[OGL] Generic Pantheon base?

[Scurvy_Platypus]

Howdy folks, a slightly odd question. I wasn't quite sure where to put this, so if it gets bumped to another section I understand.

What I'm look for is a generic Pantheon that's available to use as a base.

Allow me to explain...

I'm working on a fantasy OGL SRD project and as usual the issue of gods/dieties pops up. I personally don't really have an interest in trying to remake a whole pantheon and while I could just play the "think up another name for this diety" game, I'd like to skip that as well.

Yes, I could look at one of the various real-world pantheons kicking around and try recycling that into the SRD/game, but again there's a level of work there that I'd like to avoid if possible.

What would be ideal is if there was a pantheon put together in the standard fantasy fashion, but generic/neutral. The sort of thing where I could basically yank the names and maybe the relationships, plug them into the appropriate sections, and then move on.

Does that make sense?

I do get that a pantheon says something about the way the world works. I'm not really interested in world-building the setting here, just wanting a framework that I can hang the cleric rules/powers/abilities onto and if someone wants to use it, fine; otherwise they can easily replace it with their own homebrew or pet pantheon.

It's one of the reasons I'd prefer to skip using a real-world pantheon too, since all I need is something more on the vague side than specifc.

As I said, this is an OGL thing, so what I'm hoping for is to be pointed to a lovely OGL product that I can then butcher-and-cite.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Hm. The Book of the Righteous? I assume it's mostly OGC, if not entirely, but I don't have the book handy right now.

edit: Seems Golarion is mostly so, at least, and the info is there to peruse. Don't know if that's useful.

 

[crazy_monkey1956]

Dragonstar had a generic pantheon (based on the premise that all of the various worlds among the stars essentially worshipped the same gods under different names).

The Destroyer
The Father
The Judge
The Lover
The Magus
The Merchant
The Mother
The Reaper
The Stormlord
The Smith
The Trickster
The Warrior

As well as a Dualist pair of generic deities.

The Creator
The Adversary

 

[Alzrius]

Some of the Gods of the Grand OGL Wiki seem like they'd help, but what you really want is probably Deities of the Faithful.

 

[prosfilaes]

The Golarion gods are not OGL, so that doesn't help. The Deities of the Faithful are interesting, but aren't really set up to be the complete pantheon for a D&D world. No LE god, for one example. The only other OGL pantheon I'm familiar with is my own Kobold Pantheon in the Koboldnomicon, and while I encourage its reuse (and am even happy to send or post a copy on request), it's fairly specific to kobolds; among other issues, it has no CG, NG, or CN gods. I'm actually looking for something like this for the first PHB(ish) for Esperanto, and have basically come to the conclusion that (a) there's nothing prefab out there and (b) I was wasting time and could come back to it if I ever got any of the hard translation work done.

I'm curious if there's any preexisting D20 pantheon that could be freed now that its commercial life is over. Perhaps if there's any real gamers left at White Wolf, the Scarred Lands pantheon could be cajoled out of them, for free or cheaply. Or maybe some gamer has a home pantheon they'd be willing to OGL and post.

I did have a tiny something; I cut the Greek pantheon down to nine gods to fit alignment chart:

........... Lawful Neutral Chaotic
Good Athena Hestia Demeter
Neutral Zeus Aphrodite Hermes
Evil Hades Poseidon Ares

and gave pantheons to three gods:

Athena: Law, Good, Knowledge, War, Glory
Hestia: Good, Fire, Community, Healing, Protection
Demeter: Chaos, Good, Animals, Plants, Earth

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

Hm. The Book of the Righteous? I assume it's mostly OGC, if not entirely, but I don't have the book handy right now.

edit: Seems Golarion is mostly so, at least, and the info is there to peruse. Don't know if that's useful.

Hmmm. I don't have Book of the Righteous, so I don't know either. I looked at the Grand OGL Wiki site that Alzrius linked to and while they have a review of it, they don't have any of the content so I can't double-check. And I'm kinda reluctant to blow $20+ on the pdf without a good reason at this point.

As for Golarion... I personally have extreme doubts about it actually being OGC. While the site that you linked to does have a bunch of information, I don't see it having an OGL or the Pathfinder version of the license linked. That right there is a no-no as I understand things.

Additionally, I don't see anything listed on either the Paizo version of their SRD, nor the fan version:
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Reference Document
Pathfinder_OGC

Without something more, I'm kinda thinking the wiki might be violating I.P.

Dragonstar had a generic pantheon (based on the premise that all of the various worlds among the stars essentially worshipped the same gods under different names).

The Destroyer
The Father
The Judge
The Lover
The Magus
The Merchant
The Mother
The Reaper
The Stormlord
The Smith
The Trickster
The Warrior

As well as a Dualist pair of generic deities.

The Creator
The Adversary

Hmmmm. That's potentially useful, although I'd suspect that again it's not OGC but rather Closed content that falls under the IP related to Setting and other stuff. Still, the _idea_ behind it is what I'm more after and that sort of generic listing/title is what I was thinking of.

Some of the Gods of the Grand OGL Wiki seem like they'd help, but what you really want is probably Deities of the Faithful.

Thanks for that! I'd completely forgotten about the Grand OGL Wiki. So far the Deities of the Faithful looks like it's the closest to what I'm after. If nothing else useful pops up, I suppose I could just use those, replace the name with a formal title (ala the Dragonstar suggestion) and leave it at that.

Thanks for the help so far folks! If anyone's got other suggestions, I'm still happy to hear 'em.

 

[Aus_Snow]

As for Golarion... I personally have extreme doubts about it actually being OGC. While the site that you linked to does have a bunch of information, I don't see it having an OGL or the Pathfinder version of the license linked. That right there is a no-no as I understand things.

Additionally, I don't see anything listed on either the Paizo version of their SRD, nor the fan version:
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Reference Document
Pathfinder_OGC

Without something more, I'm kinda thinking the wiki might be violating I.P.

Ack. I hope it isn't!

Perhaps someone from Paizo could chime in here. . .

 

[Alzrius]

The Deities of the Faithful are interesting, but aren't really set up to be the complete pantheon for a D&D world. No LE god, for one example.

You didn't see Kain, the LE god of tyranny and rulership?

So far the Deities of the Faithful looks like it's the closest to what I'm after. If nothing else useful pops up, I suppose I could just use those, replace the name with a formal title (ala the Dragonstar suggestion) and leave it at that.

Just so you know, the names of those gods are also OGC; though if you want to replace them with titles, that's cool too.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

The Golarion gods are not OGL, so that doesn't help.

Yeah, that's kinda what I thought. I've gotten the strong impression that Paizo is pushing their setting much more than their rules (in terms of "what's valuable" and therefore protected). Which makes perfect sense; it's the whole IP issue that's caused me to be making an SRD and trying to replace the gods in it in the first place.

The Deities of the Faithful are interesting, but aren't really set up to be the complete pantheon for a D&D world. No LE god, for one example.

Hmmmm. That's actually not entirely a problem. The game doesn't screw around with alignments, so having a god to cover each of the 3/6/9 (depending on how much of the alignment chart you use) isn't actually necessary.

In fact, the game doesn't even really mess with Domains and all that. The gods are granting some specific powers, but they're not codified in the Domain sense. That said, I was thinking of explicitly adding in Domains, just to help keep things clear/tidy as well as assisting in folks trying to expand powers/abilities under whatever god-type they take a shine to.

The only other OGL pantheon I'm familiar with is my own Kobold Pantheon in the Koboldnomicon, and while I encourage its reuse (and am even happy to send or post a copy on request), it's fairly specific to kobolds; among other issues, it has no CG, NG, or CN gods.

Hmmm. I always wanted to buy the Koboldnomicon, but I was only ever able to find one GM willing to let me play a Kobold in the first place. And he (the GM) jacked me around pretty badly for it. Nobody in the 3.x games I've run ever wanted to be a Kobold, so I've never had the reason/excuse to pick it up.

I'm actually looking for something like this for the first PHB(ish) for Esperanto, and have basically come to the conclusion that (a) there's nothing prefab out there and (b) I was wasting time and could come back to it if I ever got any of the hard translation work done.

So.... if you don't mind my asking... why not just do what I posted above? Take your kobold pantheon, strip out the kobold bits and simply go with generic Titles, leave the Domains however you've got them set up, and then call it good?

Or am I missing something?

I'm curious if there's any preexisting D20 pantheon that could be freed now that its commercial life is over. Perhaps if there's any real gamers left at White Wolf, the Scarred Lands pantheon could be cajoled out of them, for free or cheaply. Or maybe some gamer has a home pantheon they'd be willing to OGL and post.

I'm sure it'd be useful for some folks. Of course, there _is_ the minor issue of the fact that pantheons to an extent do say something about the setting. For example, if you've got no War god in the pantheon, that says something.

In the case of a lot of homebrews, people have already done world-building, so the god of [this] has some sort of hissy fit and smacks the god of [that] and you've got 2 gods (and usually therefore their followers) fighting. Maybe the Trickster is behind it, and of course that says several things right there. If you've got a 4th god getting involved in the slap-fest, you're quickly bumping the pantheon out of the "generic" realm.

Not saying it's a _bad_ thing, just that there seems to be a basic lack of a "base" or "core" framework that you can then _modify_ by ripping out one god-archetype, putting a couple more at odds, and so forth. Especially if there's Domains that are shared between the god-archetypes and you've got one (or more) feuding.

I did have a tiny something; I cut the Greek pantheon down to nine gods to fit alignment chart:

........... Lawful Neutral Chaotic
Good Athena Hestia Demeter
Neutral Zeus Aphrodite Hermes
Evil Hades Poseidon Ares

and gave pantheons to three gods:

Athena: Law, Good, Knowledge, War, Glory
Hestia: Good, Fire, Community, Healing, Protection
Demeter: Chaos, Good, Animals, Plants, Earth

I'm guessing you mean "Domains" instead of "pantheons"?

Hmmm. Maybe I'm just going to have to sit down with my Manfred Lurker book, grab the Dieties of the Faithful, figure out some god archetypes that are missing, cross some Domains, and call it a day. Of course, that's sounds like work and a whole other project which I was hoping to avoid. *sigh*

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

You didn't see Kain, the LE god of tyranny and rulership?

I just took a quick poke through and it looks like every single alignment is represented.

Just so you know, the names of those gods are also OGC; though if you want to replace them with titles, that's cool too.

That is good to know. So often the mechanics are OGC but the names aren't. It's understandable, but can be frustrating at times.

This particular instance is one case where simply going with a title has some advantages. It means that someone using the SRD can simply plug in their pet god (since most folks have some sort of pantheon/religion they like for whatever reason) or they can just name it appropriate to their setting.

Like, you _could_ say, "Ok in this game the goddess Athena is being replace by 'Gwynth'. They're covering pretty much the same Domains, but Gwynth also has Cat Shaving as one of her Domains."

Or you could say, "Ok, in this game the War Maiden is named 'Gwynth' and has an additional Domain, Cat Shaving."

They're both saying the same basic thing, but to me it's got a different feel. I think it's because names come with pre-conceived notions ("That sounds kinda orcish to me") or in the case of famous names (like Athena) there's that chunk of already established information you've got.