D&D General Gods, huh, what are they good for?

[Zardnaar]

D&D really wants to emulate stories like the Iliad and the Odyssey where the gods regularly show up and directly interact with the heroes, but it struggles because it’s written by people who’s direct experience of religion is almost exclusively abrahamic. So, you get a pantheon of personified deities with specific purviews, but they’re also seemingly near-omnipotent, near-omniscient, distant, and non-interventionist. It’s a very confused mix.

This.

Or you get a cartoon level take on it is the other thing. FR has sometimes gone that way.

 

[el-remmen]

One way I make the distinction between Gods that grant spells to clerics and powers that make deal with Warlocks in my setting, is by establishing an upper echelon of 13 Gods that can only do the former, while all the Undergods (including archdevils and demon princes and others) can make deals with mortals for power, but need to make their way into the 13 for more power. This desire, both by the beings themselves and their followers, drives a lot of the plots and machinations in both mortal realms and divine ones.

 

[Indagare Nogitsune]

D&D really wants to emulate stories like the Iliad and the Odyssey where the gods regularly show up and directly interact with the heroes, but it struggles because it’s written by people who’s direct experience of religion is almost exclusively abrahamic. So, you get a pantheon of personified deities with specific purviews, but they’re also seemingly near-omnipotent, near-omniscient, distant, and non-interventionist. It’s a very confused mix.

If it doesn't sound too sappy, my world idea is also somewhat based on Studio Ghibli films. While reading the Birdfolk and Oxfolk entries, I could see flying islands going like clouds over the landscape, or the Oxfolk wandering along with covered wagons among fields of grass where, at times some ancient, overgrown formation was.

Or, also, things like the fairies of the seasons I mentioned earlier. I really was impressed by that section and thought it was a cool bit of world-building if I could ever figure out how it'd work.

One of the things I would be thinking of is how much to have them in the game. Why do the people need heroes if the 'gods' just interact and I can go ask them. This is especially true when there are lots of fey doing the bidding. It is a cool idea to have a bunch of sprites fly over and make the spring come, but the farmer can just ask one of them to bless his crops or make his fields more bountiful. When things become common, it becomes watered down. I.E. every class now having magic using subclasses so it makes the overall feel of magic just common. Depends of your game I guess.

Well, even in RL myths heroes are around: Perseus, Heracles, and others. Sometimes the heroes are set in motion by the deities for things that are at their level. But, like Charlaquin mentioned, this sometimes goes into weird territory because most people are so removed from the actual worship of non-Abrahamic beings.

Plus there were supposed to be things like Brownies taking care of households or fields and animals. So that sort of interaction does happen or can.

 

[Charlaquin]

If it doesn't sound too sappy, my world idea is also somewhat based on Studio Ghibli films. While reading the Birdfolk and Oxfolk entries, I could see flying islands going like clouds over the landscape, or the Oxfolk wandering along with covered wagons among fields of grass where, at times some ancient, overgrown formation was.

Or, also, things like the fairies of the seasons I mentioned earlier. I really was impressed by that section and thought it was a cool bit of world-building if I could ever figure out how it'd work.

Ghibli’s work is heavily informed by Shinto. Might be worth looking into if you want your setting’s religion to fit those vibes.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Now I kind of want to play a godling who is a celestial warlock and their patron is their worshippers. Where you have to go around answering prayers for mundane stuff.

 

[Marc17]

How do deities figure into your campaigns? If they are an engaging bunch, how do you keep things interesting? If they're not, why not?

The last campaign I ran started with discussing this with the players as the entire setting was being built from scratch. We had to resolutions: 1) it would be more of a polytheistic setting where there gods represented aspects of nature (ie their domains) and 2) to get Raised, Resurrected, or otherwise come back from the dead, it required more than just the spell and needed 'credit' built up by either the recipient or caster with an appropriate god.

This meant all the gods were the same for everybody. The elven god of death would probably look like an elf and have symbolism in their imagery and shrines that elves associate with death, while the human god of death would be the same one but probably look like a human and have human death symbolism. On top of that their alignments varied between avatars and while an evil assassin might ask the evil avatar of the god of death for aid in killing somebody, their good target might be asking the neutral avatar of the same god to not die. The differences in these avatars were typically noted in the symbolisms and offerings of their appearance and shrines. It was all sort of wishy washy to the point that clerics usually had their favorite but tried not to worry about it too much. While there were clerics dedicated to individual gods, there were others that dealt with the entire pantheon. Temples were the same. Most large cities would have a pantheon that might be dedicated to one or more of the gods, but then all or most of them would have some representation usually in small shrines there also. There were antagonisms and rivalries between gods, but generally there was no enemy, and this extended to worship also. They were part of the Natural Order. Trying to kill one would be an attack on the Natural Order and an attempt to break it. The one thing that held for all of them is, that they did not like being disrespected. I didn't have any mechanics for it, but let the players know this and that it might make a difference in something later. So, doing something like destroying a shrine dedicated to an evil avatar of this or that god, better be done respectfully (asking forgiveness or making sacrifice first, appealing to another avatar of same god, etc.) or there might be consequences.

Although there were no real mechanics, and such divine intervention was never invoked, the PCs were pretty cautious not to offend any of them. They did their share of hunting down and killing evil clerics doing evil things, but also would attempt to make amends with their god. Once dedicating the killing of a cleric of the god of death to his own god. The second resolution also came into play as there was a cleric of the god of murder who was murdering entire villages of people and dedicating it to his god, so he could have the power to cast Raise Dead, which he would do to gain political power from such action in return. The villages were usually small powerless fey creatures and elves, or other people not represented by the local kingdoms. The players made sure to put an end to that once they ran across each other and then ended up with a scroll of Raise Dead from him. The casting cost due the god was paid at the scribing of the scroll like any material component, but they knew what he'd done to create it. They kept it to use for a good cause in hopes of doing some good with it (but still had it unused by end of the game).

After seven years I'm sort of used to that style and make keep if for my next campaign.

 

[saviirkad]

I really struggled with how to introduce deities into my world, just did not like my ideas. And the players weren't looking to engage with anything that needed deities, like we didnt have any clerics or paladins, and the lack of temples, worshippers, etc., just went mostly unnoticed or unmentioned.

So after a few years, I mean. I just kind of went with there being no gods. When it finally became relevant to talk about it, I didnt want to just say "uhhhh, yeah, war god has been here this whooole time." So I said there used to be gods but not anymore. Some things that are usually of divine domain have been taken over by others. The vagueness at the time was presented as a mystery because time has moved on for so long that there are no mortals who even know what a god is, and most immortals too.

This ended up being latched onto and became a driving force for the rest of the 8 year campaign. I created a divine war that ended eons ago, between the gods who wanted to sacrifice the world for their own survival and the gods who wanted to sacrifice themselves for the world's survival. The latter won, and they followed through. The gods removed themselves. Eventually the party learned of a threat beyond the Beyond, out past the Outside. A threat that made gods afraid enough to choose between destroying their tether or destroying themselves to avoid it.

The BBEG of my campaign became someone who also came to this knowledge, and who wished to call this Entity forth. His motivations for doing so were thwarted, but the summons went through and the Threat became imminent. The party accumulated as much remaining divine energies they could and fought a three-stage battle that I definitely based off of the OG FF7 final boss fight, against an eldritch horror who preyed upon gods.

The party did win. The threat is over. Deities can now exist, and the party is choosing to relinquish their powers rather than rising to godhood themselves. So for the next campaign, when we get to it, I'll be right back to where I started.

 

[Indagare Nogitsune]

I really struggled with how to introduce deities into my world, just did not like my ideas. And the players weren't looking to engage with anything that needed deities, like we didnt have any clerics or paladins, and the lack of temples, worshippers, etc., just went mostly unnoticed or unmentioned.

So after a few years, I mean. I just kind of went with there being no gods. When it finally became relevant to talk about it, I didnt want to just say "uhhhh, yeah, war god has been here this whooole time." So I said there used to be gods but not anymore. Some things that are usually of divine domain have been taken over by others. The vagueness at the time was presented as a mystery because time has moved on for so long that there are no mortals who even know what a god is, and most immortals too.

This ended up being latched onto and became a driving force for the rest of the 8 year campaign. I created a divine war that ended eons ago, between the gods who wanted to sacrifice the world for their own survival and the gods who wanted to sacrifice themselves for the world's survival. The latter won, and they followed through. The gods removed themselves. Eventually the party learned of a threat beyond the Beyond, out past the Outside. A threat that made gods afraid enough to choose between destroying their tether or destroying themselves to avoid it.

The BBEG of my campaign became someone who also came to this knowledge, and who wished to call this Entity forth. His motivations for doing so were thwarted, but the summons went through and the Threat became imminent. The party accumulated as much remaining divine energies they could and fought a three-stage battle that I definitely based off of the OG FF7 final boss fight, against an eldritch horror who preyed upon gods.

The party did win. The threat is over. Deities can now exist, and the party is choosing to relinquish their powers rather than rising to godhood themselves. So for the next campaign, when we get to it, I'll be right back to where I started.

Not quite. The Deities might be able to exist again, but they would need to figure out how they fit into a world that's been without them for so long. The next campaign could be about establishing these ties.

 

[saviirkad]

Not quite. The Deities might be able to exist again, but they would need to figure out how they fit into a world that's been without them for so long. The next campaign could be about establishing these ties.

The way the game went and ended, effectively means that the timeline in which the world was like that will now never realize itself. The new gods that arise will, by the point in which new campaigns can be set, have well-established themselves within a timeline that never knew what came before. Though I intend to add many parallels for familiarity's sake. The state of the world will be familiar, but changed.

 

[cbwjm]

In the setting I made ages ago, the gods are from a race of celestials who seized the cornerstones of creation, ascending them to godhood and allowing them to cast back the fiendish horde invading the upper planes. They then bound the elementals into the inner planes, banished their titan brothers, and bound the dragon elders to sleep beneath the earth before undoing much of the damage to the mortal realm.

From these gods, the different races built their own pantheons, the knowledge of their gods being one and the same being eventually lost. Priests tend not to follow a singular god, they follow the pantheon just as all of the worshippers do.

Though the gods do have power over aspects of reality, they aren't needed for these things to exist and keep going, the sun will still rise without a sun god.