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Message: <blockquote data-quote="OptionalRule" data-source="post: 2984612" data-attributes="member: 6680">In terms of traditions about how cultures came to realize their gods it usually involves either visions, visitations, or stumbling across them.  Visions are quiet frequent with oracles in ancient cultures saying they had a vision of a particular god, weather they be dreams or induced by something it varies.  Visitations are quiet common as well with tons of stories of gods coming to earth and vexing we poor humans, Zeus was particularly randy and liked to visit the ladies in this way.  Stumbling across them is also a common occurance so you have heroes ascending mountains, going to hidden grottos, or descending into the earth to sometimes finding a god and being tested or sometimes seeking one out for special favor.  In each culture these are the most common ways they say they discovered their gods.  Analyzing it from a popular culture point of view of how did particular god names become common, who knows.  Why do we say forum instead of messageboard, why Blog instead of super-fantastic-posty-drama-thingie?  Who knows.When you start to see Gods in many fantasy settings you get a much more direct approach, in The Realms or Middle Earth they quiet often show up in some dramatic way and flat out say "My name is Eru and I'm a god".  More dramatically people get caught up in a war the god is raging or directly attacked.    As to what makes a god in a fantasy setting, I think you've got your work cut out for you.  I don't think there can be a standard answer for this and it's an important part of world crafting for the GM to answer this.  RPG mages sit around tossing powers about that would give many legendary gods a run for their money.  It seems the standard fantasy answer is power way beyond mortal comprehension.  As a flavor item people often say gods are fueld by belief but it has little real application in a game world.  By this standard an egyptian pharoah would be a god in name and in fact.  To me if a mortal can contest with them, even an epic one, they aren't a god. Demi-god perhaps but in a world where any number of dragons or outsiders really exist it seems you'd have to go well above and beyond to earn the title god.Or you could say the threashold is low.  "God" could be relative, more like a guardian spirit.   You could have a dragon considered a god for a particular city if it did favors for it's worshipers.  God could be the title for any patron being worshiped (or feared) by a local population that is petitioned.  I don't think ancient man drew an intellectual line between powerful spirit and god very often.</blockquote>

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