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[–] bobusdoleus 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

On the one hand, I don't think players should play multiple things. A player shouldn't be a god and a race. That's just, like, bad form.

That said, a god should probably be free to influence any unclaimed race, without post-per-day limits (beyond the already existing voat-wide ones). There's a lot of content and that's the only way any of it would get explored. A god only has so much attention span, it seems - some of the gods spend all day creating several types of plants and their interactions, some spend their time bickering with other gods, some gods create races ad nauseum, some spend all their time exploring a single race, defining their social structure, handing down boons and commandments for them. That all seems fine to me. It all comes down to exclusivity. When a god's influencing a race, they can do things, but so can other people; When a player 'plays' a race, then only what they say goes, and no one else has input. Other people can attempt things, or impose disasters, rewards, curses, etc., but ultimately it's the player's decision how the race reacts. I don't think it's a good idea for a god to also be holding exclusive control over another race like that.

As for what domains mean, exactly... Ultimately, being a god 'of something' is just a way of cementing the community's approval for certain actions. People tacitly accepted you when you created a god of <x>, and would seem a bit foolish for then denying you use of that set of abilities, so it's a useful guideline for voting - people will generally vote for things that it 'makes sense' for a given god to do. So if a god of oceans posts something about creating oceans, he can count on a lot of 'ayes.' If a god of time starts creating oceans, especially if the god of oceans speaks up how that's not cool, such support isn't forthcoming, generally. But there's no hard and fast rules about gods trumping things or not. We're all gods, yeah? We can do things. It's about what makes a good story: If the goddess of life denies someone, say the god of rocks, life for their creation, then rock-god goes off to make the life anyways in secret beneath the earth, and then the goddess finds out and is pissed... That sounds like pretty standard god-politics in a story, to me. So, getting into specific mechanics of who can trump whom, when, seems misguided. Simple voting, with the general thematic guidelines of 'this is a story about gods, try and make it a good one,' seems fine.

Which brings me back to another point of gods and domains: A god with more domains, or 'better' domains, isn't actually more powerful or better than a god with fewer, more niche ones, it's always seemed to me. or at least, shouldn't be. The domains serve as useful guidelines for what the god might care about and how they would generally choose to interact with the world, but there isn't actually a hierarchy of 'who would win in a fight' other than the base democratic voting rules. As I've said, who has what domains isn't actually fundamentally that important, except to help people frame voting patterns and play characters. As a consequence, we shouldn't need to worry about gods that went inactive or domains that are retired. We don't have a domain of 'Miners,' but we can still have miners, so there's no need to worry if the god of darkness or the god of time goes on hiatus. Other gods can still interact with those concepts just fine, and maybe that god should be available for another player to take over later, but it's not like someone needs that god to exist or the game doesn't work. There's just one fewer political entity with goals related to the idea of time. If the god of time's gone, that just means other gods can have cool time stuff and not worry about the god of time nosing in and saying 'Hey! Don't do that! I care about time and want it done differently.'

Only time it really matters which god has which thing is on a direct, 1v1 conflict with no other votes, or a completely tied vote. Those situations seem very unlikely. Generally it's probably better form to call in an extra vote rather than try to tiebreak via domains, anyways. There are too many factors, and voting's cleaner.

Them's my thoughts. I'm not actually disagreeing or arguing with you generally, I think, a lot of these are parallel or similar to stuff you've said in your comment.

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[–] 3872445? [S] ago 

I see what you're saying, and I would also be okay with this way of game play. I am basically trying to get an idea of what everyone thinks, and just how far I can push the envelope for if/when the Säen go unclaimed, or if they are claimed. You did remind me of something important, which is what makes the best story? A bunch of plant-people planting gardens all over the world is not exactly riveting... but there may be a fleshchanged among them, and who knows if the Necromancer Hellite Champion can really be trusted?