Holy Wars

Moirean

I'm not going to put a big rant here defending myself from the insults posted early in this thread, but I will point out that Holy Wars are one of the only ways mortals can fight back against a god.

Xavin

That's true, Moi, but at the same time, does it really hurt the god at all?

Moirean

Obviously not, but it's the mechanic we've been given.

Daskalos

It punishes the order more than it hurts the god.

Arbre

So if you want to hurt the God, what do you do?

Hadoryu

You insult them on the forums. 60% of the time it works 100% of the time.

Omei

You don't hurt a God. At least not without another God's direct intervention.

Ezalor

Clearly the answer here is to insult them on the forums, apply to be a Celani, work hard and become a God on the opposing side, then RP fight them to oblivion.

Arbre

I think you miss my point in your cuteness.  If a God strikes out against an individual or organization, the only -real- response any character has is to start dropping shrines or, in the case of an opposing Order, declare war.  If you want to say hey, that doesn't hurt the God, it hurts the Order, then tell me what my alternative is.

There isn't one.  So in the future, when I have an issue with a God, I'll keep doing the same thing I've always done: drop shrines.

Alexina

While declaring holywar is the only way for a mortal to in any way attack a God, the God in question will just carry on as normal while the people in their Order dies a lot and then spends thirty minutes or so per shrine they are going to reraise.

Which is sort of the whole point of this thread; the drawbacks of the holywar system outweighs the benefits by far. I'm not sure Ezalor's solution is the most optimal one.

Phoenecia

Also, holywars don't really seem like the proper place to be carrying out personal grudges against a god. If you feel like a god wronged you for whatever and you declare war over it, it comes off as really petty, and you won't be getting your revenge anyway. Start destroying shrines? So what? The order's just going to put them back up anyway. And then probably kill you for it. And then kill you more if you keep doing it. And then said god will probably find an even worse way to punish you, and you're back at square one all over again. Seems kind of like a lot of effort for revenge plots that'll ultimately result in nothing but wasted time.

Amberlea

@Moirean I'm sorry you felt insulted. I didn't really get that from what people posted; I think it was more confusion than anything that had a lot of us from Slyphe scratching our heads. I don't think it's unfair for people to question why they are about to get dragged into a large conflict (one that was obviously going to be quite one sided) when the reasons/supporting RP for that conflict was only witnessed by two individuals. I still don't understand why the war was declared in the first place. There was the whole shark attack at the pool party thing, but I thought that Moi had gotten her revenge for that. The news post you made about your real target being Dhar just made things even more confusing. I thought maybe there was some Slyphe vs Iosyne RP that occurred when I wasn't online, but that didn't seem to be the case, so a holywar seemed sort of... nonsensical? Whatever personal conflict was going on between Moi and Slyphe would have probably been more fun and involving if you had just started dusting shrines instead of actually using the holywar.

Areka

I rather like that the most mortals can do against -gods- is throw a temper tantrum and smash toys, or appeal to another god that it would somehow be beneficial to deck the other. That being said, I think a lot more can be done with Orders and holywar, but I don't feel that mortals should be given things that can actually mortally wound a god, that lessens the godness, at least for me, and SHOULD be extremely difficult and hard to pull off and require a lot of investment and thought.  

Toz

Trouble is, nobody likes non-stop losing. With possession, shouts, repeatedly invading the Keep, etc. etc., there is a laundry list of offenses - which, conflict is fine. But there is either Order war, shrine break, or grief Order. Not lots of options..

Areka

That IS part of the struggle with actions with the -Gods-. In turn, you could try to work with your gods, start seeing if there's other points you can attack (didn't Ezrax and someone else kill Auresae's pet way back when which was a big blow?). There are other options, they just take more work. 

Edit: I may just be stickling with this because I feel like the line between gods/mortals has become pretty thin IG. 

Moirean

@Amberlea - this was certainly not one-sided. I'm not going to derail the thread debating why.

Ezalor

My issue with the war was that no one from our side knew what it was about either except for the person that declared it. And then the person who did know the reason wasn't able to show up, leaving the rest of the Order to fight it. So aside from it being a blow to the enemy Order it also left our Order having to fight it for a reason none of us knew. If there wasn't a hasty surrender I would have had to pull an all-nighter fighting a war for reasons I didn't know to ensure we did not lose.

What really irked me was that I've been flamed for "using the Order as my personal weapon" for declaring war to get rid of monuments, except I made that reason well known and I handled the monuments together with the other people who wanted them gone without anyone else needing to get involved.

ICly of course my character isn't going to have any issue with this because rah rah fight kill but personally I was rather annoyed by the whole affair.

Point is, even if there is no other way to really get back at Gods, declaring a Holy War is a big time/effort investment for both the opposing Order and your own Order. It doesn't seem like the proper avenue to settle matters unless it's an actual God vs God conflict, hence why I support only Divine being allowed to declare.

Damonicus

Well can always add effects to the losing order. Not only does their essence decrease, but the god is unable to perform Blessings and such for say a few days because of it. On the alt side of it, the winning order gets double blessing and such. Sure somehow that would get abused though.

Rashar

For what it's worth, I had absolutely no problem with what @arbre did.

 It made sense, it wasn't a terrible ordeal. We got RP out of it. If Arbre would have had a friend or -two- we would could maybe have had a few fights out of the deal, and I don't think, or I would hope not anyway, that any of the parties concerned at the moment would have taken things overboard. In the end it was a couple of hours of work, which actually got the Congregation and Order together.

I think there is a huge difference between one sneaky and clearly pissed off character who manages to take down a few shrines / defile down a few more before getting caught.. and a holy war, which, as everyone here knows already, could be -days- worth of shit.

Arbre

You know what gets me?  People saying that they believe (not JUST IC, but OOCly as well) that I intentionally bombed Chaktemp/Order.  I was possessed by @Slyphe.  I kept having to dig in my system and turn off triggers because something like miasma would drop and my system would keep trying to put it back up and spam me out with the 'You are being possessed and therefore cannot do that.' message.  I didn't blame @Ashmer in the slightest for killing me afterwards, especially since he was willing to talk to me about it later.  But like... Slyphe SHOUTED about Arbre being his puppet and stuff, AFTER He put a muzzle on her for a few days, and AFTER I dropped like 4 shrines and got killed for that.

Xavin

The thing to keep in mind, though, is that a god is just that, a god. What we're talking about is roughly equivalent to expecting a mouse to be able to effectively harm a person on its own without outside circumstances. It just doesn't make sense.

Aishia

So you're saying we need to infect ourselves with the Hantavirus!?

Toz

And Dhar should just permakill all living darkies and end the game because that is something he can do. And Iosyne could be non stop torturing the population of Enorian, and so on - since this is a game, not a sim, sometimes you have to suspend belief in order to make it fun instead of a headache - gods have a metric ton of advantages, and your only options are hope it goes away or grief the order - tried a few things with a different god and got nowhere.

Edit: my point is maybe something to do to resist that doesn't involve hoping 3-4 admin can dedicate time for a month to advance something that may or may not work out. Order war system needs an overhaul because ATM, not even gods can mechanically hurt gods.

Aishia

I think the reason gods don't do stuff like that all the time is cause they don't want to piss off other gods. >_>

Alexina

We could all just do what the Dreikathi did, whatever that was. Anyway, I think religion is really important in RPG settings. Having beliefs, upholding them, spreading them, defending them, and even suffering for them just is a really good way to create interesting roleplay. On the other hand, holy wars are not interesting.

Xavin

I think it's more because any major change to a god has to have some plot behind it since the gods are pretty much the only major characters, outside of a few npc's, that the game has.

Daskalos

I think the fact that someone said 'grief the order' was even an option is appalling to me. You never grief someone deliberately.

Ezalor

Look at your own point @Toz. It's a game. The people entrusted to be Gods aren't going to go griefing someone in a game to the point where you have to "get back at them" or, if they were, I would suspect that they would be removed from that capacity very quickly.

Minor antagonizing or whatever by a God, sure, but that's very flimsy justification. You can't, and shouldn't, expect to get your way or win all the time.

Toz

Which is exactly my point - there is no in between option, @Daskalos. Gods don't have a downside, it is the Order that has to deal with any consequences. It is like you getting pk'd for Plato doing something.

It isn't 'wanting to always win', it is a frustration at only being able to lose.

Daskalos

My problem with this is, it seems, like it was a -person- abusing their position to carry out a personal vendetta, reading the comments from both sides having no idea -why- it was declared, except a post that targets Dhar. 

IF you weren't an OH, you wouldn't have the ability to carry out this vendetta and would have to find an alternate means. Instead, it seems like the easy route was taken and 'lolOrderWar' declared.