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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3826145" data-attributes="member: 4937">I always thought FR didn't have enough deities.I basically believe that there are two approaches to polytheistic pantheon design.&nbsp; Either you come up with a tight group of 5-12 deities that collectively incarnate the breadth of human experience (BotR, Bujold's 5 Chalion deities) or you have an impossibly complex universe of many dieties which overlap each other and fight for even the smallest niches.&nbsp; What I find interesting is many real wold polytheistic religions often did both.&nbsp; For example, the Greek pantheon is dominated by the big 12 Olympians, but features on the edges of its mythology a veritable menagery of lesser gods, demigods, old gods, and so forth. The FR pantheon always struck me at its heart as being rather childish.&nbsp; It basically seemed to look at each of the classes and say, &quot;I need a god of fighters, rangers, wizards, paladins, druids, and, oh, a few gods of baby killing for the villains.&quot;&nbsp; I saw absolutely no evidence that it could ever be made to come together as a tight group of theasaurus spanning incarnates.&nbsp; However, as the pantheon/cosmology grew in the direction of a Nehwonian '1000 new gods appearing every Thursday' it became more interesting to me, to the point that it was beginning to have a few deities that were somewhat interesting to explore.&nbsp; This is crucial, because I like playing a cleric, but I'm not going to play a cleric if it doesn't offer the right RP experience and that requires a diety that is complex enough that you can at least pretend he or she is interesting to follow. FR doesn't need fewer dieties.&nbsp; It needs to inject another 100 or so into it.&nbsp;&nbsp; As for gods that need to go, Cyric was never as interesting as the gods he murdered.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 3826145, member: 4937"] I always thought FR didn't have enough deities. I basically believe that there are two approaches to polytheistic pantheon design. Either you come up with a tight group of 5-12 deities that collectively incarnate the breadth of human experience (BotR, Bujold's 5 Chalion deities) or you have an impossibly complex universe of many dieties which overlap each other and fight for even the smallest niches. What I find interesting is many real wold polytheistic religions often did both. For example, the Greek pantheon is dominated by the big 12 Olympians, but features on the edges of its mythology a veritable menagery of lesser gods, demigods, old gods, and so forth. The FR pantheon always struck me at its heart as being rather childish. It basically seemed to look at each of the classes and say, "I need a god of fighters, rangers, wizards, paladins, druids, and, oh, a few gods of baby killing for the villains." I saw absolutely no evidence that it could ever be made to come together as a tight group of theasaurus spanning incarnates. However, as the pantheon/cosmology grew in the direction of a Nehwonian '1000 new gods appearing every Thursday' it became more interesting to me, to the point that it was beginning to have a few deities that were somewhat interesting to explore. This is crucial, because I like playing a cleric, but I'm not going to play a cleric if it doesn't offer the right RP experience and that requires a diety that is complex enough that you can at least pretend he or she is interesting to follow. FR doesn't need fewer dieties. It needs to inject another 100 or so into it. As for gods that need to go, Cyric was never as interesting as the gods he murdered. [/QUOTE]

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