Pantheons - an experiment in metagaming.

[Gregstrom]

Tom Lehrer? I have the boxset. Gotta love 'Poisoning the Pigeons in the Park'...

The idea of rank in the pantheons probably needs formalising, yes.

King/Queen (or a pair of Queens - maybe safer to say Ruler and Consort) first and second, then... Underworld/War/Love(Lust)/Wisdom, in that order. God of Thunder probably comes pretty high on the list, come to think of it.

It'd be nice if the head of a pantheon could set up his own list of ranks and portfolios, but that would require a neutral admin figure. Might be good, though.

[AdmiralZhao]

Two ideas:

One would be to simply have the pantheons be teams with certain limitations. The teams would last through the entire game, and would win or lose together. As an example, the Norse team would be required to have several titans and some sort of trickster, with certain thematic paths required of each pretender (e.g. A4 for the titan who is their thunder god ). The Hindu Pantheon would have various Devas and 4-armed pretenders, the Lovecraft pantheon would consist of Dagons and other weird creatures, etc. I kind of like this, if only because it could result in a team of frost giants fighting against a team of tiny monkeys with sticks.

A second idea would be that pretenders take their place in the pantheon not by their words, but by their actions. This takes a page from several role playing games, such as _Invisible Armies_, _Artesia_, and of course _Pantheon_. The game would start normally, with people having complete freedom to design their pretender and make treaties and alliances. However, by their actions players would earn points toward certain roles in the Pantheon. For instance, if you charmed/seduced many enemy units, and summoned many Dryads, and had growth scales, then at the end of the game you would have many points towards being the God of Love. Or if you cast the Forge of the Ancients, and possessed 8 of the most powerful artifacts, and had 30+ hammers, then you would earn many points towards having Vulcan's role in the Pantheon. Similarly, other actions would earn you points towards being the God of Death, of War, of the Oceans, etc. The game would end when the head of the Pantheon is recognized by acclaim, as usual. This pretender would be in first place. At that time the surviving Pretenders would be assigned their place in the Pantheon based upon their points in the various categories. So, if at the time of acclaim one pretender had Burden of Time up, and had D8 on their pretender, and had 12 liches, they would probably have the most death points and would become the new God of Death in the Pantheon (i.e. one of the second place positions). This option would take more moderation work during setup and during the final tallying. However, I would volunteer for that role if people wanted to play such a game.

[Fantomen]

I like the idea.

Edit: As a woman I dislike the idea of king = 1 and Queen = 2. I´d prefer if that was decided by power rather than gender. If I´m a female pretender and most powerful in my pantheon then I´m the queen and in first place.

No offense though, I´ve become well used to gamers having a gender perspective that is rather...dusty.

You could set a fixed hierachy but let the players make up the titles themselves within the pantheon.

[kianduatha]

Fixed hierarchy but player-made titles sounds pretty good, actually. Maybe have one 1st place, one 2nd place, and three 3rd place as the formal structure. You can of course make nebulous alliances with other nations and promise 'ranking' spots if they become more powerful, but in the end there will only be 5 ranking spots on a team.

[Festin]

I think an all-ages mod would be good for such game to provide needed diversity. Also, quite a lot of players will probably be needed to make most ot of this concept. A great game idea, by the way.

[Quitti]

Very interesting idea, and I'd sign into the lovecraftian team without a second thought

I liked the Ruler+Consort idea - like Fantomen said, the pantheon shouldn't simply be a patriarchal system (while many are, I bet not all of the real world pantheons are patriarchal).

Having a general hierarchy as forced (eg. ruler+secondary ruler with titles + 2-3 gods of specific elements/emotions/forces) would probably be a good idea. One pantheon could be something like:
1. Overlord
2. Overlords insane messenger, being the god of stars. Handles most out-of-pantheon diplomacy
3-5. God of (in)sanity (Astral, blood), God of deep reaches, where devout followers throw themselves (Death, earth), God of destruction (Air, fire).


About the points system AdmiralZhao suggested - it'd be hard to track. And general guidelines would be needed to be made to succeed in it. It'd be easier if players could just title themselves in the teams, after consulting the other players about that role. There shouldn't be any forced roles, with exception of the ruler+consort+followers. Fill them as you see fit within the Pantheon.

[Burnsaber]

O yeah. The King as 1st and Queen as 2nd thing was a bit sexist, sorry about that, it was late when I typed that post. It's pretty easy to fix, thought. The players in the team decide whenever the pantheon is pathriachal or matriarchal, or to be blunt, whetever the King position is the 1st or 2nd in the given pantheon. This could result in more politicing within the pantheon. Or if things get awesome enough, even betrayal when a powerful nation switches sides because the vote put him in second place.

There is a problem if you just allow any players just make up a pantheon from any gods. How do you prevent the top six nations just going in and forming the "winning" pantheon? Note that I'm talking about nations, because just think about it. Let's say that top six nations is composed from two separate pantheons. Why wouldn't these nations just ditch their former pantheons and weaker allies and form a "top 6" pantheon? Even if one of the players in the "top 6" pantheon gets eliminated, they'll likely just assimiliate the new top 6 nation to replace the fallen one.

Remember that according to Gregstrom, the idea was not to make a team game. But rather, the alliences are formed in-game. Also, Greg made the point about a one god being in several pantheons, this would of course reguire the pantheons being secret, only to be revealed in a winning position. This could make it rather hard to know which pantheon is winning and make the "gang the leader" tactic guite hard to implement.

[rdonj]

What if everyone was in several, randomized pantheons at the start of the game? Say, each player is in 3 pantheons of 5 players. And whenever someone from a pantheon is killed, the strongest person in the game who isn't in that pantheon, is considered to be a part of it. This could get some weird situations though, and is somewhat away from the direction a lot of you are talking about.

[jmb]

Originally Posted by PsiSoldier

An idea Ive had for a game that would kind of fit in with this line of thought was to have a game where teams were formed based on their Magic affinity. Like a Death pantheon, Fire pantheon, Water pantheon etc..

Something like that would pretty much have to be all ages though. And you would still have nations that defied easy classification which I suppose in that case they could choose one of their stronger forms to join.

The problem with that is that it's not really different from a team game since you don't have much choice for who you can ally with. OTOH, you could do the reverse: at most one god of Fire, one god of Water and so on per Pantheon...

[Gregstrom]

I think it'll help to make the position of Ruler sufficiently valuable. Then, if you're a 'top 6' nation, you won't necessarily want to be second or third fiddle in a pantheon - it'll be better to be Ruler of your own group of gods and have a fair stab at first place that way. Also, it raises the possibility of assassination attempts within pantheons.

Suggestion: As per normal Dom3 games, there is only one winner. However, the rest of the pantheon get 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc. If you want to actually win, you need to be head of your own pantheon. If (as is so often the case by the later parts of the game) you think you aren't of a stature to realistically win, then you can get yourself a good chance at ranking by being a loyal member of a pantheon. With the protection of allies, you might even grow enough to have a chance at rulership later on.

Oh yes - the instant only one pantheon remains in the game, the game ends and rankings are set. If you want to backstab your Ruler, you have to prepare the attempt (and declare it, possibly to a neutral admin) ahead of time. You can't wait until all other enemies are dead, first.

Maybe a rule that one pantheon cannot be a subset of another might be appropriate.

Edit: There aren't many rewards for winning besides pride of place. Giving the winner an appropriate forum title might be an entertaining perk...