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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6424924" data-attributes="member: 4937">So, most people in your universe are probably worshiping all six gods while saying some variation of, "Have a cookie.  Please don't trample on me.  I'll give you more cookies."  I think this might be a good setting for having a number of secret societies for good.  Most of your communities at best have leadership that leans neutral.  Most rulers are these power mad tyrants of various sorts - many of them alien: dragons, djinn, undead, sphinxes(?), mind-flayers(?), etc.   Working against them are these secret mystic orders for good which the PCs might stumble on.  It might be nice to have a world where most of the strange cults were actually the good guys.In a society with real and active deities, this really only works if either the gods tend to be more destructive than benevolent, or the city can find some power source that can thwart or replace even the gods.  In the later case, it also helps if the gods really are so distant that they don't really care what mortals do.   But atheism or its equivalent is generally non-functional if you are forgoing divine power.   Over time, societies that actively worship the gods would have evolutionary advantage over those that don't.  The first time your town has the plague, the fact that you don't have scores of individuals with a relationship to the divine and the power to work miracles means your town loses to the one that does.  If the gods are active, the fact that your neighboring town can propitiate a wrathful god stomping around smashing things and steer it away, and yours doesn't know the rituals to appease or distract it, means you get wrecked and they don't.   It's ok to have heretics but if you want them to be persistent in the environment, they need some way to function in it.  And remember.  Don't get Judeo-Christian focused.  Most religions don't assert that the gods love people or that people should love the gods.   When Socrates discusses piety, he explores whether the pious are loved by the gods, but he doesn't even think to explore the notion of whether the pious love the gods.   The Greek gods pretty much didn't care what you thought of them, just so long as you feared them enough to not disrespect their authority and performed the rituals in their honor.  So you could potentially have a society were many people worship things that they hate, in the same way that many people grudgingly pay taxes.This is a trope in my own cosmology, but one way mine differs from what you have been envisioning is mine is "the 1000 gods", where 1000 in a very archaic way simply means "a very large, possibly uncountable number".  If you have a very small and countable number of gods, its highly unlikely that the problem of identifying who is who is a big problem.   To the extent that it is, it will probably be edge philosophies such as monotheism (all six gods are actually one being) that won't be widely accepted but can't be easily disproved.  Monotheism might be a serious heresy in your setting, as might the claim that the six gods are actually avatars of 2 or 3.   Of course, some nations might persist in these heresies.  If you have questions like this, resist the temptation to give them definitive answers.  If you want the truth to be something mortals (and perhaps even gods) argue about, it certainly can't be something the PC's know the answer to.Good.  There are several good reasons for breaking away from unconsciously thinking of your fantasy universe in Judeo-Christian terms.  For one thing, it's more thoughtful.  If you don't have a single creator god, there is no reason to have a universe that reflects peoples beliefs about a single creator god.  It drives me nuts when people have a polytheistic universe with pagan deities having spell using clerics engaged in ritual magic and then they talk about clerics having 'faith' or deriving power from their 'faith'.  For another, it's more respectful to religious views to not make your fantasy religion a shallow pastiche of what people really believe.Along those lines, your setting might not have angels or devils.  The divide between them might not exist.  You deities have servitors of some sort, and some of them are fearsome and frightful and some of them are beautiful and benevolent, but as far as people are concerned, they are ultimately the same class of being.  After all, the two might well be rubbing shoulders in the court of some god, each loyally serving the god in their own way - there is no division here between loyal and disloyal servants that lies behind the angle/devil divide.  Of course, they may well be rivals and stabbing each other in the back as courtiers are wont to do, but that is familiar and understandable behavior to the mortals worshipping them or seeking intercession from the servitors.  Offering a bribe to the Sub-Chancellor of the Inner Court of the Rose to get your petition presented to the High Rector of the Court of the Fountains so that your beer doesn't sour this year, or so that your romantic rival breaks out in boils, is well something people can understand.   If the Sub-Chancellor has beet red skin, the face of an ogre, and the lower body of a boar, lion's claw, and breath the smells of rotten eggs, well.... it wouldn't be the first time you had to deal with an odious bureaucrat.Cool.  What you have reminds me of Chinese Astrology and native Chinese polytheism, so you might want to do some research along those lines to get inspiration.  Dividing the sky into six divisions or constellations, each ruled over by one of the deities and having six seasons to your year might be a good start to your mythology.</blockquote>

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