FR gods, too many?

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Fenmarel Mestarine
Fenmarel Mestarine (fehn-muh-rehl mess-tuh-reen), the elven god
of outcasts and isolation, is chaotic neutral.

There's a deity for outcasts?

I got really tired of elven deities when I found out there was a wild elven nature deity and a wood elven nature deity. Why do they have two deities who do exactly the same thing?

To be honest, I just ignore the vast majority of deities in the Realms. I'm more interested in running a campaign set in the Dales than in dealing with hundreds of human deities, hundreds of elven deities, and dozens for everyone and everthing else.

 

[John Crichton]

It's a well made point, and duly noted, but there's also some significant differences between the "Greek religious system" and the "FR religious system" and what the effects of that may be are difficult to determine.

We agree here.

For convenience, FR also has a much more "globalized" culture than anything we saw historically as well, which would tend to cut down on deities worshipped.

True. It could actually lead to worship of more deities depending on the region, as well. It's also clouded by the fact that there is no magic (in the D&D sense) in our world. Oh yeah, and the fact that some of the FR population actually got to meet, greet and see some of their gods die...

 

[Nightfall]

Obviously I side with a small panethon. If only because I get tired of dealing with that good for nothing Overgod Ao. THAT for me broke the camel's back.

 

[WizarDru]

Thus, IMHO, I'd think it'd be much more accurate if, for example, the Faerunians saw the deity of magic as Mystra, while the Mulhorandi saw the deity of magic as Isis, while the elves may see the deity of magic as Corellon. Instead, it seems that D&D uses the concept of polytheism, yet interprets the faiths of these polytheistic deities through a more modern, monotheistic lens.

Doesn't the Kingdoms of Kalamar setting take this approach? That is, the different societies view the dieteis differenty, giving them different names and aspects from culture to culture?

 

[Desdichado]

Forgotten Realms is like Rome. Did you ever see how many gods Rome had? True, the core gods were mostly either native Etruscan deities or stolen from Greece and renamed, but then they proceeded to import deities from all manner of conquered territories, so you got Roman worshippers of Mithras, Isis, and all sorts of others. By the end, you had to have had at least 200 gods, maybe more. Got to be a pain for workplaces, I imagine, since every day practically was a holiday to someone.

This is a pet peeve of mine, but the Romans did not steal Greek gods and rename them. They had their own gods with their own mythologies. In many cases, they did absorb some Greek myths and roll them up into their mythology about their gods, but in many cases they did not. Mars and Ares, for example, never had a good correlation in terms of how the Romans vs the Greeks viewed the god. Also, keep in mind that both the Greeks and the Romans were Indo-european and thus have a shared cultural heritage which explains the origin of many of their gods. Both Zeus and Jupiter can be traced linguistically to (and I'm simplifying, since we don't have all the linguistic characters here on the boards) *dyaus-pitar, the primeval Indo-european "sky father." Thor from Norse mythology, Indra from Sanskrit texts and Perkun from Slavic mythology are also the same god as Zeus/Jupiter, and in many cases the Romans at least did recognize this fact. They are all based on the same Indo-european root god and the differences can be explained by regional developments after the split of the various proto-Indo-european peoples and cultural influences from other cultural groups.

 

[John Crichton]

Obviously I side with a small panethon. If only because I get tired of dealing with that good for nothing Overgod Ao. THAT for me broke the camel's back.

Funny, he never had any effect on the games that I ran. Actually, one of my old friends had always assumed that Ao was the DM himself and should only be used in-game on super-rare occassions if ever at all.

 

[Urbannen]

I think the problem is with the FR religious system, not the number of gods. In Faerûn each village and city has a limited number of shrines and temples. One is led to believe that the inhabitants of that community only worship one of the gods represented by a temple or shrine. However each god only has a limited portfolio. What if you can't find a temple in your community whose god has a portfolio that's important to you?

Let's think about the gods whose portfolios represent natural phenomena that anyone might encounter. For instance, everyone dies. However, the god of death, Kelemvor, is only worshipped in a few places. Only Kelemvor's clerics can represent that portfolio in Faerûn. The vast majority of Faerûnians will have no access to a cleric of Kelemvor when faced with their or a loved one's death. Think about the goddess of disease, Talona. Disease is something everyone is afraid of. If Talona holds the portfolio to disase, that means that she is the only god you can propitiate in order to gain protection from a plague. Yet there are few shrines to her - most Faerûnians couldn't propitiate her if they wanted to. Think about Shaundakul, god of travelers. You would probably give a short prayer or small offering to Shaundakul at the beginning of a long journey. But where do you do that? Are you allowed to do it if you officially worship another deity?

It doesn't make sense to restrict the portfolios of the Faerûnian deities, since they are not recognized by all humans in Faerûn. Regardless of portfolio, the deities' influence is largely limited to specific geographic localities. If there is only a temple to Gond in your village and everyone only worships Gond, then Gond essentially becomes your god of fertility, death, disease, travel, wealth, the seasons, craft, and just about everything else.

 

[Mystery Man]

Doesn't the Kingdoms of Kalamar setting take this approach? That is, the different societies view the dieteis differenty, giving them different names and aspects from culture to culture?

I don't think so, Kalamar has different names for the same god and then it goes further and gives them different names for each language. Something I would not use just to avoid the hassle. Kalamar also has an "overgod" trapped in crystal or something like that.
Pretty cool story.
It's also a setting that has a ton of gods, I would imagine I would run the same way I run FR, use what you want and ignore the rest.

 

[Henry]

Both Zeus and Jupiter can be traced linguistically to (and I'm simplifying, since we don't have all the linguistic characters here on the boards) *dyaus-pitar, the primeval Indo-european "sky father." Thor from Norse mythology, Indra from Sanskrit texts and Perkun from Slavic mythology are also the same god as Zeus/Jupiter, and in many cases the Romans at least did recognize this fact. They are all based on the same Indo-european root god and the differences can be explained by regional developments after the split of the various proto-Indo-european peoples and cultural influences from other cultural groups.

Actually, that's something I wasn't aware of. Thanks! (Learn something new every day here...) I have always heard the "absorption theory", even from college professors...

My use of the Greeks was to avoid the Romans' "God Borrowing," but the point is well made that Faerun share cosmopolitan similarities with Ancient Rome. In Rome, two major initial competitors to Christianity were the Cults of Mithras and Isis, respectively - the Romans did a LOT of borrowing, ignoring the issue of the Indo-european connections: One of the effective ways to mollify a conquered people is to show you respect their religion, and this is where a lot of different deities entered the Roman lexicon.

Too bad that the Grehawk method was not followed: Using the old classic Greyhawk materials, you can actually trace which god was from which culture, and the MIGRATIONS of the peoples that spread their gods' influences. You can tell which deities were Baklunish, Suel, Oeridian, Flan, etc.

For my homebrew campaign, the point is moot; I use only about 20 deities, borrowing the concept of Dragonlance directly. All peoples worship these 20 gods (or are atheistic), and each race knows them by different names. However, their alignments are so broad, they will take worshippers of many alignments, and each one acts as a "subcult" within the religion (much like the "bajllion" sub-branches of Christianity or Islam). Since each cleric can cast even low-level miracles on sheer faith alone in my campaign, no one has the 100% claim on the "correct" path of its faithful.

 

[Benben]

Joshua Dyal thanks for pointing out a long complaint I've had over all the TSR and WoTC published worlds.

Why hasn't there been more said to having clerics of whole pantheons? It certainly seems more realistic than the churches devoted to Siamorphe and the other rare FR gods.

The pantheons of the racial gods really support this but I have never seen it implemented in a D&D suppliment.