Muckbeast

As promised, I am leaving the Wikipedia topic and moving on to another issue of Threshold’s game design. The religion system is probably one of the most robust and popular role playing features on Threshold. In this post, I am going to talk specifically about how the deities were created. I am assisted in this task by the recent discovery of an article I wrote for the webzine Imaginary Realities back in December of 1999. In fact, why don’t you click over to that article, then come back for a few more thoughts from me and some discussion: The Making of a Pantheon .

A Little More Insight into Threshold’s Religious Pantheon

As I noted in the article, what I basically did was compile a long list of concepts I wanted the deities to represent. Then I grouped them into categories as best as I could. Once I had it narrowed down to about 13, I started making the actual deities. I wanted a good balance between male and female, so I went half and half with Bilanx (the God of Balance) being either neuter or bi-gendered. There’s another first for Threshold: the first transexual deity in a MUD/MMO!

It might interest you to know that all of the deities, and specifically their detailed stories, were written on a pen and paper notepad while I was in various law school lectures. Instead of listening to the lecture, I was sitting there created and writing about the deities for Threshold’s pantheon. In a round-about way, my student loans were my first game developer paychecks.

Between classes, I would sometimes go to the law school computer lab and type some of them up. Then I would email them to myself so I would have them on my home computer. The other students would sit at their computers with Lexis/Nexis or Westlaw going, and I was typing away in notepad and email.