[Suggestion] A RimWorld of Magic expansion: Gods of the Rim

[Holvr]

[Note: This thread regards the great "Rimworld of Magic" mod by Torann, so if you're not interested in that mod, you won't be interested in this thread.]

This might be a somewhat unusual way to do it, but I'm posting this as a new thread, instead of a post in Rimworld of Magic main thread, for the sake of keeping the main one clean. This isn't a wizard class suggestion, but rather a proposition of an "expansion" for the whole mod, so if there's ever going to be any feedback to that, it's best not to spam the main thread.

To the point:

The idea is to build upon the good system of spells, abilities, mana etc. introduced by Rimworld of Magic, and add another layer in the form of gods and religion. This would serve as both another source of magic (divine, instead of arcane) and as means to a richer gameplay through commiting your colony to a certain way of life, despite - sometimes - what would please your god(s) wouldn't necessarily be the most lucrative or popular (colonist-wise) thing to do. It'd also - in certain ways - enhance the existing mages and fighters, depending on your choices.


Changes

First and foremost, this expansion would change the way Priests and Paladins (and possibly Druids) work. Instead of being a mana-based classes, they'd diverge into a new category of casters - the divine ones.

Divine classes would work slightly differently to both mana and stamina based classes, for they'd use neither, instead basing on their chosen god's favor. Favor mechanics in bullet points:
- Instead of being an actively depletable resource, favor would be something the divine character starts with on very low level, and gradually builds it up overtime.
- Favor is built by praying, acting upon your god's will, spreading your god's name, praise etc.
- When not maintained, favor drops by itself. The divine classes would have to keep their work up in order for their god to grant them powers.
- Instead of learning new spells at will via leveling up like arcane classes do, divine classes would automatically unlock higher level abilities when they reach certain levels of favor.


Gods

Each divine class would, as their first ability, choose a god (with the exception of Druids, who would be devoted to the mother nature herself from the very beginning, and paladins would be restricted to a good god). For that to work there'd be several gods, each with different characteristics, goals, preferences, and boons granted.

In general, gods would have things they love, like, are indifferent about, dislike and hate. To keep your god happy with your colony and in turn bestow powers on your priestly bunch, you'd need to keep on the good side of your god, and avoid upsetting them.
You could also have your colony worship a pantheon of gods, but that'd require some more careful approach, since gods would have relationships with each other (as a most cliche and blunt example: a god who hates undead wouldn't stand your colony worshipping both him and a god who loves undead).
Even worshipping two gods who are indifferent towards each other could prove tricky if one would want you to do things the other dislikes, so form your pantheon carefully.

Given the free nature of Rimworld, I'd rather avoid "hardcoding" gods with set names, backstories etc. and instead set up some archetypes with moving parts, and let the names and other stuff be randomised along with the planet. Below are some of the archetypes, but mind you that their "do's and don't's" lists can also be semi-random.

God of mercy:
Loves: Rescuing people, setting prisoners free
Likes: Healing, giving gifts to traders/factions, freeing slaves, recruiting prisoners
Dislikes: letting downed hostiles bleed out, raiding hostile factions, refusing rescue (from various events), using inhumane weapons (mainly fire) or weapons of mass destruction (orbital strikes), selling slaves
Hates: Killing and raiding allies and neutrals, or downed hostiles, harvesting organs

God of valor:
Loves: Defending against raids, raiding pirate outposts,
Likes: Raiding hostile factions, losing colonists in battle (glorious death!), having more melee fighters than shooters, having pawns with stamina class
Dislikes: Setting traps (deadfalls, IEDs etc.), selling slaves, losing colonists to captivity, refusing the rescue events
Hates: losing colonists to ilnesses (shameful death!)

God of terror:
Loves: Killing, feeding people to prisoners, harvesting prisoners, bloodlust traited pawns
Likes: Raiding anyone, butchering people, cannibalism (and having cannibal traited pawns), attacking caravans, leaving people to bleed out
Dislikes: trading other than selling slaves/organs, euthanising (death not cruel enough),
Hates: giving gifts, rescuing people, setting prisoners free, non-violent pawns

God of Commerce:
Loves: Trading, pawns with high social, greedy and jealous traited pawns
Likes: crafting and building (the higher quality outcome, the better), wealthy rooms
Dislikes: raiding anyone, botched construction, having unfinished items (if you start something, finish it!), stagnant wealth (upset if your colony's wealth isn't increasing fast enough), poor wealth of rooms
Hates: getting robbed (by raiders who decide to loot stuff and run), attacking caravans

God of Beauty:
Loves: Having Bard class pawns, pawns with high art skill, beautiful traited pawns
Likes: making sculptures, beautiful rooms, many different recreation sources, consuming lavish food, gourmand traited pawns, non-violent pawns
Dislikes: drug use (doesn't want "artificial" joy for pawns), ugly traited pawns, low beauty rooms
Hates: filth, blood splatters, having awful and poor items and buildings

God of Life:
Loves: Resurrecting, healing, slaying undead
Likes: high medical skilled pawns, having hospital equipment, crafting and using good medicine
Dislikes: Death knights, euthanising, colonist's deaths, letting anyone downed bleed out.
Hates: Creating undead, having undead, undead in any shape or form, necromancers, killing non-hostiles.

God of Undeath:
Loves: Creating and having undead, having liches
Likes: Necromancers, death knights, burying corpses
Dislikes: letting corpses rot away, cremating corpses (such a waste!),
Hates: non-undead resurrection, paladins

And the druid's special:

Mother Nature:
Loves: sowing trees, green-thumbed pawns
Likes: taming animals, tamed animals giving birth, sowing crops, calming manhunter animals
Dislikes: Killing wild animals in any season other than winter (manhunters don't count), slaughtering tamed animals, cutting plants and trees (harvesting is fine, but cutting them completely is not)
Hates: killing pregnant animals, burning plants

Nature should be balanced to be fair - she doesn't like cutting trees and stuff, but if you replant them in return, she'll be kind to you. In general, if you GIVE and take, it's fine, but if you only take, she'll dislike you.


Worship

Divine classes would get their favor from actively doing things their god likes, and fulfilling the god's will (quests and events given by the god, periodically), but their MAX favor would depend on how well is colony regarded by the particular god.
To this end, every non-divine pawn could be converted by any divine class to their religion, and such pawn would get a new need: "faith" that'd be kinda like a mundane version of favor. Pawns would increase it by praying (either at a new building - altar - or just the normal prayer that pawns sometimes do by themselves), making sacrifices (depending on the god - from food and crops, through art, precious metals, crafted goods, to animal and human sacrifice) and so on.
In the end - the priest's max potential would be determined by how well is he able to guide other colonists towards his god.

Favor and abilities

As said before, each priest would choose a god, and some of their abilities from now on would depend on such god. Here's where the aforementioned god archetypes come into play - the abilities a priest will get depend on the archetype of a god, so a god of life will give different abilities than a god of commerce.
For the simplicity of coding, priests would share some spells regardless of god (like advanced healing, for example, would be a baseline for most priest, maybe excluding the truly evil ones), but at least their ultimates should be different for each god.

Now, the casting mechanics: Instead of using favor like mana, they'd get spell "charges" based on the total amount of favor they have. So let's say that a beginner priest has a spell he can cast twice, each individual "charge" having its own cooldown, so let's say that cooldown is 30 seconds. He can cast the spell twice rapidly, and then wait the 30 seconds for the charges to get back, or use the spell once, and then use it again in 20 seconds, so the first charge will be back within 10 seconds of using the spell for the second time.
And the amount of times a divine class can cast a spell would scale with the total available favor, hence the priest's need for having a healthy religion in their colony, as that'd be the source of their power, but they'd still have to fulfill that potential by pleasing their god themselves, and maintaining the favor. In short: Max favor limit comes from followers, but actual favor comes from the divine classe's deeds. The amount of times they can cast each spell is based on the total value.


I'm looking forward to your input. Would something akin to this be a welcome addition to Rimworld of Magic, or would you rather prefer Torann to continue with the current mana/stamina class split?

[Torann]

First of all, let me say thanks for taking the time to post this idea; the fact that there have been countless folks who've taken the time to reciprocate their idea's about ways to enhance the mod has been what's kept me modding RimWorld for over a year.

The expansion you've proposed is honestly clean and distinct enough that, while it fits nicely on top of RW of Magic, it could also easily be a stand-alone mod.  That being said, the links you propose to magic use and overall colony behavior and interaction between classes creates a glorious hook and would present added challenges, with appropriate rewards, for any play-through.

Ok, getting into some of the details - really great lineup of god types. Seriously, lots of thought and experience went into that list of likes and dislikes and god types.  I think your suggestion of making somewhat 'dynamic' gods would also be terrifically fun.  During world generation, a database of behaviors could semi-randomly be assigned to each god, very similar to pawns and their traits, except more detailed with those 'god traits' being the defining characteristics of each god.  The other key factor would be how those traits determine which 'boons' or divine powers each god can grant.  And then, as events unfold and the player makes decisions, each of those decisions goes into a 'divine story' that logs and accounts for key actions that occur within the colony and decides how each god views that decision based on their divine traits.

I'm not sure I'd restrict a divine pawn by a magic class though. It can sometimes be a challenge to get certain classes and it seems somewhat defeating if you couldn't access or interact with a god without a specific class.  So maybe some traits or classes that would allow easier access, or more likely to become 'divine' pawns, but perhaps also some new traits like 'chosen' or 'faithful' or something like that which would nudge that pawn, and indirectly the player, into pursuing the selection and worship of a god?

As for the use of abilities themselves, once enough favor was gained with a god, pawns (even those not quite as devoted, or magical) could have access to new powers provided by their god.  Maybe the big boons, I mean the colony altering, powerhouse, divine abilities could only be invoked by those select chosen, but I think it would be more interesting to make certain classes more favored by gods (depending on the gods divine traits) rather than gating access to a god behind specific magic classes.

I see that resource quantity (godly favor) being more colony-wide vs specific pawn. Maybe the chosen, or priests, of a god would have access to more abilities, or stronger abilities, depending on the colony's standing with their selected god?  Maybe some classes, with divine support, have access to new class abilities? Making the choice of a god would be more interesting if you can't force every colonist to accept that god, or the god accept every pawn. So pursuing some kind of personal link to a god for individual pawns, but also an overall colony opinion of a god, seems like very RimWorldy decision material.  I do like the whole charges and time idea though; asking for your god to resurrect a fallen pawn is an acceptable request, but asking them to resurrect Stubbs, and 5 minutes later, to resurrect Stubbs again...

I've been looking at adding in advanced classes but this seems like a more interesting way to add to the mod (not to mention, a good way to keep balance in check) and I look forward to seeing if this is a direction other players would like to see the mod expand in.

[Holvr]

Thank you, Torann, for an encouraging and detailed response.

The expansion you've proposed is honestly clean and distinct enough that, while it fits nicely on top of RW of Magic, it could also easily be a stand-alone mod.  That being said, the links you propose to magic use and overall colony behavior and interaction between classes creates a glorious hook and would present added challenges, with appropriate rewards, for any play-through.

Indeed, I've thought about this being a standalone mod, quite extensively, and I have to come clean that I've proposed it to you, because:
- I absolutely love your mod, and find it to overlap greatly (both mechanically and "spiritually") with what "my" mod would've aimed for.
- I believe that your distinction between "mana" and "stamina" classes despite the mod being called "Rimworld of Magic" is a good sign that you're willing to explore more than just classic arcane magic, but also other sources that make for a good gameplay, thus giving a chance to a new branch of "divine" classes.
- The most shameful reason: I'm not a coder myself, and hoped that - if you liked the idea - I could see some of those ideas come true by your hands. On that note, if your mod's community response to this idea is positive, and you decide to go with it, I offer all the help I could, including sprites/icons (I've dabbled into creating similar things in the past), descriptions, design of the actual abilities, boons etc. and even some rudimentary coding help, although I'd need time to learn what's required to be able to help).

Ok, getting into some of the details - really great lineup of god types. Seriously, lots of thought and experience went into that list of likes and dislikes and god types.  I think your suggestion of making somewhat 'dynamic' gods would also be terrifically fun.  During world generation, a database of behaviors could semi-randomly be assigned to each god, very similar to pawns and their traits, except more detailed with those 'god traits' being the defining characteristics of each god.  The other key factor would be how those traits determine which 'boons' or divine powers each god can grant.  And then, as events unfold and the player makes decisions, each of those decisions goes into a 'divine story' that logs and accounts for key actions that occur within the colony and decides how each god views that decision based on their divine traits.

That sounds like a solid system. It'd make for easy modifications to different gods, and even for later introduction of other godly traits (which I'm sure people would come up with, if they like the idea) as it'd only take designing a new trait and setting up its "view" on other traits and certain events.

I'm not sure I'd restrict a divine pawn by a magic class though. It can sometimes be a challenge to get certain classes and it seems somewhat defeating if you couldn't access or interact with a god without a specific class.  So maybe some traits or classes that would allow easier access, or more likely to become 'divine' pawns, but perhaps also some new traits like 'chosen' or 'faithful' or something like that which would nudge that pawn, and indirectly the player, into pursuing the selection and worship of a god?

That's even better than my original thought! And you're right here, because why can't a wizard or a sniper worship a god? That'd seem too unnatural... mechanical. I'm quite disappointed in myself that I haven't thought about it in this way from the beginning.

And it's a perfect spot to make use of the mechanic you've already introduced in the form of tiered classes.
I can see each pawn, mundane or otherwise, being able to spawn with a "Follower" trait (not sure if the name of the trait could include the name of a specific god, like "Follower of [name]" if the gods would be randomly generated) that'd add the "Faith" need bar, which could grant some small boons, depending on the god's nature, when satisfied by praying and various activities encouraged by the god in question (like sowing trees for Mother Nature etc.). That'd focus the player's attention into trying to either make a multi-religious colony as peacefully as possible, or choose a god or a small pantheon and denounce (or try to convert) followers of other gods that'd want to join the colony. It'd also introduce a new element of colony's life to take care of (and frankly, what are we all playing RW for if not to do exactly that?) in the form of enabling pawns to satisfy their spiritual needs by building shrines or even whole temples, and assigning a priest/shaman/spiritual leader to hold sermons or even confessions (which could be a way to alleviate some of the favor/mood penalties by commiting sins [faithful pawn doing things the god doesn't like could be considered sinning!]).

Then, a follower could become a devout, then an acolyte, then a priest, high-priest and a champion, each getting an increase in passive boons, as well as actual divine abilities (the use of which would be gated by the colony's total favor, as you have proposed), but would also increase this particular pawn's spiritual needs and their "obnoxiousness" to others - you know the type... people who won't shut up about their god with no regard for your beliefs.

Hell, depending on how in-depth you'd want to take it, there could even be two special religious traits (a good one and a bad one, for balance), like:

Chosen - this pawn is not necessarily a priest, or even a follower of any god, but a god follows the pawn (so to speak) either since the pawn's birth, some deed they've done, or some event - even one that happened during the game (maybe, if a pawn held their ground against an overwhelming force of hostiles, a god of Valor could become invested in them?). The chosen would be exempt from a majority of the rules, as in they wouldn't need to be in the higher tiers of faith (aka. a priest) to cast god spells, or they could even be allowed to sin to some extent (god would let it go if they do something from the god's "dislike" list, but would still be angry at them for doing the "hated" things).

Zealot - not exactly the opposite of Chosen (a pawn could have both those traits, honestly), but a pawn that doesn't get spells or anything, since they aren't chosen, but they THINK they are, and act like it. In mechanical RW terms: for a zealot, faith isn't a need - it's an addiction. They want to please their god constantly, they nag everyone around them about it, and they can get violent if they witness someone sinning or worshipping a disliked god ("normal" religious pawns would only frown upon someone worshipping a HATED god, not merely disliked).

As for the use of abilities themselves, once enough favor was gained with a god, pawns (even those not quite as devoted, or magical) could have access to new powers provided by their god.  Maybe the big boons, I mean the colony altering, powerhouse, divine abilities could only be invoked by those select chosen, but I think it would be more interesting to make certain classes more favored by gods (depending on the gods divine traits) rather than gating access to a god behind specific magic classes.

Aye! With the shift from class-gated faith to a broad aspect that anyone could participate in, of course! Natural "priests" of a god of Undeath, for example, would be Necromancers and Liches, and Mother Nature would value her Druids, while a God of Progress (there could be one, why not) would love Technomancers. Here the possibilities are actually, nearly limitless.
And I'm all up for all faithful folks getting some boons, even if only passives at lower tiers, but an Arcane mage being capable of great healing or performing a miracle because they're also a high-priest of a god? It's an amazing prospect.

I see that resource quantity (godly favor) being more colony-wide vs specific pawn. Maybe the chosen, or priests, of a god would have access to more abilities, or stronger abilities, depending on the colony's standing with their selected god?  Maybe some classes, with divine support, have access to new class abilities? Making the choice of a god would be more interesting if you can't force every colonist to accept that god, or the god accept every pawn. So pursuing some kind of personal link to a god for individual pawns, but also an overall colony opinion of a god, seems like very RimWorldy decision material.  I do like the whole charges and time idea though; asking for your god to resurrect a fallen pawn is an acceptable request, but asking them to resurrect Stubbs, and 5 minutes later, to resurrect Stubbs again...

At first, when I thought about divines as just another branch of classes, I thought of a system in which:
- The MAX favor a class can gain depends on the whole colony's worship of the god.
- The CURRENT favor of a class determines the abilities they have access to, as well as the charges.
So basically I thought about a system in which a priest without "a flock" isn't much of a priest at all. And it's not all that divergent from what you're proposing - the colony's standing with a god determines the favor, and that's it - no "max" and "current" stuff - just "favor", as a resource that every single pawn, priest or a mere follower, draws from when they use abilities, as well as said favor deciding how many times, and how often, will such prayers be answered.
Seems like a much more natural way of doing it, and certainly opens up the door to - as you've mentioned - some classes getting unique boons for being the "god's favourite". Hell, perhaps even some fully unique abilities? As in: "Only a bard that has a certain faith tier with this particular god archetype gets an entirely new bard spell that's unobtainable by any other means".

And as for the pawns and gods not necessarily accepting each other - exactly! That'd add another layer of our beloved rimworld management. And on that note - some existing traits and even skill levels could increase the chance of a pawn choosing a particular god, and that good liking the pawn. For example a pawn with "Bloodlust" would be much more likely to follow a brutal god of war or torture than a peaceful god of mercy, and said brutal gods would welcome pawns that are bloodlusty. Same goes for skills - a pawn with high research and/or medicine would likely lean towards a god of knowledge or healing, rather than a god of valor, for example.

Seeing as a simple shift of focus (going from a 3rd type of classes to a basically classless faith system) can instantly enhance this idea, I'm curious as to what it could become if your community responds positively, and with their own input.