Playing mortals destines to become deities

[Li Shenron]

I was re-playing the ToEE PC game these days, while in the process of creating new characters and finding myself in a sudden lack of inspiration I gave them the names of a few Greyhawk deities. Then as the games progressed and a few dialogs were engaged I started imagining those PCs were actually the real GH deities, only at a time when they were still mortal. So I got this idea, that I probably will never run anyway, but I wonder if it might be made interesting.

What about running a campaign set "in the past" of D&D, and the PCs are those who will be deities thousands of years later. It's not trivial as it may seem at first...

Before going any further, let's say that those PCs are NOT deities yet, absolutely they don't have godly powers (it's not a deity campaign). They may have something special crunch-wise, but that's not the main issue, and basically they wil be just very gifted mortals - which isn't different from normal PC.

How can one make such a campaign different from a normal game, where (in theory) every PC can dream about becoming powerful enough to be god-like?

I could ask players to choose one deity from a set of chosen pantheons, for example Greyhawk + Faerun + Mulhorand. They play that deity at a hypothetical time when it was a mere mortal (even 1st level, TBD), and there were NO deities. Instead, in the world there were a couple hundreds gifted individuals struggling to become deities (all the gods from the chosen patheons). Eventually there can be open war among them, with good and evil groups battling each other and trying to reach godhood earlier to topple balance. Once (if) the PCs manage to survive and grow in power enough to become true gods, the campaign may either end or (but I won't be able to run that) continue into an epic game.

I don't know, if does this sound lame at all... just trying to figure out if it can be given a different feeling from a normal campaign and how.

 

[Li Shenron]

And one thing I thought about is that perhaps the PCs and other "rivals" may be the only individuals capable of casting spells. For example an early Pelor may be the first person who was able to heal wounds and later resurrect people. The early Boccob (and other deities of magic) might have been the inventor of arcane spells. Later, if these will manage to become gods, they would grant their spells to mortals because they of course like their own creations and want to spread them. There could be however someone else who won't reach godhood, with a completely different from of spells which will be lost forever.