The item catalogue

Every item in the game, with a picture, its price and size, its upkeep, everything special about it, and how well it suits each of the 80 traditions. The pictures are the game's own models, rendered on their own.

Many items belong to one faith, and some are shared between faiths that share them (floor sheets for Hindu, Sikh, and Jain congregations; lamps of brightness and the paifang for Chinese and Chinese Buddhist temples; the shoe rack for every faith that takes its shoes off). The Furnish tray offers a congregation only its own faith's items and the ones every faith uses (pews, chairs, organs, lecterns, stained glass, the eternal flame, a dome, the heating and the plumbing). Before a tradition is chosen, it offers everything. This catalogue lists them all, by kind; each faith's own pieces are these:

In this chapter

1. Part 1SeatingWhere people sit. Seats are the most valuable thing you can build: standing costs a person 0.15 after a service, a seat earns them 0.05. 8 items.
2. Part 2Liturgical furnitureWhat worship is led from and centres on (altars and pulpits, the ark and the bimah, the mihrab and the minbar, the temples' shrines and altars), and what its rites need, the sacraments among them. Most of a tradition's required items are here. 56 items.
3. Part 3MusicOrgans, pianos, the band, and each faith's own instruments: temple bells, taiko, the kirtan stage. The right instrument for the tradition lifts the building's fit; the wrong one lowers it. 17 items.
4. Part 4DecorSymbols and images, lamps, calligraphy, glass, and the seasonal decor that dresses the house of worship for the year. 51 items.
5. Part 5FurnishingsThe working furniture of halls, classrooms, offices, and nurseries, plus the pillar. 24 items.
6. Part 6UtilityPlumbing, heating and cooling, solar panels, access, levels, and streaming: the things that make the building work. 26 items.
7. Part 7GroundsGardens, trees, a fountain, gates and flagstaffs, and a playground: the lot around the building. Each stands outside, and each has its upkeep. 22 items.

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How to read an entry

• Price is what it costs to buy and place. Signature pieces are paid in monthly instalments while they're made.
• Footprint is its size on the grid in metres, width by depth, before you turn it with R. Clearance is the strip that must stay free in front of it.
• Upkeep is what it adds to maintenance each year. Looks (0 to 10) is how handsome it is. The average looks of what stands in the worship space, with the style's formality, decides how much outside couples want to marry there (a $2,500 fee).
• Fit with each tradition is the number shown on each card in the Furnish tray, from −1 to +1. Green suits the tradition; red doesn't.
• Badges show the tradition's rules. A required item that's missing costs everyone 0.08 after every service. An expected one that's missing costs 0.03. A discouraged one that's present costs 0.03.

How building fit is worked out

After every service, the game averages the fit of every installed item that has a distinct character (formal, informal, organ, band, icons, and so on) in the rooms where the congregation sits: the worship room and any balcony. It moves everyone by 0.15 × that average. Plain items with no character, such as pews, pulpits, communion tables, and lecterns, don't count at all, and neither does anything outside the worship rooms (a sacristy's cabinet, a hall's tables). Entries below say "doesn't count toward building fit" for these. The other faiths' own furnishings (a bimah, a mihrab, a zendo's cushions, a palki, a hundi) carry no character either, but they count by the tradition's rules: +0.5 where it requires or expects them, and −1 where it discourages or forbids them. Where the rules say nothing of one (a menorah, calligraphy panels, a samavasarana, red lanterns, a Guanyin), it's left out of the average, just as a church's plain items are: it neither helps nor hurts the fit, and its looks still draw outside weddings. Formality doesn't touch them: a kamidana is the shrine's altar however formal the rite, +0.5 at a shrine and at Tenrikyo alike, and an ark is +0.5 in every synagogue; one that shows a symbol (a murti, a deity's statue) scores by the tradition's view of statues.

How formality scores: a formal item scores from −1 at minimal formality to +1 at high (−0.33 at low, +0.33 at moderate). An informal one (chairs, a projection screen, a drum kit) scores +1 at minimal, +0.33 at low, 0 at moderate, and −1 only at high: a Methodist hall or a Salvation Army citadel is at ease with chairs. A symbol the tradition discourages or forbids clashes (−1) whatever else the item is: a stained glass window is formal, but at a shrine, where stained glass is discouraged, it scores −1. A symbol it merely allows neither helps nor hurts, so the window scores its formality alone.

So one discordant item in a small worship room matters a lot: a Catholic nave whose only characterful items are an organ (+1) and a row of chairs (−1) averages zero. Add a crucifix, statues, a font, and an altar and the chairs fade to a small dent. The same holds in every faith. A Zen center is highly formal, so a row of chairs at the back for those who can't sit on the floor scores −1; but each row of cushions, the Buddha image, and the incense burner score +0.5, so in a full zendo the chairs are one small dent among many. (At a Tibetan center, moderately formal, the same chairs score 0.) A shrine discourages stained glass, so a stained glass window in its haiden scores −1 however handsome it is. For the best fit, fill the worship room with things your tradition loves, and keep what it dislikes out of it.

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