The Campaign Builder's Guild

I am developing a setting with a single divinity, and so I'm compiling thoughts on how such a situation might be best implemented.

USING MONOTHEISM
Have you ever looked at the diversity of gods in the typical Dungeons & Dragon setting and wondered what it would be like if the deities weren't so distinct? What if divine authority led back unquestionably to one source, one sublime being beyond mortal comprehension? Although an open-ended polytheism is the status quo of most Dungeons & Dragons games and similarly styled settings, some world-builders find it more compelling to deal with monotheistic or semi-monotheistic settings, where one god or goddess has essentially unchallenged control over the setting.

Restraint
Of course, if there is an omnipotent busybody working miracles constantly, every time something gets on his nerves, he would be a nigh-insurmountable obstacle to a fun D&D game. An important part of what usually makes a one-deity dynamic tick is restraint on the part of the sole or head divinity. A strongly interventionist god can easily paralyze any action and prevent most conventional forms of tension, while a restrained god will make it all the more important and dramatic when he is driven to work (presumed) miracles. The appeal in this approach versus the typical game setting arguably lies in the mystique of an exceptionally vast and all-encompassing deity. The characters can use past actions and legends to guess at what this being's ultimate goals are, but they can rarely feel confident about them. For example, in R. A. Salvatore's world of Corona, what few events are probable miracles come with little apparent rhyme or reason, aside from perhaps rewarding the devotion of a particularly thoughtful believer.

Mystery
An interventionist monotheistic god doesn't have to be a bad thing. If the god's goals are carried out in a dramatic manner without the players having knowledge of what the god intends, then the intervention functions more like a fickle force of nature than a domineering non-player character. However, some knowledge of a monotheistic deity's plans can prove useful. Allowing knowledge in abstract or obscure ways may serve to heighten tension.

The most well-known method to provide such a limited reveal is prophecy. Because the monotheistic deity sent it, you know it must come true, but you cannot be sure exactly what it means to say must come true. For example, a prophecy that dictates the victory of a red dragon over a white dragon could refer to the literal outcome of a great red dragon over a great white dragon, or it could mean something metaphorical. Perhaps it foretells the victory of some metaphorical red dragon (such as a kingdom whose symbol is a red dragon) over a metaphorical white dragon (such as a diabolical wizard known by the moniker "white dragon" for his attitude and his cruel obsession with cold magic).

Competition for Worship
Tension can also be preserved if the godhead respects the free will of those beneath it. Then, lesser beings have leeway to usurp the faith of mortals. The deity must leave alternatives or else that free will becomes totally meaningless. Challenges to the religion must exist even if challenges to the power behind that religion do not.

Perhaps the best way to maintain conflict in the arena of faith is to keep divine magic from seeming common or cheap. It must be a special reward for exceptional faith. A surprising number of D&D players forget that clerics have to be true believers, basically giving up their lives to their patrons. It's not often an easy thing to partake of a god's power while maintaining your own independent goals, especially really selfish ones, so the evil and the un-devoted will be sorely tempted by "easier" roads to power.

A great arch-devil might patron enemies of a heroic deity-worshiping party, or a godlike fairy queen who neither serves nor opposed a monotheistic deity might patron a PC sorcerer who draws power from his fey blood and likewise stands apart from enemies and servants of the god. The most commonly used "easier road" is fiendish deals, but there are many others. The deity might have rivals for worship that, while minor on the global scale, are nonetheless viable choices for PC or NPC reverence. Sometimes a fey noble can attract his own cult interested in buying a piece of his magical power or celebrating his influence over the natural world. Sometimes alien beings like the Great Old Ones of the Lovecraft mythos or the aberration gods of D&D's Far Realms serve in this capacity instead. Occasionally, even powerful celestials can provide distractions from the deity, if they operate at cross-purposes with him. This may happen if the celestial has significant differences with the deity (such as dramatic differences on the law-chaos spectrum or disagreements about the nature of free will) or the deity is non-good.

Heresy and Schisms
A dramatic advantage of the less interventionist god is increased opportunity for conflict among those who worship that deity. If the god offers very little feedback to clerics, those clerics may come up with very different ideas of what constitutes proper behavior for a believer. Schisms may develop, one religion splintering into two, three, or even more disagreeing groups. There may even erupt holy wars between competing branches of the same religion, each side believing it to be their duty to wipe out the heresy proposed by their opponents.

The existence of many factions can feed into the same appeal players and DMs find in each of their characters having different patron deities - it provides a shorthand for significant differences in beliefs, ideals, and personal history. Several options remain to provide this kind of variety within a monotheistic milieu. First, as already mentioned, the religion can be splintered by differences of opinion about a god that responds little to settle disputes. Second, and possibly reinforcing the first, a monotheistic deity can have any number of servants with godlike power or at least great significance to different groups of worshipers. The faithful might revere powerful angels such as solars, powerful fiends such as advanced balors or pit fiends, or other mighty spirits that serve as chief lieutenants to the deity and provide direction on issues the deity himself is silent about.

Great thinking as always MythMage (stumbled onto your Sidhe work last week and damn, that's nice).

I've personally always found Monotheism (or at the very least a numerically small godhead) far more compelling than vast pantheons. The questions of teleology and theodicy, plucked from the pages of philosophical discourse and delivered as fantasy fiction, actually make challenging and compelling reads. A single deity, unquestioned (in existence if not in authority) and decidedly active in the world, is kickass story fuel.

Here's some thoughts of my own:

Worship and Faith
The whole matter of faith seems like a conflation of genuine fictional divinity and the 'open question' of real world cosmology where faith somehow ends up being the justification for much religious madcappery. As an alternative, how about a god who simply rewards those who, in addition to knowing It exists (and everybody does), will do what it says  (some people do)? You don't believe in It '" unlike in Real Life,,¢   its existence is as indisputable as gravity '" and it isn't even going to punish you if you don't get with its program. It simply looks after people whose goals are in keeping with its own.

Creation
Plenty of fantasy fiction handwaves the metaphysical logic behind magic, but I for one have a bug up my arse about 'gods' creating the universe out of nothing (the be all/end all of handwaves). So let's say god is a material being, the same sort of material thing as all other matter on a fundamental level. It is not the universe, nor is it omnipresent, but It built the universe out of Stuff, for whatever reason.

Reason
Does it need a reason? Notions of mystery or incomprehensibility aside, maybe it straight up doesn't have one. Being the very first intelligent thing in the cosmos it had no point of reference for its actions. Its first act of creation was akin to an infant's explorations of its surroundings (don't put that in your mouth, Yahweh!). Dead worlds, selfish, ruinous proto-beings and other agents of etheric chaos and endless tracts of inimical void might have been the first things it invented simply because it had no idea what it was doing.

Morality
Morality comes later, assuming it comes at all. Let's say it does. It creates demons, demideities, foundation spirits, an inchoate slurry of unintelligible elements... Only once these things start bashing into each other and leaving large chunks behind does It realise that, without Its intervention (fixing its own design errors), entropy will kick in and all Its work will undo itself. It does not dispense any 'thou shalts'. It straight up changes the rules until things are in working order.

Potency and Personality
This god is not omnipotent. Nor omniscient. To have perfect knowledge of reality It would have to be bigger than reality, and that's an unintelligible mess as far as I'm concerned. It is, however, virtually indestructible (whether a being exists beyond God's own construct capable of challenging it is up in the air). Why doesn't It throw Its weight around? Because It's still trying to figure this whole reality thing out, and it's a perpetual work in progress. It seriously made the whole world and everything in it, and being a finite being It only has so much energy to go around. It isn't very well going to stop you doing what you're doing if It can learn something valuable from your behaviour (in fact, It may have learned morality from beings It created, possibly when their restless brutality demonstrated for good and for all the value of the Golden Rule).

Prophecy and Intervention
Another way of looking at divine prophecy is as a declaration of divine intent. A divination of future events might reveal 'the mind of god', so that humans can know what It is focusing Its efforts on. In MythMage's example of the red dragon, this might translate as 'when the white dragon and the red dragon throw down God is going to put a lot of chips red.' It's what God wants to happen and will try to make happen. Defying prophecy is an uphill struggle because you're defying divine desire, not divine law. If you manage to gather enough resources that God doesn't think it's worth pressing the issue, good for you.

Worship and Waywardness
Anybody can kiss God's butt, but that's not to say God cares. Ego is a vice for beings with survival mechanisms. God does care when you want what It wants, and those needs are being refined every instant. It is on a path of (self?) discovery: the only way for It to know reality is to explore the consequences of Its creations, and the only way for It to know Itself is through the mirror of reality. Conversely, most ill-intentioned creatures escape Its attention: only seriously hardcore rabblerousers get the heavy treatment and even then God often figures 'hey, I wouldn't have made you if I didn't want you to do stuff'.

Well That's Not What You Should Do!
Just because God is obvious and Its desires are transparent doesn't mean people have to accept that it knows what's best. It's a being, and fallible like all beings. Uber-wizards and superscientists with one point twenty-one jiggawatt flux capacitators might blatantly challenge its designs. People are insane and ultimately ungovernable. They might wage holy wars not over God's divine plan but over their favoured amendments to that plan. You know, the things God got wrong. And God might not even have an opinion on the matter.

I hope this thread was open for conjecture, otherwise my bad.

EDIT: Strictly speaking there's no real reason why the god I've envisioned couldn't be killed by its own cosmos. People's houses are falling down on their heads all the time.

Quote from: Salacious AngelTo have perfect knowledge of reality It would have to be bigger than reality, and that's an unintelligible mess as far as I'm concerned.

Why should the supernatural have to adhere to such constraints of logic? Or better yet, why should cosmic/divine elements of a fictional "reality" have to be intelligible in any way whatsoever?

The way I see it, you can go SA's way (obvious God but neither omnipotent nor omniscient... nor super meddling anyway) or you can go the real world way (if there is a God, it doesn't mess with you so there's no way to know it exists or what it's like).

Either way, I'd ditch clerical magic, or at least its direct connection to the divine. If such existed it would be waaay too easy to know which religion is the "right" one, what God would want you to do, etc. etc. Then you've gone from one God to one religion, and what's an RPG without some conflict?

Actually, as I pointed out in my post, one deity does not mean automatically knowing which religion is "right". In fact, it's entirely possible that there isn't one "right" one. Other beings, such as archfiends or archcelestials, could provide the divine magic even if the deity chose to withhold it. And the deity grant spells to those who are "wrong" in order to test the faith of those who are "right" in some grand plan.

Thanks, Salacious Angel.

My intent was to discuss the different ways one can effectively implement a monotheistic cosmology and explore what the baseline assumptions are about such deities. You make an interesting single example case of a somewhat limited godhead motivated by curiosity, different from the approaches I had considered.

My own work deals with a more limited deity too, but one motivated by something very different from curiosity. Rather, it is a smaller deity growing to eliminate all other rivals for dominance.

Quote from: MythMageActually, as I pointed out in my post, one deity does not mean automatically knowing which religion is "right". In fact, it's entirely possible that there isn't one "right" one. Other beings, such as archfiends or archcelestials, could provide the divine magic even if the deity chose to withhold it. And the deity grant spells to those who are "wrong" in order to test the faith of those who are "right" in some grand plan.

One could take this a step further and completely severe any connection between objects of religious veneration (deities) and the actual, existing entity or entities. It could be that no one in the whole of mortalkind has ever had any contact with true divinity, even at the level of revelation - and neither with any "false" gods for that matter. Then you'd have a true cosmology that no one really knows about, and a bunch of religions that sprung up naturally and whose priesthoods all appear to have the gift of divine magic. But then, why would everyone be monotheists?

A more important question for us all: Which is more relevant for a setting - the "real" cosmology, or the one(s) perceived by it's inhabitants?

One thing I think could be interesting to explore is the idea of many churches of the single deity.

I think the 3.x Deities and Demigods talked about this a bit, IIRC. They used it as a way of getting clerics of different alignments and with different domain spells in a setting with a single divinity - clerics of church x can be evil as they worship the "destroyer aspect" and therefore can access Death, Destruction and Evil domans, while clerics of church y are good/lawful as they worship the "defender aspect" and access Protection, Good and Law domains, for example.

However, outside of such a rules-based necessity I did also think it was an interesting setting premise, although it would be somewhat ruined if the deity in question was of an interventionist bent. With a distant deity, though, the possibilities of conflict between churches, declaring one another "heretic" and their arguments about who has the REAL interpretation of the being of the almighty could lead to a very rich religious framework for a setting.

Even if there wasn't direct conflict between the different churches, it would still enrich the setting. For example regional variations on the one faith reflecting cultural traits from the different areas.

Quote from: beejazzThen you've gone from one God to one religion, and what's an RPG without some conflict?

is[/i] simply settled for all people for all of time. We can still slay dragons.

Quote from: Ghostman...But then, why would everyone be monotheists?

A more important question for us all: Which is more relevant for a setting - the "real" cosmology, or the one(s) perceived by it's inhabitants?[/quote]tension[/i] between them can be the most relevant part.

Edit: In fact I think that's true of other fantasy fiction. The Cthulhu Mythos is all about failing mortal illusions and bleak intimations of the truths beneath. Kinda like Sunday nights.

Quote from: Kindlingalthough it would be somewhat ruined if the deity in question was of an interventionist bent.

Fighting fish.[/i]

Quote from: KindlingOne thing I think could be interesting to explore is the idea of many churches of the single deity.

I think the 3.x Deities and Demigods talked about this a bit, IIRC. They used it as a way of getting clerics of different alignments and with different domain spells in a setting with a single divinity - clerics of church x can be evil as they worship the "destroyer aspect" and therefore can access Death, Destruction and Evil domans, while clerics of church y are good/lawful as they worship the "defender aspect" and access Protection, Good and Law domains, for example.

However, outside of such a rules-based necessity I did also think it was an interesting setting premise, although it would be somewhat ruined if the deity in question was of an interventionist bent. With a distant deity, though, the possibilities of conflict between churches, declaring one another "heretic" and their arguments about who has the REAL interpretation of the being of the almighty could lead to a very rich religious framework for a setting.

Even if there wasn't direct conflict between the different churches, it would still enrich the setting. For example regional variations on the one faith reflecting cultural traits from the different areas.

It's always interesting to do this.  The idea of unknowability, where the humans who create the faith have an incomplete understanding of a being that is so beyond them.  In Igbar, the Church of Nebler the Just Shield competes with the Lawful Triumverate (comprise of Abradaxus the Harsh, Rakastra the judge, and Nebler the Protector).  Neither is really right, from my vantage I know that both churches see Nebler slightly differently, as these are human agents trying to understand a being far aboved them.

Quote from: Salacious AngelOr if He's an amoral bastard he could just laugh his ass off while they go at it like piranhas.

Edit: Ugh. Fighting fish.

See, I would class that as being "distant" rather than "interventionist" - regardless of the motivation, the deity would, in this situation, be observing and perhaps very subtly influencing, rather than directly intervening in mortal affairs.

Back to the Beginning
Imagine a world begun with a conflict between the sole goddess and her first child/creation, a vast and powerful elemental, who at first adored his mother but wished for slaves to adore him like he did her. The plot might be driven by this conflict in any number of ways - perhaps the goddess's high priest needs the heroes to crush a dangerous arm of the elemental's cult, or the elemental cult fights on the behalf of innocent mortals persecuted by the intolerant and cruel clergy. In a game at the highest levels, the elemental might even appeal to the heroes to help preserve his influence among mortals against the overwhelming power of his mother's church, revealing dark secrets about her intentions and even hinting that mortal reverence for him is the only reason she has not destroyed the world. A noninterventionist deity might have some very unexpected and unpleasant motives and goals. The aforementioned goddess might wish to simply erase the world and begin anew and is only waiting to see what it takes to win universal adoration before she does it.

A monotheistic deity is often, but not always, responsible for and deeply linked to the way that the world comes to be. Sometimes, beginnings are irrelevant to even the divine aspect of a game or story. It may never come up. However, it can also provide a primeval backdrop for an ultimate conflict, as in the example above. A "prime mover" type of deity might also be simply curious, looking to experiment and learn what happens given certain starting conditions. It might only want to be loved freely and without compulsion by its creations. Or it might seek some other goal dependent upon free will (thus giving leeway for plots to happen without predetermination). The possibilities are numerous.

Becoming Monotheism
On the other hand, a monotheistic deity might be a new phenomenon in the world. Perhaps the world once hosted many gods, and over time the rivals have killed each other off, absorbed one another, or have simply been forgotten and faded away. Into the eventual power vacuum has stepped a god that was once less than he is now, with a perspective decidedly different than what arises from inherent omnipotence. Whereas a god who starts out on top is often tolerant of other lesser powers operating in the world, an up-and-coming young god is more likely to suppress threats to his hegemony such as the cults of fading fellow gods and non-divine religions.

Due to his lower origin, this god might not be as strong as other monotheistic gods often are - indeed, he might even be able to be threatened by epic mortal heroes of sufficient level. Such a threat is most likely when a weaker god is left alone by widespread religious apathy in a setting where gods depend on worship for their existence. In a similar setting which retains some fading strands of polytheism, preventing an evil god from being the last god standing might be the goal of a great epic quest. To stop the impending victory, one must revive at least one but preferably several dead or dying religions and thereby restore power to the associated god(s).

Quote from: MythMageBecoming Monotheism
On the other hand, a monotheistic deity might be a new phenomenon in the world. Perhaps the world once hosted many gods, and over time the rivals have killed each other off, absorbed one another, or have simply been forgotten and faded away. Into the eventual power vacuum has stepped a god that was once less than he is now, with a perspective decidedly different than what arises from inherent omnipotence.

Then there's the opposite situation: a world where there initially was, and so far has been, only one god. But now new (true) divinities are showing up. There are many ways this could happen, such as by the original god spawning (unwanted?) offspring, or by invasion of entities from "outside" creation (what ever that may mean), or by godlings spontaneously sprouting from the fertile frame of the universe itself, or by the means of apotheosis.

Quote from: MythMageWhereas a god who starts out on top is often tolerant of other lesser powers operating in the world, an up-and-coming young god is more likely to suppress threats to his hegemony such as the cults of fading fellow gods and non-divine religions.

I don't quite agree with this. I don't recall any examples of polytheist religions where a change in the power structure/usurpation actually led to the new biggest god on the block being less tolerant of other powers.

Besides, a deity that was once much weaker may very well hold more sympathy toward those that remind him of his past, than one who has always been the top dog (and thus might regard the others as weaklings not worthy of any respect)

Quote from: Ghostmaninvasion of entities from "outside" creation (what ever that may mean)

Well, in the regular Great Wheel cosmology, the Material Plane contains many worlds. Could be there's a world with a single god that gets invaded by gods from other worlds.

Quote from: GhostmanI don't quite agree with this. I don't recall any examples of polytheist religions where a change in the power structure/usurpation actually led to the new biggest god on the block being less tolerant of other powers.

Actually, I wasn't drawing on any examples because I can't think of any that fit my description of monotheism (wherein "one god or goddess has essentially unchallenged control over the setting"). Most polytheism doesn't involve gods drawing power from their worshipers and all the polytheism I know of that involves a god ascending to the highest post instead of starting out there does not also include that new top dog being "essentially unchallenged". Most of them spend a great deal of time fighting off rivals very near them in power. Can you name a few such polytheisms so I can see what you're talking about?

Quote from: GhostmanBesides, a deity that was once much weaker may very well hold more sympathy toward those that remind him of his past, than one who has always been the top dog (and thus might regard the others as weaklings not worthy of any respect)

Possible, but it seems more likely to me that such a being sees them as not worthy of any fear (and thus don't require a grand effort to kill them off). After all, complacency's a big part of what leads many primordial gods to defeat in multi-generational pantheons, isn't it?

Quote from: MythMageCan you name a few such polytheisms so I can see what you're talking about?

Perhaps you misread my post. As I stated that:

Quote from: GhostmanI don't recall any examples of polytheist religions where a change in the power structure/usurpation actually led to the new biggest god on the block being less tolerant of other powers.

Quote from: MythMagePossible, but it seems more likely to me that such a being sees them as not worthy of any fear (and thus don't require a grand effort to kill them off). After all, complacency's a big part of what leads many primordial gods to defeat in multi-generational pantheons, isn't it?

Going by examples, that very same complacency would be the expected behaviour for the new top dog also, wouldn't it?

Also, I think the idea that a god would want to kill all other gods of lesser power just so that he could be unchallenged, is something that should not be assumed as default behavior - regardless of whether he's the original #1 or the usurper. Such an assumption can be justified if the god has been assigned specific personality traits (eg. paranoia, great ambition) but not when we're speaking of pantheons *in general*. Most gods in polytheisms seem to enjoy the company of other gods to some degree at least, and would probably not opt for eternal solitude for the sake of unchallenged power.

That brings up another interesting angle for comparing many gods vs single god cosmologies: monotheist gods seem to have no problem with being alone. Of course, that might just be because they've never known anything else?

Quote from: GhostmanThat brings up another interesting angle for comparing many gods vs single god cosmologies: monotheist gods seem to have no problem with being alone. Of course, that might just be because they've never known anything else?

I think it has more to do with the fact that Monotheistic Gods are (almost always) omniscient, omnipresent and Omnipotent. Not to mention that many Monotheistic Gods have a much closer and more direct relationship with their followers.

Quote from: Elemental_ElfI think it has more to do with the fact that Monotheistic Gods are (almost always) omniscient, omnipresent and Omnipotent.

can't[/i] know - can't conceive - of anything else.  Unless, of course, the cosmology changes.

Now that might be interesting - new deities arrive in a world/plane/reality once inhabited by only one, single, omnipresent god.  Suddenly, the god isn't absolutely everywhere; for the first time, it perceives an "other" to its "self," and it isn't present within that other.  It has gone in an instant from "I am the world" to "I am part of the world" with no warning or the least bit of mental preparedness to deal with this complete paradigm shift.  Cue the divine nervous breakdown.

Quote from: Ghostman

Quote from: MythMageCan you name a few such polytheisms so I can see what you're talking about?

Perhaps you misread my post. As I stated that:

Quote from: GhostmanI don't recall any examples of polytheist religions where a change in the power structure/usurpation actually led to the new biggest god on the block being less tolerant of other powers.

:) I'm sorry, there's a misunderstanding here, but not the one you think. I wasn't asking for you to offer examples for the position you disagreed with. I was asking for examples that countered my position. That is, can you give any example of a polytheism that became a virtual monotheism, and then the new head god didn't push aside all the others more or less completely? I can't think of any polytheistic system that actually became monotheistic at all, rather than a polytheism simply being pretty much replaced by a new religion altogether.

Quote from: Ghostman

Quote from: MythMagePossible, but it seems more likely to me that such a being sees them as not worthy of any fear (and thus don't require a grand effort to kill them off). After all, complacency's a big part of what leads many primordial gods to defeat in multi-generational pantheons, isn't it?

Going by examples, that very same complacency would be the expected behaviour for the new top dog also, wouldn't it?

Just the opposite. If a primordial god fell that way earlier in the history of that world, the new top dog will want to avoid suffering the same fate. Even without such a past example, the new top dog managed to grow from merely one god among many to the greatest - that god would have to be quite unwise not to realize another god could follow suit the same way (you know, unless their ascension really was a unique event).

Quote from: GhostmanAlso, I think the idea that a god would want to kill all other gods of lesser power just so that he could be unchallenged, is something that should not be assumed as default behavior - regardless of whether he's the original #1 or the usurper. Such an assumption can be justified if the god has been assigned specific personality traits (eg. paranoia, great ambition) but not when we're speaking of pantheons *in general*. Most gods in polytheisms seem to enjoy the company of other gods to some degree at least, and would probably not opt for eternal solitude for the sake of unchallenged power.

Fair enough. I concede that point. I didn't mean that the god wanted to kill all the rivals, just sever their power bases and thus render them nearly harmless. You're right that a NG/CG/CN god would probably be pretty liberal with lesser gods, while a LG or LN god seems more likely to carefully dominate rather than outright crush the power of rivals. Although if the god ascends to become omnipresent, then they may not have any risk of solitude issues.

This is an all around fascinating discussion.  I myself have a world dominated by a monotheistic religion

My world is relatively low magic, and while what magic there is is often connected to members of faith, it remains ambiguous as to whether their power truly comes from the God, or from some inborn talent.  Furthermore, channeling of divine power often requires a special material.  Since I have both a monotheistic and a polytheistic religion in conflict, it is fundamental to the overall fabric of the world that there be enough room for doubt that the different religions would have a basis for struggling.  

Quote from: PolycarpIt has gone in an instant from "I am the world" to "I am part of the world" with no warning or the least bit of mental preparedness to deal with this complete paradigm shift.  Cue the divine nervous breakdown.

A most intriguing scenario, if the deity in question has fragile enough psyche to be affected in this way. Fuel for an epic story.

Quote from: MythMage:) I'm sorry, there's a misunderstanding here, but not the one you think. I wasn't asking for you to offer examples for the position you disagreed with. I was asking for examples that countered my position. That is, can you give any example of a polytheism that became a virtual monotheism, and then the new head god didn't push aside all the others more or less completely? I can't think of any polytheistic system that actually became monotheistic at all, rather than a polytheism simply being pretty much replaced by a new religion altogether.

Your position that I disagreed with was, with emphasis added:

Quote from: MythMagean up-and-coming young god is more likely to suppress threats to his hegemony

I mentioned that I'm not aware of any examples of this sort of thing, as I was wondering if perhaps you did know of such examples. Since you made the statement, aren't you the one that should present evidence to support it?

I pointed that in polytheist mythologies, it would seem to be the norm than when the old most powerful god is deposed, the new most powerful god simply takes his place and rules thereafter in much the same manner - that is, with a whole bunch of lesser gods around. I don't see why this should not be assumed to be the more likely(OR even equally likely!) case, regardless of how wide is the "gap" of relative power between the head god and the lesser ones.

Quote from: GhostmanI mentioned that I'm not aware of any examples of this sort of thing, as I was wondering if perhaps you did know of such examples. Since you made the statement, aren't you the one that should present evidence to support it?

Presenting evidence for it after I already said I didn't have any and conceded the point would seem counterproductive. ;) Evidence either way would be useful in a situation with so little precedence for it, but in the absence thereof, logic and extrapolation from pre-existing examples have to do.

Quote from: PolycarpIt has gone in an instant from "I am the world" to "I am part  of the world" with no warning or the least bit of mental preparedness to deal with this complete paradigm shift. Cue the divine nervous breakdown.

Or it might continue to see itself as "the world" (and may be right), in which case foreign deific influence may constitute a direct violation of the world deity's self. Foreign miracles become literal abuses against the first god, as any manipulation of the world is a manipulation of the god's own self.

Quote from: Spacious Angles

Quote from: PolycarpIt has gone in an instant from "I am the world" to "I am part  of the world" with no warning or the least bit of mental preparedness to deal with this complete paradigm shift. Cue the divine nervous breakdown.

That assumes that a foreign deity could have any influence (magical or otherwise) in a universe that is, literally, one with a single omnipresent deity.

Of course I like the idea of the foreign God perverting and twisting the native deity through divine miracles. How much perversion would need to occur until the native God morphs into something wholly different? Could just 1 spell irrevocably harm the native god?  

Another point would be, god is a living being, incomprehensible to mortals but a living being none the less. Could he not have the divine equivalent to anti-bodies that would swarm upon and destroy the foreign body (i.e. the foreign God)?

Quote from: everything.

And of course, like a child, the confused and thwarted deity might do exactly what children at this age are known for - throw a tantrum.

[quoteOr it might continue to see itself as "the world" (and may be right), in which case foreign deific influence may constitute a direct violation of the world deity's self. Foreign miracles become literal abuses against the first god, as any manipulation of the world is a manipulation of the god's own self.

divine[/i] diseases we're talking about here - they might have a much higher level of consciousness and awareness than the common cold.

Yet another way to look at it could be that as the invasive deities enter the universe (which literally IS the omnipresent god), they effectively become incorporated into that original god's mind as additional personalities. So suddenly you have a schizoid god with multiple, conflicting personalities! Imagine the theological ramifications, if the mortals were to realize this.

Without reading everything (I had a few musings I wanted to post before they're influenced by everyone else's postings), here's a few of my thoughts on the matter.

First, looking at the different interpretations of the Judeo-Christian-Islam God goes to show how a single divinity within a setting can still spawn multiple religions. Depending on the distance of the deity, people could have many interpretations.

I think there are two ways a monotheistic setting can work well: you either need a distant, if not non-intelligent, overdeity, or you need to have a near duality (with a God and a Devil figure). I like the non-intelligent creative energy as a deity, as it allows for countless interpretations.

Quote from: XeviatFirst, looking at the different interpretations of the Judeo-Christian-Islam God goes to show how a single divinity within a setting can still spawn multiple religions. Depending on the distance of the deity, people could have many interpretations.

What's interesting, to me, about the first two religions is just how much the 'human' element was used in their construction. Many of the stories and images in the Old Testament/Torah were influenced by the myths of Babylon (the flood, angels, etc.). The Bible was written by people who did not know Jesus and wrote long after he was dead. To make matters worse, the New Testament was arbitrarily compiled after centuries of debate (the books not chosen were often excluded for equally arbitrary reasons).

Beyond this (and getting slightly back on topic), if God is silent (or 'acts in mysterious ways') then obviously different religious forces will rise up as a means of uniting and codifying a people's culture. So some may see the will of God through the guise of a hundred-god pantheon, each god representing a different (mortally interpreted) aspect/personality of God. Other's may follow the word of a prophet while still other's may see/utilize his will through a more philosophical/life-way -oriented 'religion' (like Buhdism or Taoism). The problem with this is that, in some ways, it may feel too real-life for a fantasy setting (which could be an underlying reason as to why RPG's favor polytheistic rather than monotheistic religions?).