My world is built on competing priesthoods, I'm not 100% that's a good idea.

[Scalenex]

Once the nation of Arkada was a bastion of civilization. Indeed, (in other countries,) it is remembered as the center of a golden age of art and learning. Some statues, buildings, aquaducts, and roads remain from that era, but few Arkadans remember those days as other than improbable myths.
…..

The wheel sometimes rolls backward.

You write excellent prose all the time, Brian. If you published something I would pay money to read it.

Well, the problem you've stumbled upon is that the alignments are not at all equal in terms of how influential they are, or how many people are likely to follow them. Societies, by and large, are overwhelmingly going to be lawful, and most people in those societies will tend to follow lawful precepts either devotedly (those of lawful alignment), or because it's convenient to do so (those who are neutral), with only a handful of chaotic individuals resisting the norm. As part of this, most of the leaders and administrators of those societies will be lawful as well - if you're administrating a nation, you'll want it to be well-run and orderly. Actually, at least in the real world, most people favor order over chaos. There are few truly chaotic individuals - a lot of people who might be described as having a chaotic alignment they typically oppose particular forms of law and order that stifle them, rather than being truly anarchic.

On top of this, evil is not quite equivalent to good, simply because there are more reasons to be good than there are to be evil - and people who are evil do so largely out of self-interest, not for evil's sake, at least in the real world. Most cultures have their own idea of "good," and "evil," but in every case "good" is meant to strengthen the society, and "evil" is whatever harms it.

Yes, this is D&D. But if you can't tell, I don't particularly care for D&D's alignments.

I am inclined to agree. I used to really like the system of alignments, now I like them less. I created my nine deities using the nine alignments as a baseline, but I’m trying to diverge from the basic alignment descriptions more and more as I develop them further.

I am a Star Trek fan and I really like Deep Space Nine in particular. I notice that alignment charts for the various characters don’t agree. It’s all relative to each other. That’s probably because Star Trek is a hyper lawful setting. The Federation is ruled by rigid laws and Starfleet follows a strict code. Cardassia values loyalty to the state above all else. Romulus is largely the same. The Bajora follow the will of the prophets without question. The Klingon’s may kill each other in challenges but they have a strict code. The Ferengi have 285 Rules of Acquisition. The Dominion is tightly controlled. The Borg are a hive mind. I would say a vast majority of Star Trek characters would be Lawful by D&D terms but you can still sort them on the alignment chart. Few if any Star Trek characters are Chaotic but are some are Chaotic compared to the others.

None of my evil gods really delight in evil. What unites my three evil gods is that all three deities believe they deserve a bigger piece of the pie. When the Nine battled their tyrannical progenitor the three evil deities walked away believing that their contribution to the battle was the greatest and therefore they deserve the most worship and power.
Before the Nine fought their creator Turoch, they poisoned him by feeding him mutilated souls. Greymoria tortured souls so that they were poisonous when consumed. This horrified the other mortals when they found out about this causing mortals to turn away from worshipping Greymoria, but Greymoria would like to point out without her supposed “atrocity” no mortals would have survived at all.
Phidas told the lies to get Turoch to eat the poison and Turoch attacked him first, ripping off his face. Phidas was technically the first to break his oath of fealty to Turoch and he suffered the most for it. This is why Phidas embodies contracts and punishment. Turoch vowed he’d come back and said he’d kill Phidas first. Turoch’s death created a dark realm called the Void which is basically my version of the Negative Energy Plane. Phidas maintains the safeguards to keep the Void from destroying the world. He’s evil, but the good gods trust him to safeguard the world out of fear for his own safety.
When the Nine fought Turoch, Maylar played possum early in the fight than sucker punched Turoch and struck the killing blow. Because he actually slew Turoch he believes he deserves the biggest piece of the pie.
The good gods are generally interested in actively helping the mortals live better lives and my Neutral gods generally believe in leaving to them to their own devices with only occasional guidance from the Nine.

Anyway, the source of the problem, I think, is that each of the alignments appeals to certain types of people, and while individuals may gravitate to any of the nine alignments, people in general, and people in certain professions, will lean towards certain alignments, again and again, for the same reasons.

That's not a particularly deep observation, I know, so I'll share a little of what I did for _my_ setting - each of the deities represent philosophies or concepts, but these philosophies are more like overarching concepts rather than fine details, and there's a lot of room for interpretation. Different cultures may worship the same god, but that worship - as well as what the god means to each culture - varies.

For instance, suppose there's a god of the sea. In one culture, based on a series of islands the god of the sea is provider (there are a lot of fisherman in that culture), and protector (for keeping them isolated from other nations). In another culture, on a coastline often wracked by hurricanes, he's still a provider, but he's also a chaotic and wrathful deity. In still another, an alliance of pirates, the sea god might represent freedom, fortune, and even music and brotherhood (sea shanties and singing them with a crew!).

In another case, imagine a goddess of the night. In many cultures, she might be feared as a force of evil, for the night is hard to see in and holds countless monsters. But for more nocturnal races, she might be a deity of the hunt or of protection. And for human cultures with a more favorable view of the night, she may embody mysticism and wonder (the night sky and astrology).

Now, how does this translate into deities of each of the alignments? Well, one way to vary it up between cities and cultures is to consider - what does each culture consider Good, Evil, Lawful, and Chaotic? And while you're at it, what factors might shift a culture along one axis?

I hope that helps. I probably have a different idea of the role of deities than you do, but I hope my suggestions are at least food for thought.

This is a good way to look at things. I need to put some thought into this.

If you want to preserve monarchies and nobility, you can include bloodline entailed magic (ala sorcerers or some forms of warlocks) or you can simply make a convincing case that the Sword Bros can handle themselves.

I do have one large nation where the nobles are hereditary sorcerers. I’m still playtesting the rules of my homebrew system. Relative to D&D 2nd and 3.5, the two D&Ds I’ve extensively played, magic is less powerful in my world. Very useful but there is no raising the dead, no teleporting hundreds of miles, no smiting armies with one spell.
I don’t know about a societal level, based on playtesting, on an adventuring party level, non-spellcasters are just as useful as spell-casters. When it comes to fighting goblins and monsters and whatnot buff spells on warriors seem more efficient than having the warriors sword things while the spell-casters blast things.
Based on this, it is conceivable that a warlord could hold on to power against a wizard or a spell casting cleric, at least sometimes.

Your real issue is that in having a god of bureaucracy means that the government will always be much more similar to Confucian states, which have centralized governments vaguely like our modern ones, than to Western Feudalism, which is basically confederal warlordism. But often fantasy settings more resemble this anyway, since the writers are moderns native to the modern city state!

I hadn’t thought of this but you are absolutely right. I tend to drift towards making things in my supposedly medieval world analogous to modern governments.

I think also you are underestimating the chaotic gods. The whole history of civilization until very recently has been the slow extinguishing of human's natural way of life and its replacement with state-forms born of sedentary agriculture. It was really not that long ago, even in incredibly densely packed Europe, when one could "head for the hills" and join a society that lived in tribal anarchies as humans have for ten thousand of years. Even into the eighteen hundreds, people who were kidnapped into Native American tribes often "went native" whereas the reverse was almost never the case (and the kidnappings did occur in reverse). Such societies would clamor for song, rain, and freedom.

Wisely said. I should probably put more wilderness and more barbarians in my setting.

(Probably not animal husbandry though)

Well Maylar lumped animal husbandry and hunting practices togethers. He wanted mortals to attribute killing lesser beings as the path to power and sustenance.
But going beyond Maylar, I viewed animal husbandary as being tied to chaotic people because I really like the idea of Chaotic people riding through the steppes of Mongola, herding reindeer in Scandanavia or punching cattle In the American West.

By contrast, a world that's mostly truly conquered territory, that's bent either to agricultural or industrial purposes through human(oid) engineering is also one that's probably on the verge of mass democracy (there's no vent for the pressure states impose and the crowding makes states more dependent on cooperation). And in a mass democracy (or even a state negotiating avoiding that, as pre-19th century Britain or Bismarck's Germany), gods that center freedom and independence (like Zarthus) will be very popular. So it's only in relatively narrow circumstances (early age of exploration, games modeled on the American expansion into the West) that I think the chaotic gods would be genuinely on the outs with humanity.

Wisely said.