Pantheons?

What type of pantheon(s) do you use?

Do you use a sprawling pantheon, like Forgotten Realms? (Ignoring the Old Empires, Al-Qadim, Maztica, and Kara-Tur.)

Do you use a compact pantheon, like Dragon Lance?

Do you use cultural pantheons, like Greek, Egyptian, and Norse?

Do you use overlapping pantheons, where each civilization has its own pantheon, but you can always worship a deity from another culture? (I'm guessing this is what Greyhawk is like....)

Hi Heretic Apostate,

I use a homebrew "cultural" pantheon right now, as I have for years, but I decided a year or so ago to switch to overlapping pantheons. I've been waiting for D&Dg to be released, as conveniently enough, it has all three of the additional cultural pantheons I want to add (and I'm not talking about Greyhawk...).

Some of Wyatt's comments on how he has taken liberties with the original gods and myths to "D&D-ify" the real-world pantheons have gotten me a little nervous, though. It sounds as though he has messed around with the Egyptian deities quite a bit. I'm anxious to see the book for myself.

Cheers.

- War Golem

So far my campaign has involved the greyhawk, Greek, Indian, Celtic, Eqyptian, Dragonlance, and Hollow World pantheons at different points; the Devil and demon hierarchies; and the ravenloft raven undead force from Ravenloft. Of course my players have traveled to 4 different worlds.

One of the PCs is a cleric of Xan Yae (greyhawk) another was a ranger of the greyhawk unicorn deity, was kicked out of the faith by the god itself and is now a champion of Shiva(indian), and one grugach was dedicated to Poseidon(greek) from day one (he was surprised when I ran the original White Plume Mountain and there was an artifact trident for followers of Poseidon). One PC (the character long since dead) was an agent of Asmodeus for a while, and there was an NPC st. Cuthbert paladin who was part of the party for a while.

I use a compact culture dieties. There are only 13 gods in my world, but each culture hasa different name for them and may worship different aspects of the same gods.

Crothian said:

I use a compact culture dieties. There are only 13 gods in my world, but each culture hasa different name for them and may worship different aspects of the same gods.

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Yup, same here. I really think that that was one of the best features of Dragonlance. Kalamar uses this setup too, but it feels wrong to call it compact with the sheer number of deities available.

Rav

Didn't dragonlance have seven or nine gods for each of the three alignment types (good, neutral and evil)? 21 or 27, I never thought of it as compact. By compact do you mean one pantheon only for the whole world?

Voadam said:

Didn't dragonlance have seven or nine gods for each of the three alignment types (good, neutral and evil)? 21 or 27, I never thought of it as compact. By compact do you mean one pantheon only for the whole world?

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By compact, I mean "there are some tasks that just don't need to have a god watching over them." Like Dragonlance. There's some tasks that just don't have gods.

Forgotten Realms, much as I hate to admit it (I like a lot of FR, I just wish it was a little toned down...), does seem to have a god for every occasion. So far, there isn't a god of outhouses, but I'm sure someone will come up with one. This is what I mean by sprawling.

And there are seven of each moral alignment, including one each for each of the Robes of Magic. (Thus, three magic gods, plus 18 other gods.)

I checked choice #4. Both games I'm in at the moment use all the real world pantheons from the original Deities and Demigods, as well as the nonhuman deities from there and Unearthed Arcana.

One is set on a future, post cataclysmic earth, and the worshipers do tend to clump along ethnic lines. The Egyptian pantheon being the politically dominant in the colony, but more colonists being following the Greek and Babyonian gods and the indiginous people following the Norse. However, the gods are all just manifestations of some all-pervasive divine force (sort of intermediate forms used to deal with it -- the characters don't know this), so mutually exclusive religions and mythologies work just as well.

The other game is set on another planet colonized by fleeing 21st century humans; the non-human races being indigenous inhabitants. Earth's magical field had been used up centuries before they left, and they really hadn't been expecting the situation they found themselves in. Gods of the various pantheons can crop up pretty much anywhere, and most temples have been non-denominational and alignment based. A lot of this is a relic of the less sophisticated beginings of an 18-year campaign, and the DMs moving towards having more temples dedicated towards specific deities, and perhaps towns favoring specific pantheons. Which kind of a shame; while it initially bugged the heck out of me because it was done out a lack of planning, but with some thought put into it could be an interesting variation.

I'm all about the compact pantheon. However, my campaign *could* have a sprawling pantheon at some point in the future...

My campaign currently has 2 gods for every alignment, except LN and CN (16 total). Each is a former mortal. Well... 3 of them don't claim to be former mortals like the rest do, so that's still kinda up in the air, but the rest *are* former mortals. Which means, of course, that more former mortals as gods is distinctly possible.

I prefer cultural pantheons with some minor overlap as cultures come into conflict, grow, merge, and die. Compact and Sprawling pantheons really do very, very little for me though I consider overlapping pantheons to be a worthwhile alternative to cultural.

In fact I even go so far as to have reality working in slightly different ways in areas where different pantheons hold sway, making things more mutable than you would find in a traditional setting.