Focus on the bits that stand out. Take ol' Ares for example. Athens wasn't a big fan of him and portrayed him as a god of savage warfare, the forces of war to disrupt. But, he's basically Mars to the Romans who was a lot more respected, the effects of war to bring peace
Gruumsh is the father of orcs. He's a god of fighting against the enemies of orcs, be they good or evil. Those two alone are easy to turn into a protective aspect.
Protection of one's kin is certainly a good role for such a god.
I thought orcs were Mongols? Or was it general Asians? Blacks? Slavics?
It is disrespectful to call Black people "Blacks".
A fictional nonhuman race is dehumanized? Duh...
This is a direct misrepresentation of what the other person said, and is an attempt to derail the thread. I've no clue why you are so aggressively dedicated to getting into everyone's face with your reactionary anger at the thought of people being critical about the content of DnD, but leave it to the threads dedicated to that discussion.
If you picture Grummsh as more of the God of Barbarians (not that I'd use that term) you might be able to work something. God of Raging Battle and individual prowess, a more personal soldier's god, say. You could layer on a more Odin-like God of strategy and war who feels more like a chieftain's god. This could be very cool if those two gods have competing agendas for their worshippers. Grummsh wants things to stay the same, or doesn't care, but Orc-odin wants Orcs to stop being so flippin' angry all the time and plan some shizz out for a change. The tension between Odin-Thor and Ares-Athena are good examples, slightly overlapping portfolios with different agendas.
Minor quibble, i don't think Orc-Odin would want any such thing as the orcs being so angry all the time. He is the god of Fury, on and off the battlefield. Odin is the source of both poetic inspiration and battle-frenzy, which are seen as essentially the same thing with different expressions.
That said, I agree that having gods with overlapping domains that are in conflict over the aspects of those domains, like the War siblings in Theros or their inspiration Athena and Ares, is a good thing.
I personally agree that if there was to be these lists of gods that people actively worship... there should be a list of things that these gods oversee that would make sense for people to care about and want a blessing for. And if that is the case... should the god really be assigned an alignment for it?
Sure, the god has an alignment just like any character.
I honestly think this is where having too many gods does the entire pantheon a disservice. Because we end up pigeon-holing these deities into these extremely tight little domains in order to have them not step on each other's toes... but then it begs the question of how often is it necessary to pray to one of these people? You've got most of society praying to Oghma for his knowledge and intellect, but then this small subset of people over here that decide to light a candle to Deneir when they are writing stuff down? What's wrong with just praying to Oghma when writing stuff down? Why do we need another deity to cover it? What's gained by that?
Is Deneir pidgeonholed, or is he analogous to a minor saint? A patron of a specific task or endeavor, with overlap with a more prominent saint. I disagree completely with the idea that having both does any sort of disservice the the pantheon.
And on that note... how come Deneir is Neutral Good? Why is writing stuff seen as purely a good thing? There's a crapton of stuff you write down that are completely neutral or even downright hurtful. So how come this god is considered a Neutral Good deity? This is the kind of query I've been wondering about over in the "Are Evil Gods Necessary?" thread... where I've been partially questioning as to whether or not divine gods should even have alignments.
Deneir isn't necessary NG because the act of physically recording knowledge is NG (though I think it is reasonable to conclude that it is), but because the gods of FR are
characters and characters have alignments, and his is NG. Just like different gods of death have had different alignments, a different god of scribes might easily have a different alignment.
Fury, War, and Destruction... I could see Gruumsh as the god of anarchists and revolutionaries. Anyone who's oppressed by the social order, who feels ground down and ill treated, who wants to tear it all down and start anew, Gruumsh is there for them. He tells you your anger is justified, that you should let it move you to make war on your oppressors and unmake the shackles that bind you. Rise up together and break the old order so that you can build a better tomorrow. Or possibly just vent your rage in senseless violence and random destruction. Gruumsh is there for you, either way.
So, two characters from recent media come to mind reading this, and because of the recent protests and what sparked them it may be no surprise that what you've written makes me think about Black characters who are enraged and speak to the need to destroy the system of oppression in order to move past it.
The first I have to include with a warning. The language is very NSFW, and rather uncomfortable. It's one of the best scenes from American Gods, when Anansi (Mr Nancy) convinces a ship full of African captives to rise up and kill every single Dutch m-fer on the ship, and burn it.
Anansi Speech
The second requires no warning, it's just Killmonger from Black Panther. Just, his entire deal. Retribution. Liberation. Justice by the least comfortable, least "Western Liberalism" friendly definition possible. An enraged response to the hypocrisy that built the foundation of the modern western liberal democracy. "All men are created equal", written by a man who forced his slaves to bear his illegitimate children so he could get more slaves without buying them. Burn it all down.
I'm not 100% sure about tying Gruumsh directly to such rhetoric, unless we strongly change the perception of him as a disfigured and "evil" god of brutish monster-folk, though.
Odin's remit usually includes: wisdom, healing, death, royalty, the gallows, knowledge, war, battle, victory, sorcery, poetry, frenzy, and the runic alphabet. So there's a lot going on there besides wrath. Berserkr is fine, but it's not getting you the royalty or wisdom bits, which are as much Odin as poetic inspiration. Anyway, I can see we agree about Grummsh, which is the main part. We can quibble about Norse myths on our own time.
