Li-varili’s Guide to Getting Other Gods to Respond

Some of you seem to want MORE Divine to grovel and play the fool to. The ones in your org having done the inevitable and grown bored of you, or gotten themselves, hopefully, trapped painfully forever. Poor you. So, what’s the best way to get yourself someone to zap you, assuming I’m too busy for it?

Some things to keep in mind first:

1. We have limited time. For many of Us, visible RP is a fraction of the time we spend in-game, and so we often feel like when we do engage in it we need to prioritise, and the priorities of My cousins are often Order > Patroned Org > Everyone else. There’s reasons I don’t bother with things like duties or patroning.
2. We, like you all, have real lives. We have busy periods in Lusternia where We frankly don’t have time for RP, or, if you’re one of My cousins, doing the bare minimum to keep their sworn sycophants tolerably appeased. Of course, there’s no good way to communicate this IC. For some reason flicking you to astral just doesn’t communicate “come back in a RL month” properly. And, unfortunately, when that month arrives, we have enough of a backlog of interactions due people that months old outreach is just not a priority.
3. As so often in social media, etc, you see the highlights in logs. You don’t see the all the times sycophants prayed and the results were crickets, or a week of playing godline tag, or just how long person X spent camping in a fulcrux to get that 30 minute roleplay session.
4. Some of the tastiest, most delightful topics to engage a divine on may be ones they want to share with their biggest sycophants first, and if they haven’t done that yet, they may be reluctant to bare their souls to an outsider. Moreover, they may have a specific plan for how they intend to release X lore, and just need to get around to building it… someday…
5. Similarly, while most of us took up adminning because we love developing lore, and many of us have extensive headcanons, we try to be careful about solo creating lore that could tread on another admin’s territory. This includes future admin, who might pick up a currently unplayed God, whether from the Histories or an entirely new creation with a similar niche. So asking about a relationship with a historical elder, or if we made “X” is a more collaborative, complicated question to answer than you might initially think. And again, if we do have an answer, we might want to release it some way that isn’t just announcing it to a lucky individual in our Fulcrux.
6. You may, in fact, have engaged with us more recently than you know, just in a different guise. We all do care about the engagement of players in orgs other than the ones we’re visibly volunteering for, and it can be a little off-putting to feel like those efforts are dismissed.
7. The Divine are characters too. Not all Divine are as down for throwing a tantrum as I am. Silly, avoidant things. Some Divine have hot button topics that will trigger an immediate and violent reaction, but won’t necessarily lead to long-term engagement. Some Divine respond to flattery, some Divine respond to candor, some Divine like evasiveness. As admin, we’re also always trying to balance crafting an enjoyable experience for the players, and sometimes that means if we don’t think we have a meaningful engagement to give, we simply won’t engage, judging that our time is better spent elsewhere (see 1 and 6).

So, all that in mind, what is the best way to optimise your chances at getting some engagement?

1. Do some groundwork RP first. For those of My cousins who’ve surrounded themselves with fools and sycophants, well, they have to be useful for something, right? Try reaching out to people in your target Divine’s Order, and see what, if anything the Divine’s shared with them about a topic close to your heart. If you have trouble getting the mortals to bite, then you can use that when you reach out to their Divine. If the mortals do respond, you’ll hopefully refine your outreach, and maybe even get an introduction, plus more RP is always nice. Also, then the Divine gets a chance to watch you and see if you’re the type to enjoy getting zapped incessantly (seriously, what is WITH some of you) or if you really just want a conversation.
2. If you’re flexible about the type of interaction you get, especially at first, indicate that somehow. Most of Us have a few options for responses, whether fobbing you off on a sycophant, having a little priestling or nereid chat with you or write to you, short of deigning to show up Ourselves. You may know that you’d be happy with any of those, especially if they lead to more, but if what you ask for is a Divine audience to discuss a specific topic, then we may assume that that’s what you want, and if the timing doesn’t work out, or the topic would require us to develop new lore in an avenue we’re not currently interested in pursuing, we may simply put off responding for later, which quickly becomes never.
3. In a similar vein, don’t expect that we’ll put in more effort in tracking you down for engagement than you’ve put in via your initial outreach. If you pray, or write a letter, and then we try to make ourselves available, or ping you, and you miss it, we’re not going to keep trying to pry you out of your manse to come engage with us. We assume that if you really care, you’ll try again, or try something slightly different.
4. Finding a topic to engage with can be difficult, which is why the groundwork can be valuable. It lets you see what areas of lore we may have already developed, and could be interested in exploring further. Specific questions, or comparisons are always easier to engage with than “tell me what you think about life” style topics. Of course, if you get too specific with questions you could get answered elsewhere, then it can be hard to come up with a reason that the Divine would bother educating you, especially, again, if you are specifically requesting the time of the Divine, and not one of their priests or sycophants. After all, you pretty little fools haven’t shown much aptitude for learning. Yet.
5. Some of the most fun RP for us is when we get to explore aspects of YOUR characters’ personal arcs. We have ways to info-dump our lore, and while knowing someone’s interested in something may inspire us to create, it’s not a guarantee. That doesn’t mean We’ll be particularly helpful or patient if you try to get us to play therapist to your character’s angst, but hopefully you know what you’re getting into when you pray, since you did your homework, right?