I am developing my own setting using the Pathfinder system.
I have gotten to a point where I am developing the Pantheon(s) for my world. And as the title suggests I am wondering; at what point have I created too many?
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All of them are too many. I am more than enough for you fools.
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I am developing my own setting using the Pathfinder system.
I have gotten to a point where I am developing the Pantheon(s) for my world. And as the title suggests I am wondering; at what point have I created too many?
At the point where a PC can't keep track of all the Gods they need to.
Now, "all the Gods they need to" isn't all of the Gods, it's all of the major Gods in the pantheon their race or area follows, and any others that have major impact on races or in areas nearby.
One.
when you start naming them steve..or nigel, and assigning them as gods of the toilet, and cucumbers.
Honestly maybe 1 per alignment, or even one good, one evil and one neutral, and just make aspects of each, you can always add more later.
In the setting that I've been writing stories in for years, I have about 14 major gods with widespread influence, and several other gods scattered around the setting as they fit into each of the cultures throughout my world map. Some of these gods (especially the widespread ones) get repackaged in these other cultures the way that real life cults shared gods with slightly different names and portfolios.
I'm currently trying to translate my story world into its own campaign setting under the Pathfinder rules. By the time I'm done doing that, I'll probably have the same widespread 14 gods, and probably around 15-20 more gods from the varying cultures.
My suggestion is that you should look around world history to get an idea of just how many cults were running around during a given era. The Aztecs, Greeks, Persians, Chinese, Japanese, Africans, Scandinavians, Saxons, Anglos, Moors, Slavs, etc all had very different pantheons, many being worshiped in tandem, so I don't see a problem with having 100+ gods being prevalent in a given setting.
In a gaming setting, however, too many choices can get a bit overwhelming for players if the information isn't clear and cut for them. What I've started doing is recording my gods in color-coded spreadsheets, choosing different colors for different cultures. Each spreadsheet is written so that it'll print neatly for my players and feature core information blocks based on SKR's deity articles including their portfolios, adjectives for worshipers, domains, and different titles. I've chosen to omit their cults' histories and the lore surrounding them from these spreadsheets to cut back on wordcount. If they decide that they're interested in a given deity and want that additional information, I have it handy for them.
In this way, I'm trying to learn from the mistakes I made introducing new players to Golarion's deities, namely the info dumping that frustrated people, which ultimately resulted in me over simplifying things down to "you're going to be a paladin? You'll like Iomedae. If you feel like reading up on her, here's some wiki links. If you decide that you don't like her after all, let me know and we'll change it later".
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Yeah, for the very local setting I worked out for my upcoming Pathfinder game, I worked out something like 40 gods, but maybe half of those are actually relevant to the PCs due to who worships them (I made a God for the Halflings, a God for the Giants, a God for the Dragons, a whole pantheon each for the Merfolk and Goblins...none of these seem likely to come up except tangentially).
I'd say 9-12 is a good number. Large enough to have some variety. Small enough to keep track of.
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Short answer to "at what point have I created too many": When creating the next one doesn't bring any fun or depth to the setting for you and/or the players.
Longer answer (more just considerations to think about and use or discard as you see fit):
Depends on how powerful each of the gods are. If they are omnipotent/omniscient/omnipresent then there's really only room for one. But if there's a god of wine (just wine) and a god of grapes (just grapes) then you're looking at the possibility of having a god for every thing and a god for every idea of every thing.
Depends on how many church hierarchies/structures you want to have to flesh out (which in and of itself doesn't have to be directly tied to the number of deities). You could have a church for every deity which in turn means creating all the things that go alone with such socio-political organizations or you could just have a single church with separate departments/factions/etc.
Depends on how much game-mechanic overlap you want (probably the most important consideration for pantheon(s) in a game setting). How many domains will each deity grant to their clerics (on average)? Can there be only one deity that grants a specific domain, or will multiple deities grant access to the same specific domain?
Depends on how set-in-stone (cosmologically and theologically speaking) you want your pantheon(s) to be. If things are mutable (gods can die, be born, steal-borrow-gift domains from/to each other, mortal heroes can ascend to godhood) then that might mean there should be more deities. If the gods are truly immortal in addition to being immutable then there may be less gods. Though the reverse could be true in both cases, depending on what you want.
Flowing from the previous consideration concerning mutability: Leave yourself room to grow or adapt the pantheon(s). Ask your players, the one's that want to play clerics, paladins, etc., what kind of deity are they interested in having their character(s) follow. Even if it's just "what domains do you want your character to have access too?" Flesh out the one's the PCs are interested in first and then expand from there...detailing the likely deities of the bad guys. And lastly detailing the gods that neither the PCs nor the bad guys are interested in (at the moment).
Again, just considerations, no real hard and fast "n number is too much."
May your creative juices flow like Godzilla stomping through fields of ripe watermelons. :)
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Depends on how powerful each of the gods are. If they are omnipotent/omniscient/omnipresent then there's really only room for one. But if there's a god of wine (just wine) and a god of grapes (just grapes) then you're looking at the possibility of having a god for every thing and a god for every idea of every thing.
This is an excellent point. I suggest consolidating portfolios where you can. Got a goddess of love? You can realistically also make her a goddess of beauty and art while you're at it, if you think that it'll add depth to her. Or, you can blend love with lust and sexual prowess to make a totally different deity.
A god of the sun could also be the god of the hearth (home and family), which can extend into community, and extend further into commerce, and maybe even come back around to the sun and fold into fire and the forge. However, be careful not to overload a god, either.
Putting variations into your portfolios can make for unique and memorable deities as well as cutting back on unnecessary, lesser deities.
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The major religion in my homebrew is called the Church of the 10,000 Prophets. This setting is hundreds of years in the past of my original setting, where this evolved into something similar yet quite different. But that's neither here nor there.
The Romans had a god of door hinges. The Egyptians had gods of perfume, sacred oils, and sandals. Everything, no matter how great or minor, had a deity or at least patron overseeing it. I've loosely based my current religious system on the saints of the Catholic Church, and I hope I don't offend any Catholics here or in my circle of friends by doing this. Each saint (though with some overlap) oversees a different aspect of life and faith, though ultimately all answer to God. In my system there is no overseeing One, so the Anointed or Blessed (as they are called) often squabble and war with one another or in factions.
The long and short of it is, I suppose, that you can have as many as you deem necessary to impart both a religious uniqueness to your setting and be able to meet the needs of the PCs and players.
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As many as you like or your players wish to invent. The one caveat that I'd avoid is having any singular god be the sole proprietor of an "Unbeatable" concept. For example:
- Freedom good!
- Undead bad!
My examples are a little tongue-in-cheek, but I hope the concept comes through. In terms of hard to defend concepts, never put all of your eggs in one basket.
That is, have at least two deities who stand against undead, for example. Don't have a single deity who is all about ending slavery...and have that be all that they're about. Make two who are.
These concepts on their own are too easily an "I win" button in the social sense.
This is less of an issue with a single table top group, though, granted. If you're designing for a larger group with a greater number of players, it does become a thing.
You have too many gods when the players get a glazed look on their face and ignore your descriptions of the gods. You do not have enough gods when your payers can’t find the right deity for their character.
You have too many gods, when you just have a list of names and domains.
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You can never have too many gods... look at Hinduism. Religion is personal and if you can't find yourself following the destroyer of illusions and prefer the god of the smell of wet dirt, then follow it.
On a more serious, game related note... I'd say about a core pantheon of about 9-12. They'd be the 'big ones' that are encountered everywhere that almost everyone knows about. There would then be a bunch of minor deities that would probably just be a list of names and domains outside of the regions/cultures they are from.
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You have too many gods, when you just have a list of names and domains.
At this point that is pretty much all I have...
But this setting is a WIP.I intend to develop the gods further.
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I use fifteen in my setting. Mind you, I have five 'alignments' rather than Pathfinder's nine.
If you are an Atheist - one is too many.
If you are a monotheist - two or more is too many.
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In my new setting there are no "Apparent Deities", the Giants have a few otherplanear patrons, and the Dragons don't say anything about gods...
Humans and most other races worship aspects of nature, or have various superstitions.
Dwarves and elves have a few creation myths but are mostly ancestor worshipers.
As the campaign develops some gods or religious movements may develop, but I am going for a very.."Help your own damn self" world. :)
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First off: do gods monopolize their responsibilities/portfolios?
If there's a Sun God, is he responsible for making the sun shine? In that case it'd be weird to have a separate sun gods. Especially in settings where the gods actively made the world, it'd be weird to have multiple gods credited for making the same world-spanning thing. (But see Order of the Stick's backstory for an example of how it can be done well.)
As a variant, maybe the Sun exists without any god claiming responsibility, but there are still gods associated with the sun, granting Sun domain powers, because they live in a palace in the sky. In that case you can have multiple Sun gods without difficulty.
One god, many faces?
It could be that Helios the Sun God is known as Tonatiuh, Belenus and Ra by different cultures in your game world. They don't have to have identical Domain sets, but sprinkling in some intrigueing similarities (holy symbols, overlap in Domains, favored weapons, ceremonies) will help clue players in.
Not all gods need to be aspects of one another though. You can certainly have two different "culture hero" deities who taught the secrets of agriculture to their chosen people.
Unfinished lists of gods
Gods can be abstract things that came from elsewhere, or they can be mortals who ascended. You could have people revering their Ancestors, with each clan having different Domains depending on family history. In that case you don't need a complete list of all ancestor-domain sets beforehand, but you probably should figure them out for the most famous and powerful clans.
The Golarion Shoanti revere animal totems that each have different domains associated. In that case it's fair to have dozens of gods, for each animal known. But some (lion, eagle) will probably be considered more important. If a player wants to have a different animal as totem though, you can agree on domains that make sense ("let's give Fox the Trickery domain, and..."), or someone could start out with a domain and figure out animals that would reasonably grant that domain ("I want Knowledge... how about Owl?").
There are vast numbers of demon lords down there, each specializing in a different flavor of evil. Too many to name beforehand, and why limit yourself? Later on you can always introduce a new creepy cult that the players have never heard of.
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Consider some collaboration with any player(s) you might have, to see if there's a particular sort of god that appeals to them. (Not just 'I want a god that has the elven curve sword as a favored weapon, and grants access to the Liberation and Travel domains,' but actual *concepts.*)
Other than that, I'd go with the setting basics to determine what is 'needed.'
If I'm using alignments, I should have at least one option for each alignment (LG, NG, CG, etc.), making for nine gods right there.
If I'm using a planar cosmology out of D&D, including multiple upper and lower and elemental planes, there should probably be a god for each one, including oddballs like the plane of shadow or first world or elemental plane of X or even perhaps the astral or ethereal planes. If one or more planes exist, but don't have a god in charge, perhaps there's a specific reason for that. The positive energy plane, for instance, could be the residence of the sun-goddess, or it could be the primal wellspring of creation, sort of like a never-ending Big Bang of light, life and creative potential, that the gods all tap into, but so intense that even they cannot truly master. The negative energy plane could be the pit that contains the ever-hungering light-hating primal Apophis or Tiamat or Tharizdun or Rovagug of the setting, trapped on the event horizon of oblivion, and scrambling to get out and continue it's apocalyptic rampage to return the universe to the peace and serenity of unending darkness, or it could be too dangerous for even the gods of evil to do more than skirt the edges carefully and deploy their nets to catch stuff being drawn into it to be annihilated, and therefore saving for themselves any scrap of power that would otherwise have been lost.
Various real world mythologies have common archetypes, such as 'skyfathers' (Odin, Zeus, Indra, Ukko) or 'horned gods' or 'earth mothers' or 'maimed gods / wounded kings' or whatever. If you want to add a mythic sort of element, the elemental plane of air could be ruled by an old bearded thunderbolt tossing sort of fellow, whose body is as mutable as the clouds, who isn't strictly Zeus, but borrows elements from him (with one-eyed storm giants serving as his 'cyclopes' and forging his thunderbolts?).
Mixing and matching, one could have an 'earth mother' who is the primary Neutral goddess of the setting, and also the god overseeing the material plane (explaining why her petitioners tend to reincarnate, rather than go on to various outer planes, like the worshippers of the skyfather or the angel of light or the dark prince of the hells). Various gods should also have ties with each other, like the gods of the Egyptian, Norse and Olympian pantheons, and not just be nine to twelve to twenty complete strangers. The Earth Mother and the Skyfather might have had a fling, and the god(dess) in charge of the plane of earth could be their child. The gods in charge of the First World and the Plane of Shadow might be siblings, one wild and full of (sometimes dangerous!) energy whimsy, the other dour and sinister in demeanor, if not any more 'evil' than the other, allowing them to serve not only as family, and helping to make this collection gods into a cohesive inter-connected pantheon, but also as choices for Chaotic and Lawful clerics (and seelie and unseelie fey).
While I love Roger Moore's demihuman deities (particularly Aerdrie Faenya, Arvoreen the Defender and pretty much the entire Gnomish pantheon), I'd steer away from making different gods for different races. That way lies madness in a game setting that might have humans, dwarves, elves, gnomes, halflings, orcs, kobolds, goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, dark folk, drow, many types of fey, multiple categories of dragons, nagas, centaurs, tengu, merfolk, sahuagin, sphinxes, dopplegangers, vampires (and other intelligent undead), boggards, various giant types, gnolls, lizardfolk, elementals, angels, demons, devils, azata, archons, aeons, genies, daemons, multiple types of lycanthrope, etc., etc. Madness, I say! At that point, it's probably easier to allow cleric PCs to pick any two domains and be done with it, since the setting is going to have 10,000 gods anyway (assuming that any species could have a minimum of one god, and, for more populous / less organized races, such as goblins, would, realistically, have *hundreds*).
I'd be more inclined to have *some* of the common gods be more popular suitable among certain races or cultures, and perhaps be depicted in the temples of that race as a member of their race (and be called by the race-language translation of their 'common' name). Where this can be an issue is with a smaller set of gods, as suddenly, the token god of chaos and evil suddenly becomes the predominant god of a plethora of very unrelated races, with very different areas of concern. (The god of CE demons being the god of CE goblins, gnolls, lycanthropes, dragons, orcs, etc. gets a little busy and can muddle themes, something to consider, and a possible reason to follow the Golarion mold and have at least *two* options for each alignment type, so that not every LE race or culture in existence is pushed towards worshipping Asmodeus, for instance.)
One thing that I wish I'd thought of when I first started designing worlds and gods was making rival pantheons.
In my first genuinely homebrew world, I had the standard 'creator-type' god, a god for Justice, a god for Death, etc, and made it so that their work was 'true' for that world. It worked fine for quite a few years, but
I should have made that pantheon regional only - the locals in the continent where the game started should merely have believed that their religion was 'the one true religion'.
Once the game started exploring the rest of the world, I wanted to have local religions that could be in conflict with the 'old world' but I'd set too much in stone already.
The real advantages of having rival pantheons/cultures is that you can have conflicts where the moral 'rightness' is debateable. eg Two countries that follow two different Lawful Good gods could end up fighting a war, or simply having lenghy debates.
And have a god of the Dead who isn't evil (alongside an evil one, if you want) especially for PCs who don't want to be evil, but do want to play necromancers...
My favourite deity I ever invented was called 'Illbringer' - goddess of retribution and strife. She wasn't evil, but when called upon would send conflict for the PCs to deal with. Succeeding in one of her missions led to a reward and also a probability that they'd get more conflict in their futures...no-one ever played a character who worshipped her, but plenty tried to appease her. Have a look at what the ancient Greeks used to do to try to placate their deities - sacrifices (not human, usually) to Poseidon before sea journeys; elaborate ceremonies dedicated to Hades, etc - so that nothing nasty would happen.
Anyway, have fun.
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Fizzygoo and ShadowCatX both have excellent posts, and pretty much said everything I was going to anyway. So go read their posts and pretend they're more rambling and long-winded and difficult-to-follow, and that's what I would have written. :D
EDIT: and Set and Ascalapus wrote things I wanted to!
... also my edits are frustrating when I lose them.
I'm just going to link to this thread instead of rewriting everything. Again.
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Depends on how much game-mechanic overlap you want (probably the most important consideration for pantheon(s) in a game setting). How many domains will each deity grant to their clerics (on average)? Can there be only one deity that grants a specific domain, or will multiple deities grant access to the same specific domain?
I would agree that this is the most important consideration.
So, for systemic support of the game, I'd suggest at least 1 deity of each alignment, as a base.
Domains
Next, you need to assess the domains and make sure they are "available".
So, you have 33 "base" domains in the core rulebook. You should review the list and determine if there are any domains that should be the sole purview of a single deity (I'd suggest this should be uncommon). If you simply ensure each domain is available to at least 2 deities, you end up with 66. If each portfolio has 4, you still need more than 12 gods to spread the domains around. If you want to start making the portfolios sound organically believable, you may need even more.
So, presume, 15-18 gods, simply to support the game system... you may need some grease spells to make that fit in the average story world.
I thought the original 20 Golarion deities was a good compromise between small and large pantheons for a wide-open campaign settings (that has since gone way out the window but ah well). For a home game I think 20 is about the limit of major gods that most people would know about, and is probably too many.
Also, as a suggested idea, if you are world building, I would suggest breaking from the trope of the 'evil for evil sake' villains.
Make the "evil" end of the pantheon, primal elemental forces. People who venerate these are good people who are begging for the evil deity to turn its wroth elsewhere.
Personifications of plague, storms, rough seas, famines, droughts, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, general bad luck, and perhaps death itself. Names and faces given to uncontrollable events that can takes the lives of many. And a small feeling of control given to the people who supplicate the gods to spare their families.
I'd move away from the Evil Gods and swarms of Evil minions trope.
I think the villains should be humans, more flawed than the gods.
I like the concept of the "evil" nation being a nation of people who follow leaders who have twisted the messages of Neutral gods to serve their own interests.
I like the concept that "everyone is the hero of his own story" including the high priest that is overseeing the torture of heretics. In his mind, his works are for the greater good. I'd use that approach for building the campaign world with the pantheon. No "god of convenient antagonism"
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Gonna add some additional examples to Ascalaphus's, because his post is really, really good.
First off: do gods monopolize their responsibilities/portfolios?
If there's a Sun God, is he responsible for making the sun shine? In that case it'd be weird to have a separate sun gods. Especially in settings where the gods actively made the world, it'd be weird to have multiple gods credited for making the same world-spanning thing. (But see Order of the Stick's backstory for an example of how it can be done well.)As a variant, maybe the Sun exists without any god claiming responsibility, but there are still gods associated with the sun, granting Sun domain powers, because they live in a palace in the sky. In that case you can have multiple Sun gods without difficulty.
To give more credence, maybe Ra's power makes the sun shine and Apollo's job is to cart it across the sky?
The Order of the Stick example is where the gods have monopolized their portfolios, but their portfolios are super specific. (Which is why it is done well.) For example, Nurgel is the God of Death, but Hel is the Goddess of Death with specific regards to dwarves, so if a dwarf dies its not under Nurgel's portfolio, but Hel's.
One god, many faces?
It could be that Helios the Sun God is known as Tonatiuh, Belenus and Ra by different cultures in your game world. They don't have to have identical Domain sets, but sprinkling in some intrigueing similarities (holy symbols, overlap in Domains, favored weapons, ceremonies) will help clue players in.Not all gods need to be aspects of one another though. You can certainly have two different "culture hero" deities who taught the secrets of agriculture to their chosen people.
This option works best if you have smaller, unsophisticated cultures that rarely interact; basically how our real-world societies began. It doesn't work as well in a world like Golarion, where people and knowledge are very migratory.
Unfinished lists of gods
Gods can be abstract things that came from elsewhere, or they can be mortals who ascended. You could have people revering their Ancestors, with each clan having different Domains depending on family history. In that case you don't need a complete list of all ancestor-domain sets beforehand, but you probably should figure them out for the most famous and powerful clans.The Golarion Shoanti revere animal totems that each have different domains associated. In that case it's fair to have dozens of gods, for each animal known. But some (lion, eagle) will probably be considered more important. If a player wants to have a different animal as totem though, you can agree on domains that make sense ("let's give Fox the Trickery domain, and..."), or someone could start out with a domain and figure...
This is likely the route that Vuldra will take as well. Such gods probably don't have much personality or influence either: you're going to have small-scale stories and legends, but "mask" gods aren't going to be saving the world from destruction. Their legends will be centered around their interactions with themselves and mortals and those who worship such gods do so in order to gain the positive qualities they seek from such an entity, such as worshiping the fox god for guile or the lion god for bravery.
I tend to take a kitchen sink approach. I will generally consider any god imaginable allowable, if they have a reasonable enough "portfolio" (and yes, I do believe there could be a god of cheese). I will even accept players creating their own gods (though I decide the importance of the god in the world).
Then again, that IS for my setting of genericland, land of all fantasy tropes so I will admit I'm not terribly bothered bu additions. If hinduism can teach us anything, is that people CAN create a very large amount of gods.
I also tend to subscribe to the "psychic gestalt" model of god creation, IE if enough people believe in it it starts existing (and it can destroyed by disbelief). To me anyways it justifies to me why beings of near-infinite power with bother with petty humanoids.
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I'm currently mulling over aq couple of dark gods that themselves are evil, but really don't care all that much about the alignment of their followers. If the proper sacrifices are being made, and commands are obeyed, who cares?
It might also be interesting to open up good gods to "cynical" priests. Still restricted in which alignment subtype spells you cast, but if you follow the letter of scripture, you get power.
By the way. I don't consider it a strict necessity to cover ALL the domains with gods, but a majority should be available.
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You can also do fun things by varying power level between gods. Major gods grant more domains, have larger churches, and are more widely recognized and prayed to by the general populace. Minor gods may serve major gods, group together in pantheons with a particular interest, or be unknown and irrelevant outside of a minor sphere.
My current campaign world has 10 major deities each granting about 6 domains. However there are a number of minor deities, including:
- The god of weaponsmiths, who serves the God of the Sun and War and grants the War and Artifice domains. The weaponsmith is considered part of the "church" of the major god in terms of social benefits.
- The dwarven pantheon, worshiped by and safeguarding the culture of a group of xenophobic deep-mountain dwarves, who collectively function as a major deity granting the Artifice, Earth, Trade, Law, Community, War, and Protection domains.
- The swordmage, an ascended mortal worshiped by warrior-wizard types (generally members of the Magus class and some bards) who grants the Arcane and Tactics domains but has at best a handful of actual clerics.
Your PCs will generally only need to worry about the major gods, but you can always bring in minor ones to serve the plot, flavour a new culture, or accommodate a PC who isn't keen on the main pantheon. I've got a dhampir PC who wanted to worship a death deity with the Death and Darkness domains, and the major death goddess in my campaign doesn't grant Darkness, so I pointed him at the patron saint of vampires.
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I like Weirdo's way of thinking. I also like to leave my meta-pantheon open to latecomers, but all the most powerful gods should probably be known at the start of the campaign. It's fine to add another creepy demon lord cult, but you can't stealthily add a world-spanning mass religion.
I rather like the idea that certain mortals ascend to sainthood under the patronage of a greater deity. Saints grant only a handful of domains, but there can be quite a few of them.
And not all saints are bright souls. Some are saints for the darker gods.
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I think there's a Deity for anything that would be truly important in a person's life. In fact, I wonder if deities are created by people themselves in this type of fiction, the more worshipers, the greater thier power. Hence, a deity of bows and a deity of swords are perfectly valid, but more people would worship a deity of war as compared to those.
Whats important to people in medieval times?
Money
Fertility
Protection
War
Healing
Fun
Justice
Of course, I mention the ones that could be considered "good", because most people at heart are honest, good people. Though they could also worship the things they fear...
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Whenever I don't do Golarion (or any other setting), I tend to do one of two things 1) Something like Wierdo, and only make gods for important events, NPCs, locales and such, and give the Players the freedom to make their own deities or choose the major gods or 2) create a world that has only 4-8 deities, which cover a large number of portfolios, and domains (and usually lack an alignment, and have followers of all swaths, many of whom oppose each other and may consider the others heretical, just like in real life)
I do tend to find the "powerful pantheon of pre-existing gods" model kinda... nonsensical. Why the hell would creatures so powerful bother with us at all? That has always been the weakest link in a lot of fantasy pantheons to me: why do they listen to/want worshippers?
The "forgotten realms" (yes, I know a bunch of you dislike it) actually adressed that issue by having the local overgod installing a "power=worshippers" condition, since apparently several gods where ignoring their worshippers.
On Golarion though, I have yet to see a satisfying reason as to why they care (though it may have something to do with preventing Rovagug from escaping)
Whow, that got ranty for a sec.
I rather dislike the "our belief makes the gods" thing. It makes them feel cheap to me.
Not sure to whom you were referring, but I don't think anyone said that; my point (if you were referring to me) was that the players come up with their gods, and they get folded in (if only in a minor way) into the setting.
I think he was referring to me, because I made pretty much exactly that statement. Ok, I wont say a single person's belief creates a god, but if enough people believe... Not everyone likes that notion. Even in a metaphorical sense. Considering the gods dont have the time to smite every heretic, any order is going to be dominated by the beliefs of the humans that compose it, and only in rare cases can be directly defined by the ruling god.
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It's a question of who creates you. Does mortal belief create the god, or was the god there to begin with? It's just my opinion, but I just don't like the man-made god.
However, a wayward church that's gotten beyond the god's grasp to enforce orthodoxy, that might actually be a neat campaign premise.
I guess this begs the question what defines a god, and what created it. We have decent mechanisms to explain the creation of all kinds of life. But gods? Not so much. And if we merely claim that they are incredibly powerful creatures that created us, they are not effectively gods, they are just folks like us but more powerful.
There are 3 options I can see for god creation:
1) They are beings created by our beliefs (which is why there is a god of cities & law despite the fact that cities & law have not always existed)
2) They are beings like us (that evolved through the same processes) that enjoy lording their power over us.
3) They simply exist: this option assumes the gods exist, will always exist, and have always existed.
Option #1 gives them a reason to care, since we are the source of their power. #2 gives us a reason to fear, since we are less than toys to them. # 3 Is very unsatisfying. While it may suffice when the players have no reason to get into the metaphysical underpinnings of a universe, it leaves me unsatisfied. Plus other phylosophical concerns (such as how are they representing "non-universal" concepts).
Sorry for the off-subject OP.
As Ascalaphus referred to, it kind of depends on whether you adopt a highly syncretic, semi-syncretic, or non syncretic approach to religion, or whether you mix some or all of the above.
In your campaign, do two peoples halfway across the continent from each other who share few cultural links,
a) worship the same Sun God with the same general names, religious rites, and stories
(example: Jesus=Yesu=Ježiš; same name (in different languages, albeit); or, in your campaign, although local attitudes towards the god may differ, the god of feasting and drinking is Cayden Cailean in Absalom, and Cayden Cailean in Magnimar, and still Cayden Cailean in the River Kingdoms)
b) worship the same Sun God but with different names, religious rites and stories
(example: in your campaign Germans worship Thor and Romans worship Hercules, and have notably different cultural stories about them and possibly even different domains, but they are really different aspects of the same deity)
c) worship two different Sun Gods with markedly different names, religious rites, and stories
(example: in your campaign Tlaloc, Mesoamerican god of thunder, is a completely different deity from Thor, Norse god of thunder)