How hard is it to write pantheons people care about?

[Prak]

Due to players never remember any god's name, I'm probably just going to give them titles like the seven gods in Westeros. It's pretty easy to remember which one is the Smith and which one is the Mother. Hard to add more in-depth stuff in if your players don't even remember which is which.

The other advantage to using titles is that, if you're cribbing from established gods or characters, it's easier to make up a title that conveys the proper feeling, than to try to obscure the inspiration in creating new names.

[ModelCitizen]

"Kaius is a vampire!" is also a good model for similar twists elsewhere, since he has a (statted up) heir who works perfectly for "Psych, Kaius isn't a vampire!"

I think I like all the spoilers even if you play everything straight. The Blood of Vol Campaign would have a metric fuckton of backstory. If the PCs had to learn everything during a campaign they'd confuse the Order of the Emerald Claw with the Karrnathan military or the Blood of Vol with the Undying Court. This story has two factions of necro-nazis and two factions of skull-faced elf death cultists. The PCs would lose track and kill the wrong ones.

There's also a bunch of plot-critical stuff about the elf-dragon war and the Mark of Death (I think) that PCs can't affect and won't care about.

So there'd be way too much to keep track of in play, but it's fine if everyone already knows the backstory.

[A Man In Black]

I think I like all the spoilers even if you play everything straight. The Blood of Vol Campaign would have a metric fuckton of backstory. If the PCs had to learn everything during a campaign they'd confuse the Order of the Emerald Claw with the Karrnathan military or the Blood of Vol with the Undying Court. This story has two factions of necro-nazis and two factions of skull-faced elf death cultists.

There's even two dudes who look the same who insist that they are Kaius III.

So it's not as though the party can just look at one of them and say "Oh, he's a vampire!" without at least checking.

[crasskris]

Since humans can pay attention to seven things at most, seven might be a good maximum number for your pantheon. Less is, most of the times, even better, especially if the gods are multi-faceted and have a varied portfolio.

Edith corrected unneccessary repetition.

[Prak]

Since humans can pay attention to at most seven things at most, seven might be a good maximum number for your pantheon. Less is, most of the times, even better, especially if the gods are multi-faceted and have a varied portfolio.

That's... fortuitous news for the pantheon I started writing on a whim... (though possibly something that was planned for the thing I'm cribbing from...)

[crasskris]

... trolls will have a god of growing limbs back, and so on and so forth.

Isn't that the equivalent of a human god of bowel movements or opposable thumbs? Honestly, there are only one or two bodily functions I'd care enough about to venerate them in an idealized form, and they aren't the ones I take for granted.


On a broader level, gods being venerated by the 'evil' races is usually an easy way to add facets to a divine being. If the number of followers translated into real power, that move would make sense anyway.

So the gentle goddess is also the main troll goddess, who venerate her more as the goddess of brutal tenacity she turns into when really pissed off. And the god of parties and debauchery is also the god of eating squishy tasty humans to the ogres and trolls.

[Ancient History]

The big problem with fantasy religions as compared to real-world religions, and I credit Forgotten Realms for at least trying to address it, is that in most real-world religions the "gods" have no actual say in shit. If Zeus were real and found out people were trying to merge his worship with another lightning god, he could just fry their ass with a thunderbolt and get back to raping married Greek women. Heresy would be a brief but exciting method of suicide. When you have gods as more-or-less physical entities with established personalities and powers that give a shit about continuing to exist, a lot of the mix-n-match and theological disputes that make real-world religions fun and interesting get thrown out the window.

There are exceptions. The Cthulhu Mythos "deities" for example are as much interdimensional aliens as gods, and many of them seriously don't give a shit what the screaming little two-legs do as long as they move the damn seal or whatever. Humanity is literally beneath their notice 99% of the time; it's like if a human being stepped on an ant hill and was forever after worshipped by the colony as The Great Destroyer.

And, really, the whole "clerical spellcasting" thing should be tossed and replaced with giving the clerics actual sorcery and/or a more free-form prayer-based-miracle system. Go back in literature and the division between "sorcerer" and "priest" becomes practically non-existant; Simon Magus earned eternal infamy for literally trying to buy magic tricks off the disciples of Jesus, and by the logic of the day that should have worked! In the Middle Ages plenty of freelance clerics doubled as exorcists, conjuring and driving out spirits; hermits and anchorites were supposed to have developed miraculous powers based on their faith and abstinence from bathing (among other things).

[Prak]

... trolls will have a god of growing limbs back, and so on and so forth.

Isn't that the equivalent of a human god of bowel movements or opposable thumbs? Honestly, there are only one or two bodily functions I'd care enough about to venerate them in an idealized form, and they aren't the ones I take for granted.

Except that it's trolls, who, one, aren't famously intelligent or civilized, and two, that's essentially their form of medicine and possibly their form of reproduction. When viewed that way, it makes a lot more sense that trolls have a God of "growing back body parts."

[Ancient History]

Heh. Troll doctors spend many years learning how to set limbs and rip out just the diseased organs.

[hogarth]

Since humans can pay attention to seven things at most, seven might be a good maximum number for your pantheon. Less is, most of the times, even better, especially if the gods are multi-faceted and have a varied portfolio.

TL; DR answer: As a GM creating religions, seven or fewer gods sounds good. As a player creating clerics, seven or fewer options is way too few unless you're just playing a one-off campaign.

----

There are two points of view that one has to consider.

As a GM, I want my campaign setting's religion and cosmology to be as simple and elegant as possible. So it probably wouldn't make much sense to have a city of 10,000 people with shrines to 500 individual religions, even if I could create 500 interesting religions at all. So in the past I've created a pantheon with four gods corresponding to the elements/seasons/cardinal directions (with multiple aspects based on the local culture) and a pantheon with nine gods corresponding to the planets (each god gets to rule one planet).

But as a player of clerics, I want the maximum number of choices possible, and a campaign of 4 or 9 deities usually isn't cutting it. Some of those options are bound to be not particularly adventurous (e.g. a vanilla goddess of the harvest, god of blacksmiths, god of the sea -- those ideas are interesting to me maybe once in a decade) and one or two are bound to be "evil" gods (again, interesting maybe once in a decade), which leaves just a few slots to choose from. YMMV and all that, of course.

I think Eberron has a good balance for both GMs and players. For the GMs, there's a good selection of different religious structures to write stories about (polytheism, monotheism, Eastern mysticism, ancestor worship, monster cults, self-deification). And for the players, there's the freedom to worship any of the above PLUS whatever else you can think of, since Eberron took the further step of decoupling clerical powers from gods and you're free to make up any religion you want, or even making a heretical version of an existing religion.

[crasskris]

When viewed that way, it makes a lot more sense that trolls have a God of "growing back body parts."

Granted, but it is still boring (at least by itself) and only serves to highlight the trolls' nature as a one-trick-pony. Since religion is a cultural artifact, it should add to its participants personalities, not reduce them.

That being said, a god of regeneration could of course have an interesting religion: if some regerating animals like newts are considered holy and you can protect yourself by using one as a shield, that of course adds some interesting detail. But on the whole the concept of regeneration gets exhausted thematically rather quick - which is why you might need other domains and facets.

[crasskris]

But as a player of clerics, I want the maximum number of choices possible, and a campaign of 4 or 9 deities usually isn't cutting it. Some of those options are bound to be not particularly adventurous (e.g. a vanilla goddess of the harvest, god of blacksmiths, god of the sea -- those ideas are interesting to me maybe once in a decade) and one or two are bound to be "evil" gods (again, interesting maybe once in a decade), which leaves just a few slots to choose from. YMMV and all that, of course.

As a player of clerics new to the campaign, you probably want a finite number, too - unless the game is open enough and the pantheon large enough that adding your own idea for a god is no problem.

If you only have a small number, and in that I agree with you, the boring one-shot cookie-cutter stereotype harvest/sea/smith gods won't stay interesting for a minute.
Which only makes it more imperative to have gods that are multi-faceted beings whose portfolio is akin to a well-rounded personality, which can be explored further in the game. If the gods don't interact directly with mortals, this may express itself in a variety of churches, sects, cult and heresies that single divine being has spawned. Which then have various and variable relationships to each other and other religions and organisations.

Edith slew the endless worm-like sentence at the end and hacked it to digestible pieces.

[hogarth]

If you only have a small number, and in that I agree with you, the boring one-shot cookie-cutter stereotype harvest/sea/smith gods won't stay interesting for a minute.

Which only makes it more imperative to have gods that are multi-faceted beings whose portfolio is akin to a well-rounded personality, which can be explored further in the game.

Even so, there will still be big blank spots in terms of combinations of alignment and domains that won't be available. For instance, if I want to play a horse nomad cleric who worships the deity of horses and war and the GM decides that we're using the Greek pantheon, I'm stuck with either Poseidon or Ares who only half-fit, notwithstanding the fact that Poseidon and Ares might be interesting gods.

Now it's fair enough for the GM to say "this is the campaign, so deal with it". But there's something to be said (as a player) for the Forgotten Realms/Deities & Demigods "zillion gods" approach or the Eberron "worship whatever the hell you want" approach.

[crasskris]

But there's something to be said (as a player) for the Forgotten Realms/Deities & Demigods "zillion gods" approach or the Eberron "worship whatever the hell you want" approach.

No doubt; I didn't want to discount that.


Anyway, on a different tangent:

Another way to have relatable religions is having no pantheon at all. Ancestor / Spirit / Hero Worship is an alternative with real-world equivalents and usually far less dogmatic in its ideals (though not neccessarily in rites and theology) than pantheistic religion.
That can be a selling point for people like me who find the idea of someone playing whipping boy for some divine royalty and liking it hard to relate to.
Basically its the same as a pantheon with a lot of gods who are unobstrusive until you ask them for help.

[Chamomile]

I just thought I'd point out that the "god of growing back limbs" thing was a joke. Though you could easily expand that into a god of medicine in general, who is curiously worshiped by the trolls as the source of their regenerative properties, and that's the foundation for a decent deity.

[Prak]

Oh, I knew it was a joke, I was expanding, while also making it an actual idea.

[Chamomile]

I was mostly responding to all the people saying that it was a poor idea for a deity. To whom I say, congratulations, you've found the joke.

[Emerald]

The Hebrews ended up cutting three out of four of their gods for not being cool enough.

Somewhat off topic, would you mind going into more detail on this? I've heard of Yahweh's wife Asherah, but not of two other gods that the Hebrews retconned away.

[RobbyPants]

The Hebrews ended up cutting three out of four of their gods for not being cool enough.

Somewhat off topic, would you mind going into more detail on this? I've heard of Yahweh's wife Asherah, but not of two other gods that the Hebrews retconned away.

I was going to ask for elaboration too (although this whole wife of Yahweh is news to me). My initial assumption was that the Bible can vary so wildly as to what God even is, that it could be considered to be several different deities all later combined into one.

[hogarth]

The Hebrews ended up cutting three out of four of their gods for not being cool enough.

Somewhat off topic, would you mind going into more detail on this? I've heard of Yahweh's wife Asherah, but not of two other gods that the Hebrews retconned away.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Semitic_religions

[PoliteNewb]

Easy methods I use:

1.) Steal them from the real world; hell, this where half the forgotten realms gods came from. I would wager most fantasy gods are vague copies/amalgams of some real world deity of varying obscurity.

I don't even keep culturally coherent pantheons; the last campaign I ran had a pantheon that included Minerva, Vulcan, Yama, Azoth, Raiden, and Enlil. In a fantasy world, it is perfectly reasonable for any culture to revere a bird-man storm god.

2.) Make up gods as needed, and let your players do the same. Again...most polytheistic religions had literally tons of piddly-ass minor gods (even Catholics do this with the saints), so you literally can pray to one guy regarding archery and another guy regarding ocean voyages and so on and so forth. All you need is a name, a schtick, and at least 1-2 distinctive traits of either the god or the religion.

Due to players never remember any god's name, I'm probably just going to give them titles like the seven gods in Westeros. It's pretty easy to remember which one is the Smith and which one is the Mother. Hard to add more in-depth stuff in if your players don't even remember which is which.

I've been considering the same thing after reading Jo Walton; the main character worships a quasi-Greek/Roman pantheon, but she seldom (if ever) names them...they're just "The Radiant Sun", "The Virgin Huntress", "The Sky Lord", "The Master Maker", "The Lord Messenger", and so forth. Kinda elegant, since it can work across cultures...The Radiant Sun is the same guy even if some people call him Helios and other people call him Ra, and even if they believe very different things about him. The important thing is, he's the fucking sun, and that's why they worship him.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The idea of people being unable to worship openly evil gods is baffling. People do it all the time in the real world. And you don't even have to bring Abrahamic religion into it, fun as it is; there were and are seriously people in this world right meow who would eagerly kill you for no other reason than they heard through the grapevine that Hitler really hates Slavs. I mean, Imperial Japan, fuck.

And those people aren't even actual gods. Throw in actual superpowers and survivors of seeing Gruumsh smite towns because they were too nice to elves and the ability to tour Hell and have your local priest give you a preview of Evil Houri and it's hard to see how there wouldn't be some followers.


That said, I don't support there being evil Gods in the game. It's okay if the entire pantheon are sorta dicks but if half of the pantheon (or nearly half with some okay dudes) are sorta dicks and the other half are pure evil it raises some really uncomfortable questions.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Frank had a pretty good list of 'core' gods from way back when.

Black

Llolth
Set
Loviatar

Blue

Anansi
Vulcan
Wee Jas

Green

Hanuman
Terra
Thor

Red

Ares
Tiamat
Athena

White

Tezcatlipoca
Amaretsu
Ganesh

I still think that there should be a Dracula or a Cain in the core list. Also a 'good' god of death and the afterlife, even if it's the Grim Reaper. Actually I'd kind of like a Grim Reaper deity, you could make him snarky and cosmopolitan like Grim, Bonehead, that skull from Planescape, the Grim Reaper from Maximo, etc.. And a Mammon. But it's a pretty good list.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

The idea of people being unable to worship openly evil gods is baffling.

In my homebrew, I used the Draconic pantheon as the main deities. And the church of Io basically REQUIRED a place for every god in the pantheon to be openly worshiped. People gave tribute to Garyx because destruction paved the way for renewal, to Falazure to spare the town from undead and disease, to Tiamat when they were going on any sort of aggressive encounter, and so forth.

[Prak]

Due to players never remember any god's name, I'm probably just going to give them titles like the seven gods in Westeros. It's pretty easy to remember which one is the Smith and which one is the Mother. Hard to add more in-depth stuff in if your players don't even remember which is which.

I've been considering the same thing after reading Jo Walton; the main character worships a quasi-Greek/Roman pantheon, but she seldom (if ever) names them...they're just "The Radiant Sun", "The Virgin Huntress", "The Sky Lord", "The Master Maker", "The Lord Messenger", and so forth. Kinda elegant, since it can work across cultures...The Radiant Sun is the same guy even if some people call him Helios and other people call him Ra, and even if they believe very different things about him. The important thing is, he's the fucking sun, and that's why they worship him.

so far I have The Apple Picker, The Gleaming Scholar, The Prismatic Racer, and the starts of The Rosy Baker.