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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tatonca" data-source="post: 374979" data-attributes="member: 7263">Reading through this thread, there are certainly many original ideas.  It occurs to me that there is some commonality which if you permit, I will explore below.The main thing that strikes me is that the formation of the gods themselves is secondary to the story that is being told for which theses characters take a part.  This can also be said for the gods of ancient religions.  Religion fulfilled two important needs in ancient times: a forum to explain the unexplainable, and a vessel for conotizing the traditions and laws which held together their community.  This was achieved by providing divine figures that the populace could relate too and therefore believe in .  The strength of any pantheon, from a believibility or authenticity stand point then could be said to be directly relational to the amount of detail and humanity given it's members - or how much like us they are.  So although they are ascribed incredible powers that keep the universe in motion, we relate to them because they are like us.  After a hard day of chariot racing across the sky, Ra comes home and finds his wife bedding some other guy.  Suddenly my back breaking day of lugging monolithic stones around is more palatable to me.I also found it interesting that someone suggested using catholisism as a template for polytheistic belief system.  Catholisism itself is paterned after the roman pagan gods, in an attempt to woo the roman populace into conforming with the choosen religion of its leader.  Kinda like "Mars gets a new set a clothes and starts calling himself Peter"  Most of the Roman gods map in portfolio to catholic saints.  This symbolic metamorphosis is a good example of what I mean.  As the needs of the populace changed, or were forced to change, so too did the belief system.  What better way to get people to worship Jesus and revere his disciples, then to have you pray on the same day for the same thing in the same place to the same statue, just given a different name?  Or to celebrate festivals on the same days with new meaning?  As long as the holiday remains, who really notices that the meaning has changed?  Using this concept, as an example, how would the egyptian gods have been changed if a volcano had cast a decade long blanket over the sky, blocking out the face of Ra?  What god would rise in his place? So historical context becomes a key factor as well.  The last piece, when ascribing these things within the concept of a game is the required element of conflict.  After all who wants to adventure in a world where everyone gets along?  The conflict though is really between cultures embodied by their divinity.  The natural rivalry between dwarves and elves in Tolkien's works is ascribed to the belief by both parties that they were the first race on middle earth.  The "historical/mythical" text makes them both right - the god of the dwarves created the dwarves first, but was out of turn and therefore was forced to let them "sleep under the mountains" until their time was to come, appropriately after the elves.  This provides for both races to have thier own interpretations.  This is another piece these religions have in common : the already mentioned internal inconcsistencies - though I prefer to say interpretations.  My suggestion here is that these internal inconsistencies should be inate to the overall cosmology as oppose to intrisic - born naturally of it not directly for it.How does this all tie together?  Well I would imagine, if I were to create a Pantheon, I would start with the story, at the beginning - the creation if you will.  Take into account the nature of the world I wanted to create - had it always been? or was it spontaneously created?  Are there themes that will carry through my adventures that I can make a part of my world?  Are my characters destined to become part of this story or merely adventure within in it?  Is this a place of high magic, or ebbing power giving way to a modern age?  Then I would make the Gods human in some way - a flaw, a goal and a purpose.  These things will shape the types of characters that populate the world and the heavens.</blockquote>

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