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D&D General The Generic Deities of D&D

Eltab

Lord of the Hidden Layer
Basic - Neutral Good deity of children and education
Basic is the only deity which can be described as "growing up" over time. Its origin seems to be a very complex Word uttered by Assembler. The earliest version was of course Basic. Using the 4e Divine Power description of avatars, every generation or so a new iteration of Basic is born into the world, and updates the dogma. The first such avatar was BasicA. The most recent avatar was VBasic.
Theologians speculate what will happen in a few more generations when the avatar after ZBasic is supposed to come. Some hold that the god will create a new form of apotheosis; they root this opinion in the fact that Basic has become less basic as time passes.
Other theologians have noted that the teachings of Basic are increasing in complexity over time, and so they wonder if a future update of dogma will involve creating a new form of congregation called a College, into which the existing congregations (called Schools) would feed their best Students and receive back Teachers to lead the congregations and keep the institutions running.
 

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D&D has always had an odd vibe I've come to call monotheistic polytheism. There's a pantheon, sure, but most PCs tend to favor one god to the exclusion of all others. Assuming they can be bothered with religion in the first place. One of my GM's had a little laugh when I wrote down "As Needed" under deity worshiped on my character sheet. I told him my character prayed to whatever god it was appropriate to pray for given the situation.

It seems that a common assumption in D&D is one of characters who practice a form of monolatry. Whilst acknowledging other deities, a character – if they revere a god at all – will typically focus on a single tutelary or patron to the exclusion of other divinities: e.g. my character worships Heironeous. Greyhawk in some ways established this standard, but I suspect that this monolatrous tendency has its basis in pulp fantasies like Conan, where the protagonist has a particular patron deity.

In the case of clerics – or other classes with explicitly cultic functions – this single-minded devotion to one deity is cogent (although not necessarily necessary). Outside of a priestly context it seems a little odd, given what we know of how people have behaved historically when a smorgasbord of cults are available to choose from, and when there are no dogmatic controls on the types of worship permitted.

In fact, we would expect many individuals to be members of any number of cults, and at the very least invoke a variety of gods for various purposes. In this context, salvific cults don’t so much vie for devotees, as offer an opportunity for a kind of multiple Pascal’s wager; new or fashionable cults are exciting; orgiastic cults – if unrestrained by some other moral voice – are predictably popular.

Religious gatherings also offer an opportunity to socialize: an initiate exting a vault after a Mithraic mystery on Monday might plausibly turn to their neighbour and arrange to meet them at the Herculean rite on Wednesday or the Bacchanalia on Friday. Late Classical Antiquity offers a model for a culturally relaxed form of polytheism, where perhaps some kind of practice might be mandated (e.g. you must offer sacrifices to the patron deity of the royal house, or venerate the emperor), but none is forbidden (otherwise, it’s up to you).

Historically, monolatrous practices evolved in Bronze- and Iron Age ethnopolities and city states, where a particular deity had a strong association with a geographical region and/or the tribe or group which inhabited it. They developed and changed as states began to centralize and the machinery of priesthood became more influential; societies came to attach more-and-more power and significance to their ethnodeity.

Like many other conceits in a typical D&D-verse, ideas about worship are a mixture of the achronistic, the ahistorical, and pure fantasy.
 
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I've played since the early 80's and have only played with one "person of faith". Weird.
This is hugely dependent on where you are - in Texas you meet religious people all the time, to the point where areligious people are seen as weird; in New Jersey religious people really stand out because there's so few.
 

Eyes of Nine

Everything's Fine
It seems that a common assumption in D&D is one of characters who practice a form of monolatry. Whilst acknowledging other deities, a character – if they revere a god at all – will typically focus on a single tutelary or patron to the exclusion of other divinities: e.g. my character worships Heironeous. Greyhawk in some ways established this standard, but I suspect that this monolotrous tendency has its basis in pulp fantasies like Conan, where the protagonist has a particular patron deity.

In the case of clerics – or other classes with explicitly cultic functions – this single-minded devotion to one deity is cogent (although not necessarily necessary). Outside of a priestly context it seems a little odd, given what we know of how people have behaved historically when a smorgasbord of cults are available to choose from, and when there are no dogmatic controls on the types of worship permitted.

In fact, we would expect many individuals to be members of any number of cults, and at the very least invoke a variety of gods for various purposes. In this context, salvific cults don’t so much vie for devotees, as offer an opportunity for a kind of multiple Pascal’s wager; new or fashionable cults are exciting; orgiastic cults – if unrestrained by some other moral voice – are predictably popular.

Religious gatherings also offer an opportunity to socialize: an initiate exting a vault after a Mithraic mystery on Monday might plausibly turn to their neighbour and arrange to meet them at the Herculean rite on Wednesday or the Bacchanalia on Friday. Late Classical Antiquity offers a model for a culturally relaxed form of polytheism, where perhaps some kind of practice might be mandated (e.g. you must offer sacrifices to the patron deity of the royal house, or venerate the emperor), but none is forbidden (otherwise, it’s up to you).

Historically, monolotrous practices evolved in Bronze- and Iron Age ethnopolities and city states, where a particular deity had a strong association with a geographical region and/or the tribe or group which inhabited it. They developed and changed as states began to centralize and the machinery of priesthood became more influential; societies came to attach more-and-more power and significance to their ethnodeity.

Like many other conceits in a typical D&D-verse, ideas about worship are a mixture of the achronistic, the ahistorical, and pure fantasy.

Wow, this is something I have been thinking about for a very long time. Why are paladins and or clerics played like cheap versions of televangelists?

Anyway, wonder if there are any resources out there beyond this post to inform how to build a culture that reflects multiple deities as noted in your post?

On a separate but related note, I would think the existence of actual miracles and actual physical embodiment of the gods would change how exactly "normal" folks relate to their gods. Maybe.
 

Parmandur

Book-Friend
On a separate but related note, I would think the existence of actual miracles and actual physical embodiment of the gods would change how exactly "normal" folks relate to their gods. Maybe.

That's crossing the line on forum rules, but in short...no, it wouldn't necessarily change a thing from the real world.
 


Urriak Uruk

Gaming is fun, and fun is for everyone
Official D&D settings have, pretty consistently since first edition, the same set of monstrous and demihuman deities. They even have some of the same evil deities.

Flipping through the Monster Manual shows a lot of lore around the various monstrous or demihuman deities mentioned. . .Grummsh, Ilsenine, Corellon Larethian, Garl Glittergold, Kurtulmak, as deities presumed in the core rules of most editions.

Tiamat (and Io and Bahamut) are present in almost all of the official D&D settings. . .even in Eberron, which normally doesn't have the same Gods as the rest of D&D (albeit their role in Eberron is very minor, they are canonically present). Tiamat was even such an iconic villain of D&D that she was the big villain of the 1980's D&D cartoon series.

Evil deities such as Tharizdun or Asmodeus stretch across multiple editions, often mentioned right in the core rules themselves, and when not in the core rules, they're often depicted in generic works not tied to a specific setting.

From reading D&D core books and supplements, not tied to specific settings like Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, or Eberron, you'd certainly conclude that there's a certain group of deities that are presumed to be in D&D games (unless the DM says otherwise).

. . .but all those deities are either patrons of demihumans or monstrous beings, or are evil in nature. There is a conspicuous lack of a generic good setting-neutral counterpart to Asmodeus as the archetypical lawful evil deity, or Tharizdun as the generic chaotic evil deity. There's never been a human racial deity or pantheon the way the Seldarine are to Elves or Moradin is to Dwarves, or Tiamat and Bahamut are to Dragons.

As I was writing this, I thought of a counter-argument, 3e DID use an abbreviated version of the Greyhawk pantheon as a generic pantheon in the core rules (and adding deities to the core rules was a change I welcomed), but this wasn't followed in later editions, so it really isn't a constant across editions the way that the above deities were. 4e had it's own list of PHB deities which was largely, but not entirely, drawn from Greyhawk (plus Bane from the Forgotten Realms, for whatever reason). The 5e PHB included a short list of the major deities of the official worlds and historic pantheons (including such breadth of deities in the core rules was one thing 5e definitely did get right, in my opinion).

If you included deities that were mentioned in at the PHB's of 3 editions, you'd have Pelor (as the only good-aligned deity that generally accepts human worshippers), Kord (the similarly neutral deity for Humans), and Vecna (yet another evil deity, but as Vecna wasn't generally seen as deific before 3e, I didn't include him with deities that had been in core or setting-neutral D&D lore since AD&D days). If you included deities that were mentioned in the PHB's of 2 editions, you'd have the group of core Greyhawk gods from the 3rd edition PHB, which were also mentioned in the 5e PHB, plus Bane from the Forgotten Realms.

Anyone else ever think about the presumptions of core deities in D&D?

I'm late to the party on this, but my two cents are;

Pelor, Melora, Kord, and the Raven Queen. These deities are ones that I've seen pop into games again and again, not because their particularly iconic, but that they do a very good job of meeting the needs of a wide playerbase.

Pelor is the good god. Paladins, clerics, anything typical hero picks him; he's the god of the sun, like Zeus. It just works.

Melora is your hippy nature god. Works for druids, and anyone who's into "good, but not you know, LAWFUL good."

Kord is the warrior one, for people who are totally into BATTLE.

And the Raven Queen is for the angsty players, who want to be into darkness and death... but not evil either.

They all got a pretty nice niche, and people love them.
 

TwoSix

"Diegetics", by L. Ron Gygax
Pelor, Melora, Kord, and the Raven Queen. These deities are ones that I've seen pop into games again and again, not because their particularly iconic, but that they do a very good job of meeting the needs of a wide playerbase.
"Define your campaign pantheon with just 4 gods" would be a pretty fun forum game. :)
 


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