D&D General The Generic Deities of D&D

[BrokenTwin]

Erm, Zeus is lightning and thunderstorms. Apollo is the sun god.
But I see your point.

And Zeus is also... not really "Good", by any modern meaning of the word. The closest to morally good out of the Greek Pantheon would arguably be Hades, and even then there's the whole thing with Persephone.

 

[SkidAce]

Why not worship 2 pantheons or all the gods. In some religions you didn’t want to offend any gods, even a nation you were at war with. And not even unknown gods.

Many of the folks in my world do just that. Placate as needed/practical.

 

[Hoffmand]

And Zeus is also... not really "Good", by any modern meaning of the word. The closest to morally good out of the Greek Pantheon would arguably be Hades, and even then there's the whole thing with Persephone.

Eh. They eloped without mom’s permission my mother in law hates me too. I can identify.

 

[gyor]

Why not worship 2 pantheons or all the gods. In some religions you didn’t want to offend any gods, even a nation you were at war with. And not even unknown gods.

Before attacking the Romans would bribe the enemies' Gods to side with them with opulent offerings. Sometimes Romans and other ancients would adopt the Gods of those they conqouered including stealing holy icons from their enemies.

 

[gyor]

And Zeus is also... not really "Good", by any modern meaning of the word. The closest to morally good out of the Greek Pantheon would arguably be Hades, and even then there's the whole thing with Persephone.

Hephaestus was mostly good in myth, his Italians sons were really good, Flora was really good, Dionysus was extremely good depending upon the myths you looked at. Folks think he was just the God of booze, and he was that, but he was also the God of Salvation and Reincarnation.

 

[gyor]

I like the idea too, but its not inherent to just Pathfinder. You can/could do that in any edition, based on the world setup and mythos.

I feel thats always been an RP choice as opposed to a mechanical one.

PF2 made it a mechanical choice too.

 

[BrokenTwin]

Hephaestus was mostly good in myth, his Italians sons were really good, Flora was really good, Dionysus was extremely good depending upon the myths you looked at. Folks think he was just the God of booze, and he was that, but he was also the God of Salvation and Reincarnation.

True. I was mostly thinking of the "Big Three" when I wrote that (Zeus, Poseidon, Hades). I enjoyed the Dresden Files take on Hades, where the myth of him kidnapping Persephone was just them eloping and her mother refusing to acknowledge of the relationship. Dude gets a bad rap in fiction WAY too often.

 

[gyor]

Keep religion fluid. Have conflicting accounts. Avoid an overarching cosmology.

I would suggest there is a tendency – perhaps a temptation – for DMs to invent a myth cycle which describes the beginning of their world, to detail the role and functions of their deities within it: to invent a cosmology, and then engage in a kind of mythopoeia. This then comes to describe the metaphysical reality of the game world. I submit that this is a mistake.

It’s hard not to blame Tolkien – or rather, his literary emulators – for this trend. Tolkien himself is savvy, and there is the – sometimes tacit, sometimes explicit – notion that the received cosmology which we have is only that one which was moderated by the Elves. It contains elements of unreliable (perhaps alien) narration and maybe we shouldn’t really trust it one hundred percent. Tolkien then refracts this further through the lens of Hobbits (Translations from the Elvish by Bilbo Baggins), and then, implicitly, through himself. It is this untrustworthiness – or rather, the unverifiability – which gives myth its real emotional power.

Deities fragment, syncretize, recombine and die. Mortals may be deified, and deities may be historicized. Mythological figures are very fluid.

E.g.: Ba’al Hadad was a popular storm god in Phoenicia from the Late Bronze Age onwards, and in Ugaritic sources appears as one of the Sons of El, the supreme god of the Canaanite pantheon. Hadad was associated with a mountain (Mount Zaphon), was invoked as a war god, and – most importantly – was linked to fertility and the return of the rains in late summer; his fertility role was mythologized in an annual dying-and-rising cycle. When anthropomorphized, Hadad appeared as a bearded man with bull’s horns and wielding a thunderbolt; often, a bull was used to represent him iconographically. The later Interpretatio Graeca naturally drew an equivalence with Zeus.

El, who was also represented by a bull, and was likewise described as living on a mountain, was, over time, “absorbed” by Ba’al Hadad in the northern Levant. Despite being regarded as the chief of the gods, El was distant, and this pattern of rejecting otiose supreme deities in favor of more glamorous storm gods is rather common. Storm-and-war gods had a more immediate appeal, and their cultic promulgation was invariably linked to dynasties which claimed some descent, special link, or patronage from the warrior-deity. To add insult to El’s injury, Hadad later appropriated El’s consort, Atiratu (Asherah). Hadad’s sister (sometimes sister-wife), Anat, a fierce warrior-goddess, was syncretized with Atiratu to form a composite deity, Atargatis. El and Asherah were subsequently discarded altogether; they were “dead.”

A deity might be superceded as the leader of a pantheon, leaving its status ambiguous. This seems to have happened with the Norse god Tyr, who was originally the same supreme deity as the proto-Indo-European *Dyeus. At some point, Odin assumed the mantle of war and leadership: presumably, this usurpation accompanied the ascendancy of a group who already venerated the one-eyed god. Tyr now had to be described in terms of a new relationship: sometimes as the son of Odin and Jörd, sometimes the son of Hymir; sometimes, Tyr is used as a kenning for Odin himself, but his status is often otherwise uncertain.

Sometimes, deities are “adopted” into pantheons: this may occur during periods of migration or conquest (the deities of the displaced are usually negated, but one or two may endure and be recast in the world-view of the conquerors). Trade may also bring encounters with new cults to the attention of established societies; if the popularity of a new deity grows, it can be incorporated into and harmonized with an existing pantheon – at least to some degree. Dionysus and Heracles are both ancient mythological figures, originally hailing from the Middle East, who were absorbed into the Olympian pantheon. Dionysus always retained an atavistic, ecstatic character incongruent with the other Greek deities. Traces of the Heracles legend – a hero-deity bearing a club, questing for apples, mastering lions and snakes etc – are present in Mesopotamia from the Third Millennium BCE. Heracles – especially in his solarized manifestation – is continuous with Ninurta (->Nimrod), and Shamash (->Samson); they share the same ancient mythic prototype.

D&D tends to have much clearer boundaries, and has less fluid figures. So I would suggest blurring boundaries and liquifying your deities.

Usually true in D&D, but alot less true in the Forgotten Realms then other D&D worlds, where things are alot more fluid, Gods absord each other, kill each other, get raised from the dead, split in too or more Gods and Pantheons fight over turf and dominance. Bastet absords rival Fedilae, then saves the Elven Goddess Zandilar, but absords her too ultimately, only for Shar to try and absorb her, only for Bastet, now called Sharess to be saved by Sune. The Mulhorand competes with the Faerun Pantheon for Faithful and Turf, yet individual Gods between between the Pantheons have alliances, and the Faerun Pantheon iis what happened when over time Gods from at least 5 Pantheons started to merge, plus the odd ascended mortal, some of whom displace other Gods. Then you have the Chosen who are functional an extension of their God, yet with their own personality. Then you have the faith of the Adama, which is that all the Gods are parts of the same God. And soooo much more.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Keep religion fluid. Have conflicting accounts. Avoid an overarching cosmology.

I would suggest there is a tendency – perhaps a temptation – for DMs to invent a myth cycle which describes the beginning of their world, to detail the role and functions of their deities within it: to invent a cosmology, and then engage in a kind of mythopoeia. This then comes to describe the metaphysical reality of the game world. I submit that this is a mistake.

It’s hard not to blame Tolkien – or rather, his literary emulators – for this trend. Tolkien himself is savvy, and there is the – sometimes tacit, sometimes explicit – notion that the received cosmology which we have is only that one which was moderated by the Elves. It contains elements of unreliable (perhaps alien) narration and maybe we shouldn’t really trust it one hundred percent. Tolkien then refracts this further through the lens of Hobbits (Translations from the Elvish by Bilbo Baggins), and then, implicitly, through himself. It is this untrustworthiness – or rather, the unverifiability – which gives myth its real emotional power.

Deities fragment, syncretize, recombine and die. Mortals may be deified, and deities may be historicized. Mythological figures are very fluid.

E.g.: Ba’al Hadad was a popular storm god in Phoenicia from the Late Bronze Age onwards, and in Ugaritic sources appears as one of the Sons of El, the supreme god of the Canaanite pantheon. Hadad was associated with a mountain (Mount Zaphon), was invoked as a war god, and – most importantly – was linked to fertility and the return of the rains in late summer; his fertility role was mythologized in an annual dying-and-rising cycle. When anthropomorphized, Hadad appeared as a bearded man with bull’s horns and wielding a thunderbolt; often, a bull was used to represent him iconographically. The later Interpretatio Graeca naturally drew an equivalence with Zeus.

El, who was also represented by a bull, and was likewise described as living on a mountain, was, over time, “absorbed” by Ba’al Hadad in the northern Levant. Despite being regarded as the chief of the gods, El was distant, and this pattern of rejecting otiose supreme deities in favor of more glamorous storm gods is rather common. Storm-and-war gods had a more immediate appeal, and their cultic promulgation was invariably linked to dynasties which claimed some descent, special link, or patronage from the warrior-deity. To add insult to El’s injury, Hadad later appropriated El’s consort, Atiratu (Asherah). Hadad’s sister (sometimes sister-wife), Anat, a fierce warrior-goddess, was syncretized with Atiratu to form a composite deity, Atargatis. El and Asherah were subsequently discarded altogether; they were “dead.”

A deity might be superceded as the leader of a pantheon, leaving its status ambiguous. This seems to have happened with the Norse god Tyr, who was originally the same supreme deity as the proto-Indo-European *Dyeus. At some point, Odin assumed the mantle of war and leadership: presumably, this usurpation accompanied the ascendancy of a group who already venerated the one-eyed god. Tyr now had to be described in terms of a new relationship: sometimes as the son of Odin and Jörd, sometimes the son of Hymir; sometimes, Tyr is used as a kenning for Odin himself, but his status is often otherwise uncertain.

Sometimes, deities are “adopted” into pantheons: this may occur during periods of migration or conquest (the deities of the displaced are usually negated, but one or two may endure and be recast in the world-view of the conquerors). Trade may also bring encounters with new cults to the attention of established societies; if the popularity of a new deity grows, it can be incorporated into and harmonized with an existing pantheon – at least to some degree. Dionysus and Heracles are both ancient mythological figures, originally hailing from the Middle East, who were absorbed into the Olympian pantheon. Dionysus always retained an atavistic, ecstatic character incongruent with the other Greek deities. Traces of the Heracles legend – a hero-deity bearing a club, questing for apples, mastering lions and snakes etc – are present in Mesopotamia from the Third Millennium BCE. Heracles – especially in his solarized manifestation – is continuous with Ninurta (->Nimrod), and Shamash (->Samson); they share the same ancient mythic prototype.

D&D tends to have much clearer boundaries, and has less fluid figures. So I would suggest blurring boundaries and liquifying your deities.

Dude, can you please write this up in a blog post so I can refer back to it? And continue to expand on it until you have created a series of 30-40 blog posts that can then be combined, with cool art, into a book sold on DriveThru that I can buy as POD (better yet, kickstart it!) so I can have a physical copy?

I may be the only one who is interested in trying to make a game that's relatively realistic - at least in the way people engage with religion and their gods... So maybe it wouldn't be a platinum seller. But at least I'd be happy.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Erm, Zeus is lightning and thunderstorms. Apollo is the sun god.
But I see your point.

Haha you're right! I was just reading Theros and probably confused Zeus with Heliod (who is exactly Zeus, but the sun).