Pantheons

[Tris]

Read a post by Gandalf that mentioned Pantheons, and was thinking about diplomacy. I had a cool idea for a rule to make an alternative flavour of multiplayer game:

There are a number of titles available in each gods lands. (5 or 6 seems right, maybe a few more)

Each god starts with every title available, in his lands, including the title "King of the Gods". Obviously these are all only pretensions at present.

Pretenders can agree to split the titles of their adjoining lands between them. So I could agree to give you "King of the Gods" "Lord of the Sun" "Captain of the Imperial Host" and "Keeper of all Celestial Wisdom" in my lands, in exchange for "Messenger of the Gods" in your lands.

(In this case "agree" probably implies the presence of large numbers of your followers asking me nicely with pitchforks :-)

You are not allowed to destroy a god who has a title in your lands. If a particular god in your pantheon is destroyed all his titles are gone forever from your lands.

Each title has a point value attached to it. The pantheon that destroys all gods who are not part of it wins. The more titles it has left, the more it wins. Of the gods in the pantheon the King of the Gods wins the most, and wins even more if he manages to keep the most impressive titles while he does this. The Messenger of the gods doesn't win very much at all, but at least he's still around, unlike all the banished gods.

ideas? suggestions?

[Karacan]

A very fun suggestion. However, due to the very extensive amount of titles avaiable, rather unpracticable. If your god has tenthousand titles, loosing one or two won't really make a difference.

I like the general idea, though. Might steal it for a boardgame.

[Tris]

I didn't mean to use the titles inherent to your pretender...I meant to invent a set of titles that would be consistant over every nation.

So "Nie'taal, The coming darkness, Bearer of seven burdens, master of disease, not very nice bloke" could still only have the official 'Pantheon Title' of "Messenger of the Gods"

I think this could be good fun - you'd have to decide whether you needed that ally right now, or if you could afford to hit him a bit more, to convince him that he would be willing to serve you in a less prestigious position.

(or on the other hand, you'd have to decide whether you could be enough of a nuisance to one or other of the big guys to convince them to give you a decent title, or whether the best deal was availible now, and your position could only get weaker with time)

You could also bluff somewhat as to how useful you could be.

"Welcome to my Pantheon, Arcus - Commander of the Holy Host and Lord of the Sun. Where are these thousands of troops you said you would bring me?"

"Um...yeah. About that....how does 3 light infantry and a wounded commander sound?"

Feel totally free to steal that idea, all I ask is a copy of your boardgame when you've finished it