How do your Gods get Power?

[Shallown]

How do your Gods get their God-like power.

My Gods get power from actions and thoughts of the commoners. Ie tell a white lie and the God of deception gets a little bit of power. Now admittedly its a fraction of nothing but when a world of millions may tell one white lie each day or better yet live a lie then he get's stronger.

I like this model becuase it allows for dark evil Gods that don't have established churches. Their groups of worshipers are much more cult like an sinister. their goals are to spread a different kind of evil. I figure that the more "innocent" the person the greater the power when they commit an "Empowering" act. So a cult of murder instead of commiting lots of murders would try to arange for more "innocent" people to commit the crime.

It also explains why Gods of nature exist without lots of worshipers. Why would the God of untamed beast have a bunch of worshipers. The fact that nature exist ,untamed, fuels her divinity.

This also explains why paladins and clerics have oaths etc. A paladin shouldn't lie, even small ones becuase it fuels an evil God. He might due it in the extreme but not casually.

So what are peoples thoughts on the origin of Divinity?
Do you have a story of creation?

I did mine a little different this time. I had Death made first and all others sprang from him. He is extremely nuetral and knows that eventually, even the Gods, will come to his realm.
Basically he made one god and thought this entertaining and then created more allowing their actions to create more. So the First God's deception lie brought forth the manifistation of the God of Lies and so forth.

Thanks

Later

 

[S'mon]

My gods get power from the Beliefs of the people - usually via worship, but can be fear (especially for evil gods). To quantify this I use the Worship Points System I created, which Upper_Krust is developing in his any-day-now Immortals Handbook.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I have a wacky belief system that I haven't number crunched simply because it really isn't relevant to the players beating up monsters and taking their treasure.

First, I have gods like other worlds have bacteria. I let the players follow whoever they want to (with a major caveat that I'll get to in a bit). As the god gains followers it becomes more powerful, BUT it also becomes less attched to the reality of the world. So some small god with ten folowers could manifest all the time and have conversations with his flock. But a god with hundreds of thousands of followers would only be able to contact the prime material when high level clerics cast the usual spells to initiate conversation (e.g. commune).

In the game's history this has long been sorted out. Since it is practically impossible to determine the true benevolence of a given diety, the people of the game world assume all unknown gods are vile and don't bother looking for proof otherwise. The few "trusted" gods that exist are fairly powerful and thus don't interact with the world, while the "untrusted" gods are little better than cult powers and are great stuff for putting in out-of-the-way-forgotten-temples and the like.

Anyhoo. Ramble. Ramble. Ramble.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

My Gods don't get Power, my Gods are Power. The fact that people worship them has absolutely no influence on what they can or cannot do. They only require worship and obedience because they want to see the world evolve in a certain way, and influencing the way people think is the simplest way to achieve that goal. There are only four true Gods, and they will stay unchanged until the end of time.

 

[Crothian]

Gods get power through belief of people and concept of actions. A god can also come to being from need if things get unbalanced in certain areas.

 

[Angcuru]

My setting's gods do not get their power from their worshippers, as such a concept seems utterly self-defeating. The gods' worshippers are not a source of power, or even remotely necessary for the god to exist. Rather, the gods keep their worshippers around and do little things for them every now and then as a form of entertainment. Their power comes from the very fabric of existence itself, and different gods are able to manipulate is fabric in different ways. There are two main types of power: Creation, and Destruction. Creation power is the power to create new matter, and apply it as is seen fit. Destruction power is not so much to power to destroy as the power to change. It would seem that the Destruction power would seek to destroy the Creation power, but it is not so for the simple fact that since those with the power of Destruction cannot create, they must rely on those with the power to create to make things which they in turn change to suit their needs.

I'd go into more detail, but this is just a tidbit of info concerning the power base of a literary world I am designing, and I must beware of Idea Thieves.

 

[Cor Azer]

I have a wacky belief system that I haven't number crunched simply because it really isn't relevant to the players beating up monsters and taking their treasure.

First, I have gods like other worlds have bacteria. I let the players follow whoever they want to (with a major caveat that I'll get to in a bit). As the god gains followers it becomes more powerful, BUT it also becomes less attched to the reality of the world. So some small god with ten folowers could manifest all the time and have conversations with his flock. But a god with hundreds of thousands of followers would only be able to contact the prime material when high level clerics cast the usual spells to initiate conversation (e.g. commune).

In the game's history this has long been sorted out. Since it is practically impossible to determine the true benevolence of a given diety, the people of the game world assume all unknown gods are vile and don't bother looking for proof otherwise. The few "trusted" gods that exist are fairly powerful and thus don't interact with the world, while the "untrusted" gods are little better than cult powers and are great stuff for putting in out-of-the-way-forgotten-temples and the like.

Anyhoo. Ramble. Ramble. Ramble.

Hmm... very simple, yet very interesting. Definitely slipping into my "yoink" pile.

 

[kigmatzomat]

How do your Gods get their God-like power.

My gods are independent of worshipers. Each one is some person who so truly understands some primal truth/fact/idea that they embody it. Assuming no one is already the god of X, they become it. There's no bright light, no chorus of angels, nada. They may go weeks or even years without realizing that they have great power.

If a god is slain his profile goes unclaimed; there's no power stealing. Kill the god of war and there's merely no god of war. Until someone who is the very essence of war comes along who may be better or worse. This makes god-wars rare; there's little point unless the current diety of Blah is just such a total dork that everyone would rather deal with the pick of the draw and the stress of killing a god.

Additionally, the clerics serve the power, not the god. You start out as a neophyte in a religion and during the initiation ceremony you contact that power which is most like your true nature. There's no choice, you are what you are. It may change later with time, but there's no changing allegiances.

Powers without gods are harder to contact and generally have to be very primal. Good, evil, nature, war, life, death, etc. Few of the primal powers are without gods.

As a side effect, my game world doesn't have the "clerics must be within 1 step of their god" limitation because two radically different beings could both serve a similar power. Merely using Druids as a simple example, if the current God of Druids (which there isn't one) was NE, he would exclude all worshipers except NN despite being a valid Druid. This is bogus, so I assign alignment ranges to the Powers and followers and god must fall within that cloud. No CG gods or followers of LE concepts.

 

[Mercule]

I'm still working it out, but I'l give what I've got so far (and maybe yoink a couple of ideas along the way).

I absolutely detest subjectivity and "belief=power". Power flows from god to follower, not the other way around. Gods exist, for the most part, as a separate race unto themselves, although there have been a handful of mortals who have ascended to divinity.

So, what makes gods care about the mortal realm? Well, a god has the ability to augment his natural power by tying it to a sphere of influence, a bit like an item familiar. The thing is that most of these spheres exist primarily in the mortal realm. Death, storms, lies, etc. exist everywhere, but you find them in the greatest concentration on the Prime. In fact, that is the reason the Prime was created, to be a nexus for the spheres and power the deities.

As each sphere waxes and wanes in cosmic prominence so, too, does a deity's power who is associated with it. Many deities are content with relatively low-maintenance spheres that return lesser, but consistant, power. Others have spheres that are a bit more demanding, but quite important. Oceans, which just kinda sit there are at the top end of the former category; while death, which happens universally and with great frequency is at the high end of the latter.

For the record, the god of fear is the most underrated god in the cosmos -- even by most other gods. Part of this is because most beings are afraid to admit to themselves how much impact fear has in their lives. So, by being covert, he is actually accumulating power power. I sort of divine recursive loop.

A deity who takes up a sphere is required to maintain it, too. A god of death must cause, directly or indirectly, death. A god of storms must cause or stay storms. Of course, there is incentive because the better maintained a sphere is, the better the payoff is.

Now, the $64,000 question is: "What determines the importance of a sphere?" It cannot be just another way of dealing with belief, or it is still a subjective, worshipper to god flow of power. When I get that question answered, I'll have 95% of the work done.

I'm moving in the direction of having a handful of hidden "overgods". They control/represent fate and other core concepts that no god can tap into. The more impact something has on "fate" and the flow of the universe, the more divinity it bestows. I initially drew this idea from the old Masters/Immortals boxed sets and the spheres in there. Entropy played a significant role in my game way back when, but I cannot for the life of me remember what the other four spheres were. Can anyone help out, here?

 

[Kesh]

In my homebrew, the 'gods' aren't really gods. It's an animist campaign, so everything has a spirit. There are simply about a dozen 'Great Spirits' with godlike powers. Worship is simply a way to incur the favors of these spirits, and they grant spells to those whom they feel are exceptionally gifted in fulfilling their desires in the mortal world. The spirit's powers simply are a by-product of how they were created.

Also, they like to wander about the planet in material form, but generally stay out of the affairs of mortals... directly, anyway. Since one of them was killed fighting another over the rights of her chosen mortal race, there has been a detente between the great spirits which they are reluctant to break. Considering that single battle decimated a large portion of the countryside where it took place...