Hobbit4Hire$
Explorer
Forgive me, I should have been more clear.
My thinking was that the players ARE agents of a "higher plane." Think of them as anthropomorphic personifications of higher principles and forces. They are like the Angels and/or Demons bounded to Words from In Nomine, or the Gods who embody specific Runes in Runequest. They are trying to advance their specific concept in the mortal plane. They engage in a cosmic chess game with each other on the mortal plane. They could directly fight each other, but that would be catastrophic for the various planes of existence.
Thinking out loud, the game world would have at least 2 planes of existence: the mortal world, and the "higher" world. If you want to use terms in Pathfinder, then the mortal world would be planes like the Prime Material Plane and the Elemental Planes, while the "higher world" would be the Outer Planes where the various deities reside.
Success would be measured in the number of followers and access points to the material world.
So one aspect is that the gods compete with each other for members of their respective material institutions.
However, I was also thinking of adding a Ragnarok-like scenario, where the various celestial players have to also co-operate with each other to stave off some world-destroying threat.
I am just trying to come up with a failure state. For me, failure is not a lack of belief. The idea is that these gods are the type of gods who created the universe. They are not created by, and dependent upon, mortal belief, like Terry Pratchett's Discworld.
I am still massaging it out.
