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

Moving Pictures said:

The deities are ... real. They have spheres, sometimes spheres that overlap. They are grouped into two classes; greater and lesser.
There are .... forces at work creating issues for the deities. The party may find that out in time.

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That’s true in your campaign, I suppose. It’s a pretty common set up. I prefer otherwise. There’s no one true way. It’s just a fantasy story.

I'm exploring high level play for once, perhaps beyond 20th as characters I imagine will uncover many secrets of the cosmos...so I'm using many of the established gods of the various D&D worlds...

When I use established settings, I try to bring up list of gods, if there is one. If it's Msytara, I gave one-sentence to most important Immortals of each sphere.

If I were to make an original setting, I would just ask player to pick a god that their PC follows or, for atheists, a god who is patron of their class or species. I would let them choose from any rpg setting, not just d&d, or out of any fiction or even pantheons from real life, if that is ok with the table. If that means we have Athena, Asmodeus, Slaanesh, Maui and Wiggly the Lord in Black in one setting, well...it's up to me to figure out how it all fits together.

Not a Decepticon said:

If I were to make an original setting, I would just ask player to pick a god [...] or out of any fiction or even pantheons from real life, if that is ok with the table. If that means we have Athena, Asmodeus, Slaanesh, Maui and Wiggly the Lord in Black in one setting, well...it's up to me to figure out how it all fits together.

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And this is how I ended up playing a Subgenius Cleric of J. R. "Bob" Dobbs more times than I'd like to admit.

Misanthrope Prime said:

And this is how I ended up playing a Subgenius Cleric of J. R. "Bob" Dobbs more times than I'd like to admit.View attachment 429761

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That sounds like a fun character, and it certainly sets specific vibe of the campaign

I haven't put pen to paper yet, so this is subject to change, but the general approach I'm taking in preparation for a setting with gods won't be well-suited for the classical D&D list.

I'm not generally going for the idea that every god has 1-3 domains, with a clearly defined character, and more the idea that there are more cults and belief systems than gods. Things like domains are more relevant to the cult than the god itself and each god is greater than any one cult concieves of them, though each god will have common elements and characteristics that many or even most cults can agree upon.

Like, rather than a God of War, there will be warrior cults who worship a god's aspect of war. Some gods will have more of such warrior cults than others, but even a god mostly associated with hearth and home may have such a cult.

Similarly, there will be gods commonly associated with some form of moral standard of good or evil, but often the label will have more to do with the believer than the gods.

And I'm not going to stick with each god having a clearly defined identity that is universal to all within the setting, but that each cult's interpretation mingles into a broad understanding of the gods. Generally, the more powerful the god, the more obscure and fuzzy such details may be. The closer the god is to mortal kind, down to the lesser gods who walk the earth as mortals do, the more defined.

Some form of list will be provided to the players, but it will likely be of the more settled and prominent cults and creeds, with descriptions of the gods being about the more commonly held perceptions, and making it clear these are vague templates around which a PC can conform or explore variations.

TwoSix said:

When I say the classic style list of D&D gods, I mean something like this:

Raingod, NG. The God of Rain and Flowers. Portfolios: Rain, flowers, smelling nice.
Meangod, CE. The God of Carnage and Pain. Portfolios: Over-the-top sadism, public flatulence.

If you have something like this, where the gods are "person-like" and have names and domains or spheres of interest, in most of your games over the past 20 years or so, that's a Yes.

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Yes. However, I think that I have a few differences than standard D&D (or how many play/run it).

1, Several of the deities are dual-natured with beneficial and destructive aspects. For example, the sun deity is associated with life, but also drought and wildfires while the goddess of healing and rain is also responsible for destructive floods and sometimes wounds, disease and illness (There is another deity more commonly associated with disease, illness, etc, but the healing goddess can, as punishment, remove her "blessings" of both good health and past healings (e.g. causing old wounds to reappear)).

2. Non-clerics, acknowledge all of the deities. They pray to specific deities for blessings covered by the deity's portfolio and to avoid the negative aspects of the deity's portfolio.

3. Clerics have their patron deity. The work toward promoting the positive aspects of their deity and to help people from being subject to the negative aspects. Yet, they can invoke the negative aspects as "curses" and punishment on those violating the tenets of their deity. They also acknowledge the other deities and may pray to them as anyone else with the exception of any deity directly opposed to their own.

5 years ago I would've said yes. More than anything it is incredibly convenient for table play. However, I've shifted to different approaches lately and haven't used a god list in some time.

I voted "No" but...

Broadly speaking, I like the gods existing overall as Forces, generally following like the Proto-Indo-European mythology

These are the base Forces that "gods" get filtered through. Each species/culture has things that they value more than others and it's the process of valuing and worshiping these things, that a "god" comes into existence. Gods are either avatars of the Force, or will actually cause a being to manifest.

So, 4 different cultures can all worship the Dawn Mother, however each Dawn Mother is likely to vary, depending on the species/culture in question. Yes, this can result in oddities like a god being in opposition to itself. shrug

I find this approach allows me the greatest flexibility in terms of having universal forces, while still allowing for the tendency we (humans) have for investing phenomena with personality. It also allows for more complex stories of culture clash and competition. And it also provides an option for having someone become Elevated to godhood, as well as having little half deities running around, without throwing things too far out of whack

Scurvy_Platypus said:

I voted "No" but...

Broadly speaking, I like the gods existing overall as Forces, generally following like the Proto-Indo-European mythology

Proto-Indo-European mythology - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

These are the base Forces that "gods" get filtered through. Each species/culture has things that they value more than others and it's the process of valuing and worshiping these things, that a "god" comes into existence. Gods are either avatars of the Force, or will actually cause a being to manifest.

So, 4 different cultures can all worship the Dawn Mother, however each Dawn Mother is likely to vary, depending on the species/culture in question. Yes, this can result in oddities like a god being in opposition to itself. shrug

I find this approach allows me the greatest flexibility in terms of having universal forces, while still allowing for the tendency we (humans) have for investing phenomena with personality. It also allows for more complex stories of culture clash and competition. And it also provides an option for having someone become Elevated to godhood, as well as having little half deities running around, without throwing things too far out of whack

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Yeah. I just figure it’s like reality: if folks need a god for something, it doesn’t them long to invent one.