Good Plot Hooks for a Player Pantheon of Gods

[Leliel]

Well, Immortals, to be precise.

After making my own request for a 5e Immortals game (Mystra's version of gods, adventurers and sages who have attained divine power and now exist as the undisputed masters of reshaping the planes-think less Pelor and more Doctor Strange with clerics), I realized I may end up one day DMing it myself.

What stopped me was that, quite simply, I have no idea what a cabal of what-might-as-well-be gods would face as a plot. I mean, I can think of mortal threats to the people you patron pretty well (and Immortal feuding), but one of the major things is that I need a core driver for the campaign. Some thing that makes the Immortals want to work together for what could be centuries to solve a problem, or other reasons.

A big one is that all the players are actually an old adventuring party that ascended at the same time from the same use of a powerful artifact made to create a pantheon of Immortals who were already inclined to cooperate against a major crisis its creator foresaw, but I'm trying to puzzle out what that crisis could be, especially given how in the ruleset I'm using, Entropic Immortals (aka, the demonic figures of their society) are not necessarily always villains but sometimes the iron fist when a Tower of Babel needs to be brought down to build something better from the ashes.

Any ideas?

[Lapak]

Well, your own mention of Doctor Strange puts a couple of ideas in play, given what his job is.

Possible Threat One is a singular big bad who is bad enough to demand a unified threat; Dr. Strange only teams up with Dr. Doom when Thanos comes a-calling. Someone not content with bringing evil and destruction to existence as the Entropic Immortals are, this threat is a nihilist who wants to end existence altogether - no good, no evil, no law or chaos, just a void.

Possible Threat Two is Ann extradimensional invasion. A mass exodus/invasion. is coming alternate Prime, or the Plane of Shadow, or the Negative Energy Plane. Let’s take an alternate prime that has been directly ruled by their own Immortals for some time now, god-rulers who have decided to expand their empire from one world to many. Threats range from scouting parties to armies to the rival Immortals themselves, and the party is purely on the defensive until they can determine that the threat is extradimensional AND what alternate world these forces are coming from.

[redwizard007]

The original Immortals book has some info on plots and adversaries.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons_Immortals_Rules

Revised info with a campaign NOT for play as immortals.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrath_of_the_Immortals

In addition to what was in those books, you can run with just about anything you'd like. An invasion from the Far Realms could be OK. So could something involving the Blood War or a G vs. E clash. Obviously, minor forces would be window dressing, but combat with a demon prince or an archoelemental could be fantastic!

There are also opportunities to revive, or bleed power from, the corpses of higher powers that litter the Astral.

Collecting or creating artifacts could drive competition between rival pantheons that might not become lethal, but would still be... Heated.

Participation in an "End of days" scenario could be neat as well, especially if they operate as defenders in Ragnarok, but aggressors in Revelations, fend off the Titans on Olympus, attack Ra on his nightly journey through the underworld, etc. Of course, there is no reason that they couldn't just pick a side and act out the various myths untill a particular omen.

[Wasteomana]

I've seen some pretty excellent options already listed. I am currently about to wrap up a campaign that has been running for 7 years where the players are all level 30. As greater gods the problems are drastically different from what problems other entities might see.

Some of the things they have dealt with in the past:
Portfolios - What they mean, how they are determined and how the power associated with them is allocated. In my setting Portfolios / Domains are things that mortals ascribe to gods and they are used as funnels from the realm of the Divine into the mortal realm. When the PCs ascended and they started receiving prayers they were often surprised at the titles and invocations ascribed to them. The Domains they got were often not the exact ones the players had in mind and that tension was the backdrop for a lot of play.

Worshipers - Do the gods get power from those that worship them? If so, is it ALL their power (so a god who goes unworshiped is dead) or is it only some of their power (there is a finite level of god-power that they all have, but the stronger ones are stronger due to an extra worshiper 'bonus'). In my setting worship has nothing to do with the power of the gods, so their stance towards the world and religions in there name was very interesting.

The Cycle Continues - If they became gods, what stops new powers from arising. What problems did their ascension cause? Was the method they used something that others would attempt to replicate? What happens when someone tries to do it like they did it?

The Purpose of it all - Be it Life, Sentience, Good v Evil, or some other thing, a giant immortal 'why' is a big piece that is interesting to toy with. In my setting the mythos of the world was that there was one all-powerful creator god that created a bunch of lesser dieties that eventually rose up and tore him to pieces. The Creator isn't dead but instead is trying to reform and 'awaken'. That background mentality manifests in worshippers calling for the end times as well as an underlying chaotic nature and conflict in the universe. Is this how things have to be? Can they make a better universe/pantheon/purpose for life?

Scale - This was a ton of fun to play with slowly over the course of the campaign. As the PCs got bigger and bigger the issues of scale came up more and more. The death of an NPC friend is a tragedy in early levels, but once the group is immortal the mortals will all die one day. How do they deal with that? Do they create an afterlife for the faithful? How do the problems and solutions of the Immortal change when an individual death is now so insigificant and they are thinking in terms of planets, species and entire populations. The loss of a major city or country doesn't end up meaning much in the grand scheme of things if enough of a race survives to come back.