If there are known volcanoes, our characters might refer to Shindrok's crater as a "volcano" for the same reason people in the real world refer to a spider as an "insect" or a slow-worm as a "snake". And the reason does not need to be ignorance, but only different definitions. (Remember, that if definitions of logic conjunctions are applied strictly, a correct answer to "would you like coffee or tea?" would be "yes".) So our characters might very well just define a volcano by the shape of the hill and not by its geological background - as well as real people might do, if presented a similar hill.

Taking further into account, that our IC-language is only an approximation of the In-Game-Common (there is a race, we call "Diaboli" though they are not Diaboli, by the way), ...

Officially declaring it "no volcano" kind of spoils the fun, you could have with the language barrier between non-specialist and specialists:
"This book says, I need to look for a crater between X and Y. But there is none." - "Hmm, let me see. Ah, he is talking about the volcano." - "Why doesn't he say that right away?" - "Because this actually is no volcano" - "Ha, 'no volcano', stupid scientists always sitting in their libraries telling me, I cannot tell a volcano, when I see one."

(Muahahahaha!)

Like I said earlier, someone that determined to level is probably less concerned with RPing. The idea is not to force people to RP but to help out those who already wish to do so.

You may not be able to force people by such mechanics, but you can give them a little push, that might have a strong long-term effect. I would certainly be helped into roleplay by such pushes, and I am quite sure not to be alone.

Besides the already suggested mechanics to completely avoid people to be able to mine, cast, smith and kill at the same time, you could just make it extremely difficult in comparison to being able to do just one of these jobs.
Mechanics, that could do that, were skill costs that rise with the PP, that were already spent (instead of a cap).
Another option would be a maximum rate of PP, that can be spent per day (RL day to prevent ressource wasting AFKers). This might be combined with unspent PP decaying over RL time to prevent players from rotating characters.
All the suggestions about limiting the number of crafts, etc. could be modified in such a way, that you can get quite far in every job, but can only excel in one or few, so to create an item of extraordinary quality it needs more than one player.


A lot being said about levelling, I will throw in some general ideas, for the details of which I have no idea yet, but someone else might have:

• For completness's sake and knowing well, that this is a real challenge: What would really improve RP is a realistic PvP-System, that is able to prevent mindless player killing.
• The non-violate conflicts could also use some support, since they cannot be felt: The races get along fine with each other, there seem to be no big political debates, only the religions seem to squabble a bit. Of course there needs to be some background for a good debate, which would be a task for Settings, but I think, Game Mechanics could provide something too.
• What about guild houses? On one side, I have not yet been inside one, so I might not be that qualified for this topic. On the other hand there is a reason, why I haven't: As far as I understood it, a guild can open the house or parts of it to the public for sales, games, recruitment, advertising, etc. However there is no way to find those open houses without checking all of them (I want big flashing neon signs, telling me, that they are open). So this is something, that could be improved.
• There could be help to people playing merchants: Different buying and selling prices in different locations, that change over time; big carts, that can be used to carry around huge amounts of stuff, but cannot be disbanded and inhibit from anything but moving and trading.

Quote from: Wrzlprmft on April 12, 2009, 02:58:21 pm

But what about those multiple worships without contradiction? Just to go back to my example of a Talad adherent, who worships Laanx a little bit too: As far as I understood it, Talad is quite sympathetic to Laanx and therefore he should not object to it, as long as the worship to him is not reduced. Laanx in turn may hate Talad and his worshippers, but my example should at worst be as bad in Laanx's eyes as the pure Talad worshipper and therefore not experience any disadvantages — assuming of course, that the gods behave logiccally to a certain amount and have no other reason, to object to multiple worship as such.

The solution here is full implementation of factions. We can set it up so that those with a certain level of Talad faction cannot do higher level Laanx religion quests (intolerance on Laanx's part), and also ensure that Laanx faction has little to no effect upon Talad religion quests (tolerance on Talad's part). We are already in progress on this and it will come to pass, it is just not complete as of yet.

Hmm, I am rather interested in the in game reasons against it, than its implementation as rules. However in the spirit of this thread I do not expect an instant answer. Also I could do quite fine with answers like
“Those who worshipped multiple gods have been let down by all of them inexplicably.” (What would religion be without some ineffability?)
or
“When asked about multi-worship, a historian would usually say ‘Have you heard of the plague, fire and earth quake of 593? If you do not want something like this to happen again, do not even think about it!’.”

That it is an unsatisfyingly unexplained issue does not mean, that the answer cannot be short, simple or deus ex machina.

Especially because of my plans to create a character, that is a religious fanatic with missionary ambitions, I am interested in the answer to the following questions. I am aware of threads with similar topics and some posts in this threads, but I could not find a satisfying official answer. So here I am, hoping not to be reduntant.

• Where does the domain of religion, the supernatural begin?
  
  Magic is quite natural to the inhabitants of Yliakum, be it of divine origin or not, so it should not be the border. (To the people of Yliakum the deeper mechanisms of magic might be at worst what microbiology was to the people of the middle ages, to whom cheese was nothing unusually divine nevertheless.)
  
  For the existence of Laanx et cetera to be as undeniable, as stated in the description of atheism in the character creation, there has to be at least a publically perceived limit to what the playable races can achieve with magic, which is clearly exceeded by the Planeshift Gods. Where is this limit?
  
  Regarding the description of the “Journey to inner self: Laanx” in the character creation, the question also is about the limits to the magic methods of brain washing.
  
• Why is the existence of the Planeshift Gods as obvious as stated in the character creation?
  
  What would have (scientifically) convinced a sceptic chracter of the existence of some gods or at least very powerful wizards?
• What could make this sceptic think, that it would do any good to worship these beings?
  
  After all it might be possible from a sceptic's point of view, that the gods do not care about worship and it is just a waste of time. Also: What are the perceivable benefits of this worship?
• Finally, why is it not common to worship more than one god?
  
  It would not be surprising of course, that for example organised Laanxism as the analogy to the RL monopolistic brain washing religions is not very fond of the worship of other gods. But I do not see a reason, why for example an adherent of Talad would not direct any worship to Laanx from time to time — of course in a different way than organized Laanxists would do, rather worshipping Laanx like she was in her early days.