Sorry about the Bill Nye reference, I couldn’t resist (did you hear he has a new show?) Anyway, my last exam is tomorrow, and Faith development is resuming. Now that there’s at least something on every game page (events, report, law, beings, places, artifacts, and relations) I can focus on making it not suck! While the sucking is pretty pervasive right now, it’s made slightly less so by the introduction of science.
Science is a key part of the game that models the changing of the world in which faiths exist. Each faith has their own science score, and the more advanced science is, the more it affects the goings-on of your faith. Now, you may think, “hey, science, that sounds pretty sweet, my faith will encourage that.” However, while science may free your followers from the idiocy of lead pipes or awe them with the glory of post-it notes, it has a dark side.
I’m not talking about the invention of bad cell-phone ring tones here, no. Even more sinister is the difficulties religions have when science comes along and contradicts them. If your religion says that the world is held up by a rhino held up by an elephant held up by a manatee, then when astronomers come along and claim otherwise, there’ll be hell to pay. Metaphorically that is. On the other hand, people want to know how the world is held up, or what happens if you go off that quote obvious edge there in the distance. A careful balance must be met.
Science has other effects as well. As science becomes stronger, people in general become more skeptical of everything. Religion is more or less by definition impossible to prove, something that science scoffs at. You’ll find as science progresses, people will be less impressed by your holy artifacts and more materialistically inclined to join the religion that features non-stop hula dancing.
Finally, the world needs to end eventually, and it’s common knowledge that science will at least be partially responsible for that. Exactly how that goes down is still under wraps for now though.