Gods and campaign settings

[Ferret]

Are Gods nescessary in a campaign setting? I realise true or false they will most likely turn up. Do they need to be real, be able to turn up, or just effect things?

What about ascended people who are 'god-like'? Would you think that they would be accepted as gods or would other gods images super-imposed on them?


This is all for a campign setting still in construction.

I do not want respones heavy in RL religion (sounds silly but thats the rules)

 

[drothgery]

If you're designing a standard D&D setting, you have to answer the "Where do clerics get their powers from?" question. Which could be gods, celestials, demons, devils, ascended mortals, elemental forces, or darn near anything else. If you're desinging a setting without a particular gaming system in mind, then you should probably answer the "What do people believe in?" question, because religions or something very similar seems pretty necessary to make a world "feel" right.

 

[Ferret]

The way I have it pegged is that all casters get their spells from the ascended mortals. However the people might not see them as the face of the power, perhaps they saw the sun as the place their powers came from, or simply a god.

I'm not sure though, I'd like to see if any one has done anything similiar, and their general thoughts.

 

[Ron]

In Mystara, there are no gods. Clerics get their spells from the immortals, which are nothing more than powerful beings that ascended from mortality. It is a cool feature of the setting as the immortals carry their prejudices and agendas after ascension, being thus easy to rationalise their intentions.

Mystara is an often overlooked cool setting. It was originally developed to the D&D game, although TSR released a few 2nd edition AD&D products after they discontinued the D&D line in favour to AD&D.

 

[Ferret]

I played a little of it on the net with people I hardly knew but it shut down before I could into the setting; tell me are the immortals recognised as giving the powers.

 

[Wombat]

The PHB suggests that clerics don't have to follow a god to gain powers; for that matter, there is nothing requiring a pantheon. A cleric could merely be the conduit for a philosophical prospect. Indeed, in that case, it would be easy to combine any two different Domains, as long as the player could potentially justify the Domains as being connected (not that hard).

At that point you could easily keep Clerics without having to have any gods at all.

Certainly Druids cast divine magic without necessarily calling upon gods.

So, at least as far as game philosophy is concerned, such a move would have very little impact on a game. Of course it might require having some drawn up philosophies, but maybe not. In any case, it is easy enough to remove gods and yet keep divine magic, especially if you keep Alignment (the source of the Divine magic is the specific Alignment themselves).

 

[Ron]

I played a little of it on the net with people I hardly knew but it shut down before I could into the setting; tell me are the immortals recognised as giving the powers.

You mean, in Mystara? Yes.

Although I've never actually run, I imagined a campaign setting where gods were not existent. Clerics and Druids spells were no different than arcane spells but thought to be learned from gods in the past and passed on through tradition. A few spells would have to be removed, but most could work in such environment.