Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site l5.uucp Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!petrus!bellcore!decvax!decwrl!sun!l5!laura From: laura@l5.uucp (Laura Creighton) Newsgroups: net.games.frp Subject: Re: Question on resurrection Message-ID: <341@l5.uucp> Date: Sun, 15-Dec-85 16:50:59 EST Article-I.D.: l5.341 Posted: Sun Dec 15 16:50:59 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 17-Dec-85 04:47:17 EST References: <2200040@uok.UUCP> <2108@hcrvax.UUCP> Reply-To: laura@l5.UUCP (Laura Creighton) Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco Lines: 62 Hello. We always let everybody play 2 characters -- their high level one, and a henchmen. (This assumes that you *have* a high level character.) Assuming that the henchman lasted very long (likely, since nobody was into using characters as cannon fodder) you ended up with 2 interesting characters to run. This was fun. About resurrection -- my world is in the midst of a religious civil war. The gods are *very* active. However, god-human communication is very poor (That was the first world-wreaking spell that the chaotic gods' alliance cast). Therefore, only clerics can actually communicate with the gods. This is tough on the gods, who would like to influence everybody powerful to further their own ends. But communicating with a dead character is *easy*. So, every time a character dies, they have an intense religious expoerience as a god (or ocassionally gods, though very few chaotic gods want to work with other chaotic gods much) starts communicating exactly what he feels about that players past life, his friends, countrymen, and whatnot. The good part is that the chaotic gods want their clerics to ressurrect everybody they can. Resurrections come free (from the point of view of the characters -- the churches, however, don't like it much!). But, in my world, you wouldn't wake up from a resserection remembering spells. If you are a low level character you may not wake up at all (in addition to ressurection failure, low-level characters may never get their personality back together enough to have enough Will to encarnate) or you may wake up insane. Player characters wake up full of remorse for their sins, and full of the Will of a powerful being (which eventually fades out). For a few weeks, though, they are walking proselytising machines who do nothing but the Will of whatever god talked to them. It is a lot of fun. While I am at it, I might as well let you know that the Gods have no independent existence from the rest of the world, and are actually aspects of the collective unconscious. It was this discovery which put the heavens into civil war. The lawful gods deny this truth while the chaotic ones rejoice in it. But the chaotic ones use it to justify heavy meddling in human affairs (if you want to be a stronger god, just change the attitude of sentient beings towards you) which the lawful gods (who had an enterprise-like non-interference policy with lower life forms if they were good, and were bored with the lower life forms and by and large left them alone because they were so uninteresting if they were evil) do not condone. It is copmplicated by the fact that most humans are lawful (though not most player characters) and so the collective unconscious favours the lawful gods. They think that if *everyone* was lawful then they would have real, permanent existence even if they *are* part of the collective unconscious (which is of course a lie... ;-) ). I think that every DM should run ressurecctions any way that he likes. Remember that the object of the whole thing is to have great imaginative fun, not to staple each other to the wall on tecchnicalities. -- Laura Creighton sun!l5!laura (that is ell-five, not fifteen) l5!laura@lll-crg.arpa