Do your Gods give a flying ^#$%, and if so, how does it affect gameplay?

[LordVreeg]

[blockquote=S&M]I said simple belief counts for a lot. In fact, at actually accounts for everything. What most systems miss is the fact that that is a qualitative statement, not a quantitative one. Since everyone pretty much believes in all the gods, differences in the quantity of the total divine power available to a particular god is a not function of how many people believe in that particular god at all. It is a function of what they believe about that god! Dashin Mother Nature is more powerful and can throw Poncy Mirror Boy Galenar over her knee at any time she pleases because everyone believes this is so! After all, it's pretty obvious that the force of nature itself is far more wide reaching and potent than any motivation to heroism, no matter how good and admirable and noble. The gods compete for followers/worshipers then, not in a contest over sheer numbers, but in the attempt to convince more people to believe that they are more powerful. Where it comes down to a dispute between opposing claims that "Our god's more powerful than your god," however the numbers win. [/blockquote]
That's fantastic.  
I have the opposite, with Gods willingly taking on new aspects and sharing religions if it gets them access to more souls and more soul's belief energy.
I like how your gods are trying to usea philosophical debate to empower themselves.  Mine, behind the curtain they have agreed to be locked away at, are desperately trying to gain the upper hand in an ancient battle for the souls of the populace of Celtricia as they traverse from the Well of Life, into being in the 'Waking Dream', and pass through to the Well of Death at the other end, and one of the Planars can claim them once they are there...

[Snargash Moonclaw]

Many gods in Panisadore do willingly share religion and at times acquire or drop aspects - Hebnitarath being the most extensive example of when you look closely into history. Thelema's portfolio on the other hand has changed little since the dawn of time. Shalireah(proto Elven sun goddess)/2 = Shaliah (Elven evening star) + Salistreah (Human sun) is probably the most dramatic such change - sort of re-unified religiously within the Order of the Ladies Hand. For current change-in-progress, the maturation of Galenar's ethos illustrates a shift in what people believe about him (or more precisely, about what a hero is and by extension, what he represents) which feeds back (loop) as more people invest increased belief in a greater range of power. In DMing terms the whole thing is unfortunately difficult to ultimately quantify should it ever become necessary to actually settle a question of "who can kick who's butt," but as I mentioned - the gods are rarely willing to put such matters to a definitive test unless they're quite certain of winning. Hence, pundits (and nearsighted fan-boys doomed to a life of eternal hairy-palmed virginity alike) will probably forever argue about "if Galenar and Nuhveen fought a duel, which one would win?" The main reason for sharing religion though is as we discussed when I posted The Lyricists - few more immanent deities can really inspire anything deeper than personality cults by themselves - being more emulated than worshiped. The more "concrete" their personalities the more this is so, the more abstract and "transcendent," the more their ethea can be viewed as actual religions. Even so, the Lyricists incorporate two pretty abstract, transcendent deities in their trinity. (Which is part of why their religion is so "mystical" and hard for most people to grasp.)

The problems this is all attempting to address (as I perceive arising in most systems/settings) is that "# of believers" in a literal interpretation of the words doesn't actually reflect the situation - regardless of whom someone worships their is rarely a question of whether they believe that any or all of the other gods exist or not, so that # can't be used to determine anything. Most, like Forgotten Realms, instead try to quantify # of active worshipers = deity's power. This can work, but often either forces some to be surprisingly low powered when you look at what they represent because hardly anyone worships them (imagine a god of "the end of the world" with so few worshipers that he could never actually bring about the end of the world. . .) or gods who are much more powerful (because story needs them to be) than the numbers of people actually worshiping them appear to warrant. (Either that or there are an unbelievable number of evil people pretending to worship someone else and hold "black masses" in their basements. . .) So I'm trying to present a mechanism by which belief can invest power in a deity in a manner consistent with their descriptions which isn't subject to such discrepancies in verisimilitude.

How is this battle actually being fought/carried out? It sounds almost as if they are each trying to "put their mark" upon as many beings as possible prior to incarnation - effectively then producing the most followers in the world who would not have any free-will in changing their allegiance once they're born - which would imply that they have little real effect or relevance to the world of the living (hence locked behind the curtain) really being (to the living) sort of pre-birth archetypal/atavistic memories. Is that close? What then happens after death ("one of the Planars can claim them. . .")?

[LordVreeg]

well, answering the question of the internal dynamic of the Planars is a long email.   I'll try to shorten it without missing anything critical.
 
The world of Celtricia is the 'Waking Dream', created by the Song of Creation (which is still being sung today in the Void).  And when the Waking Dream was created, as well as the Stations and the Houses of the Void, the Plaanrs could enter it.  And the Planars are much more complex and yet much more simple than the folk of the "waking Dream' could ever imagine, in that they exist in a multiplicity of dimensions and at the same time a multiplicity of areas of influence, yet their need to use their power in these aspects is overwhelming.  Nebler is not just the Planar of Defence, he has an insatiable urge to Defend, and despite his great intellect and cosmic understanding, he/it cannot change this or mitigate it.  Vernidale the Green Mother/Serpent Queen feels equally driven to create growth and to support machiavellian, self-interested cold-bloodedness.  And despite the amounts of aspects a Planar might have, their multidimensional nature, their ability to be doing more than one thing at a  time allows for this dynamic.
Song of Creation

The Planars are also aware that they were created in a certain order in the Song, and while no one in the "Waking Dream' realizes this, this is not the first song.  And though the souls that each planar can claim from the Cycle of the Well of Life to the Well of Death do strengthen them today, and increase their power, it is also ensuring their place in the next Song, when this one fails.  And this is very much a survival mechanism.  This is the real dynamic for all the strife between the planars.  Even those of them that work together, due to similarities of their nature or spheres of influence.  (also, the quality of the soul is critical...powerful worshippers that perish on the Well of Death can cause actual strife amongst the Planars over whose domain does that soul fly to).  

So the belief that most Celtricians have that when they die, they are joined in death to their god, is essentially correct.  And the more powerful the soul, the longer it retains it's individuality... between the Journey through the Well of Death to the Domain a soul is going to, and the time it takes to be absorbed into the collectivity of the PLanar, it can be decades or even centuries before they are fully absorbed.

The Planars all have servants that dwell near the Well of Death, on the plains of dark glass shards of Zevashopal, the bottom of the House of Death.  Here they make their case to each other a thousand times a day, as to whose taint is on each soul, how they worshipped, who they served best.  And sometimes, when this conflict is undecided, the Planars themselves will enter the fray to make their claims.  

This the real cosmology, not the teachings within any religion, if that needs to be said.  The inhabitants of the 'Waking Dream' know little of this.  Their Holy books are full of what people have written, of what has driven seers mad and half-remembered uttereances from the Age of Heroes, or before it, the Age of Legends, when the PLanars walked the earth.

I also need to mention from a worldbuilding stance, the reason for existence for gods, what they are really trying to do (versus what mortals think) is good fodder for the beginning of setting creation. Not later on.
   

[Acrimone]

First, let me add a "me too" to most of what SM said, especially the part about understanding what the Gods "are" before you can get down to brass tacks about how they interact with the world.

The short answer to the question is as follows:

The bad gods care a lot, because they are stuck on earth with people, and they intervene in mortal affairs as much as they think they can get away with.

The good gods care a bit less -- they have other things to worry about besides the happenings on earth.  (The question is open as to whether or not they created other, more perfect worlds after all the stuff that happened with the one the game is set in, but that's not something that the players would have access to so I don't worry about it.)

The long answer, which involves answering SM's all-important question, is...

In my own world, which has very Grecian-style Gods, the Gods were the first things that were created when eternity finally caught up with the primal Chaos.  The idea is that, given an eternity, eventually Chaos would eventually fall into a pattern of self-replicating order.  It only needed to last a microsecond, and all of the sudden the universe is aware and structured.  So it started building.  It started with one God (male).  Then two Gods.  (Both male, brothers)  Then companions for the two Gods.  (two female gods)  Then there were two batches of children.  Then those Gods decided to create a world, which they did.  It sits in the middle of their Celestial Palace.

So far so good.  But bad things happen, even with Gods.  There was a murder.  And someone left.  And things got very bad in the Celestial Palace.  And some of the Gods were corrupted by their actions, and became evil Gods.  But eventually the evil Gods were defeated.  And here's where the answer to the original question comes into play.

The GOOD gods (or rather, the Gods generally seen as good) are still in the Celestial Palace.  They have great powers, and can come and go on earth as they please.  It just so happens that they don't often please.  They give their most ardent followers some of their power, push a few events here and there to keep themselves content, and trust that they've got good followers.

The BAD gods, on the other hand, were banished.  To earth.  They are stuck in a half-life, and bound to the world.  They have to spend some time in material form, and have nothing else to do except mess with things here on the planet.  The really bad God -- the one who committed the first murder -- was merged with the earth itself.  The very soil is contaminated with evil on a very low level.  The earth in general isn't a happy place: things break down, people die, and there is pain.

This is all to say that the good gods trust in their agents, while the Bad gods often intercede with things directly.  One of them travels the world attempting to turn people away from worship of the good gods, using deceit and trickery as his weapons.  Another occasionally merges himself with a chosen champion of his order to go wreak havoc on people.  But the bad gods do things like summon storms, strike down warriors on the battlefield, raise armies (usually through proxies), and bring plagues and famines.

The regulating force to the evil gods' involvement is that the Good gods are now way more powerful than the trapped and relatively defanged bad gods.  As a result, the bad gods have to try to stay under the good gods' radar.  If they were to personally jump out and wipe out an army, that's likely to draw some attention from the Good Gods... something the Bad Gods really don't want to have happen.  They are stuck in this prison of a world, and they'd like to at least be left alone.

So the big question that one of my players had was this: why don't the good gods just wipe out the bad gods when the bad gods get too out of line?  Well... despite how much the good gods (more or less) care about humans and don't like to see them suffer, the bad gods are family.  The bad gods know that, and they know that as long as they don't push things to far, they'll be allowed to survive.

I wanted a fantasy world, and I wanted to allow religions to have some credibility.  A lot of RPG players poo-poo on religion in real life, and while I'm not religious myself, I have a deep respect for those who are.  And one of the things I tried to examine in my world was how religion would change if the Gods were demonstrably real.  So I made sure that there was proof of their existence.  Their primary intervention is by granting their most devoted and proven followers a license on their own power.  This power is granted: the priest can do whatever he wants with it subject to the limits of the license.  It might take a little while for the God to notice that his or her gift is being abused before he or she takes it away.  From time to time the Gods intervene directly -- delivering messages, prophecies, objects and items... but it is always an extraordinary circumstance that -- from the players' point of view -- requires a great deal of time, effort, and ritual to occur.  (This is usually just because you have to get the Gods' attention before they will talk to you.)

Anyway, the following is from my primary campaign sourcebook, and represents some thoughts on what Gods are (warning... it's a bit long):

[spoiler=Thoughts on Gods ]What a God Isn't
         The Gods of Calisenthe are not omniscient.  Nor are they all-powerful.  They cannot themselves mystically peer into the hearts and minds of men, though with their great capacities, they can intuit much more deeply what a person thinks than even that person's own mother may.
   The Gods are not linked to the faith of the followers in any substantial way.  To the extent that they fight for their church's dominance, it is a matter of ego, not survival.  The Gods of the Celestial Palace '" and even the Dark Gods exiled to earth '" will continue to live long after man has left the earth and naught but dust remains.
   Assuming, of course, that they do not die.  For the other thing that the Gods are not is immortal in the sense of ever-living.  Being able to live forever does not mean one cannot be killed, as the story of Inri shows all too tragically.  Now, it takes a great deal to kill a God.  And it is unlikely in the extreme that anything other than another God could do it.  But it is certainly possible.
   The Gods are not, however, corporeal.  They may assume physical shape (in the sense understood by humans), but this is not their form, not the form that they use while in the Palace at any rate.  One of the curses laid upon Elledan's children was that they were bound to the earth, forced to spend a certain amount of their time in actual physical form., and robbed forever of their true forms.
   The last, and perhaps most important thing that a God is not is mystically prescient.  Some cultures believe that Gods are all-knowing, and include the future in the scope of that knowledge.  The Gods of Calisenthe do not know the future, for the future is not fixed.  Certain types of magic can, indeed, tell the future, but it is a matter of probability, not certainty.  Even the currents of the Void, brought to bear on the mortal world with all of their predictive force, cannot make up a man's mind entire.

What a God Is
         The Gods of Calisenthe are many things.  They are sometimes selfish, they are often petty.  They can be good, they can be just.  In short, the Gods have free will.  They have their fundamental natures, to be sure, but so do men.  It is in Coridain's nature to be honorable.  That does not mean he is ever and always honorable.  It is in Edrir's nature to be dark and terrible, but that does not mean he cannot show mercy.  The Gods do not consider themselves "the God of War" or "the God of the moon."  They consider themselves as themselves.  It is men who make them into Gods with ascribed titles.  The Gods simply have areas that interest them more or less than other Gods.  Arlavel doesn't really care about arcane magic.  She cares about the woods.  And so her best priestesses are those who care about nature as well.
   If one hesitates to say that '˜Gods are people, too', it is because they aren't.  Not really.  They sometimes act like people, but they are immense powers on a cosmic scale.  They have the power to create and to destroy.  Their powers are not unlimited in scope, but they would not have to be.  Arlavel may not be able to slay the entire world with a wave of the hand, but she could do it over time and with effort.
   
Why Worship the Gods?
         It may seem that the picture painted here is an unflattering one, one that casts the God as not truly divine, and certainly not deserving of the worship of men.  But worship the Gods men do '" most of them, at any rate.  And the reasons are simple.
   First, the Gods created the world, and the seas, and beasts and trees.  The Gods even created man, shaping him and making him better.  One look at the contradictory religions of the 'real' world should show that the notion of creation has a powerful pull '" even when it's not possible that everyone is right about their God.  Imagine a world where the Gods really did create man, and there wasn't any uncertainty!  
   For many men '" most of them, in fact '" the Gods of Calisenthe embody principles of virtue (or vice).  They embody emotions, actions, and serve as focii, beacons by which people can guide their own lives.   Thus, men worship Relleya because they wish to think clearly and understand their own souls.  Men worship Elleleth because they wish to be just.  Men worship Coradain because they wish to be brave, or Teyrinor because they wish to be vigilant.  It helps to have a focus.
   Generally speaking, the tangible benefits of worshiping a God are few.  Churches certainly function as a social support mechanism, but the good Gods, at least, do not often take direct action in the affairs of men.  It is unlikely in the extreme that a man's fervent prayers to Elleleth are going to save him from the bear coming towards him.  But the Gods do reward their most devoted servants with intervention, often by granting unto them great powers of their own.  And it is through the powers that they give their most devoted agents '" a sort of lease on power '" that the Gods take their most active roles in the world.
[/spoiler]

And this is the "bible" such as it is, from my campaign world.  It's the long, detailed story of the creation of the Gods, the first death among them, and all that.  Warning: it's even longer.


File: 1218057488_794_FT52779_irnaciln.pdf

[Snargash Moonclaw]

[blockquote[LordVreeg]
The world of Celtricia is the 'Waking Dream', created by the Song of Creation (which is still being sung today in the Void).  And when the Waking Dream was created, as well as the Stations and the Houses of the Void, the Plaanrs could enter it. [/blockquote]

Is the Song of Creation a metaphoric term or a literal description of the (initial and ongoing) process of creation (a la Tolkien's Ainulindalë)? In essence, the entire cosmos can be seen as "singing itself into existence" and in a Buddhist/Taoist perspective the term can be seen as an appropriate and acceptable metaphor for what cannot be described - a "finger pointing at the moon." As a more literal myth it seems to be implying a somewhat more transcendent/separate view of the gods insofar as only they are participating in the actual creative process/act and mortals are not (at least in such a direct sense - see below about souls after death). Also - is it still being actively Sung or simply echoing long after? That speaks to how the Song will end - fading out or when the Conductor signals the end of the piece to the choir. I gotta ask, sonata allegro (or more appropriately, raga) form with the various Ages constituting its movements, (or alap, jod, jhala and bandish), or acid rock opera? (Exploring ragas in this regard could prove quite fascinating, especially in terms of finding appropriate "soundtracks" when writing about various facets of the setting.) In any case the cyclic nature (neither the first nor last of such Songs) can be readily viewed as an expression of "mythical truth" which parallels scientific/historical "fact" (two terms/concepts I use a lot in addressing the matter as a minister). By this I'm referring (here specifically) to the attempt of science to explain the physical mechanisms of creation and continuation of our perceived reality/cosmos (e.g. cyclic "Big Bang" models of expansion from and contraction back to singularities producing a new cycle when they reach a "critical mass") without (inappropriately/essentially irrelevantly to that purpose) addressing questions of "who" established this mechanical process and "why." Ultimately I view all creation myths as true, including the better/deeper/more complete and well considered of those we make up, but none as factual. The question here being what constitutes factual history within the reality of the setting as described by these terms - which can make a significant difference to play. In that regard your last sentence bears discussion here:

I also need to mention from a worldbuilding stance, the reason for existence for gods, what they are really trying to do (versus what mortals think) is good fodder for the beginning of setting creation. Not later on.

Since we tend to have such similar approaches to things this statement, particularly the latter half, kind of confuses me - I may not be grasping your meaning here. Very often (and some pretty obvious examples among Panisadore's Deities can be readily found as it is quite explicit in the "DM's eyes only" portions of their descriptions) mortal misapprehension of what they're up to vs what they're really trying to do has significant influence on play and the setting's functioning in play. It is primarily the differences in mortal interpretations of the evidence produced in the world by/of deific actions which leads to various factions within religions and outright conflicting religions :fencing:  arising from/relating to the same god(s). In most cases though, I recognize and would agree that where such differences between reality and mortal perception exist they are unlikely to ever be resolved/corrected by mortals in the setting as a whole - in most such instances in Panisadore those who do comprehend reality (enlightened and/or insane) still can't explain it to anyone who doesn't already likewise understand it. :dots:

The reason(s) why the gods exist tend to be more important to worldbuilding than to play, although they can have some bearing on the above as the designer sees useful/appropriate to whatever it is that they're doing and perceived as doing. (In Panisadore it's only significant in terms of what those who understand it are doing - it lies at the root of the actions of the handful of NPC's, mortal and divine, referred to above and so is of use to the DM in the process of consistently confusing the PC's unless/until any of them likewise approach enlightenment, at which point they also realize that it doesn't really matter. . .) This I think is generally true of any setting cosmology - the DM needs to employ a certain consistency during the course of play in order to properly perpetuate that general mortal misapprehension built into the setting should the PC's be choosing to pursue story paths which it has bearing upon. In "kill the monsters and take the loot" :axe:  style play (among the extremes) this of course has little to no relevance. The more active in mortal realms that the gods in a setting are however, the more likely this is to make a difference since they will produce more evidence which the DM will want mortals to consistently misinterpret. :soap: Regardless, in the most extreme cases, should a god actually appear in their principal temples and painstakingly, thoroughly and explicitly spell it all out :hammer:  for the edification of their various misguided and bickering followers, it is still perfectly reasonable for the human (read mortal) capacity for stubborn denial in the face of clear and overwhelming proof to the contrary of their cherished opinions and beliefs to come into play, producing even wilder and more preposterous misinterpretations :morons: among them in the attempt to rationalize their insistence upon clinging to their now publicly and completely confuted dogmas. . . :rambo: . .

And the Planars are much more complex and yet much more simple than the folk of the "waking Dream' could ever imagine, in that they exist in a multiplicity of dimensions and at the same time a multiplicity of areas of influence, yet their need to use their power in these aspects is overwhelming.  Nebler is not just the Planar of Defence, he has an insatiable urge to Defend, and despite his great intellect and cosmic understanding, he/it cannot change this or mitigate it.  Vernidale the Green Mother/Serpent Queen feels equally driven to create growth and to support machiavellian, self-interested cold-bloodedness.  And despite the amounts of aspects a Planar might have, their multidimensional nature, their ability to be doing more than one thing at a  time allows for this dynamic.

Similar to those of Panisadore - in some ways it can be said that the gods are what they do/their ethea. In Panisadore this is a result of the beliefs regarding them - their own and others, but the effect is essentially the same.
Galenar and Hebnaritath provide notable examples of both cause and effect. The first is easily and rather universally understood by mortals while the latter is almost universally misunderstood. (The Lyricists understand him, but they don't count since Those Damn Poets are even more universally misunderstood. . . :drunk: ) That which removes mortal limitations consequently imposes even greater limitations. This of course is a clear indication that they are not the setting's "overdiety" or whatever. (Like Crowley referring to "The Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel," I use the term because any thing more "accurate" will inherently produce misunderstanding from overly literal interpretation, while the term is absurd enough to be recognized as a ridiculous euphemism which can't be taken literally. See Thelema. . .) I get the impression that the same holds true of the Planars, tho' I haven't noted to date any indication of whether or not Celtrician "real" cosmology includes any such cognate along the lines of Eru Illuvitar to the Ainur. (Tolkien was very Catholic.)


Song of Creation

(I will have to go back to this again more carefully - have perused cursorily in the cbgwiki.)

The Planars are also aware that they were created in a certain order in the Song, and while no one in the "Waking Dream' realizes this, this is not the first song.  And though the souls that each planar can claim from the Cycle of the Well of Life to the Well of Death do strengthen them today, and increase their power, it is also ensuring their place in the next Song, when this one fails.  And this is very much a survival mechanism.  This is the real dynamic for all the strife between the planars.  Even those of them that work together, due to similarities of their nature or spheres of influence.  (also, the quality of the soul is critical...powerful worshippers that perish on the Well of Death can cause actual strife amongst the Planars over whose domain does that soul fly to).

So the belief that most Celtricians have that when they die, they are joined in death to their god, is essentially correct.  And the more powerful the soul, the longer it retains it's individuality... between the Journey through the Well of Death to the Domain a soul is going to, and the time it takes to be absorbed into the collectivity of the PLanar, it can be decades or even centuries before they are fully absorbed.

To make sure I'm grasping this correctly: This seems to imply that the "soul," that is, what remains after the body's death, has no intrinsic reality of its own (parallels Buddhism/Taoism in that regard) - the "shell" of the aggregate ego/personality continues after death to "echo its unique chord in the Song" :blah: for a period of time directly proportional to the power with which that chord was sung in the Waking Dream - and it can further be viewed as harmonizing with the Vocal Parts of the Song sung by more than one Planar, who fight over which will absorb the energy which produced the chord once its echo finally subsides. That energy itself however is an "extrusion" from Source (as are the Planars) and ultimately reabsorbed into that source along with that which is manifest as the Planar which will have previously absorbed it.

The Planars all have servants that dwell near the Well of Death, on the plains of dark glass shards of Zevashopal, the bottom of the House of Death.  Here they make their case to each other a thousand times a day, as to whose taint is on each soul, how they worshipped, who they served best.  And sometimes, when this conflict is undecided, the Planars themselves will enter the fray to make their claims.

I take it then there is no "judge of the dead" to serve as (final) arbiter of this dispute. Also - this implies a further hierarchy of (pseudo-angelic) powers existing between the levels of mortal and (deific) Planar (Maiar to the Planars' Ainur).

This the real cosmology, not the teachings within any religion, if that needs to be said.  The inhabitants of the 'Waking Dream' know little of this.  Their Holy books are full of what people have written, of what has driven seers mad and half-remembered utterances from the Age of Heroes, or before it, the Age of Legends, when the PLanars walked the earth.

I infer here that mortal perception is not actually capable of encompassing the whole of the Song, only various, very limited parts/voices/strains/themes, leading to vastly different perceptions/descriptions of the same thing along the lines of The Blind Men and the Elephant. "Seers driven mad" having managed then to experience the sound of say, the entire Tenor Section, :band: rather than the voice of a single tenor. :sosad: (Or would hearing a soprano hitting a high note which, for the sake of safety and good taste, normally lies beyond the frequency range of mortal hearing be more apt? :explode:)

Finally - your characterizing mortal life as the "Waking Dream" seems to imply it as not actually "real" - Planar realms perhaps being so and the Waking Dream a pale imitation, false projection, etc. of them - or entirely opposite, along the lines of Australian aboriginal cosmology, the real manifestation of what is first conceived of in the Dreamtime and sung into being (like told into being as Story - telling the Story of the Dream makes the Dream/Story real) as Acid Rock Opera in Raag notation. . . Or are you referring here to The Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel?

[LordVreeg]

Llum, Steerpike, any input?
Audio Ninja D, how about the new setting?
SCMP, any opinion?

[Acrimone]

Vreeg, I thought you killed threads, not brought them back to life...

[Llum]

This is awsome, I think about this all the time, so now I get to put my thoughts into words.


Divergence

In Divergence I rarely use the word God (I removed the one time I did I believe). This is because there's no suddenly completely omnipotent being. Powers are mortals who by some fluke gained powers that allowed them to go through a singularity of sorts, and mostly survive emerging on the other side. The Powers cannot be understood by humans, mere contact with them scrambles the mind. Powers are divided into two categories, Elder and normal I guess. Powers are humans who underwent this process, they're now beyond comprehension of their former fellows. Elder Powers are the same thing just it happened to aliens thousands or millions (or billions) of years ago.

Powers are very active in The Origin, although not directly (what happens when two omnipotent beings clash? nothing, they cancel each other out) instead they go after goals and fight each other with proxies, its something to pass the time. The Elder Powers (The Deep Green and the Twin Golds) do the same, but on a much vaster scale (The entire universe). The Orange and Steel and other Powers (Elder and newer) went insane, well that's what we would call it, since can a God really be insane? They gather champions to themselves, people augmented so they can handle being in their presence, semi-divine people, demi-gods in a sense.

The Divergences are largely unaffected by the Powers, they were just created when they first came into godhood, now they're left alone, mostly.

The Penumbra is off-limits, it was a prison created by the Twin Golds to hold something in, Powers can't effect it. There is however a side effect, the wards ended up creating sources of power called galactic energy, which when used can allow someone to ascend to Godhood, of sorts. These Gods wield extreme power, that of their specific galactic energy, have divine nature, but they still have bodies. Then there's all kinds of complications, a God (Hindu Ala) stripped her sister of her divinity (Khali Ala) this led to a semi-divine person. All other kind of godly hijinx ensuied

The Aberration is another story, the Gods are impersonal Aspects, competing for control of the Web of Aspects. The Aspects aren't sentient, they only manipulate things and create servitors to wage war on the servitors of opposing aspects.

The Calm in the Eye of the Realmstorm

Gods do not exist, end of story. Some immortal people (elves mainly) have achieved extreme powers, but they're largely gone (The Refreshing).Immortals don't worship, why would they since they're basically divine in themselves, Light and Darkness for Surface and Dungeon Elves come close, since they're revered as their creators. Dwarves don't even do that. Humans currently worship freedom, they want it badly its become almost divine to them. The Orcs find nothing divine, since what divinity would give them their bastards lot in the world? The closest thing for them is the study of how the Realms interact.

Daemons just worship those stronger then them. The Hive doesn't understand the concept of worship, nether do Golems. Elementals aren't sentient so they don't worship anything ether. The Undead revere the meteors and what summoned them.

The Naga pray to the Timeless Ocean, but they know its just geology. Coualt and Salamanders are immortals and don't worship. The Morrow have the closest thing to real worship, The Flux as they call it, the divine Light of the Water, but its really just a sentient water elemental that hears them. The Giants revere they're totemic animals, but it isn't worship, just deep respect until they fuse. The Ophidian worship nothing, unless they're a Shark Giant around, then it becomes a local God to them, but its still just a Shark Giant.

Tough Worlds

In these two collection of ideas (I'm still fleshing out both of them) I haven't decided on how worship will work. In the world of the devouring I can see all kinds of cults springing up, but no real deities. In the world where magic comes from the sky, certain Dragons (unique fey creatures) are worshipped (these include Hel, Cerul and the Cornicopia Dragon) and city folk revere the sky, because that's where their power comes from (magic). The two opposing schools of necromancy each worship opposing beacons in the sky, (the Sun for the Dawn School and the Moon for the Twilight school). That's all I've decided for now.

In conclusion I've touched both extremes (active Gods and lack of Gods) and a little (very little) in between.

[LordVreeg]

Vreeg, I thought you killed threads, not brought them back to life...

Oh, this is thread necromancy, not resurrection...this way I get to kill it again...these were a few threads that got some great responses, so I thought we'd hit 'refresh'.

[sparkletwist]

The gods in Crystalstar tend to meddle fairly often, and they send their emissaries to meddle even more often than that. In this way, they are somewhat akin to the Greek pantheon, which was always up to something. It is not unusual for high-ranking priestesses to have actually spoken to them.

On the other hand... in many ways, they're more akin to the "godlike aliens" that often appear in sci-fi-- they have great knowledge and power, but are not truly "godlike," and at the end of the day, they don't have all the answers either. In that sense, the "real gods" in my setting are like the real world, where nobody knows.

[LordVreeg]

Llum, this gives me a much better insight to how your settings 'feel', especially in the Diveregence...

[Steerpike]

I'm using two different sorts of deities in the Cadaverous Earth.  The first are the possibly fictitious deities worshiped by most of the world's inhabitants: Striga, the star-gods, the many gods of Lophius Driftwood District (which are worshiped outside of that city as well), the Weeping Lady, Verlum, the Gibbering Goddess, and more planned.  The other group are more like the Tarrasque or something, huge quasi-divine monsters like Hirud, the Ravager Worm - Lovecraftian things and elemental destroyers, the so-called "Chained Ones."  They're revered by a deranged few but most consider them more like enormous demons.

A few crazed nature-worshipers revere the Fecundity, but most get eaten in short order by the beasts that dwell within or the cancer-forest itself.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

I don't use gods. :D

[Knight of Ravens]

While I have no deep analysis about the mechanics of belief, which I think are sufficiently expostulated above, I tend to make divine/cosmic beings very active in my worlds. The reason for this is simple: it's harder to pull off without a heavy overdose of deus ex machina, but it also invokes a great deal less paperwork on the PCs' level. They already know there's someone watching out for them (whether to help them along or to wreak unforgivable harm on them), and they don't have to have deep theological discussions about how Bob the Evil Cleric gets his spells. Don't get me wrong, I love theology, and I'm deeply opinionated about it'¦in real life. I find it fascinating to write and create it, but in play I personally try to stay away from the inevitable bogging down of the game that occurs.

As far as world-building is concerned, divine mechanics are usually the first thing I hammer out. Gods and immortal beings are factors that have a direct and powerful impact on any setting (whether or not they are active)

Here are some examples:

Asilikos '" For those who have looked at my setting here, you'll notice my list of divinities is most of what I've posted so far, and looking at the summary you'll see why. The disaster that tears apart my world was touched off by a war between such beings, and worsened by their attempts to end the conflict. It also, however, birthed new deities that walk among mortals and may be the most likely to end the suffering of the world (one way or another). There, the presence of the gods and their fiendish and celestial rivals and enemies directly shapes the policies of their servants. But at the same time, the catastrophe of the Shearing also limits them to a mortality of their own, and keeps them from affecting the actions of individuals and small groups, in whose hands lie destinies beyond immortal ken.

As an aside, I don't subscribe to huge pantheons, and tend not to make use of animistic faiths with numerous spirits and '˜little divinities'; take Forgotten Realms, for example. There are literally hundreds of established deities on Toril, all fairly active. That's too much interference, and with each maintaining sects of his/her/its own that's tens of thousands of little dots of influence moving about the world. It seems almost impossible that any god there has any way of getting things done with so many potential meddlers milling about (power levels aside, the rules implicitly make it out that even a greater god would have trouble with so many lesser powers interfering).

Wyctil '" As with Asilikos, a great disaster is just being overcome. In this case, the unearthing of a mighty artifact has devastated the divine ranks at the top, forcing the demigods and quasi-deities to step into shoes way too big for them. For instance, the goddess of dance is now the goddess of war, and three '˜councils' of these small gods-made-big try to sort out their new authorities while also trying to contain an invasion by the ethergaunts.

Aphon'anak '" This one does focus on a theological disagreement between the gods of the common races and the draconic gods. Both sides claim to have arisen first and created the world, which has trickled into a massive war between mortals (okay, so I like using huge wars as a campaign backdrop, if not the main event). The gods actively take to the field to lead their armies, and mortals have begun to mutate and become resistant to the powers of their patrons, and mortals take their gods' presence for granted. This is an example of the opposite end of the '˜active divine' argument; familiarity breeds contempt.

In all cases, I never, never use real world religions as more than an outline for any pantheon. Asilikos, for example, uses the basic relationships present in the Norse, Egyptian, and Greek pantheons as the skeleton for three separate groups of powers, but none of these three have been crafted to resemble those inspirations in any other way (hopefully soon I can get that posted, too).


To get back to the main question, I believe that deities that are actively involved in their worshipers' lives are more interesting than distant ones. They have more story potential, both in the ways they interact with mortals and how they interact with each other.

[Snargash Moonclaw]

[blockquote[Cavalier de Corvus]the goddess of dance is now the goddess of war[/blockquote]

Are you paraphrasing Confucius? :fencing: