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

[Celebrim]

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

You've already touched on this somewhat, but to add to what @Charlaquin said about D&D being largely written lately by people with little background in religion, most ancient societies defined "gods" rather more loosely than we would to today where "god" means something like the Abrahamic god. Gods in my campaign world, the divine rank things that have clerics, all have an origin story as being produced from fruit of the tree of life ("Yggdrasil") or else offspring of the couplings of those beings. But underneath them are a great host of created and uncreated spirits down to the level of things like sprites which are often worshipped (and relate to Shamans rather than Clerics), and for that animistic portion of my worlds cosmology I draw heavily on Celtic, Japanese, and Edo and other West African myths. These are the "small gods" or kami in in Shinto terms, or nymphs and similar "gods" in Greek terms and at the top level they shade off into figures that seem divine from the perspective of a typical mortal.

While major deities like Showna and Aravar played background roles in my last campaign, spirits of that level from Slaad Lords of Chaos, to the Archangel of Fire, to the Secundus of Submission, to Earth Spirits with global scope, to Ulgrick the Devourer, to the Prince of Cats are also flitting around the PC's lives in various ways. The Shaman at one point got to meet the earthly form of one of her spirit patrons. And beyond that, one PC is haunted by the ghost of a woman he accidentally murdered, and for a while another was being fed on by a type of fairy that bewitches men and lives off their body heat - hypothermia while in the jungle. And all of those things are in some way "kami" in the Japanese sense or "gods" in the Greek sense of the word. The fairy was the "god" of a particular sulphureous hot spring, for example.

My point is that you don't have to drop Zeus or the equivalent into the campaign to make the divine or spiritual world important to it, and Ghibli's work is an excellent example of having a world haunted by powerful spirits in a way that is more closely grounded with ancient religion than the average D&D writer.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

In my setting, gods are basically Zeus's kids' level of gods, more in charge of things people do than things like the sun or the ocean (they can be, but they have to spend power on that, which they do for branding purposes). For example, Kord is the God of Training. If you spend effort to increase your strength, dexterity, constitution, or movement speed (but not by magic), you Venerate Kord; that gives Kord power. To encourage people to do that, he has priests (many of whom own or work in gyms on the side). To get people to pay attention to His priests, he is the God of Storms. That costs power, but if people think skipping leg day caused a hailstorm, that is usually ends up with a net positive for Kord.

Most gods are Veneration farmers. Most of the Lawful gods and a fair number of the Good and Evil gods believe there will be a Twilight War (either Law vs Chaos or Good vs Evil) and planning on being the boss of their faction takes up most of their non-farming time. Clerics are a god's attempt to move the needle, but the universe is a big place, and most gods have a couple of clerics running around, so the higher level the cleric is, the more likely to attract the god's attention.

Slightly off topic, but demon lords have a similar gig. The Abyss awards them when a dragon, elemental, fey, giant, or humanoid gets changed into an aberration, construct, fiend, monstrosity, ooze, or undead (Yeenoghu has the sole concession for beasts becoming aberrations, constructs, fiends, monstrosities, oozes, or undead), as that damages reality in a way that makes it easier for the Abyss to absorb that chunk of real estate (it takes a lot of damage for that to happen, but a zombie apocalypse is usually sufficient). You can blame Orcus for the local necromancer's scheme, but honestly, Orcus doesn't really care what the necromancer is doing as long as he/she is turning living people into undead (for Orcus to get paid, the process has to start when the person is alive, like when a vampire feeds or a ghoul bites someone).

 

[Stormonu]

I picked up a neat little book recently called Petty Gods. It really got me thinking because it is a collection of just-above-human gods who hold dominion over a very narrow slice of reality - for example, there's one petty god of a specific tavern who protects the tavern, its customers and worship consists of telling the god interesting tales or anecdotes. Another is responsible for shaping the nightmares of a certain group of individuals. There's even one that is the the Martyred Saint of Untested Adventures, amusingly called Newb.

It recently has me rethinking my campaigns gods - the gods are restricted from directly intervening, but they have at their disposal a host of empowered servants they can send on particular tasks or to watch over particular individuals. Battle by proxy, influence by demonstration. Like the petty gods, these servants can be more forward in their dealings with mortals - appearing to give quests, doling out items, aiding where needed. Though they have some power, they can be slain, captured and the like and they have need of mortal's help because they can't be everywhere at once. One might linger in a temple or a ruin, another might hold a bathhouse in the city where it acts as an oracle or prophet, trying to influence those about it.