Pantheon Structuring?

[unglitteringold]

How do you structure your pantheon when presenting it to players?

My default has always been the old school alignment chart, each of the gods plopped in their box with their portfolios, favored weapons and domains. Lately, however, I haven't been telling my players anything about them unless they asked. This has lead to some interesting discoveries through game play. And when someone does want to know about the gods, I give them a series of short stories that span from the start of time to the birth of mortals.

Structuring the pantheon by heredity has changed my players' relationship with the deities considerably - it makes them more <i>real</i>, I think.

So when you tell a player about your pantheon, how do you go about it?

[johnbragg]

My pantheon works very much as a pantheon. My players are based in a very small village, where there is a single temple to the pantheon with a single priest. I only bothered to sketch out the pantheon when it became a plot point. I started with the FAther and Mother and Child, then added the Old Man (ancestor expys), the Farmer and Hunter and Herdsman (that makes a nice Seven). Also the Scribe, the Smith, the Weaver, the Beauty, the Warrior and the Joybringer. (That makes Thirteen, another good number).

Oh, and when I told my players about the pantheon:
--I told them that different parts of the world have different names for these gods, but the pantheon-believers believe they're the same god
--Some pantheon-believers structure the pantheon a little differently--if we were on the coast, the Sealord would be in the pantheon, maybe not the Hunter, but it varies
--Deities are not necessarily consistent. The Warrior in one country might be a god of strategy and skill and discipline, while in another area might be a red god of blood and rage and madness.
--what's important to most people is not being right, but in having the gods on your side and not mad at you.

When this was sketched out, it was because a barbarian had come in and beat the cleric into submission, and the PCs showed up and turned the barbarian into a bloody smear across the temple floor. So the temple had to be re-consecrated, and I had to come up with a ritual and sketch out the pantheon.

[Jendekit]

What I'm planning on for my next big campaign is inspired by LudicSavant's deity write ups. If the players want to know something about a given deity, they need to roll a Knowledge check.

In addition, every god has REASONS why they would be worshiped. They are heroes to some and villains to other. Even Hextor, the guy that in classic D&D is basically a glorified bully, has justifiable reasons for having worshipers.

[LudicSavant]

So when you tell a player about your pantheon, how do you go about it?

I like to lead with something that makes being a member of that faith or interacting with cultures where that faith is present interesting for PCs. It can just be a sentence or two, but it should be a hook that sparks ideas for character concepts or story arcs, or at least curiosity to learn more. Think something like the way adventure hooks are often presented, except instead of an adventure, it's a hook for the revered teachings of Kord, the enlightened Sage of Pain.

Also, as Jendekit alluded to, I tend to organize information by who knows what. Okay, sure, Erandis d'Vol might be secretly manipulating the Blood of Vol religion, but why even tell players that? It's just metagame information from the player perspective, not to mention it spoils the big reveal. It's generally more important to present gods in terms of their worshipers, their priests, the cultural practices of those who have faith in them. Why? Because that's the stuff that establishes the world the players come from, and the environment that shaped the PCs in their backstories. I want to know about the clerics of Corellon Larethian and what makes them special even more than I want to know about Corellon Larethian himself.

Besides that, I guess I organize by culture and/or location. Religions A, B, and C are influential in culture X or region Y, that sort of thing. If you go to Thrane, you're going to hear about the Silver Flame at some point. Often covering a culture will lead naturally into explaining something of the gods that are revered or feared in that culture.

I make a point of avoiding structuring a pantheon according to something like classes or alignments or a list of portfolio "boxes" or some other sort of checklist or matching game. IMHO, a player should want to pick a god because they find something fascinating about that religion's presence in the world, not because they saw "Oh, I'm a Lawful Good Fighter, so I guess I'll pick the Lawful Good Fighter God."

[Mechalich]

The Resvier Pantheon is strongly identified as a Pantheon - in particular it has a name: The Ten, and most people identify as worshippers of The Ten rather than as worshippers of a particular god - which is how they differentiate themselves from the non-godly faiths of druidism, ancestor worship, and worship of the setting's frightful vaguely Lovecraftian elder entity. Effectively worship of the divine pantheon is a single polytheistic faith and the worship of individual gods represent sects within that faith. The ten individual gods compete against each other, but they also work together to try and reduce the influence of those pesky druids and heretical ancestor worshippers (and they'd unite against the elder too except that it can thrash their collective hides).

The gods are divided by alignment, but each also has a significant portfolio, so that even people who don't agree with them have reason to worship them (except the chaotic evil god, he doesn't have many redeeming traits and society kind of shoves him aside). Ex. the lawful evil god is the god of war and the god of business, which is a significant portfolio that gives him importance in life even to people who don't identify with lawful evil at all.

The Ten serves as a universal, global pantheon. No other gods are allowed to muscle in from other worlds or emerge from native cults, any attempts to do something like that will be smacked down hard by the combined efforts of the pantheon.

[Yora]

I don't do any structuring at all. Different people in different places worship different gods. There's no universal system to them.

[Lycanthrope13]

I don't do any structuring at all. Different people in different places worship different gods. There's no universal system to them.

I'm going a similar route with the added caveat that "gods" are not truly divine. They are powerful, extraplanar entities that draw power from mortals. Eons ago, one of them began impersonating a mortal god so it could feed on the outpouring of positive energy known as "worship." Others soon followed suit, and now they compete for followers to become more powerful.

In this setting, the "gods" are amorphous, with attributes ascribed to them by their followers.

[Yora]

Well, my gods are mostly mountain and river spirits as well.

[LudicSavant]

I'm going a similar route with the added caveat that "gods" are not truly divine.

I just sorta always assume this is the case, since "truly divine" strikes me as the sort of thing that's in the eye of the beholder, like "truly beautiful."

After all...
Divine = of, from, or like God or a god.
God = a natural or supernatural being, who is thought of as holy, divine, or sacred.
Sacred = deserving religious veneration.

Who deserves religious veneration seems pretty definitively in the eye of the beholder.

[sktarq]

It changes campaign to campaign depending on factors from which setting is being played, how experienced the players are, how regionally specific the PC's are, how meta aware the game is likely to be, etc. I tend to focus on the philosophy and role of priests in a society over portfolio or alignment-mostly.

[Hoosigander]

I also am of the school that religious details should be revealed as the players explore or experience the world. If a religion or pantheon is associated with a particular culture then PCs from that culture might start out with a more detailed knowledge of that religion (even if they are not necessarily believers themselves.) In that case I might present a family tree of the Gods as well as some stories that are particularly core to that culture's conception of the world. I also like to weave religion into the plot. An example is when the statues of a clan's tutelary deities were stolen from the temple by another clan (two of the PC's were from the victimized clan), necessitating a quest to retrieve them. It provides a plot hook and that fact that the people worship tutelary deities and believe that the theft of the statues will prevent their beneficial influence from being exercised tell the players something about the nature of religion in that culture.

[Lycanthrope13]

I just sorta always assume this is the case, since "truly divine" strikes me as the sort of thing that's in the eye of the beholder, like "truly beautiful."

After all...
Divine = of, from, or like God or a god.
God = a natural or supernatural being, who is thought of as holy, divine, or sacred.
Sacred = deserving religious veneration.

Who deserves religious veneration seems pretty definitively in the eye of the beholder.

I'm doing it for a couple of reasons.

1) It can create an interesting crisis of faith for clerics and paladins when they learn that their gods have been lying to them.

2) It answers the question of why the gods care about mortals at all. We're basically cattle to them. They keep us fat and happy so they can milk us of energy, and when we die, they devour our souls (no resurrection in this setting).

3) I plan on introducing a lost faith, that worships an actual God. It slipped into obscurity because so many of the pretender gods have a more palatable belief system. The idea is that if a divine caster chooses to explore this, they could unlock new abilities.

4) If the gods are just filling a role that mortals have defined, it changes how we view the history of the world. All the wars that have been fought over religion and every attrocity comitted in the name of a god is just a testament to the cruelty of mortals.

[LudicSavant]

I'm going a similar route with the added caveat that "gods" are not truly divine. They are powerful, extraplanar entities that draw power from mortals.

3) I plan on introducing a lost faith, that worships an actual God. It slipped into obscurity because so many of the pretender gods have a more palatable belief system.

You haven't defined what "truly divine" means. What makes your lost god more "actual" than the "pretenders?"

[Lycanthrope13]

You haven't defined what "truly divine" means. What makes your lost god more "actual" than the "pretenders?"

You'rw right, I should have defined that. The idea I'm working with is that the lost god actually played a role in the creation of the universe, is much older than the pretenders, and isn't dependant on an external source of energy as they are, which is part of the reason it has faded into obscurity. It doesn't need us.

In terms of power, this god is to the rest as they are to humans. We're talking power on a scale that is truly incomprehensible, a being that exists beyond time and space as understood by mortals.

Is it the only one? The last of its kind? I don't know yet. I'm still ironing out the details of this world. I've been more focused on flora and fauna than religion lately.

[Winter_Wolf]

My go to is the five primal forces of the universe; they are recognized by all. Then there are the gods (probably actually demigods) who were once mortals but by some means became immortal, powerful, and capable of granting divine magic. They are, however, all tied to one of the five primal forces of the universe and really act like conduits. They're not even strictly necessary conduits; druids tap the five directly. Clerics probably could, but they're pretty heavily indoctrinated into going through the demigod champions.

As an example, Edramyd the Defender was a human captain who "saved the world" from the Darkwalker War and became a deity after his death. Hardly universally worshipped, but he's got a decent following of paladins, city watchmen, and generally people who defend others; but really only on a regional scale. He's affiliated (well more like associated as a follower) with the Holy Light. Edramyd might not even be real; he marched his unit of soldiers through a Darkwalker Gate and the apocalypse stopped though none who went through came back to tell what happened. Some people started worshipping him after that, and get spells if they're his priests. Things start getting convoluted and really it's good and useful for someone in the party to have knowledge (religion) and history (local) to really follow things. Plus it means a lot of the time I don't need to fill in blanks but just jot notes as they come up for the sake of consistency.

[Durzan]

How do you structure your pantheon when presenting it to players?

<snip>

So when you tell a player about your pantheon, how do you go about it?

I just don't. Up until recently, I've never played a game of Pathfinder or D&D where there even WAS a pantheon of deities. As a Christian, I could never understand how such a theological system found in vanilla D&D or pathfinder would work. Why do they care about mortals at all, and why do they care about who they worship? Why create an afterlife for your followers? Why these supposedly all powerful beings who created the universe and are incapable of death, have specific domains and limited functions? More specifically, why can't the god of thunder make a plant grow if he so wanted it too? And so on. I have never heard a satisfactory answer to these question, so the appeal of fictional deities to their subjects has continued to elude me. As such, I have never bothered with incorporating deities into my settings, it would be opening up a can of worms that I did not want to delve into. (That doesnt stop me from enjoying a good book with Deities in them, though.)

However... I have just opened that can of worms while working on a campaign setting. Only recently have I even considered creating or incorporating a pantheon into one of my settings, and that's because I realized it would add a bit more flavor to the setting's past. I haven't actually developed a full fledged pantheon, but have only established that gods exist... or at the very least, once existed in the past.

Once I've actually figured out the mechanics of how a pantheon works, created a pantheon, and presented it to players, I'll get back to you.

[Milo v3]

Why do they care about mortals at all

Why wouldn't they? Why do you care about other people?

and why do they care about who they worship?

Worshipping them means you support their ethos and they want their ethos to thrive so the world becomes better (from their perspective)

Why create an afterlife for your followers?

Good way to get followers.

Why these supposedly all powerful beings who created the universe and are incapable of death, have specific domains and limited functions?

God =! All powerful. There is no reason why a god would necessarily be capable of everything. Gods being all powerful is the exception, not the default, in most forms of religion humanity has come in contact with.

More specifically, why can't the god of thunder make a plant grow if he so wanted it too?

Because he isn't the god of plants/fertility/etc. That's like asking why your level 20 fighter can't cast animate dead.

[unglitteringold]

As a Christian, I could never understand how such a theological system found in vanilla D&D or pathfinder would work.

Well, I drew my inspiration from Greek, Roman and Norse pantheons.
The gods are a family of beings who have strengths and weaknesses. They all have different motivations and desires, working together or against one another to accomplish those goals.

In my pantheon the Gods derive power from their followers. They have an afterlife to collect souls to fight in an epic war of the Gods that will some day take place.

Being Christian does not prevent me from imagining a fictional pantheon.

[Nifft]

My worlds generally don't have a concrete, known, verified afterlife. Having such a thing seems to make a world ... alien, in that faith is no longer a matter of faith, but rather just another fact.

So there are people who can disagree about the nature of reality, and thus go to war against each other -- while both sides are [Good] and are going to war for legitimately [Good] reasons.

I prefer to have divine gods which are non-evil, and leave evil worship to entities which are explicitly non-divine (like the various types of fiends).

- - -

In terms of pantheon, I usually try to cover every class & profession with two or more obviously different choices. I do this by giving multiple overlapping dominions to each god. For example, from one of my settings, there was a moon goddess Selene, who was in charge of:
- The Moon (duh)
- Tides / the Ocean

From her central association with the moon, I extended her dominion in several ways. For example, I had the Sun God as Lawful Good, so I made the Moon Goddess the representative for Lawful Neutral. The sun was dominant in the sky in the summer, thus by contrast she gained:
- Cold
- Winter
- Darkness

"Moonlight illuminates but does not warm."
- Law
- Magic

By association with Law, Darkness, and Winter, I decided she was a good fit for the Death domain, too. (Someone had to be the Death god, after all.)

So her compiled Domains were:
- Cold
- Darkness
- Death
- Law
- Magic
- Moon
- Water

- - -

Also, I try to have different pantheons in different regions, but with the implicit subtext that they might secretly be the same "entities" behind the scenes.

[Xuc Xac]

As a Christian, I could never understand how such a theological system found in vanilla D&D or pathfinder would work. Why do they care about mortals at all, and why do they care about who they worship? Why create an afterlife for your followers? Why these supposedly all powerful beings who created the universe and are incapable of death, have specific domains and limited functions? More specifically, why can't the god of thunder make a plant grow if he so wanted it too? And so on. I have never heard a satisfactory answer to these question, so the appeal of fictional deities to their subjects has continued to elude me. (

People outside your religion feel the same way about your god. Is it so hard to believe that other religions would also give non-answers like "you have to take it on faith" and "mysterious ways"? Why does he care who people worship? Because he's "a jealous god". Why didn't he do things he should want to do and is capable of doing? Theologians have been trying to figure out theodicy for thousands of years.

[the_david]

I just don't. Up until recently, I've never played a game of Pathfinder or D&D where there even WAS a pantheon of deities. As a Christian, I could never understand how such a theological system found in vanilla D&D or pathfinder would work. Why do they care about mortals at all, and why do they care about who they worship? Why create an afterlife for your followers? Why these supposedly all powerful beings who created the universe and are incapable of death, have specific domains and limited functions? More specifically, why can't the god of thunder make a plant grow if he so wanted it too? And so on. I have never heard a satisfactory answer to these question, so the appeal of fictional deities to their subjects has continued to elude me. As such, I have never bothered with incorporating deities into my settings, it would be opening up a can of worms that I did not want to delve into. (That doesnt stop me from enjoying a good book with Deities in them, though.)

However... I have just opened that can of worms while working on a campaign setting. Only recently have I even considered creating or incorporating a pantheon into one of my settings, and that's because I realized it would add a bit more flavor to the setting's past. I haven't actually developed a full fledged pantheon, but have only established that gods exist... or at the very least, once existed in the past.

Once I've actually figured out the mechanics of how a pantheon works, created a pantheon, and presented it to players, I'll get back to you.

It's all actually there in the details if you know where to look. This is based on the great wheel cosmology, which is vanilla D&D for as far as I know.

A soul starts it development on the plane of positive energy, travels to the material plane and is born as a mortal. Once a mortal dies, its soul travels to an outer plane of its alignment or of the deity it worshipped in life. There it becomes an outsider. At first the outsider isn't very powerful, but over time it can transcend into a more powerful form. When an outsider dies its soul travels back to the positive plane to form a new soul.

This seems just a random paragraph of info about souls, but in actuality it reveals the secrets of the universe.
A deity needs souls to build his celestial/infernal/abyssal/whatever army. To get souls he needs mortals to worship him. (and then die) This is also the reason why the gods build worlds. They need to create habitats for the souls they need.
The other part is that the gods themselves were once mortals. They died, and then became powerful outsiders and started doing godly things.

Pantheons don't really exist in D&D. The gods are just a powerful bunch of outsiders with no real connection, other than the fact that at one point they started competing with eachother for souls. The limited domains are harder to explain. A god of the ocean makes sense in a way, as does a god of agriculture. I find it harder to accept that people would worship a god of death. It just doesn't seem like a good carreer choice for a god.

I hope this helps a bit. It still leaves questions unanswered. (The gods all seem to behave like tyrants who fool mortals into worshipping them.)

[Nifft]

I find it harder to accept that people would worship a god of death. It just doesn't seem like a good carreer choice for a god.

The God of Death is about as popular as the God of Taxes, and about as relevant to human life -- which is to say, very very relevant indeed.

Perhaps you don't pray for a visit from either the reaper or the taxman, but you may very well pay respect / homage / worship to appease such universally prevalent and inexorably potent forces.

[johnbragg]

The God of Death is about as popular as the God of Taxes, and about as relevant to human life -- which is to say, very very relevant indeed.

Perhaps you don't pray for a visit from either the reaper or the taxman, but you may very well pay respect / homage / worship to appease such universally prevalent and inexorably potent forces.

But the Great Wheel explanation, where gods recruit morals to collect their souls, saving and trading them for Valuable Prizes (TM) doesn't jibe well with that. Every moral in your Zordakia setting might burn incense to the Lord of Timely Death on the 1st Marsday of every month, to avoid his notice and wrath, but that doesn't get LTD any souls.

Homebrewed explanations are more satisfying, the ones that don't require exclusive worship. PAying your tithe to the Pantheon of Family, War, Commerce, Farming and Knowledge doesn't mean you can't burn incense to the Primal Spirits at the druids' grove. There is usually presumed to be some complicated accounting there, but sketching it out is not necessary for gameplay.

But if you need an analogy, I filled out our federal tax forms last week. And our state tax forms, and the city school tax forms. (I got refunds, but for the example let's say I didn't and sent a check.) Sending a check to the US government doesn't mean I don't send a check to the state govt, and to our car insurance company, our cable provider, and a couple of retirement funds.

Similarly, in a polytheistic world, you'd expect people to spend "worship energy" at a variety of different "vendors" for different purposes.

[Nifft]

But the Great Wheel explanation (...)

... doesn't apply to any setting that I play?

This is the homebrew section of the site, so I assumed we weren't limited to discussing any specific published setting.

Is that incorrect?

Homebrewed explanations are more satisfying, the ones that don't require exclusive worship.

Totally agree.

That's why, in the example setting that I described, I would typically have sailors pay homage to the Forge-Brother ("god of the fires of labor") and the Moon-Lady ("goddess of the tides and death") and the Storm-Son ("god of hunting and thunder"). All three gods cover some aspect of a sailor's life, and nothing bad happens if you venerate more than one god per day, so it's in their interest to cover all their bases.

[Winter_Wolf]

I don't find the Great Wheel very satisfying. I also don't know why people are so afraid of Death as a deity. You could pray for the gentle repose of your family's dead so their spirits or bodies don't return as undead. Death clears out the old to make way for the new. There's more I can say in defense of Death, but really the main thing is that people just assume that Death must be evil or at best uncaring neutral. Why not a tireless steward of the deceased trying to keep the forces of evil from perverting corpses and souls into monstrous things?

The god of taxes is pretty unpopular though, that I'll agree with.

[johnbragg]

I don't find the Great Wheel very satisfying.

Well, it's not. OTOH, I think the designers made the right choice in spending their time playtesting and not working out the kinks in the Generic Setting.

I also don't know why people are so afraid of Death as a deity.

Some of it is probably inherited from monotheistic (or actually dualistic) cultures, where Death is on Team Bad Guy, black hood, menacing scythe, etc. If you're not experienced (directly or through reading) with polytheism, you tend to assume that the gods are all sitting around wishing they were the One True God, and scheming to make it happen.

"God has a hard on for Marines, because we kill everything we see. He plays His games, we play ours. To show our appreciation for so much power, we keep heaven packed with fresh souls."--Full Metal Jacket

You could see how that sort of thing could lead to Death as a deity of carnage and desolation.

You could pray for the gentle repose of your family's dead so their spirits or bodies don't return as undead. Death clears out the old to make way for the new. There's more I can say in defense of Death, but really the main thing is that people just assume that Death must be evil or at best uncaring neutral. Why not a tireless steward of the deceased trying to keep the forces of evil from perverting corpses and souls into monstrous things?

In my setting, the Old Man associates with the souls of your dead relations, in a sort of postmortem depressing nursing home.

The god of taxes is pretty unpopular though, that I'll agree with.

Well, chances are he doubles either as the God of Wealth, or the God of Just and Beneficient Rulership--check out these sweet aqueducts, and the expensive ritual we just installed called "Citywide MAgic Circle Against CR 5+ Outsiders, Undead, MAgical Beasts and Dragons"

EDIT: Or he might double as the Lawful Evil God of Harsh Rulership That is Preferable to the CE Alternative.

[Nifft]

The god of taxes is pretty unpopular though, that I'll agree with.

Governments like him.

Of course, in some places he pretends to be the God of Tithes and Indulgences, and then attempts to usurp rule from the local government. Those governments don't like him so much.

[Winter_Wolf]

Can't say I disagree on any particular point, but fearing Old Hob still seems weird to me. Then again I made my peace with it about twenty years ago. Everything else is just finding ways to pass the time.

[Nifft]

Can't say I disagree on any particular point, but fearing Old Hob still seems weird to me. Then again I made my peace with it about twenty years ago. Everything else is just finding ways to pass the time.

Making peace with concepts that seek everyone's demise is not really my thing.

If there were a War On Death, I would enlist gladly.

That said, in my settings, Death is not particularly [Evil]; it's just a part of nature.

(... a part which hasn't been conquered yet.)

[johnbragg]

Can't say I disagree on any particular point, but fearing Old Hob still seems weird to me. Then again I made my peace with it about twenty years ago. Everything else is just finding ways to pass the time.

Well, you're of an age where the Old Man is looking to collect what is due, sooner or later.

It might feel a bit different if your prayers for the departed include a couple of your kids and siblings who didn't make it to adulthood, and a brother who died young in some sort of premodern brutal accident.

And, thinking it over, a personality who would *primarily* worship Death, as a lifestyle choice, I think we would consider very odd, and likely a suspicious character.

(IT would be a red flag in my campaign, where priests are tied more to nation than to a god. Todays Acolyte of the Temple of the Sea God in Portstown could easily get the job of Cleric-Pastor of the Temple of the Old Man if it opens up, and maybe one day get promoted to High Priest of the Cathedral of the PAntheon in Portstown.)