Mashing together deities from different books

[Psion]

Ok, but how does this help you as a game master?

"This" what.

This = My approach? It's not designed to "help me". It's just sort of the way my campaign evolved, makes sense to me, and makes me happy. I like the idea that the same goddess might be revered in entirely different worlds... or she may not.

This = the effort of this thread? To make my approach maintainable (by letting me simmer down the deities a bit), and to let me use books by different d20 publishers to support the same deity (e.g., use a plot hook from Temple Quarter, a temple layout from Temples & Shrines, a prestige class from The Pantheon & Pagan faiths all in reference to the same deity... and to have the same religion show up in Bluffside just to show the ubiquity of some deities.)

You want to mash up deities right? What are the guidelines?

That is the question: How to best simmer down similar deities. Because what I am doing right now is a bit hard to manage... but keeping all deities from different sources distinct makes it so that every new book is that much less useful, because regardless of how many deities there are in products you buy, you can really only highlight so many deities.

 

[Psion]

Yours is more mix and match, with the local equivelent of pantheons, but with gods serving in more than one pantheon, and many different combinations of gods as you go accross the cosmos (or your equivelent)?

That pretty well covers it. Minor local deities (who are often powerful spirits) only tend to appear in one nation or region. As deities progress in power, so does their scope. (That's sort of my way to allow shamans in the game.)

 

[TerraDave]

OK, now about a week ago before I went on vacation I actually thought of something practical....can I remember?

How about a simple table or spreadsheet? You still need catagories (your utilities). Make a list of unique gods under each, with names/aspects, domains, alignment, followers, portfolio and influance by region (strong/ greater here, lesser/weak there). Using the search features in Word or excel (find word), you can go through it pretty easy. A database would be more powerfull (so you could sort all by domain, all by weapon, etc) but harder to implement.

After making the main table, each time you find a god, you have to go to the relevant catagory and:

-subsume it into an existing god, with the existing god completely replacing it
-merge into an existing god, with features of the new aspect augmenting the god (and PCs can even discover unkown domains, etc)
-add as new god

If it is pretty easy to peg each god by catagory, this should be pretty easy. If gods are too distinctive, then the database might be the only way to go.

Of course, you may already be doing this.

 

[Starglim]

What book? Temple quarter? The top of the list is the Lawful deity, Lod, who seems pretty central, but doesn't fit anything I currently have established (well, that's not entirely true... one just occurred to me that would fit pretty well from my homebrew, but my mind spun off into this question before I got there.)

Lod is basically the big Indo-European sky father god. Zeus, Indra or even Marduk would fit right in there and Odin would probably work with a minor alignment shift. I can see the problem with Greyhawk or FR deities, though. I'd probably make him an aspect of Pelor who's locally important though perhaps not high-powered in the absolute sense.

 

[Psion]

I'd probably make him an aspect of Pelor who's locally important though perhaps not high-powered in the absolute sense.

Well, that's a not an option for me, as I don't use the "core"/Greyhawk deities other than the demihuman deities.

A do have a LN "god of culture" that might fit him pretty well. I also use Ukko (Finnish deity) and the Book of the Righteous deities. It's not too much of a leap to make Lod = Ukko, but I was already equating Ukko and Urian from the BotR, and I am not too sure I am comfortable equating Lod and Urian.

 

[radferth]

I have always enjoyed the simmering-down process. To grossly oversimplify the way I do it: I take whatever pantheon is worshipped in the players' home region to the base pantheon. When going to a different region, I look at the gods worshipped there and decide which ones are the same as deities in the base pantheon, and which are new. For a god that is the same as one already existing in my campaign, I decide whether its worship is basically the same as in the basw pantheon (just a few cosmetic changes) or completely different (to the point where worshippers might not even recognize it as the same deity. This last approach sounds like it might fit your needs, but I don't know if having that amount of difference between two sects of worshippers for the same deity makes sense in you world.