So, fellow world builders, how do you like to use gods in your campaign?
Are you a Dragonlance/Hercules/Xena kind of person who likes the gods to be real, petty, and involved in day to day life?
Do you prefer a more Song of Ice and Fire religion where the gods' existence is a little more doubt-able/distant.
Do you prefer no gods?
Immortal creatures that act like gods?
One all powerful god?
I have them real but I never usually have them take any part of the campaign. I usually would have them between CR 27-33, give them godly utility flavor abilities, and that's pretty much it.
Actually, it depends and I can arrange with both "classical" concepts.
In DL/Greek, the gods are very much real and active. In this concept, the clerics (and other divine casters) are ACTUALLY CHOSEN by the gods. They might even have had some eye to eye talks.
Divine casters must take care very much what they do with these powers, since the active god can always take it away (and might do so just for fun: CN god, anyone?)
I a world where gods are distant/mythical, the clerics probably get their spell powers not as a gift but through their sheer force of faith (although they might SEE it differently).
But in the end, it means, divine casters can do what ever they feal or better BELIEVE is rightful in their faith and religion and as long as they don't have a PERSONAL spiritual dilemma, they don't risk losing their powers.
So it depends on how tight you want to run your divine casters as both ideas offer interesting opportunities.
A world without gods is difficult, if you mean a world without FAITH/RELIGION. Faith and religion is a very important concept and motivation in our world and a world without this seems to lack something.
If you meant without gods but still with faith/religion and divine casters, it really is not different to the "distant gods" concept.
Immortal creatures as gods was used in DAWNFORGE. But it boils down to whether they actually give divine casters their spellpowers or simply bath in veneration but it's the faith of the casters that actually gives them their casting ability. In the end, this concept is very similar to the DL/Greek concept.
I think it doesn't really matter if it is one god or a pantheon. But one god probably results in fewer cleric possibilities, if it isn't one god that "allows" all. Otherwise, clerics become very stereotypical.
But I am still hoping to play a fantasy campaign on medieval earth once, with "christianity and islam" fighting out the crusades etc, but with magic and different races.
But regarding our current state of REAL events, it probably is a very sensible topic.
Well. Bottomline. It probably boils down to where the divine casters REALLY get their powers from: A true divine entity or from their devotion and faith to a certain religion i.e. from within themselves.
Everything else is fluff. ;)
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I prefer to have a lot of my good divinities be either distant and mysterious or abstract concepts that man stumble upon making them harder to just worship and have faith in as it's harder to decisively say whether a moment of good fortune is actually the gods or just random chance. Evil on the other hand is usually very real beings who usually have direct involvement in their clergy and faithful sending sometimes even begging to be send themselves or their servants (demons, devils, daemons, etc.) to their "aid". Most evil religions revolve around some powerful outsider with greater machinations or ego that require him to have mortals to fulfill it. Neutral religions can be either of the 2 with outsiders usually being things like Proteans or Fey who usually are in it for either selfish reasons or shear curiosity. The problem that evil outsiders (often referred to as lords) have is that most of their flock of followers is kept small due to their constant and quite often heavy requirements on the faith (usually in the form sentient sacrifices) and the requirements of their clergy in efforts to gain favor and power for themselves. In this way the clergy's of these powerful lords are often much smaller in total number but usually more powerful individually then followers of good faiths. Good faiths on the other hand usually have larger pools of lay followers and clerics and more accepted within society as they offer positive advancements to the cultures that surround them and are much less strenuous to worship. This allows them to be bigger players in the world a large and to combat the forces of evil as they have larger numbers to work with.
Doc:
Do you have your evil "gods" believe themselves evil or are their intentions good but misguided?
When I create immortal beings, one of my hardest jobs is trying to make them fit an alignment.
The reason for this is that I believe an immortal being would have a much wider scope of experience and would define good and evil much differently than a mortal would.
We may look at a god as LE, when he is really LG but he just moves pieces on the chess board in centuries, not minutes. The movement of his hand kills thousands but saves billions.
I've been thinking of making most of my gods Neutral to represent this sort of broad understanding of the universe.
Since my settings' patheons are all real-world mythologies (Greco-Roman, Norse, Sumerian, Egyptian, Hindu, and Shintou) with a slight revamp on occasion, I tend to play them as they're depicted in the myths; however, most of the stories of those myths - everything pre-Ragnarok in Norse myth, nearly all of Greek myth, etc. - happened in the distant past, during the "golden age of the gods" (note gods, the golden age of mortals is either still coming or here, depending on which part of my setting timeline I'm playing in) and before the Fates stepped in and said "Okay you guys are getting too involved, time to back it off, this is what you have clerics for".
So while some gods might still be directly active, these tend to be the chaotic and/or evil deities trying to get around the Fates' declaration, while the lawful or good ones tend to leave it for their mortal servants to handle, and only get directly involved when absolutely necessary and even then only minorly, and often in disguise (I'm looking at you, Odin). Archfiends, empyrial celestials, fey lords, protean elders, and such like extremely powerful outsiders are a slight step below true Gods, but this lets them squeeze underneath the Fates' command, and they tend to be the biggest direct players on the chessboard of reality, with the Gods giving their support to the ones they're allied with or think that they can get an advantage out of.
Take a chapter from Nobilis; the gods are the things they represent. They don't "stand for" those things (their domains), they ARE their domains. As such, it's their duty to make those things more and more real in the world.
I don't support the notion that a deity would engage in conflict with anyone except another deity. It's simply not done. A god's power is absolute over their particular domains, and being a god makes them another order of being entirely. As such, they don't have an AC or Hp, or any of those stats. Battle with a god will never happen.
Do they get involved in the affairs of mortals? Sure they do, especially on Golarion. It was my first impression that many of the deities there were once mortal, so the "higher" gods must have some purpose for recruiting from the ranks for mortals. They appear in dreams, they send signs, but no...no definitive proof that a deity exists. From a philosophical point-of-view, concrete proof of a deity's will is...problematic. Those gods have to be archetypes like "rock stars". For them to have to appear and give instruction would be debasing what they're all about. It's beneath them.
In other words, if you can't motivate mortalkind with what you represent, you have no business standing there in the flesh and ordering them about.
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Doc:
Do you have your evil "gods" believe themselves evil or are their intentions good but misguided?
When I create immortal beings, one of my hardest jobs is trying to make them fit an alignment.
The reason for this is that I believe an immortal being would have a much wider scope of experience and would define good and evil much differently than a mortal would.
We may look at a god as LE, when he is really LG but he just moves pieces on the chess board in centuries, not minutes. The movement of his hand kills thousands but saves billions.
I've been thinking of making most of my gods Neutral to represent this sort of broad understanding of the universe.
On the grand scheme of things I think most of them either don't believe they are evil or just don't care. Two examples I can think of from my game are The Ashen Bull and Otis, the desperate prophet. The Ashen Bull is an archdevil out for souls to damn and bring into the fold of his infernal armies. He seeks souls tempered in the fires of war and melts those unable to meet his demands down into slag. He despised chaos and disorder and fights to quell those who would wrench his well oiled machine of discipline into chaos. In this way he finds worshipers as he does protect the order of things but is brutal and merciless in his execution.
Otis on the other hand was a mortal man who discovered that the forces of evil that sought to consume all that was were just too much for man alone to face believed that the only safe thing for man to do was to hide from the things in the dark or direct them onto other prey. In this way he thinks he is helping the ones he cares about but will quite often go to dangerous extremes to meet this including things like calling down daemons to defend his followers or selling out neighbors to protect his family. He in a lot of ways reminds me of walter white from breaking bad in that he will do whatever he thinks is necessary to protect what he loves even if it damns him. In this way his cult (which is sometimes referred to as the cult of the desperate prophet) prospers as those who beseech his temple for power are the desperate downtrodden who either have no other options they can afford or acquire or the time that it might take other good faiths to fix the problem.
Hands off and mostly unseen but available.
Any gods that are going to get directly involved would do so thru avatars and intermediaries.
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I keep trying to do more distant gods, but my first introduction to fantasy was Dragonlance and watching Hercules/Xena as a kid so I have this tendency to directly involve gods in the day to day affairs of my world.
I think I may aim for a middle ground. Distant gods, but demi-gods and immortals who get more directly involved.
Most of the gods of Golarian specifically list their avatars or intermediaries... At least in the god supplement books.
They are not statted for the most part but that leaves you some creative room.
Direct gods doesn't HAVE to be campy. Dragonlance's divine stuff wasn't really campy... Sure, Hercules/Xena was campy to the extreme but that was a function of who produced it (Sam Raimi) not the gods themselves.
Though, I must admit, Kevin Smith's portrayal of Ares, especially later in Xena, was amazing.
It really sucks that he died right as he was getting famous.
I've had some lame moments with deities from some DMs. They would use them as a means to an end just to beat players with the DM stick.
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I like to portray the Gods as being major influences within the mortal plane, but preferring to use a subtle touch in doing so.
The reason for this because the Gods are in a state of Cold War, because the Gods know that the only thing that can destroy them are other gods (as seen in the war between Asmodeus and Ihys and all the gods versus Rovagug). None of the various Gods wants to do anything too drastic, inviting open war onto the planes. Even evil gods and goddesses, like Lamashtu, are very careful not to extend their reach too far, lest they welcome an alliance of the gods of law, order and goodness to attack and annihilate them.
Thus they keep away from direct confrontations with each other, and generally use go-betweens and cat's paws to affect the Material Plane. Think of it as the world superpowers using the CIA and KGB as seen in the real Cold War.
The only times a God will personally intervene in all their glory on the Material Plane is when another God breaks the Détente.
In the homebrew campaign I'm working on, the Gods are dead. It is a time of young new spirits, that start out with barely a form, and grow shaped by the belief of the mortals that discover them. Perhaps eventually reaching a fully fledged God state.
I've had some lame moments with deities from some DMs. They would use them as a means to an end just to beat players with the DM stick.I hate it when this happens. The main reason I bought 4E was I heard Mystra was dead. The bad news Bane was still alive.
Even worse than that, Elminster (who in some supplements had technical divine rank) is still alive, he was the stick a former DM used to hit us with, to the point that we wanted to find some way to do him in. Our Rogue suggested placing and activating a Feather Token (Tree) in his underpants.
The DM Stick is an unfortunate circumstance of rpg's. It's too often used by sloppy or lazy GMs, and even decent Gamemasters are tempted by such deus ex.
The DM Stick is an unfortunate circumstance of rpg's. It's too often used by sloppy or lazy GMs, and even decent Gamemasters are tempted by such deus ex.
Yup, that was our DM, hence why he is our EX DM!
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I have my gods interact at times, mainly with worthy followers in the sense of omens and dreams, sometimes during formal gatherings a character might receive a blessing of the gods everyone else sees.
Now as not all the gods are good, this can lead to interesting situations where the characters are wondering why they just received a blessing from a god...
and an evil god at that...
:)
Besides that gods can be interacted with in temples and shrines, with magic or by calling on them. This is not always to the advantage of the characters again, and I only use it to add to the storyline, not to take away from the story or smack down a character for some reason.
In my home brew we tend to think of things in line of Middle Earth this is likely because we have been adding content in the open spaces on the the old MERP map for years.
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Even worse than that, Elminster (who in some supplements had technical divine rank) is still alive, he was the stick a former DM used to hit us with, to the point that we wanted to find some way to do him in. Our Rogue suggested placing and activating a Feather Token (Tree) in his underpants.I've had some lame moments with deities from some DMs. They would use them as a means to an end just to beat players with the DM stick.I hate it when this happens. The main reason I bought 4E was I heard Mystra was dead. The bad news Bane was still alive.
Another one that gave us problems was Lolth. My DM found a Lolth hit squad in a dragon magazine. After that we couldn't kill a drow cleric that was higher than 3rd lv without them hunting us.
I've always had the gods be watchful and involved, but the PCs are only vaguely aware WHO they are dealing with. Be it through avatars or whatnot.
Unless it is a devine class. They better know or the lightning hurts! I try to have more interaction with divine cause to me that's kinda the point of playing one.
YMMV
I'm building a setting where the gods are nearly mortals themselves, being physical entities with seats of power that through schemes and such may be taken from them.
There used to be gods in the sense of vast, cosmic entities, but the forces of an entire world worked together to kill them and divide their power.
I keep them doubtable, and like greek gods in that they make mistakes when they do act. I prefer to use the 3.5 gods due to familiarity, and typically they don't show up, but every now and again I throw out a reference, like an old man chilling in town feeding canaries before an important battle of good and evil, or the meeting of an eccentric older gentleman jogging down the path.
If the party is to meet a God, it is a big affair that shows their hosts and legions. I typically make them active in their own segment of reality, but too busy either with their portfolios or wars to bother with the prime material, except in the most extreme of circumstances which are directly related to their wars.
For example, Jergal is in a hundred-mile hallway filled with undead scribes writing the names of the dead. Jergal is in a room empty but for his desk and writing supplies.
they are gods, in my campaign you're lucky if your epic quest you undertake at the far end of lvl 20 will give the direct vision of a smile of your god.
High lvl characters might meet creatures that dealt directly with some god.
Mid lvl characters might meet the (earthly) cult leader.
Low lvl characters meet regular priests and should be happy that their gods grant spells to their clerics.
I've had other GMs portray gods, and it was always disappointing. Sometimes someone even made fun of that god and the GM only punished him slightly (well nobody would make fun of Zol Kuthon). The problem with taking out your biggest gun as a GM is that you can't go bigger if someone calls your bluff. If someone makes fun of a solar, kick their buttox, have an epic fight and perhaps let them get away alive. If someone makes fun of a god, do you wipe them out of existence and start a new campaign?
I prefer to aim for the Greek Myth level. Interfering, but at arms length as their real concerns are each other. Mortal concerns are akin to playing a game of "Civilization" and therefore even direct action is done by proxy and influence. Directly stomping around would spoil the game.
I like distant gods, who may or may not be "divine". If you're going with the "gods need worship to survive", I tend to think of them as not caring what their followers do as long as they keep sending in that worship tax.
So, fellow world builders, how do you like to use gods in your campaign?
Are you a Dragonlance/Hercules/Xena kind of person who likes the gods to be real, petty, and involved in day to day life?
Do you prefer a more Song of Ice and Fire religion where the gods' existence is a little more doubt-able/distant.
Do you prefer no gods?
Immortal creatures that act like gods?
One all powerful god?
In my yet-unused and -incomplete homebrew, all of those scenarios are potentially true. Concepts of divinity vary by religion, sometimes radically. I've got regular theistic gods, animistic spirits, impersonal forces, immortals who might act as though they're gods but are something else, and something relatively close to one omnimax deity. (A finite pantheon generally worshiped as a group, with priesthoods devoted to individual deities being a lot more like monastic orders than separate religions.)
And I've made an effort to make sure that to the guy on the ground, each of these worldviews has enough evidence in its favor that one could easily conclude that it's objectively true and represents the true voice of objective morality on top of it.
Then I went and did my best to make the major moralities all somewhat reasonable and somewhat objectionable both in-setting and to the eyes of likely players. The major human religion believes only humans are ensouled and everything else is an animal, a curse human who had it coming (halflings), a monster to be destroyed, or a literal incarnation of absolute evil (fiends, arcane spellcasters). And anything non-human can get promoted to the final two categories. So, on occasion, can humans of the various minority faiths.
Most of the time they stay distant, working through their priests. The few times PCs do cross a deity's path it's subtle
My main campaign world seems to work this way. One god has created powerful wards to limit all divine influence on the world, and basically uses the world their private game preserve. Just here the game being stalked is other deities. The few gods that have sway there have to maintain a mortal aspect to maintain a connection with their followers. Almost to the last these aspects keep a low profile, since they are hunted by the demon allies of the god that holds the upper hand.
Most Gods if they manifest a physical representation are usually like the Gods of Toril, they will possess their favored worshiper or in a strange manner of costruct. I've had 'Gods' manifest in the form of a Construct like a Divine Vessel, I got the idea from Iron Kingdom and the faction of Menoths followers who have a warjack that dips into Urcaen and is a Vessel of the Will of Menoth.
Though I like the way the Immortals of Mystra who are th Gods of Mystra manifest. They are quite active in the way of life of the people of Mystra. They inhabit the moon if I remember right or something like that, during a cataclysm they made the Hollow World where they put most of the races that would have been eliminated in the Cataclysm in the hollow world except the remains of Blackmoor, they wer a little to high for them to consider saving them.