D&D General Do you use D&D style list of gods in your games?

While I'm used to the traditional list, for my current homebrew, I'm going with each different culture has their own or related belief system (more like the Real World™). However, the details of such will remain minimal (at best) until they become relevant to the players (like a PC comes from a particular culture or what-not). I will probably engage the players to assist coming up with details so that they have a hand in world building because that seems fun.

Yes, but more like Eberron where the Gods may or may not exist, and I don't use the Alignment system for them.

My setting has its own religions, and its deities have their own Domain portfolios, but unlike real world religions and mythologies, there's almost universe syncretisms across the setting's deities, as if all the religions were derived from a single original tradition, and this origin powers Divine Magic – but whether that means these are actual physical entities around whom traditions were developed, or whether the peoples' belief in these entities creates the Magic, I leave that up theories.

A player can always create and religion or deity for their characters. Nothing I provide is unable to accommodate one more god somewhere in the cosmos.

Distracted DM said:

Can you give examples of what'd be a No? Maybe an example of anything ttrpg-published? Is Eberron a no?

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I would lean towards calling Eberron a No, although the Sovereign Host and Dark Six do complicate that. I ultimately think of Eberron as a No because the top-level choices are Sovereign Host, Silver Flame, Blood of Vol, etc., with the specific deity being a subchoice within Sovereign Host, and the choice to worship the whole pantheon exists.

Ravnica and Strixhaven, off the top of my head, are WotC settings without a deity list.

I'm mostly thinking of games where the GM leaves the option to decide what god they worship up to the players. Like in my last 5e game my friend ran, the paladin player and the cleric player just made up their own religions and decided how to express them in play. That's been the MO for that table since I joined in '09, throughout multiple GMs.

TwoSix said:

I'm mostly thinking of games where the GM leaves the option to decide what god they worship up to the players. Like in my last 5e game my friend ran, the paladin player and the cleric player just made up their own religions and decided how to express them in play. That's been the MO for that table since I joined in '09, throughout multiple GMs.

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Oh, I 100% do that. Or to have no god at all - I've had an athiest cleric, one who worshipped basically every god they could find, and one who secretly followed an IRL god.

Would have liked an "It's complicated, about equal mix of YES and NO."

There are certain D&D gods I quite like, particularly the 4e default pantheon. So if I'm going to use a henotheistic common pantheon, there's a good chance I'll use that one.

However, I also prefer making my own custom settings, where it might not fit to have that pantheon. My Dungeon World game, for example, currently has only one religion with any deific figures at all, and it's formally monotheist! (Instead of different "gods" to represent different portfolio ideas, the singular deity, the One, has many different "facets" or "aspects", of which the most prominent is the Great Architect, representing Them as the conceiver-creator-sustainer-ruler of the universe.)

EzekielRaiden said:

Would have liked an "It's complicated, about equal mix of YES and NO.

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I thought about that, but when you give a moderate option, people always gravitate towards it.