In a message dated 5/30/04 11:09:43 AM Mountain Daylight Time, juha.vesanto@iki.fi writes: >Secondly, I have to agree with Andrew. At least the spread of Islam is >not a typical, but an extreme, example of the spread of a religion. Then what would you consider typical? What historical religion, relevant to Exquaestio's situation, has had increased difficulty gaining converts simply due to their growth? On our world there are five "first tier" religions: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Taoism. Of those, only Buddhism's and Islam's origins are sufficiently well documented to serve in world design. Of the second tier religions I'm familiar with only two: Communism and Voudoun. The origins of Voudoun are not documented, and the origins of Communism have no relevance being based on communications that don't exist on Celandra. Shamanism and neo-paganism are both undocumented. Now, I don't have any information about the Unification Church, so they may be what you are looking at, but, if so, I need to know so I can do some research. Local and ethnic religions like Judaism and Sikhism have no relevance to the existing circumstances. Religions based on personally following a particular religious leader are also irrelevant. So, by dismissing Buddhism and Islam and not giving any further guidelines you are saying, "There's no such thing as a typical religion and you're going to have to read my mind." >RulingNations@aol.com wrote: >>>If Exquaestio wants to increase their numbers, the best way would be, I >>>think, to target the power players in the Free Cities, and work from >>>the top down, rather than the bottom up. >> >>And how are they to do that without an existing power base? > >Use your fudge points. The game system tries to emulate the typical way >historical events go, and depends on extreme dice rolls for the events >that really break historical continuity from the expected pattern. >Unfortunately for the players, the high rolls (+4...) are very rare. For >this reason exactly, double/triple/.. actions and the fudge points allow >the players to tweak the chances to their favor in crucial actions. Let me get this straight. You think that I should use Fudge Points to raise an Epic (-4) task? I apologize for the rudeness, but it would be stupid to waste Fudge Points that way. >You have 9 FP:s. By making a double action (+1), and using 8 FP:s (for >a roll of ++++, and possibility for an open-ended result), you can >ensure a net result of at least +5 minus the difficulty. Spend that >on an action to target the upper levels of the society, and you have >the power base. >It would not hurt if you had something to offer for the >rulers also (Protestant Christianity gained large support among the >ruling class as soon as they realized that it gave them an excuse to rip >off the monasteries). I have stated and restated what Exquaestio offers. Since those statements were ignored I have had no choice except to use actions to state what those offers are. Since by decreasing the rate of growth you have given me fewer actions those definitions come extremely slowly. Jefferson (Exquaestio) http://www.picotech.net/~jeff_wilson63/rpg/ ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, send mail to celandra-off@phoenyx.net.
