How to make a believable pantheon for a homebrew world.

[Celebrim]

One option could be to pick some real-world religions, replace all real-world names and terms, and then modify the details here and there.

I think it isn't a bad idea to inform your world's religions with your knowledge of real-world religions, but I think it is a serious mistake on several levels to mix real-world religions with the serial numbers filed off or in pastiche or really in any other form with the game. An invented pantheon is better in every way, and less likely to cause table conflict.

The difficulty in representing a more realistic take on religions, is that belief is also added, but eventually there is disagreement at every possible level, even at the level at which some pretend they don't believe but rather know, while others that it is impossible to know.

This is no real difficulty. Have the gods themselves advocate for these very positions. One god insists he doesn't just believe that his way is right, he knows it is. Another god scoffs, not only are you wrong, but it is impossible to know anything. "Truth is just self-delusion; there is no truth except that there is no Truth.", claims the chaotic god.

This means, that real-world religions have a lot of overlapping: for instance all monotheistic religions essentially believe in Good, but clearly they often have heated discussions to say the least.

Monotheistic religions quibble over the will, nature, and desires of their deity. But this isn't an exclusively monotheistic problem, and imagine the heated discussions that occur in a polytheistic setting when you have say 4 or 5 different deities vying for dominion of the province of rain and weather - each claiming the right to priority of worship, primacy of their moral outlook, first place in offerings and services, and superiority by just right over their fellows.

All in all I'd say that you'll have to tread carefully between making religious powers tangible, and not being able to reveal much about which religion is true if any.

Having all religions be 'true' in the since that some powerful being representing the object of the worship of that religion exists, in no way at all reduces the conflict between them. The essential question of, "What do you choose to believe?", or may be more to the point, "What one ought to believe?", remains.

Yes. I suppose you can actually DM a religion-fiction campaign (think The Da Vinci Code) to be a success. Although IMO that kind of story works well if it's based on actually the real world, i.e. if you have the characters live in our world, and discover some uncomfortable truths about real-world religions.

This is I think incredibly naïve. For example, suppose your group is mostly atheists and you play an Indiana Jones type campaign, and you discover the Ark of the Covenant and that God Is Real. Does this constitute an uncomfortable truth to your group? No, of course not. The atheists are likely to believe simply, "For the purposes of the campaign, this is true." But now suppose the Storyteller insists, "No, you guys aren't getting it. We are playing in the real world. God really exists." Again, does this constitute an uncomfortable truth? No, again, this constitutes an uncomfortable moment at the table, where in the atheists in the group learn the story teller can't separate the fiction of his story from reality, and is busy proselytizing behind the DM screen, but it's not like the atheists have never encountered fiction that presumes the existence of God.

Now reverse the situation. Suppose your group is mostly believing orthodox religious and you decide to do a Dan Brown style game where various heresies are revealed to have a basis in fact. Does this represent an uncomfortable truth? No, of course not. The believers in the group will simply accept that for the purposes of this fiction, those things are true but they have no bearing on the real world. It's not like believers have never encountered stories in which various heresies are presumed to be true, or fiction in which God is presumed not to exist. If the Story Teller insists, "No, you aren't getting it. We are playing in the real world. God isn't real.", will this be an uncomfortable truth? No, but it likely will be an uncomfortable moment at the game table, as the players realize that the story teller is unable to separate his conceits from reality and that he's trying to proselytizing from behind the DM screen.

At best either way you'll end up with an argument over whether or not the story teller has his facts straight and an outbreak of, depending on the zeal of the parties involved, passionate attempts to covert people over to their way of thinking. No one of which makes for much accomplished within the gaming session.

Now, I suppose you could have a reasonably successful campaign presenting the players with comfortable validation truths - a campaign that preached to the choir, as it where. If the group was entirely believers, a story line that validated that the fantasy world had the same God as the real world might be validating, comfortable, and welcome. Likewise, among a group of non-believers, a story line that validated non-belief and presented the proxies of believers of the real world in an unflattering life might be similarly validating, comfortable, and welcome. But this is hardly the same as exploring religious or moral space in your game play, and chances are you'll find your players beliefs aren't nearly as uniform and predictable as you might have presumed.

I've been friends with Atheists, Christians and Hindus. I've gamed with lapsed Moslems and lapsed Mormons, but also believing Mormons and believing Evangelical Christians. It's alright to have players with different opinions giving their different opinions through their play. But its best to keep this all as a proxy friendly discussion, and not try to impose your views as DM on the players by asserting things about the player's real beliefs through your claims in game.

If you make them exist in a totally fantasy world with totally fantasy religions, chances are they couldn't care less for fantasy deities to be proved false or different.

Yes, but in a fantasy story fantasy deities can in fact be proved false or different. A fantasy story can prove nothing about a deity presumed to exist (or not exist) in the real world.

GK Chesterton once said, "A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author." If you have fantasy gods, you leave space for the reader learn something unique about the people in your fantasy world. If you have a pastiche of real religions, you only end up telling us what you believe.

 

[Li Shenron]

<avoid>

 

[Celebrim]

I stopped reading here...

Err... yeah. Ok.

...because I think you misunderstood what I tried to say... "Uncomfortable truth" was just an expression, not meant that the players would feel uncomfortable.

Based on your explanation, I haven't misunderstood your meaning. I take 'uncomfortable truth' in this context to mean something that provokes an emotional and intellectual response from the participant - excitement, interest, introspection, etc. And I maintain that you are no more likely to do that with a 'real' setting than a 'fantasy' setting, because ultimately you 'reality inspired' setting is just another fantasy setting however you may try to maintain a pastiche of being real. Indeed, I maintain that by placing the details at some distance from the real world things, you probably more likely to inspire introspection and offer more opportunities for exploration because you are immediately avoiding probably the biggest source of distraction, does your reality inspired setting actually bear a close enough resemblance to reality.

Science fiction and fantasy are at there strongest when they are examining reality by way of contrast and comparison. By contrast to what you hold about reality, I postulate a universe where this is true. Instead of arguing about the details of reality, I ask you to respond to that (in a way that is inevitably informed by what you believe about this reality).

(unless they are particularly sensitive... indeed The Da Vinci Code caused controversy among some religious people, but most believers weren't offended, they simply took it as a fantasy story).

Just as an side, it is quite possible to hold something to be offensive and to believe something is a fantasy story. A fantasy about child rape would probably offend most people even if they took it as a fantasy story. Furthermore, the majority of 'offense' taken against The Da Vinci Code was primarily because one of the conceits of the story was that it was not fantasy. In other words, Dan Brown in marketing the book made claims about the stories factuality, particularly that all the artistic, historical, geographical and architectural details found in the book were true, and in that light it provoked a backlash because those claims were in fact false. The remaining offense was primarily taken by members of real organizations who felt they had been slandered by mischaracterizations of their beliefs and memberships. Given the way the beliefs and members of the gaming community are frequently slandered in their characterization by the media, I would think this would be something the gaming community could sympathize with. I don't think you have to be particularly sensitive about your gaming to not want to see gamers presented in wholly negative and unsympathetic terms.

What I meant is that, if the OP is interested in making a whole story based on uncovering religious secrets, and since he is looking for a more "realistic" take on gods and pantheons, it's worth considering the option of using real world religions in the first place.

Again, I protest that I know what you meant and that I read what you wrote. And, I still for the reasons I have outlined think that is very bad advice.

If you are going to engage in mature story lines, and I mean 'mature' in the best sense of the word and not as a synonym for juvenile fascination with sex and violence, then I think that you need to create a safe mental space for that exploration to occur. If I create a universe with the idea of reincarnation and karma, then it might be interesting to explore the different ideas about how karma is accumulated and canceled, but it doesn't follow that making that universe explicitly Hindu and pretending it is the real world adds anything to the setting. Either the participants won't be conversant in the intricate disputes of the Hindu religion, and thus have no starting point I wouldn't have to recreate in game anyway, or else they might actually be practicing Hindus - in which case all the fun of exploring the question is sapped out of the situation because I'm being flippant and vain about something they take very seriously.

Likewise, while 'Dogs in the Vineyard' involves a clear pastiche of early Mormonism, it doesn't follow that the setting would be made more intriguing by making it conform more to reality - which involves less questioning of the things explored by the setting and more (I feel unnecessary) exploring what you feel about real Mormonism.

 

[Celebrim]

Let me go one level harsher than that.

If you were playing 'My Life with Master', it would be terrifically bad advice to tell the would be story teller to base the Master on some players abusive parent or ex-spouse - or your stereotyping of a spouse or parent you felt was abusive - or really in any way someone's real relationships just because you thought this would produce a more satisfying and engaging story.

You are likely to get emotional engagement, but it won't be with your story.

Alternate universes offer plenty of opportunities for engagement. Consider all the alignment debates or how much geek philosophizing Star Wars provokes.

 

[Nellisir]

Honestly, I'm not going to read Celebrim & Li Shenron's arguing back and forth. Here's what I think.

The Romans went into new regions, looked at the religions, and divvied up which local gods equated with which Roman gods. They write things like "The Gauls know Mercury as such-and-such...". So they did conflate pantheons. So you could make one pantheon and give them different names and different relationships in different areas. Frankly, this is probably the most realistic.

You can identify a few core portfolios, and create gods for each pantheon that fill those. Almost every culture has a god of the sky and a goddess of the hearth. You can mix and match traits to make things different - Odin and Zeus are both leaders of the pantheon, but they have very different natures.

Don't overthink it. As a player, 90% of my concentration is on what's happening in the game right now. I'm not writing religious tracts to NPCs. It's easy to get bogged down in campaign details and lose sight of the campaign itself. Or if you have to do it, at least acknowledge that you're writing for yourself, and be happy about it.

 

[Li Shenron]

Honestly, I'm not going to read Celebrim & Li Shenron's arguing back and forth.

Me neither. I think you're doing the right thing.

 

[Razjah]

You can identify a few core portfolios, and create gods for each pantheon that fill those. Almost every culture has a god of the sky and a goddess of the hearth. You can mix and match traits to make things different - Odin and Zeus are both leaders of the pantheon, but they have very different natures.

Up until the Odin and Zeus comment, this is basically what I do. I gave up on homebrewing gods because my players never learned them. I created a small pantheon with generic names like:
The warrior
The lady
The shepherd
The dark lord

These work well enough for players, if someone is playing a character with a more learned view of the gods- I let the player add details. The names are simple enough for the players to remember and there is no truly evil god. I always found evil gods weird, this allows for the Dark Lord to be a god of shadows and secrets. While many who worship him are evil, the dark lord is prayed to during raids to hide the village's women, children, and elderly.