Polytheism

[Tuerny]

As a spin-off of the recently started monotheism thread, what does everyone consider to be effective techniques for created a plausible, interesting, and innovative polytheistic religious system?

What do you do to make it stand out from the grab-bag polytheistic faiths that seem to emerge from published worlds like Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms?

Is there anything particular interesting and cool from your campaign's polytheistic pantheon that you think makes it stand out from others?

 

[Pbartender]

I had two different ideas for pantheons that I haven't had a chance to implement yet. They sort of combine a monotheistic, aloof Creator, with a large pantheon of small Gods that interacts with mortals.

1. Loosely based on Catholicism, there would be one prime creator. Beneath him would be a multitude of Patron Saints. The Patron Saints are typically the ones you would pray to for miracles (spells), and each of them would have very specific domains (probably two or three domains to each Saint).

2. Loosely based on the movie Princess Mononoke, there would be one prime creator. Beneath her would be a multitude of Animalistic Deities. The Deities would physically roam the world, and would be best represented by Awaked Celestial, Fiendish, Half-Celestial or Half-Fiendish Dire Animals (or other creatures), possibly with character levels. I haven't decided how Clerics would gain their powers in this scenario... Either A) From their own personal faith, B) From the spirits of their ancestors, or C) Skip it and only have Wizards and Sorcers, but included Cleric spells on their spell lists.

 

[Sarellion]

I thought about having two different pantheons. One are the wild gods, the gods of nature who fought agianst the gods of man. Now they have an uneasy truce, clerics of the wilderness gods are mostly from the beast civilizations or human ones who appease the wild gods.

An animistic pantheon or a pantheon of small powers where gods are roaming near planes would be interesting, too. It would be like in the Tamuli Saga from David Eddings.

So I could somehow use Deities and Demigods.

 

[MeepoTheMighty]

The homebrew I'm working on combines both monotheism and polytheism into (I hope) a believable coexistence. Mankind used to be polythesitic, but through a number of divine wars, trickeries, and other behind-the-scenes hullabaloo, the pantheon of gods had to combine their powers into one essence in order to overcome Evil (TM).

However, when the gods came together to create this essence, they feared that the mortals would find a way to use it for evil, so they used all their powers to prevent it from granting spells to mortals.

So for a couple thousand years, we had an Empire that was theocratically controlled by the church of this divine melting pot. Because there was nobody granting divine spells, all knowledge of the existence of the pantheon was lost.

Now, however, mankind managed to stumble upon a way to reawaken the gods (I'm not sure how yet ) and the divine magic is flowing freely - except to the church which runs the Empire. This sets the stage for a huge, secularly powerful Imperial Church coming into conflict with a number of smaller, magically-gifted polytheistic cults. The Church, of course, sees these newcomers as witches, and has set out to persecute anyone who claims to draw magical power from the gods.

I'm not sure how realistic this is, but it seems like it will make a nice backdrop for some gaming.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

I think that modelling a polytheistic faith on historical polytheism would be the path to go--I tried this in my campaign but nobody visited the empire in the two years that I ran the campaign so I'm not sure quite how it would work.

In principle though:

1. The gods are not very concerned with ethics. Instead, they will do things for you if you sacrifice to them. You sacrifice to the fertility god (or sleep with one of her temple prostitutes) in order to ensure a good harvest.

2. Real sacrifices. Everyone is expected to make an animal sacrifice every so often--or at least to participate in the public sacrifice ritual. To do otherwise would be to invite the wrath of the ignored god onto the city. (You will sacrifice to the gods of Sparta or be sacrificed to them).

3. For the most part, the gods concerns in the world are of loyalty friendship or whimsy and not of principle. Venus helps out Aeneas, for instance because he's her son not because she believes that Troy was unjustly destroyed or because she helps refugees.

4. In general, as long as the you make appropriate sacrifices to show civic loyalty neither the priests nor the people care what you believe as long as you don't deny the existence of the gods. Faith and belief are largely irrelevant. It's whether or not the gods are appeased/bribed by the regular sacrifices that is important.

 

[corzican]

Well, one of the religions I've been working on is loosely based on the organization of the Mesopotamian religions:
(Oversimplification follows)

1). The world was created from the union of the waters of the primordial abyss and the winds of Heaven. The gods of Heaven were also created from this union.

2). Apsu, the primordial abyss, distributed the tablets of destiny among the gods giving each their own powers. Growing tired of the growing noise, Apsu left and went elsewhere.

3). Left on their own, the gods of Heaven started engaging in prurient activities. Soon the heavens were full of the children of the gods. They banished them from Heaven and elevated them as the gods of the Earth. The gods of Heaven maintain control of more abstract matters such as the Sun or love. The gods of Earth deal with much more concrete things such as agriculture or crafts.

4). Needing servants, the gods of Heaven created mortals. In order to prevent a war in Heaven over followers, each deity of Heaven is a patron of only one city-state. Clerics receive their powers from the gods of Heaven, and must come from the City-State of their patron. The gods of Earth have their own priests, but they do not grant them powers directly nor are they limited to worship in any one city.

5). The lifetime of the mortal is given to them to do as they wish. Once they die, though, they belong to the gods of Earth. In death they join the faceless masses who serve the gods of Earth in endless toil. Those who achieved greatness in the name of their patron ascend and become another god of Earth. Those who did not follow the dictates of their patron deity wander aimlessly, given neither food nor water nor power in the Underworld. These unhallowed spirits form the undead of the world.

I wanted to set up a religion where not all priests were clerics, and give a good reason for "evil" or "good' cities to exist since they would be influenced by their patron deity. With the gods of Earth taking care of needs more important to the day-to-day life of mortals, the worship of the commoners is taken care of as well. I've cut out some of the finer details since I'm really hankering for this bacon sandwich which has been waiting for me the last hour. Hope this is interesting.

 

[Falcmir]

I think the strength of Polytheism is to have several interesting characters who are universally known throughout the world that have their own storyline. What I mean by that is rather than having gods who simply seek worshippers you have gods that have their own agendas. They have built in enemies, allies, goals and their own way of doing things.

 

[Nightfall]

Well unsurprising to some I'm sure, I like the Polytheistic approach of the Scarred Lands Gods. They don't always make appearences, BUT if you curse the name of Corean while trying to forge a weapon...don't expect much. Seriously, all one needs to look at is the Sourcebook for Mithril and one can CLEARLY see that even the EVIL gods get their due in a city of light.

 

[fusangite]

Greg Stafford's Runequest is based on the most solid principles for polytheism I have ever encountered. My advice pales in comparison to Stafford's example but here it is anyway:

(1) People make the mistake of writing the story from an absolute reference frame. Polytheistic traditions are not supposed to be logically internally consistent. To create effective polytheism, send your rational mind on holiday and write the same story 2-4 mutually exclusive different ways, reflecting the different Gods' and peoples' points of view.

(2) Further to the point about rationality, another hallmark of authenticity for a myth system is to make sure that even within the 2+ mutually exclusive viewpoints, things can still be inconsistent or unclear. My current world, Kazuria, is much like the world of the Old Testament: gods create all the people and all the land (the Kazurians, Kazuria); this, however, does not stop allusions to lands outside of Kazuria and people who are not Kazurian. Thus is the nature of myth -- after all, who married Seth, Abel and Cain?

(3) Gods do not need to mutually recognize eachother's existence. Often, the insertion of a monotheistic religion which claims all the other gods are false gods or a new cult worshipping a young god that the other religions do not recognize can be helpful.

(4) I believe in designing all the Gods -- not just the ones people will play clerics for. The four agricultural goddesses of Kazuria are never going to be worshipped by the characters but are the absolute backbone of the peasant class and female society.

(5) In Stafford's Glorantha, Nysalor/Gbaji and the Crimson Bat are examples of gods who show two different faces to the world. In my campaign, I have a goddess named Mizithra (I'd forgotten it was a kind of cheese when I made the Gods table) who is worshipped as an elven goddess and a human goddess -- she may or may not be two gods with the same name or two aspects of the same god. It's useful to have at least one two-faced god.

In short, polytheistic religion is not just about plurality of gods, it is about plurality of thought. If people are interested, I can post my cosmology somewhere so you can see how I've done this, or I can e-mail it along to you (obviously, I don't want to clutter this thread with 8 pages of data on my homebrew world and i don't knwo enough about the protocol here to know where or if I should). My theology is usually the only part of my campaigns I feel 100% happy with.

 

[shadow]

Right now I'm studying The Iliad in my Classic Mythology class. I'm surprised how different the portrayal of the gods of the Iliad is different from D&D's portrayal of them. In the Iliad (and greek myth in general) the gods were all powerful, but they also had human charateristics. Gods got angry, had affairs, and were constantly mettling in the affairs of mortals. The Iliad and other Greek myths portray conflict between Zeus and Hera, the king and queen of the gods. Zeus often would travel the mortal realm having affairs with mortals, and Hera was always conspiring agains Zeus. In D&D gods are always good, or always completely depraved. For example Forgotten Realms' Miellikki, Tyr, Torm, etc. are shown to be the defenders of the realms fighting against evil. Then the realms gods like cyric, bane, Lloth are shown to be completely crazy, evil, and sadistic.
Also unlike D&D, the gods of classical mythology had little in the way of organized religion. Unlike religions today, in the ancient world there was little in the way of formal dogma and doctrine. People would pray to the appropriate god for a certain situation, or honor certain gods out of fear and respect. (This is one reason I see describing the "dogma" and creeds of D&D gods a little silly.)