty of trouble getting along with other evildoers), but it might be the best we can do.

[TheMadPoet]

I like the guilds too. It's great for grouping and RP opportunity. It's nice to have lofty dreams, but I'm just unsure if the work is worth the reward. Unless the factions were overhauled with static quests, or even a new type of special quest giver that wasn't a bounty or a delivery type, I can't see them giving anything to the server that can't be done through normal roleplay. The guilds that are already here are barely touched. Heck I think the Bard's guild is still broken since Neverwinter was updated. It's not like anyone ever leaves Neverwinter Camp anyway. 

[Wids]

But all of the good stuff is outside the Neverwinter Woods.  Get out of the camp and poke around, everyone!   

The theatre (and apparently, the bygone bard guild) is still unjoinable, apparently, but I'd have to roll up a Bard to be sure.  One of the characters that I played on the Forgotten Realms Cormyr server was a Bard/Assassin played as an egotistical actress with a theatrical flair to her modus operandi; think Carlotta from "The Phantom of the Opera" blended with, well, the Phantom of the Opera.  That was pretty much my Bard/Assassin.  I wouldn't mind seeing a character like that join a theatre-housed Bards Guild, if we could have it back.

*sucks up to the builders*   

Can Bards join the Cloaktower, by the way?

[Sakes]

I don't really want to discourage you, so I'll lead off with this: LOTN is a fairly dynamic world and thus if your character is a member of a certain church that does not have representation in the module, it's entirely possible your character could acquire enough wealth to build one.  It's something that has happened before in the past.  Most notably, Port Llast is lacking a temple, something that has been noticed by more than a few characters.

That said, it's a situation where ideas are a dime a dozen, but implementing ideas are what is valuable.  The reason we don't have temples to every God and serveral joinable factions is not that no one ever considered the idea.  The reason we don't is the practical limitations of the module and our resources.  We have joinable guilds for most professions because those have an impact on gameplay since they provide class appropriate equipment.  It's a bit more to justify what amounts to a room some players may or may not RP in.

The unfinished Bard hall you mentioned is a good example of this.  It's not that we never considered the idea of giving Bards a guild.  It's that no one has finished the work and thought up a store full of cool things for bards that won't immediately be used to break rogues.  (I swear, trying to design items around UMD makes you pull your hair out)

FR has a lot of dieties, it's highly unusual to have every single diety have a house of worship in the same town.  Having to travel far afield away from your home church is part of what some clerics do in order to expand the influence of their diety.  Afterall, you don't adventure in your backyard.

In my opinion not having a home temple nearby provides as much opportunity for roleplay, if not more, than having a home temple. If you want a temple of your God in the area then build one.  You'll have to attract a following and acquire land and permission from the local government as well as lots of gold... and many the church of that deity that really hates yours catches wind of it and tries to disrupt your plans, but hey, no one said it would be easy.

[fealhach2008]

Ahem.

It's going to be a while before I can afford it, but I'd like to put in a request for a 4x4 area for my character Lia Moonshadow.

The concept I have is for an Ilmaterin chapel built in Port Llast to act as a place of worship and healing for the villagers. The history of tragedies that have befallen the inhabitants of Port Llast would probably have many turning to religion for comfort and deliverance, and Ilmater is mainly a deity for those at the bottom of the social ladder.

I've more or less completed the interior if someone wants to look at it, but I'll leave the exterior for someone else if that's okay to make sure it will fit in with the area of Port Llast.

This was from December 2009!

I'm also fairly sure I did some items for that Bard store too, but where the erf files for them and the chapel are now I don't know. Bleh.

[Sakes]

Yea, the lack of a temple in Llast has stuck out for awhile.

Did your character ever get the funds together, though?  I would have allowed you to build the temple if she had but I don't know who was on staff and active at the time.

[fealhach2008]

Heh.

Yeah, I even organised a church jamboree to raise the money although there was no transfer of items or cash between my characters - I just wanted it to create an rp event that had several of them clean up their inventories. Business was surprisingly good too.

Lia did raise the money herself, but the lack of a response I took as a gentle way of saying no.

[Sakes]

Sorry to hear that, sounds like we dropped the ball on that one.

I would say in general though that 'no response' usually either means no one is active enough to do the work or we forgot, rather than a refusal.  When the module size gets as big as it is even simple additions tend to be problematic and our DMs aren't always around.

[fealhach2008]

Did some searching and, if the chapel still exists, Kattze may have it.

I'm afraid the file for it this end has disappeared with the Bard item files.

[Wids]

For what it's worth, there is a canonical Umberlant temple somewhere north from Port Llast: The Priory of the Depths.  It's actually featured in the Neverwinter Nights 2 expansion, Storm of Zehir.  I should probably put action to words and get to work on building the Priory.  Should I make it as much like Storm of Zehir's temple as I can?

(Ah, if only NWN could import music from NWN2, this tune included.)


Anyway, that might alleviate Port Llast's lack of a temple somewhat.  But there's definitely room for another temple or three in Port Llast, I'd wager. 

[TheMadPoet]

Since the Temple of the Red Sails is in Luskan there is little reason to add two umberlee churches to the server. I'd suggest a different god.

If you treat the NWN OC as canonical there is a Temple of Tyr there. Otherwise Ilmater is a good choice considering Llast's history, or even Tempus or Valkur. Just cause it's a port doesn't mean you have to go with a water god.

[Wids]

Since the Temple of the Red Sails is in Luskan there is little reason to add two umberlee churches to the server. I'd suggest a different god.

There's a temple in Waterdeep too, if that city is ever added to this server.  Considering that most seafarers are terrified of Umberlee, her temples and shrines among the coasts can be expected to be at least somewhat common (even if some of those worship sites are nothing more than small shrines with a collection pot that a priest visits once every tenday or so).   

If you treat the NWN OC as canonical there is a Temple of Tyr there. Otherwise Ilmater is a good choice considering Llast's history, or even Tempus or Valkur. Just cause it's a port doesn't mean you have to go with a water god.

But nonetheless, holy sites for water gods can be expected in port towns.  Istishia deserves a mention too, and any city which receives visits from friendly aquatic elves may have holy sites for Deep Sashelas and Trishina as well.  But then again, aquatic elves prefer to keep their temples underwater, so that's probably not the case. 

So how about Blibdoolpoolp?  Can we squeeze a temple to Blibdoolpoolp in anywhere? 

[TheMadPoet]

Still don't think it's worth having more than one church per deity on the server, despite lore. Module size is already pretty big. IMHO it's just unnecessary bloat.

Now the suggestion you made earlier of a 'Combined' Church would be good. Llast would be a good place for that. Maybe a Temple with shrines to Tyr, Tempus, Kelemvor, and some of the other Greater deities. I'd leave out the Intermediate and Lesser deities simply to keep size down.