Deities and Portfolios

[Roman]

I am creating a pantheon and need to create deities to cover all important areas of life, endeavour, metaphysics, etc. That said I do not want thousands of deities - I want the deities to be encompassing enough so that a very high number of deities is unnecessary, but on the other hand I do not want a monotheistic or duotheistic system. I am not sure where to begin. Would anybody be willing to help me identify the important / overarching / encompassing portfolios I need to cover?

 

[OregonGM]

I've been toying with a binary system similar to the Sword of Truth series. The Maker and the Keeper. Had I not fallen in love with the Scarn setting, I would be using it now.

The huge advantage there is that the sky is the freaking limit on what you can do with your bad-guys and good-guys. A player wants to have a cleric of a Thor-type god? Fine. The (made up off the top of my head) Ragnorokians of Nothern Aparagusland celebrate The Maker as "The Thunderer". "Hey player, tell me what the domains are and anything else you can think of. Thanks, by the way, for creating that part of the world for me."

Need to drop in a module from FLGS? Easy. The bad guy who previously worshipped Hextor now is a member of a sect of the Keeper that has found purpose in celebrating conquest. Leave everything else the same and change a name.

Your common peasant thanks The Maker when the wagon narrowly misses him. The shopkeeper (who DID get nailed by the wagon), yells "What in the Keeper's name . . .are you drunk?" and then has to apologize for cursing at the next town meeting.

The DM can now spend his time designing adventures instead of making sure the cosmology lines up.
The DM has something that makes this game "different" from Greyhawk/Mystara/Faerun/Scarn/a million others.
The players can now create the kind of clerics they want.

Example :I HATE Pelor, but I want to run a "Lightbringer" kind of priest. I always thought Seker from the Egyptian mythos was cool . . . Hey DM, can I be a mysterious arabian-style priest who found The Maker in his Fire/Dawn aspect? The symbol of the falcon is important to my sect and we hate undead a lot. I'll write up as little or as much as you want. You want me to design the country he's from? Okay, but you're paying my share of the pizza this week.

Hmmm . . .I think I just talked myself back into this cosmology. Scarn might have to wait.

 

[CRGreathouse]

I think that this is very campaign-specific, because the choice of portfolios shows what is important to your world.

Some pantheons have portfolios determined largely by alignment (and the stereotypes therof). Such a pantheon might have a LG knight, a NG healer, a CG ranger/scout, a LN judge, a N wizard/contemplative/sage, a CN trickster, a LE tyrant, a NE assassin/god of death, and a CE slayer/barbarian/madman.

Others may be based on class archetypes. Deities and Demigods, for example, mentions this as a major design principle. In that case you might have a god of fighting/killing (barbarian, fighter, paladin, ranger), nature (druid, ranger), stealth (rogue), contemplation (monk, sorcerer, wizard), magic (sorcerer, wizard), and so forth.

Others may decide that some other principle is the important split in their game and go with that. For example, I could imagine a pantheon based on the elements (fire, water, metal, wood, wind; fire, water, earth, air). The fire god may be a god of destruction, worshipped by barbarians and evil wizards; the god of metal might be a god of building and technology, etc.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

From my perspective what works best is to come up with the personalities you want and then assign portfolios.

My friends and I made a list of our favorite deities, conflated those of them who were fairly similar, and then ran off to develop those that remained.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is how you want the tension between deities of different alignments to develop.

In my world, for instance, all the gods work on essentially the same level and a fairly limited in power. In order to compete, everyone has to be active, good gods have to be cunning, and evil gods have to have some really nice things in their portfolio in order to attract worshippers.

 

[Roman]

Thanks for the advice. It is true that what is important is campaign specific. However, since I am not sure where to start, would it be possible to help me come up with a comprehensive list of portfolios that would be considered important if we had a number of gods in the real world? Real world is often the best baseline - from that it is not so difficult to modify it to fit the campaign world.

 

[DongShenYin]

I'm working on a pantheon too. I've decided to base its structure as a royal family--the High King, High Queen, Princes and Princesses. Because I picture the opposing culture as an organized Imperial Legion type invaders, my PC's deities are more on the chaotic pagan side.

What kind of "atmosphere" do you want to establish for your campaign? For the major culture? Maybe it'll help if you have a general idea of your world's "attitude"

 

[Roman]

I'm working on a pantheon too. I've decided to base its structure as a royal family--the High King, High Queen, Princes and Princesses. Because I picture the opposing culture as an organized Imperial Legion type invaders, my PC's deities are more on the chaotic pagan side.

Basically, I seek to create a finite and defined number (I have not decided on what the specific number should be) of "High Gods & Goddesses" that would cover every major portfolio. These High Gods may cooperate, compete, ignore each other or whatever based on their personality. There will also be lower Gods but they will only rule smaller parts of portfolios of the "High Gods", who should already cover everything.

What kind of "atmosphere" do you want to establish for your campaign? For the major culture? Maybe it'll help if you have a general idea of your world's "attitude"

Most of the known world in my campaign is ruled by an Empire that is somewhat analogous to the French Empire under Napoleon (but without the relatively modern technology) or the Roman Empire in the ancient times. The empire is militaristic with army playing a prominent role in the national life. However, the creation of the empire only occured between 50-200 years ago (it was a gradual process) and the empire is already disintegrating. Nationalism and patriotism are both important forces in the campaign world. That said, I do not want there to be Gods for each nation - I want religion to be more or less universal in the "European-Inspired Cultural Zone", as well as to be polytheistic and comprehensively cover all important aspects of life and other significant areas, but not to have an excessive number of the High Gods.

There is also an "Asian-Inspired Cultural Zone" in my campaign world, but the two are pretty much isolated and the campaign takes place in the "European-Inspired Cultural Zone", so that is the one I want to concentrate on at this time. Naturally "European-Inspired" does not make it fully European - no more than most other D&D games would be.

 

[DongShenYin]

Basically, I seek to create a finite and defined number (I have not decided on what the specific number should be) of "High Gods & Goddesses" that would cover every major portfolio.

Seven is considered a mystical number.

Remember, a lot of gods and goddesses have portfolio that don't, upon first glance, make sense. Like being the goddess of death, fertility and cattle.

Are you familiar with the Sandman series in DC comics? The Endless aren't gods, but they preside over Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair and Delirium/Delight.

Just a few ideas.

 

[Roman]

Seven is considered a mystical number.

Remember, a lot of gods and goddesses have portfolio that don't, upon first glance, make sense. Like being the goddess of death, fertility and cattle.

Are you familiar with the Sandman series in DC comics? The Endless aren't gods, but they preside over Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair and Delirium/Delight.

Just a few ideas.

I am not familiar with the Sandman series comics, but you just spurred me to have an idea. How about something along the lines of using only emotions as gods? Something like:

Fury

Fear

Love

Happiness

Serenity

Hate

Grief

It would be interesting in that it would be different. Then perhaps fitting every other portfolio as a sub-portfolio of one of these emotions. I am not sure, though, whether it would actually be workable and not a bit too limiting to make all the 'High Gods' emotion based. For example, I cannot for the life of me think under what emotion I would fit such a crutial portfolio as nature. Perhaps under Serenity - but that itself represents only one aspect of nature... Or where to fit in magic... or a multitude of other very important portfolios. Ok, perhaps those two examples are such that they are crucial but are forces in their own right and thus can stand on their own - without a God. But what quite important portfolios like for example wealth? People should be able to pray for that... not necessarily to a specific god of wealth, but certainly to a god that covers that portfolio also. And there are other such examples... Any suggestions? What do you consider to be important portfolios - I am sure that if I could identify them all, I could work out something with them.

 

[Goblyns Hoard]

Emotions sound good

But I do think you'll have a problem with those aspects you point out - so many things can encompass the full range of emotions. Even war can be found in a fair few you've mentioned (Fury, Hate, Grief, even Love in terms of Love of country).

The pantheon I developed had a similar concept in that I gave each of the gods a 'sin' to represent them as well as the traditional spheres of influence. So each has two 'positive' and one 'negative'. The negative is viewed as something to be resisted by good worshippers, or revelled in by evil worshippers (my gods don't have alignments).

So I have a god of earth, dawn and sloth, a goddess of community, justicve and tyranny, a god of light, war and prejudice.

This rounds out the character of the gods, making them less two dimensional, but also allowing different religions to develop around each deity. I developed this because I thought it would be very interesting to parallel the real world with religious conflict between different cultures that ostensibly worship the same deity.

Back to your original query - here is the full list of spheres that I have used:

Arrogance
Beauty
Charity
Cold
Community
Consequence
Craftmanship
Dark
Dawn
Death
Deprivation
Earth
Fertility
Gluttony
Harvest
Inspiration
Jealousy
Justice
Knowledge
Life
Light
Love
Lust
Magic
Obsession
Oceans
Peace
Prejudice
Rage
Reflection
Revenge
Sloth
Storms
Tyranny
Vanity
War