Scalenex
2007-01-05, 12:05 AM
When you guys go about making your own pantheons, what process do you use? Personally I don't like the PHB dieties much though I can't put my finger on why.
You can follow me through a pantheon creating process much like Rich's world building process save I lack the prestige he does so much fewer people will read this or care.
I recently made one for a game I'm running and I realized there is a lot of ways to go about it. I created these criteria. Obviously you can't always satisfy them all and have to pick and choose.
Criteria
1) The dieties are based on something that the players are familar with and can understand.
2) All important aspects of life have a god associated with them. If something isn't included, there should be a good reason for it.
3) It needs to fit in and around the planar cosmology that D&D possesses, since very few DMs would want to homebrew something that complex.
4) The alignments need to be in balance with each other. Either through number of dieties or power of dieties. If there is an imbalance between the alignments, it should be reflected on the world.
5) The creation of your gaming world should be addressed and tie in with your setting.
6) The various gods should tie in with each other.
7) The domains should be more or less equally distributed, or if not equally distributed, two gods should avoid having identical domains associated with them.
So I looked at these criteria. I wanted each of the nine alignments to have two dieties. I debated with giving each alignment a male and female diety but changed my mind on that one. I kind of liked how OoS had one world with Greek, Norse, and Chinese gods so I thought I'd borrow from other religions. This created a hodge podge so I basically put criteria 6 away.
First I made a list of all the dieties I was fairly familar with from all the mythologies I'm fairly familar with. I'm a high school graduate so Greek went to the fore followed by Norse with Egyptian trailing behind. I quickly realized that few pantheons in the real world have a lot of evil dieties so I had to dig more obscure stuff for that. I made a nice list but I had too many LG dieties. I couldn't for the life of me cut this list down to two.
Pallas Athena, Vesta, and Thor (I know Thor isn't really Lawful in Norse Mythology but he is in OoS) so I decided to have seven Good Dieties. I had similar problems trimming down my Netural dieites so I decided to have seven of each it looked like this.
Pallas Athena LG
Vesta LG
Thor LG
Coyote NG
Lady of the Lake NG
Raven CG
______ CG
Anubis LN
Hephaestus LN
Gaia N
Hermes N
The Fates N
Artemis CN
Dionysus CN
Pretty Greaco-Roman huh? It's not my fault they have the most fleshed out neutral dieties I am aware of. I didn't fill CG because most pantheons evolved to support the status quo of the ruling caste and the status quo is Lawful and they want to protray it as good, therefore Western and Eastern culture is very pro Lawful. Notice my first CG diety is Native American. Speaking of which, Coyote is pretty Chaotic with how he is traditionally protrayed. That is true but I wanted a Neutral Good God to be the patron of the Gnomes who gravitate towards Neutral Good and Gnomes like pranks and teaching people so Coyote fit very well.
So far I see Good is leaning towards Law on Neutral is leaning towards Neutral on the Law and Chaos aspect (how appropriate!). To balance it out I'd make Evil go towards Chaos. That's how a lot of people view D&D anyway, that CE is more evil somehow than LE and LG is the most goody goody of all the Good alignments. Here's what I had.
_______ LE
Set LE
Aries NE
_______ NE
_______ CE
Kali CE
_____ CE
Woe is me! I am having trouble with evil on all levels and CE especially. I knew that I'd have Set be the state religion of a powerful LE nation that I wanted to be involved with ancient lore. Perfect, my players are familar with Vampire: the Masquerade and the Setites are all about lore. Also we are Conan the Barbarian fans and Set is all about conquest there. Kali is good as my first (and probably only Eastern diety). I wanted Aries to be a hidden power offering aid to the underdog in any conflict in order to increase the number and length of wars, hence the neutral evil so he'd work with anyone as long as the end result is destruction.
I got to fill in the blanks. Since I was making Set a big player in my world, I opted to the empty CG slot to an Egyptian diety that opposed him. I chose Isis so there'd be more female dieties. I was struggling with whether or not to use Fyren. Fyren is a demon my friend and I created whole cloth for a World of Darkness game and he didn't really want me to use it. But it was so fleshed out and all my players understood it so I just had to use it. Fyren was almost the definition of NE. I made Fyren the main opponent to the good and neutral gods and the one who created most non-humanoid monsters in order to drive the other gods creations from the world. But what about the monstrous humanoids. I didn't want them each to have their own diety. I thought that was cumbersome, so Fyren had a child who became the mother and patron of all monstrous humanoids. Her mantra is very simple, the last race standing inherents the Earth. Close enough to CE because it glorifies extermination. I named her Firbolga. I noticed that many of my good gods can tie into one of the four elements. Evil should too. Fyren ties to the Earth, Kali to fire. But evil lacks Air and Water. Could I lump them together? Air and Water, storms at sea! Storms at sea, shipwrecks. Shipwrecks, Sirens! I made a CE goddess named Siren who is the mother of most of the womanly monsters (medusae, hags, harpies, lesser Sirens). Since Siren lures men to their death with her seductive song, why don't I make her clerics kind of like that. They lure men (and women) into vice in order to corrupt and weaken them. Siren cults are very popular among young nobility who do it to revel in abusing their power and cheese off their parents. These Siren cults debaucheries destroy society within. That's how I justify the Chaotic Evil part. For the last LE slot, I chose Darkseid from DC comics. He is very evil and very lawful wanting dominion over everything. He's the youngest of the dieties having only recently (in the way dieties measure time) put his sights on the gaming world and he is trying to subvert power away from both the good gods and Fyren and Set.
Now domains, I thought it was unfair that some gods got three domains and others got four so I gave each one four.
Evil
Darkseid LE Law, Evil, Sun, Travel
Set LE Death, Evil, Knowledge, Magic
Aries NE Destruction, Luck, Strength, War
Fyren NE Earth, Evil, Protection, Trickery
Firbolga CE Chaos, Evil, Strength, War
Kali CE Death, Destruction, Fire, War
Siren CE Air, Water, Travel, Trickery
Neutral
Anubis LN Death, Law, Knowledge, and Magic
Hephaestus LN Earth, Healing, Law, Knowledge
Gaia* N Air, Animal, Earth, Fire, Plant, Water
Hermes N Air, Luck, Travel, Trickery
The Fates N Knowledge, Luck, Magic, Travel
Artemis CN Animal, Chaos, Plant, Strength
Dionysus CN Chaos, Fire, Luck, Trickery
Good
Pallas Athena LG Good, Law, Knowledge, War
Vesta LG Fire, Good, Healing, Protection
Thor LG Destruction, Law, Strength, War
Coyote NG Animal, Good, Luck, Trickery
Lady of the Lake NG Good, Magic, Protection, Water
Raven CG Air, Sun, Travel, Trickery
Isis CG Chaos, Good, Healing, Protection
Gaia is the exception, she gets six, but I added the stipulation that her clerics can't have opposed elements (Fire and Water is verboten for example)
Now for politics. There are no racial gods per se but most demihumans consider one god or goddess their patron since most gods had a hand in creating everything.
-Coyote gets Gnomes
-Thor gets Dwarves (there is a secret group of dwarf barbarians in the frontier who worship a Chaotic Good Thor who they claim is the true Thor)
-Pallas Athena is the patron of Grey Elves
-Artemis is the patron of Wood Elves (there are no High Elves in this world in order to heighten the differences between these two groups)
-Vesta is the patron of halflings and generally the most popular diety among humans though Vesta has few adventuring clerics, Most good aligned human nations have another good god as a patron and Vesta in a supporting role (would you expect less from the goddess of the hearth?)
-Gaia is the patron of most druids (if they choose a god at all), though many good druids worship Coyote and many evil ones worship Fyren
-The Fates are the patrons of sorcerers because they shape the weird destinies of these marked individuals
-Hermes is the patron of travelers. His clerics are commonly used as messengers because most warring factions know better than to mess with them.
-Set is worshipped by Lawful Evil people in power (unless they have to pretend to be good or neutral). Darkseid is worshipped by would be usurpers.
-Siren gets people who just revel in decadence
-Fyren is the patron of most noncivilized monsters, and any evil races with a tie to the Earth like Kobolds, vampires, and Underdark creatures.
-Firbolga is the patron of most other monstrous humanoids. If the goblins and orcs are cooperating, Firbolga's clerics are probably involved. "Kill the humans and then we'll fight each other"
-Aries followers either revel in conflict if they lean towards Chaotic, or try to play kingmaker with evil powers if they lean toward Lawful. All that's important to Aries is that the encourage strife.
-Kali is favored by bandits and evil barbarians. Kali tends to have few followers because their unsubtle ways (like lighting everything on fire) makes them easy for Lawful and/or Good adventurers to find them.
-The Lady of the Lake is popular with paladins and good aligned wizards
-Dionysus has few followers but most pay him heed on days of revelry, even the stuck up Grey Elves give him one day a year.
-Isis is the patron of just rebellion
-Raven is popular in small frontier areas as the god of self reliance. Being CG means his priesthood can't sponsor many clerics but a disportionate number of them go adventuring as Raven favors traveling a lot and is associated with the Sun (which is the bane of many undead). Many adventurers who became adventurers because of righteous anger follow Raven.
-Anubis and Hephaestus make sure kingdoms are run smoothly and many good and evil lands have them as administrators. Anubis' clerics focus on funeral rites and take care of burying anyone who cannot afford a funeral. They also make sure the dead stay dead and make sure that undead don't get out of control and that ressurections aren't used too often. Hephaestus makes sure the wheels of progress keep moving smoothly.
You can follow me through a pantheon creating process much like Rich's world building process save I lack the prestige he does so much fewer people will read this or care.
I recently made one for a game I'm running and I realized there is a lot of ways to go about it. I created these criteria. Obviously you can't always satisfy them all and have to pick and choose.
Criteria
1) The dieties are based on something that the players are familar with and can understand.
2) All important aspects of life have a god associated with them. If something isn't included, there should be a good reason for it.
3) It needs to fit in and around the planar cosmology that D&D possesses, since very few DMs would want to homebrew something that complex.
4) The alignments need to be in balance with each other. Either through number of dieties or power of dieties. If there is an imbalance between the alignments, it should be reflected on the world.
5) The creation of your gaming world should be addressed and tie in with your setting.
6) The various gods should tie in with each other.
7) The domains should be more or less equally distributed, or if not equally distributed, two gods should avoid having identical domains associated with them.
So I looked at these criteria. I wanted each of the nine alignments to have two dieties. I debated with giving each alignment a male and female diety but changed my mind on that one. I kind of liked how OoS had one world with Greek, Norse, and Chinese gods so I thought I'd borrow from other religions. This created a hodge podge so I basically put criteria 6 away.
First I made a list of all the dieties I was fairly familar with from all the mythologies I'm fairly familar with. I'm a high school graduate so Greek went to the fore followed by Norse with Egyptian trailing behind. I quickly realized that few pantheons in the real world have a lot of evil dieties so I had to dig more obscure stuff for that. I made a nice list but I had too many LG dieties. I couldn't for the life of me cut this list down to two.
Pallas Athena, Vesta, and Thor (I know Thor isn't really Lawful in Norse Mythology but he is in OoS) so I decided to have seven Good Dieties. I had similar problems trimming down my Netural dieites so I decided to have seven of each it looked like this.
Pallas Athena LG
Vesta LG
Thor LG
Coyote NG
Lady of the Lake NG
Raven CG
______ CG
Anubis LN
Hephaestus LN
Gaia N
Hermes N
The Fates N
Artemis CN
Dionysus CN
Pretty Greaco-Roman huh? It's not my fault they have the most fleshed out neutral dieties I am aware of. I didn't fill CG because most pantheons evolved to support the status quo of the ruling caste and the status quo is Lawful and they want to protray it as good, therefore Western and Eastern culture is very pro Lawful. Notice my first CG diety is Native American. Speaking of which, Coyote is pretty Chaotic with how he is traditionally protrayed. That is true but I wanted a Neutral Good God to be the patron of the Gnomes who gravitate towards Neutral Good and Gnomes like pranks and teaching people so Coyote fit very well.
So far I see Good is leaning towards Law on Neutral is leaning towards Neutral on the Law and Chaos aspect (how appropriate!). To balance it out I'd make Evil go towards Chaos. That's how a lot of people view D&D anyway, that CE is more evil somehow than LE and LG is the most goody goody of all the Good alignments. Here's what I had.
_______ LE
Set LE
Aries NE
_______ NE
_______ CE
Kali CE
_____ CE
Woe is me! I am having trouble with evil on all levels and CE especially. I knew that I'd have Set be the state religion of a powerful LE nation that I wanted to be involved with ancient lore. Perfect, my players are familar with Vampire: the Masquerade and the Setites are all about lore. Also we are Conan the Barbarian fans and Set is all about conquest there. Kali is good as my first (and probably only Eastern diety). I wanted Aries to be a hidden power offering aid to the underdog in any conflict in order to increase the number and length of wars, hence the neutral evil so he'd work with anyone as long as the end result is destruction.
I got to fill in the blanks. Since I was making Set a big player in my world, I opted to the empty CG slot to an Egyptian diety that opposed him. I chose Isis so there'd be more female dieties. I was struggling with whether or not to use Fyren. Fyren is a demon my friend and I created whole cloth for a World of Darkness game and he didn't really want me to use it. But it was so fleshed out and all my players understood it so I just had to use it. Fyren was almost the definition of NE. I made Fyren the main opponent to the good and neutral gods and the one who created most non-humanoid monsters in order to drive the other gods creations from the world. But what about the monstrous humanoids. I didn't want them each to have their own diety. I thought that was cumbersome, so Fyren had a child who became the mother and patron of all monstrous humanoids. Her mantra is very simple, the last race standing inherents the Earth. Close enough to CE because it glorifies extermination. I named her Firbolga. I noticed that many of my good gods can tie into one of the four elements. Evil should too. Fyren ties to the Earth, Kali to fire. But evil lacks Air and Water. Could I lump them together? Air and Water, storms at sea! Storms at sea, shipwrecks. Shipwrecks, Sirens! I made a CE goddess named Siren who is the mother of most of the womanly monsters (medusae, hags, harpies, lesser Sirens). Since Siren lures men to their death with her seductive song, why don't I make her clerics kind of like that. They lure men (and women) into vice in order to corrupt and weaken them. Siren cults are very popular among young nobility who do it to revel in abusing their power and cheese off their parents. These Siren cults debaucheries destroy society within. That's how I justify the Chaotic Evil part. For the last LE slot, I chose Darkseid from DC comics. He is very evil and very lawful wanting dominion over everything. He's the youngest of the dieties having only recently (in the way dieties measure time) put his sights on the gaming world and he is trying to subvert power away from both the good gods and Fyren and Set.
Now domains, I thought it was unfair that some gods got three domains and others got four so I gave each one four.
Evil
Darkseid LE Law, Evil, Sun, Travel
Set LE Death, Evil, Knowledge, Magic
Aries NE Destruction, Luck, Strength, War
Fyren NE Earth, Evil, Protection, Trickery
Firbolga CE Chaos, Evil, Strength, War
Kali CE Death, Destruction, Fire, War
Siren CE Air, Water, Travel, Trickery
Neutral
Anubis LN Death, Law, Knowledge, and Magic
Hephaestus LN Earth, Healing, Law, Knowledge
Gaia* N Air, Animal, Earth, Fire, Plant, Water
Hermes N Air, Luck, Travel, Trickery
The Fates N Knowledge, Luck, Magic, Travel
Artemis CN Animal, Chaos, Plant, Strength
Dionysus CN Chaos, Fire, Luck, Trickery
Good
Pallas Athena LG Good, Law, Knowledge, War
Vesta LG Fire, Good, Healing, Protection
Thor LG Destruction, Law, Strength, War
Coyote NG Animal, Good, Luck, Trickery
Lady of the Lake NG Good, Magic, Protection, Water
Raven CG Air, Sun, Travel, Trickery
Isis CG Chaos, Good, Healing, Protection
Gaia is the exception, she gets six, but I added the stipulation that her clerics can't have opposed elements (Fire and Water is verboten for example)
Now for politics. There are no racial gods per se but most demihumans consider one god or goddess their patron since most gods had a hand in creating everything.
-Coyote gets Gnomes
-Thor gets Dwarves (there is a secret group of dwarf barbarians in the frontier who worship a Chaotic Good Thor who they claim is the true Thor)
-Pallas Athena is the patron of Grey Elves
-Artemis is the patron of Wood Elves (there are no High Elves in this world in order to heighten the differences between these two groups)
-Vesta is the patron of halflings and generally the most popular diety among humans though Vesta has few adventuring clerics, Most good aligned human nations have another good god as a patron and Vesta in a supporting role (would you expect less from the goddess of the hearth?)
-Gaia is the patron of most druids (if they choose a god at all), though many good druids worship Coyote and many evil ones worship Fyren
-The Fates are the patrons of sorcerers because they shape the weird destinies of these marked individuals
-Hermes is the patron of travelers. His clerics are commonly used as messengers because most warring factions know better than to mess with them.
-Set is worshipped by Lawful Evil people in power (unless they have to pretend to be good or neutral). Darkseid is worshipped by would be usurpers.
-Siren gets people who just revel in decadence
-Fyren is the patron of most noncivilized monsters, and any evil races with a tie to the Earth like Kobolds, vampires, and Underdark creatures.
-Firbolga is the patron of most other monstrous humanoids. If the goblins and orcs are cooperating, Firbolga's clerics are probably involved. "Kill the humans and then we'll fight each other"
-Aries followers either revel in conflict if they lean towards Chaotic, or try to play kingmaker with evil powers if they lean toward Lawful. All that's important to Aries is that the encourage strife.
-Kali is favored by bandits and evil barbarians. Kali tends to have few followers because their unsubtle ways (like lighting everything on fire) makes them easy for Lawful and/or Good adventurers to find them.
-The Lady of the Lake is popular with paladins and good aligned wizards
-Dionysus has few followers but most pay him heed on days of revelry, even the stuck up Grey Elves give him one day a year.
-Isis is the patron of just rebellion
-Raven is popular in small frontier areas as the god of self reliance. Being CG means his priesthood can't sponsor many clerics but a disportionate number of them go adventuring as Raven favors traveling a lot and is associated with the Sun (which is the bane of many undead). Many adventurers who became adventurers because of righteous anger follow Raven.
-Anubis and Hephaestus make sure kingdoms are run smoothly and many good and evil lands have them as administrators. Anubis' clerics focus on funeral rites and take care of burying anyone who cannot afford a funeral. They also make sure the dead stay dead and make sure that undead don't get out of control and that ressurections aren't used too often. Hephaestus makes sure the wheels of progress keep moving smoothly.