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Deities and Demigods
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<blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2009823" data-attributes="member: 18387"><p>Deities and Demigods is the book that helps you to put a pantheon (the combined deities in a game-world) in your campaign. For some reason WOTC talks about deities instead of gods, is that to avoid flak from fundamentalists? The book is in the familiar D&D hardcover style.</p><p></p><p><strong>chapter one: Deities in your game</strong></p><p>The book makes a good habit of handing you options, from which you can decide, how to form your pantheon. It starts with discussing the various flavors, polytheism, monotheism animalism. The next topic the book discusses is how deities come to be. The relations between mortals and deities are next on the agenda, and the reverse.</p><p></p><p>The book goes on with advice how to build a pantheon. They start pretty normal, give all non human races gods. Each class and or alignment should get a god. Nothing special here. Then they regurgitate some material from Manual of the planes.</p><p></p><p>The chapter is not bad. It contains questions any GM should have answered before introducing a pantheon in his or her world. Of cause it also contains information that any GM that is worth his players, should have already figured out. But let's face it, if you don't state the obvious you can’t provide all necessary information. </p><p></p><p>A minor weakness is that the chapter looks to much at PCs classes for making a pantheon. If wine is the export product of the region you're playing in, Olidammara won't be known as the rogue god. He will be the respected god of wine farmers. In medieval Europe, every profession had his patron saint, even prostitutes had saint Claas (yup, he did fertility and children too and is the root of Santa). The pantheon is far more likely to reflect the normal professions instead of the small minority of adventurers.</p><p></p><p><strong>chapter two: Deities defined</strong></p><p>This chapters allows you to give the deities stats. Unless you have the epic level handbook, you don't need to bother. Every deity has a number from 0 to 21+. They range from the almost deity level zero to enigmatic entities that are very powerful and don't need worshippers at rank 21+. Every deity gets a portfolio, like cats, night or gemcutting. This should have been inn chapter one. Many of these words really contribute to the raw sketching in chapter one. </p><p></p><p>Mortals have feats, deities have feats and salient abilities. These superfeats ensure your deities won't be pushovers. The chapters finishes with the role-playing part of the equation, tip how to roll play a god. The average DM is one step ahead of those pointers.</p><p></p><p>In one part this chapter is very vague. Deities are apart from characters with levels, 20 hitdice outsiders. This has lead to me spending evenings in various books to find info how to include this in the stats. Especially skill points are troublesome. I reversed engineered some gods in the book, only to find out that they have way too much skill points. Well they are gods after all, but it would have been nice to supply a rule of the thumb.</p><p></p><p><strong>chapter three until six various pantheons</strong></p><p></p><p>Chapter three is about the greyhawk pantheon. Since it is the default pantheon, and is often cannibalized into homebrew campaign, it's a good choice. The have also supplied more info about the deities, some really become alive. Wee jas is the prime example here, the great artwork clearly tells you why vanity is in her portfolio. Good stuff.</p><p></p><p>Chapter four is about the Olympian pantheon. I found this a nice example of how you can build a pantheon in an historical setting. The problem I had with it, is that I firmly belief that any GM that wanted to run a game in ancient Greece, should do his homework. That GM should now Homer and the other ancient Greek tales as good as the rules. In short he could have build that pantheon himself.</p><p></p><p>Chapter five features the pharaonic pantheon. What I said about Olympian pantheon applies here again. Another question pops up here, how many game-worlds does one GM build. The example phase should be over.</p><p></p><p>No chapter six rambles on with the Asgardian pantheon. You know my comments here.</p><p></p><p>Chapter seven features a homebrew pantheon. I found it more interesting the last two chapters, but the "yes, I got the message" feeling stayed on.</p><p></p><p>The book finished with two appendixes. One contains some spells. The other one gives ideas about divine ascension, and some cool ones.</p><p></p><p><strong>conclusion</strong></p><p>When I finished the book I was disappointed. To much example pantheons, and too little meat. the book seams to be a child of marketing, something like this: Marketer: "He you writer, you're going to do a 223 pages long book on gods". Writer: "but I can't fill so many pages on that subject, I'll have to fill many pages with stuff that has little value". Marketer: "Wow, I didn't know writers understood marketing". </p><p></p><p>I would have liked it if the book lost pages, came out as softcover or in a hardcover combined with the meat of the epic level handbook. Without epic characters, your gods don't need stats and epic character should be far more involved with the politics of the multiverse so why not combine both books. The extra paper made the book expensive. It seemed like this book was destined for the bottom of my book pile and a one star review.</p><p></p><p>But the book struck back at me with it's best asset, it's artwork. True it has its flawed pieces but if you leave those exceptions out you end up with the best artwork I have seen since the planescape monster manuals. When I play with newbees, I always take this book with me. If I want a newbee to understand Kord, I can tell him what his philosophy is. But what works best is to show him a picture, the big strong guy picture that doesn't seem that smart says a lot more then a thousand words. So the book does do it's job and therefore gets it's second star, even if it does contain way too much filling.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Messageboard Golem, post: 2009823, member: 18387"] Deities and Demigods is the book that helps you to put a pantheon (the combined deities in a game-world) in your campaign. For some reason WOTC talks about deities instead of gods, is that to avoid flak from fundamentalists? The book is in the familiar D&D hardcover style. [b]chapter one: Deities in your game[/b] The book makes a good habit of handing you options, from which you can decide, how to form your pantheon. It starts with discussing the various flavors, polytheism, monotheism animalism. The next topic the book discusses is how deities come to be. The relations between mortals and deities are next on the agenda, and the reverse. The book goes on with advice how to build a pantheon. They start pretty normal, give all non human races gods. Each class and or alignment should get a god. Nothing special here. Then they regurgitate some material from Manual of the planes. The chapter is not bad. It contains questions any GM should have answered before introducing a pantheon in his or her world. Of cause it also contains information that any GM that is worth his players, should have already figured out. But let's face it, if you don't state the obvious you can’t provide all necessary information. A minor weakness is that the chapter looks to much at PCs classes for making a pantheon. If wine is the export product of the region you're playing in, Olidammara won't be known as the rogue god. He will be the respected god of wine farmers. In medieval Europe, every profession had his patron saint, even prostitutes had saint Claas (yup, he did fertility and children too and is the root of Santa). The pantheon is far more likely to reflect the normal professions instead of the small minority of adventurers. [b]chapter two: Deities defined[/b] This chapters allows you to give the deities stats. Unless you have the epic level handbook, you don't need to bother. Every deity has a number from 0 to 21+. They range from the almost deity level zero to enigmatic entities that are very powerful and don't need worshippers at rank 21+. Every deity gets a portfolio, like cats, night or gemcutting. This should have been inn chapter one. Many of these words really contribute to the raw sketching in chapter one. Mortals have feats, deities have feats and salient abilities. These superfeats ensure your deities won't be pushovers. The chapters finishes with the role-playing part of the equation, tip how to roll play a god. The average DM is one step ahead of those pointers. In one part this chapter is very vague. Deities are apart from characters with levels, 20 hitdice outsiders. This has lead to me spending evenings in various books to find info how to include this in the stats. Especially skill points are troublesome. I reversed engineered some gods in the book, only to find out that they have way too much skill points. Well they are gods after all, but it would have been nice to supply a rule of the thumb. [b]chapter three until six various pantheons[/b] Chapter three is about the greyhawk pantheon. Since it is the default pantheon, and is often cannibalized into homebrew campaign, it's a good choice. The have also supplied more info about the deities, some really become alive. Wee jas is the prime example here, the great artwork clearly tells you why vanity is in her portfolio. Good stuff. Chapter four is about the Olympian pantheon. I found this a nice example of how you can build a pantheon in an historical setting. The problem I had with it, is that I firmly belief that any GM that wanted to run a game in ancient Greece, should do his homework. That GM should now Homer and the other ancient Greek tales as good as the rules. In short he could have build that pantheon himself. Chapter five features the pharaonic pantheon. What I said about Olympian pantheon applies here again. Another question pops up here, how many game-worlds does one GM build. The example phase should be over. No chapter six rambles on with the Asgardian pantheon. You know my comments here. Chapter seven features a homebrew pantheon. I found it more interesting the last two chapters, but the "yes, I got the message" feeling stayed on. The book finished with two appendixes. One contains some spells. The other one gives ideas about divine ascension, and some cool ones. [b]conclusion[/b] When I finished the book I was disappointed. To much example pantheons, and too little meat. the book seams to be a child of marketing, something like this: Marketer: "He you writer, you're going to do a 223 pages long book on gods". Writer: "but I can't fill so many pages on that subject, I'll have to fill many pages with stuff that has little value". Marketer: "Wow, I didn't know writers understood marketing". I would have liked it if the book lost pages, came out as softcover or in a hardcover combined with the meat of the epic level handbook. Without epic characters, your gods don't need stats and epic character should be far more involved with the politics of the multiverse so why not combine both books. The extra paper made the book expensive. It seemed like this book was destined for the bottom of my book pile and a one star review. But the book struck back at me with it's best asset, it's artwork. True it has its flawed pieces but if you leave those exceptions out you end up with the best artwork I have seen since the planescape monster manuals. When I play with newbees, I always take this book with me. If I want a newbee to understand Kord, I can tell him what his philosophy is. But what works best is to show him a picture, the big strong guy picture that doesn't seem that smart says a lot more then a thousand words. So the book does do it's job and therefore gets it's second star, even if it does contain way too much filling. [/QUOTE]
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