How do you portray your deities?

[Clistenes]

For DMs around here, I have a question:

Out of curiosity, how do you usually portray your gods?

Maniacs obsessed with their portfolio almost to the exclusion of everything else? Like, for example, the God of Knowledge only cares about adquiring and spreading knowledge and doesn't worry about anything else, even putting his own followers/religion/church at risk because of it?

Characters with a strong interest (a passion, you could say) in an area but who are otherwise quite balanced and sane?

Professionals who just do a job, like cosmic bureaucrats?

Hungry power-grabbers, who treat their portfolio and churches as tools to get greater power?

Utterly uncromprehensible alien intelligences, with unfathomable interests and goals?

How do they balance their desire to promote their portfolio vs the need to keep a sizeable flock that strenghens them with their prayers?

Thank you very much

[Macros]

I'm currently running a game Wukia-style, and in this setting, I'm pretty much portraying the gods as the heads of a gigantic celestial administration. Working together in harmony -more or less- to keep things running smoothly (well, and then I threw the biggest rock I could find in those finely crafted cogs, and am letting my players deal with the resulting mess).

Usually though, I think I mostly go with the "hungry power-grabbers" type. When they take a front row in the action, that is. It allows a Cold War-like setting, and players can fit in that mold just fine.

[Vamphyr]

I'm a huge Call of Cthulhu fan so most of the deities I use are terrifying, alien, monsters.

They're primarily focused on one goal, but there are usually a series of things preventing them from accomplishing this goal (other gods, ancient magics, a lost artifact). Their worshippers are a means to an end for them. They'll give power to those who worship them and help to achieve the overall goal, but frequently their worshipers are consumed by the fire of alien power.

Considering they're beings of a completely alien mindset to an average human, they're pretty patient but unforgiving. Biding their time until they are free to complete the task that was set before them aeons ago when the stars were young.

[Phelix-Mu]

I tend to think of gods are to mortals as mortals are to ants.

A mortal looks at an ant. The tiny thing is a bundle of instincts and stimuli-response pairs. The ant can't even "think" properly; lacking a mind, it conceives of very little that the mortal can recognize.

The ant looks at the mortal. Well, actually, the ant can't even properly "look." It can receive sensory input, but it doesn't have thoughts connected to these stimuli, nor is it inquisitive or whatever.

Now the mortal looks at a god. The mortal can't even properly "look." For there is more to the god than can simply be seen or perceived at one time. A god may show a mortal a small glimpse of one facet of one portion of its total being. Just as the ant receives the photons reflecting off the surface of the mortal, but is totally incapable of understanding the greater meaning of what it perceives, so too the mortal looks at a god and sees only the bare surface of the being before it.

Anyway, that is my take.

EDIT: In short, the god is portrayed like however they want. Suits my purposes as DM.

[Honest Tiefling]

Mostly like the Ancient Greek gods, in that the gods are terrifying, awesome and powerful. But they are also prone to squabbling, petty rivalries, desires, etc. despite their power and knowledge. The god has dominion over certain things, but how they view that dominion or use it to their own ends can vary a lot.

Most of the current set I am working on to unleash upon some players fall into the strong interest category, through their strong interest can be really strange.

I save the alien intelligence for the demons, who are so chaotic as not being able to really understand or be understood by mortals (and attempting to do so goes really poorly).

[AuraTwilight]

By becoming a deity, one becomes an embodiment of what they are a deity of. Their mortal personality, if any, is retained, but becomes colored by their new outlook. They don't become single-mindedly autistic about their portfolios, but the symbolic bindings are there. Fire deities will be hot-headed and passionate and energetic, even if they never get angry over anything.

[AlanBruce]

In my games, deities are very mych present, but through their clergy or heralds, never directly. The world is aware of them, and there is much reverence and respect towards them (some parts of the world being more zealous than others).

The workd has many landmarks that prove that the gods once walked on the world, during the age of myth, but these areas are secreted and holy or unholy, depebding on rhe deity involved.

[GreenETC]

Mostly like the Ancient Greek gods, in that the gods are terrifying, awesome and powerful. But they are also prone to squabbling, petty rivalries, desires, etc. despite their power and knowledge. The god has dominion over certain things, but how they view that dominion or use it to their own ends can vary a lot.
I believe this is actually how normal D&D gods are. Just look at Garl Glittergold and Olidammara.

[Rogue Shadows]

Ha, I currently write stories wherein several of the secondary characters are basically gods, and I just finished DM'ing a campaign that featured gods.

I run gods...as big people. They laugh, they cry, they love, they hate. They achieve great things and screw up royally. The only difference is that as immortal, very powerful beings, everything they do tends to be on a bigger scale from mortals. When they laugh, it's a booming, full-hearted thing. When they cry, they're not holding anything back, since they don't have to prove anything to anyone. A god in love is positively infatuated, and a god that hates something is going to bend their whole being towards eliminating the target of their hate.

And for all that the gods operate on a much larger scale than mortals, they're still very understandable to mortals. Their actions may occasionally be inscrutable, but their motivations are always well within normal human limits to grasp.

Oh, and also, I try not to forget that all of them have INT, WIS, and CHA in the high 20s, at least. They notice everything, know almost everything, are impressed by very little.

[Honest Tiefling]

I believe this is actually how normal D&D gods are. Just look at Garl Glittergold and Olidammara.

What can I say, I'm a traditionalist. Now to think of a way to incorporate a god's more petty and mortal desires into a campaign...

[OldTrees1]

Deities are Elder Evils with Blue-Orange moralities hinted at in their portfolios/duties, yet are able to communicate with their followers and willing to let their followers prove their worship by acting as agents in the world below.

Example:
The ladies of light and dark manage the flow of life through the material plane. The perfect flow is the highest goal. This requires coordination such that the river of life does not have floods or droughts. Unfortunately most mortals have not grasped this wisdom yet. They breed like rabbits and butcher each other like cattle. The servants of the lady of light work to maintain a constant birth rate. The servants of the dark lady work to maintain a constant death rate.

[Zaydos]

Depends upon setting.

Usually I go for the qualitatively more powerful than mortals but ultimately rather human in motivations. They are also usually borrowed from real world mythologies. They do sometimes get monomaniac about their portfolios but it's very rare.

I also typically have a higher tier of gods which came before and are their portfolios. These tend to be more obsessed with their portfolio than regular gods.

I have had games with many, many types of gods before. One game had 3 different types of ascended deities (usurper, bestowed, and naturally becoming gods) the first was driven mad by power (ok he was mad before hand and the extent of his madness was not seen IC), the second was mostly a dude, and the third were PCs and... seemed to be mostly monomaniac about their portfolio and rather crazy. There were also the (now dead) Old Gods who were altruistic and Good, and when they ruled the world was in a Golden Age (no fun for games). The last group was the Outer Gods which were a varied lot of deity level entities which had been driven from their native cosmologies and were roaming the Far Realm to invade worlds and plunder them/set themselves up as gods.

[BWR]

Depends on the setting. In PS they tend to be big, bigger than the PCs can hope to be and usually concerned with bigger pictures than the PCs are. Not necessarily the ant-human distinction but more like human-sentient supercomputer. The human might be able to do the calculations in theory but just doesn't have the processing power or speed to do so in actuality.

In Mystara, the Immortals are just the next step in power level. they tend to be smarter and mor experienced, but they are very much akin to the Greek gods - they watch over the world and cannot directly interfere, but they have lots of servants who work to fulfill their plots, clerics sometimes have direct personal messages from their Immortals. Immortals are not just power sources, and every cleric does have a direct, personal connection to their patron. The more experienced (higher level), the greater this connection.

In my games, playing a cleric isn't a one-sided deal. You get serious powers and whatnot but you are a servant of your patron. If you do not act appropriately, you will be punished. Cleric PCs are great tools for DMs. You need the party to get involved in something but don't have a good hook? "Cleric, you receive a vision/message from church superior/see an omen".
The Immortals have their own plans and their own games and mortals sometimes get involved.

For instance, IMC, one PC was turned into an undead and the party's cleric was not powerful enough to cast Resurrection, so they had to find another person to do so. I rolled randomly and they found a cleric of a rival Immortal. Not an enemy, just a philosophical and professional rival. I could easily have said "sorry, he won't help" but that would be unfair to the players (since I had said at the beginning of the campaign that raising the dead was common). I could have said they could get the PC raised, end of story. After all, they may be rivals but the dead PC was not of either faith and neither Immortal is actually that uncaring.

So I made the cleric roleplay the situation. Almost perfectly, the argument came out to be based on the exact point of contention between the two Immortals - passion vs. planning, emotions vs. rationality, personal vs. community.
So the NPC cleric agreed to cast the Resurrection but made a deal: if the revived PC fulfilled the promises the PC cleric had made on her behalf within a certain reasonable time period, the NPC cleric would make an very public announcement that the PC's philosophy was, at leat in this case, superior to his own Immortal's.
Likewise, if the revived PC should fail to uphold her expectations, the PC cleric would have to make a similar statement about the NPC's Immortal and philosophy.

As you can imagine, this one incident suddenly became a minor focus for the rival Immortals. Not only the chance to prove eachother wrong on an issue, but having the other's powerful servants make a public statement on the subject...talk about a PR boost!

As it happened, the PC cleric failed and as punishment was stripped of her powers until the high priest of the faith cast an Atonement (I played that rather quickly - it wasn't so big a deal for the Immortal that they would bear lasting resentment). In return, the PC seduced the NPC, proving on a personal scale the superiority of her own Immortal over the NPC's.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I haven't have the opportunity to portray a god in all its godly splendor, since gods in my setting stay in their divine realms on their native planes barring reality-shaking unusual circumstances. Consequently in the very few instances that the gods have needed to intervene more directly in mortal affairs I've had them do so through avatars that put real effort into concealing their identities as best their still divine nature allowed.

Pesonalities vary greatly. After all there're a whole mess of gods across a series of racial and regional pantheons. The only real consistency is an apparent sense of superiority that even the most humble of gods can't completely suppress. Enormous ability scores have that effect.

[Kane0]

Like the deities of traditional Hellenistic literature... immensely powerful and bratty walking highlights of mortal failings.


Mostly like the Ancient Greek gods, in that the gods are terrifying, awesome and powerful. But they are also prone to squabbling, petty rivalries, desires, etc. despite their power and knowledge.
Yeah, like that.