Deity Alternatives?

[alchemyprime]

So, while part of me is tempted to say "forget it," I was trying to think of organizations to use as alternatives to deities for a Pathfinder game, in case someone feels uncomfortable with a pretend god (I know, I know, it's just a game).

Part of me was considering making the Planescape Factions into these organiztions - the Philosophers with Clubs would do in a pinch, I suppose. But I was mulling it over, but a sleep deprived Alch is no good with this.

So maybe y'all could help me out. Any ideas?

[Elricaltovilla]

If 3rd party stuff is acceptable to you, Dreamscarred Press has these things called Martial (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/path-of-war/martial-traditions) Traditions (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vX5QKzsOgPVoXqSuKdu_INbPz5x7OAL_qbH2aia14xk/edit). They have organization benefits, influence and unique effects for joining up. I'm not sure they quite have the world altering power of deities, but it shouldn't be hard to scale up most of them.

[BWR]

So basically what you want is a disembodied philosophy rather than a deity - and it doesn't need to be an actual organization does it?
Hopefully not going over the line here, but there are plenty of real world organizations and non-theistic philosophies with a somewhat prescriptive bent to them that you could adopt, adapt and exaggerate for your game. The Factions are one way of doing it, and the Athar actually have full clerics of the Great Unknown, so it's perfectly possible to have something as vague and undefined as that grant powers.

[137beth]

Martial traditions are certainly one possibility. Another is to use the raw ideals of the domains.

[Psyren]

There are official Philosophies in Golarion as well, e.g. The Green Faith for druids, the Whispering Way for necromancers, or the Prophecies of Kalistrade that focus on accumulating wealth above all else.

[Enran]

My usual solution is to say that faith and devotion are the sources of Divine power, so nobody can actually prove or disprove the existence of gods because those nontheists are getting just as much (results-wise) out of their devotion to their ideals as the theists are getting from their devotion to their gods. Scramble up your planar cosmology so nobody would know where to start looking for gods even if they knew Plane Shift, and voila... Nobody has any reason to get offended.

Alternatively, call out the gods for what they are: powerful Outsiders that some people worship and a subset of those people are granted powers for it. Worshipping them isn't morally right or wrong, they're not going to affect you much either way if you ignore them, they probably didn't create everything, and you'll still go to the afterlife suitable for your alignment and life with or without one to vouch for you.

Heck, fantasy gods are actually much better to use in a game than real ones. If you use pretty much any real-world gods in your game, you'll have to worry intensely about portraying them in a way that doesn't offend adherents of that faith. With your own gods, nobody has any prior attachment to the source material, so they have little to get offended over, even with people's inherent capacity for getting offended. If somebody wants to come in and question the validity of a world where a different religion than their own is true, well, my DM's response has tended to be "eh, maybe they're working in their unknowable ways in the background or something, but these beings are the ones people recognize."

Another solution is one I'm using for my first PbP game is to get rid of the concept entirely, but that's because my game is all-psionics (and ToB) so I don't have to worry about justifying Divine magic. The Divine Minds and occasionally-religious Ardents tend to worship personifications of the Ardent Mantles, which would be pretty hard to call gods in any case unless you consider the term "god" to be applicable to any concept or being receiving worship from any source (which would probably please several dragons, mind you).

[alchemyprime]

Okay so here's why I'm doing it -

I'm running games at the community center for the kids in the neighborhood, both as a "here's something fun" and a way to keep the kids doing quick math and storytelling in their heads. I'm a teacher in this community, and the center is happy to have the activity there (more kids in there means more kids who can sign up for other classes too).

But yeah... I'm worried about appearances. I shouldn't too much - most parents who saw me at the Community Center Faire we had on Friday saw me and went "Oh, it's like Dungeons & Dragons! I'll see if my kid wants to join!" But I'm still afraid for that kid who comes in and their parent doesn't approve.

Maybe it's just easier if I let them pick domains and tell them they won't get the deity specific spells, but they will get more flexibility out of it.

[Psyren]

Just have their clerics (if they even play any) get their powers from Light or Goodness or something generic like that. The whole concept of deities in RPGs is designed for a more mature audience that can recognize such storytelling devices for what they are.