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Scalenex
2018-04-18, 01:44 AM
I am working on creating a D&D/Pathfinder setting from the ground up. I have been developing my gods and goddesses based on the nine alignments, but recently I read something talking about male and female archetypes, and I questioned some of my earlier choices.

Quick cliff notes version. A tyrannically super god named Turoch create the universe so he/she/it could feast on the souls of mortals, essentially farming the world. Turoch created several servants to help him, and fearing the servants would rise up against him, he split their personalities and ethical viewpoints so extremely that they would not cooperate. Three lawful, three Chaotic, three Neutral. Three Good, three Evil, three Neutral.

But the True Neutral deity figured out Turoch was going to eat them anyway, and with the threat of annihilation the Nine servants reluctantly worked together long enough to overthrow their master and usurp control of the universe. Then they split up the managing of the universe. The sun, the sea, the weather, etc.

I kind of was a contrarian, I made the moon good male, the sun god female, the earth god male, etc, but now I’m wondering if I made good decisions on that front.

A good sun deity warms the earth, helps crops grow. An evil sun deity bakes crops to death and exults in people dying of heat stroke or starvation. But what does a masculine sun look like? What does a feminine sun look like?

I fear that my deities may be too androgynous to be good mythic archetypes. My main nod to gender dynamics is based around the alignments.

My Chaotic Good (Zarthus) and Lawful Good (Hallisan) deities are both male. They compete for the affections of a Neutral good goddess (Mera).

My male Chaotic Good (Zarthus) and Chaotic Evil (Maylar) gods compete for the affections of a Chaotic Neutral goddess (Nami).

My Chaotic Evil (Maylar) and Lawful Evil (Phidas) gods compete for the affections of a Neutral Evil goddess (Greymoria).

My Lawful Good (Hallisan) and Lawful Evil (Phidas) gods compete for the affections of a Lawful Neutral goddess (Khemra).

The ladies are not passive, they compete with their rivals for their men. Example, my Lawful Neutral and Neutral goddesses both desire the Lawful Good god. My True Neutral god is somewhat desired by all the goddesses at least some of the time, but he is the least likely to show affection of any of them.
I figure the Nine would have constantly shifting romantic allegiances and they would be seen partially on the real world. When two deities are getting along, their priesthoods and worshippers are usually forming alliances (or do the Nine follow what their worshippers are doing instead…). Sometimes when the gods and goddess hook up they do something REALLY big. I figure the first orcs were created when my Chaotic Neutral and Chaotic Evil deities had the divine equivalent of a drunken bender. “We should like totally make a new race!” During a temporary marriage between my Lawful Neutral and Lawful Evil god, the standard exchange rate of 1 gold piece = 10 silver pieces = 100 copper pieces became the standard exchange rate everywhere.


There is more to a gender archetype than who is romantically interested in whom. What can I do to add more depth and if not realism, mythic resonance to my natural forces. So I have four goddesses and five gods. They each control a broad aspect of the natural world, and they each bestowed a broad aspect of civilization.

Hallisan
Alignment: Lawful Good
Sex: Male
Aspect of Nature: The earth and minerals
Aspect of Civilization: Metal working and handicrafts in general
Secondary Aspects: dwarfs, just war, chivalric codes, honor

Khemra
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Sex: Female
Aspect of Nature: The sun.
Aspect of Civilization: Writing and history
Secondary Aspects: tradition, law, opposing undead, fire, grey elves, reigning in the excesses of the other gods


Phidas
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Sex: Male
Aspect of Nature: Maintains the barrier that keeps Turoch’s dead essence (the negative material plane) from consuming all life.
Aspect of Civilization: Currency and commerce
Secondary Aspects: Punishment, oaths, various Underdark races, fortifications, disguise

Mera
Alignment: Neutral Good
Sex: Female
Aspect of Nature: The sea
Aspect of Civilization: Hearth fires and community
Secondary Aspects: Healing and medicine, merfolk, halflings and/or gnomes, drinking water

Korus
Alignment: True Neutral
Sex: Male
Aspect of Nature: Ecosystems
Aspect of Civilization: Agriculture
Secondary Aspects: The four classic elements, most fey races, druids, prophecy, mediation

Phidas
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Sex: Female
Aspect of Nature: Arcane Magic which permeates everything
Aspect of Civilization: Wizardry
Secondary Aspects: sorcerers, warlocks, undead, dark elves, most intelligent monsters, drowning, poison

Zarthus
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Sex: Male
Aspect of Nature: The moon.
Aspect of Civilization: Art and music
Secondary Aspects: wood elves, exposing hidden evil or disguise, revenge, libertarianism, strategy

Nami
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Sex: Female
Aspect of Nature: Weather
Aspect of Civilization: Free will (she gave the first gift to mortals)
Secondary Aspects: Madness, parties and fun, chaos, prophecy, satyrs, arson

Maylar
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Sex: Male
Aspect of Nature: Disease and decay
Aspect of Civilization: Hunting and animal husbandry
Secondary Aspects: low war, social Darwinism, gnolls, stealth


If anyone has any thoughts on how to make the sea feminine or disease masculine, I would like to hear what you have to say. Also if anyone has a compelling reason to change the assignment of a natural role or aspect of civilization, or if you think I overlooked something, I’d like to read that too.

The secondary aspects listed are non-exhaustive. Humans aren’t on any of the lists because humans were created by all of the Nine in a very dysfunctional committee.

I understand that talking about gender can be a dicey topic, but I think we can agree that both the masculine and feminine umbrellas have positive and negative traits as well as lawful and chaotic. Along those lines, while I am pretty set on the genders of the Nine (though I am okay shifting their aspects), I am fairly open to making my True Neutral deity female instead of male. Or maybe androgynous or hermaphroditic.


Then there is the possibility that the Nine do not have fixed genders. I want the entire world to have the same set of gods, but they all see the Nine differently. The Nine can choose to look and act like elves, humans, dragons, kobolds, etc. Why not present themselves as different genders? While the Nine can do that, I need to come up with a good explanation why they do that. Also I need to figure out if their priesthoods have any international schisms over that. I already have schisms based on other stuff. For instance, my magic goddess' worshipers' have a schism over weather sorcery or wizardry is the superior form of honoring the goddess. Maybe they could also see the deity as a different gender.

While the Nine are tied to the nine basic alignments they usually have fervent worshipers who break from the alignment norm. My Neutral Good goddess is all about community and protection. A cult within her priesthood takes this very seriously and run their regions like a police state, for the people's own good of course. My Chaotic Evil god likes to see the strong prosper and the weak perish but he has a fringe cult that endorses helping people through their struggles...once in a while. A strong person can use assistance from time to time but if they grow too dependent they are cut off.


Given that gods and goddesses are so far removed from mortals, is it even important to consider gender dynamics at all or is that just a pointless detail?

Bohandas
2018-04-18, 01:58 AM
{Scrubbed}

Pelle
2018-04-18, 02:49 AM
To avoid stereotype biases you could randomize the genders...

Delta
2018-04-18, 04:30 AM
But what does a masculine sun look like? What does a feminine sun look like?

For a masculine sun, you might want to look at Sol Invictus for inspiration. If you're looking for traditional gender aspects: The male sun can be the ruler above all, high in the sky, his eye sees everything, he is invincible and uncaring, it's "my way or the highway" regarding his rules. The wicked have to hide from his gaze in the night and so on.

The female sun is the lifegiver and caretaker, nothing can live and grow without the sun, it nurtures and protects its followers from the predators that lurk in the darkness, its return after a harsh winter gives hope to the people and so on.


Given that gods and goddesses are so far removed from mortals, is it even important to consider gender dynamics at all or is that just a pointless detail?

This depends a lot on the cultures of your gameworld. If they are egalitarian, the Gods genders won't matter and they may well consider them genderless, while a patriarchy will most likely have a different outlook on things.

LudicSavant
2018-04-18, 05:24 AM
I kind of was a contrarian, I made the moon good male, the sun god female, the earth god male, etc, but now I’m wondering if I made good decisions on that front Calling this contrarian probably reveals more about you than anything else, given how many cultures and settings already do this.


I am working on creating a D&D/Pathfinder setting from the ground up. I have been developing my gods and goddesses based on the nine alignments, but recently I read something talking about male and female archetypes, and I questioned some of my earlier choices.

If it told you things like "moon is female and sun is male" then there's a good chance that the article was poorly researched bull@#$% and you should completely ignore it.

The thing is that ideas about gender roles vary wildly from culture to culture. A good example of just how different things can get from typical Western European values you're probably used to would be the Trobriand Islands culture (which, incidentally, were the basis for the Adem in Patrick Rothfuss's fantasy novels). Basically the very first thing you should do if you want to make your cultures feel real is to ditch the idea that your own cultural values or practices apply elsewhere.


But what does a masculine sun look like? What does a feminine sun look like?
That would depend entirely on the culture presenting them as masculine or feminine.

Pleh
2018-04-18, 05:58 AM
Whenever I'm asking myself such questions and having trouble answering myself, I go back to the question of, "why does this matter to me?"

I feel like I would tend to highlight this part as the answer here:


My main nod to gender dynamics is based around the alignments.

My Chaotic Good and Lawful Good deities are both male. They compete for the affections of a Neutral good goddess.

My male Chaotic Good and Chaotic Evil gods compete for the affections of a Chaotic Neutral goddess.

My Chaotic Evil and Lawful Evil gods compete for the affections of a Neutral Evil goddess.

My Lawful Good and Lawful Evil gods compete for the affections of a Lawful Neutral goddess.

The ladies are not passive, they compete with their rivals for their men. Example, my Lawful Neutral and Neutral goddesses both desire the Lawful Good god. My True Neutral god is somewhat desired by all the goddesses at least some of the time, but he is the least likely to show affection of any of them.

You are suggesting that the tension between the alignments is the cornerstone of this world's reality (not essentially unique, but more uniquely wrapped in a dramatic, cosmic soap opera/sitcom).

Good aligned mortals who feel neutral about law and chaos commonly feel as though they are being courted by dichotomous offers to align with lawful or chaotic decisions, much as the goddess of neutral good literally IS being courted.

I feel like your structure has less to do with the idea that the sun or earth is male or female and more to do with this idea that the extreme alignments (including extreme neutral) are male while the half neutrals (more measured and reserved alignments) are female.

From there, the sun, moon, earth, sea, et al can be whatever gender you want. Keep in mind the distinction between "god of the sun" and "god is the sun." The sun itself could still be inanimate and genderless while still being a point in the universe that manifests a deity's incarnate will.

Cespenar
2018-04-18, 05:59 AM
If you want to go classical, female deities are often wiser and more passive, while male deities often are more aggressive, warlike, more in touch with their baser instincts, etc.

Also more often than not, the chief gods and also the trickster and/or antagonist gods tend to be male.

LudicSavant
2018-04-18, 06:07 AM
{Scrubbed}

Celestia
2018-04-18, 07:07 AM
If I'm being completely honest with you, this entire thing turns me off. The way you're trying to structure this and the language you're using is incredibly patriarchal. I mean, you're even literally asking for gender stereotypes for your deities and basing one of the main themes around competing for romance. And this whole "extreme = male, neutral = female" thing isn't great, either. It all just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I'd say randomize the genders between the alignments, drop the soap opera love triangles, and don't worry about sexist stereotypes. In fact, the best way to do it is to design each deity's unique personality first and then assign their genders. What's between your legs doesn't determine what's between your ears.

Spore
2018-04-18, 07:45 AM
If I'm being completely honest with you, this entire thing turns me off. The way you're trying to structure this and the language you're using is incredibly patriarchal.

Fantasy is often just alien history, but with magic. And get this, the history of a patriarchal culture is dominated by men. History (or fake history in this case) is like that whether you like it or not. If you want to display a patriarchal society, you want the big honchos to be male. Of course in the rare instance of a matriarchal society, goddesses will play the bigger roles. Second of all, it is not your setting, so it is not your call. If he wants to make a setting where every god is a muscular beefcake and has dozens of women swooning every stride he takes, it is really not your call. He wants advice not opinion.

To add a bit of a different approach to the discussion however: If you want it more exotic however, you could have your gods be genderless entities that are just depicted in different cultures with different genders. Take Skyrim for example:

The Daedric PRINCE Azura is more often than not depicted as a female. Prince is here just a term that describes the daedra (read: demon) lord's limited grasp on reality (and very much unlimited grasp on mortals once they deal with them). Meanwhile the gods have unlimited grasp on mortals, but cannot influence reality directly. The gods are genderless as well, but they usually take gendered avatars.

Basically the gods here are displayed as whatever gender the artist or cult wants them to be. The demigod Talos in the game Skyrim is depicted as a man, even though he is just an aspect of the (genderless) dragon god of time, Akatosh. Khajiit (catfolk) call him Alkosh, the dragon king of cats, making Akatosh male. Alduin is (I think the male) aspect of entropy (basically the destructive aspect of time), Auri-El (light or life aspect of time, as without time, there is no life, or life span, I think genderless).

Yes, it is skewed towards men. But most religions are, fake or not.

Pex
2018-04-18, 08:08 AM
Male sun deities are not unheard of. They already exist in D&D - Pelor, Ra (Horus Rakhty), Amanautor.

Pelor is Blessing of the Light, its Warmth and Healing
Ra is Blessing of Life, The Ruler of the gods
Amanautor is Blessing of the Sun driving away Darkness, he is Law.

There is also Apollo, god of the Sun and Healing

For dour female deities there is Shar, goddess of Darkness, Wee Jas goddess of Death and Magic.
Not so dour is Athena, goddess of Wisdom but also of War. Red Knight goddess of Strategy and Planning in War.

Making up your own pantheon, do what you want for each deity. Whatever image you have in mind will work.

Selene Sparks
2018-04-18, 11:07 AM
{Scrubbed}

Honest Tiefling
2018-04-18, 11:24 AM
Calling this contrarian probably reveals more about you than anything else, given how many cultures and settings already do this.
{Scrubbed}

I'd ditch the relationships, personally. Why would gods give a hoot if they're boinking someone of the same gender? Why are they all straight? And why are the women the ones getting courted? If they're not passive, why aren't they selecting their own husbands? If everyone is trying to bang everyone else, why aren't they all polyamorous? Why shouldn't someone try to have multiple husbands/wives?

Also, you don't need an explanation for why the nine have different genders. They are gods. They don't act entirely like mortals. They appear as different genders because they ARE different genders and no gender at the same time. They are many and one, with different vestiges, forms, aspects or moods. They encompass all within their domain, and such cannot be limited to a singular form. They are formless beings of pure divine thought and will, and can take on or abandon these forms as they please.

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-18, 11:44 AM
I largely ignored common archetypes and tropes when assigning "genders" to the deities of one setting, and did so in part because (spoiler) they were all originally mortals. The cycle of the seasons isn't represented by a waxing and waning Mother Goddess, but by the endless cycle of death and rebirth of a "green god" who is effectively his own father and own son -- this has at least one historical precedent, but it's not typical or archetypical.

In the other, most "worldwide" deities don't have fixed genders and the mortals know that -- for example the Storm deity can be whatever the heck the Storm deity wants, as changing as the weather/whether -- while most "local" deities totally blur the line between a deity, or major animistic or ancestor spirit, and have an actual gender in many cases.

Honest Tiefling
2018-04-18, 11:51 AM
As I was thinking about this, there are other ways to sidestep this issue:

1) Gods appear as mortals perceive them. If the mortal is inclined to believe in a mother earth figure, they see the True Neutral guy as that. If they associate maleness with fertility (which has a historical basis) then they see him as a dude.

2) Why do gods even appear as mortals? That's boring. The goddess of sun and civilization could be an eternally burning figure with eight eyes comprised of light of all colors and shades with rings of runes glowing around the figure moving in intricate and perfectly ordered patterns who speaks in musical tones that convey no words, and yet has a perfectly understood meaning as those who hear it know the meaning of the song without words. YOU tell me if that's male or female.


In the other, most "worldwide" deities don't have fixed genders and the mortals know that -- for example the Storm deity can be whatever the heck the Storm deity wants, as changing as the weather/whether -- while most "local" deities totally blur the line between a deity, or major animistic or ancestor spirit, and have an actual gender in many cases.

Perhaps even the line between these spirits and the god themselves is blurred. Do they become an aspect of the god, their minds becoming one or are they a holy servant? Are the aspects always seperate, or do they converge at times? Mortals might not even know what is true or not.

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-18, 12:20 PM
{Scrubbed}

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-18, 12:29 PM
{Scrubbing}

Nifft
2018-04-18, 12:42 PM
Given that gods and goddesses are so far removed from mortals, is it even important to consider gender dynamics at all or is that just a pointless detail?

You could make it a pointed detail. For example: imagine a setting where all male gods are evil. You could spin the implications of that in a number of ways:

- Therefore, all male divine magic users are considered to be inherently tainted, and looked down upon. Female clerics dominate the religious hierarchy. Steal stuff from Wheel of Time.

- Or, all male divine magic users are considered "married" to one of the good goddesses, and all male priests are celibate. Female priests are called "witches" and looked down upon, since they're probably "married" to an evil male god.


Or take it in a different direction: the pantheon of non-evil gods are genderless, and the only gendered gods are evil. Therefore, in popular culture sex is considered sinful, and blamed for the downfall of even the divine. This gets you a Puritanical setting, so steal setting details from historical American culture -- scarlet letters, etc.


IMHO it's far more fruitful to consider the sort of trouble that gendered gods could cause, and use that trouble for your setting.

Other than adding a new type of social trouble, there's not much value in gendered gods.

Pex
2018-04-18, 01:04 PM
Or, in other words, this:
With the caveat that what's between your legs doesn't determine one's gender either, but that's only a side point.
And you're presupposing a very, very heteronormative view as the default. Why is are you assuming patriarchy as the default? Why is a matriarchal society rare? Why is egalitarianism not an option? Why must a fantasy world with dragons and wizards and such line up with frankly rather revisionist view of history? And why would this be a desirable trait?

And, finally, we're discussing a subjective matter. All advice is opinion. "It's not your call," and "he wants advice, not an opinion" is simply a way to try and shut out opinions you don't like.

Why not? Why would it be such an atrocity to be avoided?

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-18, 01:16 PM
As an example of deities of distinct gender, but not of entirely "typical" gender... what I did in this setting (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?497634-How-to-4th-century-BCE-setting):



Ersetuki, the Good Earth
Er-seht-oo-kee

Ersetuki is the tireless patron of family, of motherhood and children. The Great Earth Mother, she encourages large families, tempered only by the need to care for every child, and considers it the duty of all women to bring new life into the world. She teaches that family means more than the individual, and that every being must have and know their place in the greater family of all living things. She loves those who nurture domestic animals, even in knowing that those animals will be sacrificed to the good of the family.

(Yes the deity of motherhood is in fact female, I don't think that one should be controversial... )


Belumeru, the Green God
Behlum-ehru

The Great Green Father, Belumeru is the god of the living cycle and the seeds of life. He looks with great favor on all plants, both in the wild places and in the fields, and on those who tend to them. Ersetuki is his mother-wife – in the newness of the year he is the son, and in the fullness of the seasons he is the father, repeating the cycle eternally. He teaches that the cycle of life is greater than all things, greater than any individual, and that a father must sacrifice everything for his family if that is what’s needed. He views those who try to escape their greater fate with scorn.


Ebabarra, the Eternal Sun
Eh-ba-bahr-ah

Ebebarra is the goddess of the sun, of life-sustaining light and warmth. She is the eternal pure light of truth, and she hates even the kindest wavering from unrelenting honesty. She brings the soft touch of a warm day and the inferno of purgation, the spring thaw and the killing drought. She lovingly encourages perfection, and mercilessly demands it. She only relents from her burning stare because the other gods demand it.


Ninagal-ea, Lord of the Great Waters
Nihn-ah-gahl-eeah

The oceans, seas, and great rivers are the domain of Ninagal-ea, and he is the patron of those mortals who work that domain. His favor is the bounty of the waters, his wrath is the raging storm, the great wave, and the hungry deep. The waters are plentiful, but can be uncaring, and their vastness and power dwarf any man.


Kagal-eunir, the Lawbringer
Kah-gahl-eeoo-neer

Kagal-eunir is the patron of ordered life, of law and cities. He favors all things well planned, the life lived with calm foresight, and laws written wisely. He loves justice, and teaches that law and process followed rightly always reveals truth and always leads to justice. He teaches that there is a right order in all things, and that mortals fight it at their peril; a place for everyone and everyone in their place.


Tabannusi, the Maker
Tahb-ahn-noo-see

Tabannusi is the goddess of hearth and forge, of crafts and industry. She favors the pureness of hard work done well. The making of things is her concern, less than the rewards that might come from it or the resources used; she teaches that work well done should be its own reward, and that no amount of effort is excessive in the perfection of one’s craft.


Wasu-harrani, the Wanderer
Wahsoo-hahrahni

Wasu-harrani is the god of travel and freedom, who teaches that those who wander are not lost. The Wanderer demands a laissez-faire world with no restrictions, and no law beyond “do what thou wilt” and “don’t get caught.” He favors those who travel, explore, and never tie themselves down. He is the god of severed bonds, but also of severed ties – loathing slavery but also skeptical of family and government.


Hurasamaltu, Prince of Plenty
Hur-ah-sahm-altoo

The Price of Plenty is the god of ambition, opulence, wealth, and luxury. He teaches that deprivation and unfulfilled needs are unnecessary evils, to be avoided through the accumulation of wealth and power. The fullest coffers, the finest things, and the greatest indulgences please him, but never so much as those who always strive for more regardless of how much they have. His followers struggle between the wanton avarice and gluttony of endless accumulation and consumption, and the grand generosity that leaves no doubt as to their righteous wealth. Just remember that everything has a price…


Kashavti, the Unknown
Kah-shav-tee

Kashavti is the goddess of the great cold – the Grey Lady of winter’s grasp, the embrace of night, and the chill of death. The black night sky and the white snows are hers, as are the stars and the strange lights of the north. Goddess of dangerous journeys, secret crossroads, and hidden things. (see, The Morrigan, and Hekate, but without the "tripartite" elements, for starters.)


Sharur, the Wild Hunt
Shah-roor

Sharur is the patron of hunters, the protector of wild things, and the master of wild places. The untouched and the unspoiled are her domain. As the cities and farms grow, she is the ruthless force of nature that constantly presses back. As most of the other gods are said to call on mortals to take, and use, and expand, and control, she demands restraint, chiding mortals to only take as much as can regrow. And yet she is also the bloody-minded goddess of wild abandon and survival of the fittest, her only mercy a quick ending for the taken prey.


Pazzursetu, the Great Shadow
Pahz-ur-set-oo

The Great Shadow is both the judge and the protector of the dead. A deity of indeterminate or perhaps dual gender, and indistinct form, who rules the netherworld and watches over the dark byways of the afterlife. Pazzursetu's stories and origins are jealously kept secrets, held fiercely in confidence by her/his mystery cult.



(If you're wondering about the names, they're derived from what's known of Sumarian and Akkadian, I wanted a very old "dawn of civilization" feel. If they sound "made up" it's because they don't map to the language families most of us are familiar with.)

Grek
2018-04-18, 01:21 PM
If you want thematic resonance, you want to include generations in your pantheon. For example:

LG: The Lady Justice (Law, Mountains, Deserts, Sunlight, Architecture)
CG: The Jolly Fool (Roads, Dogs, Forests, Trade, Wind)
CE: The Mother of Monsters (Birth, Oceans, Swamps, Disease, Fishing)
LE: The Rain King (Agriculture, Blood, Rain, Rulership, Floods)

who then begat:

LN: The Fate Weaver (Destiny, Death, Cloth, Spiders, Tombs)
NG: The Generous One (Charity, Education, Writing, Strength, Trade)
CN: The Trickster (Disguise, Poison, Illusion, Song, Theft)
NE: The Prison Keeper (Bondage, Darkness, Pain, Hunting, Murder)

who, alongside their parents, begat:

TN: The Thousandfold (Night, Dreams, Twilight, Magic, Fertility)

Nifft
2018-04-18, 01:42 PM
If you want thematic resonance, you want to include generations in your pantheon. For example:
(...)


Oooo, I do like that begetting angle.

Generations of gods might allow a more dynamic setting, if a new god has been born in recent memory, or maybe right as the campaign starts.

You could also do a thing whereby the Old Gods were chaotic and/or evil, but eventually begat nicer / more lawful gods who were worthy of veneration -- sort of a Titanomachy thing.

Or the new gods are the chaotic ones, rebelling against their parents in a manner that would be entirely relatable by mortals.

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-18, 01:45 PM
A good sun deity warms the earth, helps crops grow. An evil sun deity bakes crops to death and exults in people dying of heat stroke or starvation. But what does a masculine sun look like? What does a feminine sun look like?

I fear that my deities may be too androgynous to be good mythic archetypes. My main nod to gender dynamics is based around the alignments.


My advice:

First, forget good and evil. A sun deity cares about (essentially) being the sun -- the sun is the manifestation of its power, and it is the divine manifestation of all the sun's qualities. A sun deity warms the earth, helps crops grow, bakes the crops to death, and exults in effects of heat and light on the world. If the religion includes human sacrifice, then its sacrifices are left to die of overheating and dehydration in the light of the sun, staked in the desert or at the exposed summit of a temple pyramid. A sun deity hates the dark, and pushes back against night, and clouds, and anything that obscures its perfect illumination.

Second, don't worry about "good mythic archetypes", which amount to mirroring what came before simply because it came before. Worry about synchronicity between what the people of the setting in question believe and what the gods embody and proclaim -- either because the gods are shaped by the faith of mortals or because the traditions of mortals have been shaped by the gods... or both.

Jay R
2018-04-18, 03:07 PM
You don't have to reinvent everything. [And if you're asking us, you don't even want to.]

If you want a female sun goddess, use one of these (https://www.google.com/search?biw=1315&bih=629&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=SqTXWoT8Eou6tgWN04HADA&q=sun+goddess&oq=sun+goddess), and write a persona around the look.

Do the same for anything else you're considering. Google is your friend.

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-18, 03:17 PM
You don't have to reinvent everything. [And if you're asking us, you don't even want to.]

If you want a female sun goddess, use one of these (https://www.google.com/search?biw=1315&bih=629&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=SqTXWoT8Eou6tgWN04HADA&q=sun+goddess&oq=sun+goddess), and write a persona around the look.

Do the same for anything else you're considering. Google is your friend.

Can also look at all the various solar deities from history and cherry-pick details to create the "sphere of interest" and personality and history to fit your campaign setting's cultures and cosmology.

A GM doesn't have to create everything from whole cloth, the important thing is that it works.

Scalenex
2018-04-18, 03:50 PM
Pretty much. If you want to get away from standards set in Greyhawk/Forgotten Realms, don't pull from Indo-European mythology, where most of these gods get stolen from. Ancient Egypt, as mentioned, had a male earth god and a female sky goddess as well as male lunar deities. More examples can be seen in Chinese, Mongolian, and Hindu mythology, but I'm lazy and Wikipedia has lists of different types of deities for inspiration.

My knowledge of Greyhawk is limited, so I am sort of avoiding them by default. Though the mythology I know best is Greek/Roman and Greyhawk does seem to draw from that same well of inspiration.


I'd ditch the relationships, personally. Why would gods give a hoot if they're boinking someone of the same gender? Why are they all straight? And why are the women the ones getting courted? If they're not passive, why aren't they selecting their own husbands? If everyone is trying to bang everyone else, why aren't they all polyamorous? Why shouldn't someone try to have multiple husbands/wives?

I figure polyamorous was the norm. No one stays with the same partner forever. I figure the Lawful deities would favor concrete marriages formalizing 200 years partnership or some other set number and the Chaotic deities would leave when they feel like it. I don't have a problem with gods of the same gender "boinking" but they aren't literally doing that. When the gods are together they are creating something in tandem. Sometimes it's intimate, sometimes it's business like. "Boinking" is just the metaphorical representation mortals can understand. And I did pull a lot of this from Greek mythology.


Also, you don't need an explanation for why the nine have different genders. They are gods. They don't act entirely like mortals. They appear as different genders because they ARE different genders and no gender at the same time. They are many and one, with different vestiges, forms, aspects or moods. They encompass all within their domain, and such cannot be limited to a singular form. They are formless beings of pure divine thought and will, and can take on or abandon these forms as they please.

Agree with everything you said there, but it doesn't help me apply mythic archetypes to natural fores.


I largely ignored common archetypes and tropes when assigning "genders" to the deities of one setting, and did so in part because (spoiler) they were all originally mortals. The cycle of the seasons isn't represented by a waxing and waning Mother Goddess, but by the endless cycle of death and rebirth of a "green god" who is effectively his own father and own son -- this has at least one historical precedent, but it's not typical or archetypical.

Well the Nine don't control the seasons much to their embarrassment. When they killed their progenitor god, their progenitor became the negative energy plane (aka the Void). Every year on the anniversary of his death (near the winter solstice), the Barrier between the living world and the negative energy plane thins and the Void sucks heat out of the world creating winter. Then the Nine shore up the Barrier and it reaches it's peak at the summer solstice before thinning again.

Most of the other cycles are managed by the gods. Before they fought their progenitor, the Nine set forth terms for ruling the world (which the Chaotic deities broke quickly). One example is that the Good and Evil gods agreed to split the world between day and night (which is enforced by the Lawful Neutral sun goddess) but the Chaotic Good god didn't like that much darkness so he created the moon.

I do like the classical archetype of mortals becoming gods but I haven't used that myself. A few times a mortal TRIED to become a god and usually just died horribly and unleashed a natural disaster of earth shattering proportions. One thing the Nine can do is elevate favored mortals into immortal powerful spirits. Not gods, but very powerful servants of the gods.


As I was thinking about this, there are other ways to sidestep this issue:

1) Gods appear as mortals perceive them. If the mortal is inclined to believe in a mother earth figure, they see the True Neutral guy as that. If they associate maleness with fertility (which has a historical basis) then they see him as a dude.

2) Why do gods even appear as mortals? That's boring. The goddess of sun and civilization could be an eternally burning figure with eight eyes comprised of light of all colors and shades with rings of runes glowing around the figure moving in intricate and perfectly ordered patterns who speaks in musical tones that convey no words, and yet has a perfectly understood meaning as those who hear it know the meaning of the song without words. YOU tell me if that's male or female.

Perhaps even the line between these spirits and the god themselves is blurred. Do they become an aspect of the god, their minds becoming one or are they a holy servant? Are the aspects always seperate, or do they converge at times? Mortals might not even know what is true or not.

I like the works of Rick Riordan. And one common motif in his writing he has is that if a mortal looks on the true form of a god or goddess they die, so when the gods interact with mortals they present a fraction of their true selves. I figure the Nine would be the same way and they could present almost anything they want.



"Formless beings of pure thought" isn't a universal in how the people of these polytheistic cultures viewed their deities. Some of them took a far more concrete or "like mortals but more and better" view of the gods.

I figure "like mortals but more and better" is their favored way of showing themselves, but I figure my Chaotic Neutral goddess likes appearing as the most surprising and/or funny thing she can think of.



If we treat the pantheons and deities first as elements of a mortal religion, then the behavior and "morals" of the gods in these religions will likely reflect the culture and beliefs of the mortals, rather than some inherent aspect of their own nature. For example, the peccadilloes of the Greek and Roman gods reflect a very complex and conflicting interplay of power, sexual morality, and male/female double standards for sexual behavior.

This stuff makes mythology interesting.


If we treat them as entities of great power first, who predate conceptually and temporally the mortals who worship them, then the determining factor should perhaps be their own internal standards, either as a group or imposed by whoever happens to "rule" within their circle.

Since I intended to base my world on the fragile and ever shifting balance between Good and Evil, Law and Chaos, none of the deities are really in charge, though the Lawful Neutral goddess tries to act like she in charge and most of the others have at least mentally plotted some kind of scheme to be the one in charge.

So they basically have their own internal standards which frequently conflict with the others.


In the real world development of religious beliefs, it's possible that the gods appear as animals and humans and as blends of both because they started out as ancestor spirits, hero spirits, and animal spirits at some point. They're projections of human beliefs and interests (in a perfectly mundane sense, setting aside any "who made who" questions).

I like the way you are think...but my setting pretty clearly makes the gods born as gods (or at least immortal spirits) and not coming from animals and people.


Speaking strictly for my settings, I don't do "aspects and avatars" in that way. Distinct entities are distinct. There's only so much subjectivist wonkiness I can handle at a time. Even if the mortals in one of the settings argue over the exact nature of the gods and spirits, at the core I know which version is the actual way things work.

But for others, and their settings, that sort of blurriness can work quite well -- it's quite possible the fertility deities of different religions are utterly distinct, and interconnected, and simply faces of the same single deity, all at the same time... the divine might be an utterly subjective reflection of human beliefs, even.

I want the different locales to have different interpretations and beliefs about the Nine but before I can create regional differences, I need to hammer out thier core beings.


You could make it a pointed detail. For example: imagine a setting where all male gods are evil. You could spin the implications of that in a number of ways:

- Therefore, all male divine magic users are considered to be inherently tainted, and looked down upon. Female clerics dominate the religious hierarchy. Steal stuff from Wheel of Time.

- Or, all male divine magic users are considered "married" to one of the good goddesses, and all male priests are celibate. Female priests are called "witches" and looked down upon, since they're probably "married" to an evil male god.


Or take it in a different direction: the pantheon of non-evil gods are genderless, and the only gendered gods are evil. Therefore, in popular culture sex is considered sinful, and blamed for the downfall of even the divine. This gets you a Puritanical setting, so steal setting details from historical American culture -- scarlet letters, etc.

IMHO it's far more fruitful to consider the sort of trouble that gendered gods could cause, and use that trouble for your setting.

I am intrigued by the thoughtfulness of how culture stems from these gender archetypes but it's a little more extreme than I was aiming for.


Other than adding a new type of social trouble, there's not much value in gendered gods.


Why not? Why would it be such an atrocity to be avoided?

I am aware that bringing up gender issues in fiction can be controversial but I think it does a bigger disservice to gender issues if I chose to ignore the issue altogether.


If you want thematic resonance, you want to include generations in your pantheon. For example:

LG: The Lady Justice (Law, Mountains, Deserts, Sunlight, Architecture)
CG: The Jolly Fool (Roads, Dogs, Forests, Trade, Wind)
CE: The Mother of Monsters (Birth, Oceans, Swamps, Disease, Fishing)
LE: The Rain King (Agriculture, Blood, Rain, Rulership, Floods)

who then begat:

LN: The Fate Weaver (Destiny, Death, Cloth, Spiders, Tombs)
NG: The Generous One (Charity, Education, Writing, Strength, Trade)
CN: The Trickster (Disguise, Poison, Illusion, Song, Theft)
NE: The Prison Keeper (Bondage, Darkness, Pain, Hunting, Murder)

who, alongside their parents, begat:

TN: The Thousandfold (Night, Dreams, Twilight, Magic, Fertility)


Oooo, I do like that begetting angle.

Generations of gods might allow a more dynamic setting, if a new god has been born in recent memory, or maybe right as the campaign starts.

You could also do a thing whereby the Old Gods were chaotic and/or evil, but eventually begat nicer / more lawful gods who were worthy of veneration -- sort of a Titanomachy thing.

Or the new gods are the chaotic ones, rebelling against their parents in a manner that would be entirely relatable by mortals.

I have thought about gods begating other gods. That's a great way to establish relationships between deities and their concepts, but I wanted to create a setting where everyone has the same gods (though the gods don't act the same way around different worshipers). I figure if I got too many gods and goddesses, every nation, every race would have their own patron god. That works for some settings, but it's not what I was going for.

I did really like something a friend of mine did. He actually created a pantheon for a theology college class and then decided to make a game setting around it. I think he had two semi-equal sets of gods. The first primordial gods. They covered things like Time, Death, Nature, Light...very basic elements of the natural world. They created (crafted, his gods don't "boink") a second batch of gods that covered things like law, craftsmanship...basic elements of civilization. Each generation gets closer to mortals' day to day lives.

If I decide to have generations of gods I think that's a good way to go. Concepts get more refined and specific as you move down.



My advice:

First, forget good and evil. A sun deity cares about (essentially) being the sun -- the sun is the manifestation of its power, and it is the divine manifestation of all the sun's qualities. A sun deity warms the earth, helps crops grow, bakes the crops to death, and exults in effects of heat and light on the world. If the religion includes human sacrifice, then its sacrifices are left to die of overheating and dehydration in the light of the sun, staked in the desert or at the exposed summit of a temple pyramid. A sun deity hates the dark, and pushes back against night, and clouds, and anything that obscures its perfect illumination.

The duality of the sun is why I decided to make the sun Lawful Neutral. It doesn't play favorites and rises and sets in a predictable pattern. Also her main rival, Chaotic Neutral controls the weather and creates the very clouds that obstruct her. She is not opposed to night though. I don't have a night deity, night is simply the absence of the sun.


Second, don't worry about "good mythic archetypes", which amount to mirroring what came before simply because it came before. Worry about synchronicity between what the people of the setting in question believe and what the gods embody and proclaim -- either because the gods are shaped by the faith of mortals or because the traditions of mortals have been shaped by the gods... or both.

I will keep that in mind


Fantasy is often just alien history, but with magic. And get this, the history of a patriarchal culture is dominated by men. History (or fake history in this case) is like that whether you like it or not. If you want to display a patriarchal society, you want the big honchos to be male. Of course in the rare instance of a matriarchal society, goddesses will play the bigger roles. Second of all, it is not your setting, so it is not your call. If he wants to make a setting where every god is a muscular beefcake and has dozens of women swooning every stride he takes, it is really not your call. He wants advice not opinion.

Yes, it is skewed towards men. But most religions are, fake or not.

Some of my mortal cultures are egalitarian, some are matriarchal, most are patriarchal. I stole an idea from Greek mythology. They Olympian council used to be six gods and six goddesses. After Hestia yielded her seat to Dionysus the Olympian ruling council had a 7/5 split and this paved the way for patriarchy. That is sort of why I have five male deities and four females. It explains patriarchy BUT it means my world is slightly less patriarchical than Western civilization.



Male sun deities are not unheard of. They already exist in D&D - Pelor, Ra (Horus Rakhty), Amanautor.

Pelor is Blessing of the Light, its Warmth and Healing
Ra is Blessing of Life, The Ruler of the gods
Amanautor is Blessing of the Sun driving away Darkness, he is Law.

There is also Apollo, god of the Sun and Healing

For dour female deities there is Shar, goddess of Darkness, Wee Jas goddess of Death and Magic.
Not so dour is Athena, goddess of Wisdom but also of War. Red Knight goddess of Strategy and Planning in War.

Making up your own pantheon, do what you want for each deity. Whatever image you have in mind will work.

I know there are some sun/sky goddesses, but male sun gods are the norm and female sun goddesses are the exception. Earth deities are usually female. An exception to both tendencies is Ancient Egypt. Geb was male and was the Earth. Nut was female and was the sky. They have an asterisk on them though. Geb and Nut didn't do much besides have some kids together. Shu the male god of the air and Ra the male god of the sun were both far more important to Egyptian daily life than Nut. Geb was also largely supplanted by fertility goddesses.


The problem you're running into here is a failure of definition. What do you mean by "masculine" or "feminine?" Gender roles are complex things that are dramatically different between time periods and cultures. Furthermore, you're very strongly limiting yourself if you're trying to force your mythology into a modern binary. For example, Odin practiced seiðr, magic that was a magic that was the domain of women. In the same mythology, Loki was a shapeshifter that mothered at least one child(admittedly, said child was a horse, but mythology is weird). And that's in a mythology where so much of our modern versions suffered pretty heavy revisionism, without getting into all the gender-changing, via reincarnation, avatars, or just flat shapeshifting, and all the non (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardhanarishvara)-binary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijra_(South_Asia)#In_religion) stuff in Hinduism, much less any of the less-known to westerners mythologies.

Given that my Nine deities control everything, it's almost a given that they will be less confined to gender roles than mortals. But even though Odin did feminine things, he was still a male god.


Also, poison as the domain of a female goddess who has no other association with anything like it, especially when there's a god who has coverage over "low war" and stealth? And, as a side note, why on earth would a god of gnolls be male? Gnolls are humanoid hyenas after all, and are you aware of what gender dimorphism in hyenas looks like?

I actually made the Neutral Evil deity the god of poisons BEFORE I assigned the gods genders. When the Nine decided to betray their master, the Chaotic Good deity had the idea of tainting his food (souls), the Lawful Evil deity, whom their progentor trusted most delivered the poison, but the Neutral Evil deity made the poison by mutilating several souls until they could provide their master no nutritional value. A few of these mutilated souls were not eat and escaped. They became the forerunners of the first undead.

My Chaotic Evil gods aspect of low war came about different. When the progenitor god was beating up his disobedient servants, the Chaotic Evil deity took a fall, acted more hurt then he was, then when their progenitor turned his back on him, the Chaotic Evil god sucker punched him.

You are absolutely right about Gnolls, when I assigned my Chaotic Evil god as their patron I was only thinking about alignment and martial prowess, I hadn't considered that hyenas have very strong sexual dimorphism tilted towards females.

Though I will point out that Athens had Athena as their patron and were a very patriarchal society despite having the most powerful female Olympian as their patron. Sparta had Aries as their patron, basically the most toxic male god you could get but Spartan women had more rights and privileges than most other Greek women. Aries was also the principle deity of the Amazons.


Why only the true neutral one? It really seems, from what I can see, that alignment comes first and foremost in how you're describing things, with actual characteristics coming a distant second. Why not have your law god have a religious third gender (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gala_(priests)) that they manifest in and their priests adopt? Why not have the lawful good and lawful evil god have a very tumultuous love-hate thing going on?
Again, why? You're presupposing a very heteronormative framework. Why isn't "cosmic entities are beyond the confines of human gender roles" or just "they feel like it" not good enough?

Those are good ideas. I especially like celibate priests/priestesses adopting a third gender.

I figure the Lawful Good and Lawful Evil gods would have a love hate thing going on between them. Not every romantic notion between the Nine has to be hetero normative. A lot of real world mythologies have deities that swing both ways.


Gender dynamics are a very important thing, in that, when you're producing fiction, you're saying something, and how you say it is important. Fantasy can be a great lens to reexamine how one might think about it, but it should still be done carefully, especially since having it done poorly will send a rather obvious, in unintentional, message to any women who'd be playing in your setting.

Agreed




And, finally, we're discussing a subjective matter. All advice is opinion. "It's not your call," and "he wants advice, not an opinion" is simply a way to try and shut out opinions you don't like.

I don't mind opinions, even if they are the opposite of my views. I want honest feedback.

Bohandas
2018-04-18, 05:40 PM
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Max_Killjoy
2018-04-18, 05:43 PM
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Honest Tiefling
2018-04-18, 05:49 PM
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Corneel
2018-04-18, 06:03 PM
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Max_Killjoy
2018-04-18, 06:20 PM
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Max_Killjoy
2018-04-18, 06:36 PM
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LudicSavant
2018-04-18, 07:02 PM
I am aware that bringing up gender issues in fiction can be controversial but I think it does a bigger disservice to gender issues if I chose to ignore the issue altogether. It is, however, an even bigger disservice to do it badly.

Roland St. Jude
2018-04-19, 12:02 AM
Sheriff: C'mon people. Real world religion, of any era and for any purpose, is an Inappropriate Topic on this Forum. This is admittedly broad, but it's one of the oldest and most well-known rules here.

Bohandas
2018-04-19, 12:49 AM
Edit: moving post to board issues subforum

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-19, 07:29 AM
There is clearly no way to provide help to other gamers on this subject without running a risk.

I apologize to other posters I would have otherwise helped going forward, for not posting on any subject that might brush up against this.

Furthermore, I will not be discussing the fictional deities or fictional belief systems of my own settings from this point forward -- there's simply no other way to be certain.

Scalenex
2018-04-19, 07:42 AM
Apologies, given that the Order of the Stick uses three pantheons from real world mythologies I didn't realize that discussing real world mythologies in any capacity was forbidden.

I thought I was being polite and respectful to the views of others.


Does anyone know a good forum where we can talk about mythology in the context of an RPG or fiction setting?

Spore
2018-04-19, 08:01 AM
That is why my post stayed meta. Building a pantheon up instead of copying various deities is more fun and engaging in the long run anyway, so build a society that reveres a force of power and have each culture assign different attributes to said power.

Maybe it's not even a god but a conglomerate of space slugs in your setting granting divine spells :smallsmile:

PersonMan
2018-04-19, 12:04 PM
Why not? Why would it be such an atrocity to be avoided?

I think you read too much into the post; pausing to consider why one is doing something is IMO always a good idea. If someone is building a hyper-Tolkienesque fantasy world and someone says "You seem to be sticking very closely to the sort of things found in Middle Earth, why is that?" then they aren't saying that a Tolkienesque world is bad, but rather pointing out something the author may have not realized, and thereby giving them the opportunity to improve their work by making conscious design decisions rather than just doing things as they've seen them done.

Bohandas
2018-04-19, 12:05 PM
Apologies, given that the Order of the Stick uses three pantheons from real world mythologies I didn't realize that discussing real world mythologies in any capacity was forbidden.

I thought I was being polite and respectful to the views of others.


Does anyone know a good forum where we can talk about mythology in the context of an RPG or fiction setting?

I would like to know this too if anybody can think of one

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-19, 12:10 PM
Does anyone know a good forum where we can talk about mythology in the context of an RPG or fiction setting?



I would like to know this too if anybody can think of one


Same here.

Bohandas
2018-04-19, 06:09 PM
hmm...ENWorld and RPG Codex might potentially be possibilities

Bohandas
2018-04-19, 06:14 PM
hmm...ENWorld and RPG Codex might potentially be possibilities

EDIT;
Or maybe one of the chan boards

Lemmy
2018-04-19, 07:36 PM
I do it the same way I choose any other characteristic for any character... I pick whatever fits my vision of the character.

e.g.: If I envision the deity of the sun as golden valkyrie, it'll be female. If I envision it as a golden-maned lion, it'll be male. If neither gender ir more fitting than the other to my vision of the character, I just flip a coin.

I don't really care about following or defying typical gender roles. I just go with whatever is more fitting/interesting for the character.

Libertad
2018-04-19, 07:56 PM
hmm...ENWorld and RPG Codex might potentially be possibilities

EDIT;
Or maybe one of the chan boards

I highly suggest against RPG Codex, on account that said forum community is brewing with unironic bigots.



As to the OP, I would suggest avoiding baking in gender stereotypes and roles into deities. This carries the presumption to players that your viewing of what are traditional gender norms is a universal standard. It can end up coming off as meta-commentary on how you think is "the way things are," and carries an implicit discouragement of unorthodox concepts.

Gender roles in world-building are much like creating your own pantheon, or the creation of a realm's geo-political history. Unless you seek to borrow straight from the real world, you have to deeply delve into a lot of questions. Where do LGBT and non-conforming people fit in your setting? Do the gods' roles reflect how mortalkind conducts itself and arranges their social structures? Is this subject to change with time and culture, or is the divine writ meant to be an unchangeable aspect of your world? Are any players in your gaming group women, LGBT people, or who have behavior and hobbies which your dominant culture sees as "unfit" for their gender? Have you consulted your players with your world-building and how it may impact their enjoyment of the game?

Also, what do you in real life consider typically masculine behavior? What about feminine? Why do you consider it so? Can you definitively say for sure if such things were this way across all of history and time in the real world?


My point is that discussion of real-world gender, ethnicity, and religious roles in tabletop games is a minefield which requires deep thought which is bound to ruffle some feathers. At its worst it may be used by gamers as a cudgel to reinforce their own real-world prejudices ("of course the soldiers are going to rape you! That's what you get as a woman going to the front lines!").

Sanctaphrax
2018-04-19, 11:02 PM
RPGnet would be my location of choice for a thread that mixes real-world and TTRPG mythology. Lot of people there who know rather a lot about any topic you care to name.

As for the thread topic, I don't really think you need to do anything to make gods seem gendered. Just use gendered pronouns and whatever's written around those pronouns will come across as masculine/feminine.

Bohandas
2018-04-20, 03:45 AM
I highly suggest against RPG Codex, on account that said forum community is brewing with unironic bigots.

But that would indicate that the moderators there were apathetic or the rules were lax, right?

Libertad
2018-04-20, 03:53 AM
But that would indicate that the moderators there were apathetic, right?

Maybe, or they intentionally foster this subculture. Not the first time such communities has active moderators yet gave a free pass because they agreed with hateful rhetoric. Regardless it is hardly the best forum to discuss religion and politics unless you are extremely regressive or a troll

Scalenex
2018-04-20, 05:48 AM
I guess it's too much to ask for a happy medium between hyper vigilant PCness and unrestrained bigotry.

I still want to talk about this, so I will talk about my pantheon WITHOUT bringing up real world religion parallels.

I made the CG, CE, LE, LG, TN deities male. I made the NE, NG, LN, and CN deities female. Some commented that this was stereotyping.

I was not deliberately setting out to make the extremists male and the reserved moderate ones female. I liked the idea of every deity being one step removed alignment wise from the opposite sex and two steps removed from the same sex and I just happened to have a clear male view of my Chaotic Evil god, so the rest fell into place from there.

While most of the male gods have no neutrality you could call theme extreme for that reason, but a Neutral Good goddess is unrestrained Good and a Neutral Evil goddess is unrestrained evil. Likewise Nami and Khemra pursue Chaos and Law in pure forms. You could argue this is MORE extreme than the Chaotic Good god that splits his focus two ways.

Since a case can be made that half Neutral is just as extreme as no Neutral alignments I was certainly not trying to put forth a hypothesis that men and woman are more extreme than the others.

I think since males and female are equally split between Chaos and Law, Good and Evil that I am reasonably well insulated from being accused of showing favoritism.

My gods are romantically involved in complex soap opera dynamics like many all powerful beings in fiction do. I don't think it's required. My friend made a lovely interactive pantheon where the gods are asexual beings, but I think this narrative works for me.

I am not opposed to romantic entanglements that are not hetero normative. I just don't have much of a frame of reference for it. Sure it can happen with the Nine. Particularly since the Nine can appear as the opposite sex (or an animal, or dragon, or repeating ten minute operetta). I'm not opposed to non-traditional pairings.

I'm toying with the idea that the the "True Form" of the gods is as musical expressions. When two gods work together they aren't getting together in the physical way mortals are, their songs are intertwining and creating new music. At least on some level. I figure the Nine exist on multiple levels simultaneously. I guess when two gods are "together" they could be together musically, in a business sense, military alliance sense, and a romantic sense.



Going back to the natural forces gender thing. I'm not opposed to altering the laws of physics. The world is a cylinder and if you walked to the pole off the edge you would walk into the negative energy plane. The negative energy plane being in the poles is why climate is colder near the poles and warmer on the equator.

No solar system to speak of. The stars in the night sky represent the afterlife and the major constellations mark the Nine's person sub-realms.

Would a Chaotic Good masculine moon have a different monthly cycle than the real world? Would the phases stick to the predictable 28 day cycle or would the moon be more random.

Would a lawful neutral feminine sun rise and set differently than the real sun. Would the days be shorter in the winter and longer in the summer, or would the sun rise and set in perfect 12 hour intervals every day. (I still have seasons because the pull of the poles on weather increases in the winter).

I grew up and still live in the American midwest, so I cannot conceptualize weather not being Chaotic. That being said, I have no idea if weather can be masculine or feminine. I did use a cheap pun for my weather goddess briefly but it was too stupid to use. Sue Nami.

crickets

The nature deity is True Neutral because the other eight deities were too distrustful to let anyone else have that role. I've actually changed my mind making the True Neutral nature deity male and female several times. Fiction more often than not makes nature feminine. I personally see a balance between male and female importance and archetypes in nature. I figure whether he is a he or she is she, the gender roles for the True Neutral would be muted relative to the others. If anyone has an ideas to flesh out the divine aspect of nature in a fiction setting, I'm open to suggestion. This is not really connected to gender or alignment but my True Neutral god may be the most conflicted deity at least his followers are. As the god of nature and agriculture the pro-farming clerics and anti-farming Druids don't get along well even if they have the same god.

Now my true Neutral deity is the fertility god. i do have a Lawful Good male god in charge of the Earth itself named Hallisan. As the patron of Dwarfs and metal smithing, he sees the earth in very utilitarian terms. Is that a male stereotype. Ungendered spin off question. I am mildly concerned about using the physical earth as a dominion because compared to every other deity's profile. The physical earth doesn't move or change much and would theoretically need little if any maintenance compared to the sea, weather, a barrier under attack, the sun, the moon, decay, magic. What can my earth god do? Should minerals replenish? That could explain the common RPG/fiction trope that Dwarf mines stay in operation for many generations. Another idea I toyed with is having one or more gods periodically inject food/nutrients (or at least underground light for photosynthesis) into the Underdark. I guess that would sort of make Hallisan an unorthodox fertility god.

I figure my evil gods are generally worshiped not out of love but in the sense of "SPARE US SO WE CAN SERVE YOU!" Originally the Nine split all mortals equally and had the same amount of worshiper. Then Nami, the Chaotic Neutral one gave them all free will so they could choose who they worship and how much. The three evil deities lost the most worshipers.

Greymoria, the Neutral Evil goddess of magic didn't take this well. Her reputation for a torturer of souls is well known so she is most feared and hated. She punishes mortals who do not love her enough. A lot of curses and whatnot but a big thing she does is create new races who can love her (and then usually turn away from her). She created about half of the entries in the Monstrous manuals. All the intelligent monsters that are generally belligerent to the civilized world.

Maylar, the Chaotic Evil god of disease and decay doesn't complain about not getting worshipers. He is okay with "Please don't disease us!" worship in place of adoration. He does view a quality versus quantity thing. He'd rather have 100 bad ass worshipers than 10,000 weakling worshipers.

Phidas, my Lawful Evil god of commerce and protection wants to present a respectable face. He was the first to betray the Nine's progenitor and had his face ripped off, so he permanently wears a mask now. His priests all wear masks as part of their formal vestments. They are encouraged to put on a respectable face and are essentially trying to trick or buy worshipers for Phidas by manipulating the world's civilizations.

I am mildly concerned that Greymoria is a sexist stereotype, but I don't see the male Evil gods being any less stereotypical or more honorable. Is this reasonable or did I create a minefield? I should know my Neutral Good sea goddess Mera is kind attentive, motherly, and full of empathy. In terms of gender politics, basically Greymoria and Mera represent the worst and best aspects of the feminine archetype. At least that was my original thought but if I'm spouting potentially offensive stereotypes I'd like someone to tell me.

Hallisan (LG) and Maylar (CE) represent direct active masculinity. The macho gods. Zarthus (CG) and Phidas (LE) represent a more cerebral masculinity. Ingenuity and self reliance on the good side, deception and schemes on the bad side.

I am mildly concerned that Korus (TN), Nami (CN), and Khemra (LN) are kind of androgynous even though they have "assigned" genders.

Back on the original concept, does the gender of the deity impact the nature of magic, disease, or a flimsy constantly rebuilt barrier against the negative energy plane?

oxybe
2018-04-20, 06:29 AM
Instead of starting at the deity level, I'd start at the follower level.

In short, what do the people value?

Instead of building a pantheon and then going "how does this fit the world?", build the world and go "what kind of pantheon would they ascribe to?".

If you want to have the gender dynamics be a focus on the deific relationships, consider who does what tasks in the various communities.

If you have a community where the warrior caste is largely male, there is a good chance that the major war god would mimic that: they would likely be male. However, if war is not the main facet of the god then it might fall under another: if war is seen as akin to passing judgement, which requires wisdom (and our theoretical community/culture normally views wisdom, the act of teaching and passing down knowledge and traditions, as something women do) then our war god may end up being a goddess of knowledge and judgement (and by proxy, war).

As for their personalities, if the people live in a dry area and largely get their water from one river, the drying or flooding of the river could be a facet of deity's temperment and how fickle it is. Or the diety is benevolent and when it dries up, it's the act of a second god who is holding the river god hostage and requires appeasement before they will let the river flow again.

Think of the people in your world and their lifestyle. Think about who does what tasks in a community and why. Create a pantheon that exemplifies this way of life and you'll likely end up creating deities they (the followers) can relate to, that are moulded in the image of their people (and by that same token, the people are moulded by the teachings of their god).

After that you already have your major players in your cosmic drama and a vague idea on how they interact. Setup your he-said-she-said and you should be good.

Or you could just create a party of superbeings and simply have them come down lay down the rule of the land, which may rub against the beliefs of their newly found followers, causing a bit of a schism between following the new ways and enjoying the protection of these entities or reverting to the old tradition and being potentially dropped. That's a whole other kettle of fish though.

just my 2cp.

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-20, 09:48 AM
hmm...ENWorld and RPG Codex might potentially be possibilities


In my time posting there, I found ENWorld to be aggressively myopic about throwing the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to subjects that might offend someone who died 2000 years ago.

Thrudd
2018-04-20, 11:06 AM
You might consider, rather than trying to assign gender to each deity/alignment, include both genders in each alignment- either a mated pair or siblings or parent child (or all of those at once). That way you can cover those elements which seem "masculine" and those that seem "feminine" to your culture or sensibilities within each divine portfolio without compromise.

You may also want to consider a place for androgyny in this system (others have mentioned this as well). Some or all deities could perhaps be worshipped as either gender or both at once (if they are spiritual beings that do not actually have or need genders).

Honest Tiefling
2018-04-20, 11:12 AM
1) If you don't know non-heteronormative people in real life, try to find media that represents them well and go from there. Its really not perfect, but since the gods are removed from mortals so much it should be fine. Through in most cases, it's just a normal relationship with a lesser chance of pregnancy. Besides, when the gods boink, they make mountains or concepts. I don't think you need a lot of details about their relationship as half of what mortals know might be wrong anyway.

That and asexuality is probably pretty easy to portray in this case. I'd find it hilarious if the True Neutral god just didn't like the other gods in that fashion.

2) There is nothing wrong with a FEW stereotypes of a particular nature, such as the occasional nurturing female character because that is a thing women do. The problem occurs if it enforces behavioral codes players might be uncomfortable with or if there aren't enough people breaking the mold.

Through Greymoria is basically the goddess of Hissy Fits. If you are going to have female (or male) stereotypes you should give them depth. Having a goddess of 'dem wimmins be crazy' is just really flat.

Nifft
2018-04-20, 11:41 AM
Having a goddess of 'dem wimmins be crazy' is just really flat.

Flat Goddess is huge in Japan.

Libertad
2018-04-20, 02:20 PM
1. I guess it's too much to ask for a happy medium between hyper vigilant PCness and unrestrained bigotry.

2. I am not opposed to romantic entanglements that are not hetero normative. I just don't have much of a frame of reference for it. Sure it can happen with the Nine. Particularly since the Nine can appear as the opposite sex (or an animal, or dragon, or repeating ten minute operetta). I'm not opposed to non-traditional pairings.

3. Going back to the natural forces gender thing. I'm not opposed to altering the laws of physics. The world is a cylinder and if you walked to the pole off the edge you would walk into the negative energy plane. The negative energy plane being in the poles is why climate is colder near the poles and warmer on the equator.

4. Would a Chaotic Good masculine moon have a different monthly cycle than the real world? Would the phases stick to the predictable 28 day cycle or would the moon be more random.

5. I grew up and still live in the American midwest, so I cannot conceptualize weather not being Chaotic. That being said, I have no idea if weather can be masculine or feminine. I did use a cheap pun for my weather goddess briefly but it was too stupid to use. Sue Nami.

crickets

6. The nature deity is True Neutral because the other eight deities were too distrustful to let anyone else have that role. I've actually changed my mind making the True Neutral nature deity male and female several times. Fiction more often than not makes nature feminine. I personally see a balance between male and female importance and archetypes in nature. I figure whether he is a he or she is she, the gender roles for the True Neutral would be muted relative to the others. If anyone has an ideas to flesh out the divine aspect of nature in a fiction setting, I'm open to suggestion. This is not really connected to gender or alignment but my True Neutral god may be the most conflicted deity at least his followers are. As the god of nature and agriculture the pro-farming clerics and anti-farming Druids don't get along well even if they have the same god.

7. Now my true Neutral deity is the fertility god. i do have a Lawful Good male god in charge of the Earth itself named Hallisan. As the patron of Dwarfs and metal smithing, he sees the earth in very utilitarian terms. Is that a male stereotype. Ungendered spin off question. I am mildly concerned about using the physical earth as a dominion because compared to every other deity's profile. The physical earth doesn't move or change much and would theoretically need little if any maintenance compared to the sea, weather, a barrier under attack, the sun, the moon, decay, magic. What can my earth god do? Should minerals replenish? That could explain the common RPG/fiction trope that Dwarf mines stay in operation for many generations. Another idea I toyed with is having one or more gods periodically inject food/nutrients (or at least underground light for photosynthesis) into the Underdark. I guess that would sort of make Hallisan an unorthodox fertility god.

8. Greymoria, the Neutral Evil goddess of magic didn't take this well. Her reputation for a torturer of souls is well known so she is most feared and hated. She punishes mortals who do not love her enough. A lot of curses and whatnot but a big thing she does is create new races who can love her (and then usually turn away from her). She created about half of the entries in the Monstrous manuals. All the intelligent monsters that are generally belligerent to the civilized world.

9. I am mildly concerned that Greymoria is a sexist stereotype, but I don't see the male Evil gods being any less stereotypical or more honorable. Is this reasonable or did I create a minefield? I should know my Neutral Good sea goddess Mera is kind attentive, motherly, and full of empathy. In terms of gender politics, basically Greymoria and Mera represent the worst and best aspects of the feminine archetype. At least that was my original thought but if I'm spouting potentially offensive stereotypes I'd like someone to tell me.

10. I am mildly concerned that Korus (TN), Nami (CN), and Khemra (LN) are kind of androgynous even though they have "assigned" genders.

11. Back on the original concept, does the gender of the deity impact the nature of magic, disease, or a flimsy constantly rebuilt barrier against the negative energy plane?

1. There is, you just have to look for it and keep in mind that the extreme examples get played up on the news and YouTube channels because people love seeing bloodsports. As mentioned before, RPGnet is a good place provided you stay out of Tangency. Communities for Jim Sterling and ContraPoints are good social justice-focused communities that don't descend into levels of #killallwhitemen lunacy.

2. Check out Lambda Library for non-heteronormative literature. Subreddits are a good place to ask around, such as /r/actuallesbians and /r/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns/ the latter especially if you want a funny and approachable means of learning via memes.

You know what? Here's a freebie link to ContraPoints' channel. It's an approachable and often humorous way of checking out gender issues and has great production quality. (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNvsIonJdJ5E4EXMa65VYpA)

3. If this is in reference to my last post, t's not about the laws of physics so much as presumptions that subjective cultural beliefs are objective facts. Even the field of biology is constantly changing as people make new discoveries which bring into question the old. This is common for science in general.

4. Don't see why it'd be different. Also dramatically altering hours in the day and days in the year really throws off players' concept of time, so I suggest against this.

5. In our real world, certain phenomena such as the sea and storms viewed as feminine due to its "tempestuous" nature based on the stereotype of women being inherently more emotional than me. As the people most familiar with the sea were sailors whose subculture tends towards the "macho" side of things, this is the origin of a feminine storm.

6. Nature has given us species of fungi which have over 17,000 genders. It's given us frogs who can physically alter their reproductive organs when there's a ratio of unbalanced sexes. Nature is masculine, feminine, non-binary, and more complicated than we can ever realize.

7. But earth does change. It just operates on a scale too vast for mere mortals to understand. The earth moves and shapes continents, it forms mountains from its bones, it is in a never-ending war with the sea who slowly turns its flesh into salt. Its earthquakes tear apart structures no army can hope to bring down, and every day its soil feeds mortals.

8. Crazed woman desiring to be loved. This is definitely a stereotype.

9. The American Midwest, as well as most cultures on Earth, see men as the default. Men are far less likely to be defined majorly by gendered traits. Think of how many games with male players doing female PCs try to "play up" feminine stereotypes in order to be different. They have their characters wear pink, or are really into fashion, or hate violence, and so on and so forth. These traits are not inherently bad, but it's a problem when it becomes a pattern when you make women characters have these be their defining traits.

10. Androgynous just means a person has traits associated with masculinity and feminity, usually physical. Why is this concerning to you? Many men IRL are not muscular and in shape, there are many women who work in the fields through history and as such gained more muscles than curves.

11. Already sort of answered before with the nature and weather stuff, but why would it?

Selene Sparks
2018-04-20, 04:01 PM
I made the CG, CE, LE, LG, TN deities male. I made the NE, NG, LN, and CN deities female. Some commented that this was stereotyping.

I was not deliberately setting out to make the extremists male and the reserved moderate ones female. I liked the idea of every deity being one step removed alignment wise from the opposite sex and two steps removed from the same sex and I just happened to have a clear male view of my Chaotic Evil god, so the rest fell into place from there.So this raises most important question of why. Why should every god's alignment be one off from its opposite-sex neighbors?

While most of the male gods have no neutrality you could call theme extreme for that reason, but a Neutral Good goddess is unrestrained Good and a Neutral Evil goddess is unrestrained evil. Likewise Nami and Khemra pursue Chaos and Law in pure forms. You could argue this is MORE extreme than the Chaotic Good god that splits his focus two ways.And then have "dem crazy wimmins" and the sane, rational men who don't get caught up in their hysterics. This manages to be actually worse.

My strongest possible recommendation is that you design the gods first, and then gender them later. Or simply not gender them at all. Instead of them having gender at all, gender could be something each person brings to the table, in a Galactus-like (https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c5/1b/0b/c51b0b037ca7e8de039a8f7c79233986.jpg) fashion, and so the gender of each deity is something that varies depending on who you are, where you grew up, and so on.

Since a case can be made that half Neutral is just as extreme as no Neutral alignments I was certainly not trying to put forth a hypothesis that men and woman are more extreme than the others.

I think since males and female are equally split between Chaos and Law, Good and Evil that I am reasonably well insulated from being accused of showing favoritism.I don't think anyone thinks you're trying to. But, to put it another way, I don't think the D&D writers were trying to say anything in particular when they wrote the designated evil elves to be dark-skinned and have women in charge, but it still sent a pretty loud message. Now, don't get me wrong, what you're doing here isn't on the level of drow at all, but the principle isn't too dissimilar. You're setting up a system where they're directly juxtaposed, so the kind of conclusion is pretty hard to not make.

I am not opposed to romantic entanglements that are not hetero normative. I just don't have much of a frame of reference for it. Sure it can happen with the Nine. Particularly since the Nine can appear as the opposite sex (or an animal, or dragon, or repeating ten minute operetta). I'm not opposed to non-traditional pairings. This is actually a good example of the kind of thing I was talking about. In this framing, heterosexual relationships are the norm, and other things aren't. Or, basically, outside of not having some of the baggage of differing social expectations between parties, relationships are just relationships. While getting to know more LGBT people, which, if I'm understanding your post correctly, what you're lacking for framework, is a good thing(Seriously, we don't bite(unless you're into that)), it shouldn't be necessary for the broad-scale idea of non-straight relationships.

Would a Chaotic Good masculine moon have a different monthly cycle than the real world? Would the phases stick to the predictable 28 day cycle or would the moon be more random.

Would a lawful neutral feminine sun rise and set differently than the real sun. Would the days be shorter in the winter and longer in the summer, or would the sun rise and set in perfect 12 hour intervals every day. (I still have seasons because the pull of the poles on weather increases in the winter).

I grew up and still live in the American midwest, so I cannot conceptualize weather not being Chaotic. That being said, I have no idea if weather can be masculine or feminine. I did use a cheap pun for my weather goddess briefly but it was too stupid to use. Sue Nami.Again, I really think you should work backwards here. That is, do you want the celestial bodies to behave differently? If so, then they should, and you can justify it by the gods or whatever. Actually, they probably shouldn't because the players aren't going to remember it, and so its never going to come up in a way that people won't find at least a little irksome, probably, so I'd not do it, but the principle stands.

To the broader point, weather, the sun, the moon, and so on absolutely cannot be masculine or feminine because those are human cultural traits. The weather, the sun, and the moon are not intelligent beings with identity or culture, and so anything masculine or feminine you see in it is something you're bringing to the table. More on this in a moment.

The nature deity is True Neutral because the other eight deities were too distrustful to let anyone else have that role. I've actually changed my mind making the True Neutral nature deity male and female several times. Fiction more often than not makes nature feminine. I personally see a balance between male and female importance and archetypes in nature. I figure whether he is a he or she is she, the gender roles for the True Neutral would be muted relative to the others. If anyone has an ideas to flesh out the divine aspect of nature in a fiction setting, I'm open to suggestion. This is not really connected to gender or alignment but my True Neutral god may be the most conflicted deity at least his followers are. As the god of nature and agriculture the pro-farming clerics and anti-farming Druids don't get along well even if they have the same god.As Libertad said, nature doesn't work like that. In animals, the sexes are a weird thing.

Beyond that, though, even among humans there's more than two genders. Why would especially a nature deity be so limited? If the issue is trust, why not have it be more than one god? Twins or triplets sharing a role? Or even a massive colony of lesser souls all jammed together with a bit of divine power, so that they're neutral on account of having thousands or millions of each alignment within, and having it all balance out. There'

Now my true Neutral deity is the fertility god. i do have a Lawful Good male god in charge of the Earth itself named Hallisan. As the patron of Dwarfs and metal smithing, he sees the earth in very utilitarian terms. Is that a male stereotype. This raises the question of why, again. The idea that men see things in utilitarian, logical terms is that women are too emotional to really be useful for the whole "thinking" thing. This is notable in the framing you've given us. That is, we have, among the women goddesses, a wild party girl, a nurturing hearth-tending goddess, a jealous, crazy, clinging woman, and someone who's job is to keep the men from butting heads too much. That is, beyond the LN one(who still is, just not to the same extreme), these are themes that aren't about women, but are ideas that we see in the world today to undermine and delegitimize women. Which, again, isn't something I think you're trying to do at all, it's something people in our culture pick up because it's a constantly-repeated implicit message in so much media, but it's something you should be aware of and try to avoid whenever possible.

Greymoria, the Neutral Evil goddess of magic didn't take this well. Her reputation for a torturer of souls is well known so she is most feared and hated. She punishes mortals who do not love her enough. A lot of curses and whatnot but a big thing she does is create new races who can love her (and then usually turn away from her). She created about half of the entries in the Monstrous manuals. All the intelligent monsters that are generally belligerent to the civilized world.Yeah, this here is a real problem. While different people have different tolerances, honestly most of what you've mentioned would have gotten at most a raised eyebrow or something if I were gaming in this, because, while my concerns stand, they're far from the worst I've seen. But this, this one is a big problem.

Like the drow, the way you've set this up raises unavoidable comparison between the gods and goddesses. In this, you're bringing magic and poison, assigning them to a woman, and then having the woman be a clinging, jealous psycho, which seems to be pretty heavily tied to the idea that she's a woman. These are, as I've mentioned before, things that you're bringing into this, with your own biases and cultural background, and is frankly the kind of thing that would make me pretty uncomfortable at a table.

For a better view, let's compare the NE goddess to the two evil gods:

Maylar, the Chaotic Evil god of disease and decay doesn't complain about not getting worshipers. He is okay with "Please don't disease us!" worship in place of adoration. He does view a quality versus quantity thing. He'd rather have 100 bad ass worshipers than 10,000 weakling worshipers.

Phidas, my Lawful Evil god of commerce and protection wants to present a respectable face. He was the first to betray the Nine's progenitor and had his face ripped off, so he permanently wears a mask now. His priests all wear masks as part of their formal vestments. They are encouraged to put on a respectable face and are essentially trying to trick or buy worshipers for Phidas by manipulating the world's civilizations.So, here we have two men dealing with the same problem as the woman. In this, the chaotic one is fine and manages anyways, rather than be possessive and crazy and whatnot, and the other goes and gets people invested in him anyways without pitching a fit. In other words, instead of being a hysterical womanfolk who can't manage not being loved, they go and solve the problem in a way that they feel like, because they're manly men and not one of those overly-emotional, touchy-feely women.

I am mildly concerned that Greymoria is a sexist stereotype, but I don't see the male Evil gods being any less stereotypical or more honorable. Is this reasonable or did I create a minefield? I should know my Neutral Good sea goddess Mera is kind attentive, motherly, and full of empathy. In terms of gender politics, basically Greymoria and Mera represent the worst and best aspects of the feminine archetype. At least that was my original thought but if I'm spouting potentially offensive stereotypes I'd like someone to tell me.You did, in fact, create a minefield, but it goes quite a bit deeper than you seem to think it might. It's not just that the crazy jealous stereotype, it's that, even in the one that seems on its face the least affected by it, you're having each of the goddesses defined by their gender. The wild party girl, the "motherly" woman who's in the kitchen, the crazy jealous one, and the mediator between the take-charge, get-stuff-done men. On the other hand, you have the men, who can seemingly be whatever, because, in US culture, male is the default, and so it seems that you feel the need to justify the women as such, and so they're defined by that while a man can go be a sleazy merchant, a hunter, a strategist, a knight, or so on.

Now, don't get me wrong, each individual goddess, except for the evil one, wouldn't be a problem by themselves, it's that it's all of them are how they are.

Hallisan (LG) and Maylar (CE) represent direct active masculinity. The macho gods. Zarthus (CG) and Phidas (LE) represent a more cerebral masculinity. Ingenuity and self reliance on the good side, deception and schemes on the bad side.And why are ingenuity and self-reliance masculine traits?

Sanctaphrax
2018-04-20, 05:08 PM
Maybe, or they intentionally foster this subculture.

If my one, very brief, excursion into posting there is any indication, they do.


Back on the original concept, does the gender of the deity impact the nature of magic, disease, or a flimsy constantly rebuilt barrier against the negative energy plane?

No.

Scalenex
2018-04-20, 07:45 PM
Thank you for the intelligent and respectful replies everyone.


Instead of starting at the deity level, I'd start at the follower level.

In short, what do the people value?

Instead of building a pantheon and then going "how does this fit the world?", build the world and go "what kind of pantheon would they ascribe to?".

Reasonable but I have whole-heartedly committed myself to building my nations and cultures based on the gods rather than building my gods based on the nations and cultures.


If you want to have the gender dynamics be a focus on the deific relationships, consider who does what tasks in the various communities.

If you have a community where the warrior caste is largely male, there is a good chance that the major war god would mimic that: they would likely be male. However, if war is not the main facet of the god then it might fall under another: if war is seen as akin to passing judgement, which requires wisdom (and our theoretical community/culture normally views wisdom, the act of teaching and passing down knowledge and traditions, as something women do) then our war god may end up being a goddess of knowledge and judgement (and by proxy, war).

Well reasoned


As for their personalities, if the people live in a dry area and largely get their water from one river, the drying or flooding of the river could be a facet of deity's temperment and how fickle it is. Or the diety is benevolent and when it dries up, it's the act of a second god who is holding the river god hostage and requires appeasement before they will let the river flow again.

It gets down to nuts and bolts but I figured the Nine were so mighty that they have trouble directly interacting with the mortal world without causing horrific collateral damage. The Nine act through their lesser servants. But I was thinking of creating a story based on this very scenario. An evil spirit servant captures and binds a Mera spirit of desert water to extort desert folk until adventurers step in and free the Mera spirit.


You might consider, rather than trying to assign gender to each deity/alignment, include both genders in each alignment- either a mated pair or siblings or parent child (or all of those at once). That way you can cover those elements which seem "masculine" and those that seem "feminine" to your culture or sensibilities within each divine portfolio without compromise.

You may also want to consider a place for androgyny in this system (others have mentioned this as well). Some or all deities could perhaps be worshipped as either gender or both at once (if they are spiritual beings that do not actually have or need genders).

This is probably the best way to sidestep gender stereotype issues. I am slowly working on regional different outlooks of the Nine. I could easily give each nation different gender views of the same gods. But I am making the gods in detail first, one could view the genders assigned as temporary place holders.


You might consider, rather than trying to assign gender to each deity/alignment, include both genders in each alignment- either a mated pair or siblings or parent child (or all of those at once). That way you can cover those elements which seem "masculine" and those that seem "feminine" to your culture or sensibilities within each divine portfolio without compromise.

You may also want to consider a place for androgyny in this system (others have mentioned this as well). Some or all deities could perhaps be worshipped as either gender or both at once (if they are spiritual beings that do not actually have or need genders).


1) If you don't know non-heteronormative people in real life, try to find media that represents them well and go from there. Its really not perfect, but since the gods are removed from mortals so much it should be fine. Through in most cases, it's just a normal relationship with a lesser chance of pregnancy. Besides, when the gods boink, they make mountains or concepts. I don't think you need a lot of details about their relationship as half of what mortals know might be wrong anyway.

Reasonable


That and asexuality is probably pretty easy to portray in this case. I'd find it hilarious if the True Neutral god just didn't like the other gods in that fashion.

That’s kind of what I was going for. Maybe not a true asexual, but I figure my True Neutral deity would have less libido (or whatever the divine equivalent of libido is) than the other eight. Maybe I’m blurring the lines being asexual and celibate, but I don’t want get deep into semantics on this.


2) There is nothing wrong with a FEW stereotypes of a particular nature, such as the occasional nurturing female character because that is a thing women do. The problem occurs if it enforces behavioral codes players might be uncomfortable with or if there aren't enough people breaking the mold.

Through Greymoria is basically the goddess of Hissy Fits. If you are going to have female (or male) stereotypes you should give them depth. Having a goddess of 'dem wimmins be crazy' is just really flat.

I think you are on to something. A setting with NO stereotypes can be almost as offensive as a setting built on stereotypes. I am trying to create depth. Greymoria throws a lot of hissy fits but on some level she is justified. When the Nine rebelled against their horrific progenitor, Turoch, Greymoria inflicted far more damage than any of her sibilings did. Maybe they could have won if one of the Nine sat the battle out, but Greymoria’s contribution of poisoning Turoch was truly irreplaceable.

What did they do during the battle? Everyone fought but each of the Nine had one especially note worthy contribution.

LG Hallisan led the frontal assault. He also led an army of mortals into battle (who mostly died). The few survivors gained great power and became the first dragons.

LE Phidas was the one Turoch trusted most, he set up the ambush. When Turoch died he said he’d come back and kill Phidas first. That’s why Phidas takes the lead maintaining the barrier against the negative energy plane.

LN drafted the Compact that let the Nine put aside their differences and work together (however briefly)

CG Zarthus defended his siblings against Turoch’s loyalist servants. No one knows how many loyalists there were, what their names were, or what their genders were because the Nine wanted to remove Turoch’s loyalists from memory. There is a rumor if the name of one or more of Turoch’s loyalists is spoken outloud a hundred times by a hundred people they will return and then bring Turoch back.

CN Nami forced her siblings to deviate from their battle plans last minute. This was important because Turoch had spies reporting on the rebellion and Nami’s last minute changes made the spies look wrong.

CE Maylar played possum early. Then sucker punched Turoch when he wasn’t expecting it actually getting the death blow on Turoch.

NG Mera shielded most of the world’s souls so there would still be a world left to rebuild after the battle was over.

TN Korus foresaw that Turoch was planning to someday eat the Nine and convinced the others of this. If the Nine didn’t believe they were facing mutual destruction, they never would have cooperated in the first place.

NE Greymoria prepared the poison fed to Turoch. She tortured the souls that were making up one of his dinners so that they provided no sustenance and weakened him. The tortured souls that were not consumed became the forerunners of the first undead. While this was important this is VERY scary to mortals. That’s why she is the most hated goddess. Because her contribution to the rebellion was truly necessary she views this as unfair (which it is really is).



So this raises most important question of why. Why should every god's alignment be one off from its opposite-sex neighbors?
And then have "dem crazy wimmins" and the sane, rational men who don't get caught up in their hysterics. This manages to be actually worse.

Okay my point is I can construct a rationale to say that NG, NE, LN, and CN are the crazy ones and LG, LE, CG, and CE are the balanced ones. But since there is no moderation in the LE, LG, CE, and CG gods, I could easily say that THEY are the crazy ones. If I flipped it and made the part neutrals male and the no-neutrals female, there THE EXACT SAME POTENTIAL to say my pantheon shows “dem crazy wimmins.”

I could get around this by randomizing which alignments have which genders but then I create a bigger problem. If I did this then I would be essentially to skew Good towards women and Evil towards men (or visa versa) and/or skew Law towards women and Chaos toward men (or visa versa). That’s an even bigger can of worms!
No one wants their gender to be the Evil gender. Law and Chaos is a bit dicey. But if women were the Chaotic that’s almost literally “dim crazy wimmens” and if women were the Lawful ones they’d be “dim bossy wimmens”. If men were the Lawful ones they would be the oppressive patriarchy. If men were the Chaotic ones they would be the free ones while women were the restrained ones, making it again oppressive patriarchy. Yikes!

If I made all the gods male or all female I would certainly send a statement.


My strongest possible recommendation is that you design the gods first, and then gender them later.

That is what I did. I created the basic framework. Assigned each alignment god a nature and civilization portfolio. Then I work ed out their goals. Then I assigned them genders. Then I assigned them names. Then I worked out their priesthood practices.


Or simply not gender them at all. Instead of them having gender at all, gender could be something each person brings to the table, in a Galactus-like (https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c5/1b/0b/c51b0b037ca7e8de039a8f7c79233986.jpg) fashion, and so the gender of each deity is something that varies depending on who you are, where you grew up, and so on.

Every other game I ran or played did this. But in this case I wanted to go top down. Create the gods, create the greater cosmology, then draw the land masses (I can’t make up my mind whether I want several continents, a single Pangea, or bunch of islands and peninsulas sort of like the Mediterranean), then work my way down to mortals. Since the gods came first, the mortals should stem from them, not the other way around.


I don't think anyone thinks you're trying to. But, to put it another way, I don't think the D&D writers were trying to say anything in particular when they wrote the designated evil elves to be dark-skinned and have women in charge, but it still sent a pretty loud message. Now, don't get me wrong, what you're doing here isn't on the level of drow at all, but the principle isn't too dissimilar. You're setting up a system where they're directly juxtaposed, so the kind of conclusion is pretty hard to not make.

That makes me feel better. Nothing I can come up with can be more socially loaded with controversy than Drow! In fact I took out Drow in my world because I don't like how un-PC and just over the top they are. I have three Elf nations (pondering adding a fourth tiny one but that's neither here nor there), and all the Elves have the same racial abilities and look the same. If you dress the different elves alike, a human cannot tell the difference. The Grey Elves are called that because their impressive large cities are built from grey stones. The Wood Elves are called that because they prefer forested lands, and the Dark Elves are called that because they practice slavery of non-elven races. All three are egalitarian (with regards to genders, if not races).


This is actually a good example of the kind of thing I was talking about. In this framing, heterosexual relationships are the norm, and other things aren't. Or, basically, out side of not having some of the baggage of differing social expectations between parties, relationships are just relationships. While getting to know more LGBT people, which, if I'm understanding your post correctly, what you're lacking for framework, is a good thing (Seriously, we don't bite(unless you're into that)), it shouldn't be necessary for the broad-scale idea of non-straight relationships.

I agree I should get to know more LGBT people. I am proud my state was one of the first to allow gay marriage, and I like to think I'm straight, not narrow. When I get the opportunity to vote on a referendum backing gay rights, I have done so. Now that I established my “straight not narrow” credentials, I am going to ruin that by saying something potentially controversial…

Nowadays we have great advances in food production and health care and environmental concerns and other factors have created a general pressure pushing that maybe less humans is a good idea. In an agrarian society with medieval-ish technology that not only has to deal with the hard life of farming, also has to deal with the potential of goblins eating your children among the hundreds of other nasty monsters. The nobility can probably avoid monsters eating their babies, but in order to maintain their power they have to let their sons and daughters be adventurers so they can get class levels to maintain their power. Thus they want to have an heir and a spare, no several spares.

Society, both commoners and nobility, is going to see the act of intercourse as a means of procreation first. Love, identity, even pleasure, these things would be culturally less important than reproduction. Hetero-normative “romance” is how the next generation is made, so that would become this dangerous fictional world’s “normal.”

WITHOUT NAMING SPECIFIC EXAMPLES, there were historical agrarian societies that tolerated or even celebrated non-traditional gender norms, but they were still often expected to conceive a few children for the good of the family/nation/species. So even through reproduction is important it doesn’t mean my fictional world cannot tolerate or even honor non hetero-normative pairings, it just will be less common. I always like to say “normal” does not always mean “better.”


Again, I really think you should work backwards here. That is, do you want the celestial bodies to behave differently? If so, then they should, and you can justify it by the gods or whatever. Actually, they probably shouldn't because the players aren't going to remember it, and so its never going to come up in a way that people won't find at least a little irksome, probably, so I'd not do it, but the principle stands.

I haven’t thought about players not remembering or caring. Good point. I don’t need to mess up the moon, I’m already adding some supernatural power to moon. When the moon is full, Zarthus the moon god unleashes his power to expose corruption that hides behind a respectable face. Much like the moonlight in Pirates of the Caribbean revealing the monstrous nature of the undead pirates, the full moon exposes lycanthropes for what they are. I’m still brainstorming what happens to vampires, if anything. Disguise checks have a circumstance penalty on the night of the full moon and dopplegangers disguises reveal tiny imperfections. Dopplegangers have managed to piss off all of the Nine when their ancestors tried to resurrect Turoch but that’s neither here nor there.


To the broader point, weather, the sun, the moon, and so on absolutely cannot be masculine or feminine because those are human cultural traits. The weather, the sun, and the moon are not intelligent beings with identity or culture, and so anything masculine or feminine you see in it is something you're bringing to the table. More on this in a moment.
As Libertad said, nature doesn't work like that. In animals, the sexes are a weird thing.

I’m going to paraphrase one of my favorite author’s Rick Riordan. His fictionalized version of Apollo hand waved away the physical sun. “If you want to talk about the actual sun, that’s astronomy and physics. If you want to talk about the IDEA of the sun, that’s interesting.”

When you are dealing with gods and goddesses, spirit worlds and the like metaphors can often be literal. And because I want to create other planes, I could use the other planes for more exotic personified versions of natural forces.


Beyond that, though, even among humans there's more than two genders. Why would especially a nature deity be so limited? If the issue is trust, why not have it be more than one god? Twins or triplets sharing a role? Or even a massive colony of lesser souls all jammed together with a bit of divine power, so that they're neutral on account of having thousands or millions of each alignment within, and having it all balance out. There'

Worth considering. Especially if I want to go with the now scrubbed comment someone made that maybe the Nine used to all be mortals.


This raises the question of why, again. The idea that men see things in utilitarian, logical terms is that women are too emotional to really be useful for the whole "thinking" thing. This is notable in the framing you've given us That is, we have, among the women goddesses, a wild party girl,

Since most fictional cosmologies nearly always make the party god male frat boy types, I thought I was progressive making a party girl. Add in that Nami gave mortals free will and essentially saved all mortals from what was effectively slavery and thought control, Nami is a very admirable figure though she has her flaws just like all the Nine do.


a nurturing hearth-tending goddess,

Okay this is traditional. You got me! I did expand this a bit. Within fictional cosmologies, female fire goddesses tend to be gentile hearth goddesses. Males fire gods tend to “steal” fire somehow and give it to mortals. In this case I have a gentle female hearth goddess that also “stole” fire. When the Nine split up the natural world, Mera was given domain over water. As part of the sun, Khemra was given dominion over fire. Khemra the Lawful Neutral goddess of the sun is furious that Mera partially usurped her dominion over fire. On some level everyone gets their dominions usurped. Jealous of her sister’s popularity as a benevolent water goddess, Greymoria likes to direct her minions to drown people and then blame Mera for it. Maylar believes every god or goddess who helps cure a disease is directly challenging him. In a perfect world only Maylar could cure diseases, for a price.


a jealous, crazy, clinging woman,

You got me, this is a negative female stereotype. I cannot see how the Evil deity can be anything BUT a negative stereotype to whatever it’s attached to. If I flipped it I would have to make both the LE and CE deities male. Given that Phidas my Lawful Evil god depends on lies, putting forth a false positive masks, embodies materialism, and employs complex schemes to trick people into worshipping him it would be far more offensive to make Phidas a manipulative female stereotype. Thus I styled Phidas’ lying and scheming around Machiavelli’s The Prince, a masculine set of lying sleaze, to avoid looking like I’m painting females as wily deceptive she devils.

Maylar my Chaotic Evil god, opens the problems of diseases being randomly destructive. A female Maylar (Mayla) would sort of embody the outdated sexist stereotype of hurricanes being female though. Maylar actually embodies negative male stereotypes. He’s a controlling bully who believes might makes right and the strong should dominate the weak. His followers run mafia-esque “protection rackets.” That’s toxic masculinity to a “t.” Maybe two wrongs don’t make a right but I believe I showcasing the positive and negative aspects of both sexes. Mera is the gentle nurturing mother and Greymoria is the spiteful witch. Hallisan is the chivalrous defender of the weak, Maylar is the domineering bully. Khemra provides useful order to let everyone thrive but sometimes can be stifling. Nami provides liberating freedom but sometimes can be reckless. Every positive is balanced by an equal and opposite negative.


and someone who's job is to keep the men from butting heads too much. That is, beyond the LN one(who still is, just not to the same extreme),

I never thought of it as keeping the men in line. Before the Nine rebelled against their maker, they agreed to split up the world in a very detailed agreement called the Compact. Every deity except for Khemra has broken the Compact in some small way while the three Chaotic deities break the Compact in large ways. This makes Khemra furious. She wants to keep all the Nine in line and keep them from butting heads.

In cities where Khemra worship is strong, all of the Nine have temples or shrines that in the same place set up in a circle. Everyone is worshipped together like they agreed on originally. A lot of the other deities hate this and refuse to participate so you have some temples dedicated to Maylar, Greymoria, Zarthus etc that are actually run by Khemra priests which many consider sacrilegious. This is one example where Khemra tries to re-instate the original terms of the Compact. But I never thought of her keeping the “men” in line.


These are themes that aren't about women, but are ideas that we see in the world today to undermine and delegitimize women. Which, again, isn't something I think you're trying to do at all, it's something people in our culture pick up because it's a constantly-repeated implicit message in so much media, but it's something you should be aware of and try to avoid whenever possible.

Agreed, that’s why I’m running my stuff by the forum audience to point out any glaring flaws. I will say that because gender archetypes are HUGE, it will be unrealistic to remove ALL the flaws. I’m aiming for just the glaring ones.


Yeah, this here is a real problem. While different people have different tolerances, honestly most of what you've mentioned would have gotten at most a raised eyebrow or something if I were gaming in this, because, while my concerns stand, they're far from the worst I've seen. But this, this one is a big problem.

Like the drow, the way you've set this up raises unavoidable comparison between the gods and goddesses. In this, you're bringing magic and poison, assigning them to a woman, and then having the woman be a clinging, jealous psycho, which seems to be pretty heavily tied to the idea that she's a woman. These are, as I've mentioned before, things that you're bringing into this, with your own biases and cultural background, and is frankly the kind of thing that would make me pretty uncomfortable at a table.

For a better view, let's compare the NE goddess to the two evil gods:
So, here we have two men dealing with the same problem as the woman. In this, the chaotic one is fine and manages anyways, rather than be possessive and crazy and whatnot, and the other goes and gets people invested in him anyways without pitching a fit. In other words, instead of being a hysterical womanfolk who can't manage not being loved, they go and solve the problem in a way that they feel like, because they're manly men and not one of those overly-emotional, touchy-feely women.

Phidas and Maylar just as overly-emotional as their sister Greymoria. They just try to hide it. Phidas literally wears a magic mask (and it hides his fears and tears not just hiding his scars). Maylar lashes out at everything physically. Greymoria is many things but she is not dishonest. She stated what she wants and goes for it in a direct manner. Then men hide their emotions, and then lie about it constructing complex rationales to justify their asocial actions. A negative male stereotype.


You did, in fact, create a minefield, but it goes quite a bit deeper than you seem to think it might. It's not just that the crazy jealous stereotype, it's that, even in the one that seems on its face the least affected by it, you're having each of the goddesses defined by their gender. The wild party girl, the "motherly" woman who's in the kitchen, the crazy jealous one, and the mediator between the take-charge, get-stuff-done men.

I covered the party girl, hearth goddess, crazy jealous one already. I’ll revisit Khemra, LN, female. She is the most take charge get-stuff-done of all the Nine. She is hardly a mediator (if anyone is TN Korus is a mediator though he steps in only rarely).


And why are ingenuity and self-reliance masculine traits?
MINEFIELD ALERT!
There is saying that women are human beings and men are human doings. A woman has intrinsic value to society. A man has to contribute something before he is considered valuable. This is why even in the 21st women and children are rescued first. Modern media reinforces the being/doing dichotomy all the time.

I will admit that for most of human history women have had fewer career opportunities than me. That said. Most inventions were created by men. Most scientific breakthroughs were created by men. Most famous artists and musicians were men.
For the negative stereotype, most ingenuity comes from low status men, aka betas. In this case Zarthus has to be clever to get status because it doesn’t come naturally like the martial alphas Maylar (CE) and Hallisan (LG). Phidas (LE) also has a bit of ingenuity and is seeking to artificially gain status through controlling wealth, something historically associated with men. Phidas also wants to knock the others down, especially Zarthus. He was hoping he could control Zarthus’ art by monetizing it.

It’s not a crime to say something positive is a masculine traits. I would call nurturing a positive feminine traits. That doesn’t mean that a man cannot be nurturing. Likewise many women are ingenious and self reliant.

As the creator of free will, Nami (CN) is a pretty innovative female. Greymoria (NE) is pretty innovative too creating wizardry, warlock pacts, and inventing new creatures. She created dozens of new creatures, while most of the other Nine only made one or two. The more powerful and populous races usually have two or more creators, but Greymoria is the most common partner for these.

Self-reliance is dicier. Nami (CN) is pretty self-reliant. She has one of the most decentralized priesthoods so her priests and priestesses have to be pretty self-reliant. She is the creator of free will and that is pretty self-reliant. Khemra (LN) is pretty self-reliant. I see Chaotic Good as being pretty libertarian, so that’s why I made Zarthus into self-reliance more than the others. Statistically, libertarians tend to be male. Generally speaking, women are more community centered then men. Self reliance is the opposite of being community centered, so by default this makes self-reliance masculine.


On the other hand, you have the men, who can seemingly be whatever, because, in US culture, male is the default, and so it seems that you feel the need to justify the women as such, and so they're defined by that while a man can go be a sleazy merchant, a hunter, a strategist, a knight, or so on.

I disagree with the notion that men are the “default” person given that women can do everything men can do and that women outnumber men in the US.

Maybe, I am a male so many male is default to me. Most stuffed animal toys are gender neutral (not possessing genitalia or secondary sex characteristics). I noticed most boy children give male names and personalities to their ambiguous toys. I noticed most girl children give female names and personalities to their ambiguous toys.


Now, don't get me wrong, each individual goddess, except for the evil one, wouldn't be a problem by themselves, it's that it's all of them are how they are.

Evil acts are offensive by their very nature. I am not sure how to be politically correct with an Evil anything. I also am not sure how Nami, Khemra, and Mera are okay by themselves but offensive as a set.

Fun aside on the names, for months I named them LG, LN, LE, CN, CE, CG, TN, NG, and NE but I got tired of that eventually.

I see Khemra being similar to fictionalized versions of ancient Egypt and liking pyramids and what not so I based her name on Khem.

Phidas is a greedy merchant so I based his name on Midas.

Hallisan was originally based on popular fictional portrayals of Pallas Athena. I thought the “H” made Pallas sound more masculine thought that's just my opinion.

Maylar is a pretty obvious root to "mal" which is bad in Latin. I am mildly concerned that this name is too cliche.

Nami is should for Tsunami. Originally she was Phyra. I had the idea of having her be a firebug (mainly to scorn her Lawful Neutral sister) but I decided arsonist was not good for a major character trait for a goddess and my friend who was helping me beta-read my cosmology thought the name was too similar to Phidas. One of Nami's many religious factions likes arson, but they are rarely tolerated by the other Nami priests given that they are basically Chaotic Evil.

Zarthus I sort of made up. But I kind of see him as a sneaky avenger with a rapier not unlike Zoro so I wanted a “Z” name. Originally I went with Zorthus, but it didn't roll off the tongue.

Greymoria is based on a magical book being called a grimorum.

Mera is based on Meer, the German word for sea. Though I may have to change the name if I went public because Mera is the name of Aquaman’s wife though I think Mera might be in the public domain.

Korus my True Neutral, I forgot why I chose the name.

Turoch, their progenitor is based on the Terrasque. Both Turoch and the Terrasque pretty much want to eat everything they see. In fact I had the idea of maybe having a Turoch cult try to resurrect Turoch and only bring forth a tiny portion of Turoch’s essence and accidentally summon one or more Terrasques. Or maybe the Terrasque was a pet or minion Turoch unleashed after Turoch’s death. Originally I made Turoch male, but now I think it may be better to leave that unknown and have Turoch never referred to by a pronoun. The Nine don’t want to tell their worshippers what gender Turoch had if any, fearing that the more people know about Turoch the easier Turoch would be to resurrect. In any event since Turoch is not an active player, I doesn’t matter much what gender Turoch has or doesn’t have. Though maybe I’m wrong.

Unrelated side note. After Turoch died, the Nine each claimed a body part of Turoch and forged or crafted it into a weapon or tool. Phidas made a mask out of Turoch’s skin. Mera made a poison curing comb out of Turoch’s liver. Maylar made a spear out of his leg, etc. If one of the Nine made a weapon as opposed to a tool, you can bet that their favored weapon is that weapon. I figure these Trophies would also make up priestly vestments. Phidas priests and priestesses where masks while on duty. Mera priests and priestesses have a visible comb sticking out of their hair.

During the Second Age, an Elven king tried to find the remnants of Turoch’s corpse so he could claim a body part and make himself a god…it didn’t go well and ultimately led to 95% of the Elves dying so the Nine made humans as a replacement race. Just to be fair gender why, a Dragon queen made a similar screw up during the First Age that killed 95% of the dragons and led to the Nine making Elves a replacement race. Who knows when human hubris will bring down the Third Age. Muhahaha.

Honest Tiefling
2018-04-20, 08:04 PM
Okay, so Greymoria is getting some depth. Now instead of the hissy fit thrower, she is the PRIDEFUL hissy fit thrower. I don't think this is actually getting much better.

I suggest that Gerymoria also monitor magic, in that she WILL crush you if you abuse it, particularly the undead that she employs. She might be ruthless and cruel, but she gets results and doesn't let silly things like 'pride' or 'love' or 'honor' or 'the whining of mortals' get in her way. If she kills you, she killed you for a very good reason. I mean, most settings have mages that went bonkers or somehow screwed up magic. Why not have a god dedicated to stopping that with cold, unemotional logic? She'd be a contrast to more whimsical Nami or motherly Mera.

As for Nami, she is clearly intelligent. Maybe she is the wild party girl, but she is also very intelligent. Madness can lead to brilliance, so perhaps she also caters to artists and those with a particular clarity if thought that seems like madness to those who have not pierced the veil. Madness tends to get lumped in the female camp, but I like the idea of divine trances and magical madness, so sue me. She's still quite feminine, but with a mysterious and scheming side to make her more competent, capable and scary.

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-20, 08:14 PM
MINEFIELD ALERT!
There is saying that women are human beings and men are human doings. A woman has intrinsic value to society. A man has to contribute something before he is considered valuable. This is why even in the 21st women and children are rescued first. Modern media reinforces the being/doing dichotomy all the time.

I will admit that for most of human history women have had fewer career opportunities than me. That said. Most inventions were created by men. Most scientific breakthroughs were created by men. Most famous artists and musicians were men.
For the negative stereotype, most ingenuity comes from low status men, aka betas. In this case Zarthus has to be clever to get status because it doesn’t come naturally like the martial alphas Maylar (CE) and Hallisan (LG). Phidas (LE) also has a bit of ingenuity and is seeking to artificially gain status through controlling wealth, something historically associated with men. Phidas also wants to knock the others down, especially Zarthus. He was hoping he could control Zarthus’ art by monetizing it.

It’s not a crime to say something positive is a masculine traits. I would call nurturing a positive feminine traits. That doesn’t mean that a man cannot be nurturing. Likewise many women are ingenious and self reliant.

As the creator of free will, Nami (CN) is a pretty innovative female. Greymoria (NE) is pretty innovative too creating wizardry, warlock pacts, and inventing new creatures. She created dozens of new creatures, while most of the other Nine only made one or two. The more powerful and populous races usually have two or more creators, but Greymoria is the most common partner for these.

Self-reliance is dicier. Nami (CN) is pretty self-reliant. She has one of the most decentralized priesthoods so her priests and priestesses have to be pretty self-reliant. She is the creator of free will and that is pretty self-reliant. Khemra (LN) is pretty self-reliant. I see Chaotic Good as being pretty libertarian, so that’s why I made Zarthus into self-reliance more than the others. Statistically, libertarians tend to be male. Generally speaking, women are more community centered then men. Self reliance is the opposite of being community centered, so by default this makes self-reliance masculine.



I disagree with the notion that men are the “default” person given that women can do everything men can do and that women outnumber men in the US.

Maybe, I am a male so many male is default to me. Most stuffed animal toys are gender neutral (not possessing genitalia or secondary sex characteristics). I noticed most boy children give male names and personalities to their ambiguous toys. I noticed most girl children give female names and personalities to their ambiguous toys.



Why not just call them positive traits -- what's the point of labelling them "masculine" or "feminine"?


(And for reference, careful with the whole "alpha male" "beta male" thing, there's a whole toxic delusion subculture out there based on the notion of alpha and beta males.)

Libertad
2018-04-20, 08:17 PM
MINEFIELD ALERT!
There is saying that women are human beings and men are human doings. A woman has intrinsic value to society. A man has to contribute something before he is considered valuable. This is why even in the 21st women and children are rescued first. Modern media reinforces the being/doing dichotomy all the time.

I will admit that for most of human history women have had fewer career opportunities than me. That said. Most inventions were created by men. Most scientific breakthroughs were created by men. Most famous artists and musicians were men.

For the negative stereotype, most ingenuity comes from low status men, aka betas. In this case Zarthus has to be clever to get status because it doesn’t come naturally like the martial alphas Maylar (CE) and Hallisan (LG). Phidas (LE) also has a bit of ingenuity and is seeking to artificially gain status through controlling wealth, something historically associated with men. Phidas also wants to knock the others down, especially Zarthus. He was hoping he could control Zarthus’ art by monetizing it.

It’s not a crime to say something positive is a masculine traits. I would call nurturing a positive feminine traits. That doesn’t mean that a man cannot be nurturing. Likewise many women are ingenious and self reliant.

I disagree with the notion that men are the “default” person given that women can do everything men can do and that women outnumber men in the US.

Maybe, I am a male so many male is default to me. Most stuffed animal toys are gender neutral (not possessing genitalia or secondary sex characteristics). I noticed most boy children give male names and personalities to their ambiguous toys. I noticed most girl children give female names and personalities to their ambiguous toys.


So to the bold things first. The "women have more value than men cuz wombs" is far from a universal standard. There were many societies in the ancient world which put greater criminal punishment on killing adult men instead of women and children due to the perception than grown men could contribute more labor.

Additionally, I don't know if you read up on it, but the "alpha/beta male" dichotomy is a scientific falsehood (http://www.businessinsider.com/no-such-thing-alpha-male-2016-10) propagated by MGTOW and alt-right groups who have rather toxic views on women and minorities. Also the "alpha male" idea of wild animals was tested on wolves in captivity and not as they usually live in the wilds. The original scientist who proposed the theory now disavows it.

Thirdly, even if you disagree that does not change the world we live in. In the USA men still hold the majority of positions of political power. Funding for birth control is denounced as encouraging sexual promiscuity among women whereas those very same complainers willfully vote for govt funding for viagra so old men can engage in sex acts even though many of them are past their fertile days. There are conservative political organizations teaching teenagers that non-virgin women are "used goods" but do not place the same standard of purity on men who are promiscuous. Women are much more likely to be sexually harassed on the street, in the workplace, and in online environments than men. Issues which affect men are more or less taken for granted (like viagra and leadership positions) but when a women tries to set foot in those same arenas there's still huge pushback.

It's hard for many in the West to imagine, but we still live in a patriarchal society. It's not as bad as say, Afghanistan, but that doesn't mean we achieved social equality.

The numbers of people does not make them socially privileged. Whites were a minority in Apartheid South Africa but the 90% black population was forbidden from voting and exercising their rights at the time.


Edit: You more or less answered in your own post about your association with masculine traits of "self-reliance and ingenuity" was due to men being predominantly in engineering and similar occupations. This was more social than inherent, in that for most of history universities and organizations explicitly barred women from such things. Ada Lovelace was one of the first pioneers in computer technology, but you don't hear about her as much due to male technicians getting more exposure.

An interesting example in the US is the legal field. For so long law was seen as a masculine occupation. Now in recent years a little over half of university graduates with law degrees are women. Perhaps in future generations legal work may be seen as more feminine then :P

Honest Tiefling
2018-04-20, 08:22 PM
It occurs to me that a really easy fix is to make Nami a goddess of innovation and new ideas. She's freaking chaotic neutral, doing new things should be her bag. The lawful Neutral one can be law, order and RULING. So she isn't just yelling at the menfolk to stop fighting, she's in charge.

Also, can you edit the first post to have a list of these people? I'm not saying the discussion is bad, but it's hard to flip through things to figure out who is who.

I am not sure, but I think the idea of male as default stems from archetypes, not actual people. When people imagine a character or fictional being, (at least in the States) they tend to picture them as male. That's why a lot of PCs and NPCs in older RPGs are predominately male. (Or they were written for FATAL or Cthulutech).

Selene Sparks
2018-04-21, 12:42 AM
Okay my point is I can construct a rationale to say that NG, NE, LN, and CN are the crazy ones and LG, LE, CG, and CE are the balanced ones. But since there is no moderation in the LE, LG, CE, and CG gods, I could easily say that THEY are the crazy ones. If I flipped it and made the part neutrals male and the no-neutrals female, there THE EXACT SAME POTENTIAL to say my pantheon shows “dem crazy wimmins.”Exactly, that's the point I was trying to make. If you have a setup where all women are X and all men are Y, you are saying something broader, at least implicitly.

I could get around this by randomizing which alignments have which genders but then I create a bigger problem. If I did this then I would be essentially to skew Good towards women and Evil towards men (or visa versa) and/or skew Law towards women and Chaos toward men (or visa versa). That’s an even bigger can of worms!
No one wants their gender to be the Evil gender. Law and Chaos is a bit dicey. But if women were the Chaotic that’s almost literally “dim crazy wimmens” and if women were the Lawful ones they’d be “dim bossy wimmens”. If men were the Lawful ones they would be the oppressive patriarchy. If men were the Chaotic ones they would be the free ones while women were the restrained ones, making it again oppressive patriarchy. Yikes!Not necessarily. It's, again, a matter of framing, predominantly. It'd certainly be less likely to come off as bad if it was framed with the gender as a secondary thing, rather than a primary thing. In essence, there's a difference between "Here's a setup where the characters, who happen to be women, tend fall into this roll," and "All women in this set up are like this."
That makes me feel better. Nothing I can come up with can be more socially loaded with controversy than Drow! In fact I took out Drow in my world because I don't like how un-PC and just over the top they are. I have three Elf nations (pondering adding a fourth tiny one but that's neither here nor there), and all the Elves have the same racial abilities and look the same. If you dress the different elves alike, a human cannot tell the difference. The Grey Elves are called that because their impressive large cities are built from grey stones. The Wood Elves are called that because they prefer forested lands, and the Dark Elves are called that because they practice slavery of non-elven races. All three are egalitarian (with regards to genders, if not races).

Society, both commoners and nobility, is going to see the act of intercourse as a means of procreation first. Love, identity, even pleasure, these things would be culturally less important than reproduction. Hetero-normative “romance” is how the next generation is made, so that would become this dangerous fictional world’s “normal.”Would it though? Without specifics, we have seen how plenty of institutionalized non-reproductive sexual relationships were seen in history. They were often heavily romanticized and had large cultural impact.

In other words, regardless of environmental pressures, people will know that they like people, and that sex can be a pretty fun thing, and, given the records we have, in history, poetry, and more, I don't think those can really be divorced from the broader idea.

Since most fictional cosmologies nearly always make the party god male frat boy types, I thought I was progressive making a party girl. Add in that Nami gave mortals free will and essentially saved all mortals from what was effectively slavery and thought control, Nami is a very admirable figure though she has her flaws just like all the Nine do.Again, I don't think it's unworkable at all, I just think you definitely need a lot more than just "party girl." Honestly, Honest Tiefling's idea is actually a very good one. Essentially, what I'm going with is that, again, having your chaotic goddess of creativity, fire, weather, or whatever, also being into parties and cutting loose and whatnot isn't bad at all, it's when the entire character is "party girl," essentially entirely boiling down to a dismissive stereotype, is where the problems arise.

You got me, this is a negative female stereotype. I cannot see how the Evil deity can be anything BUT a negative stereotype to whatever it’s attached to. If I flipped it I would have to make both the LE and CE deities male. Given that Phidas my Lawful Evil god depends on lies, putting forth a false positive masks, embodies materialism, and employs complex schemes to trick people into worshipping him it would be far more offensive to make Phidas a manipulative female stereotype. Thus I styled Phidas’ lying and scheming around Machiavelli’s The Prince, a masculine set of lying sleaze, to avoid looking like I’m painting females as wily deceptive she devils.Again, my objection doesn't lie in that there's an evil goddess who's evil, it's that the evil goddess is framed in terms of an extremely common and destructive set of stereotypes applied to women constantly.

Or, let me put this another way: Given the very basics of what you presented in the OP, as well as the story behind poison, you could easily present her as a detached, sociopathic scientist-type that does what she wants to in the most efficient way possible, regardless of how it goes for others because they're simply not as important to her. She creates monsters and undead and the like, not out of the pathological need to be loved, but because she's curious as to what could happen, that it looks interesting, or having a monster/zombie/whatever do it was easier than however she handled stuff earlier. She went straight to poison because she simply saw it as the most efficient option. She gave wizardry out because she is a wizard. And not just that, if there are other wizards doing things, they might stumble across something interesting. This would even give people an actual reason to worship her. She's a wizard, and she sponsors wizards. And the fact that subject you to a fate worse than death if she thinks that it'd be more interesting that whatever was going on prior, well, them's the breaks, and that kind of risk may be worth it to people, or even to whole cities supporting her cult, because that's the best source of wizards around, and sometimes you really need a wizard, even with the baggage. Actually, as a general rule, that's probably a good idea anyways. Rivalries aren't interesting unless there's real interaction, so having some reason for the bad guys to have good, normal people as willing, even happy followers is a good thing.

So, there, you can have a potentially horrifyingly evil goddess of magic, poison, and monsters that has a constructive role in the world without being a sexist caricature.

Maylar my Chaotic Evil god, opens the problems of diseases being randomly destructive. A female Maylar (Mayla) would sort of embody the outdated sexist stereotype of hurricanes being female though. Maylar actually embodies negative male stereotypes. He’s a controlling bully who believes might makes right and the strong should dominate the weak. His followers run mafia-esque “protection rackets.” That’s toxic masculinity to a “t.” Maybe two wrongs don’t make a right but I believe I showcasing the positive and negative aspects of both sexes. Mera is the gentle nurturing mother and Greymoria is the spiteful witch. Hallisan is the chivalrous defender of the weak, Maylar is the domineering bully. Khemra provides useful order to let everyone thrive but sometimes can be stifling. Nami provides liberating freedom but sometimes can be reckless. Every positive is balanced by an equal and opposite negative.This is a bit of a problem. Given what you've said, you certainly don't mean it, but if you present stereotypes like that, it definitely comes across as an endorsement.

One other note on that subject, though, it's worth keeping in mind that, while you're presenting the jealous, clinging behavior as a feminine trait, 55% of women are murdered by a current or former intimate partner, 93% of those being a current partner, and during the two weeks after leaving a relationship, they're 70 times(not percent, times) more likely to be killed than at any point prior. So there's a kind of a deep problem within the line being presented, beyond just the manner in which it's being presented.

Agreed, that’s why I’m running my stuff by the forum audience to point out any glaring flaws. I will say that because gender archetypes are HUGE, it will be unrealistic to remove ALL the flaws. I’m aiming for just the glaring ones.One thing that would likely make things less problematic would be a more deliberate playing with expectations. That is, deliberately taking and twisting archetypes or stereotypes, rather than just running straight with them.

MINEFIELD ALERT!
There is saying that women are human beings and men are human doings. A woman has intrinsic value to society. A man has to contribute something before he is considered valuable. This is why even in the 21st women and children are rescued first. Modern media reinforces the being/doing dichotomy all the time.Women and children aren't rescued first for that reason, not just the fact that that's not how rescue training works in the 21st century, where medics are trained to go to the most vulnerable or in need first, but the history of it was that women and children were categorically similar, that is they were helpless and lesser.

It's funny that you use the term "value," because that's actually a decent way of putting that women, historically, were, in fact, valued like goods, because women were goods, rather than people historically. You can look at old law systems, which I obviously will not make any direct reference to, to see that the deaths of wives and daughters were treated quite often as property crimes to the men, because the men, in those systems, were actual people and women simply weren't.

I will admit that for most of human history women have had fewer career opportunities than me. That said. Most inventions were created by men. Most scientific breakthroughs were created by men. Most famous artists and musicians were men.Yes, because, in western countries, men were the ones who could get education, had money and rights, and generally were allowed to do things other than sit at home in the kitchen. Power begets power, resources beget resources. And, also, even in modern times, men themselves do a good bit of excluding (http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2014/why-does-john-get-stem-job-rather-jennifer).

It’s not a crime to say something positive is a masculine traits. I would call nurturing a positive feminine traits. That doesn’t mean that a man cannot be nurturing. Likewise many women are ingenious and self reliant.No one is saying it's a crime, I'm just curious as to why you're specifically putting forward those traits as explicitly gendered. I don't think I can comment on the rest of this part while staying inside the forum rules.

I disagree with the notion that men are the “default” person given that women can do everything men can do and that women outnumber men in the US.And yet, men have dramatically more power by pretty much any metric you want to go by. Men are dramatically more common in high elected office, are paid more, are more likely to get promoted, and so on. But it even goes deeper than that. But it goes beyond that. (https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2013/02/16/male-as-the-neutral-default/)

Maybe, I am a male so many male is default to me. Most stuffed animal toys are gender neutral (not possessing genitalia or secondary sex characteristics). I noticed most boy children give male names and personalities to their ambiguous toys. I noticed most girl children give female names and personalities to their ambiguous toys.It's really not just you, although it is something rather difficult to notice unless you look for it, or it affects you.

Seriously, next time you go to the store for anything, check out the labels. The constant framing is that something aimed at men is the default, and anything for women is an aberration. There's deodorant and women's deodorant, razors and women's razors(where, in the one time I decided to directly compare them, no joke, the only difference is that the latter was pink and costs notably more), t-shirts and women's t-shirts, and so on. Heck, in book publishing, JK Rowling goes by JK Rowling, because the publishers didn't want to have the name "Joanne" on their books because it might alienate boys. Essentially, the majority of the people in power are old men making decisions about things from their

Evil acts are offensive by their very nature. I am not sure how to be politically correct with an Evil anything. I also am not sure how Nami, Khemra, and Mera are okay by themselves but offensive as a set.Again, the problem isn't that there's an evil goddess that does evil goddess things, it's the manner in which she's evil. You're essentially unintentionally affirming and reinforcing a toxic idea used in the marginalization or delegitimization of women, and that toxic idea is both true and why the goddess is evil.

As for the set being a problem, let me put it this way: What, specifically, is the problem with the drow? Obviously, on a broad scale, they're pretty obviously racist, sexist, and an excuse for the male writers to have a bit of alone time with a box of tissues, but on the individual elements? Again, the problem isn't that they're evil and dark-skinned(although, let's be real, D&D has a problem here because they keep having it happen), or evil and led by women, it's that, in the framing, those are separable. They are dark skinned and follow women because they're evil, as opposed to the good, pale, man-following elves.

Essentially, in your setup, the women are all directly defined by their femininity. They must one of the handful of tired stereotypes, whereas the men can be much broader. Just one of them, in a more varied cast, wouldn't be a problem, because then the message wouldn't be that the women aren't defined by the fact that they're women, because you'd have other that aren't.

Anything I didn't cover, Libertad was pretty much spot on, so listen to him.

Delta
2018-04-21, 04:48 AM
MINEFIELD ALERT!
There is saying that women are human beings and men are human doings. A woman has intrinsic value to society. A man has to contribute something before he is considered valuable. This is why even in the 21st women and children are rescued first.

I don't really have the time to go into everything in detail, much as I'd like, I'd just like to point out that this is NOT factually true. This is not how emergency services work and it hasn't been for quite a while.

Scalenex
2018-04-21, 06:08 AM
It's hard for many in the West to imagine, but we still live in a patriarchal society. It's not as bad as say, Afghanistan, but that doesn't mean we achieved social equality.

Agreed but as a great man once said “Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I take solace that my generation is slightly more just than the one before it and the next generation will be slightly better still.

But my RPG world doesn’t have to arc towards justice. It’s not real. It doesn’t need to be just. It needs to produce interesting stories. Dark Sun and Ravenloft are horrific settings but they make for interesting stories. Given that Good and Evil are stalemated in my world up above, it probably won’t arc towards justice. At best it will seesaw.
Social injustice in a fictional setting is not a bad thing. One could also use a fantasy world’s injustice to highlight a real problem. I would use Dr. Sues’ The Sneetches for a simple but powerful example. Actually he wrote a lot of poignant stories for social justice. Though if you look up the war propaganda cartoons he made during WWII, he had some views which are very offensive now.


An interesting example in the US is the legal field. For so long law was seen as a masculine occupation. Now in recent years a little over half of university graduates with law degrees are women. Perhaps in future generations legal work may be seen as more feminine then :P

Future generations? Try this generation. I did make the patron of law and order female and it seemed natural. With women getting more college degrees than men in general, I suppose the stereotypical academic will become/already is feminine too. Khemra is not just the patron of law but she gifted mortals with writing and encourages the study of history.


It occurs to me that a really easy fix is to make Nami a goddess of innovation and new ideas. She's freaking chaotic neutral, doing new things should be her bag. The lawful Neutral one can be law, order and RULING. So she isn't just yelling at the menfolk to stop fighting, she's in charge.

I don’t see why you can’t have two deities that embody innovation. A lot of themes get double coverage. Khemra is the main fire goddess for controlling the sun, but Mera is the hearth goddess, Hallisan is the lord of forges, Nami likes to burn things, and Korus has some influence over all four classic elements as part of his nature portfolio.
Related note, I imagine Zarthus and Nami are at their best for creating new things when they are “together.”


Also, can you edit the first post to have a list of these people? I'm not saying the discussion is bad, but it's hard to flip through things to figure out who is who.

I put the names of the gods in the OP.


Exactly, that's the point I was trying to make. If you have a setup where all women are X and all men are Y, you are saying something broader, at least implicitly.
Reasonable point.


Would it though? Without specifics, we have seen how plenty of institutionalized non-reproductive sexual relationships were seen in history. They were often heavily romanticized and had large cultural impact.
In other words, regardless of environmental pressures, people will know that they like people, and that sex can be a pretty fun thing, and, given the records we have, in history, poetry, and more, I don't think those can really be divorced from the broader idea.
Reasonable. Also when I think about it the Nine can create all sorts of things but they can’t have children, at least not children like themselves, so the Nine’s coupling would have no reproductive basis at all and a big aspect of my setting is stuff that the Nine does impacts the mortal world.
I thought about having the gods have godly children with smaller portfolios but wanted to keep the divine narrative cast small. (As much fun as it would be to have my earth god and fire goddess conceive a son or daughter who becomes a deity of volcanoes). If I have too many immortals running around there isn’t room for mortals to have as much impact. So retract the statement about my world having a strictly reproductively focused view on romance.


Again, I don't think it's unworkable at all, I just think you definitely need a lot more than just "party girl." Honestly, Honest Tiefling's idea is actually a very good one. Essentially, what I'm going with is that, again, having your chaotic goddess of creativity, fire, weather, or whatever, also being into parties and cutting loose and whatnot isn't bad at all, it's when the entire character is "party girl," essentially entirely boiling down to a dismissive stereotype, is where the problems arise.
Again, my objection doesn't lie in that there's an evil goddess who's evil, it's that the evil goddess is framed in terms of an extremely common and destructive set of stereotypes applied to women constantly.
Understood.



Or, let me put this another way: Given the very basics of what you presented in the OP, as well as the story behind poison, you could easily present her as a detached, sociopathic scientist-type that does what she wants to in the most efficient way possible, regardless of how it goes for others because they're simply not as important to her. She creates monsters and undead and the like, not out of the pathological need to be loved, but because she's curious as to what could happen, that it looks interesting, or having a monster/zombie/whatever do it was easier than however she handled stuff earlier. She went straight to poison because she simply saw it as the most efficient option.

I kind of viewed the poisoning and undead creation as the actions of a cold calculating scientist while the creation of new living creatures are projects of passion, with a few exceptions. Beholders and Dopplegangers were created in a metaphorical laboratory. Greymoria didn’t want new worshippers, she wanted watchful sentries and skilled infiltrators respectively.


She gave wizardry out because she is a wizard.

This is my current story behind the Gift of wizardry. She is the goddess of wizardry and sorcery. Originally the world was ruled by dragons who built their civilization on their sorcerous abilities. The Dragons had sorcerous ability because Greymoria allowed them to wield such power, but most Dragons believed they wielded the magic through their innate greatness. Greymoria bestowed mortals with wizardry so non-dragons could narrow the power gap with their oppressors.


And not just that, if there are other wizards doing things, they might stumble across something interesting. This would even give people an actual reason to worship her. She's a wizard, and she sponsors wizards. And the fact that subject you to a fate worse than death if she thinks that it'd be more interesting that whatever was going on prior, well, them's the breaks, and that kind of risk may be worth it to people, or even to whole cities supporting her cult, because that's the best source of wizards around, and sometimes you really need a wizard, even with the baggage. Actually, as a general rule, that's probably a good idea anyways. Rivalries aren't interesting unless there's real interaction, so having some reason for the bad guys to have good, normal people as willing, even happy followers is a good thing.[
So, there, you can have a potentially horrifyingly evil goddess of magic, poison, and monsters that has a constructive role in the world without being a sexist caricature.

I try to come up with at least five or six different factions within each priesthood. The fastest growing faction for Greymoria’s priesthood pretty much does all the things you say, they call themselves the Keepers of the Book. They promote the advancement of wizardry and encourage wizards to use their magic to help people they come across and then credit it to Greymoria. They are well received because they are constructive.
Also while Greymoria isn’t widely worshipped by non-magic users, when people put on costumes to re-enact the Nine’s Rebellion against Turoch, the role of Greymoria is considered the highest honor to play. It’s general practice for most mortals to honor even the deities they don’t like at least once a year or if they are really stubborn, once every nine years during their least favorite god or goddess zodiac year.
Mera is a Neutral Good peacenik but she has a cult of worshippers that can approach Lawful Evil-esque levels of oppression in the name of safety and protection. I haven’t come up with a “black sheep” faction for every priesthood yet, but it is my intention to come up with a faction that turns basic assumptions about the god on its head.


No one is saying it's a crime, I'm just curious as to why you're specifically putting forward those traits as explicitly gendered. I don't think I can comment on the rest of this part while staying inside the forum rules.

You bring up a reasonable point. I guess the best way is to avoid gender archetypes altogether. This character is male and has these traits. This character is female and has these traits. I don’t have to make blanket statements that the gods represent all mortals that carry or identify with their gender.


Again, the problem isn't that there's an evil goddess that does evil goddess things, it's the manner in which she's evil. You're essentially unintentionally affirming and reinforcing a toxic idea used in the marginalization or delegitimization of women, and that toxic idea is both true and why the goddess is evil.

As for the set being a problem, let me put it this way: What, specifically, is the problem with the drow? Obviously, on a broad scale, they're pretty obviously racist, sexist, and an excuse for the male writers to have a bit of alone time with a box of tissues, but on the individual elements? Again, the problem isn't that they're evil and dark-skinned (although, let's be real, D&D has a problem here because they keep having it happen), or evil and led by women, it's that, in the framing, those are separable. They are dark skinned and follow women because they're evil, as opposed to the good, pale, man-following elves.

Well I’m doing my best to avoid tissue box monsters! Among other things I’m desexualizing succubi. They are shapeshifting spies now, not seducers. They don’t use their kiss to energy drain because their natural forms don’t have mouths, when not polymorphed they use telepathy to “talk” like most of my modified or homebrewed demons.
I certainly haven’t figure out how skin tone works in my world. That’s a potentially loaded topic for another day. I’m still figuring out which fantasy races I want and which I don’t. For instance I think Gnomes and Halflings are so similar (they shared a sourcebook in 2nd edition!) that I don’t need both. I like Gnomes, but most players would rather play Halflings. Either way Mera wanted to create a non-threatening looking race that could act as peacemakers between the Dwarfs, Elves, and Dwarfs (and theoretically every other race).
The Dark Elves weird oppressive, sexualized matriarchy is probably based on the fact that their chief deity is a female spider. Female spiders sometimes eat their mates after copulation but this has generally been exaggerated in the public imagination, much like piranha. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go2op7E73C4
Then when you add the fact that female elves are frequently fetishized in illustrations and it gets weird real fast.

Speaking of weird. I’m still figuring out what half-breeds if any I want to include because they imply disturbing backstories. http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0555.html. I am currently leaning towards only the three once dominant races being able to interbreed: Humans, Elves, and Dragons. Since these three races were created by all the Nine working together they have more mutable genes.
I had a lot of fun developing a little Half-Elf nation, so I cannot not have Half-Elves. During a long war between elves and humans, half-elves were treated poorly by both sides. A band of half-elf adventurers gathered as many half-elves as they could and they eventually established a (small) independent nation. Because they felt like the monarchies of the humans and elves oppressed them they are my world’s currently only democracy. They are also the only nation that declares Chaotic Good Zarthus as their divine patron. Zarthus has thus expanded his profile to be the patron to all half-breeds.


Anything I didn't cover, Libertad was pretty much spot on, so listen to him.
He does make many valid points.


Okay, so Greymoria is getting some depth. Now instead of the hissy fit thrower, she is the PRIDEFUL hissy fit thrower. I don't think this is actually getting much better.

I suggest that Gerymoria also monitor magic, in that she WILL crush you if you abuse it, particularly the undead that she employs. She might be ruthless and cruel, but she gets results and doesn't let silly things like 'pride' or 'love' or 'honor' or 'the whining of mortals' get in her way. If she kills you, she killed you for a very good reason. I mean, most settings have mages that went bonkers or somehow screwed up magic. Why not have a god dedicated to stopping that with cold, unemotional logic? She'd be a contrast to more whimsical Nami or motherly Mera.

I really like the idea but I am not sure how to implement it.

I have always been fascinated by the concept in fiction that magic has consequences. A loooong time ago I created a thread on that very topic. http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?99842-Magic-with-Consequences-(3-5-House-Rule)&highlight=Scalenex Though spell failure was more random, loosely based on Paradox in the White Wolf publishing game Mage: the Ascension.
So the ideas brainstormed in the old thread were making a casting check to avoid a spell miscasting. But if it’s based on something non-mechanical, what would constitute an abuse of magic to someone as ruthless as Greymoria?

Here’s some metaphysics.

Divine magic represents magic that the Nine can do very easily. Arcane magic represents magic that the Nine have to exercise considerable effort to use. Thus a mortal arcane caster theoretically has the same capacity to manipulate arcane magic as the gods. Divine magic is power Turoch gave to the Nine. Arcane magic is power he tried to keep for himself that the Nine eventually figured out how to use. Obviously Greymoria put the most effort into learning arcane magic.

Bardic magic blurs the line between arcane and divine magic. That’s because at the dawn of creation Turoch sang the world and the Nine into existence. In fact if the Nine want to create something permanent they pretty much have to sing into existence. The Seeker of the Celestial Song in the 3.5 Complete Arcane touches on this.

Clerics, when they go through training, they basically prepare their bodies and souls to accept the Nine’s divine magic channeling through them. As they level up they become better at channeling their patrons divine power. Divine bards pretty much get their magic the same way, they just cast it differently. I figure Zarthus and Nami actively try to recruit divine bards. The other priesthoods only train a divine bards if a perspective new recruit has natural musical talent. There are no Clerics of a cause.

Druids are a mixed bag. Many worship Korus and get their powers like clerics do. A much smaller number embody predators and get their powers from Maylar. An even smaller number act as guardians of the sea and get their power from Mera. An even smaller number get their power from Nami or Zarthus. The rest of the Nine sponsor a Druid less than once a generation. This only happens when a temple takes in a new recruit who REALLY likes the outdoors. Rangers are in a similar boat, but Maylar and Zarthus have proportionally more rangers than they have druids.

There is a small very old cult of Druids nicknamed Compact Druids because they choose to follow the original guidelines set before mortals had free will that try to worship all the Nine roughly equally. While it’s not uncommon for a mortal to worship all nine of the Nine, it’s rare that they try to apportion their worship equally, so this cult is small. Compact Druids get their water spells from Mera, their protection spells from Phidas, their fire spells from Khemra etc. I am still on the fence whether I want Compact Clerics or not.

Favored Souls are directly imbued with divine power by one of the Nine either at the moment of conception, in the womb, or shortly after birth. It’s rumored that children as old as ten can be imbued as favored souls, but that’s not proven. This is usually done during that deity’s Zodiac year. The Chaotic deities use favored souls a lot. The Lawful deities very rarely empower favored souls, instead relying on their clerics. The Neutrals fall between.

Maybe I might have some favored souls be the descendants of extra-planar servants of the Nine, but I’m not sure if I want these extra planar servants to “boink” mortals or not. I guess it depends if a player really wanted to play a half-fiend or half-celestial. Then I’d have to adapt the Monstrous Manuals ever so slightly to make it half-Maylar spirit or half-whatever.

I don’t see why my world needs paladins. Just be a fighter/cleric to be a warrior for your deity. Though Phidas would probably prefer rogue/clerics and Greymoria wizard/clerics.

Sorcerers are either beings with dragon blood or they are mortals that picked up magic by being born near fonts of magic energy. Greymoria does her best to direct these sorcerous imbuing to parents she think would be sympathetic to her ideals, or barring that, will direct her worshipers to kidnap the children if possible. Though she doesn’t have perfect control over who gets sorcery and who doesn’t.

Wizardry works for mortals as it does for the gods. If you follow these specific rules, you can control arcane magic in a limited fashion. Yay!

Warlocks are mortals who have arcane magic shoved into them. Then it’s wielded somewhat crudely compared to wizards and sorcerers but it’s more personal. Most warlocks are empowered by Greymoria’s extra-planar minions. “Serve my mistress and get these cool powers!” A tiny minority are empowered by lesser creatures but while Greymoria can easily empower hundreds of warlocks, a faerie lord is lucky if he has enough power and control to empower two warlock pacts. Nami, a distant second to Greymoria in wielding arcane power, empowers a few warlocks when she is bored usually with really weird pacts. Unlike Greymoria and the Fae, Nami either cannot make herediary warlock pacts that carry on to the warlock’s children or she doesn’t want to. I briefly toyed with the idea of Void Demons being able to empower warlocks, but prefer to focus on psionics.

Speaking of psionics and Void Demons. When Turoch was destroyed his essence created the negative energy plane which is trying to destroy the world. Locally called the Void. The Void creates Void demons which like Turoch try to drain the life force and soul from everything they can reach. Void Demons can use psionics, no one else can. That was the rule for centuries.
Then one day a power mad Elf king accidentally weakened the Barrier to the Void and let in an unprecedented horde of Void Demons that killed 95% of all sapient beings, split continents, created new deserts and generally worsened the world. The event was called the Second Unmaking. The Nine created new beings to repopulate the world (namely humans, orcs, a couple others) but gasp a tiny portion of all these races created after the Second Unmaking now have psionic potential! Oh no! These younger races must be tainted. The Nine are freaking out that some mortals can use a power that they cannot.


As for Nami, she is clearly intelligent. Maybe she is the wild party girl, but she is also very intelligent. Madness can lead to brilliance, so perhaps she also caters to artists and those with a particular clarity if thought that seems like madness to those who have not pierced the veil. Madness tends to get lumped in the female camp, but I like the idea of divine trances and magical madness, so sue me. She's still quite feminine, but with a mysterious and scheming side to make her more competent, capable and scary.

If I can achieve this level of depth with all of the Nine, I will be very happy.

Honest Tiefling
2018-04-21, 10:35 AM
Your ideas of magic are complicated, so apologies for trying to condense them: but what can Greymoria detect or not? She's the goddess of arcane magic that permeates everything! What do you mean she can't monitor arcane magic? Perhaps it only works near her followers/shrines so things can slip through for plot reasons, but now she has a reason to murder the entire family of someone who kills her cleric. Whatever your reason, that's no reason to allow abominations of magic into the world.

And what if she did have a hand in every single sorcerer? Maybe she can't completely shut off a bloodline, but she can nudge it into certain directions. She's the goddess of arcane magic, what do you mean two people boinking near magic can foil her?

As for paladins, here's a reason to include them: They play differently from a fighter/cleric. You could probably just fluff them as holy warriors, perhaps those with less spellcasting training so they don't really occupy a separate niche, but are still playable. Or they could be non-sneaky inquisitors or crusaders, given that most editions give them an emphasis on charisma.

Libertad
2018-04-21, 02:59 PM
1. Agreed but as a great man once said “Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I take solace that my generation is slightly more just than the one before it and the next generation will be slightly better still.

But my RPG world doesn’t have to arc towards justice. It’s not real. It doesn’t need to be just. It needs to produce interesting stories. Dark Sun and Ravenloft are horrific settings but they make for interesting stories. Given that Good and Evil are stalemated in my world up above, it probably won’t arc towards justice. At best it will seesaw.
Social injustice in a fictional setting is not a bad thing. One could also use a fantasy world’s injustice to highlight a real problem. I would use Dr. Sues’ The Sneetches for a simple but powerful example. Actually he wrote a lot of poignant stories for social justice. Though if you look up the war propaganda cartoons he made during WWII, he had some views which are very offensive now.



2. Future generations? Try this generation. I did make the patron of law and order female and it seemed natural. With women getting more college degrees than men in general, I suppose the stereotypical academic will become/already is feminine too. Khemra is not just the patron of law but she gifted mortals with writing and encourages the study of history.



3. Speaking of weird. I’m still figuring out what half-breeds if any I want to include because they imply disturbing backstories. http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0555.html. I am currently leaning towards only the three once dominant races being able to interbreed: Humans, Elves, and Dragons. Since these three races were created by all the Nine working together they have more mutable genes.



1. Doesn't mean we need to include all our real-world social ills in our games. The problem with in-universe sexism and real-world racism and homophobia is that many Game Masters take it to the extent of "if you play anyone other than a heterosexual white male you're going to be continually under attack by otherwise friendly NPCs." This discourages players from playing said characters. Another thing is that when you have to deal with something constantly in real life or on a regular enough basis that is unpleasant, there's a chance you might not want it to be an element in one's tabletop gaming sessions unless it's structured as a power fantasy. Like a Jewish player may be all game for being a WW2 soldier killing Nazis, but not want to be in an Ars Magica game where every NPC participates or nods along approvingly to pogroms in the Venetian Ghetto.

I'd also recommend against MLK quotes for discussion of issues of fantasy gaming, even moreso in the context of choosing to keep real-world prejudices in one's games. It comes off as pretentious, even if you didn't mean it that way. Not to mention just about every political group has done their best to hijack the man's agenda for their own ideologies.

2. Would you have made the same decision if such a thing did not feel normal/natural? Would you be just as comfortable making Khemra a burly sailor type or infantry-style soldier?

3. Including rape in fiction is something which requires care and foresight which IMO a lot of tabletop gamers do not have. Eberron has half-orcs, but given that no race is really inherently evil most of those unions are via marriage and non-violent interaction rather than the prototypical "rapist hordes" orcs usually are in fantasy fiction. go for something like that. But if you still want mostly-evil monstrous races, their culture may still encourage consensual relationships and punish sexual assault. Just about everyone has some set of standards on where the line is crossed, even oppressive people.

Selene Sparks
2018-04-21, 04:53 PM
Agreed but as a great man once said “Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I take solace that my generation is slightly more just than the one before it and the next generation will be slightly better still.

But my RPG world doesn’t have to arc towards justice. It’s not real. It doesn’t need to be just. It needs to produce interesting stories. Dark Sun and Ravenloft are horrific settings but they make for interesting stories. Given that Good and Evil are stalemated in my world up above, it probably won’t arc towards justice. At best it will seesaw.
Social injustice in a fictional setting is not a bad thing. One could also use a fantasy world’s injustice to highlight a real problem. I would use Dr. Sues’ The Sneetches for a simple but powerful example. Actually he wrote a lot of poignant stories for social justice. Though if you look up the war propaganda cartoons he made during WWII, he had some views which are very offensive now.This is true. But if you're bringing in injustice in the world, you should take care to not do so in a way that's distinctly unpleasant for players. For example, encountering sexism in-game will turn off a lot of women, because we deal with that crap enough IRL, and, in my experience, would rather get to the stabbing of dragons and saving the world and whatnot, rather than dealing with the stuff a we game to get away from.

Now, it can be handled well, but it's frankly rather difficult, and something you should probably talk to players about. And if it's handled poorly, it will likely make women at the table feel unwelcome at best.

I kind of viewed the poisoning and undead creation as the actions of a cold calculating scientist while the creation of new living creatures are projects of passion, with a few exceptions. Beholders and Dopplegangers were created in a metaphorical laboratory. Greymoria didn’t want new worshippers, she wanted watchful sentries and skilled infiltrators respectively.It's worth considering that projects of passion aren't exclusive with the cold scientist archetype. If nothing else "Oh, hey, this is cool" and "I wonder what'll happen if..." are reasonable motivations.

The cult setup looks pretty cool.

You bring up a reasonable point. I guess the best way is to avoid gender archetypes altogether. This character is male and has these traits. This character is female and has these traits. I don’t have to make blanket statements that the gods represent all mortals that carry or identify with their gender.That's a good rule, yes, although I'd say it's necessary to go that far. Again, the problem is when the roles are all exclusively gendered in such a fashion.

Speaking of weird. I’m still figuring out what half-breeds if any I want to include because they imply disturbing backstories. http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0555.html. I am currently leaning towards only the three once dominant races being able to interbreed: Humans, Elves, and Dragons. Since these three races were created by all the Nine working together they have more mutable genes.Evil society doesn't have to include rape. And also, nations nicely divided by the species within them has always struck me as more than a little weird. That is, why not have most half-orcs be from countries with a disproportionately high orc population, from the result of orcs and humans hooking up. In other words, I don't think they have to imply disturbing backstories, save in the disturbing way of the OotS strip. Even evil countries have laws, after all.

But, on a more serious note, the subject of rape is something you're probably going to want to avoid, for rather obvious reasons.

I really like the idea but I am not sure how to implement it.

I have always been fascinated by the concept in fiction that magic has consequences. A loooong time ago I created a thread on that very topic. http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?99842-Magic-with-Consequences-(3-5-House-Rule)&highlight=Scalenex Though spell failure was more random, loosely based on Paradox in the White Wolf publishing game Mage: the Ascension.
So the ideas brainstormed in the old thread were making a casting check to avoid a spell miscasting. But if it’s based on something non-mechanical, what would constitute an abuse of magic to someone as ruthless as Greymoria?The most obvious thought is epic magic in 3.X, which is so obviously broken that the game can't function with it, so you could say she's actively preventing anyone, even herself, from touching it because what the heck were the designers thinking? You could also make the point of Wish, that is the list of safe Wishes are the extend of Wish, as the Wish spell is powerful enough that it could have huge ripples throughout reality if it's done wrong or carelessly. Finally, you could even her respond to arbitrary loops, of which both 3.X and 5e's Wish loops are a good example.

Clerics, when they go through training, they basically prepare their bodies and souls to accept the Nine’s divine magic channeling through them. As they level up they become better at channeling their patrons divine power. Divine bards pretty much get their magic the same way, they just cast it differently. I figure Zarthus and Nami actively try to recruit divine bards. The other priesthoods only train a divine bards if a perspective new recruit has natural musical talent. There are no Clerics of a cause.My sole concern for the lack of cause clerics is that if the gods are ever expected to interact with the players. That is, it'll be really annoying for players if the character they've been running for the entire campaign suddenly loses all their class features. As such, I would recommend the idea, if you're not including cause clerics, that cleric power, once bestowed, can't be revoked. This could also go interesting places, in that the gods might want to go out of their way to placate their high-level followers, on account of them potentially being a major headache if they wind up splitting on poor terms.

I am still on the fence whether I want Compact Clerics or not.I'm always going to recommend more player options. It's not a problem for them to be so incredibly rare as to never show up unless a player is playing one, and even then that could be a remarked-upon weird thing, and that's probably better than having the player really wanting to be a pantheon cleric and it being not okayed.

I don’t see why my world needs paladins. Just be a fighter/cleric to be a warrior for your deity. Though Phidas would probably prefer rogue/clerics and Greymoria wizard/clerics.Because classes are metagame constructs. That is, paladins are almost certainly not paladins in world, they're a holy warrior. A 10th-level barbarian isn't a 10th level barbarian in-world, they're a freakishly strong badass who tends to get caught up in the heat of battle. And the paladin is ultimately a set of class features that you can use to build a character.

Let me put it this way: In 3.5, paladin is normally included in the go-to gish builds, because it has good synergy with sorcerer, and in 5e, they're the best way I've seen to actually model a supernatural martial artist-type channeling their inner strength to beat up people they don't like. Removing the class damages both ideas for no real gain that I can see.

Honest Tiefling
2018-04-21, 06:31 PM
Oh, as for the half orc thing? Go look at Half-Orc art from fourth edition. Probably a bit burlier, but there is the implication that someone might bang one of those. If the orcs have sufficient wealth through various methods, they could just get their own darn human spouses without force.

Heck, they could be sexist like the Norse, where they believe that only women can use magic and therefore should be in charge of money. The women's place is still within the home but you might get an axe to the face if you touch her without permission. (okay, it was actually a fine, but an axe is more hilarious). Yeah, maybe not the best arrangement for a lady but you could see how some might decide that team +2 strength is a lot better then other options.

Knaight
2018-04-23, 09:53 AM
If you're trying to make something that rings true one of the biggest traps to avoid falling into it that of an overly symmetrical, overly neat, and just generally obviously constructed pantheon. To some extent the accumulated lore about a pantheon is folklore more than anything else, and that's just not how folklore grows and develops.

There's a few aspects to the current setup that look like they're falling into that trap a bit. Having exactly one god per alignment (with TN blank) is already a little overtly symmetrical. Slotting in obvious and highly symmetrical gender patterns on top of that just makes it worse; the whole thing smells a little too strongly of edifice. It's too neat and too clean.


(And for reference, careful with the whole "alpha male" "beta male" thing, there's a whole toxic delusion subculture out there based on the notion of alpha and beta males.)

"Toxic delusion subculture" is my new favorite phase for describing these people.

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-23, 10:29 AM
If you're trying to make something that rings true one of the biggest traps to avoid falling into it that of an overly symmetrical, overly neat, and just generally obviously constructed pantheon. To some extent the accumulated lore about a pantheon is folklore more than anything else, and that's just not how folklore grows and develops.


Very important point -- the nice neat tidy pantheons of deities with clearly assigned roles and game-alignment slots are artifacts of RPG supplements (most notably D&D), which were in turn based on the intersection of the way D&D's handling of priests-as-character-class and in-setting-religion evolved along odd angles from a strange starting point, and the shoddy and conceited as hell Victorian-era / schoolbook "scholarship" regarding ancient beliefs and practices that the early writers of said in-game pantheons drew their inspiration from (sometimes through another layer of pulp fantasy fiction).

Trying to split the deities up into static lists and give them explicit bureaucratic spheres/domains is always going to result in something that feels contrived and artificial, IMO.

(I may have already ventured too close to the border of badwrongspeak, so I won't risk giving any examples, sorry.)




There's a few aspects to the current setup that look like they're falling into that trap a bit. Having exactly one god per alignment (with TN blank) is already a little overtly symmetrical. Slotting in obvious and highly symmetrical gender patterns on top of that just makes it worse; the whole thing smells a little too strongly of edifice. It's too neat and too clean.


Agreed. Ditch the "this deity has exactly this set of interests" and "this deity is X alignment". Give the deities overlap and grey areas on their "spheres" and "domains", especially on things like fertility and war and whatnot that are really important to humans and create a lot of uncertainty/anxiety. Get rid of their alignment and have them act based on promoting their area of interest.

Scalenex
2018-04-24, 01:19 AM
This is true. But if you're bringing in injustice in the world, you should take care to not do so in a way that's distinctly unpleasant for players. For example, encountering sexism in-game will turn off a lot of women, because we deal with that crap enough IRL, and, in my experience, would rather get to the stabbing of dragons and saving the world and whatnot, rather than dealing with the stuff a we game to get away from.

I can understand that it’s a good idea to minimize the metaphors for real world social injustice so you can get to saving the world, stabbing dragons and taking treasure. All things equal I like a balance between “deep immersion” roleplaying and “kick in the door” roleplaying. As I get older I want less door kicking, but I found without some door kicking an RPG chronicle falters. Fantasy novels as opposed to RPGs, I prefer a lot less door kicking.


Now, it can be handled well, but it's frankly rather difficult, and something you should probably talk to players about. And if it's handled poorly, it will likely make women at the table feel unwelcome at best.

Reasonable. I have known my RPG group for many years and I know where the lines are drawn. If I roleplay with strangers or casual acquaintances, I am more cautious. The enduring popularity of Game of Thrones among many demographics shows there is a lot more tolerance for covering very dark and serious issues in fantasy than I previously supposed, but when in doubt, use caution.


It's worth considering that projects of passion aren't exclusive with the cold scientist archetype. If nothing else "Oh, hey, this is cool" and "I wonder what'll happen if..." are reasonable motivations.
In the First Age I can imagine Greymoria (and the others) creating a lot of new races just because she can, but as they get more and more followers, I think in most cases when a god or goddess creates something new, one of their followers had the idea and the deity gave them a boost.
Non-Greymoria example. The cockatrice. A hardline druid believed that agriculture was devouring wilderness too fast and thought it would be poetic justice to transform chickens into deadly monsters, so she put a lot of effort into making killer chickens with a petrification attack. Korus liked the idea and blessed the first cockatrices with very large clutches of eggs so the new race could spread. Unfortunately, the pioneering druid’s name was forgotten and most just assume cockatrices are something Korus came up with.


Evil society doesn't have to include rape.

I never said it did. The Order of the Stick example I linked was consensual mating. Highly unorthodox mating, but consensual much like the Draketooths. The Middle Ages had a lot of rape but this one place where historical realism isn’t needed.


And also, nations nicely divided by the species within them has always struck me as more than a little weird. That is, why not have most half-orcs be from countries with a disproportionately high orc population, from the result of orcs and humans hooking up. In other words, I don't think they have to imply disturbing backstories, save in the disturbing way of the OotS strip. Even evil countries have laws, after all.

Again, the example I cited was consensual human-orc mating. I have a bigger issue with my modern understanding of biology than with the social issues. Essentially are humans and orcs biologically similar enough to produce viable offspring? Dwarfs and gnomes? What about sterile offspring like in the Dark Sun setting where Human-Dwarf hybrids were always sterile. I want to start with biology and THEN tackle the social implications and potential controversies.
Half-breed children of mortal creatures and outsiders is a whole other issue. I am certainly NOT going to have outsiders rape mortals or visa versa, but I figure a Mera spirit and a mortal who really embodies Mera’s ideals could easily fall in love. .
I agree with you completely that nations divided by species are a little weird in a world as diverse as a typical D&D setting. I am still working on drawing land masses on borders on my world map, but I figure a realistic interesting fantasy world will have some isolationist mono-species nations, some nations that are very mixed and cosmopolitan, and a majority falling in between the two extremes.
I am planning on having three Dwarf nations. One isolationist and very stereotypical Dwarfy. They hate orcs and goblins, drink a lot of ale, like axes and hammers and are distrustful of outsider. Another nation has open borders and a lot of trade with non-Dwarfs. They dislike orcs and goblins, drink ale and wine in equal measure, use swords as often axes and hammers. A third nation mixed so thoroughly with the local humans that adventurers who meet them for the first time are like “are these really dwarfs?” They like rum, trade amiably with the nearby orc tribe, and find axes and war hammers extremely unpractical for using while in their canoes.

My favorite non-fiction book in Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. I am trying to apply the principles in his book to figure out how people, culture, and technology would diffuse across different a fantasy world in a semi-realistic manner. In this case I am replacing “guns” with “wizardry.” Without using real world examples: Oceans, mountains, deserts and even changes in latitude all slow down the diffusion of culture, technology, and people, that’s why I’m stressing on how to draw my world map.

I figure regions where travel between different lands is easy will have lots of cultural mixing. Regions with very harsh natural barriers to travel will have very little cultural mixing. Granted you got wizards that can cast Teleport and other conveyance spells to make travel easier, but you got have literal monsters at the edge of the map making both overland and sea travel much more dangerous, so it balances out.


But, on a more serious note, the subject of rape is something you're probably going to want to avoid, for rather obvious reasons.
Preaching at the choir on this one.


The most obvious thought is epic magic in 3.X, which is so obviously broken that the game can't function with it, so you could say she's actively preventing anyone, even herself, from touching it because what the heck were the designers thinking? You could also make the point of Wish, that is the list of safe Wishes are the extend of Wish, as the Wish spell is powerful enough that it could have huge ripples throughout reality if it's done wrong or carelessly. Finally, you could even her respond to arbitrary loops, of which both 3.X and 5e's Wish loops are a good example.

Good ideas. I'll certainly consider Greymoria policing epic spells.


My sole concern for the lack of cause clerics is that if the gods are ever expected to interact with the players. That is, it'll be really annoying for players if the character they've been running for the entire campaign suddenly loses all their class features. As such, I would recommend the idea, if you're not including cause clerics, that cleric power, once bestowed, can't be revoked. This could also go interesting places, in that the gods might want to go out of their way to placate their high-level followers, on account of them potentially being a major headache if they wind up splitting on poor terms.

Reasonable concerns. I still haven’t decide how the Nine get their power from in a metaphysical sense. Do they feed on belief? Do they feed on the souls of their dead worshippers? Do they generate their own energy? Do they feed on the core of Positive Energy at the center of the Earth? Do they siphon off a bit of elemental energy from the world? If it turns out the belief sustains the gods, than belief is powerful enough to let clerics of a cause exist. If not, then the answer is no.

I am leaning towards the idea that the Nine get their power from belief, but generally my Evil gods are more apt to make overt displays of power than the others and they generally have fewer worshippers. Though I guess in this case “belief” could be adoration or fear.

I was thinking that while the Nine can de-magic their followers this almost never happens. First off, the god in question would fire a warning shot long before denying all spells. Example, when I played a 2nd edition D&D game, my DM thought I was overusing the spell Nap (it lets you get a full eight hours sleep in 10 or 20 minutes) using it to stay awake for watch every single night, and one day my cleric’s deity didn’t let me get any more Nap spells at all for a week. Still got my other spells though.

I figure warning shot one is not getting the spell you ask for. Warning shot two is getting half the spells. Warning shot three is a visit from an outsider affiliated with your god. Then it’s spell stoppage time. Even then you could have a warning stoppage. There is a big difference between no spells for one day and no spells forever, unless that one day has you in a life or death struggle.

I also figure the Nine are very patient and flexible with their followers’ actions. I figure if a cleric is really pushing the envelope on what is acceptable, he or she is going to be marked for death, condemned as a heretic by the ruling council of high priests long before the deity steps in. Most priesthoods of the Nine have some kind of heretical movement that refuses to die. “If our divine lord doesn’t mind what I’m doing, who are you to say this heresy?” Since neither side lost their spells, they both feel they are “right” and the deity's continued support proves it (or proves that the deity wants his/her followers to work this out between themselves).

To use an Order of the Stick example. Both Red Cloak and his brother Right-Eye, wanted what was best for goblin kind. Even though their methods were diametrically opposed, I’m sure the Dark One was happy to accept Right-Eye into the Goblin afterlife.

As long as the cleric is trying to help his/her deity, they can still get their magic. It doesn’t matter if a Greymoria or Maylar cleric is trying to win over people by being nice or a Mera cleric is brutally murdering evildoers, as long as the cleric thinks he or she is doing the right thing, they still get their magic.


I'm always going to recommend more player options. It's not a problem for them to be so incredibly rare as to never show up unless a player is playing one, and even then that could be a remarked-upon weird thing, and that's probably better than having the player really wanting to be a pantheon cleric and it being not okayed.

Excellent idea.


And the paladin is ultimately a set of class features that you can use to build a character.

I guess I can use the same logic. Paladins are so rare that they will probably never show up unless a player wants to play one.

Monks are tricky. They are also a character class I was thinking of axing. They way I see it they need a perfect set of circumstances. A would-be monk needs to grow up in a society where 1) weapon use is severely restricted, 2) the need for weapons/self-defense is very high and 3) the character has a lot of time to train in obscure difficult skills.

I might do what a friend of mine did in his own D&D 3.5 setting, and flip the alignment requirement. Monks cannot be Lawful. Monks were all ex-slaves that learned advanced unarmed combat so they could combat their oppressors.
Or I could just do the thing again where monks exist but they are so rare that you will never see one if a player doesn’t ask to play one though I was planning to alter the random treasure generator to not have monk boosters or weapons as options.

If someone has a counter argument for, “Lots of lawful monks make sense in a world with your Nine deities because ______” I’m open to suggestions though I guess it doesn’t matter much in the short term because my gaming mates in general are not big on playing monks.

On a related note, I am a big fan of the newer PC classes in Complete Warrior, Complete Divine, etc such as favored soul, scout, hex blade, and what not but few others are. I also like the variants in Unearthed Acrana. One friend says “I don’t need a fancy class to match my character concept, I can use my skill points, feat choices, magical items, and ability scores to flesh out my personal vision of my character just fine.” It’s bittersweet when your players school you on the core concepts of role playing.


If you're trying to make something that rings true one of the biggest traps to avoid falling into it that of an overly symmetrical, overly neat, and just generally obviously constructed pantheon. To some extent the accumulated lore about a pantheon is folklore more than anything else, and that's just not how folklore grows and develops.

There's a few aspects to the current setup that look like they're falling into that trap a bit. Having exactly one god per alignment (with TN blank) is already a little overtly symmetrical. Slotting in obvious and highly symmetrical gender patterns on top of that just makes it worse; the whole thing smells a little too strongly of edifice. It's too neat and too clean.

I did literally set out the create a pantheon that neatly justifies D&D pathfinder rules from the ground up rather than the vast majority of game setting that start with the people and then come up with gods to match the people. When you do the latter, pantheons are less neat and clean.

That doesn’t mean you can’t have a top down system that is not neat and clean. It’s just harder.


(I may have already ventured too close to the border of badwrongspeak, so I won't risk giving any examples, sorry.)

The following example is from my friend’s RPG pantheon, a purely fictional example and thus it is goodcorrectspeak.

He didn’t use alignments but it was pretty neat and clean with gender and concept balance. Each deity created Dwarfs, Humans, and Merfolk as a collective. Then most, if not all of them created one race just for them. It was very neat and clean AND THEN the gods almost destroyed all creation by accident and had a civil war (the Fire and Light god versus everyone else) that unbalanced things. One died, one is a demon lord now.

Even though the demon god is now severely outnumbered, he as about as many supernaturally powered followers as all the other gods combined because the other gods are concerned about mis-stepping and accidentally making things worse and the demon god loves risk taking.

Constantine once said in a DC animated movie “Even deities can get it wrong. It’s how we got the appendix, Neanderthals and reality TV.”

The funny thing is the Light god was literally omniscient. He knew the rebellion would fail, but he participated in it anyone because he knew he must. The omniscient god never told the others that EVERYTHING was preordained. All the gods and mortals think they have free will capable of changing things but they do not. The Light god’s corpse became the stars in the night sky, which is why seers can sometimes divine the future through the stars. I almost wish I could steal that idea, but I don’t like the idea of any being, even a deity being omniscient or on free will being an illusion.



Trying to split the deities up into static lists and give them explicit bureaucratic spheres/domains is always going to result in something that feels contrived and artificial, IMO.

I agree. I am sort of compensating for this by giving the Nine a lot of power outside their official sphere. They way I figure out, a Cleric’s player could choose almost any two domains they want for almost any of the Nine. TI made a list for Pathfinder and gave about 12 or 13 possible domains for each of the Nine than figured it’d be easier to say, look at the domain list and pick any two you want. Then sell me on how that fits your character concept. I figure with only nine deities to choose from rather than the usual 20 you get in a typical D&D game the more flexible I can before for players who want to be clerics, the better.



Ditch the "this deity has exactly this set of interests" and "this deity is X alignment". Give the deities overlap and grey areas on their "spheres" and "domains", especially on things like fertility and war and whatnot that are really important to humans and create a lot of uncertainty/anxiety. Get rid of their alignment and have them act based on promoting their area of interest.

I mostly agree. While I used the alignments as a baseline I am trying to move away from it. But I do need to give them a set of interests. The Nine are important NPCs. Important NPCs need to have goals, hopes, and fears. Most of them have some long-term scheme. I also created this as a rough draft for what they want their followers to do. I am not planning on making staying within one step removed a requirement for clerics or favored souls
I got a rough draft of the basic tenants. I understand each god would have hundreds of pages of text describing what their loyal followers should do or refrain from doing. This is the extreme cliff notes version.

Mera
Cherish your family and community.
Recognize that all beings are part of a greater community.
Protect those who need it.
Be generous to all, especially those in great need.
Water is essential to all life, ensure that is used well.

Hallisan
Promote hard work for this is the key for all to better themselves.
Stand resolute against all who would threaten good people.
Pursue excellence in all you do, if you diminish your crafts you diminish yourself.
Promote justice and fairness for a just society forms the basis, both for vigilance against evil and prodigious industry.

Zarthus
Provide for yourself and your family, help others do likewise.
Don’t become consumed by your work, make sure you enjoy life and all it has to offer, help others do likewise.
Those who restrict another’s ability to provide for themselves or enjoy themselves must be punished.
Seek beauty wherever it may be found so you can enjoy it and share it with others.
Seek corruption wherever it is hiding it, so it may be removed before it festers.
Encourage music and art to glorify Zarthus’ gift and spread joy and wonder.

Korus
Help others appreciate nature’s bounty.
Learn to live off the land in a sustainable way.
Learn about the cycle of nature and how things are interconnected.
Leave others to their own devices unless they refuse to do likewise for others.

Khemra
Follow the roles you were destined for and make sue others do likewise and don’t overstep their bounds.
Seek and share knowledge and make sure it is preserved for future generations.
Help create and maintain ordered societies for this is the way to ultimately benefit all.

Nami
Embrace your passions, do not restrain them.
Be like the weather: Don’t be predictable but don’t be completely random either.
Embrace change in all its forms.
Prevent others from taking themselves too seriously and expose the lies and hypocrisies they try to hide behind.

Greymoria
Love Greymoria above all others for without her nothing would exist.
Punish those who do not love Greymoria.
Encourage the spread of arcane arts for this will glorify Greymoria.

Maylar
Test the limits of your strength and test the strength of others.
Elevate yourself by any means necessary, and never grow complacent regards to your own strength.
Those who can endure your testing will become stronger, those who cannot endure it should serve those who can in some way.
If the weak cannot be used, destroy them. Thus the cycle of life can be renewed.

Phidas
Obey all your oaths and contracts and repay all your debts.
Help others fulfill their commitments when they falter slightly. Punish them when they fail entirely.
Create order to encourage the keeping of one’s commitments and fortify the world against destruction and chaos.

I am not sure if it was brought up. But I don’t think most priests would need to cast spells. A priest needs to be able lead regular worship services, provide advice to parishioners, bless babies, and preside over funerals. You don’t need to cast spells to do ANY of that.

I figure a couple ranks of Knowledge (religion) and one rank in Diplomacy or Perform would be all you need for a character to be a priest, but I’m sure each priesthood would want some kind of initiation ceremony, show of loyalty, and a bunch of bells and whistles. I figure the Lawful priesthoods would have formal standardized training and Chaotic priesthoods would base their training on mentor-apprentice pairings with the new recruits following the mentor around and learning on the job. I have about two pages per deity written for how the priesthoods government themselves.

I does help with winning converts to your cause if clerics can magically heal the faithful and smite the unfaithful. In many cases you don't want your magical crusading heroes to interrupt their adventuring by handling mundane priestly concerns.

Honest Tiefling
2018-04-24, 11:45 AM
I am not sure if it was brought up. But I don’t think most priests would need to cast spells. A priest needs to be able lead regular worship services, provide advice to parishioners, bless babies, and preside over funerals. You don’t need to cast spells to do ANY of that.

D&D 4e/5e both had a ritual system. Basically, with the right feat or class features you could cast certain spells over a period of time as a ritual. It explains why these people aren't adventuring and why a adventuring priest would be considered a boon in many cases. Also explains why people keep showing up for services, they are a part of the ritual.


I figure a couple ranks of Knowledge (religion) and one rank in Diplomacy or Perform would be all you need for a character to be a priest, but I’m sure each priesthood would want some kind of initiation ceremony, show of loyalty, and a bunch of bells and whistles. I figure the Lawful priesthoods would have formal standardized training and Chaotic priesthoods would base their training on mentor-apprentice pairings with the new recruits following the mentor around and learning on the job. I have about two pages per deity written for how the priesthoods government themselves.

I have a day off work, so why not throw them up? I'm sure other people might be curious as well.


I does help with winning converts to your cause if clerics can magically heal the faithful and smite the unfaithful. In many cases you don't want your magical crusading heroes to interrupt their adventuring by handling mundane priestly concerns.

So...What are adventurers adventuring at in this setting? Because you'd think that plundering the castle of the god opposing your god is also worthwhile, and that place is more likely to have beer as loot.

Scalenex
2018-04-25, 02:09 AM
I have a day off work, so why not throw them up? I'm sure other people might be curious as well.

It's not on the topic of gender archtypes, because I assume every priesthood with a very few specific exceptions does not regiment roles of priests along gender lines.

Mera Priest Factions
Formally Mera’s priests and priestess call themselves the Tenders of the Sacred Hearth, or the Tenders for short. Mera’s detractors say the name is fitting because they are indeed tender and weak.
Mera’s priesthood doesn’t have any formalized standards or ranks that all members share. Mera expects mutual respect to be the glue that holds her priesthood together. Most of the time that’s enough. There is general deference to Tenders with seniority. Iterant priests tend to defer to locals. When acting collectively Mera’s priests try to follow the lead of whoever seems most experienced in the task at hand. Usually they manage to work together fairly harmoniously and a lack of formal protocols rarely hinders them.
New members are usually trained at temples where they volunteer for service (if adults) or are oblated by their families (if they are children). Smaller temples use a mentor-apprentice system with priests taking on protégés when their other duties allow it. Larger temples routinely train multiple recruits at a time in a class room setting with one or more priests with teaching their primary duty. A once rare practice that’s becoming more common is for an iterant priest to recruit someone while on the road and train him on the road while performing his duties. New recruits take an oath and are deemed Initiates until they are deemed ready to become full members. Then they take another oath and gain the title Brother or Sister. The third title, Elder, exists representing a priest others defer to routinely. Standards for what qualify as elder vary widely from place to place, but most priests will respect an elder from another temple or tradition even if said elder wouldn’t qualify by their own temple’s traditions.
Though the details are lost to history, there is a very long standing split within Mera’s priesthood among the Humans. While Mera temples differ widely among regions most identify themselves as being Terrawans or Walchese referring to which of their legendary forebears they take after more: Terrawa or Walcha. There are a small number of temples that straddle the two traditions, most of which are either very young or very old. With the exception of the Firebringers who claim to be the oldest faction, all the smaller factions claim to have arisen out of the Terrawans or Walchese.
Dwarves and Elves rarely become priests of Mera and those few temples in their lands are nearly all Walchese, with the exception of the Mondarian Dwarves (who break every Dwarven stereotyp) who are all Terrawan. Gnomes frequently become priests of Mera, and they lean very heavily towards the Terrawan tradition. Mera’s has very few priests or temples from other races and these tend to be very unique, essentially completely removed from the Terrawan/Walchese divisions. Mera strongly encourages her followers to promote harmony between all the races of Scarterras and any temple is open to priests and congregations of any race in theory. In reality, the community focus of her Tenders and the fact that most communities are made up of one race, integrated temples are quite rare (apart from Mondart where most temples have Human and Dwarven members).

Terrawans: Terrawans believe that Tenders should integrate with their communities as much as possible. They are usually encouraged, sometimes virtually required, to marry and have children. Terrawan clerics often work multiple jobs often serving as the village cobbler, blacksmith, or any number of mundane jobs in addition to their priestly duties and traditional healing duties most priests of all faith due. Most Terrawan temples grow enough of their own food so as to be nearly self-sufficient. Terrawan temples tend to be very modest in size and artistry.
Many services are held in or near the homes of the congregation instead of their temples especially when the nature of the service is very personal like a wedding, baptism, or funeral. Non-spell casting clerics are fairly common. Rank is based largely on seniority, not raw power so an elderly Experts are often in charge of young but high level Clerics.
Terrawans tend to travel often both so as to be able to administer to as many people as possible and because their temples tend to be located in rural areas with widely dispersed congregations.

Walchese: Walchese believe that Tenders serves their community best by making themselves examples of piety to inspire their congregations. Most Walchese take a variety of vows that set them apart from their congregation, such as vows of silence, celibacy, chastity, or poverty. Most Walchese Tenders do not pursue mundane occupations and most temples rely on donations to feed their staff. Most Walchese temples are large and ornate and nearly all of them boast a fire called an everlasting hearth that is maintained twenty-four hours a day (though everlasting hearths are hardly uncommon in Terrawan temples).
Many temples have nearby or attached inns or hospitals. Services are nearly always performed at the temples and most services are presided over by a spell-casting cleric. Paradoxically the non-spellcasting clergy are often held up as greater exemplars of Mera’s faith but despite being heaped with praise, they mainly serve in supporting roles and almost never lead. Walchese tend to wait for others to come to them in the temple than mingle with the populace. Walchese temples are more likely to be found in larger towns or cities or along major trade routes.

Wayfarers: Originating from the Terrawans, it now includes many Walchese. The Wayfarers refers to any clerics of Mera who focus on protecting waterways. They maintain lighthouses, operate trading posts along major river ways and even provide divine magic to parties patrolling for pirates and hostile sea monsters. The newest branch of the Wayfarers maintains temples catering to travelers built near oases along important desert trade routes.

Guardians: This newest splinter group from Mera’s priesthood sprung from the Walchese. It has yet to spread beyond a few isolated areas. Areas with Guardian temples are almost entirely run by Mera’s clerics. They collect all the regions output of food and any other products and then distribute them the populace as needed. They arrange marriages, serve as the police, lead the soldiers should an external threat arise and basically control all aspects of their congregation’s lives, all in the name of their protection and welfare. Other Mera clerics look askance on their heavy handed and patronizing attitude of the Guardians, but the Guardians claim that their congregations are among the safest and most prosperous people in the world.

Pure Ones: A splinter group emerging from the Walchese. Pure Ones are complete pacifists. They take vows of poverty to go along with their vows of chastity and are strict vegans. Unlike the Walchese they sprung from, they favor simpler temples and vestments. In recent generations, Maylar’s and Greymoria’s congregation has begun targeting them. Maylar’s followers attack the priests directly while Greymoria’s followers attack their congregations and dare them to fight back. Then they spread the stories about the slaughter far and wide. The Pure Ones have have lost as many members to declining recruitment than they have to casualties. Mera’s other clerics generally try to respect the Pure One’s wishes and do not generally come to their aid militarily. Most of the Pure One’s surviving temples now have a temple of Zarthus nearby providing protection that wasn’t asked for.

Firebringers: Fire brings light and warmth to keep the darkness away. While Firebringers do provide comfort to the afflicted like all Mera’s clerics do, they prefer to be proactive. They serve as mediators between factions in conflicts. Sometimes they smite evil doers to protect the innocent. Naturally most adventuring clerics of Mera are Firebringers. The Firebringers have protocols and traditions unique to their sect, but they hold no temples as they are expected to constantly be traveling to trouble spots. Would-be Fireringers need to be sponsored by an existing iterant Firebringer and their home temple to be candidates. The Walchese and Tarawans temples produce about the same number of Firebringers, but the factional differences don’t disappear entirely. Walchese firebringers tend to sponsor Walchese candidates and likewise for the Tarawans. Candidates who pass the tests set by their sponsor then accompany their mentor in the field until deemed ready to act on their own. The rare, rare times Mera sponsors Paladins, they are considered honorary Firebringer priests.

Blessed Ones: This is the term Mera’s priesthood uses to refer to her favored souls. Mera doesn’t empower many favored souls and most of those she does empower are in areas where her priesthoods hold little sway, so they don’t come into a lot of contact with formal priests. Mera’s faithful believe that most if not all Blessed Ones are created with a very specific (and very important mission). Thus any favored soul can expect strong support from any temple they come into contact with, but they can also expect to be held to very high standards of behavior. Most Blessed Ones who later decide to join the priesthood become Firebringers.

Hallisan Priest Factions

Hallisans priests formally call themselves the Guardians of Valor. Hallisans detractors of course love to ask who guards the guardians.
All of Hallisan’s Human temples have the same code of laws and rank system and answer to the Elder. The position of Elder is held for life. Each Elder elected from by a vote from a council made up of the leaders of every temple (this is called the Council). Usually the Council meets in person, but far flung leaders can issue absentee votes by messenger or a Sending spell.
Not every place of worship is a temple. Most are called chapels and are answerable to the nearest temple. Every temple has slight variations on their system of leadership mirroring the Council. Most temples have councils made up of the leaders of every chapel that in turn elect their councilor mirroring the greater hierarchy. Temples with very widely dispersed chapels find such regular votes impractical at best. Chapel leaders are called Father or Mother. Temple Leaders are called Revered Mother or Revered Father.
Perspective members volunteer (or are oblated by their families) at their nearest place of worship. Those who are accepted by the leader of their chapel are then brought to the nearest temple where they must be accepted by the temple leader. Training for Human clerics is always performed at a temple, not a chapel. Training always takes four years at which point the new initiate is brought before the Council and tested. Few fail this testing. Those that do fail get one more year of schooling to address their problem areas or may choose to resign. If they fail their second set of testing after a year, they are expelled from Hallisan’s order (this is exceedingly rare). Once said test is passed they then become full members with assigned duties (usually at the temple they trained at or one of its associated chapels).
Dwarf Guardians have their own Elder and their own hierarchy spanning all the Dwarf nations. The main difference between theres and the larger human one (besides the size of their beards) is that every house of worship regardless of size is considered a temple and therefore has equal standing. The Dwarven Elder generally gives his temples noticeably more autonomy than the Human Elder does.
Hallisan priesthood in the Elven Empire has its own system of ranks and own set of regulations as well. They too have a council that elects an Elder, but their elders serve 81 year terms rather than life terms. The Elvish Council makes most of the actual decisions with the role of Elder is more or less a ceremonial position. Outside the Elven Empire, Hallisan worship among Elves is not very deep and the Wood Elves and Dark Elves would never answer to a hierarchy run in the Elven Empire (or any Human nation).
Gnome Guardians are part of the same hierarchy as the Human one. They only have a single temple overseeing all Gnome chapels. Since it has more chapels than any other, many gnomes are pressing for additional temples. There have been two attempts in the past by the Gnomish temple to split into two or more temples to better administer their chapels (and to get an extra vote on the council), but they have both failed. There is (quiet) talk among them of forming their own conclave like the Dwarves and Elves, but this is hampered by the fact that most Gnome Guardians serve in mixed Human-Gnome chapels. A few want to go the more stereotypical Gnomish route and bring everyone together, uniting Gnomes, Human, Dwarf, and Elf Guardians under single banner but there is too much opposition to this among the leaders of all the different councils.
Hallisan has very few clerics and temples among other races. None of them have the numbers to make an expansive hierarchy and they have rebuffed attempts in the past by the Elf or Human priesthoods to co-opt them.

Non Cleric Priests: Favored Souls of Hallisan are widely praised publicly by temple leaders but in private they are usually denied most positions in temple due to their lack of formal training, so most act as free agents. Many clerics are actually Experts or Paladins. Experts rarely ever get to be temple heads, but this is not unheard of. No non-spellcasting Revered Mother or Father has ever been elected Elder. Paladins who settle down in one place are disproportionately likely to become a Revered Mother or Father someday, but only one Human paladin has ever been elected Elder. The elves are the exception and have elected many paladins Elder.
Most of Hallisan’s priests will say they have no factions but each temple is a type of faction unto itself with differing challenges, priorities and methods of doing things. Charismatic and/or politically ambitious clerics often serve as the centers of their own de facto factions. One temple bears mention for it contains two orders which transcend all the temples.

Grand Temple: The Grand Temple has no chapels reporting to it. It has the other Temples reporting to it. It serves as the seat where the Council meets and where the Elder presides. It’s up to the Elder whether he mostly works from the Grand Temple or is a hands-on leader frequently traveling to the temples under him. The Grand Temple has a Steward who acts as the leader of the temple in the Elder’s absence and sits on the Council (but doesn’t vote). The Steward commands and coordinates the Grand Temple Guard and the Grand Temple Harbingers.

I still haven't decided whether to put the Grand Temple in the middle of a very Hallisan-friendly nation or whether to make it an independent quasi-state little land.


Grand Temple Guard: No one has assaulted the Grand Temple in over a hundred years, but attacks on Councils members or even the Elders while they are in transit are a fairly common occurrence, so the primary duty of the Guard is to ensure the safety of the Elder and the Council at these times. The Guard also will mobilize if an external threat is too large for one temple to handle or spills across the borders of multiple Temple’s protectorates.

Grand Temple Harbingers: In order for the Elder to direct the temples under him, he need to get his proclamations to them. In order to make wise decisions he needs to be kept informed of their local situations. The Harbingers’ duty is to make sure the lines of communication between the Grand Temple and the other temples remain open at all times. Harbingers also are responsible for facilitating any and all joint efforts between the Human, Elven, and Dwarven sects of Hallisan’s priesthood.

Mekelorn: Mekelorn is a dwarven city, but it is the holiest site in the world to all dwarves who revere Hallisan. Believed to be the site where Hallisan forged the first the first dwarves from the living rock. The Great Stone is believe to be what the first dwarves were formed from and is the site of their holiest temple. Many dwarves make it a point to make a pilgrimage to the Great Stone at some point in their lives. Mekelorn is one of the largest Dwarven settlements in the world and all aspects of its governance are advised heavily by the priests of Hallisan (though Dwarf priests of all faiths jockey for influence there).

Zarthus Priest Factions
Zarthus’ priests call themselves Lantern Bearers. As Zarthus provides light in the darkness as the moon, his priests must also bear light into the darkness.
Priest of Zarthus are free to recruit whoever they wish and they are free to customize their training however they wish provided they cover the core tenets important to Zarthus. Training regimens outside the one-on-one mentor-apprentice system are very rare. Zarthus has a higher proportion of priests without the cleric class than any other of the Nine except maybe Greymoria. As long as they know enough official canon, so they can lead services, preside over funerals, weddings and the like, they can be priests. There is the informal requirement that all of Zarthus priests excel at something that they enjoy that can be used in Zarthus’ service. This can be a form of art, a particular trade, fighting ability, or the ability to cast divine spells. Generally Zarthus’ priests wear an insignia relating to their skill or skills. That way a Zarthus worshipper doesn’t ask an artist for a healing spell. Unless they specifically ask to not be included (or never meet a Zarthus priest), most Favored Souls of Zarthus are inducted into the priesthood and are treated more or less like any other priest.
Zarthus’ priesthood has some of the most widely divergent and often conflicting factions of any of the Nine (save Maylar and perhaps Greymoria). This almost never results in bloodshed (beyond the occasional non-lethal duel), but it makes joint efforts very difficult. Most Lanterns will claim to be part of no faction or simply name the most renowned priest in his lineage. In this case, lineage follows mentor-apprenticeship bonds instead of bloodline. Since priests tend to take on apprentices like themselves, members of the same lineage frequently have similar goals and methods to each other. Beyond this, most Lanterns can be lumped into one of three broad categories. The Patrons refers to priests who focus on artistic expression and revelry. The Homesteaders refers to priests who focus on supporting the physical welfare of their congregations often at the edge of civilization. Vindicators refers to those who stand up to oppressive rulers and/or hunt down enemies of Zarthus and his followers. Most priests have little problem dealing with priests belonging to the other two broad groups realizing that all these roles are important. Priests have the most issues with other priests of their own broad faction differing widely over methods and priorities. More specific groups of note are below.

Library of Zarthus: Zarthus’ priests long ago helped establish a college for bards. While independent of Zarthus’s priesthood for the most part, the bards of this college are generally Zarthus worshippers and many alumni become honorary priests. A favored story topic is great deeds done by the faithful of Zarthus. For a long time these stories were presered in oral tradition.
One priest in his travels realized the scope of differences between differing priests and decided that more than tales of deeds should be preserved in writing. He believed that the priests of Zarthus were hurting themselves by not sharing their methods with each other whether they were variations on ceremonies, instructions for making unique magic items, or secret codes. Every time a priest died, irreplaceable knowledge was lost. He tried to expand the library to include more than tales but also operational knowledge. but getting priests to volunteer their secrets here is difficult.
He also tried to encourage period exchanges of apprentice Zarthus priests of different mentors, but there are very few takers for this. Of these few takers, four tried to implemented a new program. The library now is the base for Zarthus’ only permanent seminary attempting to provide a well rounded education for new priests. The first graduating class had four instructors and nine students. The current incarnation has six permanent instructors and averages over twenty students. There is some resentment towards those priests without a traditional mentorship (they have no lineage!), but other established priests have supported the school, which is usually willing to allow guest instructors to teach briefly if they are so inclined.

Mask Breakers: The Mask Breakers refer to a loose association of Lanterns who make it their primary mission to oppose the god Phidas all around the world. They mount a guerilla campaign against Phidas’ temples and any nation officially backed by Phidas’ priesthood. Nearly every Lantern dislikes Phidas, but the ruthlessness of the Mask Breakers causes most others to keep them at arm’s length. Their willingness to take lives in the name of the greater good causes their detractors to accuse them of becoming what they seek to fight. Others argue that it only leads to escalation as Phidas’ priests almost inevitably step up their oppression in retaliation. Mask Breakers earn enemies from their own side. Mask Breakers move around a lot, so the retaliation enacted against them often falls on their more peaceful Zarthus worshipping brethren instead exacerbating the internal divides.

Lineage of Gariel: The priestess Gariel is said to have fallen in love with a priest of Mera (or in some stories the priest of Mera was her brother and their love was platonic). This particular Mera priest was a strict pacifist. When he (and everyone else in his temple) was murdered by parties unknown, Gariel went on a quest to hunt down everyone and anyone who seemed likely to be responsible. Sating her revenge on a nearby tribe of orcs, she realized she had no real means of figuring out who killed her love. She vowed to never let it happen it again. Gariel has long since died, but her lineage is strong and now defends Mera’s priests and congregations whether they ask for it or not.

Apseldia Temple: Lanterns have been opposing oppression since they were formed. They were certainly there when the Half-Elven forefathers of the city-state of Apseldia threw off their Human and elven oppressors and established their own nation. Usually the Lanterns move on whenever they succeed at overthrowing a regime, normally letting the newly freed people handle their own affairs. In this case, most of the priests stayed and helped form the new government and became a vital part of the running of day-to-day affairs. Generations later, Apseldia is no longer in immediate danger of being swallowed up by a bigger nation. Zarthus’ local priests find themselves in unique situation: they have now become “The Man.” With so few traditions set in stone, the Apseldia’s priests are likely to diverge more and more from other priests, who are not normally found in positions of governance and power. Already there is resentment building towards them from other Lanterns for the Apseldians “selling out.”

Lineage of Tabrath: This is one of the oldest lineages known. Tabrath was a famed crusader against innumerable marauding monsters. While Tabrath was a lone warrior type, the bearers of his legacy are among the most cohesive of any faction in Zarthus’ priesthood. Today his lineage and their non-clergy supporters makes up squads or small armies of monster hunters. Heroes to any number would-be beleaguered villages on the edge of the wilderness, the lineage of Tabrath has many enemies. They are accused of disproportionately taking revenge for mild harassment into genocidal heights and accused of attacking “monstrous” races that didn’t do anything bad at all, just for treasure and glory. This has led to pre-emptive attacks against them, especially by Dragons.

Korus Priest Factions

Korus’ priests maintain many ancient traditions, but there is lots of regional variation and little in the way of a world spanning hierarchy. Most priests identify themselves as Stewards of Korus’ Gift or Stewards of Korus’ Dominion. The Stewards of the Gift focus on agriculture. They are usually clerics or experts and are usually trained raised from a young age in a local temple near their birth place. Most candidates are oblated by their families when they are children.
The Stewards of the Dominion focus on the wilderness. They are usually rangers or druids. Most candidates are shadowed by a priest for years. If the priest believes a perspective candidate would do well, they are asked if they like to join (usually in adolescence or young adulthood), and then they begin their training in the field following their mentor. Non-spellcasting priests are rare, but Stewards of the Gift tend to incorporate a lot of lay people into their ceremonies and those who excel at it often receive much prestige from their communities. Most subgroups of either major faction are very localized and informal, only falling back on formality when receiving visiting priests. The shared formal protocols generally are sufficient to allow cooperation across disparate groups when it becomes necessary.
Stewards of the Gift help ensure that sustainable farming (or logging or fishing etc) techniques are used. They lead most harvest and planting festivals as well as administer their services for the congregations’ mundane needs serving as midwives, advisors, and healers. Stewards of the Dominion sometimes serve as guides through the wilderness or gamekeepers but many, if not most of them are somewhat reclusive. Most Stewards of the Dominion focus on nature itself and not how the civilized world interacts with it. Some can be quite hostile to those they see as intruders or despoilers.

Talons of Korus: This small faction of Stewards of the Dominion is quite feared. They protect the most sacred wild places against any and all intruders and hunt down and punish those who they deem sinners against nature. There are rumors that they are aiming to bring down certain cities and farmlands entirely so that nature can reclaim some of what was taken from it. Only about half are said to be Humans or demi-Humans, the rest are in fact belong to the fey races.

Urban Stewards: In the biggest population centers, usually ones with a temple district housing temples to all the Nine in close proximity. The Stewards find themselves in an odd position they did not ask for, that of mediator. Korus’ priests are widely assumed to have little bias and thus are routinely called in when there are disputes between priesthoods of the other eight deities and in many secular disputes besides. What few non-spellcasting priests Korus have tend to be found in urban centers. Their new niche caused urban priests to adapt training and recruitment. They now look for instincts for diplomacy and tact become more than they look for a green thumb.

The Seedlings: Korus’ favored souls are more common than most other of the Nine. They occasionally become priests filling both stewardships in roughly equal numbers, but for the most part live their lives independent of any hierarchy. They are said to spread about like seedlings on the wind so that Korus’ teachings and values can spring up in far flung places. The Seedlings are a widely diverse lot and generally allowed to do as they please by Korus’ established priests. Most Seedlings belong to one of the so called Monstrous races. Few commonalities among them can be established. While there are many where it’s hard to tell how they are furthering Korus’ goals, none seem to be acting counter to Korus in any obvious ways.

Nomadic Stewards: Technically Stewards of the Dominion, priests of Korus associated with various nomadic peoples and the so called barbarians deserve special mention. Unlike most Dominion Stewards, they don’t hide at the fringes of society, and they don’t avoid it altogether. They are vital and integral parts of the societies they are part of. They are often second only to the chiefs or elders in authority, and if the chief or elder dies, a Steward will often serve as the interim leader until a replacement can be found. They are usually groomed from birth for their roles as priests or priestess later.
Other than those generalizations, nomadic Stewards tend to favor greatly based on the tribe or organization they are a part of.

Scalenex
2018-04-25, 02:11 AM
Khemra’s Priest Factions

Khemra priests and priestess call themselves the Keepers of the Way, short form Keepers.
Khemra has a centralized priesthood. Every priest is ordained into one of the five Orders. Each Keeper answers to a senior member of his or her own order. When Orders must work together and one is priest is clearly of superior rank to the others, that priest takes charge. If such is not the case, they defer to the Eclipse Order first, then the Zenith Order, then the Day Order, then the Dusk Order. The majority of most priests stay in one order all their lives, but switching is by no means unheard of.
A great many Keepers try to make it into the Zenith Order at the end of their careers, and a fair number of priests cut their teeth in the Dawn or Dusk Orders and then transfer to another order. Khemra’s priesthood has many non-spell casting priests but they have their own separate system of ranks. Generally a high ranking non-spellcasting member is on comparable footing with a low ranking spell-casters. Non-spellcasters do the many necessary but inglorious tasks that let the temples run smoothly and many parley this into informal influence exceeding their official title. Because of this, despite the fact that spellcasters hold more rank, a cleric that is consistently rude to his non-spellcasting brethren is likely to regret their behavior finding his letters lost and requested supplies not forthcoming.

Dawn Order: Dawn is associated with new beginnings. The Dawn Order’s primary duty is recruitment. They recruit all perspective Keepers for training (though other Orders can and often do pass on recommendations). In addition to searching out candidates, they interview all volunteers. Whether they recruit children or adults is up to personal preference and regional traditions. The more powerful the priesthood of Khemra is in an area, the more likely they are to induct children oblated by their families. In areas where Khemra is not the dominant priesthood, most recruits are adults who volunteer themselves. They also proselytize to outsiders in order to enlarge Khemra’s congregation. They also have the duty to uncover secrets and new lore, so the Dawn priests are among those more likely to become adventurers than most others. Those who specialize in uncovering lore are often nicknamed “Seekers” though the nickname also applies to the whole order. The few divine bards that serve Khemra are usually Dawn Order priests.

Day Order: Day is the time most work is done. The Day Order makes up the plurality of priesthood’s members. Anything that does not fall under the auspices of another order automatically falls under theirs. Their primary duty is to ensure the physical and spiritual welfare of their existing congregations of worshippers. They also advise secular leaders and provide most temple maintenance. If an area’s temple is too small to have all the orders represented, a Day Order priest usually fills in for them temporarily.

Zenith Order: When the sun is at its zenith, Khemra watches over all. The Zenith Order are the law keepers of Khemra’s priesthood. They make sure her traditions are upheld by both Khemra’s priest and Khemra’s congregation. Khemra is said to put immense effort in making sure her siblings keep to their commitments to the Compact. There is an intense debate on how much oversight the priesthood in general and the Zenith Order in particular should have over the other priesthoods (since Khemra herself tries to keep her siblings in line with the Compact).
In general priests in favor of non-interference seem to be slowly winning the debate since overzealous Zenith Order priests are making enemies of other priesthoods nearly everywhere, and this damages the whole priesthood’s standing, not just the Zenith Order. When another deity’s priest talks about a “sunblinded meddler”, they usually unknowingly are referring to a Zenith Keeper. It’s not just outsiders, Even Khemra priests of other Orders will sometimes call an overbearing Zenith priest “sunblinded” under their breath. Due to the power it has over the others, the Zenith Order is often considered the most prestigious. Unlike the other orders, most of its members are transfers from another Orders. Those who are recruited directly into the order are true prodigies (or have cleverly passed themselves off as such).
Dusk Order: The sky turns red at dusk. Khemra spills the blood of her foes and sheds her own blood in defense of her faithful, so must the Keepers of the Dusk Order. As the martial arm of Khemra’s priesthood, they lead expeditions against the priesthood’s foes, provide security for Khemra’s temples, and serve as military chaplains and advisors. What few paladins that devote themselves primarily to Khemra are all Dusk Order members.

Eclipse Order: The smallest order by far. Every single favored soul of Khemra is born during an eclipse and all favored souls of Khemra are inducted into Eclipse Order (barring the rare favored soul of Khemra is never discovered or actively resists the Keepers). In addition to favored souls, the Eclipse Order includes a small support staff of other priests. Being a non-favored soul on that staff is considered a high honor or a tedious assignment, sometimes both at once. Favored souls are the only priests authorized to propose major changes to the priesthood’s laws and protocols. Essentially their sphere of influence includes anything they want. This gives them many rivals and sycophants among the other orders. A great many resentful priests (especially of the Zenith Order) often try to get Eclipse priests to go on lengthy quests to get them out of their hair. Other times, the favored souls themselves volunteer for lengthy quests finding the scrutiny they receive stifling. Despite accusations, none have been proven to have sent an favored soul sent on a suicide mission deliberately.
Khemrarok: The nation of Khemrarok is a theocracy in Khemra’s service. All the major government positions have to be held by priests. As a result, there are more non-spell casting priests of Khemra here than anywhere else simply because their need is greater. Many of the non-spell casting priests end up wielding more temporal authority than spell-casters that far outrank them in the clerical hierarchy. The current emperor or empress (always a favored soul) has established that one’s rank in Khemarok is independent of one’s rank in the priesthood. Some non-spell casting priests are hoping that this will provide a stepping stone for the current or a future emperor putting all priests on the same rank system. They have been petitioning every Eclipse priest towards that regard with the hopes that one of the priests they sway will someday become the head of the Order and make that change.
I have yet to decide whether Khemarok is a localized bastion of Khemra worship or if they have authority over Khemra temples elsewhere. And yes, their aesthetics are based on fictionalized versions of Ancient Egypt


Nami’s Priest Factions

Nami’s priests and priestess often call themselves Rovers on the Wind, short form is Rovers. While many Nami clergy do travel a lot, the name Rover is applied to even sedentary priests.
Most of Nami’s priesthood will say that their order has hundreds of factions with one member. Each priest has full autonomy in recruiting and ordaining new priests. Given their value placed on individualism it’s harder to trace similarities to lineages and patterns with Rovers than with Lanterns. There are still some identifiable splits based on ideology or behavior. The two main ideological splits are listed below followed by several factions. Most Rovers don’t waver on their ideology but more than a few flit between the various subgroups listed below the ideological splits at multiple points during their careers.

Group versus Individual Freedom: The core tenet that Rovers are split over is whether they should constrain their behavior to the point where their actions don’t constrain or harm others or not. Naturally those who advocate not harming others are more tolerated by non-Rovers more than those who don’t, and are far less persecuted. A lot of those who argue for having no constraints against harming others make it a purely academic point. They actually choose to not harm others most of the time or all of the time, they just state that they do have the right to do whatever they please, even if they don’t exercise it. Thus it’s hard to tell where many Rovers stand.

Spell-casters versus non-spell casters: Most of the Nine’s priesthoods have non-spellcasting members. Sometimes they are the equal of the spell-casters, sometimes they are not. A faction of Nami’s priesthood believes that since they have no formal requirements for ordaining priests, they depend on their patron’s direct approval more than the others. Nami can refuse to empower a spell-caster if she disproves of her actions or character, but she can’t easily do so for a non-spell-caster. Many advocate only allowing spell-casters to become priests for this reason. Others say that putting that requirement on the priesthood would go against their whole code.

Liberators: A loose term for those priests who stand out against oppression. Note Nami’s priests have varying definitions of what “oppression” is, and their actions vary from the purely symbolic to the intensely violent. For the most part liberators tend to be nomadic rather than focusing on a single location.

Circuit Priests: Most people acknowledge Nami on her holy days, but few worship her the rest of the year. Most nations and cities celebrate their holy days on different days of the year, so a single Rover can theoretically preside over the yearly celebration of Nami six or seven times a year or more. To many outsiders it seems like the priests just have a knack for showing up on time, and the Rovers love to maintain the illusion but there is hard work and organization behind the scenes to make this possible.

Roving Congregation Priests: Those who worship Nami primarily are often nomadic. Some barbarian tribes have Nami as their primary patron and a lot of troupes of traveling entertainers also count Nami as their patron. The priesthood of Nami has quite a few members on staff of the Amstrean Circus for instance. These are perhaps the most literal example of Rovers.

Sedentary Priests: As mentioned before many of Nami’s priests are nomadic. Most of Nami’s sedentary congregations are in densely populated cosmopolitan areas. These temples serve as bases where nomadic priests can stop, receive training, supplies, or just a place to recuperate before moving on. They are also where most of the coordination work is done that makes the circuit priests so efficient at covering wide areas. They usually strive to remain neutral in Nami’s priesthood’s (many) internal disputes and frequently serve meeting places and/or sanctuary for priests of many different outlooks. In addition to providing places of resupply and refuge to traveling Rovers, permanent Nami Temples often double as inns open up the public, both to provide a positive image of Nami to outsiders and for some extra coin.

Bachites: (I may change this name to something less plagerized from the old live action Hercules TV show). The Bachites are named after a legendary priest of Nami from the past. Different legends have the priest as male or female. Some have him/her as a Human, some as an Elf, some as a Dragon, some as one of the other races. The current Bachites take Nami’s command to live unrestrained as far as possible. Basically monsters in human skin, they are almost universally despise. Often they are wiped out or driven away in one area only to resurface in another time or place.

Gentle Breeze: The Gentle Breeze is a loose term referring to Rovers who take Nami’s command to help liberate others as a mandate to help others in their daily lives. They try to provide good advice, healing, and artistic outlets. They tend to be more sedentary than other Rovers. The movement is gaining momentum and most recently built temples fall under the sway of the Gentle Breeze. Unlike older established temples, they are less neutral with regards to outsider Rovers, and often refuse to admit certain traveling priests in if they disagree with their methods. It may only be a matter of time before they escalate their refusal to associate with the Bachites into violent opposition.

Phidas Priest Factions

Phidas himself wears a mask at all times to hide his disfigurement. Some Phidas priests wear a mask all the time while on duty, some only when they need to dress formal, but they all have one. Thus Phidas priests are called the Masks of Phidas or simply Masks.
Masks are allowed to recruit whomever they wish though they are restricted on how often and how many they may recruit by rank. Any ranking cleric can veto a younger cleric’s decision. If the number of clerics in an area is deemed low, clerics have quotas rather than limits on recruitment. New recruits undergo tests and training set by ancient traditions but interpreted by their mentors (usually the one who recruited them or their recruiter’s superior).
Recruits deemed failures are usually simply turned away. If the temple they were recruited to happens to be a secret temple, or the recruits fails so late in his/her training that he/she has already learned secret lore, the failure is killed, though this late stage failure is fairly rare. There is no official requirement that a priest must be able to cast divine magic, but non-spell casting priests are unofficially snubbed and tend to get promoted more slowly leading to most recruits choosing to learn spell craft.
Phidas’ priesthood encourages competition between priests to keep the individuals and the priesthood strong. There are a lot of rules and guidelines for these internal Darwinist struggles. The most important rule is “Don’t get caught.” The second most important rule is not to slay your rivals outright since that depletes the priesthood’s power. The preferred method of competition is through unwitting proxies. Most such competition is between peers of the same rank until you reach the higher ranks when your competitors are mostly would-be usurpers. There are nine ranks. Initiates are those who take the vows of service to Phidas but haven’t been ordained. Once they pass the tests they become novices. At which point future promotions come at the whims of those who rank subject to the approval of his superiors. The ninth rank has only three members called pontiffs. Pontiffs are selected by Phidas himself.
Below the rank of pontiff there is no limit on numbers of any given rank. The way to get rank is by getting things done, not by magical power. Making money for the Church, weakening other Churches’ influence, expanding Phidas’ congregation, tightening control on Phidas’ congregation, winning over secular political leaders, and training apprentices are the common ways to gain standing in the priesthoods eyes but political acumen is needed to get the most out of one’s own accomplishments.

Phidas’ priesthood is also split into four Orders based on their primary function. Moving between orders is fairly common over the course of a priest’s career. The pontiffs are supposed to transcend all the Orders are not officially affiliated with any Order specifically. Most pontiffs were originally in the Order of Phidas’ Shield or Stewardship.

Order of Phidas’ Mask: This is the largest order of Phidas’ priesthood and the one that most novices are initially inducted into. Phidas’ Mask provides the public face of the whole priesthood. They provide most priestly services to Phidas’ congregations. They also provide most of the liaisons with other priesthoods of the Nine.

Order of Phidas’ Shield: Phidas’ shield is in charge of security and the day-to-day operations of Phidas’ temples not relating to interacting with the main congregation (serving as quartermasters for instance). In addition to being charge of mundane security for their congregations and temples, the Order of Phidas’ Shield is supposed to help maintain Phidas’ safeguards against the Void. Namely they post watches near the border to the Void to provide early warnings of demonic incursions. They also provide steeply discounted priestly services and divine magical items to demon hunters around Scarterras, even to individuals not normally friendly with Phidas. Many adventurers who are used to tight fisted Masks being hard bargainers are shocked to find just how generous the Masks can be if the adventurers need to be healed of level drain after fighting demons.

Order of Phidas’ Dagger: The Order of Phidas’ Dagger does not officially exist, only members of the third rank are allowed to know of it at all. All members must be at least of the fourth rank to join it. The Dagger performs all of the clandestine missions that the priesthood would rather no one knows about. Also they serve as the priesthood’s inquisitors, policing Phidas’ congregations and their fellow priests for disloyalty, heresy, or even simple incompetence.

Order of Phidas’ Stewardship: This is the Order that ambitious priests usually want to join. The Order provides much of the same clerical services provided to Phidas’ congregation as the Mask Order but they focus on Phidas’ worshippers with actual positions of authority from barons to kings and many of their bureaucrats.

Phidas’ Bankers: This is not a formal order. More and more the temples of Phidas finds themselves doubling as financial institutions. These institutions are becoming more and more powerful. Once, the four Orders tried to pawn off running these institutions to the other Orders as drudgery work. Now positions in the bank are hotly contested prizes. Currently the Stewards have the upper hand but the struggle continues and the Pontiffs have not made any significant rulings on deciding whose auspices it falls under despite numerous pleas. Financial institutions further upset the status quo by providing the most reliable way for non-spell casting priests to advance in rank since magic has relatively little to do with the work involved. Some want to christen Phidas’ Bankers into a fifth Order.

The Priesthood of Phidas in Lunatus: Lunatus the homeland of the Elven Empire has no pontiff. Originally the island of Lunatus had a pontiff but Phidas hasn’t replaced the last one in hundreds of years, presumably out of displeasure for his congregation declining in numbers there. The three pontiffs all have a broad regional focus that includes parts of the Elven Empire, so all three pontiffs claim to have rightful influence on the Empire’s capital of Lunatus. There are Elven priestly factions supporting all three pontiffs.
All of the current pontiffs are Human and many elven priests of Phidas balk at being subordinate to any Human. The ego fires are fueled by the fact that despite a lack of pontiffs, elven priests tend to belong to higher ranks on average than Human priests. There is also a faction of priests supporting the independence of the island’s (and the whole Elven Empire’s) Phidas priesthood. It is believed by some that if a priest can effectively manipulate the three Human pontiffs well enough to serve himself, the Elves in general, and the greater priesthood, then Phidas will reestablish a Lunatus pontiff. Others believe that whoever spearheads Phidas displacing Khemra as the preeminent religion of the Elven Empire will be thus promoted. Thus, even the Elven independence movement is factionalized as they disagree with how to get there and who the pontiff should be, all want to be the one that gets the credit for said coup which isn’t remotely near completion.

Other Phidas Priests: Dwarf worship for Phidas is slowly growing. Dwarf priests of Phidas are nominally included in the greater Human hierarchy. Most of them are members of Phidas’ Shield or Phidas’ Mask. Dwarf priests tend to be more patient and less scheming and ambitious than Human priests. They have a “slow and steady” attitude towards personal advancement and the advancement of Phidas in general. They claim this strategy has helped them raise the status of Phidas in the Dwarven nation of Stahlheim, and this has raised Stahlheim’s prosperity and standing as well. Like the Dwarves, Gnome priests are in the same broad hierarchy of the Humans. Gnome priests are generally too rare and diverse hard to pigeonhole, but they tend to carry grand ambitions masked behind traditional Gnomish diplomacy and politesse. Their schemes and plans seem to fall between the glacial Dwarf and short-sighted Human time scales.
Dark Elf priests of Phidas are not connected to the hierarchy of the Elven Empire or the Humans. Phidas is the second most influential deity in Kahdisteria. Greymoria’s priesthood is so powerful amongst the Dark Elves, that Dark Elf Masks know better than to rock the boat. They quietly pick up as much invisible influence in finance and trade as they can while letting Greymoria’s priests continue to advise the top rulers unchallenged. Phidas worship amongst the monstrous races is also not connected with any global hierarchy. The Laershin tribe of Kobolds has been worshipping Phidas as their main patron since before Humans existed, informally without clerics. A few Human Masks have cautiously begun training a small number of Kobolds as clerics hoping that this could lead to converting all Kobolds to Phidas worship. Other Human Masks are working on training clerics among the favored soul loving Tiamlan tribe of Kobolds. Most of these Masks are closet heretics. See below.

Blessed One Heresy: Phidas has no favored souls. He is the only one of the Nine to have zero favored souls. Most outsiders believe that Phidas can’t make favored souls, but The Masks maintain that Phidas neither wants nor needs favored souls. The Blessed One Heresy states that Phidas empowered several Blessed Ones at the beginning of the Second and Third Ages helping the emerging Humans and elves thrive. The heretics believe that Phidas will empower another Blessed One (or several) who will lead all the world (or just Phdias’ faithful into a golden age). This flies in the face of the priesthood’s teaching and is ruthlessly quashed whenever it’s detected. Phidas and his spirits have not issued any comment about the heresy one way or the other.

Greymoria Priest Factions

The formal name for Greymoria’s priesthood is the Children of the Dark Mother, short form Children. Monstrous races created by Greymoria are also called Greymoria’s making the distinction fuzzy, though Greymoria’s many detractors love to say all her Children are monsters in some way.
Greymoria is the only one of the Nine to not accept any non-spell casting priests whatsoever. Her priesthood is also the only one to routinely ordain arcane spell casters as priests. That’s a fairly stringent entry requirement combined with the relatively small size of Greymoria’s congregation make Greymoria’s priesthood rather small.
The dark Elf nation of Kahdisteria has a very political powerful Church recruiting primarily from the nobility or powerful arcane spell-casters arising from the middle classes. Elsewhere Greymoria’s priests have to maintain a low profile if not absolute secrecy. Children develop a relationship with a potential recruits or shadow them secretly not revealing who they serve until they can gage a candidate’s receptivity towards Greymoria’s doctrine and his/her like magical aptitudes, only making a recruitment pitch when they are fairly certain the candidate will respond favorably. Candidates who refuse are sometimes killed; candidates who fail are nearly always killed. Priests are expected to promote arcane magic, encourage adoration for Greymoria, and punish those who deny Greymoria, particularly Mera’s followers. Most Children dislike the idea of factions and the factions listed below are pretty small.

Sorcerers’ Heresy: Throughout much of the civilized world, official doctrine for Greymoria’s priesthood is that wizardry was invented by Greymoria as opposed to sorcery which was just administered by Greymoria. Thus wizards are closer to her than sorcerers. The sorcerer heresy attests that since sorcerers are born with a tie with Greymoria and wizards have to learn it, thus sorcerers are actually closer to Greymoria than anyone else.
The Heresy is naturally powerful in Swynfaredia (where only sorcerers can hold a noble title above that of knight) and Greymoria’s mainstream priests don’t have the ability to enforce their decrees there. In Kahdisteria, there is functionally no Heresy as wizards and sorcerers are considered equal as a whole (there status is based on level).

Shepherds: Most of Greymoria’s new races wouldn’t be alive today if they didn’t have first Dragons, then Elves, and later Human faithful protecting them when their numbers were small. Shepherds primary duty is to ensure the welfare of Greymoria’s newest children. Greymoria never created new children particularly often so most of the time Shepherds focus on helping existing races, or punishing them if they fall out of line with Greymoria’s desires. When you have a social outcast Human spellcaster working with or leading a group of monstrous humanoids against Human targets, there is a good chance said collaborate is one of Greymoria’s Shepherds A few enterprising Shepherds, mostly transmuters, seek to create their own children to serve Greymoria.

Bearers of the Book: The most benign of Greymoria’s factions, the Bearers speak of the first Book of Magic that the first mortals learned wizardry from. They seek to promote the study of wizardry in any of its forms, even if those wizards don’t primarily worship Greymoria. They hope to increase praise towards Greymoria as people learn the inestimable value of wizardry to society. If there is a public temple to Greymoria outside of Kahdisteria, it’s probably run by the Bearers of the Book. They are naturally very opposed to the Sorcerers’ heresy.

Shadow Hunters: The Hunters spread wizardry and encourage people to become warlocks like many other priests of Greymoria. Their primary purpose though is to hunt down wizards, warlocks, and to a much lesser extent sorcerers who do not worship Greymoria and convert or kill them. Most are satisfied if said arcane caster regularly worships Greymoria alongside others of the Nine, but a few hardliners are satisfied by nothing less than a complete conversion. The Shadow Hunters view the Bearers of the Book as heretics who encourage the spread of magic to the unworthy.

Slayers of the Soft: The Slayers specialize in causing trouble for the congregations and priests of Hallisan, Zarthus, and especially Mera. It’s up to individual Children whether they favor inflicting suffering or endorse outright killing their foes. Drowning is the preferred method of murder since it subverts the benign aspects of water that Mera represents.

Maylar’s Priest Factions

The most common formal name for Maylars priesthoods is the Testers of Strength. If one survives the tests Maylar inflicts on them, that means one is worthy to live. If one is not worthy to live, it’s a self-correcting problem
Maylar’s priests have full autonomy on who to recruit and how to train their recruits. Once the priest has deemed his recruit ready, naturally the Testers demand a test. It varies from person to person and place to place, but all Ordeals are physically demanding. Tests of endurance are the most common involving enduring deprivation or torture (self afflicted or otherwise). Tests of combat are also common, especially for non-spell casting priests. The ordeal doesn’t end until the applicant dies or receives a noticeable sign of Maylar’s approval. For a would-be divine spell caster the sign is usually their first use of divine magic. If the applicant is not a spell caster the sign is usually a disembodied voice or an image seen in gore. The more extreme and obvious the sign is, the greater Maylar’s favor is. Maylar’s priesthood has no cloistered clerics at all. All of Maylar’s priests are expected to be able to fight competently if not exceptionally. Favored souls are usually treated like any other priest. Many favored souls don’t bother with formally espousing Maylar’s tenets and just live as bandit kings or warlords and this suits most other Testers just fine.
Maylar encourages infighting to keep the priesthood strong. When two priests Maylar meet for the first time there usually is expected to be a show of strength by both parties if not an outright duel. Usually where everyone stands is decided quickly, but meetings between equals tend to be very drawn out and are often lethal to one of the participants. Factions based on an individual, dogma, or tactics usually resolve conflicts with other groups in similar ways with aggressive displays and our physical confrontation. Both factions and individuals within the priesthood tend to be territorial. Establishing well defined territories helps priests showcase their strength without constantly fighting each other. Now they only need to fight when territories overlap or when traveling. Most factions are based on the leadership of a single powerful priest rather than ideology or tactics but the classifications below cover many variations on these cults of personality.

Bearers of the Ill Wind: The Bearers of the Ill Wind are the most hated priests of Maylar. Most Bearers are actually unconnected individuals and groups. The faction name is a name given to them by outsiders not themselves. What unites the Bearers is the delight in spreading disease by both supernatural and mundane methods. Some groups and individuals spread disease indiscriminately. Others operate as extortionists, infecting a populace than offering healing services to the highest bidder.

Herders of Men: The Herders of Men are the most benign of all of Maylar’s priests. Maylar is credited by many cultures with having given mortals the secrets of hunting and animal husbandry. Many involved in these professions do acknowledge him but don’t really worship Maylar much. The Herders of Men encourage Maylar worship amongst herders and hunters. They hardly ever “test” people by threatening their lives. Herders tend to be found in areas so dangerous to common people that such imposed tests are deemed unnecessary. The Herders of Men say if their congregations can handle the hard labor, the natural elements all the other threats hunters and herders have to deal with on a daily basis, they are already strong enough and do not require further testing.
The Herders have the stated goal of making Maylar worship more socially acceptable, and they are fairly likely to offer their advice and clerical services with few or no strings attached. They have even begun extending their services to farmers provided the farmers live in a dangerous area and show a willingness to take a hand in their own defense. They do prescribe to tough love and don’t help those they deem incurably weak (but at least they don’t attack the weak, just ignore them). Viewed as heretics by others of the priesthood, they are frequently given severe “testing” by other less benign Maylar priests. Despite this they are mostly thriving and gaining in numbers as their congregations grow.

Nomadic Priests: A number of Maylar’s congregations are bands or tribes outside of civilization, often belonging to the monstrous races. In smaller groups the priests themselves are usually in charge. In larger groups they often act as an advisor or second-in-command to a mighty warlord. Sometimes it’s not clear who is in charge and there is an internal struggle of some sort. Bands and tribes with nomadic Maylar priests are known for their brutality and hostility towards civilization. Bands of highwaymen within civilized lands operate similarly.

Decadents: The Decadents is one of many nicknames given to underground Maylar cults in civilized societies. Decadents are usually wealthy and jaded young nobles or members merchant class who venerate Maylar secretly and live second lives underground where they perform heinous acts both to advance themselves socially and for the perverse thrill it gives them.

Selene Sparks
2018-04-25, 04:14 PM
I can understand that it’s a good idea to minimize the metaphors for real world social injustice so you can get to saving the world, stabbing dragons and taking treasure. All things equal I like a balance between “deep immersion” roleplaying and “kick in the door” roleplaying. As I get older I want less door kicking, but I found without some door kicking an RPG chronicle falters. Fantasy novels as opposed to RPGs, I prefer a lot less door kicking. I don't disagree, it's just that, for myself personally, I dislike having to directly deal with a brand of unpleasantness that I have to deal with regularly. Where I was trying to go with that was that the immersive roleplay doesn't have to go into those kinds of elements. I've found that both myself and my group simply don't like dealing with it, so the RP is both more enjoyable and immersive when we simply have our fantasy worlds be more egalitarian.

Reasonable. I have known my RPG group for many years and I know where the lines are drawn. If I roleplay with strangers or casual acquaintances, I am more cautious. The enduring popularity of Game of Thrones among many demographics shows there is a lot more tolerance for covering very dark and serious issues in fantasy than I previously supposed, but when in doubt, use caution.Anecdotally, most ASoIaF fans I know are men, and I know several women who, when it got brought up, remarked that the gratuitous manner in which it was handled actively put them off the series.

I never said it did. The Order of the Stick example I linked was consensual mating. Highly unorthodox mating, but consensual much like the Draketooths. The Middle Ages had a lot of rape but this one place where historical realism isn’t needed.My apologies. I misinterpreted your "unpleasant implications" remark.

My favorite non-fiction book in Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. I am trying to apply the principles in his book to figure out how people, culture, and technology would diffuse across different a fantasy world in a semi-realistic manner. In this case I am replacing “guns” with “wizardry.” Without using real world examples: Oceans, mountains, deserts and even changes in latitude all slow down the diffusion of culture, technology, and people, that’s why I’m stressing on how to draw my world map.
I figure regions where travel between different lands is easy will have lots of cultural mixing. Regions with very harsh natural barriers to travel will have very little cultural mixing. Granted you got wizards that can cast Teleport and other conveyance spells to make travel easier, but you got have literal monsters at the edge of the map making both overland and sea travel much more dangerous, so it balances out.Guns, Germs, and Steel is a good book.

If a model compatible with real life is what you'd want, one thing that you really need to do is have high level characters be very rare. Teleportation itself is a game-changer on so many levels, and that's without getting into Wall of X/Fabricate, or the like.

Plus, it's really dumb when you get into Forgotten Realms level nonsense of every other innkeeper or tavern-owner is a retired adventurer who's level higher than you.

I was thinking that while the Nine can de-magic their followers this almost never happens. First off, the god in question would fire a warning shot long before denying all spells. Example, when I played a 2nd edition D&D game, my DM thought I was overusing the spell Nap (it lets you get a full eight hours sleep in 10 or 20 minutes) using it to stay awake for watch every single night, and one day my cleric’s deity didn’t let me get any more Nap spells at all for a week. Still got my other spells though.
I figure warning shot one is not getting the spell you ask for. Warning shot two is getting half the spells. Warning shot three is a visit from an outsider affiliated with your god. Then it’s spell stoppage time.I'd still caution against this. Even if it's obviously not as extreme as a paladin, having your long-running character suddenly turned into a worse version of an NPC class isn't a good thing, both from a game perspective, as you've essentially killed the character for all practical purposes, and from an RP perspective, in that if a player has gotten attached to the character, they will likely go out of their way to avoid paths that lead there. Essentially, more good religion-based RP is likely to occur if there isn't a sword of Damocles hanging over their head, especially since, even if you don't intend to drop it, the players will still see it.

I am not sure if it was brought up. But I don’t think most priests would need to cast spells. A priest needs to be able lead regular worship services, provide advice to parishioners, bless babies, and preside over funerals. You don’t need to cast spells to do ANY of that.
I figure a couple ranks of Knowledge (religion) and one rank in Diplomacy or Perform would be all you need for a character to be a priest, but I’m sure each priesthood would want some kind of initiation ceremony, show of loyalty, and a bunch of bells and whistles. I figure the Lawful priesthoods would have formal standardized training and Chaotic priesthoods would base their training on mentor-apprentice pairings with the new recruits following the mentor around and learning on the job. I have about two pages per deity written for how the priesthoods government themselves.
I does help with winning converts to your cause if clerics can magically heal the faithful and smite the unfaithful.I really recommend going the Eberron route here. In Eberron, most priests are low-level experts, trained in Knowledge(Religion) and Perform(Oratory). To be a cleric, you have to have a much deeper faith, on a level most people simply can't really understand, because that's what it takes to be able to get your hands on Divine Magic in Eberron. Related to that, like what we can actually see, people don't just go into a temple and throw a bunch of money on a table and get healing, because mostly what people need is the heal skill anyways. Think about it; most people in the world are first-level NPCs. That means they're sitting on probably around 4-6HP. The amount of healing that most heal spells put out is so much more than a normal person's HP total that the actual number flatly doesn't matter.

There's also the fact that the world becomes pretty unrecognizable the instant you have hordes of healers that can fix literally any malady within 6 seconds just wandering around. In other words, I strongly recommend having both PC classes and high-level characters in general be rare in-world.