What religious pantheon do you use?

[MadLordOfMilk]

Though it never really interested me before, I've recently become intrigued by how people handle religion and deities in their D&D games, especially as I'm not sure what to go with for my next campaign. So, ENWorld-goers, I'd like to pick your brains a bit!

What religious pantheon, if any, do you use in your campaign world?

Is it based on a real-world culture's religion (e.g. using the Norse gods), or is it made up?

Have you ever run a game where people believe in a single deity, rather than the typical polytheism?

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Have you ever run a game where people believe in a single deity, rather than the typical polytheism?

I came up with a homebrew where there were two deities, a pair who created the world. A god and a goddess, allies against the uncountably many forces of unmaking. The god and goddess kept apart from the world but their enemies held no such limitation upon themselves. In the campaign, there was one such entity building an empire that was sweeping towards the lands of the PCs' homes. The god and goddess were at times functionally a single church. Some regions worshipped them as two sides of the same thing. Other regions only venerated one while minimizing the other.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

I use homebrew deities, with a few more powerful deities and many small gods of lesser power (with little obscure temples -- who knows, such a god might actually live in is temple).

 

[Shades of Green]

My current (a bit inactive) setting has two Great Gods: the Mother Goddess (a Chaotic Neutral nature goddess) and the Clockwork God (a Lawful Neutral god of technology and civilization). In the past, the Mother Goddess used to be broadly worshiped - more or less in a monotheistic way - back when she was a Chaotic Good goddess of fertility and agriculture. But a grand magical experiment went awry, ripping a massive amount of divine energy from the Mother Goddess to create the artificial Clockwork God. The resulting wounds turned the Mother Goddess into a cold embodiment of feral nature (changing the climate into an ice-age in the meanwhile).

Both Great Gods of the current age are quite inhuman and, usually, distant. While certain cults still worship them, the majority of people now follow a more shamanic tradition, honoring their ancestors and other local spirits and receiving protection from them.

 

[S'mon]

The Norse gods tend to figure a lot in my campaigns. In my primary homebrew world Ea the Norse gods are common, with others such as MAR Barker's Ksarul.

In my "Willow Vale" campaign there is a monotheistic Church of the Unconquered Sun, which opposes Bafomet the Evil One. Regular D&D 'gods' become 'saints' and 'exarchs' in this setting.

My Wilderlands campaign uses the multiplicity of Wilderlands gods and real-world pantheons, including Norse and Egyptian.

 

[Mr. Wilson]

It depends on which setting we're playing.

I use Eberron's religions when playing in Eberron, the FR deities for FR, and my own homebrewed pantheon that is a pretty much a mix and match from FR and my own creations.

 

[wedgeski]

Honestly, after umpteen years of building the same suite of gods over and over again, I got bored and gave up.

When 4E came along I seriously considered removing the Divine power source entirely. The game would have made that very easy indeed and I thought it would be an interesting backdrop... but some of the new players I've befriended in the last couple of years like their paladins just too much for me to do that to them.

These days I run an open-ended pantheon which is only vaguely defined at the start of the campaign, and even then in terms which are very specific to the dominant factions. IMC, "everyone" knows that true power rests with the mages, and they consider their own prophet to be the only truly divine being ever to have lived.

My players are then free to establish their own characters' beliefs, based on deities out of the PHB or one of their own devising. For those that just want to deploy divine mightiness on their foes, this can be ignored; for those that are interested in contributing to the campaign world, they can provide as much detail as they like. This is working very well for us at the moment.

 

[KingSoft]

I have been struggling to find a pantheon that worked with me and my players for a while so i hope you don't mind a long post.

I have the exact opposite opinion as Wedgeski, dnd is all about the age of myth it needs visible gods messing around with the campaign world. I think gods should be awe-inspiring and big part of every day life. That is an important part of dnd to me.

I find the lore of the traditional DnD pantheons interesting, but i don't use them simply because there are too many goods. Each race has its own god of war, death, creation and so. That fills the campaign with so many gods it is hard to make them feel important in the campaign.

I think, it is a good idea to try to lower the number of gods in the campaign. Make one pantheon to rule them all that all the races worship in different forms, or use a few pantheons that whole regions or groups of races worship. This can be a good source of conflict for the campaign and you still keep the number of gods low enough for them to seem important in the eyes of the players.

Now as for how gods look i like to make them awe-inspiring. Worshiping Bahamut the platinum dragon, or the Silver Flame are more majestic (and cooler) gods of justice then Heironeous, a knight in shining armor. This also makes it easier to have different races worship the same gods. Not to say you cant use a few human gods, especially if the god is an ascended mortal, but just don't make them all human or elf or whatever.

I try to avoid using the real world pantheons because they are too human centric, however i do use as inspiration for my gods. The Norse description of the Fenris Wolf charging odin is just epic

"Fenrisúlfr will go forth with his mouth opened wide, his upper jaw touching the sky and his lower jaw the earth, and flames will burn from his eyes and nostrils."

Now that is excellent imagery for a god of destruction. He also tried to eat the moon

Good imagery for the deities is important. It helps you decorate their temples and worshipers and make the legends about them that will inspire the players to play clerics, and pallys.

If you use important and active gods, try not to fall in to the trap of the gods babysiting there clerics and churches, and telling them everything they need to do. Give the gods a broad enough portfolio and agenda that priests of the same deity can disagree with each other. I never take my clerics powers away if they make 1 mistake (gods are to busy to babysit you), as long as the cleric is truly faithful to his god he gets powers (remember clerics have super high wisdom so feel free to smack down any players claim they are just misguided when they butcher the gods dogma). If a divine servant starts to deviate too much, it first falls on his order to correct him, then the other servants of the god (angels and the like), and if he commits a truly horrible atrocity then the god its self could get involved, but this should be the stuff of legends. (like Lord Soth)

I also try to point out to the players that people pray to different gods for different reasons. I hate it when a pantheon turn it to "Pick your monotheism". I think pantheons are much more fun then a single deity set up.

Your avrage npc will pray to the wild god of the sea god before travel, the god of life when his son is being born, and then beg the evil god of plagues not to take his son when he is sick. Even your cleric of holy purifying fire will pray to the sea god so he dose not end up sinking.


....that is enough ranting for now... but i would be happy to give you examples of my pantheon if your are interested.

 

[MadLordOfMilk]

I've found the responses thus far quite inspiring, and they're definitely helping me with forming a more concrete idea as to where I'd like to go with deities in my upcoming game. Thanks!

As far as specifics responses:

I came up with a homebrew where there were two deities, a pair who created the world. A god and a goddess, allies against the uncountably many forces of unmaking...

Very cool, I like it! Y'know, before this thread, for some reason I'd always thought in terms of either monotheism, or at least 7 or 8...

I use homebrew deities, with a few more powerful deities and many small gods of lesser power (with little obscure temples -- who knows, such a god might actually live in is temple).

Hmm, this could actually give me a good solution to my biggest issue: I like the idea of a pantheon of numerous deities, but I hate how easily and quickly that sort of thing gets bloated.

My current (a bit inactive) setting has two Great Gods: the Mother Goddess (a Chaotic Neutral nature goddess) and the Clockwork God (a Lawful Neutral god of technology and civilization)...

Very cool idea! I like the concept

...Regular D&D 'gods' become 'saints' and 'exarchs' in this setting...

Though I found your entire post useful, I just wanted to mention that I found this part especially interesting.

It depends on which setting we're playing...

That's pretty much been my experience, also. This is really my first time without an established setting/pantheon to draw upon, hence starting the thread.

These days I run an open-ended pantheon which is only vaguely defined at the start of the campaign...

I actually quite like this idea, and it's something I've done a lot (mostly in short one-off adventures). The primary reason I'm going beyond winging it with deities in my upcoming game is I'll have a lot of total newbies to table RPGs, so I'd like to at least give them something to start with

I have been struggling to find a pantheon that worked with me and my players for a while so i hope you don't mind a long post.

*snip*

....that is enough ranting for now... but i would be happy to give you examples of my pantheon if your are interested.

If you could, I'd greatly appreciate it! I actually found your post pretty inspirational, and you seem to have a lot of the same feelings I do. Thanks in advance!

 

[Oryan77]

I use whatever deity I want for any situation I need it for. There is no limit. Players can worship any deity as long as there is published information about their domains. I can get away with this since I run a Planescape campaign. I get away with all sorts of things since I run a Planescape campaign.