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Iceforge
2018-07-31, 04:39 PM
Greetings playgrounders!

I realized that as a Game/Dungeon Master I have a significant lack of knowledge/understanding a subject and hope someone here can help with either a good source or an explanation of the rules of being a God in a pantheon.

And I don't mean system specific rules, like how to play a God/Deity, I mean help me with a general lack of understanding of how that is supposed to work.

In real life I am an atheist, not that it really matters I guess, but might be part of my struggle. While I can wrap my head around how a monotheistic God functions, being omnipotent, and having always just existed, not needing a source for their existance, I don't really understand how a pantheon of Gods makes a lot of sense as a status quo, and in all the roleplaying books I read, it just seems to be assumed you know this.

What qualifies as a God in a pantheon? How come one (or a conspiracy) of other Gods can work together to kill another God, how does that work? How can that even work?

On a fundamental level I never really understood what is the difference between a very powerful being with magical abilities and a deity, if they can both be killed?

It might be explained in great detail somewhere in a core book and I just missed it, would really appreciate anything that explains how thats supposed to work, as it just never on a fundamental level made sense to me, which I on reflection think has been an overall negative to my previous games and I am seeking to improve my future games by seeking help from you, great playgrounders :)

Darth Ultron
2018-07-31, 05:29 PM
What qualifies as a God in a pantheon? How come one (or a conspiracy) of other Gods can work together to kill another God, how does that work? How can that even work?

On a fundamental level I never really understood what is the difference between a very powerful being with magical abilities and a deity, if they can both be killed?


In D&D a being is only a god if they grant their worshipers divine powers and in return get power from their worship. So lots of 'being of power' don't count as gods.

A pantheon is a group of gods, often created or made or hired all at the same time. Each god picks or is assigned a portfolio: A thing that god promotes, likes and encourages. Each pantheon has slots to fill. In a vague sense a pantheon agrees to work together and not directly oppose each other.

A greater, powerful god will be of a vague thing, like peace, war or magic. As the gods go down in power, so will the thing. A god of swords is weaker then the god of battles, and they are both weaker then the god of war.

A god, while very powerful, is not above destruction. Though often it will take a god of equal power or several of lesser powers.

martixy
2018-07-31, 07:10 PM
Wow, this is a broad subject. It will be impossible to cover in a post on a forum thread.

It also makes it very hard to even know where to begin covering the subject.

There are no rules for being a God, as such. Now, I will talk about D&D, because that's the only game where I know how things work.

In game terms, gods only really exist to give players domains and something to worship. That's the end of it.

Past that, how you structure your universe's pantheon is subject only to your tastes and understanding - that's what makes it difficult to talk about. Being an atheist has nothing to do with it. It's about borrowing from culture and history, from all the myriad mythologies that already exist within our world. If anything, that knowledge and historical context is what you seem to lack, not any inclination of faith or the like.

I suppose the easiest way is to find something that strikes your fancy, some mythological pantheon or concept and run with it.

JoeJ
2018-07-31, 09:23 PM
Your question is really hard to answer without delving into how gods are understood in various real world religions. The best I can suggest without violating the forum rules is to read some myths from different cultures and see if you can get kind of a feel for the themes and ideas they tend to have in common.

Andor13
2018-07-31, 10:37 PM
What qualifies as a God in a pantheon? How come one (or a conspiracy) of other Gods can work together to kill another God, how does that work? How can that even work?

On a fundamental level I never really understood what is the difference between a very powerful being with magical abilities and a deity, if they can both be killed?

A) You are accepted into the Pantheon as a God by the other Gods/Head God/Worshippers/Luck.
B) Sometimes it doesn't. Gods spend a lot of time locking up other Gods 'cause they are hard to kill.
C) Sometimes they have a particular bane (Balder & Mistletoe). Sometimes Gods aren't that hard to kill.
D) There isn't always one. Growing up in a Monotheism soaked culture it's hard to grasp, but for polytheistic cultures, and in particular animistic cultures, Gods are usually on a scale from "Can cause a catacylsm accidentally with a good sneeze" to "If you don't pay him his proper respects he'll make your bread go stale, so either pray to him, or smack him upside the head, either works."

Theology is a fairly large field of study, it's kind of hard to sum up.

Anymage
2018-07-31, 10:47 PM
In D&D, gods generally are just really big outsiders. They can grant spells, have certain special powers that relate to their area of specialty, and are usually somewhat bound to their natures. (E.G: don't ever expect a god of justice to bend the rules.) That more closely matches how people in real world polytheistic cultures saw things.

If you want to better wrap your head around things, read up on animism. D&D scale gods let you try and put a face on a massive issue, be that commerce or war or whatever. Animism, where everything has a god but individual gods are usually much smaller and local in scale, should help break you of the idea that all gods must be the large G, omnipotent types.

Knaight
2018-07-31, 11:27 PM
I'm going to shy away from mythology and religion and into fantasy tropes here, but there is some crossover. The short version - polytheism is, if anything, easier to square than monotheism. You've got more human gods, who definitely aren't omniescient or omnipotent, but who also definitely have superhuman powers (though there are exceptions there, there's a L. Sprague de Camp novel with a near forgotten god powered by belief, living in an idol), and usually a near obsession on a narrow focus as well as a lot of very human interactions.

Kitten Champion
2018-08-01, 03:14 AM
I would agree that it depends on how you conceive your setting's gods to be. They could just be powerful beings who've transcended a certain setting-defined power threshold and achieved apotheosis, either literally and divinity is a state of being or merely that they're revered as such by others.

If you want gods to be more elemental forces of reality - tied to some concept or natural phenomenon - the gods as individuals could be personifications of that force and still be "killed" in terms of that persona with its physical body, personality, and memories would being gone but the force itself would either create or find a replacement. Unlike just a god-like mage or similar being, such a god's death would loosen the fabric of reality to undermine the grand design in some fashion - the sun doesn't rise the next day or the moon simply hangs there, there's sudden massive destructive weather phenomenon, tidal waves and earthquakes, dog & cats living together, mass hysteria - it's not just some powerful being's gone but that rules of reality are suddenly in flux and that's objectively horrifying.

I suppose two things should be noted.

Gods allow us to negotiate with Nature, otherwise purely indifferent phenomena like the weather or our impending mortality are then something we can have a say in. That is, if it's an intelligent being with which we can interact. In a pantheon, the negotiations become more complicated in that you need to know who to ask and how, and with that a lot more relevant power structures for each deity are necessary.

The second is scale, gods operate on the biggest scale available. You can treat them in much the same respect as any other competing or allied powers -- empires, kingdoms, clans, street gangs, etc - but the politics they operate in are in the cosmic sphere. It's thus not a great idea to get involved, because you're almost certainly incapable of grasping the bigger picture there.

Cespenar
2018-08-01, 03:20 AM
A pantheon of gods in a status quo isn't that much of a stretch. Just think of them as super powerful politicians, or different mafia bosses of a city. They could take each other down, but the costs are often unforeseeable. And why upset the balance when you're already the top dogs of the multiverse?

Millstone85
2018-08-01, 05:22 AM
On a fundamental level I never really understood what is the difference between a very powerful being with magical abilities and a deity, if they can both be killed?Here are different ways to define divinity beyond power:

* Unmoved Movers
If one sapient being can exist without a cause, why not several? A few might have created the setting, while others moved in at a later point. Being "the god of X" is a way they found to not be constantly at each other's throats. Also, not having a cause doesn't preclude being killable. Alternatively, death to a god just means banishment into the outer void or primordial chaos.

* Embodiments
"The god of X" doesn't just rule over X. He or she is X. And while they can be hurt, it comes with dramatic consequences for the setting, like the sun being unable to rise. Sometimes, it is possible to replace a god.

* Tulpas
A god derives their power from people believing in them, and may have been created by belief in the first place. The belief they need can be anything from true devotion to just having heard of them, the latter making them a living meme. A very popular approach to fantasy godhood, which IMO is also amusingly atheistic.

A setting might use only one type of god, but could just as easily use all of them. For example, it could be said that unmoved movers rarely stick around after putting things in motion, preferring to go from one genesis project to another, each time leaving embodiments in charge. In turn, embodiments are not really interested in running churches, and let mortals create their own idols. Alternatively, gods combine all three traits. The are unmoved movers who became various aspects of the universe, and rely on their believers for extra juice.

BWR
2018-08-01, 07:43 AM
In D&D a being is only a god if they grant their worshipers divine powers and in return get power from their worship. So lots of 'being of power' don't count as gods.



Incorrect. Gaining power from worshippers is not a prerequisite. E.g. the gods of Dragonlance.
Also, some non-divine beings have in certain editions granted powers to worshippers, yet aren't considered gods. Clerics in some earlier editions gained lower level divine spells from lesser servitors of their patron instead of the god directly.


A pantheon is a group of gods, often created or made or hired all at the same time. Each god picks or is assigned a portfolio: A thing that god promotes, likes and encourages. Each pantheon has slots to fill. In a vague sense a pantheon agrees to work together and not directly oppose each other.


Except when they don't. E.g. Mystara has pantheons, in the sense that there are a collection of gods that are worshipped in the same culture, but these gods don't so much have portfolios as spheres of political or hobby interest, which may or may not overlap. There is no such thing as 'slots to fill'. Not every concept is considered important enough in any given culture to have gods dedicated to that concept, and sometimes they do directly oppose each other (Shar and Selune from FR are an example).



A greater, powerful god will be of a vague thing, like peace, war or magic. As the gods go down in power, so will the thing. A god of swords is weaker then the god of battles, and they are both weaker then the god of war.


Mostly true, but again you can find exceptions.

Darth Ultron
2018-08-01, 01:30 PM
Incorrect. Gaining power from worshippers is not a prerequisite. E.g. the gods of Dragonlance.
Also, some non-divine beings have in certain editions granted powers to worshippers, yet aren't considered gods. Clerics in some earlier editions gained lower level divine spells from lesser servitors of their patron instead of the god directly.

Well, I'd wonder why you though Dragonlance gods were so unique. I have sure never seen anything that said that specifically.

I guess you could say a 'lesser servant' grants powers from the gods power indirectly, or some thing....but no matter the method, is it still not coming from the gods?




Except when they don't. E.g. Mystara has pantheons, in the sense that there are a collection of gods that are worshipped in the same culture, but these gods don't so much have portfolios as spheres of political or hobby interest, which may or may not overlap. There is no such thing as 'slots to fill'. Not every concept is considered important enough in any given culture to have gods dedicated to that concept, and sometimes they do directly oppose each other (Shar and Selune from FR are an example).

I guess your saying each pantheon is different? Ok...




Mostly true, but again you can find exceptions.

Guess you can find exceptions for everything?

Faily
2018-08-01, 03:22 PM
Well, I'd wonder why you though Dragonlance gods were so unique. I have sure never seen anything that said that specifically.

I guess you could say a 'lesser servant' grants powers from the gods power indirectly, or some thing....but no matter the method, is it still not coming from the gods?




I guess your saying each pantheon is different? Ok...




Guess you can find exceptions for everything?

1. Dragonlance gods are not reliant on being worshipped as a source of power. There was a long time on Krynn where they were not worshipped.

2. Mystara Pantheons are social constructs of mortals, not constructs of the Immortals (gods).

3. There is no grand-sweeping "this is how Gods work" in D&D settings. Eberron is vastly different from Forgotten Realms, which is different again from Mystara, which is nothing like Greyhawk, which is nothing like Dark Sun.... you get the idea.

Darth Ultron
2018-08-01, 04:29 PM
1. Dragonlance gods are not reliant on being worshipped as a source of power. There was a long time on Krynn where they were not worshipped.

Not exactly true as many did still worship the gods even during the dark times. Still, I have never seen any D&D book that has said ''Dragonlance gods are different and special". Any book that has mentioned them treats them exactly like any other pantheon of gods.



2. Mystara Pantheons are social constructs of mortals, not constructs of the Immortals (gods).

Sure, but still the gods ''play along''....so it does not matter much.



3. There is no grand-sweeping "this is how Gods work" in D&D settings. Eberron is vastly different from Forgotten Realms, which is different again from Mystara, which is nothing like Greyhawk, which is nothing like Dark Sun.... you get the idea.

True, but D&D does have grand sweeping rules of this is how gods work.

BWR
2018-08-01, 04:33 PM
Well, I'd wonder why you though Dragonlance gods were so unique. I have sure never seen anything that said that specifically.


Huh? I'm merely pointing out counter examples to your misinformed statements.



I guess you could say a 'lesser servant' grants powers from the gods power indirectly, or some thing....but no matter the method, is it still not coming from the gods?


Or they could come from their own powers. I don't recall any place stating that angels/aasimon/whatever get their powers directly from a god. These tend to be innate, no?



I guess your saying each pantheon is different? Ok...


I am. You were the one saying they all had these certain rules to follow.



Guess you can find exceptions for everything?
And if there are exceptions, sweeping statements about 'this is the way things are' are wrong and need to be corrected.

Anymage
2018-08-01, 04:50 PM
Not exactly true as many did still worship the gods even during the dark times. Still, I have never seen any D&D book that has said ''Dragonlance gods are different and special". Any book that has mentioned them treats them exactly like any other pantheon of gods.

How often are monster dietary requirements listed out, and how often are those relevant in a game?

It's similar whether gods "eat" belief or whether they're self-sustaining. It might be relevant for some campaigns, but for the vast majority, it isn't. So long as they work the same as far as rules are involved (whether that involves granting spells or players who feel suicidally combative), I don't see why the rulebooks would call out trivial distinctions.

Thrudd
2018-08-01, 04:51 PM
Each setting has its own answers. If you want to know what the deal is with the deities in Forgotten Realms (or another specific setting), there are books or websites that explains that cosmology, and people on the forum here I'm sure could describe any of the cosmologies in detail. You just need to specify which fictional world you're asking about.

If you are designing your own setting to work with D&D, you can invent anything you want that explains the mechanics of the game. From the point of view of the characters/people in the world, there is something that they pray to, and with special training some people can get spells by that praying or meditating or focusing real hard. Everything else is up to you. You probably want to explain what it is that lets some people get certain spells, and other people get other sets of spells. Where do the different domains come from, why are clerics ands druids and paladins different, etc. But the answer to any of those things doesn't need to be a pantheon of gods (that is just the easiest/most common answer).

Segev
2018-08-01, 04:57 PM
Leaving D&D and other gaming aside, the definition of "a pantheon" is literally "all of the gods." This is, in its original usage, religion-specific.

Thus, you have "the Greek Pantheon," and "the Egyptian Pantheon," and "the Roman Pantheon," and "the Hindu Pantheon" (although the Hindu one is...interesting...in the question of what's a 'god,' since they have several classes of beings which may or may not qualify; if you really are interested, I'd research it, but I don't know enough to do more than say, "It's complex."). Essentially, any religion that recognizes the existence of a particular group of deities as all being deities defines that group of deities as "a pantheon."

In modern fiction dealing with various religious god-groupings as story elements (I am no longer dealing with them as real belief systems, but as fiction about those belief systems, and this is in now way meant to be a commentary on the religions themselves, merely how they're depicted in modern fiction), we will often see more than one pantheon coexisting. We have enough differentiation between the cultures that hosted the religions that worshipped and believed in these pantheons to be able to recognize a distinction. If the Norse and Greek gods are both real in a setting, we might term them as belonging to different pantheons because we know the Norse group has its own unified history and religious doctrine and set of stories which - even if they're not 100% self-consistent - more or less fit together in a single "mythos." It takes work in the fiction-writing to make the Norse and Greek pantheons' respective stories line up in a way that both can exist. (Some fictions take the position that Odin is Zeus and the like; this is how the Romans tended to weld other pantheons' gods into theirs.)

In D&D, you'll get two rough classes of pantheons: the ones we already discussed, dragged into the D&D settings and planted as local culture-groups' religions and plastered into the various planes (some all as one, some scattered around as befits each god's personality and depicted alignment); and the ones constructed specifically for various settings.

Some settings will have a single pantheon. Just all of the gods (literally what "pantheon" means, remember) of it form a single coherent mythos. Others will cluster them a bit more, having an "elven pantheon" and a "dwarven pantheon" and the like.

So, for a D&D - or any other multi-pantheon fictional setting - usage, a "pantheon" is essentially an extended family or tribe of gods. In truth, they form a unified, at least semi-coherent mythos, and they are generally concerned with the same subset of mortal affairs ("the Greeks," or "the Elves," etc.), such that if there is conflict in the pantheon, it is over their shared subset of interests. Corellan Larathean will always be more concerned with the evil dealings of Lolth than he is with the malfeasance of Vecna. He-Man will always be more likely to be the hero you seek out for help against Skeletor than against Megatron. In terms of fictional multiverses, this is what makes a "pantheon:" their relationships are to each other more than to the gods outside of their pantheon.

You could actually do an interesting study in crossover fics - particularly massive crossovers between numerous franchises - in defining each of the individual crossed franchises as having a "pantheon" of heroes and villains who are more likely to show up together (as allies or mutual antagonists) than they are with others.


Does that help?

Thrudd
2018-08-01, 05:07 PM
He-Man will always be more likely to be the hero you seek out for help against Skeletor than against Megatron.
That might be a fun setting - a world where 80's Saturday morning action cartoon characters are worshipped as deities. The trinity of Power: He-Man, Optimus Prime, and Lion-O. The Order Militant of St.Joe the G.I. The evil high priest of Cobra!!!

Segev
2018-08-01, 05:16 PM
That might be a fun setting - a world where 80's Saturday morning action cartoon characters are worshipped as deities. The trinity of Power: He-Man, Optimus Prime, and Lion-O. The Order Militant of St.Joe the G.I. The evil high priest of Cobra!!!

Heck, Cobra is practically a cult already. "Hail Cobra!"

Florian
2018-08-01, 10:27 PM
What qualifies as a God in a pantheon? How come one (or a conspiracy) of other Gods can work together to kill another God, how does that work? How can that even work?

Think of it like this: Earlier cultures used gods as explanation models for how physics and existence work. Everything important at that particular time and culture was basically either turned into a god or at least featured in the story of a god.

So, unlike monotheistic religions, the individual gods in a pantheon are not omnipotent and omnipresent, working more on a human scale, but again, the pantheon itself is by making up the sum of all existence.

Also note that in this model/these myths, a place in the pantheon rarely stays empty and itīs always up to epic heroes to try and ascent to godhood.

As for the "what qualifies" question, let me put it this way: For the gods themselves, a pantheon doesn't exist - you either are a god or similar mythical/powerful creature or you are not. Itīs important to note that real world polytheistic believes had large amounts of overlap, for example between the roman and the greek pantheons or the scandinlavic Odin being the germanic Wotan.

Golarion, the Pathfinder default setting, is actually a good example. Major Deities are the ones that turn up in every racial, cultural or regional pantheon. They're always the same, just sometimes with different names. Minor Deities are more specific to a race, culture or region and will only be included in those specific pantheons. For example, the gods of "life and death", "the sun", "nature" are always the same, no matter what pantheon, but the elves also have a god of "portals", while some cultures have a god of "honor" in their pantheon that others just lack.

Millstone85
2018-08-02, 06:52 AM
Think of it like this: Earlier cultures used gods as explanation models for how physics and existence work.An interesting quirk of D&D lore is that you have:
* Primordials, basically uber-elementals.
* Archfey and powerful wildlife spirits.
* Estelar, preoccupied with higher concepts.
* Alien entities that go Y' ymg' mgr'luh.

... but only the third group is referred to as "the gods".

CharonsHelper
2018-08-02, 07:44 AM
I'm just going to jump in and complain about my pet peeve. :smallfurious:

When used in the context of polytheism, the word "god" is not capitalized. It's capitalized in the context of monotheism because it can be used interchangeably with their name.

I know that it's a common error since the vast majority of the time in the western world one is talking about monotheism - but still an error!

NichG
2018-08-02, 10:12 AM
Greetings playgrounders!

I realized that as a Game/Dungeon Master I have a significant lack of knowledge/understanding a subject and hope someone here can help with either a good source or an explanation of the rules of being a God in a pantheon.

And I don't mean system specific rules, like how to play a God/Deity, I mean help me with a general lack of understanding of how that is supposed to work.

In real life I am an atheist, not that it really matters I guess, but might be part of my struggle. While I can wrap my head around how a monotheistic God functions, being omnipotent, and having always just existed, not needing a source for their existance, I don't really understand how a pantheon of Gods makes a lot of sense as a status quo, and in all the roleplaying books I read, it just seems to be assumed you know this.

What qualifies as a God in a pantheon? How come one (or a conspiracy) of other Gods can work together to kill another God, how does that work? How can that even work?

On a fundamental level I never really understood what is the difference between a very powerful being with magical abilities and a deity, if they can both be killed?

It might be explained in great detail somewhere in a core book and I just missed it, would really appreciate anything that explains how thats supposed to work, as it just never on a fundamental level made sense to me, which I on reflection think has been an overall negative to my previous games and I am seeking to improve my future games by seeking help from you, great playgrounders :)

If I want to do this seriously (in the sense of running a game about it, or playing a character who is actually actively 'pantheoning'), I think the most important thing is to start from the assumption that anything within the pantheon cannot kill or directly reduce the agency of anything else in the pantheon without themselves losing more than the one they take from.

The usual 'mortal' stories are about ascendancy, growth, improvement, changing fortunes, etc - fundamentally, they're about creatures that through their finiteness embody and represent the essence of change. A mortal story has a force that was powerful become weak or a force that was weak become powerful, and the really epic ones have that happen to forces which seemed immortal but were brought within the sphere of mortality by an exceptional circumstance - felling empires, killing gods, etc.

A pantheon on the other hand essentially represents something that is internally a status quo - the immortality of it is that given thousands of years of opportunity, these are the entities who formed some kind of stable coexistence. If they could kill eachother without a cost they are unwilling to pay, they would have done it long ago. If they could gain permanent advantage over one another, they would have done it. Those entities too weak to not have a dead man's switch or guarantee of their own continuance are the failed and imprisoned monsters of bygone eras, not the gods that remain.

This doesn't mean that a member of the pantheon can't be killed, but it means that killing them should barring very exceptional circumstances almost always be the worst move you could make. These are individuals who have made themselves into the load-bearing columns of reality to protect themselves from ancient and festering grudges. These are beings that hate and love each-other as intensely as it is possible to do, and yet cannot find any sort of permanent satisfaction or settlement. Kill Death for stealing your favorite mortal and all of the primordial beings of chaos that were dispatched aeons ago return as the very thing keeping them sealed away ceases to exist - and the threat they pose is far worse than death itself.

So as a result, since they cannot afford to actually knock each-other off or scheme for power over each-other, they turn to the world of mortals to play out their conflicts - catharsis through the risks, sacrifice, and victories of their pawns, champions, and avatars. Those who are truly good simply want to save as much as they can from the depredations of the others or promote beauty or growth in the world, while all the while forced to abide cleaning up after those who feel more intensely their own animus than any sense of obligation to reality - because they cannot fundamentally stop them without a much greater cost being paid.

If I'm running this as a game of gods, first off give all PCs the following abilities:

- Cannot be destroyed, unmade, corrupted, or controlled
- Can choose at any moment to become un-interactable by any force in existence

Then, the positive elements:

- Some thing or things to care about, which represent the character's influence and motivation within the world. If a player wants to play the god of Beauty, then perhaps the thing which sustains and connects them to the world are great works of art, conclaves of aesthetic cultists, or even just the cleanliness of modern cities. While not necessary to do god stuff, these foci will make themselves available to the deity as convenient extensions of their will, and that which damages or profanes them will immediately become known to the character. Without investment in the world, a god-character is pointless.

- Some actual proactive power to influence the world by fiat, but it doesn't have to be much. Generally here I focus on themes of boon, bane, creation, change, restriction, and removal - but turned to those in the world. A PC deity might find that ideas they have or things they say become manifest as new inventions or even new laws of physics for mortals to take advantage of. Or if they do not like something, that thing might be stricken from existence or its usage might be limited in some form. These things are more part of the characters' natures than things they specifically have mastery over, at least at first - making a new kind of magic for just a single chosen one is harder than making a new kind of magic for everyone.

Now toss in a reason why not everyone can get what they want, and watch the chaos unfold. Since the characters can't kill each-other or stop each-other, the only possible dynamic is negotiation and compromise. But at the same time, there should be no perfect compromise to be had either. So you end up with a kind of turbulent stasis - they'll all work together because the alternative is worse, but at the same time no one is perfectly satisfied. Scale up the timescale of the campaign to a century a session (but of course, as gods, a little negotiation with the resident psychopomp lets the PCs keep their favorite mortals around in soul form, keeping a consistency of personality going in the campaign), throw external influences in, or have the occasional rare opportunity to break the status quo, and you've got a game. Ultimately, in some form or another, the fundamental tension and question of the game is going to have something to do with coming to terms with and shaping the infinite.

Max_Killjoy
2018-08-03, 12:41 PM
Greetings playgrounders!

I realized that as a Game/Dungeon Master I have a significant lack of knowledge/understanding a subject and hope someone here can help with either a good source or an explanation of the rules of being a God in a pantheon.

And I don't mean system specific rules, like how to play a God/Deity, I mean help me with a general lack of understanding of how that is supposed to work.

In real life I am an atheist, not that it really matters I guess, but might be part of my struggle. While I can wrap my head around how a monotheistic God functions, being omnipotent, and having always just existed, not needing a source for their existance, I don't really understand how a pantheon of Gods makes a lot of sense as a status quo, and in all the roleplaying books I read, it just seems to be assumed you know this.

What qualifies as a God in a pantheon? How come one (or a conspiracy) of other Gods can work together to kill another God, how does that work? How can that even work?

On a fundamental level I never really understood what is the difference between a very powerful being with magical abilities and a deity, if they can both be killed?

It might be explained in great detail somewhere in a core book and I just missed it, would really appreciate anything that explains how thats supposed to work, as it just never on a fundamental level made sense to me, which I on reflection think has been an overall negative to my previous games and I am seeking to improve my future games by seeking help from you, great playgrounders :)


I'd love to help on this but we're not allowed to reference any actual examples here (except when some of us are).

Vaguely, if you look at some of those historical pantheons, their origin myths trace back to a singular figure of some sort.

Segev
2018-08-03, 01:14 PM
I'd love to help on this but we're not allowed to reference any actual examples here (except when some of us are).

Vaguely, if you look at some of those historical pantheons, their origin myths trace back to a singular figure of some sort.

What we're not allowed to do is discuss them as religions. We can discuss the stories about them as long as we're clear that we're discussing stories-told-as-stories, and not making any commentary on the actual religions, themselves, as they were (or maybe still are) practiced. Probably best to steer clear of discussing historical practices of any who worshipped them, let alone modern practices of any worshippers of any particular religion.

At least, that's my understanding. If I'm wrong, hopefully somebody who knows better will show up and politely clarify. But it would seem counterproductive to restrict any discussion of the mythoi, as it would also start to impede the fundamental purpose of this subforum, since all it would take is somebody claiming they actually worshipped, say, Vecna, for that to make any discussion of fiction-about-Vecna verboten.

Max_Killjoy
2018-08-03, 01:35 PM
What we're not allowed to do is discuss them as religions. We can discuss the stories about them as long as we're clear that we're discussing stories-told-as-stories, and not making any commentary on the actual religions, themselves, as they were (or maybe still are) practiced. Probably best to steer clear of discussing historical practices of any who worshipped them, let alone modern practices of any worshippers of any particular religion.

At least, that's my understanding. If I'm wrong, hopefully somebody who knows better will show up and politely clarify. But it would seem counterproductive to restrict any discussion of the mythoi, as it would also start to impede the fundamental purpose of this subforum, since all it would take is somebody claiming they actually worshipped, say, Vecna, for that to make any discussion of fiction-about-Vecna verboten.

My experience is that there's no way to know where the line actually is, even for posts dealing entirely and only with completely fictional deities.

It's a large part of why my posting rate here went way down.

Darth Ultron
2018-08-03, 01:40 PM
My experience is that there's no way to know where the line actually is, even for posts dealing entirely and only with completely fictional deities.

You could stick to what is published in the Game Books. If it's in a game book, it's about the fictional people, places and things in the game.....and has nothing to do with reality.

Also, if you feel the need, you can always use other fiction, like comics or movies.

Anymage
2018-08-03, 02:55 PM
I'm just going to jump in and complain about my pet peeve. :smallfurious:

When used in the context of polytheism, the word "god" is not capitalized. It's capitalized in the context of monotheism because it can be used interchangeably with their name.

I know that it's a common error since the vast majority of the time in the western world one is talking about monotheism - but still an error!

I'd wager that a lot of us are using mobile devices, and those will generally autocorrect to capitalize. Because people in our real world are more likely to use the capitalized case, and the people who program soft keyboard dictionaries work with that assumption.

And honestly, given how often mobile devices can take a word that's a perfectly correct english word and replace it with another one that its autofill predictions think is more likely, having people talk about the God of magic is pretty low on the list of autocorrect annoyances.

Iceforge
2018-08-04, 01:14 PM
Thanks for all the replies, a lot of helpful stuff has been posted.

Background for asking, besides improving myself as DM, is that I had usually just stuck to the Greyhawk deities in the book and usually which religion someone followed was more flavor to the character than anything else, as we rarely, if ever, play games where the characters get personally involved with the deities in any way.

Then I started preparing for creating a game in the Scarred Lands setting, which has an interesting story and setup in my view, but does have much more involved deities, given how one of the primary points of the setting is that the gods have very recently lead a war to kill their titan creators, or well, imprison them at least.

And part of the lore in the setting included some of the gods conspiring to kill one of the other gods, who was not sideing with the rest in the pre-war discussions about killing the titans being necessary, and it just struck me that I have absolutely no clue how divinity is supposed to function in such a setting, and getting a deeper understanding of that might improve this and other games in general, so big thanks to everyone who has replied here, lot of bits and pieces from various replies really does help me my understanding, and much appreciated given how difficult a subject it is to discuss due to its close possible ties to real world religions