I'm in favor of religion if it is implemented in a way that adds new
role-playing goals to the game. I believe that to be successful,
Olympia needs to have a variety of orthogonal goals: economic, fame,
religion, magic, etc. And while I agree that people strictly
role-playing religion is interesting, I have to think that it would be
a lot more interesting if there were game mechanics behind it. If
player thought there might really be a "Dark Prophet", their reactions
to Dr. Pain would probably have been different. That's one aspect you
simply cannot capture with pure role-playing, no matter how inspired.
Some time back I gave Rich a bunch of ideas about temples and religion
which he might want to circulate if he thinks worthwhile.
As far as player godhood goes, I thought you just got added to the
internals mailing list... :-)
-- Scott T.