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I don't know how often this occurs with other FMs, but since Areia was made FM of Kelemvor, I've gotten at least three otells from players mentioning something along the lines of, "I've been having trouble finding the FM online. What's your rank?" And this is when I'm on... Well... A lot.

This has been suggested in the past--

viewtopic.php?f=77&t=17193&p=111935
viewtopic.php?f=77&t=9866&p=71887

--And there seemed to be pretty much universal agreement that this would be a good thing. Give all FMs, regardless of character class, a title on the who list. The helpfiles aren't always up to date, and I think this would be a nice way for hopefuls to see when their FM is on. I'm wondering if maybe it's just that it'd be a lot more work to implement than one might think? Anyway, if it's possible, I'd love to see it.

This is a good idea.

It's probably a hard code suggestion which it would be a good thing might take time! If so I'd say give the player of the FM the option to toggle it off and on. Sometime's you're on or your FM status is still a bit hidden due to the nature of your church?

Eh, being able to hide it would kind of make the change less useful, I think.

The Who list is pretty OOC as far as titles and such go, so I don't see harm in forcing FMs of Shar, Mask, etc. to show their titles (priest FMs of those faiths show now as it is). The benefit that would be gotten from having the title show constantly for all classes is that enquirers and hopefuls can, at least, see that their FM is online, even if they might not know ICly who that person is or where they usually hang out. At least then they'd know that's the time to be hanging around cities/temples, otell the FM to set up a meet, or whatever to have a better chance of running into FMs ICly if they want to start the faithing process sooner rather than later.

Who
Syntax: who
who character

WHO shows the characters currently in the game. The command shows all who
are in the game, including dead players and those invisable by magic. You will
still see the WHO list while blinded. Immortals who are wizinvis will not appear.

Please note the information in your title is considered IC information through
hearsay. It does not mean the very first time your character meets someone and
are not greeted by them that your character will know all the rumors about an
unknown character by the who list information. It is expected that the who list
information be considered a rumour after a few roleplayed encounters with a
particular character, whether they greet you or not. This does not place them
under any obligation to confirm those rumours, however! (i.e., to GREET you!)

NEW: The WHO command will now automatically invoke CHECK and inform you if you
have a message waiting for you at the magical post.

This is from the helpfile. The first line in the paragraph. It's not wholly ooc m'dear and I feel many would still take it ic if it where for the more reclusive faith managers.

Meanwhile, if your faith help file is not up to date then you (the FM) should reach out to the staff to correct it. Many council members from Code, Player, and Staff Councils can update those.

Harroghty wrote:Meanwhile, if your faith help file is not up to date then you (the FM) should reach out to the staff to correct it. Many council members from Code, Player, and Staff Councils can update those.

Indeed, beat me to the punch
Help files are helpful!

As far as secretive faiths go, I don't think the clerics of those should get the beforename titles. It would be nice not to know who is a sharran + maskarran + whatever else. I view these things like reading a book and having the secret villain at the end revealed somewhere 1/3rds through.

Might be weird to ask, but what is the route problem of this topic?

Is it that people aren't readin the help files or is it that people aren't clear what is OOC and IC to use to ask around for faith managers?

One player can only have so much first faithing experience across characters. To put forward my own, I am yet to arrange a meeting OOC with any of them. For the more popular faiths at the time we ended up meeting through other faith members and for the one more or less dead faith I joined it was through Im intervention as is all the dead faiths.

For one I had to send a letter through the IC mail but in each case it wasn't a secretive faith and for those I assumed inquiring put you on the list and last year or so there were a few maskarran / sharran get togethers to meet and induct new secret people into the faith. Perhaps these should be a normal more often process for those faiths?

To be clear, this isn't a recrimination, simply curious of the source of the issue since I haven't experienced this difficulty before on either side of the faith manager lifetime.

My concern here is a change that will have little to no effect as it fails in solving the route problem. From my perspective, faith managers are already visible through the help files and as said above I've not had very much difficulty faithing my characters even when playing in a different time zone at the beginning of my FK career.

Harroghty wrote: Meanwhile, if your faith help file is not up to date then you (the FM) should reach out to the staff to correct it. Many council members from Code, Player, and Staff Councils can update those.

Fair enough. The problem I've been seeing is that, even with Kel's helpfile having been updated to show Areia's name when she was promoted, a few--a not insignificant number--of enquirers/hopefuls still went a fairly long time without noticing that she's even the FM and online available for faithing RP.

Yemin wrote:Might be weird to ask, but what is the route problem of this topic?

Is it that people aren't readin the help files or is it that people aren't clear what is OOC and IC to use to ask around for faith managers?

Considering the above, and from what I've gathered from talking with a few other folks, it's probably more the former which I guess I just didn't assume because I'm the type to be looking through helpfiles and asking questions ICly pretty frequently.

Thanks for the input, everyone!

Here's a thought that kinda of goes along the lines of both sides of this with modification to Areia's request:

Why not have a church mob respond to the faith inquire/faith apply command by offering either -

a) Information about the faith as a knowledge style learning quest: Something FM's could write for their faith and app to have it added to churches.

b) Knowledge about who the FM is, who to look for, and where to go to typically find this person (like a city or general area): Again something that can be put into an app by the FM to have added to churches.

Both of these additions would likely go a long way towards immersion, helpfulness, and RP boosting. If a faith doesn't have an FM, a general ooc notice might be given to check the help files for that particular faith when someone uses either of the above commands. (This could be across the board anyways just to point to the help file system as a whole)

I think a general OOC notice attached to the faith enquire command pointing to check the help files would solve this with an added note about secretive faiths.

Options A and B seem a little too involved for a position that changes from time to time and while more faith knowledge quests would be cool I don't think is the right fit for a solution here. It would be more efficient to point towards resources we already have in place than to create new ones.

Something like:
Faith enquire Chauntea
You enquire about the faith of chauntea
OOC check the help file for your chosen faith to find out more information and also who leads the faith. If no faith manager is named... bla bla

Would also give these players the opportunity to use the links in the deity help files to read up about the faith.

Applying my personal experience to this question, I am not sure how it helps. I did not understand the faith system when I first began to play FK. Harroghty met Torm before Harroghty met Athon (the FM at the time). I met Torm because I just roleplayed my interest in the faith and eventually used the pray command to solicit help. There are two categories of people we're talking about: those who have just made a new PC and those who have made their first new PC.

Those who have only made a new PC do not really need coddling; they should know to read the help file or inquire in character to discover the FM. Therefore a white title doesn't really help them, or at least is not required. These people are not (should not be?) lost without the information. If the information is not available, then the FM should make sure it becomes available.

Those who have made their first PC probably do not understand what white titles are in the first place. I did not realize that Athon's white title (Vanguardier) meant I should speak to him about Torm until Torm (and Gwain) made that indirectly clear by telling me to speak with him. I had to rely upon information from IC interactions and I feel as if that's probably the most natural source of info.

I can't remember, but does the minister of Ao in the dripping dagger direct you to Sandrew for his lesson about joining a faith? If not this might be the easiest way to give first time players the information they need after you see the ilmatrite when learning about religion.

Providing that sandrew specifically includes suggestions about help files and such.