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

[LordVreeg]

So I have had quite a few good conversations about the place of deilogical intervention in RPGs.  And I do believe that the level of interest/intervention that the gods (supreme beings, devils, etc)  are expected to have is an absolutely critical part of seting design.  Not just a list of gods and their spheres, or maybe the more advanced ideas of different religions, no, that is a different but related issue.  
I speak of the predetermined level of intervention and interest that the Gods may have on the mortal world.  Some settings have distant gods with little or no direct interest on the world in question, but this can cause a greater weight on the need for faith.  Some settings have gods that have a very active and direct intertest in the setting, with little to stop their meddling except for other gods.  Other settings have haev hidden agenda's and lost gods, or gods who fight over the worship of countries or heroes.  

Some of the greatest storylines are influenced, openly or from behind a curtain, by the gods.  Ask Homer.

What level of influence and interference do you use in your setting?  How does it affect the daily life of people, and how does it affect your storylines?  

[Ninja D!]

I like to have my settings much like the real world - there is no actual proof that gods exist.  They very well could, and somethings suggest that they do, but there is no solid proof.

[Pair o' Dice Lost]

My gods almost never intervene directly--you'll never see the god of the sea step in and save a floundering ship, and you're not likely to see a choir of angels show up and say "This is what [god X] wants, do it or else!"

What my gods do like to do is send omens, portents, and (occasionally) objects to their followers.  A farmer who faithfully worships an ibis-headed goddess of agriculture might pray for guidance--"Iliandra, there are rumors of snow from the south; should I plant tomorrow?"--and wake up to find a single ibis feather resting on each of his farm implements, a definite "yes" for planting; a nobleman wondering whether to finance a particular adventuring party might pray to his patron god of the sun and find that for the next hour whenever he thinks about the adventuring party the sun is hidden by clouds--a definite "no" for that course of action.

One of the benefits of this take on deific intervention is that if a choir of angels does show up, people either listen and obey flawlessly and damn the political/economic/other consequences, or get the hell out of Dodge, based on whose god sent the angels.

[Moniker]

In my gaming world, any hand the gods played was during the early development and nurturing of the worlds' peoples.

The normal, everyday miracles ever-present in D&D (such as Cure Light Wounds) doesn't exist; it's enough that the gods designed the world so perfectly that the great, flaming ball of fire called Masser doesn't come crashing down into the world and incinerating everyone. ;)

[Nomadic]

Mine has no proof for or against gods. People believe what they chose to believe. There is no verifiable viewable evidence that they exist, nor has science in the realm reached a point where it could claim they don't. Because of this there are many different religions in UR (much like the real world).

[LordVreeg]

SO, TO THOSE OF YOU LEANING TOWARDS A FAITH DRIVEN FORMAT...do the gods actually exist?  do they have an agenda?  do they have champions, or can a mortan gain their enmity?

[Moniker]

The gods most certainly exist, but they are beyond the realm of mortal comprehension. They are personified by humanlike archetypes in order for mankind to understand them, and written of as thus in holy books. More so, the gods are personified specifically to teach mankind morality, virtue and reason. Think Aesop's Fables.

Do they have champions? Certainly, but the gods aren't the ones choosing them. Men simply choose to champion ideals from gods. The lucky ones discover how to tap into a small portion of the power the gods exerted over the world during the early days. However, the gods do not willingly "grant" powers (although some men will claim as such).

Can they gain their enemity? Not really, but they can gain the enimity of their followers. Truth be told, the faiths in my world are nothing more than philosopher's clubs, armed with steel and shield - albeit very influential and wealthy clubs. ;)

[Pellanor]

The Gods were bored. They had omnipotence and omniscience over their domain. They desired a challenge. So the Gods created a world outside of their domain. One that, once done, they could not influence or see. The only way for them to interact with this world was through their agents.

Every sentient individual belongs to a single deity. Upon that individual's death the deity gains access to all of that individual's memories, and is granted an "afterlife", or possibly even rebirth, based on how well his life pleased his deity.

In addition those of great skill can contact their deity in their dreams, and commune through visage, seeking advise and power.

Every once in a while the Deities are allowed to create "champions" these fated ones have special powers to fulfill the role their god set out for them. Whether they choose to follow the wishes of their god, or even know what those are, is another manner entirely.

[Nomadic]

There is no way to know hehe. That is the beauty in that nobody knows if they do or not. UR purposefully leaves things vague in order to mirror real life to some degree. It is also more open than most games. I want to have a general platform that a DM can run with and pop in his own ideas without conflict. For this reason UR will purposefully be leaving things out like specific gods or highly in depth city info (specific shops, anything less than a history shifting npc, etc).

After my template world is done I will then be making an actual game module for it, filling everything in. That way DMs have the choice to make the world their own, or to just use a pre-designed one if they don't have time.

So does UR have actual existing gods? That depends on the DM.

[Hibou]

In Haveneast, the gods are very distant and their existence is questionable, as several other people (NinjaD would be the first) declared for their own settings. However... they are there. It's just that sometimes, what one chooses to believe is far better than what actually is.

[SA]

Pair o' Dice Lost and Pellanor, those are some kewl ideas.

Whether or not the actual Gods exist in my setting is a point of conjecture, even for me, but there are certainly many creatures that have been mistaken for the gods or their agents.  For instance, there's this monolithic prehistoric fossilised corpse whose mere proximity causes madness and dis-ease, and warps one's offspring.  Now, it's really just radioactive (bestowing such dubious gifts as dwarfism and Wolfram syndrome), but the people who dwell near it think it to be the remains of Untu, the primordial, titan-esque hound, a force of chaos and mutability.  That's why they call it Dog Mountain, and a whole theocratic nation of freaks has been born at its feet.

[lionrampant]

[blockquote Dice]What my gods do like to do is send omens, portents, and (occasionally) objects to their followers.[/blockquote]

I'm leaning towards this method myself in the campaign I'm working on, though I would add "visions" and "dreams" to the list.  Almost everyone will insist that the gods are real, due to clerics being able to cast spells.  That's coming from something, right?  However, the gods do not generally walk the earth, and it is totally possible that the generally held beliefs people have been trained to hold about their gods may not, in actuality, be true.

But it is a very good question, overall.  Most RPGs I've played in treat the gods as celestial vending machines: I spend a spell slot, push the button, and get what I want.  Gods with any real personality wouldn't let that slide for any of their followers, with the potential exception of their most devoted followers whom they know they can trust from experience.

[Nomadic]

The beauty of UR is that there are no clerics. At least not how fantasy views them. It has priests but these are more in line with real life priests. Devoted solely to worship and the like.

You can't get spells from a god. However members of religious often look out for each other in other ways.

[XXsiriusXX]

At its base, my setting is much like the real world, there is not much concrete proof that the gods exist. I have tried to model the various faiths on real world examples of modern and classical religions. For example, a few of my various faiths have a divine representative, like the Pope or the Dali Lama who control how the religion functions and what is or isn't doctrine. Some faiths believe in the same god but have different interpretations on how they should worship, similar to Islam and he various dominations of Christianity. One of my city states, Averic, has the head of the state religion appointed as a political office, much like the pontificate maximus from the Roman Empire.

 I have also added a few things to nudge belief that gods do exist. I have given most faiths some sort of artifact or other worldly facet. One of my faiths has an Ark of the Covenant type device and another has a an orb that shows the possible future of the person looking into it.

[Snargash Moonclaw]

There are no gods. There are only gods. And they're only gods. . . :soap:

I've probably gone into this at length in various ways previously, but I continue to be intrigued by exploring the interplay.

A big factor to consider in this is what the gods in fact are in a given setting. FRPs really dodge this question rather neatly - and rightly so since it generally isn't the role of a game to define real cosmology and theology. (Generally. If you view the cosmos *as a game* to begin with, then gaming theory is the only way to explore such questions effectively. . .) That is, we tend to look at gods in a setting very similar (or even identical to) gods of classical mythologies. These are very different from deities of more "mystical" descriptions. Few classical mythologies pose actual "smith of the world" type creation myths - if you dig into what preceded the gods of a given pantheon you encounter some pretty abstract concepts - even if the more concrete gods created the land forms as we live in them the initial act of creation out of chaos, the void , what ever occurred before that in a rather vague fashion by vague divine agencies which produced more discrete gods which in turn modified creation into more discrete forms. The biggest question ultimately is with regard to the fundamental nature of reality - under which questions regarding the fundamental nature(s) of any conscious, deliberate, creative entities are necessarily subsumed.

The funny thing about it all as that many of us (myself included) try to find ways to reflect such fundamental reality, as we perceive/understand it, in our settings. The games generally need to dodge this - for reasons of marketing at the very least, but within the scope of the game (which we freely expand when we deem it necessary), or setting, or stories often highlight it. Gods in settings tend to range from super-powered NPCs (which can be clearly statted out with a character sheet and all concomitant abilities) to ideological concepts displaying varying degrees of anthropomorhization and amounts of concrete definition and proof of their existence; definition and proof in setting story are usually directly proportional - more vaguely described deities are invariably more "faith based" and indirect in action - to the point of being debatable as to whether or not they even exist.

Okay - a look at the intro to my setting and the descriptions of the deities makes it pretty clear that most of the gods there are very "hands on." These are very much just super-powered NPCs. They have their own beliefs and agendas in play and pursue them assiduously. They manifest directly and through avatars and intervene in matters as they see fit. They don't micromanage generally, unless some detail has truly captured their interest. Given the scope of their perspective on matters - both in broad awareness (though not "omniscient") and immortal span of time - this would directly imply that the detail is in fact far more significant than mortals are able to comprehend. However, should a mortal with the same agenda be able to comprehend such scope, the mortal would act in a similar fashion within the scope of their abilities. In this sense, the gods are essentially "cosmic top level management" whose followers depend upon them to actively pursue their agenda and assist in doing so at the lower levels - everyone working together toward the same end. Gas station attendants rarely encounter the CEO of the oil co. employing them - but it can happen. . . Fortunately, such CEOs don't have such a degree of power to shape the world, delusions of grandeur notwithstanding.

The Primordials are a bit more vague and even less likely to be seen intervening - the goddess of the waters may rarely rescue a vessel, but the fact is, she's concerned with a huge ecosystem and more likely to provide a priest who asks if a voyage will be safe with some indication to "wait two days" than rescue a ship that didn't ask/heed such advice. . . Those involved with weather are notoriously unmovable - but it's because they really care a lot about a hell of a lot more than just the person asking for rain, or absence of it. They're still very active, it's just a question of grasping the scope of their priorities and concerns - mortals have difficulty understanding what really matters.

At some point there is the interaction/manifestation of even more abstract ideas, such as karma, entropy, and "ultimate reality". It's in this weird grey zone that we actually have religion. Gods as patrons of crafts, arts, or even ideals (such as heroism) aren't the focii of religions - they are at most higher level intermediaries of a greater religious principal - Galenar is "Life's Champion" because he believes that this is a worthwhile use of his abilities toward some vaguely implied "greater purpose or good" - in short he can be said to subscribe to a religion. So what do the gods believe in? The answer to that is presented in Panisadore as "?". Not all of the gods have achieved "enlightenment" - tho' many are quite close. (In keeping with explicit Buddhist teachings on the matter, the gods are also subject to karma and eventual reincarnation and it is in fact under the condition of mortality that a being is most likely to achieve enlightenment.) Certain beings are far less direct, far more abstract and can as readily be regarded as simply a projection of an individual achieving a momentary glimpse of some "facet" of ultimate reality as an actual personification of that facet. Thelema may not really exist, but when someone struggling to comprehend the fundamental "forces" of "karma" achieves a breakthrough in doing so they are briefly in that state of understanding, precisely as that being commonly referred to as Thelema - so Thelema does exist as much as anything else does, since in truth "Thelema Nature" and "Hebnaritath Nature" and "Buddha Nature" simply are (rather poor) terms referring to the inherent "fundamental reality" of everything. Of course none of the preceding (esp. "Buddha Nature") terms are actually used in Panisadore. Instead, those who get it and those who are clueless all use the term, "?".

All of which of course, amuses me immensely, and I love playing monks in convoluted games of ethical intrigue. (Legend of 5 Rings in it's original (non-D20) form really rocks with a game master who can really understand and present the setting and it's mechanics. Sadly, it's one of the few games where I really am a snob - I've met very few who can, even if they're quite good GM's in general, really present the game's potential. I'm not sure how well I could pull it off honestly, but even more, it's one of the games I much more want to play than gm.)