Totemic personifications and chocolate snack cakes.

[alsih2o]

Does the world you play in have personifications of different states? Can you walk right up to Sleep or Death or Ecstacy and ask them a question or punch them in the gut?

Are they damagable? Mortal? Are they statted out? Assumed ot be invincible?

More on snack cakes later.

 

[Maldur]

My world is build from the runes, these runes are the building blocks , so death is a block, as are fire and stasis, etc

People can be infused with this power, so these people may act like the personification of the rune ( they are more like avatars, or heralds)

 

[WayneLigon]

Are they damagable? Mortal? Are they statted out? Assumed ot be invincible?

One world does, one does not The one where such things do walk around they are assumed to be invincible; as long as people sleep, for instance, then it's impossible to get rid of the personification of Sleep.

Of course, some theorists say that such a thing is possible, but it would have such insanely disasterous consequences that no one tries it. Which of course makes for the occassional plot hook as insane cultists work towards imprisoning and destroying the personification of, say, Civilization. If that were to happen, people would not only forget how to (for example) read, they would never be able to create the concept of 'reading' ever again. Same thing with farming, legal systems, etc; people would go back to being beasts and the cultists would have herds.

 

[tarchon]

In my world, Little Debbie and Betty Crocker are real... all too real...

 

[Nifft]

Nope.

But nice penguin. -- N

 

[Henry]

In my homebrew campaign, there is a god of death, but his name is not "death." Similarly, there is a goddess of love, but not "love" per se. Some could say they ARE these things personified, but not really.

In my FR campaign, same deal. Torm is not Duty, but his life when a mortal was the "essence" of duty.

 

[Vrecknidj]

This sounds like the Incarnations of Immortality series by Piers Anthony. Death, Time, Fate, Nature and War are the 5 main universals in human life that are personified. In fact, each is an office that's occupied by different individuals (kinda like a prime minister or president of a nation).

I used such things in a campaign for a long time. These beings were more powerful than even the gods, and were in fact the beings that could keep the gods in line.(Anyone ever wonder why groups of gods don't gang up on the little ones more often? This was just an answer to that question--there are plenty of other good answers I suppose.)

Anyway, only mortals could occupy those offices, so this gave mortals a bit of a balance of power in the gods v. mortals issue too.

Dave

 

[Iron Sheep]

I voted no, although technically the states of existence and non-existence have will and are worshipped as gods by some people in my world. They do not ever take humanoid form, however, and they can't be hurt or killed (at least, not without destroying the universe). They are effectively divine rank 21+ entities which the gods respect and fear.

They certainly aren't in the mould of Gaiman's Dream, Death, Destiny, etc.

Corran

 

[Terraism]

I voted no - but then, I'm running a game in which there's only one diety, too, and concepts (by and large) don't have corporeal embodiments. Except amongst the fey, but they're... different.

I remember RangerWickett had an interesting thread about this a while back, though. You might want to look for that.

 

[Wombat]

I answered "No" because there are no manifestations of any higher beings or divine forces in my worlds. Oh sure lesser demons and angels might appear, but not the gods or powers themselves. They have never directly appeared in my world and, as far as anyone knows, they are unable to do so, anymore than humans are able to venture into godly realms (assuming such realms actually exist). We do zero, zippo, nada planar hopping in my campaigns, never have, never will. Thus all the gods are taken on faith -- sure, there are divine spells that are different from arcane spells, thus there are two different approaches, but no one has ever seen a god, only their lesser servants (and that quite infrequently).