Hmm, I like this \"papers\" idea. Quite usefull for people to keep a track of their actions. That way, good players would be truly recognized by the society, while cheaters and backstabbers would be sent into the low grades.
A sort of National Archieves could be craeted, so players would eb able to, for a small fee, inspect certain notes and information about a character. There would be, however, more private information, that would first require the agreement of the owner to be seen by a certain character.

Nadius has a good point. Ancient guns where terrible during combat, and only offered a good help at the begginings of it. And that remained the same until the very XIX century, when guns, although more accurate, where so slow to reload and so expensive, that captains and generals where the ones to carry hand guns, and they usually had 4 or 6 of them, since they simply threw the gun after shooting.

Well, you all got good points. This is a very preliminar idea, therefore, in need of a better development.

As you pointed, Badakai, too powerfull cults would be the only ones to atract new players. However, remember that the tipe of powers of the divinity will depend mainly in the tipe of character it was before. That will be the first thing that will have different tipes of characters choosing different cults. No matter how powerfull is an Azure Deity, it will never atract a Brown Way wizard.

Another thing would be to add speciall weaknesses to the different divinities, a sort of leveling statuses. And limit the amount of divinities as well.

Your point about Paladins is interesting as well. As you said, ancient, stable religions, such as the temple of Laanx, would persecute a new divinity that threatens to impose it\'s ideals. However, divinities should never become powerfull enough as to technically dominate Yliakum.

The matter is, the Divine status should be an extremely rare reward, given directly by the \"Gods\" (aka Developers) to very worthy players, whos characters have reached incredibly powerfull levels.

Although I do not need guns to have a good game, having them, done good, would not be bad either.
However, if any gun is ever added, something I doubt, I would advice only fantasy steamtech.
Fantasy Steamtech is like the things you find in games such as Warhammer: Steam Cannons, Tar Guns, Heavy Ballistas powered by steam, etc.
Steamtech (a more medieval version of Steampunk) can make a game very interesting. But it also can ruin it, specially when you are trying to get a magical based medieval mithology.

Steamtech, if used, should be extremely rare. Dwarves would be the most logical groupd to have these tipes of advances, and even there it should be rare.

Note: Machines do not specifically mean advanced technology. Several machines where avaliable during the medieval times. And, since this is fantasy, you can tweak that a little. Add baloons, flying machines and the such, but do not add submarines and electric weapons (electric weapons where a mistake made in Dungeon Siege, where they definitely didn\'t fit).

We all know that any good RPG needs books, hopefully, lots of them. But creating vast amounts of books is not an easy task, and the books created by the developers could not always be fitted to the actual reality within the game (due to the constant changes that a player-based game have).

For that matter, and to add a fun and interesting factor to the game, Custom Books could be implemented.

For example, my character, Fiztkarloff, is a Red Way mage and Alchemist (doesn\'t work yet, yes, but still is one). Now, lets say that I traveled long to find, by accident, some tipe of strange leaf with powerfull healing properties. Now, I would like to have a way to keep the information of where I found it and how to use it, as well as how to identify it. Then, if my character carries some ink and paper, I could start writing a book/scroll with information. I would be updating new information to the book from time to time, to make it better.

Any player could write his/her own book or scroll, to hold any information he want. Stories about their jouneys, rules of a certain Guild, the properties of a certain monster, guides to find the stores in a city, the names of important character, etc, etc, etc.

Books and Scrolls should be limited by the Inteligence of the character, so really smart character will be able to have bigger collections of books (a wise wizard is much more leaned to write a book than a dragon hunting barbarian).
And books could even turn into a profitable bussines. Books and scrolls with really usefull and rare information would be very expensive and unique, and the owner could want to sell it only to important and rich characters, or hold it as a jewel of his highly exclusive collection, an envy to other book collectors.

These books would also be usefull to create sorts of custom made quest. A certain Guild would, for example, require the new members to study the Guild Book and then test them. Or an important Alchemist is in need of a book writen by another character who will only negitiate with ceratin tipes of character, etc.

And even  new jobs could be created, such as Notaries (who keeps track of Guilds, new important figures, disputes, etc), Scribes (can write lots of books, requier less elements to make them, etc), among others.
Wizards could be able to enchant their most valuable books with security spells, traps, etc.

I belive something like this would greatly enchance the way people play and exchange information. Just think the possibilities of a certain group of people publishing some sort of newspaper, or scribes actually opening profitable libraries, selling their books or the ones brought to others. Merchants buying and selling books found in far away places. A myriead of things can come up of something like this.