Confessions

[Gerolf]

Confessions, to my knowledge, are not the perview of the Inquisition.

Well... It depends on how technical you want to slice this. When I was cardinal it was explained to me (And to my knowledge the help files still reflect that) the order of progression is Acolyte--> Priest---> here you have to make a choice as the career choices branch. A standard inquisitor has roughly the same rank as a High priest.

Inquisitors are just specialized priests. Further the whole goal of a Review of Faith is to get a confession of a major heresy or witchcraft.

So in the very technical and literal sense, confessions are the purview of all members of the Holy Order as it furthers the Order's primary mission of rooting out taint. It is just that some priests do weddings and funerals while others conduct investigations. I mean, Gerolf did more weddings and confessions as Grand Inquisitor than he did as Cardinal.

[Zeita]

I think the delineation between Inquisitors and priests as one doing Reviews of Faith and the other performing confessions and other 'velvet glove' activities is important thematically. BUT, with the oft-limited population of Orderites, that is often impossible to achieve if you want to properly cover the whole ground. In my experience, Inquisitors performing confessions need to purposely put on their priest hat and step away from being an Inquisitor- I often used to perform a little ritual to seal the confession and help give some faith that what was said within was private and sacrosanct.

Definition wise, I think it is important to define a confession less as rooting out taint and more as giving the confessed person the chance to gain absolution for lesser sins. There is no helpfile directly for confession, which I think there probably needs to be.

In the helpfile 'sins and atonement' there is the sentence that reads: As such, confession and the cleansing that goes along with it are feared at times even by the most loyal Davites. I think that that language needs to be changed, as I think a standard, faithful Davite would eagerly go to confession for the preservation and 'repair' of their souls.

[Azi]

i like the idea of a help confessions helpfile, at least.

i love confession RP, and my own experience is that it can sometimes be hard to grasp how casual regular everyday confession and penances are. a helpfile with some common confessions and punishments rather than making all the priests seek out the Book of Penances might help make it a little more mundane too.

and more river dunking

[Andruid]

I'm totally cool with submitting dirty secrets and embarrassing details about my character to the Order, and while I would prefer to do so via active RP, I could see Leech's original idea potentially as a way to throw out hooks for priest/priestess characters and give them themely things to pursue.

For this to work, however, I think there would need to be both OOC -and- IC consent from the person doing the confessing. OOCly, I've agreed to use the confession system to submit stuff about my character. ICly, I've come to the church and told a priest a little bit about my problem (or a lot, depending on what I'm comfortable with), and I hope to continue the discussions at a future date with someone who thinks they can help me find spiritual purity or whatnot. Thus, Orderites would have the impetus (and permission) to discern that info and potentially follow up.

I also think the system would need to be tied to specific church-based locations in game, just like any rumor or bounty. This grounding is necessary, in my mind, to keep the system IC, but it could also help get more players congregating in or visiting areas that are thematically very important but in reality often don't see a lot of action. I don't think we should be pursuing gnotes v2.0 for priests or any kind of persistent logging system.

[Starstarfish]

As someone with an Orderite character, any system that gave me ways to find RP hooks with other people would be a blessing. I posted a comment about rumors, but having a system for introducing some of these sorts of things people are submitting about their characters or other characters already to be RPed as confessions versus (or in addition to) rumors would give Orderites another plot hook.

Perhaps offer the RPXP bonus for submitting a confession to said system like you get with a cnote as a way to encourage folks to do something thematic - confess as good Davites

[Kinaed]

What about a confession system that is NOT viewable by Order members, other than that your character has or has not confessed recently? They can petition the Synod or something for access to a character's confession, and the player can choose to release it or not?

[Voxumo]

Then why would anyone ever actually confess to a real player, when it's safer to confess to the automated system?

[Kinaed]

That's a fair enough point, though I don't think we have a lot of people confessing and may get more out of an automated system... or not. Honestly, it'd be low priority either way.