OSSR: Deities & Demigods Cyclopedia

[Koumei]

You could fight AD&D's Lolth. Fuck, you were supposed to. And that was cool.

Did Lolth (or indeed, any other god) have actual godly powers that affected the world but weren't really combat abilities? For instance, could she telepathically communicate with/look through the eyes of all the spiders, even the "does not have a CR" one under your sink, fuck with drow in various ways on her whims, enhance massive amounts of spidersilk, cause swarm activity out in Waterderp and so on? Could Tiamahamut make dragons across the realms freak out and go on "Now the PCs have a quest that needs dealing with like right now" rampages as opposed to lazily flying around like Ultima Weapon?

Because as you pointed out, that's the other failing of 3E gods. They're arbitrarily "fuck you" in strength, with 40+ Outsider HD, ability scores of $TEXAS and "everybody within 100 feet of me dies with no save. Twice." and are aware of stuff relating to their portfolio but can't actually affect said portfolio. So Kharhun the FR god of lost keys can't even hide/reveal keys all over the place. By the way, Kharhun doesn't exist but it's FR so I bet half the readers assumed he did.

I'd really like to see D&D handle gods where they have far-reaching deific influence that isn't automatic "I win forever", and you go and kill them at level 13, and you then gain those powers and suddenly have all these extra responsibilities and the "I run a kingdom" minigame gets upgraded.

[hogarth]

Did Lolth (or indeed, any other god) have actual godly powers that affected the world but weren't really combat abilities?

1E AD&D Lolth is a bad example because she was basically just a tougher demon (with a puny number of hit points!).

Some gods in Deities & Demigods had impressive(ish) unique powers (like being able to answer any question X times a day, or whatever), but those were the exceptions. An awful lot of the gods were just an Nth level fighter with a funky magic weapon, along with the usual boilerplate god abilities (and psionics). I can't remember what the standard collection of powers was for a greater god, for example; something like Wish x/day, Polymorph Any Object x/day, Teleport without error at will, etc.

[icyshadowlord]

Hogarth, are you speaking of the third edition Deities & Demigods or the older one?

[nockermensch]

You could fight AD&D's Lolth. Fuck, you were supposed to. And that was cool.

Did Lolth (or indeed, any other god) have actual godly powers that affected the world but weren't really combat abilities? For instance, could she telepathically communicate with/look through the eyes of all the spiders, even the "does not have a CR" one under your sink, fuck with drow in various ways on her whims, enhance massive amounts of spidersilk, cause swarm activity out in Waterderp and so on? Could Tiamahamut make dragons across the realms freak out and go on "Now the PCs have a quest that needs dealing with like right now" rampages as opposed to lazily flying around like Ultima Weapon?

Because as you pointed out, that's the other failing of 3E gods. They're arbitrarily "fuck you" in strength, with 40+ Outsider HD, ability scores of $TEXAS and "everybody within 100 feet of me dies with no save. Twice." and are aware of stuff relating to their portfolio but can't actually affect said portfolio. So Kharhun the FR god of lost keys can't even hide/reveal keys all over the place. By the way, Kharhun doesn't exist but it's FR so I bet half the readers assumed he did.

I'd really like to see D&D handle gods where they have far-reaching deific influence that isn't automatic "I win forever", and you go and kill them at level 13, and you then gain those powers and suddenly have all these extra responsibilities and the "I run a kingdom" minigame gets upgraded.

Gods in D&D don't feel godlike, at all. Portfolio sense was the only thing vaguely interesting they could do, but the kind of cool stuff you mentioned is sadly lacking.

[hogarth]

Hogarth, are you speaking of the third edition Deities & Demigods or the older one?

The 1E AD&D version. I leafed through the 3E version once or twice, but it wasn't nearly as interesting; it had way fewer gods with way fewer bits that you could actually use in a D&D game.

[JigokuBosatsu]

If I recall correctly, Yog-Sothoth manifests as a bunch of evil bubbles. Is that right?

He's bubbles in "The Horror at the Museum", bubbles and tentacles in "Lurker At The Threshold", and a guy in a sheet in "Through the Gates of the Silver Key."

[shadzar]

Did Lolth (or indeed, any other god) have actual godly powers that affected the world but weren't really combat abilities?

you didn't face the Gods in their godly form, only their avatar form. so like Takhisis v Paladine, you may have met Fizban, but never would ahve fought Paladine. they didnt need to fight you in god-form because they could destroy the world with the blink of an eye, why trifle with mortals on a level beyond entertainment?

the gods pretty much had other things to deal with like Ao, the over god than Lolth to actually fight a mortal. Cyric and Raistlin get away with it because of creative licensing on the novel author's part.

really fighting the gods would be like using Immortals of BECMI or DM: HLC from PO series of 2nd. the lords of the Nine Hells, were pretty much just demons nothing akin to someone that would create a time of troubles or cataclysm.

Takhisis created the Draconians, with the help of the Greystone i think, or corrupting it or just them. Creating races is pretty much godly powers.

[ishy]

The year is 1980.

That is, game masters tended to ignore deities which were supposedly served and worshiped by characters in the campaign, or else they had gods popping up at the slightest whim of player characters in order to rescue them from perilous situations, grant wishes, and generally step-and-fetch. Obviously, there is a broad ground between these two extremes, and that is squarely where I desired AD&D to go.

(...)
There are a lot of rules then about DMing gods, clerics, omens, and then my favorite - rules for divine ascension.
(...)
I should add at this point that on top of including stat blocks for gods, the entries also include brief notes on worship, magic/sacred items peculiar to a pantheon or mythos, and even some stat blocks on affiliated heroes and monsters - the Native Americans for example get the Thunder Bird. Presumably the White Buffalo was cut for space.

What are the rules for DMing gods, clerics etc like?

Does the book include,
1: what makes gods different from high level creatures?
2: what benefits do gods get from having worshippers?
3: what do gods do for worshippers?
4: what do gods when they are not meddling in the material world? What are their plans etc?

What makes gods worth adding to the game other than that there are crazy cults for different gods?

[hogarth]

Does the book include,
1: what makes gods different from high level creatures?
2: what benefits do gods get from having worshippers?
3: what do gods do for worshippers?
4: what do gods when they are not meddling in the material world? What are their plans etc?

What makes gods worth adding to the game other than that there are crazy cults for different gods?

The book doesn't talk much about what the life of a god is like (a la #1, #2 and #4). It does talk a bit about the benefits of worshipping the gods of different pantheons (on a pantheon-by-pantheon basis).

[tussock]

Isn't it basically that having more worshippers makes you a higher ranked god, which gets you higher level clerics who can cast bigger cleric spells? So you need to be an intermediate god to hand out Raise Dead and only greater gods give all the 7th level spell goodness. Maybe that's a 2nd edition thing.

Plus in FR at least if you run low on worshippers you go to sleep and float into the astral plane unable to maintain your domain, and make a nice place for adventurers to go kill Bits O' $GOD.

[hogarth]

Isn't it basically that having more worshippers makes you a higher ranked god, which gets you higher level clerics who can cast bigger cleric spells? So you need to be an intermediate god to hand out Raise Dead and only greater gods give all the 7th level spell goodness. Maybe that's a 2nd edition thing.

Certainly there were different rankings of gods in 1E like you describe (IIRC, demigods = 5th level spells, lesser gods = 6th, greater gods = 7th). But I'm not sure it actually said that more worshippers move you up the scale. Maybe it did.

[shadzar]

i cannot find reference to it in the 128 page version of the book. the "level" of a god just was, or specific mythoi may have had specific rules for their own gods.

[silva]

You could fight AD&D's Lolth. Fuck, you were supposed to. And that was cool.

Did Lolth (or indeed, any other god) have actual godly powers that affected the world but weren't really combat abilities? For instance, could she telepathically communicate with/look through the eyes of all the spiders, even the "does not have a CR" one under your sink, fuck with drow in various ways on her whims, enhance massive amounts of spidersilk, cause swarm activity out in Waterderp and so on? Could Tiamahamut make dragons across the realms freak out and go on "Now the PCs have a quest that needs dealing with like right now" rampages as opposed to lazily flying around like Ultima Weapon?

You wont find coherent gods and religions in D&D.

Luckly though, Runequest, Cults of Prax, Cults of Terror and Trollpack are still around in some form or another.

[hogarth]

You wont find coherent gods and religions in D&D.

On the contrary, the gods and religions in Eberron seem quite reasonable to me.

[Ted the Flayer]

That's what makes the Eberron religions so fake-sounding. Religion doesn't make a damn bit of sense if you're not an adherent.

[hogarth]

That's what makes the Eberron religions so fake-sounding. Religion doesn't make a damn bit of sense if you're not an adherent.

I don't understand. To me, the Eberron religions don't make a damn bit of sense either (i.e. there's no particular benefit to worshipping one religion or another, other than viewing them as a social club), in exactly the same way that real-life religions don't make sense.

So you have a Christianity-ish religion (Silver Flame), a Buddhism-ish religion (il-Yannah) and a Greek/Norse/Roman/whatever-style polytheist religion, along with a bunch of random cults, that don't make any more or less sense than their real world counterparts.

[Ancient History]

Real-world type religions rely on different degrees of faith - because if we don't cut out someone's heart the sun still rises, the lesions on the chicken's liver don't fortell the outcome of the presidential election, and taking a shit on the altar is not going to cause a demigod to appear in person and kick your ass.

In the D&D world...well, this is usally where gods fall down: they don't tend to control the weather, at least not any more than a really bitching powerful wizard can. They may be god of such-and-such, but if they spontaneously stopped existing the campaign world would presumably get along fine. The only time a D&D deity was essential the running and maintence of something important was Mystra in the Forgotten Realms, and everyone hated it.

So if your god is not some enigmatic force that governs the very elements of the universe, if they're just some superpowerful dude or dudette - and one that provably exists - then a lot of real-world religion has to go out the window. Faith is something people came up with to explain why a good and just god let bad shit happen. If no one sacrifices a pair of white doves on the altar tomorrow, nothing happens (well, possibly some dove sex). If no one sacrifices a goat to Thor on Thor's Day, then presumably Thor will roll into town on his goat-drawn chariot and ask some very pointed questions about where the fuck his goat is. Or if he's busy, maybe he'll send a valkyrie-intern or something. But the thing is that in D&D, there's no reason to presume that gods don't take an active interest in proving their existence to people.

So if Jesus can just pop in from Heaven and spread a little manna and water-into-wine, why does he need Saint Peter to head up a church? Either he can't (not all gods are equally powerful), or he won't (not all gods aren't dicks), or he really can't (busy, Satan and his legions are invading). Most of D&D sort of assumes the latter by default - the gods are busy doing godly things, and they have the mortal representatives imbued with a fraction of their divine might to take care of shit in their place, usually with a couple "Don't make me come down there." clauses attached.

But even if you can accept a real-world-type church or priesthood springing up around people that can legitimately pull off miracles and answer to Superman, that has plenty of effects within the game itself. For one, you're never going to have a One True God if there are dozens of faiths out there - if your god really was more powerful than the others, they'd have wiped out the competition. And you have pantheons, which suggests deities can share worshippers without too much hassle. You have race-specific entities like Lolth, which make sense to a degree - if everyone else has a god, then your tribe had better get a god of its own or you're going to be at a tactical disadvantage - but keep in mind that humans will worship anything, so the gods are also idiosyncratic and picky about who worships them. That gets to be a big factor when it comes to the afterlife, because in D&D there IS a verifiable afterlife - more than one, even - and it really does pay to shop around and try to conform if you want to reincarnate or spend eternity as a lizard basking on a rock rather than buff Tiamat's ass-scales for eternity.

[hogarth]

Real-world type religions rely on different degrees of faith - because if we don't cut out someone's heart the sun still rises, the lesions on the chicken's liver don't fortell the outcome of the presidential election, and taking a shit on the altar is not going to cause a demigod to appear in person and kick your ass. [etc.]

Just to clarify -- you're not talking about Eberron, right? Because basically nothing you said applies to Eberron, where being a cleric has little or nothing to do with religion.

[Ancient History]

I'm talking in the abstract; Eberron religions still don't make any damn sense, but I wasn't discussing them specifically.

[silva]

Lets be frank here: religion in D&D ( and in most rpgs, really) is just disposable background fluff for justifying divine spells. Runequest is the only game to do religion in a way that is meaningful and anthropologically sound (with Tekumel as a distant, but honorable, second place). Everything else is as fake-sounding as it gets.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Welcome to the Den, Silva. Do you do anything besides shill for Glorantha?

I feel compelled to mention that many RPGs take place in some variation of the real world, where presumably the religions are at least as meaningful and anthropologically sound as any fictional ones.

[Prak]

Lets be frank here: religion in D&D ( and in most rpgs, really) is just disposable background fluff for justifying divine spells. Runequest is the only game to do religion in a way that is meaningful and anthropologically sound (with Tekumel as a distant, but honorable, second place). Everything else is as fake-sounding as it gets.

I believe you mean Glorantha, as Runequest is the system and does not, in any version I've seen, intrinsically do religion "right" or even "wrong."

And the thing is, Glorantha fucking sucks. Sure, it's all very versimilitudinous, what with it's symbolism and shit. But the fact that it is just symbolism means that players don't get to use their base assumptions for anything. Sure, things fall towards the earth, but it's not because of mass, it's because of psedo-mystical bullshit about how everything moves towards the earth-father. If that's all it was, it'd be fine. But no, because there is no science, nothing works unless the GM says so. You cannot mix up saltpeter, sulfer and charcoal and get gun powder. ...unless you know the special mystical words of the mostali (dwarves). You can't neutralize acid with base, but you can use water, because acid is symbolically tied to fire. If you could work things such that you changed the symbolic call-name of a horse to "Arrow" you could fire the horse from your fucking bow.

Now, none of that has anything to do with gods in Glorantha, but they suck too. First, divine magic is only not the objectively worst form of magic because it is the quickest to use. In all other respects, it sucks. You have to go to specific locations and say "here's some of my mechanical statistic which represents free will, oh great flying bull man! Please give me a spell!" Which you can then use once. Then you have to go back to the holy place. If you're an adventurer, you will almost never use divine magic, because you won't be able to get more after you use any you start with. If you're high enough in the religion that you can set up holy shrines, then you have demands which don't allow you to go adventuring.
More than that, there is no fucking reason to worship gods in Glorantha. Why, you might ask? Because gods are fucking cardboard cut outs. They have no free will, and don't really do anything. Sure, things might get a bit screwy if you kill a god, but, fuck, there are at least four sun gods, they can't all be flying the chariot.
In my opinion, if you have this sack of power with no free will that doesn't really do anything, there is no reason to worship it. You honestly might as well start worshiping the not-god tree of reverse psychology. Especially since, canonically, you can make gods by worshiping shit. There is a tribe of newt-people that created a frog god by worshiping a specific frog spirit. If being a god weren't such a shit deal, I'd be trying to get every character I play to be worshiped. Instead, I'm just going to have characters trying to drum up worship for their stuff so they can get powers out of that. Fuck, I still say that sorcery could vastly speed this whole process along, I just need to figure out the right way to do it (hmm... form/set steel>sword, awaken steel to create intelligent sword, use release intelligence if necessary to make intelligent sword sentient, then tell the new intelligent swords to start worshiping your sword... That *should* work). Gods in Glorantha, like everything else, are bullshit, I'm sorry.

[silva]

Welcome to the Den, Silva. Do you do anything besides shill for Glorantha?

Yeah, I shill for Shadowrun too.

I feel compelled to mention that many RPGs take place in some variation of the real world, where presumably the religions are at least as meaningful and anthropologically sound as any fictional ones.

Yup, you have a point. My comment was about the fictitious ones.

[silva]

snip

Prak, your post is nonsensical in so many levels I wont even respond it right now. I will to take my time to vivissect it when I have a bit more time.

(does this term exist, "vivissect" ? )

[Chamomile]

snip

Prak, your post is nonsensical in so many levels I wont even respond it right now. I will to take my time to vivissect it when I have a bit more time.

(does this term exist, "vivissect" ? )

Vivisection is surgery for scientific purposes conducted on a living creature. What the Hell are you doing using words you don't even know, posting a response just to let us know you'll be posting a response?