Quote Originally Posted by nweismuller View Post
I'm not really familiar with Eberron; how is my setup an inversion of theirs? The 'names and titles' thing was something that honestly... just sort of happened during development, for its part. The key thing I wanted to accomplish with this was to make both major sides of the religious divide feel like religions people might actually follow, and stepping away from the fairly strange D&D polytheism assumption where everybody has some particular patron god and aren't really engaged with other gods, instead having each major pantheon be its own religious structure. This is also why none of the evil gods end up looking like Erythnul or Nerull or the like, gods that only a certified lunatic would actually follow- I had a design goal that they'd have an actual appealing hook for people, even if the overall patterns of behavior they promote are... not great.
So "worship of the pantheon" is also pretty common in Eberron.

Allow me to explain. In that setting, there are several distinct faiths. Not really "competing", because they all sort of have different focus. The Church of the Silver Flame, for example, follows the teachings revolving around the Silver Flame, an energy which is a force for good. They seek to show compassion and generosity, and fiercely oppose supernatural evil.

Back on topic, the most common religion in the setting is the Sovereign Host. The SH has 9 deities, all of whom have names (Onatar is the god of the Forge and invention, for example). The SH has a dark side, however, the Dark Six. They are only referred to by their titles (The Devourer, The Fury, The Mockery, etc). Obscure religious scholars might know that the Dark Six do have names, but they're rarely invoked (The Mockery's original name was Dol Azur, for example, brother to Dol Dorn and Dol Arrah of the SH). There are those who worship the Six, usually for selfish reasons, but this is often not public.

The SH is usually worshipped as a whole. A blacksmith might have a special reverence for Onatar, or a farmer for Arawai, but for the most part, people worship the whole Host.

The kicker is that the SH may or may not even be real. They aren't powerful celestial with bodies, personalities, and agendas, like in FR. Rather, Onatar is thought to be present in every Forge, Arawai in every harvest, etc.

That's the gist of it. The parallel I saw was that the evil gods of yours had names and the good/Neutral ones didn't. That's all.

I do like what you've got tho.