I make up my own gods. I like them to be mysterious beings, where it is unclear whether they actually exist, are personifications of ideas or natural principles, or are completely made up. Divine magic in my campaign comes from some mysterious source.
It's like the real world - religious people think their god is real, atheists think the gods are a scam, and there are many shades in between. No-one has any evidence either way, as a priest who thinks his god is just an anthropomorphic ideal of perfection to aim for gets spells just like a priest who thinks their god is an actual super-being watching over them.
I really don't like using real-world gods. It destroys my suspension of disbelief. What's the point of having a unique world if your going to have everyone worshipping Zeus and Thor?
One problem I have with developing pantheons is what to do with non-humans. It seems unrealistic that there are universal gods (like in the PHB) and then one god for each race, but no "god of humans."
I usually make a pantheon for a world with about 5 or 6 universal gods, but have them look different and go by different names to different races. The gods in my current homebrew are life, death, nature, love, and healing/medicine (these exist to all races but go by different names). Then I made a "Hero" for each race or culture, a sort of demigod who is usually a child of one of the main gods and is worhipped as a founder by their race.
I include (and defend the inclusion of) "real world" deities in my current campaign for several reasons.
First, they are a part of D&D canon. The first edition Deities & Demigods as well as the current one (which I am not as fond of nor have as much of a need for) include several "real world" pantheons. Players know them and understand them.
Second, the term "real world" is misleading, for the reasons mentioned above. Perhaps historical would be more accurate. They are part of the "real world"'s other world, the misty and insubstantial world of myth. And as previously stated, it is an individual choice wether one believes such creatures actually walked the world or not. The opinion of the atheist bears as much weight as that of the polytheist, and everyone between the two. So, it is arguable that to some (if not most) people playing the world of D&D, they are "fantasy" gods born of mythologies & the stories of ancient peoples, not "real world" gods. They serve to underscore the symbolic manipulation of archetypal content that D&D is, at least to me.
Third, the particular campaign I mentioned is set in an alternate Earth. If that ain't your cup of tea, or if it prevents the suspension of disbelief, that is your opinion, and again, you are entitled to it, but my players enjoy it, and have for two and a half years.
The few "real world" gods that survived the last two Epochal Wars are tired, old, in many ways, shells of their former selves, many of them wandering the earth in avatar form to seek answers that once were crystal clear in their omnipotence. The pathos of this group offsets the brazen vitality of the younger gods, and their willingness to meddle in mortal affairs.
Also, one of the players in my first campaign wanted to play a cleric of Thor, and so, in my benevolence I said, "what the Jotunheim? Why not?"...
I meant no offence to anyone who does use "real-world" gods. Sorry if my bluntness sounded like I think it's always a bad idea - I don't. And if I had an alternate earth campaign I would definitley use 'em. But if you don't, how do you get around the fact that they are tied to particular real world cultures? That's my main reason for not using them in my current HB, it makes me feel like I'm restricted to using a Norse-like culture if I use Thor, or Meso-Americanish if I use Quetzlcoatl (heh heh, I always liked the Aztec gods. I briefly had a cleric of Huitzilopochtli in 2nd ed.) Somehow I can't make it work in my head flavour-wise to have a steely eyed son of the desert worhipping the Aesir. Maybe it's my lack of imagination...
Anyway different strokes for different folks as my grandma used to say :)
I appreciate your point of view as well, and as we both have stated, people are entitled to their opinions. I would have trouble believing that a bedouin worshiped Thor too. Luckily, most of the classic historical mythologies are very archetypal, and it is believable that almost any seafaring, semi-nomadic barbarians would worship the Aesir, or that any decadent, imperial culture would have gods similar to the Greco-Romans.
My campaign began in 1666 during the great fire of London, and the character in question was a "doctor" of Norse descent, who secretly worshiped the old Aesir despite living in a Christian land (England) and practicing Christianity as a front while magically healing his patients with the power granted by Thor.
One of the main threads in the plotline was the Catholic Inquisition (which actually drew its power from the Blood Trinity), the recent and as yet unhealed schism of the church, and the exploration of the New World, where Dragon worship had replaced totemic and ancestor worship, so at the beginning, religion and deities were more befuddled and confused.
I hope I didn't sound too arch in my reply either. I appreciate the level headedness of these boards a great deal and do not seek to offend. I just wanted to present my case for using some of these deities. I don't always, by the way. When I did an FR campaign, the only whiff of "real-world" deities, was that provided by the FRCS, the Mulhorandi pantheon, a barely disguised egypto-babylonian mythos.
P.S: Heathansson; I am definitely developing a soft spot in my heart for Wee Jas as well, I just wish the wiseacre in my group wouldn't say "Hugh Jass?" whenever I invoked her name as my Aasimar cleric often does *grin*
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I've thought of using a number of different real-world deities in the different homebrew worlds I've toyed with. Typically, I like to go with those who don't normally see much action. I've written up pantheons containing Thoth, Pan, and Erebus, all of whom have at least 3rd edition stats. I've also considered such deities as Prometheus, Epimetheus, Magni, Modi, and some of the vedic gods, none of whom have 3E or 3.5E stats (that I know of anyway).
Currently, in The World (the site that Lilith put together) I'm using Kali as one of the main evil gods. In the realm of Shandura, she is worshipped primarily by jungle dwelling orc tribes, as well as some human cultists.
In the current homebrew I am running, I use a mix of the FR gods and new ones I made up. I will, in time, have an entire pantheon I would like to use for my homebrews. The reason I like to use the FR pantheon is the inclusion of all the dieties of the non-human races, such as the halflings. Of course the core dieties include one diety for each of the races, but the FR pantheons expand on them. I have been known to on occassion use the Greyhawk pantheon, but more often I have been leaning towards including pantheons from the real world in my games. I did run one homebrew collaberation with four other DM's, in which we each had our own group of gamers(about 40 of us total)and every week we played in the same world, sometimes interacting with another group. In this game, I had a barbarian in the group I DM'd that worshiped Crom. It was amusing;)
I use the Greyhawk pantheon at the moment. I really like a select group of the deities there (Vecna, Wee Jas; Hextor's not bad, Nerull is cool; Moradin), and they are familiar, and I just subscribed to Dragon for a year mainly to get the Vecna and Wee Jas articles. So I don't want to abandom them right away.
However, I really dislike some of the deities in Greyhawk, too (such as St. Cuthbert, and Pelor does nothing for me, either, same with Boccob). I'd like to start working on a custom pantheon, but I don't want to just throw away some of the better Greyhawk deities... maybe I can just change their names, or even allow a few to cross over. Although, coming up with holy symbols seems daunting.
If I did, I'd "keep" a lot of the demon lords and "elevate" them to deific status, such as Dagon and Orcus (not Demogorgon!).
I also dislike using real-world deities. I share that it tends to ruin suspension of disbelief and just have everyone go, "Ooo, Thor!" Or something similar.
For those who use their own deities, do you make your own planes/cosmologies, as well, or just rely on the Great Wheel, or avoid making any deffinative "structure" at all?
For those who use their own deities, do you make your own planes/cosmologies, as well, or just rely on the Great Wheel, or avoid making any deffinative "structure" at all?
I sort of vaguely tell the players that the gods live somewhere on the world, like Mt. Olympus, though of course it would be some sort of extra-dimensional space. As most of the gods and goddesses in my world are demigods they pretty much wander the earth like legendary heroes. The cross-cultural deities, which in game terms are lesser deities, live in the god's home but possess mortals if they need to venture out, due to an ancient pact between them.
Besides that I use the great wheel to allow demons, celestials, elementals, etc, but I say that there is a shield around the world called the Gauntlet (thank you Mage: The Ascension!) that prevents the Gods from leaving and Cthulhu like Aliens getting in. The native gods (but not demigods)have great power over Outsiders granted to them by the two Overgods, and can expel them whenever they feel like it, which prevents the world being overrun by demons (Ouch!)or celestials (imagine how boring that would be!)
Just out of curiosity, what is Demogorgon's real-world backstory? I've heard he has some roots in the middle ages, but I'm not really familiar with what they are.
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Not sure either. I was just skimming Milton's Paradise Lost on the net one day for jokes and inspiration, and I saw Demogorgon's name, along with a lot of Gygaxian terms like "paynims" and such. So I knew I had found a place rich in historic plunder.
I didn't read the whole thing or nothing in my smokin' jacket in front of the fireplace with Alestair Cooke.
Just curious,...does having "real world" demons and devils like Mephistopheles, Demogorgon, Asmodeus, and Belial (I could prey continue) cause the same disbelief suspension problems as Thor?
Yeah actually. If I use those guys at all I change their names. I prefer just using unnamed Balor's and stuff. But my PCs never get high enough anyway to tangle with guys like that!
Oh and before when you mentioned Crom - he's my favourite made up god of all time. But I am a Conan fanboy. I was this close to writing "Crom" under "religion" on the census this year. He doesn't expect anything from you and if you ask him for anything he says "I gave you life and strength, that's enough." Heh heh Crom rocks.
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I could be a snot and say, "you mean like Balor of the Evil Eye?" but I won't.
It's just one of those funny irrational idiosyncracies I've noticed among many humans. I always felt that somewhere within those tiny little irrationalities we all display in our own little ways lies the truth of the human spirit somehow.
I could be a snot and say, "you mean like Balor of the Evil Eye?" but I won't.
It's just one of those funny irrational idiosyncracies I've noticed among many humans. I always felt that somewhere within those tiny little irrationalities we all display in our own little ways lies the truth of the human spirit somehow.
Yes, I never claimed to be entirely rational! Still, you gotta admit the average person has more of an existing picture in their head of Thor than they do of the champion of the Fomor, if only because of marvel comics. In fact a D&D Balor has nothing to do with Balor of the evil eye beyond the name, if we were to get technical.
Asmodeus and Mephistopheles I find particularly bad for my disbelief, as they come from a Christian religious framework which is totally at odds with everything in the D&D cosmology. If there are stats for Mephistopheles then why not the Angel Gabriel? It's like having the devil without God.
Just like the real world, D&D cosmology is huge and doesn't make much sense. I try to rework it into what seems logical to me, but we all have to draw the line somewhere. Otherwise I would find myself outlawing Vampires and Harpies because they come from real world myth.
I guess if it was 100% consistent it would be the truth, not a made-up fantasy game! :)
Okay, after this one I'll stop because this doesn't even apply to you because you said you make up all your own deities, but...Christianity? You mean with St. Cuthbert? Okay, I'm through. My son was born on Lindisfarne Day, so I should stop. Donesky. Kapootsky. Fini ad finitum, even.
St. Cuthbert? Even as a 12 year old I could tell that guy didn't fit in ;)
Last campaign I ran was a Greyhawk campaign that fizzled out by lvl 12. I wanted to run it longer, but was getting a headache running 8 people of such high level and was getting a bit bored at the same time. My current campaign is homebrew (an Ice Age fixture borrowing heavily from Frostburn.) with 4 players. The PCs are up to 9th-level in that one and I'm planning to run it to lvl 20.
I also run my guys through my playtests. The last one they did was a module that is being released through Goodman Games.
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For those who use their own deities, do you make your own planes/cosmologies, as well, or just rely on the Great Wheel, or avoid making any deffinative "structure" at all?
I use a very different cosmology as well. My world is flat and dissolves into chaos at the edges. The gods are believed to live beyond the chaos somewhere.
Demons and devils live in the deep underground, which gets stranger and more magical the deeper you go.
Elementals all come from the same plane, which is split by elements. The elemental plane is accessible through natural portals at the boundaries between regions. (For instance, some large geysers are portals to points on the boundaries between fire and water regions.)
Faerie and Shadow are connected to each other and the world at faerie rings and mounds and at points of deep and permanent shadow, respectively.
That's pretty much it, though I should perhaps note that I differentiate between natural and supernatural alignment (only the latter interacts with, or is detectable by, magic).
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For those who use their own deities, do you make your own planes/cosmologies, as well, or just rely on the Great Wheel, or avoid making any deffinative "structure" at all?
I usually just use the Great Wheel, but I've been toying with a world idea where there is something more classical, like they have in Diablo or Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality.
I contend that the D&D version of polytheism is even more irrational when you have actual evidence than in the absence of evidence. Any sensible person would "follow" all the gods to some extent. Even the evil gods would require regular propitiation -- sort of a deific protection racket.
Unless the gods were sufficiently jealous to forbid such practice -- which has always been my interpretation. I've always figured Boccob wouldn't grant spells or aid to people that also honored Obad-hai (as an example). IMC I'm a bit stricter than most on who clerics will heal -- people straying too far from the deity's agenda are going to be out of luck.
I love your 'protection racket' perspective; that's exactly what D&D religion is all about. Gods aren't divine beings inherently deserving worship. Rather, they're gangsters -- providing aid if and only if their demands are met. Cool :)
I contend that the D&D version of polytheism is even more irrational when you have actual evidence than in the absence of evidence. Any sensible person would "follow" all the gods to some extent. Even the evil gods would require regular propitiation -- sort of a deific protection racket.Unless the gods were sufficiently jealous to forbid such practice -- which has always been my interpretation. I've always figured Boccob wouldn't grant spells or aid to people that also honored Obad-hai (as an example). IMC I'm a bit stricter than most on who clerics will heal -- people straying too far from the deity's agenda are going to be out of luck.
I love your 'protection racket' perspective; that's exactly what D&D religion is all about. Gods aren't divine beings inherently deserving worship. Rather, they're gangsters -- providing aid if and only if their demands are met. Cool :)
How "Athar" of you . . .
Even the Forgotten Realms has its "Christ figure", in Ilmater, the Broken God, or Crying God, whose worshippers help the poor and downtrodden.
I think part of my fascination with mythology & deities, both real world and D&D canon, comes from the fact that I was raised by deists, without any organized or formal religion.
To return to topic for a sec, I use a cosmology that blends real world ideas about the gods and religion (Sheol replaces the shadow plane, Mt. Olympus is a coterminous location with planar resonance to Elysium and Arcadia) with the Eberron-like system of waxing and waning influence, using the "traditional" cosmology instead of Eberron's slightly more limited planes.
For those who use their own deities, do you make your own planes/cosmologies, as well, or just rely on the Great Wheel, or avoid making any deffinative "structure" at all?
Depends,sometimes when I don't plan on using the world again, I just use the Great Wheel. When I plan on using the world for a long time, as well as over and over, I tend to come up with my own cosmologies and myths. Hey, I even sometimes make up some saints and heroes tied to each religion.
Just curious,...does having "real world" demons and devils like Mephistopheles, Demogorgon, Asmodeus, and Belial (I could prey continue) cause the same disbelief suspension problems as Thor?
Similar to this, I've got another question for you all. If you use a custom cosmology, do you include the Demon Lords and the Lords of the Nine? What about the Abyss and Hell in general? If not, what do you do about Baatezu and Tanar'ri? Or does no one touch that because it's so deeply ingrained?
I once had a thought to reclassify all fiends based on body type, rather than alignment. The groupings would be humanoid (succubi, erinyes, osyluth, babau), arthropods (bebliliths, advespa, chasme), beastial (bezekira, hell hounds), "classical" (balors, pit fiends, and cornugons), and then I suppose there would need to be a sort of "miscellaneous" for oddballs (nalfeshnee, anyone? Glabrezu?). However, it proved more of a challenge than I was willing to work through, and Hordes of the Abyss has only further complicated things with the Obyriths and Loumara.
Just curious,...does having "real world" demons and devils like Mephistopheles, Demogorgon, Asmodeus, and Belial (I could prey continue) cause the same disbelief suspension problems as Thor?
They never have really bothered me, perhaps because the only names that would seriously draw me out of the game would be Satan or Lucifer, and even then, Satan only means "adversary," or I suppose in this case, "Adversary."
The other names were regional names that were ascribed to demons, but really were popularized when Milton used them as subserviant members of Hell's heirarchy in Paradise Lost.
I would love to run a campaign using the Pei'an deities from Roger Zelazny's "Isle of the Dead" and "To Die in Italbar." I've also statted up his false 'Masters of Karma' from "Lord of Light." Anyone tried things like these before?
I run a homebrew. Its been the same homebrew since 1st edition though it has evolved and in fact gets rewritten from the ground up every ten years or so which can have radical changes. Last time I rewrote it I got rid of most of the material for the more distant continents and replaced them with fables and legends. In my experience continent hopping just does not come up very often at all and its better to leave distant continents outside of the core material available to the players in order to add more mystery.
In fact I've become really enamored with mystery as a key tool in the DMs arsenal. My last rewrite involved removing a lot of material from the Players Guide Book as I have come to believe increasingly that mystery is a great player motivator. Instead of giving away the secrets of my world in a Guide Book I guard them jealously doling them only after the players have sweated to uncover them. My players love it - usually the great secret comes as some kind of a colourful handout. I only realized how much my players liked this sort of thing when they showed up one day, about six months into the campaign, with a binder full of some kind of clear plasric protectors in which they had collected 'their' handouts.
I use my own pantheon but there is some theft of the monster Gods from D&D. I mean Drow just are not the same unless Lolth exists to be their God. Some of the other D&D Gods are inspirational as well - Kurtulmuk is interesting because he's such a low cunning fool and yet he is the God of the very cunning Kobolds. Grumash One Eye is an excellent God of Orcs and he comes complete with an excellent Orc creation myth (the one with the Gods drawing lots and cheating the Orcs) that does wonders to explain the why Orcs are evil and warlike as well as explaining why they live in the places they tend to live.
I don't tend to use real world Gods though a handful of mine might be partly inspired by real world Gods. Really when it comes to Pantheon creation I'll grab whatever inspiration I can get. Creating Pantheons is hard. In fact I think that redoing the Pantheon was the hardest part of the last update I did. Making Pantheons can be hard work. You don't want to many Gods as they just get lost in the mess and your players loose track. On the other hand I find it hard to have to few. Gods can add a great deal to the look and feel of a dungeon, IMO, and having all bad guys worship 'The Evil God' squanders opportunities. Just think how interesting Lolth is for example - but having every evil individual worship her would probably eventually grow stale.
I do use the Demon Lords etc. Its more trouble then its worth to change them and in any case I tend to really like iconic D&D material. I don't use the Great Wheel for cosmology as I really want to emphasize Good and Evil and the Great Wheel provides space for all sorts of view points. I don't want that - the material plane is a battle ground for the forces of Good and Evil - so there is no place in my world for planes of Lawful Neutrality. I like Slaadi so much that I have them skulking around the edges of the lower planes (They become Demons that fled The Blood War eons in the past). I care little for the rest of the neutral outsiders however if I ever decide that I really want to use some race of them I can throw them into the edges of the upper or lower planes and make up something as needed.
An interesting concept to handle those other outsiders might be "middle" planes. You've got the Inners, with the transatives and elemental and energy planes, which are pretty closely tied to the explanation of the mechanics of D&D, and then you could have the Outer Planes, where good and evil battle on titanic scales. Then for all those other places and things that don't fit, just dub them "Middle" Planes. They act as stranger versions of the Material, alternate worlds and such, but aren't necessarily tied to an ethos, and thus allow for a great deal of diversity. Again, as you were saying, there can be a great deal of mystery involved; perhaps only some names and fragmented lists of the creatures that dwell there, maybe a generalized description of the terrain. These "Middle Planes" could also be quite numerous.
Or you can just choke it all up to theories. Some philosophers think the Great Wheel exists and most outsiders come from somewhere on that, while others feel that there is only "heaven and hell," so to speak, and where these other beings comes from is more mysterious, with the Middle Planes being just a hypothetical developed to provide some answer.
All right, last question I can think of (for now): what about languages? Do you world builders out there typically use different languages for different human ethnicities, or just leave it as "Common," for simplicity? If you use different languages, do you generalize them across broad regions, or go in-depth and come up with a new tongue for every major clump of people?
You don't want to many Gods as they just get lost in the mess and your players loose track. On the other hand I find it hard to have to few. Gods can add a great deal to the look and feel of a dungeon, IMO, and having all bad guys worship 'The Evil God' squanders opportunities. Just think how interesting Lolth is for example - but having every evil individual worship her would probably eventually grow stale.
Yeah I know what you mean. What I've done is hve only a few universal gods and lots of little demigods I can make up as needed, who are immortalized mortals. And with the major gods, I've tried to give them portfolios that make sense for worhsippers. So there isn't a god of good and a god of evil, there is for example a god of mercy (NG) and a god of vengeance (LE). Maybe an extremely bloodthirsty evil warrior would fixate on the vengeance god the same way those death-metal gang guys in Norway do with Satan, but really most of his power comes from otherwise decent people who have had something bad happen to them and have succumbed to the desire for revenge. I don't know if I'm explaining it very well, but what I'm trying to say is that IMC there are no major gods OF evil, but there are major gods who ARE evil because of what they otherwise represent. But if I need a crazy cult or something I jus invent a local demigod for crazy cultists!
All right, last question I can think of (for now): what about languages? Do you world builders out there typically use different languages for different human ethnicities, or just leave it as "Common," for simplicity? If you use different languages, do you generalize them across broad regions, or go in-depth and come up with a new tongue for every major clump of people?
Both. There's a Common trade tongue and each nation or tribe also has it's own language that may or not be related to others. But all PCs, merchants, travelers and city-dwellers speak common. Sort of like english in the EU.
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I generally use a common trade tongue.
If I want to write a story specifically about a communication difficulty, I do so. Otherwise, I like to keep things simple.
I had people in a Rifts campaign show up in Japan once, and I was going with the Shogun idea of strangers in a strange land.
So naturally, since no character spoke Japanese, it became a story element.
Otherwise, I don't usually deal with it.
However, now that you bring it up, I can see where it could lead to a lot of interesting roleplaying. Characters pantomiming what they are trying to say; it could conceivably make a strong and challenging game element.
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All right, last question I can think of (for now): what about languages? Do you world builders out there typically use different languages for different human ethnicities, or just leave it as "Common," for simplicity? If you use different languages, do you generalize them across broad regions, or go in-depth and come up with a new tongue for every major clump of people?
I use regional/national languages. In part this is because much of the world development was done while Hero was my primary RPG system, and Hero's language system is interesting:
Languages have degrees of similarity. To use real languages as an example, if you speak German, you can understand a fair amount of Swiss German or Dutch, you can puzzle out some words in English, the phonetics, spelling, and grammar are recognizably related to Italian, and the language is entirely unlike Chinese. These degrees of similarity also affect how difficult it is to learn a new language.
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If you use a custom cosmology, do you include the Demon Lords and the Lords of the Nine? What about the Abyss and Hell in general? If not, what do you do about Baatezu and Tanar'ri? Or does no one touch that because it's so deeply ingrained?
This is one of the problems I have with the idea of the Great Wheel cosmology; that all souls get split up 18 ways, and get reborn in a dimension where everyone thinks and acts as they do...
This doesn't mesh with the myths & legends that humans grew up with, and which inspired RPGs in the first place.
Take the Norse pantheon, for example; the legends have Thor, Odin, Balder, Frigga, etc inhabiting the same domain as Loki; otherwise, how could Loki play his tricks on them?
Same with the Greco-Roman pantheon, inhabiting Mount Olympus, the Japanese deities of the Celestial Bureaocracy, the Native American deities in their Great Sky-Lodge, and so on...
The D&D model splits all these pantheons apart, and re-houses them, with strangers who hold similar portfolios.
This seems 'wrong' to me; Hermes/Mercury should be stood at Zeus/Jupiter's right hand, ready to deliver his messages and edicts with immediate effect. He shouldn't have to go planar hopping to his master's plane every day, touting for business ("Gizza job, mate, got any messages? No? Aw, go on...I can do that, yeah, go on, give it me...").
Plus, the original myths assumed you went to one of one of very few places when you were dead, either the Heaven/Hell split, or the Greco-Roman Underworld, where everyone went, regardless of your conduct in life. Granted, these models could sometimes be expanded upon, to include concepts such as Purgatory (a tedious waiting room, before judgement), Limbo (a nothingness, for people who died young, and had not had chance to do right or wrong), or souls could choose between remembering their past lives (good and bad), or drink the waters of forgetfulness and move to a new afterlife with a clean slate.
Now, granted, these tales had a social purpose for the masses; be good and sit on a cloud with a harp, or be bad and have devils stick a fork in your arse for all eternity...
Even the dilemma of whether to drink from the Styx and lose ALL your memories, good and bad, could be designed to make people reflect on the good things in life, and count their blessings.
But my point is, that the afterlife would be filled with people from all walks of life, and would not be so narrowly defined as in the Great Wheel model. "Heaven" could well include souls from several of the D&D alignments (LG, NG, CG, LN and N), as could "Hell".
I have a much easier time imagining a dead satyr finding himself in Elysium, or prancing round the Happy Hunting Grounds, than surfing on a rock in a sea of primal flux, being chased by creatures with frogs' heads, but that is the scenario were are given...
I have always been a big FR fan since I started playing D&D. However, as I am just about to start introducing my 11 year old son to the game, I think I will just be using generic worlds for a while to keep the confusion down.
I will likely start with the original Adventure Path from WotC (he will like hack and slash the most to start with as every kid getting into the game does) and then move on to other things... like one of Paizo's APs or perhaps a series of dungeon adventures leading into the Red Hand of Doom (ecellent adventure for those who haven't looked at it... kudos to James and his collaborator).
I would love to run the Expedition to Castle Ravenloft as well, but I will need to wait a while until he is mature enough to handle a horror game.
Sean Mahoney
Doug- could you expound upon this lingual system somewhat? I'm interested.
I ran a short experimental game a few months ago in which I nearly had a TPK on my hands, since the characters only spoke Common, and not the regional language (by their own choice; Common wasn't spoken well in the area). They couldn't get the info they needed and nearly died of it.
I learned that Common should remain more than serviceable in most situations; while language barriers can make good roleplaying opportunities, from a play balance and mechanics stand point, constantly enforcing that can be problematic.
However, I do like the idea of having numerous languages in the game. I don't think every nation deserves its own, just becaue of how small, and sometimes poorly defined, political areas can be in a pseudo-medieval setting. Not to mention, it would get hard to keep track of, and there simply wouldn't be enough skill points/Int modifiers around to ever lea a significant amount of them (depending on the size of the world you use). However, a language for most individual ethnicities/regions sounds like a good idea.
Snorter- I agree that there are some problems with the Great Wheel, and as someone said earlier, D&D's idea of polytheism as a whole. There are just a bunch of deities thrown together with no connection to one another. I've been putting more thought into designing my own pantheon over the last week or so, and I think D&D's cosmology sort of sits on one end of a continuum. There, many gods exist with no real relationship to each other; as for a creation myth, it can either be unified for all gods (more along the lines of simply having a massive, disparate pantheon) or none at all.
On the other end, you've got the more realistic approach of having many pantheons divided amongst the various people, of differing sizes. They have closely interwoven stories and myths within a given pantheon, but don't really interact at all with any others, and whatever creation story there is typically doesn't coincide with any other pantheon's. Each pantheon has to cover the values and ideals of a whole society, so there is a great deal of overlap between various groupings of deities. This doesn't seem to square well with the idea that, overall, all these gods are real, and would probably have some interaction with each other across groupings, and that there is, more or less, a unified cosmology beyond the world, although some may divide the planes by pantheon, instead of alignment.
I'm thinking that the best solution in-game might be a sort of amalgam of the two. That's what I've been focussing on trying to conceptualize and develop. However, the process is further hindered by the actual difficulty of designing gods, particularly when it comes to decided which concepts to represent in order to have enough interesting gods, and which to leave out to avoid "clutter." I've got several ideas for interesting gods, but I'm not sure their portfolios are broad enough to merit inclusion in a generalized listing.
Keep the posts coming, I like reading them!
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Doug- could you expound upon this lingual system somewhat? I'm interested.
The Hero System is a point-purchase system, so converting is a bit tricky. The original system rated each language's similarity with each other language (which is less difficult than it sounds, since languages are reasonably well described evolutionarily), on a scale from 0 to 4.
Also, in the Hero System, you don't go from zero to fully fluent directly. Rather, with one point in a language, you speak "phrasebook" Elvish (or whatever): "Where buy food?", "Give money to me!", etc. With 5 points (the maximum), you can imitate other dialects credibly (see Hugh Laurie in House).
So, with 4 points of similarity, you get half the points of the language you speak better. With 3 points, you can make a roll to understand phrases. With 2 points, you get a discount of a point when you buy another language in the group. With 1 point, you can buy without penalty. With 0 points, you pay extra to pick up the new language.
(Take this as a plug for the Hero System. I love the system. If only my players were as enthusiastic.)
For D&D, I'd simplify it to two levels of fluency (one per skill point spent at base). For similarity, I'd roll "1" and "2" together, give an INT roll to understand phrases for "3" (if you are fluent in the base language), give phrases (and a 1 point discount) for "4", and charge an extra point for "0".
I ran a short experimental game a few months ago in which I nearly had a TPK on my hands, since the characters only spoke Common, and not the regional language (by their own choice; Common wasn't spoken well in the area). They couldn't get the info they needed and nearly died of it.
The players must understand how important languages are, but it's likely in most worlds that many people in neighboring areas would have at least a basic understanding of the languages of their neighbors.
I learned that Common should remain more than serviceable in most situations; while language barriers can make good roleplaying opportunities, from a play balance and mechanics stand point, constantly enforcing that can be problematic.
Complex languages only work if you're willing to make them important. They're not worth the trouble otherwise.
However, I do like the idea of having numerous languages in the game. I don't think every nation deserves its own, just becaue of how small, and sometimes poorly defined, political areas can be in a pseudo-medieval setting. Not to mention, it would get hard to keep track of, and there simply wouldn't be enough skill points/Int modifiers around to ever lea a significant amount of them (depending on the size of the world you use). However, a language for most individual ethnicities/regions sounds like a good idea.
FWIW, I don't really have unitary racial languages for mortals of any race. (I don't much speak "Human"; I'd not expect hobgoblins to speak "Goblin".) Historically, there were very few hard boundaries between languages. What is now called "German" was several related languages, and the same is true of English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, etc. Limiting vocabulary and making the occasional die roll for understanding is pretty easy to do, and can make for fun roleplaying.
I have to say that I am very fond of the Forgotten Realms languages that seem to follow the lines of racial (well, human races) areas of influence as opposed to strict country bounderies. However, I can't see putting that much work into my own homebrew world. Races of Faerun was really a masterpiece but almost too indepth to really include in a game... I love it...
Sean Mahoney
Greyhawk!
Wow what a great thread!
When I started playing D&D, we really didn't have a setting that we worked with, or any consistent story. The first setting that I ever got into was Hollow World (part of the Known World). The idea of radically different cultures/races made adventuring really seem like exploring.
The second setting that I used was FR, mostly because of the novels.
For the past 3 years or so (essentially since I've returned to D&D), I've run my campaign that is either a homebrew that heavily borrows from other settings or is a heavily fleshed out version of a published setting. The major city is Freeport, but the campaign takes place in the V'Rossan Ocean where Freeport is located. I really wanted to recapture the feel of Hollow World (and also my academic studies in post-colonial literature), so a major theme of the world is how different cultures/races interact.
Along those lines, I've tweaked many of the PHB races signifigantly: Gnomes come from a Japanese inspired island, two subraces of dwarves exist -- a barbaric, sorcerous type, and a somber rogue-ish type. I've also introdced a couple of my own races, and include a couple from Stormwrack.
As for deities, there are 36 powers that exist, each with a unique alignment and element (LG fire, CN air, etc.), all named after mythical demons, devils, and angels and/or staples of D&D mythos (Tiamat, Demogorgon, etc.). Most mortals never interact with these powers, and have no way of comprehending their goals/motivations. Certain powerful mortals who transcend their mortality manage to touch a bit of the divine and become saints (another homage to Hollow World where powerful characters can become immortal). Most mortals interact with the powers through these saints. Divine spell casters achieve their magic from the powers, but filtered through the saints. This causes all sorts of theological conflicts between churches who may or may not worship the same power (sounds a bit like the "Real World," eh?).
Sorry for the long post, but I dig world creation threads (and world creation. The <i>best</i> reason to DM!).
El Skootro
Doug, I'm still not comprehending the system well enough, but I think I like the sound of it. It sounds like it may be just as easy to pick up the Hero system books as it would for you to fully elaborate on the language system used there, but I'm afraid I'm not willing to go that far for a susbsystem. :) Could you flesh out the D&D conversion a bit more?
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Doug, I'm still not comprehending the system well enough, but I think I like the sound of it. It sounds like it may be just as easy to pick up the Hero system books as it would for you to fully elaborate on the language system used there, but I'm afraid I'm not willing to go that far for a susbsystem. :) Could you flesh out the D&D conversion a bit more?
8-)
Language Skill
I rate language skills on a 0-3 point scale. With 0 points, you don't understand anything, 1=phrasebook understanding, 2=fluent, 3=native with the ability to imitate accents. (I think it arguably appropriate to require a point for literacy if the language uses a different script, but I don't do that now.)
Language Similarity
I rate each language as Very Similar, Similar, Not Similar, or Wildly Different to/from each other language. (Hero does this graphically, using Venn diagrams, but you could use a grid if that works better for you.)
Learning New Languages
When you want to learn a new language that is Wildly Different from all languages you know, spend 2 points for level 1 (phrasebook), then one more point for each increase. If you want to learn a new language for which your nearest known language is Not Similar or another language only known at level 1, spend 1 point for each level of understanding. If you have at least 2 points in a language that is Similar, you can spend 1 point to get 2 points in the new language. If you have at least 2 points in a language that is Very Similar, you are considered to have 1 point in the language for free.
New Character Languages
The character's native tongue is understood at a 2-point level, but without an accent in his home area. All other languages the character is entitled to at the start of play are treated as points to spend on languages instead.
Neighboring Languages
Most nearby areas will speak a language that is Very Similar, as distance increases, similarity decreases. Dominant dialects retain their understandability over larger areas, since they tend to be merchant tongues. And areas on major trade routes are more likely to both understand people from farther away and be understood by people from farther away.
Homebrew here been that way for some time, its went from DnD to ADnD to 3.0 now 3.5. I am not saying that I have not played in FR or Eb but when i run I run homebrew.
Thanks, Doug! That's really nice; consider it stolen. :)
I am a big fan of using multiple languages in the campaign world. Even in a certain geographical region there can be a dozen or more languages. Sometimes it leads to one or more of the players translating for the others. Makes for better roleplaying.
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Currently running around in Eberron. Most often have played in Forgotten Realms. Other worlds/systems include Dark Sun, Planescape, Medieval Earth, and a number of Homebrew systems.
We are currently trying the Eberron cosmology. Otherwise we try to stick with whatever cosmology fits with the world in question as written.
I had started to create my own Homebrew world and fairly quickly got in over my head. While I think that I would do much better now, I have other things in my life that are more important to me than taking the time to create something from scratch when there are so many good systems out there already. It is much easier to me to modify Eberron or Faerun to suite my needs than it is to create "Rimmer World" -- (which in turn allows me to spend more time with family and friends outside of gaming).
...I ran a short experimental game a few months ago in which I nearly had a TPK on my hands, since the characters only spoke Common, and not the regional language (by their own choice; Common wasn't spoken well in the area). They couldn't get the info they needed and nearly died of it.I learned that Common should remain more than serviceable in most situations; while language barriers can make good roleplaying opportunities, from a play balance and mechanics stand point, constantly enforcing that can be problematic.
However, I do like the idea of having numerous languages in the game...
I really like Languages. I ruled that there was no Common or Undercommon and then used the history of my home brew to create a language system. My Players Guide outlines the languages past and present that a character from the part of the world where the campaign is set could reasonably know about.
I actually found that the whole history and cosmology of my world strongly shifted into focus after I had outlined the languages and where they came from. I realized that two of my human racial groups must be at least distantly related and began to work on themes for "The Bloodlines of the Western Men". Interestingly neither of these groups where quintessentially Western European. Instead one of them is strongly oriental and their bloodlines include access to ancient clan loyalties that are kind of hereditary secret societies in my world. Essentially in working out the historic roots of the languages I clarified my whole history and how the races and different ethnic groups related to my cosmology. This allowed my to add more interesting elements to my adventures. It also gave a lot of interesting ideas for the “Secrets” of my world. Good secrets are always a boon for a campaign world.
I also have not really found languages to be much of a barrier. Characters in D&D often have a fair number of different languages that they can speak so in general there is some one in the party that can speak almost any important language.
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Home Brew, Grey Hawk, Rifts Earth
was gonna mix Freeport with Forgotten Realms.I make up new stuff whenever the fancy strikes me.
I put Freeport in my Realms Campaign and it worked like a charm. I love the Forgotten Relams but I find that sometimes GreyHawk is a more interesting choice. I also like RIFTS.