Concerning the Gods

[Auramis]

I need help creating a list of gods, and I was just curious as to how you all create god lists for your campaigns or how your DMs do it. Do they create their own gods, use already established lists, mix-match lists, or some combination of the three?

[Kd7sov]

I find making pantheons one of the most pleasant parts of worldbuilding. Naming them less so, but the conceptualization...

And that is plural, yes; the campaign I'm currently trying to build has three, centered in different parts of the starting continent. (Though one of those is arguably not really a pantheon, as one of my cultures pretty much just worships the visible-light spectrum. It's a little more complicated than that, but not much.)

In any case, my process is roughly as follows:
Start with a concept. This can be as broad or as simple as you like; the three mentioned above have as their concepts "color", "individual dualism", and "a family with a missing father".
Figure out how the roles are assigned. My color pantheon, for instance, is effectively a single unit, although some shades are more closely connected to particular areas - divination, for instance, is more the realm of blue than of green. On the other hand, my family pantheon gives each god a nickname/epithet and at least two of the Cleric domains.
Optionally, as a help with the previous step, devise/steal a creation myth. This is not required, as it can raise questions (peeking into the Greek and Norse mythologies for a moment: what is the relation/connection between Gaia and Ymir, if the pantheons associated with both those stories can and do grant powers?), but it can nail down some roles.
Name them. It may be helpful to pick a real-world culture for each pantheon and find a list of names from that culture to pick from.


Hope this helps!

[arawra]

I tend to stick to established lore as to keep a more available space of reference, and enjoy when that is available to me as a character.

Worth mention is that in the game I DM I made available RNJesus - a Chaotic Good god that favors tilting the scales in favor of a morally good outcome. He deposed Erythnul.

[Naanomi]

I love making a pantheon, I have several in my various campaigns over the years...
-Druidic animal totems that were elevated to divine status as the tribes that worshiped them civilized
-splintered fragments of a dying creator God, formed in phases (a duality with four greater gods, each fractured into two lesser aspects)
-seven mortals raised to godhood with potent artifacts left by the racial creator gods when they fled a cursed world

Mishmashing Gods from other settings into a planescape style 'The Gods of Prime #2748' can also be fun sometimes

[Clistenes]

I like to split the pantheon into branches, each with its own origin and traits:

-Elemental Gods: Basically big ass powerful ancient elementals, similar to Kossuth, Grumbar, Akadi and Itishia. They don't care much for worship, they don't need it to live or to be gods, but they get some extra power from it, so they will grant power to clerics who make rituals startling enough to make themselves noticed.

-Nature Gods: Animistic spirits, similar to Genius Loci, Oreads, Dryads and Theltors, only instead of being the spirit of a hill or a tree they are the spirit of Earth (Beory), the Sea (Soggelos), Atmosphere (Thor) or the Sun (Pelor). Just like Elemental Gods, these don't need worship to live or to be gods, but they need worship to remember their mortal followers and keep their human-like personalities. Pelor, for example, would slowly become a neutral, aloof deity without worship.

-Ethical Gods: Gods of Justice, Freedom, Tyranny, Wrath, Sin...etc. They are either ascended Outsiders (mostly ascended fiends like Orcus or Lolth) or Gestalt entities created when a whole host of Outsiders merge (mostly from the merging of a Celestial Host, like Maat, Goddess of Truth, Tyr, God of Justice, Rao, God of Peace...etc.). They are so strong as their Virtue or Sin, regardless of worship, but they use religion to advance their portfolio.

-Patrons of Mortal Activities: Gods of Crafts, Arts, Business, Travel, Marriage, War...etc. They are mostly ascended mortals who became worshiped after their demise or minor spirits ascended to true godhood. Good examples are Valkur, God of Ships, Hephestus, God of Blacksmithing and Metalworking. Ohgma, God of Knowledge...etc. They rose to godhood thanks to mortal worship, but now they depend mostly on the strength of their portfolio to keep their divinity.

-Deities of Life, Death, Destiny and Magic. A mysterious lot. They don't care too much for worship.

-Racial deities: Mostly ascended paragons, like Bahamut, Tiamat, Moradin...etc. They are very dependant on worship to keep their level of power.

I pick whatever deity fits better what I want, and modify them if necessary.

[JAL_1138]

In the beginning there was nothing. And the Creators looked upon the void and saw that it was empty. And Dave spake, saying, Let There Be Dungeons. And there were dungeons, and They saw that the dungeons were good. And Gary spake, saying Let There Be Dragons. And there were dragons, and They saw that the dragons were good.

[Shining Wrath]

I think the gods looking down upon this forum are very concerned. #rimshotisneeded

I'm currently homebrewing my own human pantheon, it's a lengthy process since I've got several dozen gods needed.

Guiding rules:
No single god made humans. Humans were made by dozens of gods trying to prove to the likes of Gruumsh and Morandin that they can make people, too! This in part accounts for the driven nature of humans.
The human gods are divided into 9 Courts; each court corresponds to a fundamental drive, like community or freedom.
My gods are fallible and limited. Worlds (and gods) are created by something called The Silence, so named because it never communicates at all except by what it creates.
Since gods are fallible, race is not a perfect predictor of alignment. If Moradin makes 1000 dwarves, 10 or so will be chaotic evil, and perhaps 10% will be either NG or LN, and so on.

[some guy]

I usually start with a small standard array with gods, to which additional gods get added that my players or me think of during play. Most of my players create their own gods.

[Joe the Rat]

When world-building, I like playing with and overlapping motifs. Using symbols and contrasts and themes in combination. Numerology can give you all sorts of interesting options. Dualities, the Quarternary of Four Elements, or Six. Seven Deities of Light for Seven Days of the week, or 12 (or 13) Deities for the months or the year. Or both: 7+13 = 20. Eight Virtues, Nine Alignments, that sort of thing.

I often like to mix and match and overlap. Deities of Earth and Fire are also the gods of Order (With Fire doing double-duty as Light and Knowledge), while Air and Water are the gods of Chaos. The alignment of Earth and Fire, Iron, is symbolically the Metal of Order. Twisting on the theme, the alignment of Water and Air invokes the Moon, and hence Silver as the Metal of Chaos. Earth and Air are the War Gods, Earth being the protector type favored by town and fortress-makers, Air by more nomadic raiders. Fire represents reason, Water emotion. Both are favored by artists. That sort of thing.



-Elemental Gods:
-Nature Gods:
-Ethical Gods:
-Patrons of Mortal Activities:
-Deities of Life, Death, Destiny and Magic.
-Racial deities:

This is an excellent list. Keep this in mind. You don't want to get done with a beautifully balanced and organized pantheon, and realize you left something really important out - like war, or love. You can also use the groupings to define different generations of gods (Going from Titans to Gods in Greek Mythology, for instance). The elemental and nature gods are good as older, more primal beings, while the ethical, vocational, and "civilization" deities are the new kids on the block.

Something I've come across is the idea of "A Form You Are Comfortable With" - a set of deities to cover the natural, philosophical, and social underpinnings of the world, which take on different names, looks, and social prominences within different cultures or species. Your Hephaestus and my Gond are the same "entity" as his Moradin. This does help make the gods of choice seem more like legitimate powers of the world as opposed to powerful beings who are really just interlopers with influence tied to where they are worshiped. This can get weird at times: Coyote, Loki, and Garl Glittergold have a lot of similarities, but if you make them the same, there are some alignment aspects that need abstracted. Get your list of beings and portfolios, then decide what their various masks are (or if a given culture has that deity). This does also tend to push the holy wars as being wars between individual deities rather than wars between groups of believers - which may or may not suit your needs.

With 5th Edition specifically, I tend to keep an eye towards the Domains when thinking up deities - make sure all are covered, or try to get the domains equally represented across the pantheon (unless the pantheon has a specific cultural theme - the Norse pantheon is like half war gods, for hyperbolic example).

[DireSickFish]

Since Clerics have to have a god this is a major thing that I hash out right away. The gods are the most powerful force in any realm and knowing there will lets you know how the world took shape.

For my setting I had 5 gods each associated with an island and a race. They created a pact with each other to keep other gods out (because there were a large number of gods and it caused endless fighting). The pact is so strong that no god individually can break it, but the rules are mysterious and unknown to mortals so I can get away with what I want.
Each island has it's own climate.

Dwarf god - Cold and mountainous with windswept frost plains filled with barbarians
Elf godes - Forests with elves that try to keep nature in balance
Gnome God - Hills with gnomes ruling in magocrcies and possibly having magitech but I haven't explored this area much
Hin godes - Mostly desert with lush California/Chile liek coast godess of trade and luck, this is also the largest landmass
Demon god - Mountains and lava and the smallest landmass, god of death and fire and rage because he gets the worst of the other gods

I've got a lot of creation lore going on and a big part of my first game was the ways in the world that get around the gods laws.

I have a hard time handwaving or leaving vague gods when they are so tied into the system mechanics.

[mephnick]

I generally don't have them and simply make up some religions. I find actually creating a bunch of gods a LOT of work with little payoff. You can just as easily have a cleric of the Last Child without having to stat out the Last Child or bother giving it domains or relationships blah blah blah.

But if you enjoy all that stuff then I'd probably keep it simple. My main rule for world building is: Your players probably don't care, so only do things if you enjoy the process.

[Draken]

For a campaign I am running, I snagged twelve deities from various god games I played here in gitp (Two of said gods were mine too).

They are, arranged in sets of three.

Time & Space
Darkness
Civilization

Three Suns (lets call them Conviction, Temperance and Compassion)

Animals & Plants
Air & Water (It is a dragon)
Earth & Fire (It is also a dragon)

Three death gods (hereby subtitled The Guide, The Dead and The Dying)

These twelve gods are all cosmic beings tied to the material plane. They exist apart from mortal concerns and their clerics are more philosophers who teach people the best ways to not be crushed by their tread (not literal treading).

Other than these, there is the Pantheon. This is broader. The Pantheon are the gods of the outer planes and they are... Well, myriad. Also lesser than these twelve, the gods of the pantheon are constructions of faith that rise in those ephemeral realms by the ebb and flow of mortal beliefs, the same is true of everything else in the outer planes. Much of the work of clerics of the Pantheon is to keep the beliefs stable so that the planes don't change and the denizens of the planes don't feel compelled to do something about preventing such change (it happened some 1,000 years back in the setting's history and it was ugly).

The Pantheon is pretty much "any deity from any source", but mostly they are the standard D&D gods.

[Naanomi]

I agree that some synergy/structure is nice. While real world polytheisms are kind of 'a big bunch of whoever'; in a fantasy setting that often feels messy somehow. Sets of opposites are nice, or a clear hierarchy. It helps build relationships between the Gods as well.

The setting I most currently run has an (absent) creator God, his two 'halves' (the sun and the moon, roughly corresponding to civilization VS nature); each of which have two 'faces' that collectively represent the four classic elements (fire and air under Sun, earth and water under Moon); which in turn are each served by two 'ministers' (the eight of them roughly lining up with 5e's Domains)

Other times I like to rely on the setting's inherent structure. One God for each Outer Plane usually ends up created a varied and well-rounded Pantheon. Likewise a Power for each Base-Quasi-Para Elemental Plane can (with a little creativity) shape the Divine players in a setting very well.