[Questionare] As Opposed to a Poll (Even more data colletion along with an inanely long title)

[limetom]

Free Response Question:
What part of religion in your camapign setting do you often find yourself stumped on?

Your answer can be as long or as short as you would like, I just ask that you do answer.  My secret project, or at least its main topic, should be pretty clear now.

[beejazz]

Monotheism/Polytheism.

[Hibou]

Coming up with deities that are unusual when compared to traditional D&D gods, while having them be kind of Vecna cool.

[Numinous]

My hardest issue is creating multiple pantheons that can be both worshiped as a whole while giving each individual deity depth in it's own rights.  Another issue is creating more than one of these pantheons coexist, as I tend to use active gods in my worlds.

Also, I love to twist the alignments of traditional gods, like neutral death gods.  However, sometimes it's just plain difficult to rationalise such a thing.

Last thing I have trouble with is making god gods with any flavor at all.  They all seem bland to me, while each of my deities of Chaos and Evil have a page(at least) of origins and motives.

If you coudn't tell, I spend a lot of my time on gods. ;)
IM me if you need help on your "secret project".

[Soban_KiithSa]

I ran into the problem of creating original gods for my setting, and found a rather interesting solution.  I'm running another game in the setting, but the player's are playing the gods.  They created the gods, but this has read to some rather interesting ones.  Around 90 percent of them are blatant rips from animes and video games.

[ironpanzer1]

Recently I have moved away from gods in the traditional D&D sense, mostly because of the problems of the lack of faith required to believe in their existence. Instead, I use an ancient, almost extinct, and immensely powerful race that parades as gods, and worship of philosophical concepts. This represent both extremes, the visible gods that interact directly with the world, and the conceptual gods that require true faith to believe in.

[Raelifin]

[A:] Putting myself in a religious mindset and getting over my atheistic attitudes.

[Ishmayl-Retired]

Giving the gods cultural differences is usually pretty tricky.  For instance, the as-of-yet-unnamed religion of the Gaardans, based on ancient Slavic religions, needs to have a 100% different feel from the Shinos, a pantheon inspired by ancient Japanese religions.

[SDragon]

Mythos, plain and simple. i have a hard time reading long mythological stories, especially non-european ones, that i can use for inspiration.

that and, i want to find a way to introduce new dieties. i guess that could be considered part of Mythos, though....

[CYMRO]

How, if the gods are very real and present in the D&D sense, not to make them overpoweringly meddlesome.

[SDragon]

How, if the gods are very real and present in the D&D sense, not to make them overpoweringly meddlesome.

you just gave me an idea that has plenty of potential: the gods are overpoweringly meddlesome. at very least, it should work for trickster gods....

[Numinous]

How, if the gods are very real and present in the D&D sense, not to make them overpoweringly meddlesome.

are[/i] overpoweringly meddlesome. at very least, it should work for trickster gods....
[/quote]
Meh, it leads to a very two-dimensional world.  trust me, I've already tried that.  you're gonna need more than that to make anything resembling a world.

[SDragon]

How, if the gods are very real and present in the D&D sense, not to make them overpoweringly meddlesome.

are[/i] overpoweringly meddlesome. at very least, it should work for trickster gods....

im sure that it could be done properly; no clue how much expertise it would take to do it properly, but i do know it was done pretty well in American Gods.....

[Yair]

For me it is the Mythos behind the Gods.  Also, as Ishmayl said creating cultural differences.

[Túrin]

The hard part, to me, is to create enough religions, and enough variation within them, to even create the impression of something approaching real-world religion. Thinking up good and varied mythology is a very difficult part in this process.