How many gods is too many gods?

[Connorsrpg]

You can never have too many deities Find ways to bring them all in in small ways, such as a shrine in a forge, a statue over the fire in the inn, their symbol/image carved into a weapon, etc.

You info does not have to be pervasive. Just enough to get players' interest and when you do use more of that deity.

Your deity set up looks a little like our homeworld. See Religion tabs on RHS if interested: http://cellworld.wikidot.com/

 

[StormbringerAUS]

One

 

[Mistwell]

I believe a maximum of about 3000 gods can fully manifest on DiscWorld

 

[Ancalagon]

Players of clerics and other religiously inclined PCs can create their own gods if desired.

When one of my players said she wanted to play a cleric with the knowledge domain, I made up half a dozen knowledge-related gods and let her choose one. The Memory Tree is the one she picked... a bit of a shame, I was fond of Wato, keeper of secrets, who demands the sacrifice of *hands*.

 

[SkidAce]

It really depends on how you want to go about it. Greyhawk has hundreds of deities, as does the Realms. Dragonlance has only about 2 dozen, and Dark Sun doesn't really have any. Your setup is particularly well thought out, but I would suggest a few minor changes:

8 Overdieties - This works pretty well, but I would just consider them the Greater Gods, because that's how you describe them. I would try to make sure that their alignments are fairly spread out, or perhaps just unaligned (since they are above such things). In general they probably won't have much in the way of direct followers, but they may receive homage in the temples of the 32, since they are the creators.

32 Greater Gods - These should be the lesser gods, as they are more active with the world, having the majority of the temples. I would consider reducing this number down, because it makes more sense for there to be more of the racial gods. Swapping the 32 and 20 should work fine.

20 Racial Gods - These should be the demi-gods of your world. They probably don't have a lot of direct worship, like the overgods, except among those of the same race. There should be more of these than the 32, and might be tied into their church. They can provide spells, but on a limited basis, so there shouldn't be as many clerics/druids/paladins/rangers as the others.

I would organize your religions as such: the lesser gods hold the majority of worshipers, but each of these religions also offers worship to a greater god, plus one or more demi-gods. The specifics of the demi-gods could also be regional, so a demi-god may not be worshiped in all areas. This way allows for each temple/church/religion to provide information on multiple deities, which helps expand knowledge to your players.

To provide the information to the players, I'd suggest you have only 2 or 3 religions in your starting area. Provide them with the details of those religions, which should provide somewhere between 6-15 deities to start with. You could also detail a few other religions where are foes of the local religions, but that information is less specific. As you expand the campaign, you can add in new religions as desired.

Well written.

 

[Li Shenron]

Sooo, basically it's fine to have as many as I want as long as I don't force feed info on them to the players.

Yes, do not make a presentation of all your deities before the group, just like you wouldn't do that for all the 100 kingdoms in your world, all your 1000 monsters or all your 10000 NPCs

 

[Voi_D_ragon]

It really depends on how you want to go about it. Greyhawk has hundreds of deities, as does the Realms. Dragonlance has only about 2 dozen, and Dark Sun doesn't really have any. Your setup is particularly well thought out, but I would suggest a few minor changes:

8 Overdieties - This works pretty well, but I would just consider them the Greater Gods, because that's how you describe them. I would try to make sure that their alignments are fairly spread out, or perhaps just unaligned (since they are above such things). In general they probably won't have much in the way of direct followers, but they may receive homage in the temples of the 32, since they are the creators.

32 Greater Gods - These should be the lesser gods, as they are more active with the world, having the majority of the temples. I would consider reducing this number down, because it makes more sense for there to be more of the racial gods. Swapping the 32 and 20 should work fine.

20 Racial Gods - These should be the demi-gods of your world. They probably don't have a lot of direct worship, like the overgods, except among those of the same race. There should be more of these than the 32, and might be tied into their church. They can provide spells, but on a limited basis, so there shouldn't be as many clerics/druids/paladins/rangers as the others.

I would organize your religions as such: the lesser gods hold the majority of worshipers, but each of these religions also offers worship to a greater god, plus one or more demi-gods. The specifics of the demi-gods could also be regional, so a demi-god may not be worshiped in all areas. This way allows for each temple/church/religion to provide information on multiple deities, which helps expand knowledge to your players.

To provide the information to the players, I'd suggest you have only 2 or 3 religions in your starting area. Provide them with the details of those religions, which should provide somewhere between 6-15 deities to start with. You could also detail a few other religions where are foes of the local religions, but that information is less specific. As you expand the campaign, you can add in new religions as desired.

This is more or less exactly how it was thought out, execpt the overdeities aren't the creators of the multiverse (strictly speaking). They're all N by the way.

Aaand... 20 isn't divisible by 8 .

I do have a list of demigods/racials for elves, dwarves and orcs, but for humans I thought I'd just vary them up by region since one of fantasy's tropes is that while the elder races are all very homogenuos, humans have large variety of different cultures.

 

[Lanefan]

I find deities are one aspect of world design that will, if allowed, inevitably expand to fill any available space plus 10%.

You think you've got all the deities you need, and then the party find a new culture which would logically have its own local deities; and even if these are just reskinned deities already written up elsewhere you've still got to write them up again in their reskinned form to show how they differ from the established norm.

As for how I do it overall: there's 1 prime deity (who is, in effect, the living universe) who stays in or becomes the background most of the time.

Then there's 4 deities below that, one for each paired combination of Good-Evil and Male-Female.

Below that there's 16 more deities, one for each paired combination of the 8 non-pure-Neutral alignments and Male-Female (so Female CG, Male CG, Female CN, Male CN, etc.). So, 1 + 4 + 16 = 21 deities. That's it...for the actual real deities.

Just about every other deity - and I've got lots of 'em - is in fact an aspect of one of these 21, though it's sometimes nigh-impossible to tell who is an aspect of who (and many worshippers would probably be highly offended if they ever found out!). Thus, of the 12 full deities in my Greek pantheon, going by memory one is actually in the 21 and the rest are a bunch of other deities' aspects. Zeus, for example, is an aspect of Moradin (!); who is one of the 21...one of the top 4, in fact; he's the Male Good. I don't have my notes on this stuff in front of me right now and thus I forget which of the Greeks is in the 21 - I want to say Athena or Artemis?

Immortals - i.e. those who've risen to quasi-divinity from mortality (a not-uncommon end-game career goal for PCs!) - are a different matter. These beings have divine powers in some ways but cannot support Clerics or grant spells etc. Most associate with a pantheon, some might serve a deity or even another immortal; but others are completely independent.

Lanefan

 

[Coroc]

[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] female deity with good alignment?

Don't you know the Soul of the woman was created below

(Led Zeppelin Dazed and Confused)

 

[the Jester]

I'm a believer in the idea that, if it suits the religion, there is no such thing as too many deities. Or too few. I've had a pantheon of thousands of gods in a big cultural gestalt, most of which I never even detailed.

I'm also a fan of local gods, small gods of local features or a single village or even a single family.