General RPG DiscussionDiscussion of all RPGs and non-system-specific topics. DM/GM/player issues, settings, etc. Rules discussion belongs in one the forums below.
__________________ It is the spirit of the game, not the letter of the rules, which is important. NEVER hold to the letter written, nor allow some barracks room lawyer to force quotations from the rule book upon you, IF it goes against the obvious intent of the game. As you hew the line with respect to conformity to major systems and uniformity of play in general, also be certain the game is mastered by you and not by your players. Within the broad parameters give in the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Volumes, YOU are creator and final arbiter. By ordering things as they should be, the game as a WHOLE first, your CAMPAIGN next, and your participants thereafter, you will be playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons as it was meant to be. May you find as much pleasure in so doing as the rest of us do.
While they weren't very good as more than beer and pretzel books, the Avatar Trilogy of Forgotten Realms books did one thing; they sold me on Torm. After reading Tantras and seeing the God of Duty and Loyalty portrayed as a gentle, grandfatherly, and forgiving figure who would still give his life in battle to defend his cause, I could honestly see myself as a follower of his doctrines in that setting.
As a DM, two of my favorite gods are old-school Bane (Forgotten Realms) and Set from the Egyptian pantheon. Set in particular is amusing to use, as for a dark god brimming with nefarious plots he's actually rather considerate and protective of his actual worshippers. It has thrown off my players before to face evil clerics who love their god rather than fear him.
In regards to real world pantheons, I studied Norse and Greek heavily as a child and dabbled in Egyptian. Frankly, though, I don't have a favorite deity... I am partial to the Norse pantheon's myths, though.
I am glad to see that Issek of the Jug got his props, but I have a deep love for Death from the same world -- I love the image of Death being something of a harried bureaucrat, slaving away under the Gods of Necessity and being given a laundry list of mortals to snuff out by X time ... only to be thwarted by heroes who refuse to be on the list! ;-)
And the RuneQuets gods are cool because, unlike so many rpg gods, they are mythological -- they do not have limited areas of expertise, but slop over each other, have confusing/contradictory stories, and are portrayed differently as they wash between cultures. Humakt is cool, but I have a deep love of Lhankor Mhy, the god of knowledge ... probably partially due to one PC in a Prax game having the battle cry of "Anthropology or Death!"
__________________ Jack, you have debauched my sloth.
I really enjoy the gods of Empire of the Petal Throne (Tékumel :: The World of the Petal Throne) especially Ksarul and Thumis since they are the gods of knowledge and give actually teeth to academic infighting (but that might be due to my leaving a PhD program).
For some reason I really like Issek of the Jug. While he was only featured in one story and mentioned in another, Issek's faith really captured my imagination. The imagery and self-sacrifice of the cult really grabbed me.
__________________ Robert Blezard I write; therefore, I am!
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I'm a big Conan fan so I must agree that Crom is a great deity. And while I wasn't willing to use Crom for my own setting I did create a barbarian god as an homage to Conan and Crom.
__________________ Robert Blezard I write; therefore, I am!
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I have never been much for gods who are... particularly human.
I'm currently in the third book in Greg Keyes' "Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone" series, and his take on the gods (called different things in each of the world's languages, but "saints" is the most common word in the books) is shaping up to be interesting. Exactly what they are, and what the major church reall is, seem to be major mysteries of the books, that I hope will be understood by the end (and the final book is out, so there is an end).
Oh yes, agree completely, Keyes is so good at his cultures becuase his degree is in anthropology.
Have you ever read his Waterborn, and Blackgod books? Very fasinating look at gods in that setting.
Pharasma (Pathfinder) - perhaps the best example of a goddess of birth and death that I've seen in a long time. Older than most of the current slate of Golarion's gods, mildly creepy, holds the portfolio of prophecy in a world where prophecy has gone mad, and has Groetus the so-called "God of the End Times" orbiting her domain like a leering, distant moon.
Set - real world and fantasy version alike, at least when presented as LE (I don't know what was going on in 3e Deities and Demigods with a CE Set allied with Apep... someone didn't do their homework). Best way to have a lawful deity of potentially chaotic things. Good stuff.
Tiamat (D&D version, not real world one) - the original, archetypal, vain, tyrannical dragon goddess. I <3 Tiamat.
Anubis (Planescape's Guardian of the Dead Gods version) - really original idea with placing Anubis as having voluntarily shed his divinity, ascending to become something else entirely in order to watch over the drifting corpses of the dead and forgotten gods of the multiverse.
Illsensine and (the late) Maanzicorian- some Cthulhu-vibe perhaps, but I always liked the illithid gods as antagonists.
__________________ "I can just see the 4e adventure anthology "Tale from the Limited Staircase"." - Ken Marable
I will also go with the Gloranthan gods. Some of my favorites have already been mentioned, but most of the others have some cool twists, as well. The old Cult Compendium comprises a wealth of great ideas (maybe, the new one too, but I haven't read that one).
Boccob comes close for me, but ohgma is also cool.
I always kinda liked olidammara
Seconded.
When 3.5E's Complete Divine came out, I greatly coveted the use of the Celerity Domain, for which the default (=Greyhawk) deities were Ehlonna, Fharlanghn, Olidammara, Xan Yae, and Zuoken.
Combining the various Domains of those 5 deities, you get: Knowledge (2), Luck (2), Trickery (2), War (2); Animal (1), Chaos (1), Good (1), Mind (1), Plant (1), Protection (1), Sun (1), Travel (1), and Weather (1).
It was suggested that deities in other settings who had the same Domains could also offer the Celerity Domain; and I see that Oghma offered Knowledge, Luck, Travel, and Trickery on that list, so he should be a shoe-in for 3.5E Celerity.
Corellon Larethian and Erevan Ilesere, both elven gods from D&D.
I semi-randomly picked Corellon as a god for my first character, a half-elven Bard. It seemed appropriate, the PHB had him as the god of the elves and having portfolio elements relevant to a Bard's interests. Since my character was devoutly religious, I started looking up other, more comprehensive sources on Corellon and liked what I found. I like the concept of gods who, while mortals might perceive them as being a specific gender, aren't in actuality any one gender - Corellon is male, and female, and both, and neither. (This is actually why I hate Sehanine-as-Corellon's wife and Angharradh in FR. Corellon doesn't need a damned wife.) Corellon's interests are also pretty much completely relevant to my own, so there's sort of the 'oh hey, a god of stuff I actually like' thing going on there.
I like how he's written up as being humble and willing to learn from others, even mortals, and actually taking an interest in cultures outside of that of his own race. I especially like the legend of Lafarallin from 2e's Monster Mythology, specifically because Corellon comes off as so much of a jerk who's completely missing the point during most of it, until he realises that yeah, he kind of screwed up, and fixes things, and actually fixes them rather than the greek method of 'whoops, I guess you can go be a constellation or something'. It's interesting to me to have an interpretation of a god who's flawed and willing to admit to it.
There's also some amusing contradictions in FR that lead to some interesting pondering - Corellon clearly doesn't hate drow entirely since 2e's Demihuman Deities notes him as having a few drow in his clergy, but they're barred from being specialty priests of him in the same entry. Does he still love his wayward children, especially the ones who find their way home, but not fully trust them? Is it a mortal issue and a prospective drow Feywarden just wouldn't ever find someone willing to train him?
I dunno, he just comes off as appealing to me, and about as realistic a god as you're going to get for a fictional race in a fictional game.
Erevan I dunno, I just find him cool. I named a cat after him. (Unfortunately said cat got out Wednesday night/very early Thursday morning and hasn't been seen since and probably won't be since he's never been outside before and we have coyotes around here. I'm telling myself he just took after his namesake, got bored with us and went to go find a new family in need of a siamese. Coyotes don't leave corpses so there's no way of proving myself wrong. ._.)
For me, the answer is unquestionably the Iron Kingdoms gods. The pantheon is small, but the presence of faith is entwined in the rest of the setting.
Menoth, the law giver and creator of man, is a strict and harsh god, whose hand forged man into the technological power it would become.
The twins, Morrow and Thamar, were humans who lead a crusade for freedom. Morrow marched for liberty through morality, whereas Thamar, the dark goddess, believed that true freedom meant being free from socially imposed moral straitjackets. Their ascension changed the whole continent.
In most places of Immorien, Morrow has the kind of presence that Christianity had on Europe during the Reniassance. But in some places, Menoth has a overwhelming following that dictates the entire lifestyle of his people.
There are other gods, who play into the world in their own ways, and each is interesting. But the primary reason I find them so beloved is that they really are inseparable from the setting.
Each setting seems to have a half-dozen or dieties that I really like, but there are some common themes.
Dieties of space, the stars, etc. appeal to me, whether it is Ptah 'Opener of the Ways,' or Celestian from Greyhawk or Desna from Golarion.
Female dieties with a strong (or even harsh!) demeanor, such as Wee Jas or Xan Yae from Greyhawk, or Auril or Talona from the Realms also draw my attention. Along the lines of Xan Yae, other dieties that are connected to mental and physical self-development (from monks to psions), such as Greyhawk's Zuoken or Golarion's Irori, are also cool.
Fate/destriny gods like Istus (Greyhawk), the only diety I know of that has both Chaos and Law as Domain choices or Pharasma (Golarion) are cool, or, in a related vein, luck gods like Tymora (Realms), Tyche (Greek) or Enkili (Scarred Lands) also are cool.
Gods tied to darkness / the night also are a favorite theme, including (qu'elle surprise), the Egyptian Set / Sutekh, as well as Ratri (Hindu) or Drendari (Scarred Lands). Similarly, illusion-specific gods, such as Lleira (Realms) or Sivhana (Golarion) are top choices. (Indeed, I went back to Greyhawk after the Time of Troubles became canon, and I realized that there would no longer be edition support / conversion material for the Lleiran characters that our campaign was based around, from a throwaway line in the original Waterdeep boxed set, about the Lleiran ties to the masked Lords of Waterdeep.)
Otherwise, some dieties have interesting themes, such as Tritherion, with his obsession with freedom and three animal companions (some hawk I don't remember, 'Nemoud the Hound' and 'Carrolk the Sea Lizard'), or the Heironeous pseudo-Achilles with his six-armed 'evil twin' Hextor (paralled in the Aureon / Shadow split in Eberron), or the fun of Baervan Wildwanderer with his 'little friend' Chiktikka Fastpaws.
Dualistic dieties (like the Heironeous / Hextor or Aureon / Shadow thing, but in a single character) like Nethys (Golarion) or even tripartate dieties like Angharradh (the Realms) are also cool. I like the idea of one diety possibly having wildly disparate congregations.
Some of Roger Moore's contributions, like Arvoreen the Defender or Aerdrie Faenya or Solonor Thelandira are nostalgia favorites. A Halfling Paladin-god? A winged elven goddess of birds and weather? Just cool stuff.
One last 'hook' is a diety who has a mystery about them. Nemorga, in the Scarred Lands, is a diety of uncertain provenance in a setting where every diety's lineage is generally known and acknowledged. Jergal, in the Realms, goes one step further into coolness, being a *pre-human* diety, who has hung on to relevance even after the death of the race that first worshipped him! (And there's even a hint that Aerdrie Faenya is a pre-elven diety, from the time when aarakocra, bullywugs and lizardfolk ruled the Realms, and with the decline in her original worshippers, she is now predominantly considered an elven diety!) That kind of stuff is just awesome. If anything in a setting deserves to have some mystique and unanswered questions, is the dieties of that setting!
There's even a few that sprang out of Dragon magazine (well, other than all of the Roger Moore demihuman and humanoid pantheons!), such as Kirith Sotheril, an elven goddess of magic. They come from all over.
Pharasma (Pathfinder) - perhaps the best example of a goddess of birth and death that I've seen in a long time. Older than most of the current slate of Golarion's gods, mildly creepy, holds the portfolio of prophecy in a world where prophecy has gone mad, and has Groetus the so-called "God of the End Times" orbiting her domain like a leering, distant moon.
Anubis (Planescape's Guardian of the Dead Gods version) - really original idea with placing Anubis as having voluntarily shed his divinity, ascending to become something else entirely in order to watch over the drifting corpses of the dead and forgotten gods of the multiverse.
I have to agree 100% with those two choices. Pharasma is an interesting deity (as are many of the Pathfinder deities) and I use a Planeescape-inspired version of Anubis in my homebrewed Mirrored Cosmology. Anubis is still a Guardian deity on a plane I call the Plane of Twilight, which replaces the Astral Plane (and Plane of Shadows) in my altered Planescape-like cosmology.
Anubis Guardian of Death, The Immortal Judge, The Hound of the Dead
Intermediate Deity Symbol: Black jackal Home Plane: Plane of Twilight Godly Realm: Wanders Alignment: Lawful neutral Portfolio: Guardianship, judgment, death, Plane of Twilight Worshipers: Guardians, embalmers, necromancers, monks Cleric Alignments: LN, LE, LG, N Domains: Law, Luck, Protection, Repose, Strength, Twilight [custom domain] Favored Weapon: Mace or quarterstaff
__________________ Robert Blezard I write; therefore, I am!
D&D v.3.5, d20 Modern, OSRIC, Pathfinder, True20... OGL Forever! Walk the Road
Avatar by Sialia
__________________ Robert Blezard I write; therefore, I am!
D&D v.3.5, d20 Modern, OSRIC, Pathfinder, True20... OGL Forever! Walk the Road
Avatar by Sialia
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