From: Colin Watson (watson@computing-science.aberdeen.ac.uk)
Date: Wed 10 Nov 1993 - 12:59:25 EET
>Colin Watson writes on Pantheons and the mechanics of joining.
Hm, I think this might have been wrongly attributed... ...but I'll answer anyway, what the hell. ;-)
>Colin, if you
>were a priest of, say, Orlanth, would you want all these farmers coming up to
>you offering you 10% of their time ? What would you do with it ? Or 10% of
>their crops ?
Well, it *is* a lot of wealth that they're offering. If I set them to farming the temple fields it would generate even more... But, in reality I'd probably send them off to work at the Ernalda temple. She can owe me. And in return, during times of war, I'd request that all the worshippers sign up for the local militia.
>Given Orlanthi society, there's not the strong ecclesiastical
>heirarchy of the middle ages when 10% tithe was neede to support all those
>priests and other non-productives (!).
I dunno, I think there are still going to be a fair number of non-producing types areound. And Priests tend to "need" a better standard of living than the average farmer, to the extent that they consume maybe 10 times the wealth of a farmer. So with a 10% tithe you need about 100 initiates to support a priest. Sounds about right to me.
>Don't forget "Battle beyond the Stars"...
I was trying to... |-(
Goes to show: no matter how nice the plot is, it still helps to have a
good GM and reasonable players.
(Decent special effects would help too:-)
___
CW.
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