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.

 

[Brendan Byrd]

< tangent >

“Gods, huh, what are they good for?”
Deus ex machina, of course.

< /tangent >

 

[nevin]

So while there are settings where the absence of deities tends to cause issues (Athas most notably and Ravenloft to some degree), there seems to be no reason deities actually have to exist in a setting; besides giving Clerics spells, divine beings seem to do very little else. Unlike in RL religions where the divine were literally responsible for various natural phenomena (and were supposed to be in charge of some Human-made things too), the D&D deities tend to be very aloft, even to the detriment of the world they're attached to (I'm looking at you Krynn).

There are usually reasons given for why this is the case (generally amounting to some sort of treaty between them and powerful infernal beings), but it often feels like they'd not intervene even if there were some world-ending crisis. Of course, the other side of this is that it's to empower the PCs to really help shape events--no matter how bizarrely one-sided it may be.

A problem I am facing as I try to develop my setting is that I want a closer connection between the divine and mortal realms. This is partly because I imagine the deities to be archfey (a concept explored in the Gargoyles tv series). Some of my thoughts running thus:

1) Where the Other World touches the Prime, various types of circles form. Most common are fairy circles. Larger and less common are crop circles. And, finally, there are henges. The henges are sites of worship, and I could easily imagine some round temple forming in its center or somewhere close by where the resident archfey resides (when it so desires).

2) There's no technical reason Archfey can't have Clerics given fey deities do exist. However, it still leaves unresolved what the difference would be between a Cleric and a Warlock in terms of worship vs pact.

3) If the Fey are involved more in the Prime and even responsible for various natural phenomena (if the Spring Sprites don't show your area gets literally stuck in winter; the Fey in charge of the sea can literally save your ship or sink it, etc.), then how is best to work this all in without it becoming too much? It's one thing to imagine a world not too dissimilar to that of Disney's The Nutcracker Suite combined with The Pastoral Symphony; it's another to figure out how that sort of thing works in practice (having house-hold protectors would make thieves have issues, but also PCs who need to get into a stronghold).

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?

I think gods are the most underused mechanic in D&D. If there is any divine worshiper in the party you suddenly have someone whose entire level of power is predicated on keeping thier deity happy. Suddenly Alignment is important. Also Gods in D&D games are usually mythological style gods who don't know everything and have their own goals and power base to protect. And yet most DM's just allow the cleric to abuse their alignment, ignore their church and do their own thing. In my games the First world has different rules than the rest of the universe. Fey affects like the spring sprites could easily be at the wrong time of year because the rules of the Prime Material are not thier rules. Also ArchFey have incredible power but they do not have connection to the Divine source of the Universe which requires a connection to the outer realms. Thus they are limited to granting powers with pacts. Warlocks etc. Also these pacts are much like what devils use and require a deal. Fey always have to keep the wording of the deal. But much like Devils they are the master of saying what they want to say while appearing to say something else.

But Dieties, Arch Devils, Arch Fey and other powerful creatures are effectively always stirring the pot affecting the mortal realm as they do thier own things to maintain or gain power or even just find some relief from centuries of boredom.

Remember to make the deals with powers that make deals, or laws of worship for clerics relatable to the characters. There should be consequences for breaking them, or even for fulfilling them most excellently. It's a world for the Pc's where religion is alive and the gods will lay you low or lift you up in the right circumstance. And either scenario brings lots of attention from other powers as well. I've had a diety restrict a cleric to healing only spells and no weapons as a punishemnt. I've taken spellcasting away for an entire session till the cleric atoned. I've had a devil make the deal then tell the pc that if X guy dies then you die. He's important in my plans. And the guy was a paladin to boot. (oh the fun of that scrambled player brain.). Just remember to reward as much as you punish if at all possible. Otherwise you may not have clerics in your game.

These guys should be the movers and shakers that even kings and high clerics are afraid of. Think of them that way.

 

[Umbran]

... Unlike in RL religions where the divine were literally responsible for various natural phenomena...
...

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?

So, there's a difference between what the gods actually do, and what people think they do.

I prefer my fictional religions to still require faith - so I usually don't have deities taking giant avatars and walking along on the surface of the world, or mortals going to see them, and coming back to report on the experience.

Lore about gods in my world is actually lore, not fictional facts I call "lore".

I don't do much with deities to "keep things interesting" - I use social phenomena around religion to keep things interesting.