What religious pantheon do you use?

[Smoss]

My campaign world started with a simple concept.

One deity - The personification of Fate.

The deity started by creating the world and letting all the races it created run rampant without power limitations. That was the world's first age (Age of Dragons).

After wiping the world clean in an apocalypse, the deity let humanoids have their way with it in the second age (Age of Elves). With long lives and such, elves soon ruled the world. They learned of Fate - Naming the deity Faerlynn. The deity appeared to them as one of their magical talking cats (And this has been his avatar ever since. Ask my players about THAT DAMN CAT!). The elves decided to use their power to alter destiny - But learned of a problem and Faerlynn's ultimate power (and weakness). A fate seen MUST happen. Avoiding it merely puts it off and allows it to grow stronger. The second age ended when the elves finally saw their folly and chose apocalypse as their fate, rather than avoiding it and making things even WORSE.

The third age (Age of Heroes) involved fulfilling a lot of the horrible fates that the elves foresaw in the Second Age. It involved great battles between law and chaos, ending with the obliteration of both sides due to the betrayal of the good by the evil. The strongest heroes (Commonly called the fifty) were turned into deities for the next age.

The Fourth Age (Age of Fate) had 50 gods... Plus Faerlynn at the top. It was my campaign setting during the 3e era. used the 3e gods with some modifications. But the deities were just very powerful heroes from the third age with a bit of power from the REAL deity. This age finished off the last of the foreseen fates of the Second Age. Once the slate was clean, Faerlynn slaughtered the gods and wiped the planet clean of life... Or so he thought.

The Fifth Age (Age of Kings) was to be Faerlynn's opus. His perfect world now that he had learned from the others. But survivors of the Fourth Age - People who had become immune to fate/destiny thwarted him. They tore him apart into five "ephemera" in an epic battle that nearly destroyed the world.

Thus leaving me in my current setting. The Sixth Age of Doulairen. There are no real deities (But people worship some fake ones anyway). Faerlynn is sealed away as the five ephemera and life goes on...

Long post, but shows some odd thoughts on a one deity world...
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Smoss
Doulairen

 

[Subtlepanic]

In my homebrew world I use a pantheon inspired by Earthdawn (IIRC).

Basically, each god represents one of the emotions. So you have the God of Hate, the God of Love, the God of Pity, etc.

The positive emotions are arranged into a pantheon called the "Fervours", and the negative emotions are called the "Forbidden Fervours". It's handy, because players needn't remember the actual god's names, and as most emotions are covered, they can just make it up: e.g. "I shout a prayer to the god of anger".

 

[Evilusion]

Well I run my own homebrew world. I have about 25 god/goddess made up of old PC's my bother and I use to run. I changed thier name just so people would not know who I was using. One of the big advantages for me is I can usally tell a player what the diety expects from him or her with out having to have a lot written down.

I tend to make the gods keep the same name across my world, just to make it simple on me.

Evilusion

 

[Bluenose]

My homebrew pantheon uses three tiers of deities.

There are the eleven greater gods and goddesses who represent concepts that are recognised nearly everywhere. Four male gods, representing different concepts of rulership; the Emperor, the Chieftain, the Tyrant, and the Warlord, plus the male god of War. Six female gods, representing different cosmic principles; Mind, Emotion, Fate, Chance, Creation, and Destruction. Nearly every culture on the planet recognises their existence, under one name or another, and with slightly different approaches to how the deity in question should bbe worshipped. Some of them have picked up other aspects, so the Emperor is seen as the sun god in a lot of areas - not universally.

There are lesser deities, who are usually seen as children of the greater gods. So the goddess of Justice is a child of the Goddess of the Mind and the Emperor (or some claim the Tyrant). None of these are recognised in every society, but they have more than local significance.

Last are the hero-deities and demigods. And they're mostly ascended mortals. People who found cities, establish rule over a large region, create a particularly important organisation, or something similar, often get worshipped after their 'death'. These are almost all extremely local, unless the organisation is extremely widespread, and usually don't have many worshippers.

There are other cults, too. There are people worshipping lords of the underworld, or the overworld, or fey nobles, or nature spirits. But those aren't really part of the pantheon.

 

[scruffygrognard]

I love the Norse pantheon but use a homebrew pantheon in my homebrew world.

Pretty standard, generic gods that the players can relate to.

 

[El Mahdi]

On a related note, I had a friend in the first group I played in named Negaswerao (real name, Indian origin, born in Wisconsin...), but everyone just called him Rao for short. Whenever he played a cleric or needed a personal deity, he'd always use the Greyhawk god Rao.

 

[Ahzad]

for a long time i use the Greyhawk deities, then i loved the detail of the Forgotten Realms Powers & Pantheons, & Faiths & Avatars. then fell back to using the Greyhawk deities, with some of the detail from those FR books ported over. then 3e came about and with it came the best god book ever, IMO. Green Ronin's Book of Righteous Might. I pretty much use that as either the gods or template for gods for anything i do.

but over in the corner there is always a lurking presence of a Tharizdun type character or the Great Old Ones.

 

[nnms]

The majority of the people in the region the PCs are starting (the northwestern frontier of a fallen empire) are followers of the old ways. Their animistic/shamanic worshipers of primal spirits. However, they also venerate the three ancient gods of the southern empire as the overseers and organizers of the natural world.

The goddess of creation and birth
The sun god, a good of growth and preservation
The storm god, a good of destruction and endings

As well they whisper about their great enemy, a god who perverts the cycle and makes the dead walk. Who curses spirits with unrest and seeks to destroy the cycle of life.

As well there is the grey lady of fate. Scholars debate whether she is a true god or not.

Different races don't really have different gods. The Dwarves heavily emphasize the goddess of creation as their Forge Mother. And the storm god is the Grudgebearer. The Elves worship the cycle directly and have their own names for the three faces of it.

To the south and the east the gods become innumerable. Their rate of clerical power is much, much lower. They have gods of war and peace and travel and trade. Gods of the sea and the mountains.

Most of them aren't real gods. Occasionally one of the three gods of the cycle will see merit in their faith and extend to them some facet of power. When the empire still stood, the three were widely worshipped as the official faith of the Emperor. They were recast in more civilized terms than how they are worshipped in the north. With the fall fall of the empire, their temples and shrines got separated and people began to worship the things they prayed for rather than the gods themselves. So a merchant who used to pray to the goddess for her help in creating wealth began to focus on praying to a goddess of wealth.

Clerics, paladins, etc., are generally rare enough that the gods themselves make an appearance at their anointing. A cleric of the sun god will see a chariot rider who's face blazes so brightly he can hardly look. The chariot will ride by and the rider will toss down a glowing hot bronze disc. When it has cooled, the cleric has their holy symbol All true wielders of divine power receive their holy symbols or other divine implements directly from their god.

Many of the terrible gods of far away lands are actually demonic beings. They can grant power like the gods can. Some seek to destroy the world and render it to chaos. Others want to dominate the world. No one is sure where these beings come from. Their followers believe them to be the true gods that always were. Others see some as fallen traitors. Others see them as manifestations of evil acts done by mortals-- spiritual echoes of hate, murder, envy, tyranny and lust. They certainly claim to be the true gods.

Then there are the elemental lords. Lords of fire, air, earth and water. They too can grant magic but rarely do so outside of their chaotic elemental realm. Some giants and elementally touched beings can call upon them in the mortal realm.

 

[Celebrim]

Homebrew.

For most of my campaigns, I've never had a formal pantheon. Gods were introduced willy nilly whenever I needed an evil or good temple or some player wanted a deity to worship. That has slowly developed into some vague notions os a formal pantheon, but it's still vague. At some point maybe I'll lay it all out. I know its basic structure and the basic cosmology, and I know that there are many many gods and many more sub-deities that nevertheless attract reverence locally and individually.

 

[Aldarc]

The type of "pantheon" that I use for a setting depends on what I want to accomplish in that setting. In other words, What sort of aesthetic do I want to impart on the world? Despite this, I have noticed some reoccurring and recycled motifs through my scrapbook of homebrew settings. Sometimes these ideas exist alone, and sometimes they exist all meshed together.

The Gods
I tend to develop ontological ambiguity towards gods. The gods may not be "true gods" at all, just powerful forces and cosmic beings or entities that are worshiped as such. For example, in one setting, the ancient gods of polytheism are linked to the ancient titans that wandered the primeval earth. Early humanoids worshiped them as gods long after the titans died or disappeared from the world.

Many humanoid cultures developed stories, mythologies, and expanded pantheons that evolved from their memory of the ancient titans. Yet many commonalities link the pantheons of different humanoid cultures. (Think Proto-Indo-European comparative religion.) These gods usually have certain parallels with Greco-Roman, Celtic, Germanic, and/or Ancient Near Eastern pantheons. Worship of these old gods may either still be commonplace or replaced by newer religions in a given campaign setting. In one setting, the titan gods died against the primordials, but mortals believe that their spirits still rest in the earth, sustaining life, providing guidance and overseeing the natural world. Then later one religion may claim that all of these titans are facets of a singular god.

Animism
The veneration of ancestral and natural spirits (i.e., animism) is frequently prevalent in most campaign religions. This is influenced by real world folk religions, commonly featured in major ancient religions apart from the state-sponsored cultic religions of the gods. People venerate the spirits for real metaphysical consequences, namely the Reincarnation or Cosmic Cycle. That is, you pray and offer sacrifices to the spirits of nature to gain their blessing or appease their wrath. You pray and offer sacrifices to ancestral spirits to ease their passing in the spirit world (i.e., the Shadowfall), where they will rejoin the Well of Souls and await reincarnation. You do not want fallen spirits, whether ancestral or natural, to come back as haunting malicious spirits, possess the corpses of the dead, or worse - to become completely corrupted and transform into a demon. Demons are corrupted spirits that seek the destruction of Cosmic Cycle.

Angels and Devils and Manichaean Cosmologies
In many of my homebrew mythologies, angels and devils were born out of an infinite abyssal chaos (the astral sea) as one singular celestial race of beings. These celestials viewed the (non-theistic, non-anthropomorphic) Entity of Chaos as a divine principle or god, if you will. (Yet is questionable whether or not the Universe can be called 'god' at all.) Two camps emerged from this celestial race based upon how they perceived their relation to the Entity. One camp believed that the divine plan/formula they perceived in the fabric of the Entity was to be maintained and preserved. They became subjected to the created order. The other camp believed that the divine plan/formula they perceived in the fabric of the Entity gave them the power to rule over the created order as they saw fit. What's more is that they believed they could change the formula to their leisure. They subjected the created order. And in the Astral Sea/Abyss, consciousness shapes form; that is, form follows function. The first camp became more uniform and disembodied in their appearance, and this first camp became angels. The second camp became more individualistic and embodied in their appearance, and this second camp became devils. Both angels and devils believe that they follow the dictates of the Divine Principle. So to most mortals who are unaware of the origins of the cosmic divide, essentially everyone, the object venerated by angels and devils appear as two separate warring entities or gods.

Humanoid races are frequently brought into this cosmic struggle. Prophets may have apocalyptic visions of angelic courts or visits from angels, then prophesying a religion of order, light, and truth that stands apart from evil, darkness, and falsehoods. Or devils may empower and encourage mortals who equally lust for power and dominion. Multiple religions may exist surrounding these different approaches or theological interpretations of this cosmic struggle.