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Altair_the_Vexed
2014-06-16, 11:26 AM
For some time, I've been pondering deities and their place in RPGs.

I play mainly fantasy stuff, so there's an expectation that there are gods of some sort, and that these gods are different to our real-world religions.
But the more I thought about it, the more I saw that there are lots of different ways of handling the divine in your game.

So being me, I wrote a long blog post about it, here. (http://running-the-game.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/gods-what-are-they-for.html)

TL:DR version?
Gods in RPGs can be classed as Real, False, Non-existant, Proven and Unproven, and combinations thereof.
Politics of religious organisation are often more important than the deities themselves.

What d'y'all think?

Deaxsa
2014-06-16, 12:21 PM
I view Dieties as Hercules who can give people spells. Nothing more. Because, simply put, I view gods as intangible... entities that cannot be understood. Deities can totally be understood. Not gods.

In other words: if it can affect the players over and over again, and has a shape, it's a diety. If it's only speculated at and has no noticeable effects on the universe, it's a god.

I guess what it breaks down to for me is: what do gods (and religion) do for our society IRL? and the answer to that (unless someone knows of any divine intervention that i haven't heard about) is: nothing TANGIBLE. They give us hope, the give us belief, they give us something to wonder about, and those things give us structure, give us grounding, give us institutions which can be very helpful (or very unhelpful), etc. All of the benefits we derive from gods are constructs (which are very real, but they are based on an intangible idea.)

So to say (as in OOTS) that "Thor went on a rampage and started slinging bolts of lighting at the boat" is asserting that Thor, while he may be very powerful, is not actually a god. Deity, sure, but not a god. Worshipping Thor is like worshipping a 60HD Solar in my mind, in DnD terms.


SO. All that said, i think i view Gods as serving the same purpose in RPGs as they do in real life, only muted because of the middle step: the Diety. I think that Dieties are there to provide a more tangible excuse for gods, and to let people not wonder about gods. Of course, most of the thinking of this post went into explaining my opinion of gods/dieties, instead of thinking about the role-playing aspect. Although i suppose they could be used to be anything they are in real life:
-excuses for conflict
-progenitors of knowledge and reason
-avenues to self-discovery
-distractions from ugly reality
-excuses for exploitation
-explanations for natural phenomena or things that have yet to be reasonable explained
-many, many more
And the thing is, you can play any of these up OR down depending on all of the story-telling factors that exist in your RPG.

MrNobody
2014-06-16, 01:16 PM
I read your really interesting review and my thought is:
"Why choose only one way?"

First, i assume that Gods are real, proven, active characters. They take active part in world's history, cause wars, bring peace, give gifts or condemn, send "humanitary help" or vast troop, if needed.
However, they have some laws to respect, so they limit these huge displays of power to very rare occasion.
Minor manifestation ("signs" of their will like thunders, flock of birds flying in a particular shape and so on) are more frequent, and even more frequent are divine casters.

That said, why should it be the only way? These activism could lead to an huge range of possibilities:
- God in disguise: a god could try to extend his influence to a part of the material plane in which he has no power. To do this, he disguises himself as a different deity that could "please" more the mortals. This "new" god is fake but true at the same time.
- God of Gods: Gods have ranks, and some are more powerful than others. Some lesser deities could be at command of other gods so... who are you serving while serving your god? Are you sure that he is the source of your power? who knows...
- Lazy god: some god could think they have no time to mind mortals business. They can be real, but not proven nor active. A god of Mysteries could fill the world with proofs and counterproofs of his own existence, gaining power by the doubt around his own existence and by the strong faith of the few real believers.

Over this few examples of variant for gods, there are also variants for mortals
- Mortal in disguise: ignorance is one of the worst curse, and some powerful entities could have the temptation to take advantage of it. A creature that has, by race/class/other, divine spells could even grant spells to his priests through th "imbue with spell ability" spell. He could easily deceive people to consider him a god.
- False cult: with a work similar to the one described in the latter point, big groups of people could deceive entire population. Political group "sent by gods", casters that disguise himself as lovely priests of non existent gods (ur priest, bards...). Such groups would set up heavy, restrictive "traditions" involving education: the less people know, the easy is for them to rule them all.

That said, the nice thing is that you do not have to choose only a single option since in the same setting ther's room for everything. True cults, false cults, no cults, true gods, false gods: every issue can get along with any other, making a big, complex divine setting.

Altair_the_Vexed
2014-06-16, 01:24 PM
I view Dieties as Hercules who can give people spells. Nothing more. Because, simply put, I view gods as intangible... entities that cannot be understood. Deities can totally be understood. Not gods.

In other words: if it can affect the players over and over again, and has a shape, it's a diety. If it's only speculated at and has no noticeable effects on the universe, it's a god.
...
Interesting distinction. In my blog post, I used "proven" and "unproven" to cover a similar distinction, but you seem to be taking a slightly different direction.

Of course, "god" and "deity" mean the same thing in common English use, but it's a decent way to use the two terms for the difference between these ideas.


I read your really interesting review and my thought is:
"Why choose only one way?"

...

That said, the nice thing is that you do not have to choose only a single option since in the same setting ther's room for everything. True cults, false cults, no cults, true gods, false gods: every issue can get along with any other, making a big, complex divine setting.

Totally! In my games, there are several examples of gods' reality: unproven to proven.
One thing I will say - I also enjoy the idea that gods need not get along with each other. In our history, dominant cultures tended to absorb conquered religions into their own (Robert Graves' Greek Myths has many examples of this), but when there were co-existing separate cultures, there seems to have been a tendancy to accept local gods as the supernatural force of the local area - that is, gods were not omnipresent, but ruled over particular places.

Of course, it's an RPG / fiction, so you can do whatever you like. I suppose I'm just saying we should think about, and decide on these things when world building.

By the way, let's all remember the forum rules on discussion of religion! I tried in my blog to avoid talking about current, real-world religions, precisely because of these rules. Careful now!

Deaxsa
2014-06-16, 01:52 PM
Interesting distinction. In my blog post, I used "proven" and "unproven" to cover a similar distinction, but you seem to be taking a slightly different direction.

Yes, but no god can be proven, just like no person could be proven. i guess you could call one a God/Diety, and the other an Idol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idolatry)? (If you'll notice, people who others think are practicing idolatry don't think they are practicing idolatry themselves, and I've made NO ATTEMPT to identify who is and who is not practicing idolatry)




By the way, let's all remember the forum rules on discussion of religion! I tried in my blog to avoid talking about current, real-world religions, precisely because of these rules. Careful now!

It is impossible to ask "what role will gods play in fictional universes" AND ask "don't talk about real-world religions" when, for some of us, the ENTIRE POINT of an RPG is to mirror and provide a foil to the real world. Additionally, one of the BEST sources of material from which one can draw is, in fact, the real world, and this fact does not stop short of religion. Now, i'm in NO WAY saying that people should post opinions about real world religions. Just that they exist, and that without them, there would (probably) be no such thing as a fantasy religion. And that this is a very sticky subject and we should tread with extreme caution.


Edit: Actually, after reviewing the forum rules, i'm confused about what can and cannot be talked about, and where the line is. As a result, I'm probably going to stop posting on this topic until that's been made clear to me.

NichG
2014-06-16, 02:35 PM
I think this sort of masks over the essential question, which is 'what is the role of gods in a game?'. That is to say, what is it that they provide for the players in terms of narrative elements or other factors. I think if you classify games with gods along those lines, its going to end up looking very different.

Off the top of my head:

- Conflict between mortals and the divine. the role of a 'god' or 'gods' is to present something as undefeatable or un-approachable, and then to give lie to that presentation. Essentially its a meter stick to make the actions of the mortal characters seem more epic or broader in scope - calling an antagonist a 'god' is a short-hand for saying 'this antagonist is inherently more powerful than almost everything else', so when the characters manage to thwart or defeat it then it establishes their growth and also establishes the conflict as being cosmic in nature - save the world versus throw down the evil king.

- Inspiration. This is hard to do in a game often because of player psychology, but is cool when you pull it off. The idea is that generally players will find it difficult to really trust NPCs, because the PCs are generally the proactive beneficial elements of the setting (e.g. if an NPC is frequently showing off how smart or strong or kind they are, thats usually not great for the gameplay since it means a lot of screentime for the DM playing with themselves). By labeling something an object of faith, you're asking PCs to choose to believe in someone else without directly having to see in-game confirmation, which can help bring out roleplay dynamics about trust, belief in things, etc.

- Deus Ex Machina. Okay, you need something to be a certain way and there's no really good explanation for it. So a wizardgod did it. Why do water spells not function in the desert of sorrow? Well, game mechanically you want to run a survival sequence, but, uh... okay, this is where a former sun god bled when struck by the god of suffering! This can also be used (including with 'false' or 'non-existent' gods) to explain strange social behaviors, traditions, and the like - you want a culture where the king is always a 10-12 year old child and is replaced on his 13th birthday? Okay, they believe in a god who mandated that in one of his holy texts!

- Ironic usage. Like with any concept, one can take the idea of 'gods' and play around with using it in an ironic fashion. Gods who are actually no more powerful than people but were just in the right place at the right time. Gods who hold forth particular concepts but do so in ways that are unexpected or feel twisted - Pelor the Burning Hate, for example. Gods who are supposed to be friendly but end up being hostile because of some quirk of personality (e.g. OCD gods of justice - 'you stole a cracker, now you must suffer for 10000 years!').

- Setting up conflicts with an establishment. This might fall under Deus Ex Machina, but its somewhat distinct. The nature of 'belief' as a concept means that you're going to get lots of different variations on that belief, and that people who hold one or the other will naturally come into conflict. So 'gods' in the abstract sense gives you a way to have an establishment which in principle sounds like it should be an ally, but in detail breaks down as it expends a lot of energy pushing its particular version of the beliefs. This is a good way to set up brother-against-brother sorts of conflicts - everyone involved means well, but because they can't let certain things go then a conflict is born where reasonably there shouldn't be one.

erikun
2014-06-16, 02:47 PM
God = deity. The term "deity" is basically a sanitized version of the term "god", primarily used to avoid conflicts and relations to real world religions. It's much the same reason we saw "celestials" in D&D3e rather than angels.

Note that D&D tends to take a very different route for how gods are handled than most other RPGs. In D&D, gods are concrete and distinguishable. They are actual thinking individuals. It is possible to communicate directly with one. Powers are specifically given for doing things which a god wants you to do, and powers are specifically removed for doing things which a god does not want you to do. As such, D&D gods tend to have a direct influence on the setting: a god of flowers, oceans, and samba dances wants you to promote flowers, oceans, and samba dances. If you do so while worshipping them, you can get powers. If you actively work against flowers, oceans, and samba dances, then you'd lose those powers.

Most other settings have gods as much less distinct. Most have powers granted by taking specific actions - if the "gods" grant powers at all - and a god's wishes are inferred from that. Most knowledge of gods are based on creation myths, and different people have different variations/interpretations on it. Some settings are even more unusual - in Glorantha (RuneQuest/HeroQuest) the mythical adventures of the gods are what grant a person power, and by travelling and reliving the god's adventres again a person can become more like the god gain more power... or gain more power by changing the myth to become more like themselves.

Altair_the_Vexed
2014-06-16, 02:49 PM
I think this sort of masks over the essential question, which is 'what is the role of gods in a game?'. That is to say, what is it that they provide for the players in terms of narrative elements or other factors. I think if you classify games with gods along those lines, its going to end up looking very different.

Off the top of my head:

- Conflict between mortals and the divine. ...
- Inspiration. ...
- Deus Ex Machina. ...
- Ironic usage. ...
- Setting up conflicts with an establishment. ...
Thanks - good point: I didn't cover the narrative goal(s) of having gods in a setting. I think I'll paraphrase your post as a comment to the blog, because they're important points.

I think I skipped over that topic because it seemed fairly clear to me that, by deciding to put gods in a game, you would have an idea of how they or their churches would then interact with the story.
Sure, I might do that, but not everyone will think that way. So, stating it outright as part of the article would be contstructive.

Airk
2014-06-16, 03:17 PM
Thanks - good point: I didn't cover the narrative goal(s) of having gods in a setting. I think I'll paraphrase your post as a comment to the blog, because they're important points.

I think I skipped over that topic because it seemed fairly clear to me that, by deciding to put gods in a game, you would have an idea of how they or their churches would then interact with the story.
Sure, I might do that, but not everyone will think that way. So, stating it outright as part of the article would be contstructive.

I think you sortof missed the point. It's not "if you decide to put gods in the game, you have an idea of how they would interact with the story"; It's "How you want the story to go determines whether and how you should put gods in your game."

A lot of fantasy games have gods because fantasy games have gods. That's fine and all, but it's pretty bland. The last fantasy game I ran had gods because I wanted to run a game about Belief, "life" after death, and asking hard questions, so the gods were designed around setting that up.

At the end of the day, how you handle gods should be based on what role you want them to fulfill in the 'story' - and I put that in quotes simply because I don't want people to assume I'm talking about a linear plot here, but a game in which there used to be gods and now they are all dead (See: The Banner Saga) is very different from a game in which gods are immortal, unkillable, and spend their free time screwing with mortals, regardless of any linear plot elements.

Altair_the_Vexed
2014-06-16, 03:31 PM
I think you sortof missed the point. It's not "if you decide to put gods in the game, you have an idea of how they would interact with the story"; It's "How you want the story to go determines whether and how you should put gods in your game."
...
I don't see how there's a distinction between those two statements. In both, the decision to include gods in the game involves considering their function in the story.
I suppose there's a different emphasis - your statement starts with the story and ends with gods. But if I add the word "already" into my statement "you <already> have and idea..." then we're saying the same thing, aren't we?
And that is what I meant.

Coidzor
2014-06-16, 03:55 PM
I always thought that they made for good backstory and mythology to help shape/demonstrate cultural values.

kyoryu
2014-06-16, 04:02 PM
I think you sortof missed the point. It's not "if you decide to put gods in the game, you have an idea of how they would interact with the story"; It's "How you want the story to go determines whether and how you should put gods in your game."

I endorse what this man says (even if running a more game-focused game, where you can substitute "gameplay " for "story").


I don't see how there's a distinction between those two statements. In both, the decision to include gods in the game involves considering their function in the story.

It's a matter of which is the driver. Airk is basically saying "start with what you want your story to be about, and then figure out how/if gods fit in" (I'd also add "gameplay elements if more game-focused than story-focused"). The point is that having gods isn't a secondary decision that's made in a vacuum, or as an add-on - it's a decision that should be made in service of the larger goal of the game goals.

Altair_the_Vexed
2014-06-16, 04:19 PM
...
It's a matter of which is the driver. Airk is basically saying "start with what you want your story to be about, and then figure out how/if gods fit in" (I'd also add "gameplay elements if more game-focused than story-focused"). The point is that having gods isn't a secondary decision that's made in a vacuum, or as an add-on - it's a decision that should be made in service of the larger goal of the game goals.
Yes, I think I already covered that in my reply to Airk - all world building decisions should be made that way. I didn't bother to come out and say so because when you're world building, of course you should be thinking about the story / game goals - what narrative purpose do gods serve - just like the other aspects of a game world.

Airk
2014-06-16, 04:27 PM
Yes, I think I already covered that in my reply to Airk - all world building decisions should be made that way. I didn't bother to come out and say so because when you're world building, of course you should be thinking about the story / game goals - what narrative purpose do gods serve - just like the other aspects of a game world.

Well, your original statement actually sounds like "If you put gods in your game, you have to figure out what that does to the game." Which is fine, I guess, but it's sortof slipshod. It's like saying "Well, if I use a wooden ladder, I should figure out how much weight it can support so that I don't move too many people up it at a time." instead of saying, "I need to be able to move three people at a time up this ladder, so it needs to be able to support enough weight to do that."

Figure out what you 'need' in your game, then figure out what pieces to use to get that effect. Do not look at a collection of pieces and then figure out what they make. The distinction is subtle but relevant.

NichG
2014-06-16, 06:40 PM
Basically the idea is that every element or idea is a tool that you, as the setting designer, can use to achieve certain effects. But the thing that's most helpful is to know what your tools do, rather than just knowing what your tools are.

veti
2014-06-16, 07:26 PM
I like my gods to be invisible, intangible and generally impotent - except when they're not. The one thing they can do is to make an extremely powerful impression on people's minds, which will cause those people to do things on their behalf that they can't do directly.

(If you've read any of Lois McMaster Bujold's Chalion books, you'll understand what I mean by that.)

It would be interesting to try to construct a fantasy world with no religion. (Tolkien's Middle-earth comes close - there's no mention of temples or priests in LotR, although there are some references to undefined "higher powers".) My feeling is that it would have a big gaping hole where players would expect to find "religion", and you'd need to think of some human (ish) institution to replace it.

In practical terms: gods are there to provide a justification for churches (which are incredibly useful and versatile vectors for stories), and to give the DM a way to influence the world directly. Of course that's not a good thing to have to do, but occasionally I just can't face handling the fourth monumental derailment within one session, and then a voice just speaks directly to the PCs "DON'T DO THAT".

Angelalex242
2014-06-16, 07:31 PM
I think the best use of 'em is to just rip of Greek Myth whenever possible. I personally figure a non divine caster should encounter his deity 3 times over the course of the campaign. Divine casters should encounter their deities 6 times over the course of the campaign. Exalted characters encounter their deities 9 times over the course of the campaign.

You should also encounter celestials about twice as often as you encounter the deities. For non divine casters, the celestials will be in disguise. For Divine Casters, they won't be. (The archon polymorphs himself into a kindly old man when talking to the fighter or the wizard, but appears in a blaze of glory for the cleric and the paladin.)

And every once in a while, design an encounter where celestials or deities directly help the PCs out. Normally, this is an encounter you specifically design to be 4 ECLS higher then the party. And it's that high because you're planning on a celestial chipping in.

If the ECL is 8 or 10 or more levels higher, that's when the gods themselves chip. How did the level 8 Paladin beat the Balor about to destroy the city? Well, Heironeus decided his bravery was so awesome that he decided to chip in himself. People who do things that brave for the sake of their deities should be rewarded by those same deities.

And let's not forget that like any good console RPG, perhaps the last thing the 20th level characters should do before the campaign ends is...take down an evil deity. Maybe it's only the evil deity's avatar, but they should win that one without outside help. It pays the gods and celestials back for all those interventions earlier in their career. Nothing pleases the gods of light better then watching mortals kick an evil god's hind quarters.

Knaight
2014-06-16, 07:51 PM
TL:DR version?
Gods in RPGs can be classed as Real, False, Non-existant, Proven and Unproven, and combinations thereof.
Politics of religious organisation are often more important than the deities themselves.

What d'y'all think?

I think the categories work decently, and the religious organizations are frequently much more important to the actual gods. That said, I would also consider a lot of these to be better for certain cultures than a whole setting. Take your 'unproven' cases. It's easy to have both belief in the gods and atheism, to have mutually conflicting beliefs, etc. The subcategories represent cases which tend towards one end or the other, but there's a lot of territory in between. Then there's the "The Myths are all True" category - the gods might be extremely powerful, they might have done the things attributed to them, but there's plenty of room for, say, holy scripture of God A to have been modified by God B, even if they're exerting enough control for mortals to be unable to modify it.

I'd also note the presence of other kinds of religion. "The Gods" implies a polytheistic culture with a pantheon. Monotheism can also work, ancestor worship is tragically underused, so on and so forth.

While I'd say that all of these types are useful for different scenarios, there are a few things I gravitate to that I tend to find work best for the settings I tend to find interesting. These are:

No gods. Major religions still exist. I particularly favor this one, as it is the religions I tend to find more interesting. However, there is either competition between religions, religion as an institution butting heads with other societal institutions, or schisms galore. There's quite possibly all three. It's the conflict that tends to make things interesting after all, and religion and politics are two very big vectors for it (hence why the real world ones are banned on the forum).
No gods. Religion isn't a significant cultural force. I tend to employ this one when deliberately making cultures less pseudo-Medieval, or in more high tech settings where the focus simply isn't on religion.
Cults. Society simply isn't organized enough to have really major religions (the lines of communication to spread them aren't there, the stability for even an oral tradition is shaky, etc). As such, simple animism and ancestor worship are much more likely to be mainstream. Small cults, though, are able to form, as much less sophisticated societies are really needed at that scale. Some of these cults are probably pretty horrible, as this is favored for a more sword and sorcery campaign.

mephnick
2014-06-16, 08:19 PM
Convenient plot inspiration

Dimers
2014-06-16, 11:31 PM
It would be interesting to try to construct a fantasy world with no religion. (Tolkien's Middle-earth comes close - there's no mention of temples or priests in LotR, although there are some references to undefined "higher powers".)

The world of the Black Company series has no gods. The later six novels includes plenty of priests and religion and extremely powerful people who are remembered as gods hundreds of years after they exit the world, but no actual gods. The author uses his characters to directly comment on that in a few ways (frequently but not exclusively anti-religion or anti-priest). Only two worshippers of one Extremely Powerful Person actually get anything for their devotion in the whole series. The lack doesn't stop people from believing, though!

DM Nate
2014-06-17, 03:23 AM
Sentient beings aren't even necessary to fill the role of "gods" in a story, unless you have plot reasons for them. It's stated in the sourcebooks that clerics can draw their powers and spells from simply "ideals" they worship.

TheCountAlucard
2014-06-17, 04:33 AM
There's also the question of whether or not the god is the river or not.

In other words, if you yank Helios' head off his shoulders and kill him, is the sun itself going to go out?

JusticeZero
2014-06-17, 09:16 AM
It helps when you are not locked in to certain assumptions by the system. For example, Girdwood lets me do things that I can't do when the system assumes that a pantheon of entities that are somehow able to grant power to gaggles of T1 casters is out there. Seriously, how does that even work?

valadil
2014-06-17, 09:50 AM
Gods are a variable that you can tune to tell the story you want to tell. The only thing I'd consider mandatory about them is that your cultures probably have some level of folklore around them. How true/believed/present it is depends on your game.

An absurd retitling of this thread could be "Sea captains! What's their role in RPGs?" Sometimes they're the center of the story, other times they do nothing. It all depends on the story you're telling and the characters going through it.

Prime32
2014-06-17, 02:29 PM
I notice you've left out the idea of "small gods" - things like the spirit of a particular forest that can cause travellers to trip over roots if it's angry, or offer easy-to-find berries if it's happy. Or a household spirit who brings a family wealth and prosperity as long as they leave it offerings.

There's also something to be said for the idea of gods as PCs. God Games, as in "a group of ultrapowerful beings come together to create a world", are fairly popular on these boards, but you could have fun playing one of the lesser varieties in a group of normal PCs, or play a PC whose goal is to become a god.

You can also get fun stories out of the idea of gods who use artefacts to perform their jobs (e.g. the god controls the tide with a magic trident) or large numbers of servants (e.g. the god controls the tide by ordering millions of celestial mermaids to use control water at the same time). In the former case the PCs might have to steal, retrieve or repair the artefact. In the latter it becomes an extension of mortal politics but with higher stakes - you can have a PC with a god as a boss, or pass the position of godhood to a PC without increasing their actual power.

Garimeth
2014-06-18, 09:23 AM
I tend to use the "gods" as administrators of primal forces. They are super powerful, and grant powers to their followers, but have a strict agreement about how and when they can intervene in the world itself. I also tend to have a few different "types" of religion in my games:

The "common" religion: fantasy polytheistic standard as described above. These can be thought of as the "Gods of Civilization."

Ancestor worship. There is a spirit realm and certain people can commune with it. Elves in my game have a cycle of re-incarnation. (Many cultures will use this in addition to one of the others.)

Spirit worship. Think "river spirit" the mountain's spirit" etc. Again certain people can commune with these. (Shaman, barbarians, and some rangers.)

Nature worship. The world itself is alive, though not necessarily sentient, and directs natural forces and non intelligent creatures to its defense. (Druids).


All of these coexist in my current setting and different cultures emphasize different facets of them. They are all true, and all accepted. People differ on the degree of importance, if any, they have in the world or the individual's lives.

Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll
2014-06-18, 06:17 PM
I don't like the idea that default DnD idea that the interaction between churches and peoples mirrors the interactions between their gods. The Church of Hector shouldn't be at odds with the Church of Hieronymous because Hieronymous stole Hector's lawnmower. I prefer to have distant agnostic Gods where the conflicts between churches is the NATURE of divinity. I find this kind of conflict much more interesting to look at.

I tend to base my cultures off of real-world cultures, so my religions are likewise based off of real-world religions, with some centralized churches and some not, some monotheistic, some monotheistic with lesser divine entities like Angels, some divine rulers, some polytheists of various incompatible types, some ancestor worship, some spirit worship, all sorts of things.

But you'll never get anything more than the Greek idea that other religions worship the same Gods under different names and guises. So while you may have an Atheinsfolk polytheist seeing the worship of the Poccner polytheists, and go "Oh, when they worship Otietsbog they're basically worshipping Mattur under another name", as there are great similarities between the religions, but you'd never have a Tiflinian who is a monotheist and has a divinely descended King say "The Shansle god Brashal and their demon-god Kazka exist but because our god Unathrenis hates them, we hate their religion".

The Shansle might be the only exception to this, because they're based on duotheist (I made this word up) religions like Zoroastrianism, which have a Good God who is in an eternal struggle with the Evil God. But they don't really worship the Evil God, you won't have a religion that is devoted to Kazka, because I don't like evil people worshipping evil gods.

I guess I just don't like black-and-white alignments at all, and natures of divinity is wrapped up in that.

Knaight
2014-06-18, 09:24 PM
An absurd retitling of this thread could be "Sea captains! What's their role in RPGs?" Sometimes they're the center of the story, other times they do nothing. It all depends on the story you're telling and the characters going through it.

This is a pretty decent analogy really. Sometimes the core concept of the game is piracy on the high seas, and sea captains are a very, very big part of that. Sometimes the core concept of the game is a group of desert nomads in an inland desert trying to preserve their way of life as people gravitate to the big cities around the oases, and sea captains are basically irrelevant - maybe you'll meet a former sea captain somewhere, but that's about it.

Vinegar Tom
2014-06-19, 09:39 PM
The role of gods depends entirely on the type of game you have in mind. D&D is very simplistic. Everyone knows that the gods exist, and they're also aware of all those afterlives, and how you get into a particular one, yet despite this being a 100% established scientific fact, almost no non-good sentient beings make the slightest attempt to change their alignment in order to avoid an eternity of torture or boredom, and as far as humans are concerned, all afterlives are equally well-subscribed-to.

In a religion-based game, that needs changing, because it's absurd. If the number of worshipers any particular god has is irrelevant, why even bother with organized religion? If the sole point of being a Cleric is to gain spells while you're alive, and a Fighter of the same alignment gets exactly the same reward when he dies, why don't the gods just grant Divine Magic to everyone who has the appropriate alignment? And why would any Evil Clerics, who must know better than anyone what awaits them posthumously, exist at all?

To make it work, the gods need a motive. Maybe they're parasites; worship makes them stronger, and without it they'll die. The ones that exist now are more or less evenly matched, and they must all be pretty smart and devious to have existed this long. That's not to say that none of them can be good. Of course they can. But ultimately they have to stay alive, if only to prevent the worse gods from having more influence; and that end justifies some pretty dubious means. As for the bad gods, they're spectacularly good liars, and they know what people want. None of the successful religions openly advertises itself as "The LE Burn-In-Hell Religion That You Join Because It Says So On Your Character Sheet"!

So in that kind of rpg, the PCs, irrespective of their morality, don't really know the true agenda of the being they worship until considerably later in the game, if they ever find out at all (though presumably they do if it's worth using this kind of plot-arc). Obviously alignment has to be treated a lot more loosely in this sort of campaign - a saintly PC who finds out he's been working for demons all along continues to be a saint, just as long as everything he does from now on adjusts itself to what he now knows. But he may become horribly cynical once the basis of his religion turns out to be a complete lie. Then again, try having a spectacularly evil PC find out that the god who allowed him to indulge his very worst impulses on a regular basis was actually using him to eliminate people who were much, much worse - a good roleplayer can do something very interesting indeed with a concept like that.

In a nutshell: D&D wastes gods, because ultimately they're the source of something Arcane Spellcasters get too without being religious at all, and they seem to be better at it than those guys who pray and hear voices in their heads but tend to be less intelligent, so what are the Gods actually for? Mostly to provide an afterlife which, since by definition it isn't available to PCs, is pretty much beside the point. For a god-heavy campaign, they need to have some sort of believable reason to use PCs as pawns. The simplest way to do it is something like the above, assuming that all gods are powerful enough to override any spell with the Detect descriptor, at least until a very high level indeed, and grant spells of inappropriate alignments. Hey, they're gods! If you can't do that, what's the point of being a god, huh?

NichG
2014-06-19, 09:51 PM
The role of gods depends entirely on the type of game you have in mind. D&D is very simplistic. Everyone knows that the gods exist, and they're also aware of all those afterlives, and how you get into a particular one, yet despite this being a 100% established scientific fact, almost no non-good sentient beings make the slightest attempt to change their alignment in order to avoid an eternity of torture or boredom, and as far as humans are concerned, all afterlives are equally well-subscribed-to.

In a religion-based game, that needs changing, because it's absurd. If the number of worshipers any particular god has is irrelevant, why even bother with organized religion? If the sole point of being a Cleric is to gain spells while you're alive, and a Fighter of the same alignment gets exactly the same reward when he dies, why don't the gods just grant Divine Magic to everyone who has the appropriate alignment? And why would any Evil Clerics, who must know better than anyone what awaits them posthumously, exist at all?


Personally I like the idea of worshippers as being parasites on the gods - actually being directly harmful to the gods in a minor way. The gods themselves would go and smite them for it, except that more often than not that just gets them more worshippers. So they hide out as far from the material as they can, trying to have as little direct influence on the prime as is possible for them. Furthermore, it turns out that every cleric is actually basically an Urpriest and is taking power in a way that the gods cannot directly interfere with or stop. Even worse, perhaps souls going to their gods upon death is not actually something the gods can prevent - its like bits of dirt and grime clinging to the gods' deific forms, hard to completely remove and gradually building up to a real inconvenience. A sort of cosmic alimony.

The evil gods are just the gods who took a bit longer to figure out that overt action was going to get them more worship and smashed a few cities before they got the message. The good gods are the ones who saw it coming a mile away. Most of the 'portfolio' and 'domain' and 'lore' stuff is all BS invented by the mortal priesthoods. Gods causing natural disasters are just the ones who thought they could be sneaky and create 'natural' kill events unrelated to themselves and not get worship. Oops.

And the reason they don't just wipe the prime clean is that an influx of all those mortal souls all at once would basically bury them in soul-cruft and they might not survive. So instead they fill the land with monsters, trying to drive the population in a slow downwards spiral until they can safely extinguish it.

Jay R
2014-06-20, 01:52 PM
I think many people start from the wrong end.

Did the universe create the gods or did the gods create the universe?

Who are they, and what are they like?

What do they do? How do they feel about each other?

To understand Zeus, and use him as a god character, it's more important to know that he pursues young women, and that his wife disapproves and is actively antagonistic to his children, than to know that he's a thunder-carrier and she's a goddess of women.

Design an extended dysfunctional family first. Start a personal history for them. Then assign them domains based on their characters.

Here's the approach in my current game, in which I wanted to allow PCs to use whatever gods they chose, without having to deal with the problem of competing pantheons.

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 an abundance of names. The Sun God, for instance, is known as Apollo, Aten, Ra, Tonatiuh, Surya, Helios and many others. Similarly, every earth goddess is know 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 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.

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.

All of the above will be available knowledge to the players. Here is what they will not know.

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.

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.

Beleriphon
2014-06-20, 08:45 PM
But you'll never get anything more than the Greek idea that other religions worship the same Gods under different names and guises. So while you may have an Atheinsfolk polytheist seeing the worship of the Poccner polytheists, and go "Oh, when they worship Otietsbog they're basically worshipping Mattur under another name", as there are great similarities between the religions, but you'd never have a Tiflinian who is a monotheist and has a divinely descended King say "The Shansle god Brashal and their demon-god Kazka exist but because our god Unathrenis hates them, we hate their religion".

Other than the fact that's a legitimate model. Henotheism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henotheism) essentially goes with with the typical D&D for a cleric where there are lots of gods, but only one god is actively worshipped.

Atenism (that is the worship of Aten) in ancient Egypt worked on a monolateral principle. Yes it was a monotheistic religion, but it also acknowledged that other gods existed, but were unworthy of worship. So its entirely possible, and in fact realistic, for your religion to admit Zorg is a real god but you had his followers because they don't worship Banjo.

Fire Lord Pi
2014-07-06, 10:36 PM
I like this talk of the problem with gods because I myself feel that the TINY TINY section of the PH pisses all over the concept of these immortal, mighty beings.

In my world, every god has his own "heaven" which they offer. Clerics receive spells if they have been ordained by their respective church and say the words of prayer and preparation.

But alignment isn't tied to religion. Although I firmly believe that D&D's alignment system is very accurate for both the game and life, alignment is a reflection of a character, not the other way around. And there is no in-game knowledge of alignment. A man could be both LG and CE in the different eyes of different priests of different religions.

And the gods still give a bad priests spells. They need the worshipers.

Averis Vol
2014-07-07, 12:56 AM
I've always seen gods as the representations of ideals that were so strong, they became manifest as real, tangible entities. Furthermore, in a world with so many creatures beyond the material plane, that, with their power, could destroy the material plane with little effort, you need something to defend you from them, even if it's only because they cease to exist without worshipers.

Devils_Advocate
2014-07-31, 08:42 PM
D&D is very simplistic. Everyone knows that the gods exist, and they're also aware of all those afterlives, and how you get into a particular one, yet despite this being a 100% established scientific fact, almost no non-good sentient beings make the slightest attempt to change their alignment in order to avoid an eternity of torture or boredom, and as far as humans are concerned, all afterlives are equally well-subscribed-to.
Where the heck are you getting this from? It seems to be a ridiculous caricature that conflicts with every setting that I'm aware of.

The "Great Wheel" cosmology seems to be the most used, so let's look at that. So, for starters, the afterlife isn't eternal at all. You normally come back as a fairly pathetic being that can totally be killed forever dead, and once you are, that's pretty much it. You "merge with the plane", which is the end of your individual existence, but hey, it's something, I guess.

Secondly, if you're evil, following an evil deity means that you get to go to its divine realm when you die instead of just appearing on the lower planes as a disgusting larva that sits around waiting to be eaten. So, if a deity is publicly known to torture its own followers' souls, then sane people will generally avoid worshiping that deity precisely in order to avoid that fate! They'll choose gods who they at least think offer better fates than that. The prospect of being rewarded for doing horrible things is a major reason why people worship evil gods!


Those who follow the tenets of Evil throughout their lives are judged by Evil Gods when they die, and can gain rewards at least as enticing as those offered to those who follow the path of Good (who, after all, are judged by Good Gods after they die). So when sahuagin run around on land snatching children to use as slaves or sacrifices to Baatorians, they aren't putting their soul in danger. They are actually keeping their soul safe. Once you step down the path of villainy, you get a better deal in the afterlife by being more evil.

The only people who get screwed in the D&D afterlife are traitors and failures. A traitor gets a bad deal in the afterlife because whichever side of the fence they ended up on is going to remember their deeds on the other side of the fence. A failure gets a bad deal because they end up judged by gods who wanted them to succeed.
--- Tome of Fiends (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=28828)

That's not to say that a god of murder will give you hookers and blow in hell for murdering lot of people in his name. More likely, he'll give you the chance to murder a whole lot, and that's at least as much because he has lots of murdering that he wants done as because you'll enjoy it. Similarly, a benevolent god is going to give you greater opportunities to be kind and helpful, because that's what he wants done. If you want "fun" in a shallow sense, then you probably want to worship some Chaotic Neutral god of hedonism whose realm is filled with revelry because he likes revelry so he went and filled his realm up with it because that way he has lots of what he likes. And really, how could a realm of virtue serve as paradise for someone who wishes to commit misdeeds (http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/09/30#.U9rxJqOmWVv), for any opposed values of "virtue" and "misdeeds"? That makes a whole lot of sense!

There are a multitude of deities, and basically for every possible lifestyle, there is a deity who endorses it. So if you're sensible, you worship a god who endorses whatever you want to do. That way, you can do what you want, maybe even get some divine intervention to help you, and then when you die, you can continue in your favored activities in a supportive environment, which is what you can generally expect, because naturally a deity is going to set up the afterlife it offers to encourage whatever sort of activity it wants people to engage in.

So the afterlife, as a rule, tends to be "more of the same". If you fought untiringly for your god in life, then you can expect to fight untiringly for him after your death (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0704.html), for example. The incentive to treat others as you want to be treated is the prospect of having/getting to deal with a bunch of other people like you, who act the way that you do. And that certainly could be considered a form of justice, but that aspect of it is mostly a side effect. It's not about being in a place that's designed as reward or punishment. Indeed, you can expect your new form to be adapted to your new environment; that's not the point. It's not the climate, it's the company.