I saw Susu's post on praying and it inspired me to ask a few lingering questions I've always wondered about praying.

I'd love the perspectives of both the players and imms on this.

What do you see as appropriate types and amounts of praying for religions?

Typically, I've always only prayed to a patron imm when I wanted to speak, in their shrine. Do people pray more than that in general ways? Kind of like "Oh god... Help me through this trial"

What kind of praying do you imm's encourage? If someone is constantly praying to you, are you annoyed? Does it get your attention? Do you like it? Does it piss other imm's off? "Jimbo's praying again *eyeroll*"

I hope you get the idea of what I'm aiming at

Remember that what it does, functionally, is send a line to every immortal that is logged on. So, if I'm reading roles, reviewing something, dealing with a mortal in some capacity, etc...and there's not a good reason to be interrupted, there's going to be a bit of annoyance.

It will not annoy me if it's the "door bell ring" that someone else described and someone is at a shrine looking for a conversation (assuming it's not done constantly.)

I personally do not like it as a mechanism to roleplay outside of initiating a conversation. That's like using the bat phone...when there are a lot richer/classier ways to RP with your intended immortal set. If you're my follower (not that I have any now during my dormant status), I'm going to throw down a snoop on you most of the time we're both logged in...so I'm a lot more impressed with banter about your religion in your IC interactions and maybe even clever comments to mobs about it.

The thing that really annoys me with prayers is when someone treats it like a one-way conversation, and sends up a ton of long prayers in a row. So, my biggest request would be to think twice before you type in a second prayer within a short period of time, for any reason. If you have an issue that needs discussing, send up ONE prayer and wait for a response via tells, and have the conversation that way. If the immortal is tired of the discussion and ends the tells, do not start up again via prayer. If you think you're not being listened to, calm down and write a thoughtful email to the imps....don't just go nuts on the prayer channel. Nothing will make me stop listening to your argument faster...I'll mostly start looking for buttons that silence you.

nt

http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=5&topic_id=2189&mesg_id=2189&listing_type=search#2204

Generally I only throw up IC prayers if:

1. I want to talk to the imm. In this case it's like ringing a door bell. Usually in the shrine.

2. I did something moderately cool, like kill a strong enemy. This is fairly rare.

3. I don't necessarily want to talk to the imm and haven't done anything cool, but I haven't prayed recently and just want to voice some thanks/praise for my deity's perceived awesomeness. These I don't do more often than once per session.

Four easy steps to praying to immortals

1. Don't pray asking for equipment or restores or heals or to be rescued if you are lost and/or stuck, we're not going to help you with things like that. DO pray about people violating rules, bugs in the game, to make sure that you are not in an off-limits area, and sudden changes to stats that shouldn't have happened, etc. Don't pray to us about being killed or looted, or to have us perform tasks you can do yourself or with other mortals, such as locating corpses. For any questions you might have we will only give general responses.

Example: 'pray I died and don't know what will happen next.'. Another example would be: 'pray I think that Merlin and KingArthur are both the same person.' Please don't just type in 'pray'. If you want a response, tell us what you are praying about. If only one or a few imms can answer your pray, then go ahead and put their names in the pray. But, if you do pray for a specific imm or imms, and none of them are on then the other imms who are on at the time probably won't answer, so only specify someone if they are really the only ones who can help you.

2. Now, you've sent up a pray. Wait for a response. You can go to sleep, we can send tells to sleeping people. If no one responds in a 10-15 minutes, then send up a second pray, but DON'T send up multiple prays at once. If still no one responds, then you can send up prays every couple of minutes as long as you want, until someone responds. If you have a very specific pray, though, then just write that immortal(s) a note about it. Yes, we do read our notes. If you think it's really urgent, then continue praying once every five minutes or so (if you feel like it) until someone logs on, but notes are a better way to catch someone if no one is on initially.

3. Now, if someone has responded to your pray, then tell them the problem and they will try to deal with it or refer you to a higher level immortal. Remember there are a lot of people who play this game so we get bogged down with prays sometimes, so try to be patient. If the immortal doesn't deal with the problem to your satisfaction, instead of getting pissed at the immortal, write a note about it to the implementors. In fact, if you *ever* have a problem with any immortal (including an imp) write a note about it to the imps (the format would be: note to Nordewin BoltThrower Valguarnera Jullias Drokalanatym Sebeok Yanoreth Zulghinlour), and we will investigate the situation and punish as necessary. If one of the imps was the problem, then write about it to the others, of course. If you have a problem with all of the imps, then you'd probably be happier finding another MUD to play on.

4. If you abuse the pray channel by praying for restores, equipment, special attention, etc, or if you demand an unusually large amount of attention from immortals, then we will probably get sick of hearing from you. Now, a number of people who play this mud never pray at all which is fine with us (although we would like it if you prayed if you see a bug or a rule violation). Then there is a large section of people who pray about normal things and we appreciate them for being patient. Then there are a few people who are either new and pray for restores, pray 'hey, someone just killed me!' or some other pray like that and the people who have been around for a long time who think they can insult the imms because they've been around a long time. Try not to be in this last group. You will have a much better time playing here if you respect us and we will respect you. Just try to remember that we put a lot of hours of hard work into this mud for your playing enjoyment. Every immortal has spent at least a few hours working on something for the mud and the implementors have all spent thousands or more. I hope if you all read this that we can avoid misunderstandings in the future. This mud has been open since 1994, and it doesn't show signs of going down soon, so if you're planning on being a long term player here, work with the immortals instead of
against them.

--- The Implementors of the Carrion Fields.