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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yair" data-source="post: 3187709" data-attributes="member: 10913">I usually go in from the 'ontological' direction - what is reality? What are the god's relations to it? What are the people's?For example, my latest creation was Tempest's religion (link in sig), where I went for an "idealistic" ontology - all is thought. This led to the idea that as you go down into the underdark you enter the area of nightmares and insanity. That the upper, surface realm is the place of sanity and reason, without monsters, warmed by the light of reason and the sun. The main good god is both light and reason, and battles the insanity and darkness of the underdark. The planes are connected physically - as you go deep into the underdark you mechanically enter new planes of existence successively until ultimately you reach the equivalent of the the Far Realm. A prior campaign, set in the FR, focused on a 'dialectic' view of existence. Existence was in truth one, unchanging, perfect - the overgod Ao. Gods presented the dialectic process, starting with the Trinity of Selune, Shar, and Mystara being the seperated (Selune), what remains (Shar), and the infinitely-thin barrier in between them (Mystara). Within each seperation partial concepts were represented by the chief deities (such as Plague as an aspect of Shar, or Music as an aspect of Selune), while lesser deities represented subsegments of them and demigods partial aspects of the lesser deities (such as Obad Hai being Nature, Mielikki being Forests, and the Neverwinter Forest being her mount). Planes were united with concepts and gods, so by traveling within the Astral for example you were literally traveling within Mystara (as magic/seperation connects all possiblities). Toril, the world, was the concept of Balance and hence at the fulcrun of all planes, and alone of all planes/gods its children belonged in another plane upon their death as they inevitably fell from balance.These kind of concepts can serve as a good place to start for a more meaningful and interesting conception of deities and planes of existence, or so I find. Of course, I don't hold myself bound to this method, I just use it to get somewhere interesting and go from there.</blockquote>

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