Mashing together deities from different books

[Psion]

I have the two games mechanics quareters books. Great reference. I have incorporated liberty in my game as "Dragonwatch Harbor."

Temple Quarter is a nice and flavorful book. But alas, I have no intention of using the deities. I am plum full of deities and don't feel like adding any more. I usually meld deities together in new products to make them resemble the ones I already have.

This is a problem because a lot of the Temple Quarter material relies on the flavor of their deities.

I do use the BotR deities as a selection of "old deities" in my game. I have also used a few other sources to draw deities from, but I think the deities that I want to feature as central figures in the game are pretty much set.

Has anyone out there gone through the exercise of melding deities together or making in-place replacements? I've done it a few times. Darkfuries Temples & Shrines was surprisingly easy to make correspondances with my existing deities. But the city of Liberty is proving a bit harder.

 

[HellHound]

I love doing that. In fact, Once I wrote the deities section for the mind flayer book, I went on to write deities for my unpublished psionics book, and for a lark, I transposed them over the deities from the core Arcanis setting and mushed them together and figured out which ones were which... All of the Illeth gods now have corresponding deities in Arcanis from the Arcanis pantheon.

That said, I haven't checked out the Temple Quarter yet.

 

[Garnfellow]

There was an ancient, fascinating Ed Greenwood article in Dragon (issue 54 or thereabouts) that walks the reader through the creation of a mix-and-match pantheon, using his then house campaign as an example. Pretty nifty stuff.

 

[BOZ]

which, of course, had a lot to do with how Greenwood's pantheon came about. some, like Oghma, Loviatar, and Silvanus didn't even get a name change, but some were altered and renamed (guess who is who!)

 

[Psion]

There was an ancient, fascinating Ed Greenwood article in Dragon (issue 54 or thereabouts) that walks the reader through the creation of a mix-and-match pantheon, using his then house campaign as an example. Pretty nifty stuff.

Sort of not what I am talking about. Though some of that would go on, what I am more getting at is mashing together individual deities (e.g., adapting text from different d20 products so that two products talking about their own spin on a deity concept are used to refer to the same deity in your game.)

 

[BOZ]

a while back, i got the idea of taking the old 1E DDG, making copies of all the gods, whiting out their names, and mixing them all up in a shuffle (sure, some would be obvious - Chtulhu anyone?). then i'd sit down with the other people in the group, and we'd sort through them and pick and choose what would make a good pantheon. then they'd get renamed, described a little differently, and fleshed out.

never did quite get that finished though...

 

[HellHound]

a while back, i got the idea of taking the old 1E DDG, making copies of all the gods, whiting out their names, and mixing them all up in a shuffle (sure, some would be obvious - Chtulhu anyone?). then i'd sit down with the other people in the group, and we'd sort through them and pick and choose what would make a good pantheon. then they'd get renamed, described a little differently, and fleshed out.

Whoa - how come the goddess of secrets is eating 1d4 random people per round, no saving throw?

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I'm not sure that I'm 100% on what you're getting at, Psion, but let me just toss this out anyway.

The Twin Crowns setting (which I think you've read) has a couple of gods that are deliberately presented as dual-aspected. You have two major divisions, each worshiping a variation of the same god.

Something like that?

 

[Psion]

I'm not sure that I'm 100% on what you're getting at, Psion, but let me just toss this out anyway.

The Twin Crowns setting (which I think you've read) has a couple of gods that are deliberately presented as dual-aspected. You have two major divisions, each worshiping a variation of the same god.

Something like that?

Well, I do do that in my setting, but that's mostly a little flavor detail.

I am more after the idea of, well, consolodating deities from vastly different sources. I don't cotton well with the idea of tracking 100s of deities. What I like to do is -- for example -- if there are two good gods of magic that have some similarities, sythesizing them into a deity that you can use source material from either source to refer to. For example, Mystra and the good goddess of magic in Temples & Shrines.

 

[BOZ]

Whoa - how come the goddess of secrets is eating 1d4 random people per round, no saving throw?

sssshhhh!!