On topic, I agree with Tabstorm, insofar as I think the 6* blessing abilities would be totally fine if it weren't for pointless monster spawning. Assuming there's no real appetite to remove that, however, I'd be fine with just making a new 6* ability for those gods called "Consecration" or something, that creates an altar and applies the blessing/gifts the book.
ion_frigate wrote:I think the problem is that the "Stone Soup" part works really well for game play, but really badly for flavour. Look at ADOM: a game that's been largely written by one person, and it has far better and much more consistent flavour than anything that Crawl can offer. Similarly, other community/committee-developed games tend to have bad or at best mixed flavour: NetHack and its variants come to mind.
I'm not sure what qualifies as "objectively great flavor," but in my opinion, DCSS and NetHack both have excellent flavor. Flavor isn't all writing and story and imagery; it's also atmosphere, mood, etc., a gestalt of everything going on. The "fantasy kitchen sink" design of Crawl and NetHack has its own charms.
I'd be all in favor of somebody setting up some kind of tzar of flavor on the devteam, but that's a huge task, and one that would be endlessly controversial no matter who took care of it. Coming up with a compelling new Crawl flavor sounds difficult. Original stories are hard; look at ToME4.