...
>True. Some folks like frameworks. Some folks need them. Some folks
>can ignore them.
>
>I think its best that they are there as guidelines and I'm glad that
>they were left in.
I agree that the guidelines are good insamuch as they tell the player that there are in-game repercussions of the character decisions. It's just that the system already has a means to resolve such conflicts - the normal resolution system. That is, these mechanical limits seem somewhat metagamey to me. Basically, a character could participate in many more religions than the limit allows, in theory, they'd just have to slight this one or that one.
My point is that at some level of committment, yes, the religions will start to conflict - I'd say it's right after the first religion. That is, a character has only so many hours in the day. Some are for sleeping, some for eating, and many of them will be involved with their occupation - most of the waking ones. The mechanics of survival require that this be true. So the character only has so many hours left over for worship and other activities. It seems to me that every religion will be vying for all of the character's "free" time - not getting all of it, but trying. As soon as the character starts a second religion, the religions will compete. I mean, what the percentage system seems to say to me is that you can cozily compartmentalize your obligations. Your Humakti rituals will never fall on your Odaylan holy hunt days. The Shaman's request for you to go get certain herbs will never conflict with the need to participate in another practice's ecstatic worship. Etc. What seems more accurate is that there will be overlaps, more frequently with more religions. To say nothing of the other sorts of conflicts that multiple religions provide.
What would make more sense to me is to simply have more obligations place more stress on the appropriate relationship and piety abilities. After a while, something has to give. I'd basically just represent this as a conflict between the religions in question in play, and the characters devotion to them all. If/when the character fails (and given enough obligations he will), then the loss has to be represented as an "injuring" of the Abilities in question. Either the people of the religion, or the divine beings themselves (or both) will begin to fail to respond as expected. An Impaired could mean, say, that the Affinities of your Humakt religion would only operate at 50%. Or that the local churchgoers start to shun your character for his odd beliefs.
So, I think that the guidelines are a good way maybe to gague when such overlaps would start to become really problematic. For instance, if you have only two basic worshipper religions each at 10%, then you probably don't have too much stress on them each time-wise. OTOH, if the religions are worship of Humakt and Erissa, then I'm going to put other very large modifiers on the roll based on the fact that the religions conflict in a big way (this, of course assuming that we could somehow play getting into that situation in the first place). Again, time is only one source of conflct.
I see this as a nifty source of character conflict. I'd like to see players attempt to mix religions - I don't even mind that they may be doing it for "Powergame" reasons. What the system will allow me to do is to make the character's own internal conflicts central to the events of play. It doesn't matter that the player didn't intend to find that conflict, the system will inform them that they'll be stepping into it right from the start. That is, when the players see that these things *can* be in conflict, mechanically, they'll understand that there's no "powergame" play that doesn't have in-game Gloranthan repercussions. And, at that point, you no longer have to worry about the "powergamers" because they'll suddenly "get" that power in Glorantha isn't about collecting religions, it's about having a clear and supported world view.
Mike
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