Building the Parthenon (Alt. title: Religion and You!)

[Parakirby]

How do you go about creating the gods in your mini-world?

I tend to go for a bit of a Discworld view of gods; that as a god has more worshippers, the more powerful he/she/it/they become.

The gods themselves, if it isn't a monotheistic religion (Then it is always invariably a creator god they worship) are based off of early Indo-European mythology.

The main, core gods would be of food, war, and creation; sometimes they are together (i.e. food and creation).

The rest of the gods would represent what is important to the people praising the religion. Craftsmanship, the sea, flight, and so on.

There also has to be a god who can 'take the blame', a god people curse at. Think of Hades, Satan, etc.

[Dan_Hemmens]

I shy away from the "Discworld" metaphysic these days, firstly because it makes no sense to me (how did they create the world if they needed worshipers to have power).

I tend to try and avoid the classic "Gods of" as well, in favour of "Gods who".

[Kurald Galain]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon

FYI.

[Parakirby]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon

FYI.

Yyyeah, I know.

[Morty]

As much as I like both Discworld and Forgotten Realms, I tend to go with gods being concepts, ideologies and desires of mortals blended into one semi-sentient beings. So there are few gods, even though some cultures worship the same diety under different names. Therefore, it's mortals who create gods, instead of the other way around. I also like there to be a little bit of uncertanity as to wheter gods really exist or not.

I shy away from the "Discworld" metaphysic these days, firstly because it makes no sense to me (how did they create the world if they needed worshipers to have power).

Actually, it's preety clearly stated in at least two Discworld novels, namely Eric and Small Gods, that those weren't gods who created the world but rather some Creator, and the gods came later.

[Dan_Hemmens]

Actually, it's preety clearly stated in at least two Discworld novels, namely Eric and Small Gods, that those weren't gods who created the world but rather some Creator, and the gods came later.

I know, but that's not usually the case in D&D settings. D&D seems to take the Populous II metaphysic as read, even if it doesn't make sense in context.

[Prometheus]

I tend to have it more like modern-religions. The same God can have multiple churches that believe different things, there are pieces of theology that are either excepted or not regardless of Diety. Somehow though, they are just about all right in some way or another.

[Moff Chumley]

As much as I like both Discworld and Forgotten Realms, I tend to go with gods being concepts, ideologies and desires of mortals blended into one semi-sentient beings. So there are few gods, even though some cultures worship the same diety under different names. Therefore, it's mortals who create gods, instead of the other way around. I also like there to be a little bit of uncertanity as to wheter gods really exist or not.

A bit like the WH40k Chaos gods, then? (Note: I said "a bit". Remeber that, please.)

[Nerd-o-rama]

Yyyeah, I know.

Did you know you could edit the title of a thread by editing the subject line in the first post? Or even double-clicking in the box around the thread title on the forum page?

Gods needing worship makes some sense to me, but it seems a bit too limiting at times. I also prefer a mythology where the gods don't get directly involved in things and don't exist in an empirically verifiable manner. It both makes the gods more impressive and reduces the potential for deus ex machina.

[Morty]

I know, but that's not usually the case in D&D settings. D&D seems to take the Populous II metaphysic as read, even if it doesn't make sense in context.

Hm. In this case, I'd agree with you.

A bit like the WH40k Chaos gods, then? (Note: I said "a bit". Remeber that, please.)

Preety much, yeah. Though I was inspired by WFRPG, but it's more or less the same.

[Xuincherguixe]

First I think about what all the other pantheons are like. Then I do something completely different.

For the campaign setting I'm procrastinating on, there are three largely incompatible religions. The short version is...
The humans are for the most part the dominant force, and the enemies. They have 12 gods. They are racists and misogynists.
There are a countless number of demons, but they are led by five "Outer Powers". Beings who may very well have existed even before time.
And a set of Nature Spirits who I'm not entirely sure what to do with. They're largely strange and irrational, but no one is under any illusions otherwise.


The human gods are largely boring and uninteresting. This is intentional.

But the Outer Powers? Those guys are great.
There's a Black Hole, the Devourer. A being of greed and an unceasing appetite. But, also something around which existence orbits around. Loosely based on Azathoth.
Another is the Destroyer. His existence is waves of motion. If he was in an ocean, the ocean would be throwing up massive tidal waves. If he was in the ground, there would be earth quakes. It is a being of cycles, much like the waves that it is. A forest will burn, new life will grow, the forest returns and the Destroyer comes again.
Then there is The Deciever, who everyone sees as something different. Generally though it's one gigantic elaborate illusion. A being of truth and lies. What is seen may not be "real" but what is seen still holds information.
The Invader is a being of wind. Always wanting to penetrate, and own. But when it doesn't do anything with what it has.
The Corrupter consists of warped space. A straight ladder would bend and twist in on itself while within the corrupter. A being of change.

The outer powers are interesting enough that I'd consider reusing them. None of them have a true form that is physical. Their implications are their form. I'd be lying if I said it all came from out of nothing. The main inspirations were the Chaos Gods from Warhammer 40,000 and the Cthulhu Mythos (though I suspect the former were derived from the later anyways) Two things which I only know bits and pieces of. But not everything needs to be completely original.

So basically? Make your gods WEIRD. Maybe even terrifying. They don't necessarily have to malevolent, but there's no reason to assume that the masters of reality are something easy to understand. In fact, it works a lot better when they're completely alien.

[Mkhaiwati]

Depends on what you want. Most of the D&D style religions are stated as above. However....

I went with something different for my world. Each "god" is in charge of some facet of life, culture, or something. A person, unless actually imbued with divine power such as ranger, cleric, priest, druid, etc, worships the entire pantheon.

People can only be married by a priest of the goddess of marriage (and love, fertility, and a few other items). A priest of the death god oversees funerals, death rites, and may be the only ones who raise/resurrect others. Crops are planted/harvested with ceremonies by the goddess of agriculture. So on and so forth. This gives each deity a chance to be part of the life of all people.

Part of the history of my world is that the gods fought amongst themselves (there can be only one). After too many bit the dust, the decided upon a compromise. Of course, some got a shorter stick than others.

[NecroRebel]

Did you know you could edit the title of a thread by editing the subject line in the first post? Or even double-clicking in the box around the thread title on the forum page?

It's entirely possible that the initial title was a reference to the famous Athens acropolis, which contained temples to most of the major Greek gods, and more specifically the structure known as the Parthenon itself within said acropolis. The OP's statement that he was aware of the pantheon/Parthenon difference implies this to be the case, in fact.

Personally, when I build settings in general I prefer to choose a theme for the setting and then set everything based off of that theme. Forgotten Realms, for instance, is kind of an "everything including the kitchen sink" world, so there are gods for everything. However, a setting whose main theme is duality would have only 2 deities or 2 strictly-deliniated pantheons, while a world set to the theme "barbarians vs. monolithic civilization" will probably end up with a single monolithic church in said monolithic civilization.

Of course, settings without a very metaphysically-oriented could have a wide variety of systems of worship. Personally I prefer polytheistic or nontheistic cultures, as it helps avoid complaints about making fun of someone's God as well as more complicated philosophical questions which most people don't want to deal with, but that's just me. At that point, it's better to think of religion on a culture-to-culture basis, again following the theme of that particular culture.

[Lupy]

I like to have an Elf god, a Human God (worshipped in different forms), a Dwarf god, and other racial gods. Each god has an arch-dragon who guards their church. Additionally, a few demi-gods wander the world helping where they can without revealing their identities...

Once in a very silly campaign the gods were Trogdor the Burninatior as a War/Chaos/Fire God, Wiki-Pedia God of Knowledge/Nuetrality/Magic/Air, and Goo-gel God of Law/Searching/Earth, and the forgotten God... Banjhulu of Puppets/Water

[Xefas]

In my current campaign, there's a god for every alignment, and then each individual church/group of worshipers attribute what they want to each god. War-inclined Orcs might worship Erythnul as the god of battle, Humans who live in a parched desert might worship Erythnul as god of the sun, and Red Dragons might worship him as god of mountains/sky. He's Chaotic Evil, but most people have the attitude that all gods should be respected in some form or another, regardless.

In addition, there is a single racial god for each race. They are far weaker than the nine greater ones. These include Corellon, Moradin, Kurtulmak, Blipdoolpoolp, Surt, etc.

Most campaigns, however, I just use the default D&D pantheon (instead of hacking off their names and appearance and plastering them onto the personalities I want).