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Grinner
2012-04-28, 01:53 AM
I'm working on a PnP game about deities, but I'm having trouble conceiving an objective for the players.

The best I can come up with is:

Accruing worshippers
Engaging in celestial politics
Fighting off extradimensional horrors
Bringing master plans to fruition
Edit: Drinking (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/images/oots0201.gif)


What do you all think?

Marlowe
2012-04-28, 02:25 AM
I've come to my own conclusion that they are basically parasitic beings who have inveigled themselves into middleman positions between mortals and the impersonal force that is divine energy. If they actually DO anything that isn't self-serving, it doesn't seem very well backed up.

EDIT: When I designed my own pantheon, I had the deities united by the goal of defending the mortal realm against outsiders both Celestial and Infernal. Which may not make a lot of sense to some people, but they don't have to play with me. The "fighting off extradimensional horrors" thing is nice.

Endarire
2012-04-28, 02:44 AM
Look up the game Nobilis. It's a tabletop RPG where the player characters are avatars of the gods. Sometimes, they fight excrucians (extradimensional beings). Sometimes, they do other things. (Don't know. Never got that far.)

Aux-Ash
2012-04-28, 02:51 AM
My first thought is that deities don't do, they are.

The god of death isn't causing death, he is death. The god of the seas isn't controlling the seas, he is the seas. The former does not take lives because he is cruel, he is taking them because their lives ended. The latter does not cause storms and still water out of malice, but because proper respect to the sea was not taken.

As such, one objective of the players could be to strive to ensure cosmic balance and plain be the forces of nature. But morever, they should involve themselves in mortal affairs through proxies. Wether prophets, heroes or demigods. These are but aspects of the deities themselves. When they act, the deities act through them. Just keeping the world and the cosmos in balance.

Grinner
2012-04-28, 02:58 AM
EDIT: When I designed my own pantheon, I had the deities united by the goal of defending the mortal realm against outsiders both Celestial and Infernal. Which may not make a lot of sense to some people, but they don't have to play with me. The "fighting off extradimensional horrors" thing is nice.

There's a D&D creation myth somewhere that kind of follows that. But, yes, the deities do tend to lose purpose when it comes to game-time.


Look up the game Nobilis. It's a tabletop RPG where the player characters are avatars of the gods. Sometimes, they fight excrucians (extradimensional beings). Sometimes, they do other things. (Don't know. Never got that far.)

I'm familiar with it. In fact, Nobilis is the primary inspiration behind this game. The problem is that I'm envisioning the deities as formless intelligences, as opposed to physical gods, so traversing the breadth and width of existence in search of things to kill doesn't quite work out.

Edit: @Aux-Ash: I like the way you think. :smallbiggrin:

NichG
2012-04-28, 04:14 AM
I've used several different takes on it. One in particular I like is the idea that deities are actually quite mortal-like in one particular facet - they get bored. Combine that with the idea that deities think Big, and so merely socializing with humans, etc, doesn't cut it for them. Sort of like how that Lv20 party
could easily take out a band of kobolds harming a village, but it just seems way too small even if they don't have anything else pressing.

Of course the gods can make Big things to do by fighting eachother, finding beasts beyond creation, etc. However, they realize that the world needs time to heal after any sort of event of the scale that interests them, and so a pact is made. The deities will occupy a plane where time moves at a different rate, except that each of them has one day a year (10 years, 100 years, whatever) in which they can sync up with the world and act directly.

This in some sense explains how, despite deities being very powerful and capable of acting with alacrity, the deaths of deities or even direct fights between deities are an infrequent event. Its not that they don't fight or don't die, its that one day for them is a hundred mortal years, and so they're adventuring and interacting at full tilt, but it seems glacial to mortals.

This is the sort of thing I'd expect from beings whose idea of a good time is 'geological change'. Waiting for those two continents to smash together is like watching paint dry unless you do some speedups.

This could be something imposed upon the gods by their cosmological station. Sort of like how ents are portrayed as thinking slowly, gods, due to their associations with large-scale natural phenomena, would think even more slowly (but could act quickly once moved to action).

Alternately, each deity presides over 400 worlds, and so can only spare one in four hundred days to directly intervene in any one world. That version doesn't explain the low deity interaction rate of course, so I'm not as fond of it.

So all of those explanations are called for in the gods-as-people picture, but if gods are animistic forces, etc, then its not necessarily the case that they 'do' anything ('doing' something would almost be antithetical to their nature, and would only happen when some part of their balance is disturbed). That's more like 'this grove has a guardian deity, who sleeps unless the grove is disturbed', but writ large.

Grinner
2012-04-28, 06:45 AM
@NichG: The Greco-Roman deities were thought to have that same mindset, and that's not too far from what I've got.

The game's deities definitely aren't forces of nature or concepts incarnate. They're wholly separate from those things, but they can learn to manipulate them to their own ends.

KillianHawkeye
2012-04-28, 07:16 AM
In my games, the gods basically all have a mutual non-interference pact when it comes to the material plane. They can only act through intermediaries, such as clerics, outsiders, etc. They can visit the mortal world as much as they like as long as they stay disguised and don't interfere too much. If one of them does start altering reality left and right, it would nullify the pact and spark a new war between gods over the fate of the material plane.

For example, the first campaign I ran was Red Hand of Doom for D&D 3.5, and Tiamat's plan to have her worshippers open up a gateway to Hell was basically a loophole to allow Tiamat to directly affect the world. It wouldn't have broken the pact because it would have been the actions of mortals that created the portal. I later had another deity in disguise point the party in the right direction when they were lost in the wilderness after being teleported to a demon's temporary lair, but they never discovered the deity's identity.

On the outer planes, the deities can basically do whatever they want. Of course, each deity is the total master of their own domains, so that limits what the others can do somewhat. They tend to avoid large scale actions such as destroying entire opposing armies because that would only lead to a direct fight between gods which just leads to pain and dying and new gods rising up to replace the old ones. So mostly, my deities just play the role of diplomat or strategic commander in a great, eternal struggle for immaterial supremacy. It's kinda like a bunch of immortal college frat boys who are always trying to one-up each other with pranks or through manipulation.

TheCountAlucard
2012-04-28, 09:25 AM
In Exalted, the gods also oversee their respective domains. The god of a river is going to make sure the river continues to function, and protect it from demons, Fair Folk, et cetera, and probably extort worship from people for some extra perks. :smallwink:

Mastikator
2012-04-28, 10:54 AM
The god of leisure does nothing but sit around the house and eat cake.

STsinderman
2012-04-28, 11:34 AM
It might be a idea to read some Pratchett for ideas.

Hiro Protagonest
2012-04-28, 12:41 PM
In Exalted, the gods also oversee their respective domains. The god of a river is going to make sure the river continues to function, and protect it from demons, Fair Folk, et cetera, and probably extort worship from people for some extra perks. :smallwink:

Exalted also gives a reason why the big deities don't do anything either. They're addicted to the best game ever.

Mario Kart! Plus World of Warcraft! :P

Frozen_Feet
2012-04-28, 01:14 PM
A big thing that is missing: Creating the world. Or creating things in general.

The god of rivers is not such because he is a river, or because he's needed for rivers to continue functioning/existing. He's god of rivers because he darn well came up with the concept, it's his, and he's the one who made the first rivers.

In my setting-under-work, "gods" are this... and many other things. The creator-gods I described are also physical gods, just living on another planet. So are their evil equivalents. On the other hand, there are immaterial gods who don't do anything or have any apparent role in the cosmic order... they just kinda are. Before they become planets and stars, that is.

Then there are the gods of death who are both it and incarnations of it. When met in the latter form, they are very active but also "human-sized" - one can be challenged by a mortal warrior. Even though bizarre in shape and abilities, they are far cry from cosmic power.

In my settings, worship is entirely inconsequental to these beings. They neither need it or seek it out. People worship them out of their own volition, either because they think they deserve it or because they think they can squeeze an advantage out of it. The latter is, in some cases, true, rationalizing the practice. But physical gods have emphasis on physical and can't hear your prayers unless you are, you know, speaking to them. In person.

Some gods also worship other gods, though there's poor correlation to power in this hierarchy.

Grinner
2012-04-28, 01:33 PM
A big thing that is missing: Creating the world. Or creating things in general.

That...is extremely true. I am ashamed. :smallsigh::smallredface:

I've sort of imagined the players less as conventional gods and more as celestial reality hackers. Just can't figure out what their general motive would be...

deuxhero
2012-04-28, 10:07 PM
They're addicted to the best game ever.


And I just lost it!

Geostationary
2012-04-29, 01:09 AM
I'm familiar with it. In fact, Nobilis is the primary inspiration behind this game. The problem is that I'm envisioning the deities as formless intelligences, as opposed to physical gods, so traversing the breadth and width of existence in search of things to kill doesn't quite work out.



I'd second (third?) Nobilis on this. Just have them be True God or the like; besides, Imperators only really look the way they do because it's hard to process conceptual beings. It's also important to note that Nobilis' combat system makes no distinction between kung-fu treachery, keeping secrets, and strongly worded arguments, making it much easier to metaphorically punch a god to death- possibly while wielding actual metaphors. So long as there's sufficient miraculous power behind the action, there's no limit to what you can do/hurt.

Slipperychicken
2012-04-29, 01:54 PM
I like the idea of deities being anthropomorphic. They do what people do with power and time: they screw around (often literally. Zeus and Hera were known for doing it while shapeshifted as snakes).

They find really strong guys (Heroes), set up fights and trials to watch for amusement, and generally see how far these guys can push themselves before breaking.


They use empires and religious crusades for large-scale cockfights, betting favors and rights with other deities, egging on their "chosen" people.


They squabble with other gods over politics, their favorite mortals and places, whose followers are more devoted, often resulting in great trials and pain for mortals.


They chill out with other Gods, their dead worshipers, and sometimes mortals too. This can include playing music, drinking, hunting, weaving, smithing, and other leisure activities.



They grant spells to their followers (think Thor from OotS), and give them advice every so often, usually through Oracles.

Frozen_Feet
2012-04-29, 03:03 PM
I like the idea of deities being anthropomorphic.

I on the other hand dislike it. Often in my settings, even when gods appear in humanoid shape, they are decidedly inhuman (and more than likely appear as humanoid for merely gits and shiggles). Usually, physical gods get very weird as they increase in power. Typical forms are giant beasts, stars and planets.

Slipperychicken
2012-04-30, 10:08 AM
I on the other hand dislike it. Often in my settings, even when gods appear in humanoid shape, they are decidedly inhuman (and more than likely appear as humanoid for merely gits and shiggles). Usually, physical gods get very weird as they increase in power. Typical forms are giant beasts, stars and planets.

That is a quite valid interpretation, especially given the massive mental ability scores these guys toss around, and the fact that humans aren't even supposed to wrap their minds around these guys.

Personally though, when I think "PCs as Gods", I think the Greek pantheon, abusing their resources for all kinds of weird, zany mischief, sometimes working hard at their jobs, but mostly using the world as a sandbox of sorts. Either that, or munchkinning their way to the top of the cosmic power structure, as PCs are known to do (although I have a very hard time imagining a literal God existing as a shotgun-hobo).


You could also have the PCs interests being trolled by other gods, or perhaps some unknown entity (mortal trickster-heroes, evil spirits, eldritch horrors, etx.).

Mixt
2012-04-30, 11:19 AM
What do deities do you ask?

Well, Tiamat at least seems to spend an awful lot of time making little chromatic dragon babies...
But don't tell her i said that.

Urpriest
2012-04-30, 06:35 PM
Instead of the Greek and Roman deities, it might be a bit more useful to look to the Vikings. They had enemies (Giants), rivals (Vanir), and internal politics (Loki mostly, but lots of other options). They were basically one big kingdom, but with responsibilities and powers that stretched the breadth of the cosmos. As long as you populate the world with other gods or godlike beings to oppose, ally with, or otherwise annoy, you're going to have plenty for the players to do.

nedz
2012-04-30, 07:30 PM
A big thing that is missing: Creating the world. Or creating things in general.

The god of rivers is not such because he is a river, or because he's needed for rivers to continue functioning/existing. He's god of rivers because he darn well came up with the concept, it's his, and he's the one who made the first rivers.


this, and the exact opposite.

I see gods as cultural entities really. So the river god is the god of the river people. He is needed, by them, to ensure that the river floods at the appropriate time, but not too much, and that it doesn't dry up. They are his people, and he protects his, and their, interests.

The creation thing, well that the old chicken and egg.

Tvtyrant
2012-04-30, 07:35 PM
I like the idea of a god being the physical incarnation of something. So they are immortal because whatever they represent hasn't been destroyed, and if it is destroyed they die (or lose their powers). As an incarnation they try to champion the existence of whatever they represent (so the god of love tries to get people to fall in love, the god of winter makes winters wintery, etc.)

Beleriphon
2012-04-30, 07:51 PM
Instead of the Greek and Roman deities, it might be a bit more useful to look to the Vikings. They had enemies (Giants), rivals (Vanir), and internal politics (Loki mostly, but lots of other options). They were basically one big kingdom, but with responsibilities and powers that stretched the breadth of the cosmos. As long as you populate the world with other gods or godlike beings to oppose, ally with, or otherwise annoy, you're going to have plenty for the players to do.

I like the Norse gods for this reason. The best description I've read about them comes from Age of Odin (awesome book) where Bragi explains that the gods aren't "gods" they are myths. Exaggerated expressions of the people that created them is what it is best viewed as.

So if you want vaguely anthropomorphic beings of immense power you need to give them other beings of equal power to argue with, and fight against. A god of death isn't necessarily literal death, they are simply the being that was charged with (or stuck with) watching over the dead. Once you add some personality you have a pretty good idea about how they view that task.

TheCountAlucard
2012-04-30, 08:27 PM
The Gods of Pegāna.

Dunno why I didn't mention it before.

Reluctance
2012-04-30, 08:44 PM
One thing worth keeping in mind whenever your campaign starts getting weird is this. Your players are human. Playing a nigh-omniscient abstract concept is like imagining arbitrary N-dimensional constructs. Completely outside the design parameters of our brains. We can approximate it, but only with significantly more time and work than players usually put into their characters.

Grinner
2012-04-30, 08:59 PM
You could also have the PCs interests being trolled by other gods, or perhaps some unknown entity (mortal trickster-heroes, evil spirits, eldritch horrors, etx.).

Absolutely! :smallbiggrin:


Instead of the Greek and Roman deities, it might be a bit more useful to look to the Vikings. They had enemies (Giants), rivals (Vanir), and internal politics (Loki mostly, but lots of other options). They were basically one big kingdom, but with responsibilities and powers that stretched the breadth of the cosmos. As long as you populate the world with other gods or godlike beings to oppose, ally with, or otherwise annoy, you're going to have plenty for the players to do.

That's smart. :smallsmile:

I think I'm settling on the political angle. The players will be thoughtform deities sustained by human consciousness (getting actual worship grants a bonus), and their agenda will be left up to the players. I'm also thinking of writing a backstory about a vanished creator deity.

Now, I just need to worry about tension, cosmology, and metaphysics. :smalleek:


The Gods of Pegāna.

Dunno why I didn't mention it before.

I'm glad you did, though. Downloading it now.

jackattack
2012-04-30, 09:31 PM
Gods (small "g") don't just create things, they keep them working. Reality isn't necessarily a create-it-and-forget-it prospect -- it might take continued effort to keep it working properly.

Consequences of failure might range from having to start over from scratch, to oblivion for the gods themselves (if they used a portion of themselves when they created the world and the stuff in it).

Take your favorite aspects from resource-allocation and real-time-strategy games, and adapt them for use at the table.

------------

In the game world of Oathbound, the gods are creating trials for heroes in order elevated humans to divine status so that those humans can take the gods' places, and the gods can retire/escape/die.

A slightly different take on that theme is that this is how gods procreate, by creating worlds to act as "event incubators" for their progeny. You would have to eliminate mythology about gods having children with/by each other, of course, but it does give you a good reason for gods to interact with mortals.

M33p0
2012-04-30, 10:45 PM
A good place that I could suggest getting ideas from is the Scion game from White Wolf. At least if they are just prospective gods, you can spend a lot of time with them carving out their "nitch" in the cosmos and go from there. Think of mythology when figuring out what they should do. What does someone who has achieved ultimate power do for adventure? I know there are the Far Realms but there is not much on that subject. I would really just suggest with starting them off with a divine spark and slowly having them go from there. Maybe Planescape?

NichG
2012-05-01, 12:27 AM
There was a denouement after a campaign where the PCs all became progenitor gods of a new, blank cosmos. We sort of split up domains haphazardly and picked what we wanted our characters to be responsible for.

My solution for my character's 'what next' was the idea that the cosmos would get boring to the gods if they knew every single thing in it, and it'd tend towards stagnation and worse, detachment. So he swore to raid other cosmoses for their originality, their most interesting beings, ideas, magics, what-have-you, and to sneak them in to his cosmos so that the other gods wouldn't get dangerously bored. This included things beyond the gods' power scale (sort of a 'hey, this Cthohnian monster is really tough, I can't even scratch it. I bet the others will have fun with it! Here kitty kitty oww...')

SoC175
2012-05-11, 03:57 PM
In the FR the deities seem to be needed to actively care for their portfolios or things will go wrong on the mortal plane.

During the interregnum between two lords of Death, mortals just couldn't die. When Lathaner (deity of sun) was visiting Chauntea (deity of nature) and during an argument in her garden "heated up" and burned his footprints into her field she remarked that one poor country would now suffer from their crops withering on their fields

Karoht
2012-05-11, 04:11 PM
It's hard to want to do the bidding of any of the deities when they can literally just snap their fingers and make you dance like a monkey, much less go and wage war on some clutch of demons after questing for the macguffin of demonslaying.


I like to think of the gods as various embodiments. A combination of the universal consciousness and the will of the people. But because they are essentially mass figments, their sense of time and connection to the people tends to be remote at best and utterly distant most of the time. Hence why gods don't save the world typically, mortals do.


If you read the Book of Cain from Diablo 3, it sets up an interesting mythos where the mortals are actually believed to possess the potential to stand shoulder to shoulder with the angels and demons. Maybe even surpass them. A part of me rather enjoys this idea. For a game mythos, I feel it's quite good, and does a great job of explaining what it's major deity type characters have been up to, all the way up to and during the game itself.

Morithias
2012-05-11, 05:12 PM
In many settings *cough*Faerun*cough* the gods are nothing more than parasites who extract worship so they can be powerful via threats of torture.

This is something I do not like, so I greatly changed it in my own setting.

In my setting, their are no evil deities. All deities answer directly to the creator, and their job is to oversee the rules of reality and keep thing running smoothly. The goddess of magic's job is not simply "die so magic will screw up" but rather, to oversee the creation of spells and restrict the rules so spells like "familcide" cannot be created.

Their job is to maintain order and promote good will. They do this via their clerics, because god powers don't work on the material plane. A god CAN wander the material plane, but they'll just be a high level quasi-deity.

The gods are handpicked by the creator as "best at what they do". The goddess of combat, is not some weak ass deity that has toughness as a feat. She's the most powerful optimized fighter the creator could find.

Overall the gods have 5 primary goals.

1. Increase the size of the holy book of virtue (book that records every good deed ever done)
2. Slow the increase of the size of the unholy book of sin (book that records every bad deed ever done).
3. Reward those who have earned their way to heaven with a peaceful and happy existence in the afterlife.
4. Maintain order in the material plane and try to keep the peace.
5. If the situation calls for it, go to the material plane and fight. However for this to happen the situation must be brutally dire in nature.

The gods are not "stuck" working for the creator. Gods can retire and be replaced if someone better comes along, or they don't want the job anymore.

Slipperychicken
2012-05-12, 02:26 AM
The gods are handpicked by the creator as "best at what they do". The goddess of combat, is not some weak ass deity that has toughness as a feat. She's the most powerful optimized fighter the creator could find.


I have to differ slightly on this one. You'd also want your deity to have organizational management and leadership skills, since effectively/efficiently running a religion (or any organization for that matter) requires those skills. If your deity is going to be ordering mortals around, they had better be giving some darn good orders! Most min/maxed Fighter builds just can't bring this to the table (they know how to hit stuff, not necessarily how to carry out the Creator's will, or how to inspire others to hit stuff like them).


Additionally, a Creator, like any manager, needs its under-deities to have the qualities that generally make good employees (agreeableness, punctuality, work ethic, maintaining workplace atmosphere, energy, etc). It doesn't help to hand-pick a god who'll start fights with other gods, shirk its responsibilities, and disobey your orders.

Jay R
2012-05-12, 11:34 AM
The problem is that D&D has included more than one pantheon.

If the Greek gods exist according to their mythology, then Gaia is the earth, and with her son and husband Ouranos (the sky) conceived Khronos and the other Titans, who conceived the Olympians.

But if this is true, then there is no room for Vishnu, Odin, or anybody associated with any other creation myth.

The gods are associated with the creation of the universe. Sometimes and creators, sometimes as early created beings, but in any case, inconsistent with any other creation myth.

Consider this: Poseidon is the god of the sea, But so are Njord, Namu, Idliragijenget, Yam, Chalchiuhtlicue, Llyr, Tangaroa, and even Davy Jones. If more than one of them exist, then "god of the sea" means something inconsistent with every one of those mythologies.

To use gods in D&D, you have to invent some new creation mythos that accounts for them all, decide that inconsistent statements can both be true, or assume that you just don't know.

Morithias
2012-05-12, 11:34 AM
I have to differ slightly on this one. You'd also want your deity to have organizational management and leadership skills, since effectively/efficiently running a religion (or any organization for that matter) requires those skills. If your deity is going to be ordering mortals around, they had better be giving some darn good orders! Most min/maxed Fighter builds just can't bring this to the table (they know how to hit stuff, not necessarily how to carry out the Creator's will, or how to inspire others to hit stuff like them).


Additionally, a Creator, like any manager, needs its under-deities to have the qualities that generally make good employees (agreeableness, punctuality, work ethic, maintaining workplace atmosphere, energy, etc). It doesn't help to hand-pick a god who'll start fights with other gods, shirk its responsibilities, and disobey your orders.

Alrighty then, both good points, and I shall address them.

1. Ascended Quasi-deity. Gives you I think +14,14,12,12,10,10 in your ability scores. Even if you only started out with a charisma of 8, and it's your dump stats, that still comes to an 18 minimum.

The goddess of combat's job is to oversea the rules of war and combat, and when I say rules I mean the literal laws of physics. When the Musket was invented her and the creator had a field day trying to figure out how it worked in terms of the rules of the universe. Her job is not diplomacy, and even then what would warriors want unite and fight under? They want a god who represents who they are.

Of course the fact that Kenshin the "Goddess of Combat" was a rebellious princess probably helps her reputation and got her into the job. She is quite charismatic.

As for the want like good employees in order to be picked for a deity you have to a. Be worthy and b. Be in heaven.

Heaven is not something you get easily in my campaign setting. You need to be exalted in nature in order to get into heaven right away at death, because heaven is suppose to be paradise right?

Yeah....anti-heroes have no place in this heaven, if you're a jerkass, even one with a heart of gold, you're probably going to either the abyss (A giant prison where you serve your time for your sins in my setting) or limbo (the inbetween heaven and hell where you go if you're not bad enough for the abyss, but not good enough for heaven), and of course overseeing every trial are the ultimate beings of law and order, the devils who oversee the paperwork and file every soul into their proper afterlife.

You get to heaven when you have found true redemption. When you are a person who truly is worthy of it.

To put it in terms of OOTS...Roy would probably go to Limbo. He's a good person, but he lacks a lot of qualities that say "would want to spend all eternity around". He also tends to solve his problems with violence far too often. (Then again the devils and demons not being evil in my setting should tell you this is a setting where you can't go around committing hate crimes)

Miko would obvious go to the abyss, premeditated murder is a 100 year sentence in my setting. Of course she would serve her time, go to Limbo, eventually reform and find redemption then go to heaven.

I tried to design the afterlife around a system with the basis of "If I was god, how would I make the afterlife work", which fits well since the creator is the physical embodiment of the DM.

Of course the rules are always changing, which is why the devils, demons, angels, and gods need to work together to keep order. Cultures shift and evolve over time, and the afterlife needs to realize that you can't keep using the same rules for all eternity. Values shift, people grow, and the afterlife needs to as well.

Hope that answered your thoughts, and I pray I haven't missed anything super obvious that is a plot hole.

Karoht
2012-05-14, 02:26 PM
The problem is that D&D has included more than one pantheon.

If the Greek gods exist according to their mythology, then Gaia is the earth, and with her son and husband Ouranos (the sky) conceived Khronos and the other Titans, who conceived the Olympians.

But if this is true, then there is no room for Vishnu, Odin, or anybody associated with any other creation myth.

The gods are associated with the creation of the universe. Sometimes and creators, sometimes as early created beings, but in any case, inconsistent with any other creation myth.

Consider this: Poseidon is the god of the sea, But so are Njord, Namu, Idliragijenget, Yam, Chalchiuhtlicue, Llyr, Tangaroa, and even Davy Jones. If more than one of them exist, then "god of the sea" means something inconsistent with every one of those mythologies.

To use gods in D&D, you have to invent some new creation mythos that accounts for them all, decide that inconsistent statements can both be true, or assume that you just don't know.
Or, you treat the myths as exactly that. Myths. Not historical accounts. Myths have a touch of storyteller imbelishment, and are rife with inconsistant facts. Never let the facts get in the way of telling a good story.

In other words, you explain the inconsistencies of the facts with the inconsistancies of the account itself.


Picture a bunch of ocean gods, sitting around a fire, telling the tale of how they vanquished the great sea monster. Kind of like a bunch of army vets telling a story from the war, all shouting over each other 'thats not how it happened' kinda deal.
Ocean God A-It was a giant snake, and I beat it by doing X.
Ocean God B-That's not what happened! It was a giant lizard, kinda like godzilla, and I beat it by doing Y because you were too busy being drunk.
Ocean God C-No no no. It was a giant Squid, you two were stuck in it's tentacles, so I beat it by doing Z.
Ocean God D-You're all wrong. Now kid, listen, I'll tell you the real story...
Etc.


Something like that.

viking vince
2012-05-15, 09:52 AM
Also, you can have different gods for different material planes (there are a bunch of them, after all).

Loxagn
2012-05-15, 11:52 AM
Depends on the setting, mostly.

In some settings, gods are simply powerful people who have enough weak people who really, really like them. Translate an adventurer's unique brand of sociopathy into this, and you get god-level adventurers going around and blowing up councils of epic archmages because somebody promised them a lot of Quintessence for it.

In my setting, there are beings of 'deity' levels of power. Did they create the world? No. Do they really have anything to do with its continuing working? No. They observe. They connive, they calculate, and most importantly they preserve the path the world is moving down. The universe is a chalkboard spanning countless septillions of miles, filled corner-to-corner with the most complex and important equation ever written. Their primary concern is making sure that it all comes out to the right answer in the end.

Amiel
2012-05-19, 09:18 PM
The role of a deity is to sit corpulent upon their thrones and ingest the veneration as defined by divine right.
They also engage in temper tantrums if their divine way is not seen or enacted and generally screw with mortals with sheer audacity.
They shape their portfolios into something mortals can understand and worship.

Wardog
2012-05-28, 01:17 PM
Yeah....anti-heroes have no place in this heaven, if you're a jerkass, even one with a heart of gold, you're probably going to either the abyss (A giant prison where you serve your time for your sins in my setting) or limbo (the inbetween heaven and hell where you go if you're not bad enough for the abyss, but not good enough for heaven)

Prison for being a jerk? That's... harsh.

Morithias
2012-05-28, 01:35 PM
Prison for being a jerk? That's... harsh.

Well maybe not for just being a jerk, but it varies from case to case. When I say "Anti-hero" I mean someone like the punisher. Someone who has killed a lot, and is tainted with violence and bloodlust.

Or a bully who is a jerk to people cause he feels like it, but never really crosses the line into "evil" the jerk jock, or the alpha bitch.

Please also note that these "prisons" are not torturous. They are more like modern day prisons, meant for rehabilitation and serving your time for your sins.

Few people go to heaven quickly, all people go to heaven eventually.

Hey, at least it's better than being slowly absorbed into a wall, cause you won't give some parasite your soul to munch on.