Pantheons-worldwide or local?

I'm planning on having the best of both worlds in my next campaign. The Gods are worshipped world-wide (there are two opposing "pantheons" - one good, one evil), but as they tend to be busy on the big, cosmic things, interaction between mortals and the Gods is usually through the medium of "saints", most of whom are racial/national.
 

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Depends on the campaign setting. I've used local pantheons with different reasonings for why they were localized, a world spanning pantheon (both with the deities having different names in different areas and with them being one and the same everywhere), and other setups.

For the most part my current campaign only has one true god (with several other powers coming very close to god hood). He is known globally by the same name. One of the primary tensions of the setting are the differences in beliefs of the various religions around the world that pay homage to this same deity.
 

I always go with a single pantheon that is worshipped worldwide. In a D&D world that makes the most sense to me, though I could see demigods representing more localised specific deities.
 

I've never had occasion to examine the question, since I usually design campaigns to take place in a relatively focused section of the world . . .

. . . but for the last campaign setting I came up with, I can answer the question by referring to design principles.

In this setting, there were no absolutes about religion in the first place. It was shortly prior to Eberron's release, but Wizards of the Coast and I engaged in parallel evolution on the issue of non-contactable deities, even down to the question of extraplanar entities' knowing the truth of the matter.

(Eberron's answer is "They don't, but many of them believe anyway", which is slightly more sophisticated than my own of "They might and they might not, but they either can't or won't answer questions on the matter".)

I established this factor as a way of achieving the sorts of doctrinal splits we see throughout virtually every era of human history; eliminating the possibility of just asking your god which of two opposing doctrinal camps is correct leads to a more interesting and pleasing structure that feels like the historical reality even if I have no interest in running a historical game.

What this meant, practically, was that different sects could propose radically different interpretations of the same basic cosmology, to say nothing of the conflict between those religions with wildly varying cosmological and theological ideas. For instance:

  • The majority of clerics of the World Mother believe her to be the creator and sustainer of the world itself; all life proceeds from her and owes her worship.
  • A minority of these clerics believe that the World Mother must have a divine consort to have brought forth life, taking the motherhood idea more literally than mainstream thought, though opinions are sharply divided on who, exactly, this consort might be.
  • The clerics of another religion which proposes a Greco-Roman style pantheon of deities in some kind of "family" structure have their own goddess of the Earth, with a much-restricted sphere of influence compared to the attributes of the World Mother.
  • Yet another religion devoted to the elemental forces proposes that the earth is properly associated with a masculine Elemental King, and that life is an outgrowth of the interaction of all four elements as overseen and directed by their respective Kings or Queens.
  • A philosophical offshoot of this elemental religion asserts that the Elemental Kings and Queens have use only as metaphor, owning no real existence, but still subscribe to the idea that life is a mixture of all four elements.
  • Several sects of druids possess different, though vaguely compatible, ideas about the World Mother in relation to the force of Nature itself which they honour: one sect might refer to the World Mother as a philosophical metaphor for Nature (as the elemental philosophers do the Kings and Queens), another might argue that the World Mother is a semi-real entity existing as a face and embodiment of Nature to which mortals can more directly relate, while a third might believe that the World Mother is a real entity created from Nature and life itself and have relatively close relations with some of the more ecumenical clerics of the World Mother.
  • Other druids assert that anthropomorphising Nature is meaningless (or possibly blasphemous), revering it as an unpersonified force.
  • Some folk might believe the World Mother is simply a very powerful spirit being, not truly in charge of anything per se but still disposed to use her powers on behalf of those who propitiate her with offerings and actions in defence of things she cares about.

That's just one set of examples. It's fairly simple to see how some of these points of view might simply belong to different cultures separated by geography or race (though this setting was absent playable non-human PCs).

The best answer I can give is that ideas might be worldwide, sort of, but that specific implementation of those ideas is a very different matter.
 

Worldwide but with weighted differences based on location. I have my gods then assign a status weight to them, this basicly the percentage of the population that worships them. That weight changes from location to location.
 

Hmmm, for my homebrew world:

In antiquity gods were local, as religion evolves the rise of monotheistic religions stemming from a codefied book of worship leads to conflicting monotheistic sects that have all risen from that single root religion.

The result is war. And the sects continue to break down into smaller and smaller sects as time passes, and each places different emphasis on the teachings of The Book. Several go so far as to create either additional supplements to The Book or to reinterpret The Book to fit their own doctrine.

And as the monolithic monotheisms fracture the old things that had been driven out of the world by the codefied belief return. The opening of the campaign sees the first dragon spawning in 1000 years.

The Auld Grump
 

Since Terra is real close to Earth (but with more dragons per acre) we have got it all:

http://www.terra-viejo.net/World/Religions.htm

http://www.terra-viejo.net/Guide/Clerics.htm#Church

Each race has its own religion(s) and various (human) pantheons co-exist with more monotheistic religions.

The other aproaches listed above are good to. But at least since Gods, Demigods and Hereos, the more pantheons the merrier aproach has been part of D&D, and in our campaigns has worked surprisingly well.
 

I have a plethora of minor deities, generally locally worshipped. This is especially common for the ore chaotic and evil deities, but happens all over my game world.
 

HellHound said:
I have a plethora of minor deities, generally locally worshipped. This is especially common for the ore chaotic and evil deities, but happens all over my game world.

I also have hundreds of the lesser dities with a set 13 greater gods. The greater gods are whorsiped everywhere the others have their influence in smaller places
 

it's nice to have them be both worldwide and local at the same time... each culture represents each god individually, and ingores some while focusing on others. :) this way, both dwarves and orcs could worship the same Neutral war god without even realizing it. ;)
 

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