How to make a believable pantheon for a homebrew world.

I've been working on a homebrew world, and with it a pantheon of sorts. In my gameworld, multiple cultures/nations are coming together into one region which will boil with conflict. I feel that it would be easy to simply create a list of names of dieties and then associate an element, emotion, or idea with them, i.e. Eldred, the God of Law and Justice. But, I feel that to do that is, in a way, too easy.

Please, be mature enough to not let this divulge into a debate about religion/God/atheism/whatever.

What I've noticed in my limited experience is that game worlds tend to have a rather straight-forward pantheon that tends to be universal. Different cultures have different gods, yes, but they often also acknowledge the other cultures gods. In our real world, it's not that simple: arguments, debates and wars are fought over theological ideologies. Christians, for instance, deny that Kali, Ra, Osiris, Zeus and the existence of any God aside from Yahweh; Muslims are in the same boat, though they and Orthodox Jews have arguments with the both. Even still are the 'pagans,' believing in oft un-named deities simply referred to (at times, by some) as "the Father" and "the Mother." And, then there are the atheists which don't believe in any god. My point in all of this is that many of our world beliefs are exclusive to themselves, in that they deny the opposing schools beliefs. Even those belief systems which are called 'inclusive' end up diminishing those other beliefs. Whether any religious system or god that may or may not be true in our world is largely a matter of personal opinion and/or belief.

In my gam eworld, I am trying to replicate this sense of religious tension that exists in our world, while also maintaining a sense of continuity. Each belief system in our world has a creation story/myth, and with them they all have heroes, or figures of great importance that vary greatly. On the other side of the coin, in our world a story about a great flood is found within many cultures and thoughts of a coming apocalypse/great disaster is shared, though explicit details may not be.

It would seem that to make one pantheon, and have it split and divided up between these cultures which then begin to argue/give favoritism to things would be a logical way to emulate this, however that seems like a cop-out because every culture/system still has whatever religious truth, no matter how much they skewed it may have become, which is something that I'd like to avoid.

So, does anyone have any ideas or suggestions to do this? I feel like it's difficult to create a false pantheon in a fantasy world in which deities are expected to act. In such a world where magic and monsters exist and power if often on display would it even be feasible that a false-pantheon could arise? If so, what do you imagine such a pantheon would look like? Would it's heroes be those of history, myth, or a mixture of the two?

Is it rewarding to the gameplay/roleplaying experience to have religious lore - of heroes, prophecies, creation and other myths - of various cultures turn out to be completely false? (As in: the paladin-player finds out that the God he has sworn allegience to does not exist). Would it be more rewarding if the real religious truth of the game world was something to be discovered as part of the over-all narrative?

I look forward to hearing input and ideas from you all, as I suspect you've much more than I!

One thing to note is that in many pantheons, its members tend to be relatives. You can expand this into having multiple pantheons beings various families, perhaps descended from one supreme being who is no longer able (for whatever reason) to prevent the inter-family bickering. In a sense, imagine if Ra and Odin were first cousins, and you have an inkling as to the sort of interfamiliar conflicts that could arise.

False pantheons are quite possible.

1) They can arise from sinister origins such as an "evil" god creating a way to lure true believers away from worshipping other gods and secretly fostering worship of themselves in another guise.

2) They can be the tools of demons, devils or other demagogues who are seeking elevation to godhood through worship (if such power can be acquired that way. Again, stealing worshippers away from the true gods can also be a motive in of itself, if the gods power is based on worship - which many official D&D campaigns work).

3) Gullible or superstitious individuals could found a worship on a fake god. Until it becomes a threat to worship of the real gods, it may be ignored. Clerical spells for such a fake religion may come from a misunderstanding of magic; worshippers know the right words, gestures and components - but the power isn't coming from the gods themselves but from a twisted sort of arcane magic. Yagno Petrovana from Ravenloft presents an example of this with the fake god Zhakata.

4) Over time, a strong enough belief in a idea, virtue or vice may cause a deity to spontaneously come into being. The regular gods might oppose this, but not be able to stop the eventual zietgeist from forming a true god. An example would be 40K's creation of the daemon Slaanesh.

5) The god has no power now, but it did at one time. These worshippers dare to wake gods better left sleeping. They are "harmless" - until their sleeping god stirs and its power can be felt. Clerical spells for such a god may come from ancient bargains or methods now long lost, somehow unearthed and passed through dreams to those "in tune" to the sleeping god. Sleeping Cthulhu, the dead gods of Lhankmar and such a example of a diety.

The best fantasy starter kit for religions is Green Ronin's 'Book of the Righteous'.

A really simple but well realized (at least in its initial conception) panatheon can be found in Bujold's 'The Curse of Chalion'. Bujold later deconstructs are own creation at least partially, resulting in a situation where I find her heretics more sympathetic than her believes, but... more on that later. The initial set up is very tight.

As you your central question though, a world with real polytheism (many gods) who are really active and intervening regularly and openly in the world would be very different than this one. Modern western thought explains real world history in one of two ways: either the gods do not exist, or else there is a single god who for reasons of his own avoids intervening in people's lives openly (and most especially in the lives of non-believers). Which ever one you choose is irrelevant to the topic of fantasy, because in most fantasy worlds the cosmology makes it manifest that neither answer is true. As such, you would expect religion and religious controversies in this other world to be centered largely around different issues. These issues would most resemble not the current controversies between believers and non-believers, or the religious and irreligious (two different things), but those that flourish within communities where every already believes.

For example, the question of 'Do the gods exist?' might not have any currency in the religious arguments of a fantasy world. But the question of, 'Are the gods good?', 'Which gods are worthy of worship?', and 'Ought we worship the gods at all?' are still relevant. The equivalent to an atheist in a fantasy world isn't someone that believes the gods are real, but someone who believes that they have no relevancy to his life or are in fact tyrants and fiends greatly to be despised.

Likewise, just because you agree over the basic details, doesn't mean that different cultures don't have their own takes on what 'really happened'. There is no reason to assume that the gods are honest, or even that the honest ones are anxious to correct all the facts and misconceptions held by mortals. Different cultures may tell the same historical truth in different ways. In my campaign, all the other races believe that the goblins are evil schemers, but the way the goblins tell their own story the other races are foul traitors, thieves, and usurpers.

Very basic facts about pre-human history might remain open matters of investigation and controversy, either because the gods are keeping secrets or have promoted competing narratives. How did humanity come to be? Who made the world? Which deity came first? Who has the just claim to rule - the oldest, the wisest, the strongest, the noblest? What caused the gods to war? What is the ultimate purpose of humanities relationship with the gods? Are the gods really immortal? Are the gods really different in kind from humanity, or just different in scale? In my campaign world, one of the central heresies (Gantroism) is that mankind is really older than the gods, and the gods are mans invention rather than the other way around. Another central heresy (Kelternism) is that the gods are all really fiends (some in disguise) undeserving of worship and in fact deserving of destruction, and that the whole 'rot' about 'good and evil' is just a scheme for keeping mortal eternally enslaved.

And some gods are something of a mystery even to the other gods, and ultimately stand in place of my criticism of the entire pantheon. Take the god Pitarian. He's the god of fools, and he's a laughing stock even of the other gods. Nominally married to the goddess fire Tholumessa, Pitarian is the world's most infamous cuckold. Thulmessa plays the wanton with pretty much everyone but Pitarian, whom she openly despises. Yet he dotes on her, seemingly unaware of her many flaws or her abuse. Hardly anybody worships Pitarian, per se. He's reviled and offerings are given in mockery to him - like rotten fruit, dead rats, vinegar instead of wine, broken things, dry beans, and any jape or joke the giver can imagine. No one ever asks anything serious of Pitarian. By convention, you only make ridiculous petitions to him - like that your turnips won't bruise on the way home, that your shoelace will remain tied, that your eyelashes won't fall out, that you'll avoid a paper cut, or you won't put on your shirt inside out in the morning.

However, as a campaign level secret I've never previously revealed to anyone, I will say that Pitarian is IMO looking on the pantheon from the outside in one of the only truly decent deities in the pantheon. The rest of them, even the nominally good ones, are egotistical bastards most of the time. Pitarian is one of the only ones that seems to know what love really is, virtually the only deity not abusive of his power and freedom, and Pitarian's clerics are invariably the wisest, kindest, noblest NPCs I create in my campaign world. This is not intended to be obvious to my players in the least. My biases I try to keep hidden, but in many ways I sympathize with the heretics of my campaign world. If you say, "These guys aren't really worthy of worship.", when not wearing my DM hat, I'd have to agree. They afterall aren't really gods, they are just me. Pitarian is actually my highest image of myself, the most noble I could imagine me being - a really nice Fool but no more than that. I can't imagine worshiping me, so I am also a heretic of my own panatheon.

One option is to create one god for each race/major ethnic group and then give them a portfolio (or set of portfolios) that reflect major cultural values. For example, include a god for the elves, dwarves, halflings, human ethnic group 1, human ethnic group 2, human ethnic god 3, and orcs. The elven god is also the god of archery, hunting, and nature. The dwarven god is also the god of mountains and craftwork. The halfling god is the god of the hearth and agriculture. The orc god is the god of war, famine, and pestilence. Human ethnic god 1 represents a sea-faring culture and thus is the god of the sea and trade. Human ethnic god 2 represents a nomadic peoples of a broad steppe region and thus is also a god of the sky (there's a lot of sky in the steppes) and horses. Human ethnic god 3 represents a settled culture with lots of cities and social structure and thus also is a god of chivalry, cities, and rulership. And so on....

You may be able to keep a lid on the number of gods this way but also enable a lot of cross cultural worship - humans blacksmiths putting dwarven blessings on their forges, orc hunters offering a bit of their kills to the elven god, and so on...

The reason I thought of this is with some D&D-ish pantheons, gods may come from certain ethnic groups, but they don't always seem to indicate why that ethnic group found them important. The Greyhawk gods always felt a bit weird because of this, at least until Len Lakofka started detailing the Gods of the Suel. Then it started to make a little sense.

Zipster said:

My point in all of this is that many of our world beliefs are exclusive to themselves, in that they deny the opposing schools beliefs.

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Actually I think that is a (nearly) exclusive trait of the abrahamic religions. Most other bigger religions and also the ancient ones are pretty tolerant when it comes to other faiths and have very often incorporated foreign deities into their own pantheon.

Another popular point of tension (historically and otherwise) is the 'One True Way-ism' of particular religions.

Take, for example, a generic Goddess of Light. Followers of the Goddess of Light believe that Her Light covers the world and protects it with Her embrace. Since light sources are common (and for some races, necessary), She is seen as a life-giver. Since some undead are affected by sunlight and that evil is generally associated with darkness, She is also seen as a crusader against Evil.

Now, clearly, this Goddess is but one of many in the world, but to the Plainsmen, She is their one and only Mother who allows their crops to grow. To the human fortress-dwellers, She is a bastion of light against the encroaching darkness in the hearts of all men and the undead scourge plaguing their borders. To the Dwarves, She is master of the Hearthfire and champion of Dwarven women.

But to the monks of the Ebon Tower, She is only half of the equation. Where others see Darkness as the enemy, the monks see that one cannot exist without the other and believe that Darkness itself is not Evil, but people's fear and ignorance make it so.

... my mind is starting to trail. But the short of it is, many peoples can worship different aspects of the same God/dess in a polytheistic setting, but they may not all agree on how to do so, and may not even call the God/dess by the same name.

Or something.

It's early. :3

I think before you even decide on a Pantheon, you need to decide how involved the gods really are in the world. Does divine magic really come from a god, or is it really like arcane magic but just channeled by a different method?

If the gods are actively involved they it could be pretty hard to deny their existence, and just how powerful are the gods, would they get involved and directly smite any false prophets or false gods that appear? Do their avatars walk the planet, or did they in the past and if so how long ago?

Don't get so hung up on the question of 'existence'. For example, even if the Abrahamic religions allowed for the existence of any other gods, they would still argue that only their god was worthy of worship. Likewise, it doesn't follow that just because a polytheistic outlook allows for the existence of the god of Abraham, doesn't mean that they would find such a jealous god to be in any way worthy of worship.

On the subject of exclusivity, one way to look at the alignments is to say that each alignment denies that the opposing alignment really exists.

For example, Neutral Good argues that evil is merely the absence of good and that law and chaos are arbitrary things without any real meaning. The only thing that they believe is 'real' is Good. Everything else is either a failure to see the basic goodness (of say both structure and growth, of the individual and of the group), or else the absence of this basic goodness. Evil exists only as a flaw in the world.

Lawful Nuetral for its part makes the same suggestion. The only wrong in the world is Chaos, a thing without substance itself, but merely the absence of right and proper order. Chaos is merely a flaw in the world. Good and evil are arbitrary creations of delusional beings who fail to see clearly as a result of confusion arising from the disorder. What others see as 'good' or 'evil' are in fact merely cases of right order or the absence of same.

And likewise Nuetral Evil argues that evil is the only reality in the world, and that all 'goodness' is hypocrisy at best or superabundant deception at worst. Good is basically a delusion in this world view that just propagates greater and worse evils. The fundamental nature of the universe is corrupt and inescapably so, and anyone that tells you other wise just wants to use you or isn't strong enough to face the truth. There is no difference between heroes and villains, between the white hats and the black hats, except that the villains and the black hats are at least being honest with themselves and others. If the heroes were really honest with themselves and truly opposed evil, they'd recognize that the villain that wants to burn down the world is really the only person with any sort of sane moral outlook.

These views of the world are intensely mutually exclusive. Each side is denying not only the basic tenants of the other, but even that the system of the world each imagines has anything to do with reality. In other words, those that don't share their moral outlook aren't only wrong, but positively insane. It doesn't really matter whether a god of 'Good' exists and a god of 'Evil' also exists, since the fundamental question isn't really over existence but over what is right and what is wrong. It's not like religious tensions goes away if you allow that all religions are representing something in reality. If you believe their god is also insane, delusional, and diabolical (just like his followers), there is plenty of religious tension over what is the proper way to describe and think about that reality. Should one live for oneself or should one live for others? Should one be merciful and kind when working for the health and wellbeing of yourself and others, or does might make right and is oppression, violence, trial, and destruction the only real path to true strength? Tension doesn't go away just because you allow that there are powerful figures advocating for the opposite path.

Zipster said:

In my gam eworld, I am trying to replicate this sense of religious tension that exists in our world, while also maintaining a sense of continuity. Each belief system in our world has a creation story/myth, and with them they all have heroes, or figures of great importance that vary greatly. On the other side of the coin, in our world a story about a great flood is found within many cultures and thoughts of a coming apocalypse/great disaster is shared, though explicit details may not be.

It would seem that to make one pantheon, and have it split and divided up between these cultures which then begin to argue/give favoritism to things would be a logical way to emulate this, however that seems like a cop-out because every culture/system still has whatever religious truth, no matter how much they skewed it may have become, which is something that I'd like to avoid.

So, does anyone have any ideas or suggestions to do this? I feel like it's difficult to create a false pantheon in a fantasy world in which deities are expected to act. In such a world where magic and monsters exist and power if often on display would it even be feasible that a false-pantheon could arise? If so, what do you imagine such a pantheon would look like? Would it's heroes be those of history, myth, or a mixture of the two?

Is it rewarding to the gameplay/roleplaying experience to have religious lore - of heroes, prophecies, creation and other myths - of various cultures turn out to be completely false? (As in: the paladin-player finds out that the God he has sworn allegience to does not exist). Would it be more rewarding if the real religious truth of the game world was something to be discovered as part of the over-all narrative?

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For an organic method of religion creation, use a timeline. Your timeline will need parallel lines for each humanoid (or believer) culture that springs up, or dies.

- The earliest culture(s) will either have a religion that is comparable to their understanding of science (e.g. the sun is the bringer of life) or one directly handed to them by their predecessors: gods, monsters, or aliens.

- Each new culture will either adopt an old religion, modify an old religion, start a new religion*, or not need a religion because they have direct contact with, let's call them, GAMs (gods, aliens, or monsters). (*A new religion is swallowed easiest if it bears similarities to previous religions).

- Continue this, somewhat lengthy, process until you've reached your contemporary game world.

When super-human power is evident in the world, it has to be explained. Some will say it's a force of nature, some will say it's a power beyond nature, and some will say it's from gods. Unless your world has churches where actual gods come down to pet their followers, there will be those who dispute which, or whether, gods are behind that power.

False religions could be fun, but keep in mind that if some religions seem to have divine favor, and some don't, then the latter religions won't have a lot of followers anyway. Unless, well, those fake religions turn out to be profitable...

Zipster said:

So, does anyone have any ideas or suggestions to do this?

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One option could be to pick some real-world religions, replace all real-world names and terms, and then modify the details here and there.

As you say, the main difference between D&D religions and real-life religions, is that the former are primarily a matter of allegiance while the latter are primarily a matter of belief. There is no such thing as "I don't believe in Hextor" in D&D because there is no question on what deities exist, they just do; instead, it's a matter of what side do you pick (if you pick a side at all).

The difficulty in representing a more realistic take on religions, is that belief is also added, but eventually there is disagreement at every possible level, even at the level at which some pretend they don't believe but rather know, while others that it is impossible to know.

This means, that real-world religions have a lot of overlapping: for instance all monotheistic religions essentially believe in Good, but clearly they often have heated discussions to say the least.

All in all I'd say that you'll have to tread carefully between making religious powers tangible, and not being able to reveal much about which religion is true if any.

Zipster said:

I feel like it's difficult to create a false pantheon in a fantasy world in which deities are expected to act. In such a world where magic and monsters exist and power if often on display would it even be feasible that a false-pantheon could arise? If so, what do you imagine such a pantheon would look like? Would it's heroes be those of history, myth, or a mixture of the two?

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I would expect it to look like every other pantheon. With few exceptions, "False" will be what others think when look at it, but its believers will see it as "True". The exceptions are for true hoaxes, but even they need to make believe it's "True" for the hoax to work.

Zipster said:

Is it rewarding to the gameplay/roleplaying experience to have religious lore - of heroes, prophecies, creation and other myths - of various cultures turn out to be completely false? (As in: the paladin-player finds out that the God he has sworn allegience to does not exist).

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IMHO no, it's not rewarding, unless maybe to a very experienced roleplayer. Simply because it's difficult to roleplay through such a big change in character. The average player may even take it personally if you force her to deal with this without agreeing together beforehand.

Zipster said:

Would it be more rewarding if the real religious truth of the game world was something to be discovered as part of the over-all narrative?

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Yes. I suppose you can actually DM a religion-fiction campaign (think The Da Vinci Code) to be a success. Although IMO that kind of story works well if it's based on actually the real world, i.e. if you have the characters live in our world, and discover some uncomfortable truths about real-world religions. If you make them exist in a totally fantasy world with totally fantasy religions, chances are they couldn't care less for fantasy deities to be proved false or different.