Divinity, The Tabletop and You

[Tanuki Tales]

I'm curious about what everyone's approach to the existence of deities in their games is, what kind of gods (or specific gods) they like to use and what kind(s) they absolutely abhor.

I personally like the approach that DnD's Eberron setting uses (where there are "god-like" entities that are definitely known to exist but the actual gods, if they exist, don't have much of an active role at all) when I'm in games that don't absolutely require the gods to flat out exist and be active. Otherwise I don't have much of a generalized opinion on deity's in general and use them as tools like any other part of the gaming experience.

[Yora]

I went with animistic. You can basically walk up to the spirit of the land and talk to them, if they feel like answering. Spirits have some control over plant growth and weather within in their domain and to some extend can drive away and call all kinds of animals. The more powerful ones can even spread diseases that target specific kinds of creatures.
Most spirits are indifferent to anyone passing through and unfriendly to those who would settle on their land, but in many cases they can be shifted to indifferent or friendly by the pleas of druids and shamans and regular offerings of sacrifices they deem appropriate.
Only very few spirits are openly hostile to those passing through their domain and these might create muddy holes and thick undergrowth to keep visitors out, or have them get attacked by animals or become victims to landslides and falling trees. Only the very powerful ones have the ability to make the ground split open and target intruders with lightning.

People also revere the elements and other major natural features as deities, which are primarily the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, the Sky, the Ocean, and Darkness. However, these deities never respond directly to prayers and it's not even certain that they interact directly with the lives of mortals at all. They are more symbols or manifestations of certain aspects of life and nature and their worshippers hope to gain understanding and get into tune with these aspects through meditation and rituals, to gain higher spiritual understanding.
Since all spellcasting comes from personal ability and the energies of the environment, even the priests of these great gods can cast spells just as shamans and druids do. However, it is expected that a person of great spiritual knowledge uses this insight to master magic, so actual priests rank higher than mere sages of the philosophies.

[SiuiS]

Depends. If it's a focus of the game, then reverence becomes important. But for games that don't have that depth, I don't bother. I don't want gods involved in a game that considers divinity something to barter for human love.

[BWR]

I'm classic. Gods are big busybodies who love mucking with mortals' lives.
I'm not so classic that they have stats that PCs can go and kill on a whim.
I tend to like the Mystaran Immortal version best, because just about all Immortals started as normal mortals and ascended, and they are not personifications of elements in the multiverse, just powerful politicians with hobbies and an agenda. The Old Ones are to the Immortals as Immortals are to mortals, and less knowable.

[AuraTwilight]

It differs from game to game, but in general, divinity is something players can accomplish for themselves.

[kieza]

I have three groups of religions: Deific, Animistic, and Ideologic

The Deific religions worship the actual Gods: distant but powerful figures who grant blessings to their followers. Notably, none of the gods are wholly good or evil: the god of battle blesses righteous defenders as well as ravaging hordes, and the god of the underworld eventually takes both tyrants and saints. None of the gods have ever shown themselves to mortal eyes; their presence is inferred from the visions experienced by devoted worshipers, in which the worshiper senses an indescribable, but undoubtedly real divine presence. Most deific religions are based upon revelations gained in these visions. Some powerful clerics and arcanists have managed to summon angels to learn more about the gods, and a few have succeeded in traveling bodily to the Astral Plane in order to explore Heaven.

Animistic religions are more common among primitive cultures, and are centered on spirits of the land, of which there are a great many. Some of these religions focus on reverence or awareness of the spirits in general; others revolve around powerful, unique spirits. Unlike the Gods, there are both good and evil spirits. Worship of benevolent spirits generally takes the form of offerings, as thanks for the spirit's protection; malevolent spirits are worshiped in order to appease them, or direct their wrath towards enemies. Followers of animistic religions do not gain any inherent powers, as clerics do, but they can call up spirits to aid them, or allow a spirit to "ride along" in their body.

Finally, there are the Ideologic religions, which are simply belief systems, with minimal or no supernatural elements, such as dwarven ancestor worship: the dwarves revere their ancestors, care for the things that they made, and animate golems in their likenesses as a token of honor, but they do not claim to receive any magical aid by doing so.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

I dislike there being "one true pantheon" of gods that are known to exist and conflict between religions are actually conflicts between living gods that are equally extant. Rather, my world has a multiplicity of faiths, as varied as human faiths. All have certain truth behind them; an especially powerful angel prince may play the role of a diety for a specific religion, and may actually be effectively a god in power (despite being no more than in intensely powerful angel). Nevertheless, his church sees him as the one true god. Nature spirit faiths revere certain fey powers, the "evil" gods are either far realm creatures or demons or such like. But the key is that the religions don't agree on the existence or divinity of other faiths like many default DND pantheons.

[mephnick]

I waffle between having houses of gods and ascendants like the malazan book series, or having animistic spirits of the land. Sometimes both.

I find the "there's a bunch of big, all-powerful gods with multiple domains and they're all related or conflicting" trope pretty tedious. You don't have to have a God of X just cause WotC did.

[Talakeal]

My setting is primarily animistic. All spirits belong to one of fifteen different orders, each taking control over a different aspect of reality; (Magic, Space, Time, Life, Dreams, Nature, Fire, Earth, Water, Air, Knowledge, Technology, Death, Art, and Chaos). Each order serve as custodians and caretakers for reality, and only interfere with mortal affairs on a subtle level, influencing probability, unless they are summoned into the physical world by a mortal spell-caster.

Each order of spirits is ruled over by three gods, one good, one evil, and one neutral. This makes for a total of 45 deity level beings in the game. The deity are the strongest beings in the world and beyond the limits of mortal power, but they are not omnipotent, and they follow the same rules as everyone else. A max level party would have a decent chance of defeating one. However, if a spirit, of any rank, is killed a replacement spirit will come into being over time to fill the gap left in the cosmos.

[Mutazoia]

(Depending on the game and the group) I've found that I tend to run a version of the Catholic church more often than not. One over deity with lesser saints handling the various domains. This seems to have a less upsetting effect on the more religiously stringent players. (I have had people refuse to play when using traditional D&D deities...as if they felt that even pretending they existed was a major sin.)

[Rhynn]

I prefer my systems to be agnostic: there's religion (a lot of it, preferrably in great detail and verisimilitude), but there's no objective proof of deities. Some people wield magic and claim it's from the gods, but nobody gets to go up and chat to them, by-the-book D&D 3E style.

I do love well-done classical Greek-style gods too, though: Glorantha and Artesia's Known World are some of the best examples. Gods walking among you, etc.

For me, the religions are more important than the gods, though. In Glorantha and A:AKW, the religions draw so heavily on basically all of world mythology (parts of Glorantha draw on Abrahamic religions, Greek gods, Norse gods, Australian aboriginal mythology, African mythology, Asian mythology, etc. etc.) that they just feel real.

In both of those settings, the progression from human to divine is a part of the mythic reality, and I enjoy that a lot, especially the way it's presented; the more divine you become, the less choice and freedom you have, and the less in touch with the mundane world you are. True Ascension means being removed from play.

My own main setting has a very simple set-up, built around the central idea of wanting "Lawful clerics and Chaotic anti-clerics", old-school D&D style. Both groups follow the same basic quasi-Zoroastrian religion involving the Eros/Creation/Life-impulse and the Thanatos/Death/Entropy-impulse, neither really "good" or "evil", both ultimately just part of the way the universe works. The Eros-cult is dominant because humans generally find it more palatable and agreeable, and has formed into a "universal church" over the centuries, followed in the "core realms" of the campaign. The Thanatos-cult is worshipped more openly in other realms, but it also draws sociopaths who revel in death, destruction, and entropy.

Both groups also have countless sects - gnostics and mystics, hermits, fanatics, fundamentalists, etc. - with different modes of worship, different versions of the fundamental story (the creation of the world from the principles of Eros and Thanatos), but each with no more proof than the others that they have anything right.

The setting has no "planes", as such; wizards can enter a sort of "astral plane" composed supposedly entirely of thought, but that is really no more real than the experiences "real" magicians have (reading about some of Alan Moore's spiritual experiences, as well as about experiences people have using certain mind-altering substances, was a major inspiration; Cerebus was another...).

The setting also has an Ascension theme, but it's very vague: basically, some ancient empire left behind certain monolithic structures that are thought to have something to do with ascension to divinity, but that's about it.

Quite incidentally, I also love the religious/mystical themes in Dragon Age: the corrupted City of Gold, the corrupted dragon-gods-become-archdemons, etc. ...

[Angry Bob]

Game 1: Gods run on rule by fiat. They can do anything they want. However, because paradoxes would ensue if they actually went against each other, no timelines exist in which they actually do, making them appear quite impotent to their worshippers.

Game 2: If you know where to find them, and can survive the environment of their home, you can get an audience with them.

Game 3: The only gods here are mortals with enough power to demand worship.

[Vitruviansquid]

I never have active or interventionist gods. When I do, it's always "well, why doesn't the God just..." or "all this trouble could be saved if the God came and..."

[lunar2]

in the setting i'm working on, there are no traditional deities. there are the fey spirits, creators of the fey and some other lifeforms, like the elves and orcs from human stock, but even they don't seek worship, merely knowledge and/or power. think of them as disembodied scientists with a great deal of power over life at the genetic level.

[Rhynn]

I never have active or interventionist gods. When I do, it's always "well, why doesn't the God just..." or "all this trouble could be saved if the God came and..."

Theodicy only applies with certain presuppositions (omnipotence, omnibenevolence, omniscience), which are hardly universal to the concept of divinity. Remove one and the problem can be solved trivially.

The basics:
1. The gods don't know everything to act on it.
2. The gods can't act freely.
3. The gods lack the power to do everything.
4. The gods don't care to do something.

Any or all of these can be true, and they can still be "like unto gods" to mortals, and worshipping them can still be a good idea.

[Mastikator]

I really like the religions in the Ebberon setting, the level of diversity is just right and the fact that they all are related to each other in some way (some in a very direct way, like the sovereign host and the dark six) and that it's all very morally grey. The religions are all dragon centric in one way or the other, as is the creation myth. Ebberon is a dragon's world. And then there are the other planes of existence, which I think are just fantastic.

[Telok]

One common theme at the basis of my game religions is that mortals are ants.

Literally, the mortals are to the gods as ants are to humans, and it's modern day humans (in a first world urban area) at that. So no matter how awesome your 79th level ultra-wizard is some god will turn around and say "Oh, hey. There's an ant banging it's head on my light switch. How cute, he's trying to turn it on. <squish> Bloody stupid ants." From the god's point of view the only questions are if the mortal is a boring ant or a fire ant and if there's a couple of ants or a couple of thousand ants. It might even get to the point of a question about buying ant poison or hiring an exterminator.

From the point of view of the mortals/characters I use a slightly modified combination of Hindu, ancient Roman, and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup gods. The real life gods give me a goodly assortment of religious holidays, feasts, and rituals in addition to the non-adventurer gods. The Dungeon Crawl gods are the adventurer gods. They have nice lists of what they like you to do and what they don't like you doing. There's a secret piety score that can bring you back from the dead (sometimes) or be used to ask for miracles. And the Zin and TSO lists make really good basic paladin codes, which saves me the trouble when I'm running a D&D game. Think up some holy symbols, assign some spheres or domains, and require all divine powered spell casters to worship a god. It works out great for me.

[Dimers]

I find the "there's a bunch of big, all-powerful gods with multiple domains and they're all related or conflicting" trope pretty tedious. You don't have to have a God of X just cause WotC did.

In my primary setting, the gods grew to be what they were long before there was even a material world. They're the most powerful spirits; the way to become a god is not something a mortal could ever have followed, and at this point, it's not something a great spirit could do either, because other gods would act to block it during the eon it requires. So while all the gods interact with humanity in certain areas, they're not humanity-focused. There's a storm god but not a god to ask for good weather to grow crops. There's a god who rewards noble acts but not one with the mission of protecting the weak. There's no god of war, or love, or smithing, or directing the souls of humans that have died, or quite a few other classic roles that you see in the pantheons many games draw on. Why would there be? Humans didn't create the gods; they don't exist to serve humans.

The gods also don't serve the universe or some greater order, another trait you often see that Talakeal mentioned explicitly. They're just a bunch of guys. (Well, a bunch of disembodied minds; gender is something stuck on after the fact by mortals trying to understand them.) They work to reshape the universe in different ways depending on their personal goals, but they're not in charge of the universe and don't think it's perfect as-is.

My gods are very active in mortals' lives. There's a big celestial war going on, and the gods aren't anything like all-powerful or all-knowing, so they recruit allies among mortals -- and the material world is so varied and vast and untapped that it's become an important battlefield in itself. While mortals are definitely weaker than any god, the gods would be fools to ignore their potential as allies. The only reason gods end up helping mortals is due to Covenants made to recruit them, or in hopes of getting more people to sign up for Covenants. Unlike Telok's "ants" concept, these gods treat mortals as lesser but useful beings, like livestock, or flowers that attract bees that fertilize fields, or bacteria that produce medicine, or pets that defend the house against pests or intruders -- resources that can be harvested if cared for well. Sometimes they even grow attached to a particular mortal.

Personalities of gods make a huge difference in how people perceive them. Duan is very distant and wants few followers, mostly just blocking other power-plays ... Merathet selects canny people, preferably ones with weaknesses by which she can manipulate them ... Courdemain pays attention to how his followers treat other mortals and rejects the ignoble ... Mya has a strict code of honor too but comes across as stern rather than glorious ...

And on the other hand, in the Diablo2-style setting I'm prepping for a game right now, divinity is distant and unknowable to the point of agnosticism. There's no communication between gods and mortals at all. Some people get power from them, but nobody knows why, or how that decision is made if it's even a decision at all. There are no specific gods. Even priests can only talk about divinity in the vaguest way. Religion isn't central to almost anyone's life because it seems so random whether the Divine will pay the slightest attention to a given mortal concern.

Both settings are animistic, one because animism is inherent in the way the gods came to be, and the other just because I'm running D&D 4e and don't want to exclude all the primal classes. There's a clear relationship between gods and lesser spirits in Setting 1. In Setting 2, there's really nothing to indicate that gods and spirits might be the same kind of being (and in fact they're not).

[Jay R]

Here is what a PC with the NWP Religions will know, spoilered for length:

There are two gods called together The Uncreated. Separately, they are The Lord and The Lady, and nothing is known about them.

Their first children were the sun, the earth, the oceans, and the winds. These four are either the creators of our world, or the stuff of which it was created - it's not clear which. They are, of course, the essence of the four earthly elements, the embodiment of the elemental planes, and the structure of the world. There is a fifth one, representing the quintessence, but since that cannot exist on our changeable and imperfect world, he/she has no influence here.

They have been referred to by an abundance of names. The Sun God, for instance, is often identified as Apollo, Aten, Ra, Tonatiuh, Surya, Helios and many others. Similarly, every earth goddess is known to be the true earth, born of The Lord and The Lady - even those with known other parents, or those with no parents, like Gaea. Attempts to question the logic of this are met with the ancient, sacred chant, " Hakuna heigh-ho fragilistic bibbidy chim-cheree," which has been variously translated as, "It is not wise to question these mysteries, which are beyond the knowledge of our world," or "Die, you heathen scum, die!" In practice, there is no significant difference between the two translations.

The children/creations of these four are the only gods who will answer prayers or interact with the world directly. They include all the pantheons that have ever existed.

Except Lovecraft.

The Lord and The Lady have been identified as the embodiments of Good and Evil, or Law and Chaos, or Male and Female, or Light and Darkness, or any other opposing concepts.

Wars have been fought between those who believe they represent Good and Evil, and those who insist on Law and Chaos.

Wars have been fought between those who believe The Lord and The Lady hate each other with a hatred surpassing any passion on earth, and those who believe that they love each other with a love more true than any mortal could ever know.

Wars have been fought between those who know beyond all doubt that The Lord is Good and The Lady is Evil, and those who know beyond all doubt that The Lord is Evil and The Lady is Good.

No arcane or divine magic will successfully find out any further facts about The Lord and The Lady.

Here is what the PCs don't know. (Yes, I'm sure the PCs aren't on this forum.)
No arcane or divine magic will successfully find out any fact about The Lord and The Lady. I have three answers, all completely true, and mutually incompatible.

1. The Lord is Fate, and The Lady is Luck. Neither can exist without the other, and each action in the world, from a sneeze to the fall of an empire, is a victory of one of them over the other.
2. They are Yin and Yang, and the heart of each beats in the breast of the other. They represent complementary, not opposing, forces. Each is in fact all of the universe except the other, but neither one represents any specific principle (not even male and female), and whichever one represents goodness in the situation might be the evil in another. Together, they represent wholeness and balance
3. They are the Creators - the mother and father of the world, which they birthed and/or created for some great purpose which is not yet fulfilled.

No mortal can comprehend the true nature of any god. Therefore the image, history, and culture of any god are the simple stories people tell themselves about the gods, to comfort themselves into believing they know something.

Do you believe that your god is a Norse, hammer-throwing warlike thunder god with a red beard? Then that's what you see in your visualizations, and those are the aspects that your god shows to you.

So do you create the gods by your belief, or does the god who most closely resembles your belief respond to your prayers in the form you expect, or are they merely your own hallucinations that always occur as a side effect when invoking divine magic? One wise sage, Chicxulub the Philosophical, actually asked this question. He is said to have discovered the true answer after sixty years of study, prayer, and meditation, on March 23, in the year 643.

Incidentally, the largest impact crater ever discovered is the Chicxulub crater, which appeared on March 23, in the year 643. (Many have entered this crater to explore it. None have returned.)

Oh yes, and the fifth child of The Lord and The Lady, representing the Fifth Element? It turns out that he's not the stuff of the heavens, but of the hells. His children and descendants are all the demons, devils, and daemons. His creations are the evil spirits of the underworld. No, he's not out to conquer the world or destroy it or anything of that sort. he just likes to see war, strife, and pain.

[Tanuki Tales]

A lot of great things mentioned so far, but something Jay Z said sparked something in my mind:

Of those of you who don't use the normal divinity paradigm for your games, how many of you also don't use demons, devils and all that Orcus on his Throne stuff?

I'm a WoW player and I absolutely love the concept of Sha from Mists of Pandaria (even if the Sha are just the undead nightmares of a slain Old God). They make interesting villains aside from "demon X", "elemental Y", "insane mortal jerk Z".

[Rhynn]

Of those of you who don't use the normal divinity paradigm for your games, how many of you also don't use demons, devils and all that Orcus on his Throne stuff?

My (D&D) setting has "demons", but the term refers to spiritual entities that wizards encounter in the "astral plane" / "plane of thought" during their progress through the circles of wizardry (of course, this is just orthodox wizards; there are other practices). They are creatures of vice and ties to the mundane: lust, greed, jealousy, hate, and so on. They must be overcome, their vices conquered, for the wizard to become enlightened and ascend through the levels of the astral plane and progress through the circles.

In other settings, e.g. my similarly agnostic Dark Sun version (where plenty of people worship gods, but the only divine casters are ones who channel elemental powers), I do have more traditional fiends, but they have no explicit or provable connection to any gods. Many of them will claim otherwise, though...

This approach is very much inspired, I suppose, by sword & sorcery literature, like Conan and Lankhmar. I like the idea that "demons" are creatures of the "Outer Dark" (very much in the Lovecraftian sense).

[Yora]

I use the Spiritworld and the Void as the two other worlds beside the regular one. The Spiritworld is a rough copy of the normal world, but much more magical and quite hostile to mortal creatures because of the great power of natural forces. It's very much based on Elysium, Beastlands, and Ysgard from Planescape and dominated by two primary races of spirits, which are very much like eladrin and yuan-ti.
Underground, the spirits of the spiritworld are much more primordial and chaotic. There's some inspiration from the Deadra from The Elder Scrolls, and people who worship them are usually considered crazy.

The Void is the infinite realm beyond the borders of the natural world and the spiritworld. All the beings from the Void are called demons, but a great deal of them are just careless and not specifically evil. Which in practice doesn't make much of a difference for people who have to deal with them, because they twist and warp the laws of nature around them and spread corruption wherever they go, regardless of their intentions. Some demons are quite curious about the material worlds, since the Void is completely immaterial and timeless and they don't have actual bodies. To visit the material worlds, they have to possess living or dead bodies, or more often just heaps of highly corrupted physical matter, like rock or ice.
Visiting the Void for mortals is always a form of astral projection and while things may appear material, it's all an illusion of mortal minds and actually just a strugle of wills. (So much easier to run as a GM.) It's pretty much taken from Dragon Age.

[Jeff the Green]

I like ambiguity. In my home setting, most faiths are just that—faith. Some have powerful magic patrons like angels or demons, and some cults are centered around an actually supernatural being like an ancestor's ghost or fey, but those don't usually have the power we'd associate with deities.

Some religions are objectively false, however, such as the binders who think the vestiges are their ancestors or that incarnum is made of soulstuff (both are refluffed a bit to be purely applications of the planet's natural magic field.

[Rhynn]

I also loves monsters-as-gods. Another sword & sorcery theme. It's just a thing that must be done: PCs fighting the terrible "god" of some ancient fallen people or ruined place.

ZARGON!

[Talakeal]

I'm a WoW player and I absolutely love the concept of Sha from Mists of Pandaria (even if the Sha are just the undead nightmares of a slain Old God). They make interesting villains aside from "demon X", "elemental Y", "insane mortal jerk Z".

I have something similar in my campaign setting. The world is made from the body of the slain god of dreams, and Tarrasques (yes plural) are the remnants of the god's nightmares.

[lucky9]

With me, the campaign 'deities' are simply ascended munchkins mortals. That's why they don't interact, or fight, or what have you any differently than mortals. They have their petty squabbles with epic level stakes, and generally don't behave the way an 'actual' deity would. The mortals are completely oblivious to this fact of course, and continue to worship them.

[Graustein]

My usual approach is that there are no deities, and that the magic of faith-based caster classes comes from the mindstates they enter and powered by their faith. A cleric's spells come from that cleric's own power, shaped by their faith but not a result of it. This does mean there's no fundamental difference between the magics of a cleric and those of a wizard, or a sorcerer, or even the supernatural/extraordinary abilities of a monk or barbarian. The power just comes out differently as a result of training or the like - is it conscious practice (wizards), is it raw power brimming out (sorcerer), is it faith (divine classes), is it mental states (monk, barbarian)? It's all power.

It's a little trickier to justify in the case of paladins, unfortunately, but we tend to just handwave it. A paladin's strength here comes from their own conviction, which is highly rigid and intertwined with their code, such that the guilt over breaking the paladin's code shakes their faith and stops them from tapping their powers. It does mean, though, that a paladin like Miko wouldn't fall because in her case her conviction is in herself. We've just never come up against that scenario, though, so it works out.

This doesn't mean that there aren't superpowerful beings worshipped as deities - archangels, demon lords, even just a local phoenix or something. There's nothing in the paradigm that would preclude that. They simply don't actually grant any divine powers, although a church could still be shaped by their dictates and such.

[Talakeal]

It does mean, though, that a paladin like Miko wouldn't fall because in her case her conviction is in herself. We've just never come up against that scenario, though, so it works out.


Not a bad approach at all. It allows you to tell a lot more stories. Leave redemption for those who are wracked with guilt, allow the self righteous types to function as villains while still being able to look down upon everyone else.

[Amphetryon]

For my current campaign, the gods are the Draconic pantheon, with all true Dragons that appear being aspects of the deity of their color. One reason behind this was a desire to run a lower-magic game; by making innately magical beings (Dragons) with access to Wish-level magic into deities, it increases the perception that such magic is truly special, rather than ordinary.

[Mastikator]

I have something similar in my campaign setting. The world is made from the body of the slain god of dreams, and Tarrasques (yes plural) are the remnants of the god's nightmares.

So similar to Asatro then, where the world is made up of Ymer a dead primordial giant killed by Odin, Vile and Ve.

[GenericGuy]

I prefer the concept of gods that were, that they did exist but have now gone off to places unknown and now its up to the mortal races to wait and prepare for their return.

So yeah, gods who are hands off for now, but weren't always and wont be forever.

Because of this, a lot of religions try to "jump start" the apocalypse, with disastrous results.

[Lord_Gareth]

I've experimented with some of the stuff mentioned above (animism, distant gods, unknown gods, fueled-by-belief gods) but inevitably I tend to gravitate towards gods that are kinda tired, kinda overworked, and kinda out of their depth. At some point or another they started existing, or got born, or were created, or whatever, and they found out that divinity has no instruction manuals and no job training. A lot of them screwed up over the course of their career; some of them have to live with actions they regret getting worked into dogma. They range from autocrats who run every facet of their faith to disinterested beings that want mortals to leave them alone. Most are somewhere in the middle, taking their responsibilities seriously with a faint edge of bitterness. They tend not to intervene directly.

[veti]

My favoured option is "some sort of divine spirit, which definitely exists and grants powers, but is very controversial and can't be perceived or interacted with directly in any way whatsoever". It makes for a large, powerful, broad and politically-complicated "church", which allows you to do so much.

An alternative that I'd like to try, but haven't yet, is the pantheon described in Lois McMaster Bujold's "Chalion" series. There are five gods - the Father, Mother, Daughter, Son and Bastard. The first four are each associated with one of the four seasons of the year ("Father of Winter, Son of Autumn" etc.). They're mostly worshipped as a pantheon, and they have no power to act except in people's minds. A "saint", in this world, is a human who chooses to let a god act through them.

What I like about this pantheon is that it maintains the single, more or less unified church, while also introducing the ever-popular aspect of individual, personified deities.

[Shadowknight12]

I don't do the same thing twice for my settings. In one setting, I made deities nonexistant, and divine magic coming from inner faith (something similar to Graustein's take). In another, I made the gods very active but killed off by eldritch abominations (it was a dystopian post-apocalyptic fantasy universe). In another, I made the gods extant purely by ascension to divinity (and therefore being nothing but powerful mortals, without any sort of omniscience or omnipotence). In another, I had divine magic come from animism.

I like keeping things varied.

[GrayGriffin]

Most of the games I play in are Pokemon Tabletop games, so the "gods" in those games are generally the various legendaries from all generations. However, there is some difference between how they are treated in the different games I play:

Legendaries Lost-As the title suggests, many of the legendaries were killed off by a group called the God Hunters. My character's faction also recently awakened a sort of "new" legendary, or the guardian spirit of the island our base is at. The legendaries, despite being able to die like normal Pokemon, are still considered divine, and still have great powers.

Gods and Chaos-The legendaries are a more conventional "pantheon" in this, usually keeping out of human matters and using their agents to do their earthly work. However, the judgement of Arceus has recently come upon humans for what he feels are sins against the Pokemon he created, so they may start to have more activity on Earth now.

Archtypical PTU-Funnily enough, despite the DM initially saying that legendaries didn't fit with the feel of the game, this is the game with the most legendary involvement. The legendaries are still active in the world, and are capable of changing from Pokemon to human form as a sort of disguise. While some of them are doing what they can to fight against the various eldritch evils that have surfaced, many of them are also appointing disciples to assist them in this task. However, not all the legendaries are aligned towards good, either. My character is one of those who was Touched by the legendary Terrakion. Recently, another character, due to incredible luck with dice rolls, is most likely going to become a disciple of Suicune. Last, Teams Magma and Aqua are apparently led by disciples of Groudon and Kyogre, respectively.

[SiuiS]

My (D&D) setting has "demons", but the term refers to spiritual entities that wizards encounter in the "astral plane" / "plane of thought" during their progress through the circles of wizardry (of course, this is just orthodox wizards; there are other practices). They are creatures of vice and ties to the mundane: lust, greed, jealousy, hate, and so on. They must be overcome, their vices conquered, for the wizard to become enlightened and ascend through the levels of the astral plane and progress through the circles.

In other settings, e.g. my similarly agnostic Dark Sun version (where plenty of people worship gods, but the only divine casters are ones who channel elemental powers), I do have more traditional fiends, but they have no explicit or provable connection to any gods. Many of them will claim otherwise, though...

This approach is very much inspired, I suppose, by sword & sorcery literature, like Conan and Lankhmar. I like the idea that "demons" are creatures of the "Outer Dark" (very much in the Lovecraftian sense).

Do you have this all collected anywhere? I would love to plumb it, it's basically a completed version of what have been pecking away at for a while.

[Rhynn]

Do you have this all collected anywhere? I would love to plumb it, it's basically a completed version of what have been pecking away at for a while.

Not so far. My setting is "ready to play" (but not lined up to play for a good while) in the sense that I can just drop in a module (I've been thinking of The Palace of the Silver Princess and The Village of Hommlet) and go, then expand on things as we play (plus I have a huge setting map and a small regional map), but mostly everything is in a huge disarray in a single text file. I've written out some things like Orcs, Goblins, Dragons, and a draft version of the unified creation myth, but not the details of the religions or wizardry.

If you bother me in late January (when I'm back home and have access to all my files again), I could try and write out some stuff and post it here. The tricky part is that a lot of this material relies on my own impressions and images (e.g. the astral plane being almost wholly a mash-up of Cerebus's grey planes and Alan Moore's writing about meeting a "demon", which for me is enough notes to run it and improvise from), which makes it harder to explain to others...

Plus, since the setting hasn't been played yet, nothing has come up in play, and thus nothing has been "set in stone."

I'm actually still considering including "Outer Dark" type demonic entities, or possibly "Mythic Underworld" type demonic entities (which could be the same thing, much as in Eberron) in the setting, but they'd probably not resemble traditional D&D fiends very much. The greatest, of course, would be the Three-Lobed Eye...