Just keep this thread going, here is why I asked this question. I currently run a Greyhawk campaign, and my players of the last five years or so like to play things “canon” (in other words, if it wasn’t published by TSR/WoTC then it isn’t canon. They wouldn’t care if Gary Gygax himself showed up at one my games to disagree. Their response would be, “We’ll except that when we see it in print…”). Now that’s not to say that THEY don’t like to do things outside of canon, they like to feel that their characters are the “most important people in the world” and I’m ok with that because that’s kind of the whole point of the game….
Anyway, to facilitate things I normally put together information “packets” about the particular area that the campaign is taking place in. For example, our current campaign is taking place in Keoland and I scanned and gathered all of the information from the various canon sources (1st Edition, 2nd Edition, 3rd Edition Gazetteers, Living Greyhawk Journals, etc. and put it together in a 30 or so page “primer” for Keoland. They got a big kick out of it, and then set about trying to become major forces of good in the area, etc.
I wanted to do the same things for the gods of Greyhawk, but Holy Polytheism Batman, once you include the Olman, Touv, and all of the hero-deities and quasi-deities, there are just a boat load of Greyhawk gods (not to turn this into a Greyhawk vs. Forgotten Realms flame fest, but any Greyhawk fan that says ‘There are too many gods in FR’ hasn’t looked at GH very closely

). Now my players wouldn’t like it if I just started “removing” gods, but if a Time of Troubles sort of thing happened, that their characters could actively be involved in, during which a few (or many) of those gods happened to kick the divine bucket…that they would like. They then could have some say in which “stay “and which “go.” Right now, the party is between 18th and 14th level, so they are not weak, but not uber-powerful either. Done correctly, this could be like a year long “adventure”
Anyway, that’s why asked about the generalities. I want to get a feel for what all of the FR gods were doing during their “mortal phase”