Find inspiration everywhere! Martin found it in History, I do in Philosophy.

[Madnick]

Exploring our worlds history, mythology and philosophy a Game Master can be inspired to create amazing little hooks for his players. Now that I get older I am finding that reading something to be inspired as a Game Master makes me want to read more, expand my horizons in the aforementioned fields. That would be a surprise to the 15 year old me when I created my first 18^00 Str Barbarian 20 some years ago.

Here I am showcasing Plato's Theory of Forms, which I used to create the multiverse in my home brew world. Along with his Allegory of the Cave, I have the foundation to propel my players to plane travel with ease and depth that I could never have done with out Plato

After all what do you need for plane hopping? Four planes is great start

 

[Fenris-77]

I have a lot of love for R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing series specifically (but not entirely) because of how much that fantasy setting and especially the magic system therein is obviously influenced by his professional work on Theory of Mind and associated cog-sci stuff.

 

[Voadam]

Since in a lot of D&D editions the summon monster spells create temporary generic magical versions of monsters on the spot instead of summoning specific individuals, I analogized it to tapping into Plato's Forms which I feel works well conceptually.

 

[pemerton]

Since in a lot of D&D editions the summon monster spells create temporary generic magical versions of monsters on the spot instead of summoning specific individuals, I analogized it to tapping into Plato's Forms which I feel works well conceptually.

Per Plato, any instance of an X is a (fallen, imperfect) copy of the form of X.

If a wizards casts a spell that creates an X, and again if we take Plato's metaphysics as given, then that magical creation is a (fallen, imperfect) copy of the form of X. It's not going to be more or less generic than any other X that actually exists in the world.

 

[Madnick]

That's why I love tapping into philosophy and stealing ideas for my worlds, depending your prism you can adjust theories and fit them to your game. I have to say that @Voadam 's take can be easily be interpreted as a fitting logical deduction. Personally I leave the perfect forms of my world to be the actual Gods that created the whole existence in the first place.

So in essence all creatures are born in the world of perfection, hence they experience it, and when/if they derail from that perfection, they are send to the Prime Material plane to atone for their mistakes, in an effort to regain access to the perfect realm.

 

[Fenris-77]

The last time I did a cosmology from scratch, my gods were all facets of human culture, or I guess the gods of human civilization building - farming, crafts, hunting, that sort of thing. These were contrasted against the gods of deep wild, or the human attributes that work against civilization - wrath, the wild, plague, etc. Not as good and bad division, just what I thought humans would worship (i.e. themselves mostly).

 

[Emerikol]

The last time I did a cosmology from scratch, my gods were all facets of human culture, or I guess the gods of human civilization building - farming, crafts, hunting, that sort of thing. These were contrasted against the gods of deep wild, or the human attributes that work against civilization - wrath, the wild, plague, etc. Not as good and bad division, just what I thought humans would worship (i.e. themselves mostly).

This is a pretty cool take on Gods. They kind of write themselves and it makes them a little gray vs obviously black and white.

 

[Fenris-77]

This is a pretty cool take on Gods. They kind of write themselves and it makes them a little gray vs obviously black and white.

Yeah, thanks. I was pleased with it. Im also not running just discrete gods, but rather a cosmology where there might be hundreds of aspects of gods, but they all come back to one of the core gods. I wanted to leave some room for creativity when it came to wierd cults and stuff, which is dead easy when you can make up a specific aspect of god to fit what you want.

I also have a little old gods vs new god, sort of like GoT. There are the old gods, the seven of man, but there is also the one, a god of the Sun. Lots of faction infighting and stuff. The whole deal was designed to compliment a sandbox setting where any given campaign can go in different directions in terms of religion.

 

[Emerikol]

Yeah, thanks. I was pleased with it. Im also not running discrete gods, but rather a cosmology where there might be hundreds of aspects of gods, but they all come back to one of the core gods. I wanted to leave some room for creativity when it came to wierd cults and stuff, which is dead easy when you can make up a specific aspect of god to fit what you want.

I also have a little old gods vs new god, sort of like GoT. There are the old gods, the seven of man, but there is also the one, a god of the Sun. Lots of faction infighting and stuff. The whole deal was designed to compliment a sandbox setting where any given campaign can go in different directions in terms of religion.

I think religions are one of my favorite things to work on when it comes to a campaign setting. I definitely like to change it up and try new things. The aspects idea is a great one. I discussed a related idea one time with a friend where each civilization had their own gods but they were really just aspects and could be traced back to a core set of Gods. I consider "The Book of the Righteous" one of the best 3e era books written on the subject. I still have it and use it for a reference because much of it is usable even if rules change.

If you like that god themed books, you might like the Rose of the Prophet series. The theory was that Gods grew stronger with more worshipers and weaker with fewer. The premise is the LN god tries to take over everything and ultimately the CN god's followers (the protagonists) have to stop him.

 

[Fenris-77]

That's a cool idea. I've always liked the notion of the struggle for worshippers being an actual thing whne worshippers mean power. Very American Gods.