Religion and gods in fantasy

[Kalontas]

I like the "walking gods", if mainly because I basically grew up on Greek mythology. You know what makes Greek gods so special and different than other mythologies' gods? They actually have some personality. Norse gods are mostly just big, angry, blond dudes who keep yelling at you if you don't follow their favours (Loki has the most character of them, but even he's just a ridiculous villain who stirrs up things for fits and giggles). Egyptian gods are virtually the same, discounting one story where they show some personality (the Osyrian cycle). What makes Greek gods so special to me is they are just so... human.

You want to know how I always explain why are my gods so human? Because in fact, they're not human at all - they're basically energy beings that lacked any sort of emotion human would know - but then they met the mortal men and couldn't understand them. So they took on flesh bodies and felt the same passions and drives that make humans feel. They felt emotions and got completely addicted to them, because it warmed up their cold, calculative divine minds. Nowadays they never leave their flesh bodies, even on Olympus (and equivalents), because they want to feel. It also handily explains why a cunning mortal can defeat a god (and apparently kill it, but only apparently) - he's killing the flesh body which while still enveloped and protected by powerful magic, is still a mortal, fleshy body that can be cut and harmed. Of course, releasing the real god from the avatar may be much more dangerous to you, but that's another story.

For example, during my longest campaign, I made my players fight Ares himself. One particular player who hated the guy just as much as me, took it on himself (other people fought various companions of Ares, including Eris, Phobos, Deimos, etc.). Ares that time took on an avatar that was basically a suit of armor (just because he thought it'd be badass - he was never the brightest of gods). After really heavily pounding on my player's character, I suggested that this guy is basically armor - so the player managed to wedge metal sword between the plates, and break the thing open. Armor collapsed, Ares run away (like the little coward he always was) and took on an actual body - and my player was victorious over a god.

[LordVreeg]

If, for example, I knew that Heaven was real, beyond a doubt to the point where it is scientific fact, I would go to church every damned day, I would not smoke, I would not drink, I would not gravitate towards "fun" women.

I completely take your point for the rest of this post but, really? Are you sure you wouldn't just justify the smoking, drinking and womanising as being exceptional in YOUR case because YOU'RE special and will still definitely get into Heaven because of reasons X Y and Z? I mean, there have been a lot of people who believed in Heaven and Hell to the point that, for themselves, they "knew beyond a doubt," scientifically or not, that they existed, and still have done bad things, things expressly forbidden by the religion they so strongly believed in. . .

You mean like people do after they get a disease, have to beat it by changing their behaviors...and after they beat it slowly move back towards the bad behaviors again, even though they *know* the consequences?
yes.  People are weird.  But we need us some operant conditioning to keep us on the straight and narrow; most of us, at least.

Dealing with omniscience is also an interesting thing.  How much the Gods really see.  I use a rough equation for my Planars, but omniscience is not in the cards for my guys. 

[beejazz]

I like the "walking gods", if mainly because I basically grew up on Greek mythology. You know what makes Greek gods so special and different than other mythologies' gods? They actually have some personality. Norse gods are mostly just big, angry, blond dudes who keep yelling at you if you don't follow their favours (Loki has the most character of them, but even he's just a ridiculous villain who stirrs up things for fits and giggles). Egyptian gods are virtually the same, discounting one story where they show some personality (the Osyrian cycle). What makes Greek gods so special to me is they are just so... human.

Loki always seemed like a special case among gods for me. There's just something kind of funny about what is (effectively) the god of trolling. You can push the mindset of a god like that into "alien" territory without making it Lovecraftian or arbitrary, which sets it apart as sort of unique. I also vaguely remember in Gilgamesh that one of the gods (Ishtar? can't remember) called for a flood to punish humanity, and then just started crying about it when it happened, having completely forgotten calling for it. Exchanging phenomenal power for the attention span of a goldfish in your divinity can both make them interesting and explain why they don't intervene frequently/coherently. In the setting for Qoheleth, I've got extinct(ish) godlike entities that just don't talk. Before events that set the story in motion, they were pretty much peaceful things drifting through space.

Personally, I like giving my divinity quirks like this because otherwise, human like gods would "retire." As in, if you were a god, you might just use it to take care of yourself and be happy after a while. Sure, at first you might intervene, but after a while you might get frustrated with the stress of intervention coupled with the anticipation of continuing to intervene literally forever. Or you get bored same as you would if you played a videogame in godmode.

Conversely, perfect and removed gods (or gods that are perfect embodiments of universal forces or what have you) are too abstract. Without concrete game terms, how would you assess their power? Without clear motives, how do you determine what they do or if they should do anything? Like what actually motivates the god Storm? And then what does he do about it? And then how can the players possibly respond?

Boiling it down: Alien gods can be arbitrary, human gods would retire, and abstract gods either don't do anything/do too much/are also arbitrary. The core of each solution needs some fixing, which has to get done on a case by case (either setting by setting or god by god) basis.

[O Senhor Leetz]

Conversely, perfect and removed gods (or gods that are perfect embodiments of universal forces or what have you) are too abstract. Without concrete game terms, how would you assess their power? Without clear motives, how do you determine what they do or if they should do anything? Like what actually motivates the god Storm? And then what does he do about it? And then how can the players possibly respond?

That may be true, but on the other hand, this type of theology in a setting can create amazing and realist conflicts. Conflicts within the same church, theological debates on "where do these spells come from?", heretics, prophets who may just be crazy, and the fact that their abstract nature allows for mortal interpretation and mutation of divine ideas.

[Gamer Printshop]

Conversely, perfect and removed gods (or gods that are perfect embodiments of universal forces or what have you) are too abstract. Without concrete game terms, how would you assess their power? Without clear motives, how do you determine what they do or if they should do anything? Like what actually motivates the god Storm? And then what does he do about it? And then how can the players possibly respond?

That may be true, but on the other hand, this type of theology in a setting can create amazing and realist conflicts. Conflicts within the same church, theological debates on "where do these spells come from?", heretics, prophets who may just be crazy, and the fact that their abstract nature allows for mortal interpretation and mutation of divine ideas.

This! How can you have a good heresy going, if everybody understands the true way of the gods. Abstract is good for creating varying points of view - conflict is good.

[beejazz]

Conversely, perfect and removed gods (or gods that are perfect embodiments of universal forces or what have you) are too abstract. Without concrete game terms, how would you assess their power? Without clear motives, how do you determine what they do or if they should do anything? Like what actually motivates the god Storm? And then what does he do about it? And then how can the players possibly respond?

That may be true, but on the other hand, this type of theology in a setting can create amazing and realist conflicts. Conflicts within the same church, theological debates on "where do these spells come from?", heretics, prophets who may just be crazy, and the fact that their abstract nature allows for mortal interpretation and mutation of divine ideas.

And that may be true, but the same can be said of physically real but geographically/cosmologically removed gods. Or of including religions that don't hinge on divinity as much (Buddhist, Confucian, Roman mystery cults, or pseudo-Masonic types). I think part of the potential problem is how "fantasy" you want your gods. Intangible gods that act are hard to react against, and it's hard to understand what motivates (from the example) a force of nature.

[Xeviat]

All of the ways can be done, but writers need to base their plots and other setting elements upon the initial assumptions. I'm using walking gods who only aren't fully known because the very powerful ones consider mortals to be so far below them that they don't answer questions 100% of the time. But I'm also dealing with more animistic gods, where much of reverence is doing actions to please the gods, not so much following rules set out by the gods. The gods are only plot devices when something is threatening them, or they're threatening something, otherwise they are very much background elements.

If your setting has divinities that act like something we could attribute to modern interpretations of gods (like inspiring mortals to write books and sending one prophet two-thousand years ago), then that becomes the root assumption of the setting. If one has Greek gods ala Homer, then that becomes the root assumption. It's only when someone tries to have the best of five worlds that settings lack internal consistency.

[O Senhor Leetz]

It's only when someone tries to have the best of five worlds that settings lack internal consistency.

This is the most pertanent thing I've read in a long time and it's very true. I'm of the school that less is more and simple is the best.