The Tavern

The whole idea of making new god seems great. There is, however, some ideas of mine, which might be worth to think of. I was thinking about god of insane killers (like Michael Myers), which - I think - fits well to the god of shade, which grants you benefits of being unnoticed killer (but for the cost of becoming more and more insane).

As there is already a lot of "evil" gods, the new god should be like super-evil. I was thinking of some "creepy" name, like Burzum or something similar. If you want it starting with letter "D", it might be something like Daggorath. There is a bunch of slavic ancient gods below might be worth mentioning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sl ... al_figures

Let's start with the motto:
"Murder! Insanity! Death!"
This describes the real nature of this *thing* (thus, its followers).
...and a description:
"D..., a shadowy god of insane murderers"
The believers sell their soul for the benefits for the cost of ongoing insanity.

This god obviously likes killing, from which he especially likes:
=> killing monsters of your own kind,
=> performing cannibalism,
=> poisoning monsters and using "evil-branded" weapons,
=> drinking blood,
=> killing neutral monsters,
=> killing combos (the more monsters you'll kill in one spree, the better),
=> building sculptures out of the killed bodies (ok, now that was a joke...).

Piety levels:
( ) - "Beginner"
(*) - "Budding Sadist"
(**) - "Crazy Freak"
(***) - "Lunatic Maniac"
(****) - "Insane Killer"
(*****) - "Mass Murderer"
(******) - "Son of Sam"

Sacrifying a body will cause an explosion of blood, depending on the size of the monster. If god didn't accept the sacrifice, the following message appears: "The kobold's body parts slowly disappears in the vacuum". If the god accepted a sacrifice, the following message appears: "D... laughs crazily while kobold's flesh explodes in a fountain of blood" and a blood will appear on the nearby tiles, just like during a kill.

Worshipping this god makes will gradually drive you insane. These disadvantages will partially compensate some benefits you'll get from worshipping this god (being shadowy, etc.). What would this mean? There are a lot of possibilities:

=> insanity level 1: random crazily laughs during some kills (the laugh will warn nearby monsters, but no, it's not a "scream mutation", because it happens only after some kills, when the victim was stabbed while asleep or confused - thus we can call these killes a "murders") - this is to compensate the benefits of not being noticed by others; the probability of RCL during a "murder" should be rather lower that higher,
=> insanity level 2: schisophrenia 1: sometimes seeing illusions (non-existing things), which is a sort of confusion - for example: you see the bloody good stuff on the ground, and while you're on its tile, it turns out it was just an illusion of your mind,
=> insanity level 3: schisophrenia 2: sometimes seeing illusions (non-existing monsters) - just as above: sometimes seeing dangerous monsters, that are really just in your mind (but a player does not know, whether it is an illusion, up to the first hit),
=> insanity level 4: periodicly (but very rarely) hurting self (thus, the deadlier weapon you carry, the worst HP loss you risk).

EDIT: ok, maybe naming the last piety level "Son of Sam" (which is a real person), is not the best idea, and it would be better to name it after some non-existing character, like "Michael Myers". Or something with the "Madness" word.

adamo901, please start a new thread for your suggestion. This thread is for discussing a different god which has already been coded up. When you write up your proposal, please make sure to complete it by listing the powers of the god and giving reasons why it would be a strong addition to the game.

Lasty wrote:giving reasons why it would be a strong addition to the game.

because what crawl really needs is to emphasize the sociopathy of its core gameplay mechanic

This just comes off as tasteless, frankly.

The god of insane killers is already Makhleb, Trog, Lugonu, Yred, Vehumet, Kiku, Okawaru, Beogh, and arguably TSO. This sounds like following one of them while under Xom wrath.

Arrhythmia wrote:This just comes off as tasteless, frankly.

"burzum" is definitely a cool suggestion for a name, more gameplay features should be named after bands whose founders are murderers, arsonists, and hardcore white supremacists

no one around here takes my proposels here hersiosly either so i dont bother eith typo check, grammer either. I am glad to see someone fellow minded. so ok i think the proposel is really bad. except one part:

adamo901 wrote:=> insanity level 2: schisophrenia 1: sometimes seeing illusions (non-existing things), which is a sort of confusion - for example: you see the bloody good stuff on the ground, and while you're on its tile, it turns out it was just an illusion of your mind,

code this in right now i want to see the bloody good stuff

bloody good stuff for the bloody good god

what, you expected the god of bloody murder to give you powers?
what are you, insane?

adamo901 wrote:The whole idea of making new god seems great. There is, however, some ideas of mine, which might be worth to think of. I was thinking about god of insane killers (like Michael Myers), which - I think - fits well to the god of shade, which grants you benefits of being unnoticed killer (but for the cost of becoming more and more insane).

As there is already a lot of "evil" gods, the new god should be like super-evil. I was thinking of some "creepy" name, like Burzum or something similar. If you want it starting with letter "D", it might be something like Daggorath. There is a bunch of slavic ancient gods below might be worth mentioning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sl ... al_figures

Let's start with the motto:
"Murder! Insanity! Death!"
This describes the real nature of this *thing* (thus, its followers).
...and a description:
"D..., a shadowy god of insane murderers"
The believers sell their soul for the benefits for the cost of ongoing insanity.

This god obviously likes killing, from which he especially likes:
=> killing monsters of your own kind,
=> performing cannibalism,
=> poisoning monsters and using "evil-branded" weapons,
=> drinking blood,
=> killing neutral monsters,
=> killing combos (the more monsters you'll kill in one spree, the better),
=> building sculptures out of the killed bodies (ok, now that was a joke...).

Piety levels:
( ) - "Beginner"
(*) - "Budding Sadist"
(**) - "Crazy Freak"
(***) - "Lunatic Maniac"
(****) - "Insane Killer"
(*****) - "Mass Murderer"
(******) - "Son of Sam"

Sacrifying a body will cause an explosion of blood, depending on the size of the monster. If god didn't accept the sacrifice, the following message appears: "The kobold's body parts slowly disappears in the vacuum". If the god accepted a sacrifice, the following message appears: "D... laughs crazily while kobold's flesh explodes in a fountain of blood" and a blood will appear on the nearby tiles, just like during a kill.

Worshipping this god makes will gradually drive you insane. These disadvantages will partially compensate some benefits you'll get from worshipping this god (being shadowy, etc.). What would this mean? There are a lot of possibilities:

=> insanity level 1: random crazily laughs during some kills (the laugh will warn nearby monsters, but no, it's not a "scream mutation", because it happens only after some kills, when the victim was stabbed while asleep or confused - thus we can call these killes a "murders") - this is to compensate the benefits of not being noticed by others; the probability of RCL during a "murder" should be rather lower that higher,
=> insanity level 2: schisophrenia 1: sometimes seeing illusions (non-existing things), which is a sort of confusion - for example: you see the bloody good stuff on the ground, and while you're on its tile, it turns out it was just an illusion of your mind,
=> insanity level 3: schisophrenia 2: sometimes seeing illusions (non-existing monsters) - just as above: sometimes seeing dangerous monsters, that are really just in your mind (but a player does not know, whether it is an illusion, up to the first hit),
=> insanity level 4: periodicly (but very rarely) hurting self (thus, the deadlier weapon you carry, the worst HP loss you risk).

EDIT: ok, maybe naming the last piety level "Son of Sam" (which is a real person), is not the best idea, and it would be better to name it after some non-existing character, like "Michael Myers". Or something with the "Madness" word.

Seek help.

Arrhythmia wrote:This just comes off as tasteless, frankly.

Well don't know about that. In my last orc game I did so many things the proposed god likes.
I ate fellow orcs, I killed monsters of my kind, I used poisons, drained life from my enemies, and generally just insanely hacked every singe living or undead being I saw.

This game is sooooo much about insane killing that claiming otherwise is just hypocritical. (Not inclugind Ely maybe, but even she doesn't mind if you kill allmost everything while laughing maniacally).
But I do agree that glorifying some things, let's say cannibalism, is tasteless.

There are few aspects I like about this god, mainly the insanity thing. But that would suit better some cthulhu themed game than crawl.

I didn't took the time to read the OP when I split the thread which is why I didn't immediately yiuf it. Fixed.

Zammy wrote:
Arrhythmia wrote:This just comes off as tasteless, frankly.

This game is sooooo much about insane killing that claiming otherwise is just hypocritical. (Not inclugind Ely maybe, but even she doesn't mind if you kill allmost everything while laughing maniacally).
But I do agree that glorifying some things, let's say cannibalism, is tasteless.

It is tasteless because it makes fun of mentally ill people (shizophrenia and self-harming? really?) which is on a whole other level than killing and eating monsters in a fantasy game.

Although to be fair, one of the most active [REDACTED].

I believe that minmay did this on purpose, but I suggest to close the thread.

Tastless? This god is not much more evil than - for example - Yredelemnul, Kiku or Makhleb, so I don't see the point.
In terms of taste... dr. Mengele's WizLab (this one with experiments on living beings seeking for death - mutating them etc.), was really testeless.

It's just a game, man - Doom 2 was banned in Germany for nearly two decades...

adamo901, what about quokkas? your proposal totally ignores them

adamo901 wrote:Tastless? This god is not much more evil than - for example - Yredelemnul, Kiku or Makhleb, so I don't see the point.

The point isn't how evil the God is. Rather, as cerebovssquire pointed out, it's the (literal!) demonization of people with schizophrenia or people who self harm that makes this god completely beyond the pale.

And you'd have to be CRAZY to suggest it!

@arrythmia

1. "hurting self" action is not schizophrenia in my description (what I called "schizophrenia" were actually two actions: seeing non-existing objects and monsters) - it's the forth action of mental illness combined with the god (which I described above), so please don't tell me that I accuse people with schisophrenia of hurting self!

2. It's the question of terminology; if I used wrong word to descript the action, what would you say if I named these actions (2nd and 3rd) differently, not "schizophrenia", but "illusions", "mind-tricks" or whatever? I can edit my first post and change the descriptions of these actions if they are so controversial to you.

You haven't answered my quokka question.

adamo901 wrote:@arrythmia

1. "hurting self" action is not schizophrenia in my description (what I called "schizophrenia" were actually two actions: seeing non-existing objects and monsters) - it's the forth action of mental illness combined with the god (which I described above), so please don't tell me that I accuse people with schisophrenia of hurting self!

I know, if you re-read my reply you'll notice that I never mentioned they were the same in your description. Rather, I'm objecting to the fact that you've created an evil god who only evil people will worship that gives you schizophrenia (and makes you self harm). That is, you're tacitly insinuating that people who are schizophrenic (or self harm) are literally evil. It's an incredibly ignorant and/or vile thing to do.

But, if you rename the abilities, the God, the flavour, damn near everything, so as to put aside the politics of the situation, your God doesn't even DO anything. There are no powers that make a worshiper stronger, only flavour text on sacrifices and crippling debuffs. There's no reason to ever worship this god.

What Arrhythmia said is spot on. I'd just add that having effects similar to but worse than mislead happening randomly would make a god very unfun. Putting players in situations where they need to make difficult decisions based on incomplete information is good. Giving them false information is really bad. Interface and visual screws are almost nonexistent in Crawl for good reason. Mislead is fine because it is very rare, you know it has happened, it wears off pretty quickly, and it doesn't tell you monsters exist that don't exist. (It just makes you see different monsters from the ones really there.)

IMO mislead wasn't fine

It sounds good, but adding some Insane Clown Posse would make it GREAT.

duvessa wrote:IMO mislead wasn't fine

Well it certainly wasn't worth keeping in if it was causing lots of crashes. Having an effect that limits the amount of information you know could potentially work, especially as a rare effect given by one unique, though I think something that simply obscured every creature (you knew its location, but not its identity) until it wore off would be more elegant and a lot less ugly. That would be terrible as a random god effect though. But anyway. Cool, no interface screwery in Crawl at all now.

Well there's still maprot in labs.

dck: but at least it has a function (but not to turn this into yet another maze thread, it's already bad enough)

No, just trying to think of other examples and interface screw and it's the only one that came to mind.
About mislead, I actually watched an orbruntomb attempt get misled and well, it was a huge mess but the thing is you could for the most part tell which monster was which by playing really slowly and possibly noting them down as well. I'd never really noticed how spoilery it was until then, but then I realized I'd spotted slime creatures before while misled by reading the quivering messages or deduced which monsters with spells was which by paying attention to its spellset.
It looked pretty rad and was thematically cool, but all in all it was for the most part an exercise of patience to deal with mislead "porperly" so I can agree it's good it is gone, even setting things like crashes away.

There's also maprot in abyss, which does serve a function, true, but is also annoying when, for example, you teleport near where you were before, and you can actually see that for a second before a screen refresh and the old area is dumped. I guess there's no way to fix it without changing abyss though,

Actually I think you could probably fix maprot by removing maprot.

moocowmoocow wrote:It sounds good, but adding some Insane Clown Posse would make it GREAT.

A THOUSAND TIMES THIS

Arrhythmia wrote:I know, if you re-read my reply you'll notice that I never mentioned they were the same in your description. Rather, I'm objecting to the fact that you've created an evil god who only evil people will worship that gives you schizophrenia (and makes you self harm). That is, you're tacitly insinuating that people who are schizophrenic (or self harm) are literally evil. It's an incredibly ignorant and/or vile thing to do.

Well actually Lovecraftian mythos (which I'm a fan of) is full of evil gods who make their worshippers go insane, hurt themselves (and others) and often even commit suicide.
And yet Lovecraft is considered to be a cornerstone of modern horror genre and is not said to slander people with mental illness.

I think it's quite a stretch to say that if evil god worshipers go insane all insane people are evil. It's almost like saying that all good people like evil people getting killed since in crawl there are good gods who appreciate death of evil beings (or just guys worshiping the wrong god).

Zammy wrote:Well actually Lovecraftian mythos (which I'm a fan of) is full of evil gods who make their worshippers go insane, hurt themselves (and others) and often even commit suicide.
And yet Lovecraft is considered to be a cornerstone of modern horror genre and is not said to slander people with mental illness.

Lovecraft never went into as much detail about the madness of his protagonists (or much of anything, really, he was pretty bad about that) as the OP did. Plus he was writing horror stories, people play Crawl to have fun, not to reflect on atrocities.

a really lovecraftian god would be nice. maybe something whose theme is corruption, and whose lair is in a chaotic everchanging dimension full of tentacled monstrosities, mind eating demons, and mutating beings from unkown dimensions. and phase bats. cant we have something like this in the near future?

Hirsch I wrote:a really lovecraftian god would be nice. maybe something whose theme is corruption, and whose lair is in a chaotic everchanging dimension full of tentacled monstrosities, mind eating demons, and mutating beings from unkown dimensions. and phase bats. cant we have something like this in the near future?

We have one, it's called

Spoiler: show

Zammy wrote:Well actually Lovecraftian mythos (which I'm a fan of) is full of evil gods who make their worshippers go insane, hurt themselves (and others) and often even commit suicide.
And yet Lovecraft is considered to be a cornerstone of modern horror genre and is not said to slander people with mental illness.

I think it's quite a stretch to say that if evil god worshipers go insane all insane people are evil. It's almost like saying that all good people like evil people getting killed since in crawl there are good gods who appreciate death of evil beings (or just guys worshiping the wrong god).

You're missing a lot of the subtleties of the situation. For example, the Gods of Lovecraft's works are usually metaphors for some other, more tangible concepts, like guilt, mortality, knowledge, or science. In that light, his works become more like parables against becoming obsessed with those ideas. On the other hand, the OP's proposal has at most a tenuous grasp with grammar, let alone more complex ideas like metaphor.

This is putting aside the fact that Lovecraft really isn't the ideal to strive for when it comes to social criticism.

Arrhythmia wrote:You're missing a lot of the subtleties of the situation. For example, the Gods of Lovecraft's works are usually metaphors for some other, more tangible concepts, like guilt, mortality, knowledge, or science.

Or, occasionally, foreigners.

"Hey Nyarlathotep! Let's see some papers!"

Arrhythmia wrote:You're missing a lot of the subtleties of the situation. For example, the Gods of Lovecraft's works are usually metaphors for some other, more tangible concepts, like guilt, mortality, knowledge, or science. In that light, his works become more like parables against becoming obsessed with those ideas. On the other hand, the OP's proposal has at most a tenuous grasp with grammar, let alone more complex ideas like metaphor.

This is putting aside the fact that Lovecraft really isn't the ideal to strive for when it comes to social criticism.

You are totally right that Lovecraft is rather poor example to be used as social criticism.
So feel free to be righteously infuriated about OP proposal.

<sarcasm>
I on the other hand am appalled that crawl clearly states that people on vegetable diet are mutants (see herbivore mutation).
Not to talk about people with some syndrome that makes them scream uncontrollably. They are clearly mutants too.
</sarcasm>

Point is, you can be insulted about anything you like. I usually choose not to all worked up when someone comes up with a proposal that could be interpreted to insult some group. That way I'd be spending all my time being angry.

Peace, dudes. Let's just play crawl and have fun.

well, infuriating (berzerk) is considered a bad mutation in Crawl...

Zammy wrote:Point is, you can be insulted about anything you like. I usually choose not to all worked up when someone comes up with a proposal that could be interpreted to insult some group. That way I'd be spending all my time being angry.

I don't know why you think I'm mad. I just think that mental illness stigmatization is a big problem in North America and the OP's proposal is emblematic of that. Surely I can think these things, and have a reasoned discussion about these things, without being angry, can't I?

This thread is now a genuine discussion of mental illness.

Arrhythmia wrote:I don't know why you think I'm mad. I just think that mental illness stigmatization is a big problem in North America and the OP's proposal is emblematic of that. Surely I can think these things, and have a reasoned discussion about these things, without being angry, can't I?

I think this is just us having a different view on the OP's proposal. I don't see anything insulting in it and you do.
It might be a cultural difference.
We even make fun of sucides here and Finland has one of the highest suicide rates in the western world...

I just assumed that you are angry since you saw something upsetting in there that I could not see. Allmost made me felt you want to see something you could be upset about. Clearly that is not the case.
Let's just agree to disagee on this subject, ok?

@Arrythmia:
"But, if you rename the abilities, the God, the flavour, damn near everything, so as to put aside the politics of the situation, your God doesn't even DO anything. There are no powers that make a worshiper stronger, only flavour text on sacrifices and crippling debuffs. There's no reason to ever worship this god"

These were the propositions to modify already coded god (to add some stuff), the shadow one, but the thread was split. I admit my proposition wasn't good (though some actions still might be used as a bad mutations, or some kind of a new god's wrath). I just wanted Seth to be creepier. I'm sorry if this has offended anybody. I don't want Arrythmia or other here to think that I stigmatize people - when writing this topic, I didn't think about that this way (yes, I realize of the stigmatization problem in Europe). Names of the actions were not proper, nor the Son of Sam, and no, I'm not a fan of Burzum (though I know what it is). The whole idea was proposed just for fun, not to make fun of mental ilness or glorify evil behaviors. Let's make a distinction between two things: computer games and a real life. Even though I like to play custom versions of Doom (which is a very brutal game), I'm the last person to go to the shooting-gallery or rifle-range. I'm also a fan of some horror movies - that doesn't mean I approve what Michael Mayers or Leatherface does in the movie. When writing this, I was just inspired by some aspects of the game (particularily "evil" gods) and some horror themes, but well, maybe it doesn't fit to the new god idea and the whole DC. Again, I'm sorry for the mess.

adamo901 wrote:Again, I'm sorry for the mess.

You're a cool guy who ended this very maturely. Keep on keepin' on.

yeah, you deserve some love for this.

The Tavern

god of insane killers (split from Seth, the Shadow King)

god of insane killers (split from Seth, the Shadow King)

Re: New God: Seth, the Shadow King

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