NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jer" data-source="post: 3751477" data-attributes="member: 19857">Meh.  Over the last 20+ years I've done it all - created my own pantheons, used pre-published campaign setting pantheons, told my players to "pick a god" from mythology, asked my players to collaborate in setting up a pantheon, run a campaign set in a world with only dead gods where clerics were more like mages and got their powers by tapping into the spirits of the dead gods, used the "core pantheon" from the 3e books, etc.What I've found is that it doesn't tend to matter much in the end, other than varying the amount of work I do for a campaign.  My players aren't there to critique my world building prowess - they're there to play a game.  Sometimes they want deep narratives, with fully developed characters and a ton of backstory with resolutions spread out over the whole campaign.  Sometimes they want to kill orcs and take their stuff.  Regardless, my pantheon building efforts don't tend to contribute much to the game at all for my players (other than some unintentional hilarity when some name that I've chosen for a god turns out to sound like something funny) - they care about their characters, the narrative their characters are in, and the NPCs in the world far more than the pantheon.  The only times the pantheon has mattered is when the gods are an active plot point in the storyline -- in games where the gods are a mere background element they might as well be named "Groucho, Harpo and Chico" for all the import my players put on them.So my take is - if you like detailed worldbuilding yourself, and you want to create your own pantheon for your own sake it can be a lot of fun.  If you happen to have a group that likes to do collaborative worldbuilding and they want to make up a new pantheon that can also be a lot of fun.  But if you are running a game where the gods don't really matter much at all, and your players are there mainly for their own characters and aren't into worldbuilding, then the pantheon your game has doesn't make much difference.  The "core pantheon" from the 3e book covers most of the bases and gives a selection of gods suitable for a game like that.  And having a "core pantheon" of some sort lets those types of games get off the ground from go without the DM having to worry about what is in essence a trivial detail for his campaign.</blockquote>

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