Rolls for players looking to fund a new major religion

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by johndallman

While starting a new strand of Wicca isn't that hard, getting its members to devote themselves exclusively to one form is much harder. They tend to be quite alert to cult-like behaviour. And saying you're an incarnation of the triple goddess … not many of them are going to take that up unless you have extraordinary evidence.

Would a billionaire Einstein/Newton level skilled in Artist (Magic) Engineer (Magic equipment) and Professional Skill (Magician) and Talent 4 be close to it?

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by ericthered

which means we're back to trying to make a splinter religion.



Ok, I think this should be done in steps:
0) use the invention rules to invent a doctrine with philosophy or theology as the controlling skill.

1) Build a personal cult following around yourself through monthly leadership job rolls with a hefty penalty. Possibly require parallel public speaking rolls.

2) build an inner circle. Monthly teaching job rolls to get your missionaries, public speakers, and so forth to grasp the doctrine. give both sets of monthly rolls a small penalty for splitting your time.

3) Transition to cult larger than you personally can visit. roll the monthly leadership rolls, and add larger administration rolls as well. increase penalties with the size of what your holding together, and remember if you're not working full time on this, you get penalties.

4) Build a structure that can survive your death. Several skills should be rolled for this, and a large part of it is finding strong successors who won't break away and steal all your work. This is HARD, and should not be a single roll. Relevant skills include Law and Politics.
5) The GM should throw bumps your way the entire time. Scandals (real or imagined), controversies, criminal accusations, and protestors.

Loving it! This seems cool enough to actually be developed and wrote into some "Build your own religion in GURPS" book. How would you calculate the penalties? According to the range/speed table or to the Action books? Would size consider the number of preachers/priests or the number of followers? Thank you!

[mr beer]

Originally Posted by Alonsua

Would a billionaire Einstein/Newton level skilled in Artist (Magic) Engineer (Magic equipment) and Professional Skill (Magician) and Talent 4 be close to it?

Such a person can trivially provide fraudulent 'proof' of miracle working ability, since that is open to any con-artist with a tiniest fraction of such a unique talent, otherwise they are 'merely' the most talented stage magician in the world. What they also need is the social engineering skills to run the scam.

[AlexanderHowl]

She does not have enough Charisma to start a religion. She might be able to create a cult with a few hundred or few thousand members, but she is no L. Ron Hubbard, and he only created a religion with 200,000 members. If she wanted a major religion, she would need to hijack a Protestant Christian sect, since they fragment every month.

In addition, Wicca is probably the worst religion to try to hijack because its members are trained to recognize potential megalomaniacs. The stories that I could tell you about lunatics trying to recruit my Wiccan friends during the 90s to do something similar to what you are suggesting. They were lucky if the cops got to them before the Wiccans.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Alonsua

Would a billionaire Einstein/Newton level skilled in Artist (Magic) Engineer (Magic equipment) and Professional Skill (Magician) and Talent 4 be close to it?

None of this is even relevant to starting a religion. People who start religions are not just miracle workers, not even if they can achieve real miracles, let alone fake ones. Early Christianity, for example, has Simon Magus, but he wasn't the god it worshiped, or the prophet whose teachings it conveyed, or even one of its leaders; rather, he's something of a cautionary figure, one who had a big time clash with Peter.

Starting a religion means creating a group that transmits your ideas. The direct, face to face part of this is Teaching. If you yourself work on setting it up to recruit people indirectly, that's probably Propaganda. If you direct the organization that manages it, that's Administration; perhaps Finance to get donations; perhaps Leadership to inspire your followers to do things in your name. Really, it's all social skills, and you want to look at the GURPS Supplement on organizations to see how you would define a suitable organization and perhaps what you would have to do to create it.

[AlexanderHowl]

I would use Public Speaking or Writing over Teaching, but I generally agree. In addition, the people who create new religions generally have to be charismatic and skilled. I would argue that the creators of new religions possess Charisma 5+ (Buddha, Jesus, Mohamed, etc) or possess Charisma 3+, Megalomania, and the right skills to identify and exploit vulnerable people that they can easily convert them (any number of other religious leaders that I will not name out of politeness).

I would suggest looking into the literature on cults. Mandatory fasting and/or strict vegan diets shock the members into submission, love bombing and/or sexual orgies act as rewards, while ostracism and/or solitude act as punishments. After a few weeks of all three, the majority of people are pretty much willing to do anything from arson to prostitution. The cults that use drugs as rewards and torture as punishment are run by amateurs, the real effective cults never use anything so crude.

[Daigoro]

As far as the Cultural Change rules from Infinite Worlds go, it's a bit hard to judge complexity because the Simple-Amazing scale is rated in terms of overall effect on society, not on how big or difficult a task is itself.

Examples are given of a new saint or demigod as Average, and a new heresy or revival movement as Complex. You're effectively looking at both, so you could just go Complex, or you could establish her identity as the Triple Goddess first, as an Average invention, then use the "existing invention" bonus to leverage the rolls for the Complex invention.

Your skill rolls would be against Theology and Propaganda, at a minimum, but remember that an Average invention roll is still at -10. You could use some Research to find a similar demagogue or sect that you want to borrow some techniques from to give a "copy a working model" bonus, but you might get a backlash if people notice the similarity.

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I would use Public Speaking or Writing over Teaching, but I generally agree. In addition, the people who create new religions generally have to be charismatic and skilled. I would argue that the creators of new religions possess Charisma 5+ (Buddha, Jesus, Mohamed, etc) or possess Charisma 3+, Megalomania, and the right skills to identify and exploit vulnerable people that they can easily convert them (any number of other religious leaders that I will not name out of politeness).

I would suggest looking into the literature on cults. Mandatory fasting and/or strict vegan diets shock the members into submission, love bombing and/or sexual orgies act as rewards, while ostracism and/or solitude act as punishments. After a few weeks of all three, the majority of people are pretty much willing to do anything from arson to prostitution. The cults that use drugs as rewards and torture as punishment are run by amateurs, the real effective cults never use anything so crude.

Charisma 2 (+2 to Influence rolls), Born entertainer 4 (+4 to first influence roll made against one or more audience members after a successful performance), Gifted Artist 3 (+3 to reaction rolls from buyers and critics), Honest face (look honest, reliable and harmless), Appearance/Beautiful (+4/2 to reaction rolls), Acting [2]-15, Administration [2]-15, Fast-Talk [2]-15, Leadership [2]-15, Public Speaking [2]-15 and Big Store [6]-20. This is all in addition to Performance (while magicing) [20]-20.

Cultivating a persona:
Best of Acting+5 or Performance+3. +1 from Honest Face. Winning gives +1 to reaction/influence rolls.

Isn´t that summed up better than Charisma 5 and much better than Charisma 3?

Charisma 5 = +5 to influence rolls
This all summed up = +8 to influence rolls (after a successful performance), +5 to reaction rolls (after showing up the "miracles"). Add Appearance/Beautiful on top when relevant.

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

As far as the Cultural Change rules from Infinite Worlds go, it's a bit hard to judge complexity because the Simple-Amazing scale is rated in terms of overall effect on society, not on how big or difficult a task is itself.

Examples are given of a new saint or demigod as Average, and a new heresy or revival movement as Complex. You're effectively looking at both, so you could just go Complex, or you could establish her identity as the Triple Goddess first, as an Average invention, then use the "existing invention" bonus to leverage the rolls for the Complex invention.

Your skill rolls would be against Theology and Propaganda, at a minimum, but remember that an Average invention roll is still at -10. You could use some Research to find a similar demagogue or sect that you want to borrow some techniques from to give a "copy a working model" bonus, but you might get a backlash if people notice the similarity.

That´s what I thought! So it´s not even an Amazing invention roll, but an Average and a Complex one respectively, achievable with a basic skill of 18. And the most important thing to throw it up at as many people as possible is money.

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

She does not have enough Charisma to start a religion. She might be able to create a cult with a few hundred or few thousand members, but she is no L. Ron Hubbard, and he only created a religion with 200,000 members. If she wanted a major religion, she would need to hijack a Protestant Christian sect, since they fragment every month.

In addition, Wicca is probably the worst religion to try to hijack because its members are trained to recognize potential megalomaniacs. The stories that I could tell you about lunatics trying to recruit my Wiccan friends during the 90s to do something similar to what you are suggesting. They were lucky if the cops got to them before the Wiccans.

Charisma 5 = +5 to influence rolls
Her advantages summed up = +8 to influence rolls (after a successful performance), +5 to reaction rolls (after showing up the "miracles"). Add Appearance/Beautiful (+4/2) on top when relevant. So she is basically a very charismatic person until she is inspired by her divine powers, going from +4 to influence rolls to +8 to influence rolls, and from +2 to reaction rolls to +5 to reaction rolls. This is all not counting Appearance/Beautiful.