God and deities

>>52977127

I don't use them at all because I don't like the idea of an all-powerful being having the flaws of mortals.

>>52977127
did Pluto have a one-headed spear and one-headed dog?

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>>52977127
My gods are well beyond what any mere mortal could fight directly, but they have rules on what they can do directly to mortal beings, imposed by the two eldest and strongest deities, Lord Fate (god of order) and the Lady (goddess of chaos).

Most of the gods are actually ascended mortals. Every thousand years the gods get together and play what amounts to a giant poker tournament, using portions of their own divine power as collateral and mortals as pawns. Since there is a maximum amount of power that a deity can have (again, imposed by Lord Fate and The Lady), excess power can be invested by a god who has it into mortals so as to create new gods, while it's possible for gods to "go all in" and lose, thereby losing their divinity. As a result the pantheon tends to get shaken up quite a bit every millennia.

The last time I ran a game in my campaign setting it involved this millennial poker match, with Scrylia, the Goddess of Conquest (an ascended mortal who's apotheosis was 2,000 years ago), set against The Lady (with the Lady's chosen pawns being the PCs, of course, while Scrylia's was a conquering warlord and his four generals). Scrylia ended up losing, and having gone "all in" it meant that she was reverted back to her mortal form...which turned out to be a pseudodragon, who managed to make her escape while swearing her revenge.

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I'm not good in groups. It's hard to work in groups when you're omnipotent.

Norse Gods are my point of reference: Immortal to a point, but fallible.

They are mortals, but with more. Braver, smarter, wiser... but also pettier, angrier, crueler.

As for the mortality of gods... Impossible to kill permanently, baring extreme circumstances, and even then it will just mean that someone else will become a being so similar to them as to be them. Sometimes it will be their slayer, sometimes their chosen successor, sometimes some random smo whose combination of humors was compatible with the element of the natural orders that the god represents.

>>52977483
I could see this

Like a powerful god is actually powerful in energy but ages normally and can "die" and could host like a event where a chosen one is picked to replace that god and have that said energy and power like that

Hell, that was true of the Norse gods.

The reason they lived so long was due to the magical apples of Idunn, not their own longevity.

>>52977432
That sounds like a really damn interesting concept on how to handle deities and gods.

Mind if i use it for a future campaign?

I have a few very powerful magic users whose historical actions (or little glimpses of them in different regions) have contributed the local folklore and religion. While impressive beings, they are not as powerful as is claimed. They did not invent the sun (they did invent one of the moons).

Most of the regional religions are not based on the beings themselves, as they have not interacted with them. All they have to go on is the results carved throughout the land of their once-apocalyptic strife and ascribe to them meaning. That rift in the earth could well have been created by a godlike being, or it could have been an earthquake, but the culprit and motive are manufactured.

There are a few cults that know the real truth (or at least a part of it), but generally people worship gods that don't actually exist in the universe. Allows for lots of regional diversity without worrying about conflicting cosmology.

I don't allow my PCs to interact with Gods, capital G. I don't think it adds to the experience personally.

>>52977702
Sure. For the record, I think it works best if the gods have a tendency to "pop in" on mortals who amuse them, in the same vein as as the gods in Hercules: the Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess.

In the setting I currently run, the sun and stars are literal gods. Most people view the sun as the chief deity, and while he does have the most influence over the world, it is a matter of proximity not power or size. The sun and stars are basically giant torches of law. Anything they touch is influenced and put into order by the eyes of the gods observing it. People can pray to the sun and stars, and sometimes will get real tangible answers. These gods will occasionally manifest an avatar of some form on a world, if they feel it needed. Usually this is done to fight back against some pocket of demons or eldritch horrors that hid from their gaze for too long and grew powerful.

>>52977127
Very much like Greek gods. They are powerful, but flawed. They gave some beasts sapience, then they gave them ingenuity. This led to massive amounts of conflict and death, and so the five most powerful agreed to not step in and help again. They still do once in a while anyway, but actual divine intervention is rare in the extreme. The only exception is the goddess of beasts and the wilds, but she finds ways around the rules, or loopholes, for fear of the others kicking her shit in.

Sounds shit when I explain it. Still working it out.

The main conflict in my setting is that the realm of power once reserved for gods is getting breached by beings that are not gods at a rate exponentially increasing as the forward march of science simply cannot be contained, despite the forces that have tried. It helps that gods are not truly infinite in power or omniscient, just extremely powerful and inherently capable of generating a spiritual force that maintains their longevity indefinitely, but are otherwise just animals that could probably be killed with minimal effort under the correct circumstances. So far at least three factions have reached the level of natural gods, with two more factions (the antagonists and the players) are very near to it.

What I'm currently working with is several tiers of gods, so to speak. The highest gods being gods of concepts, like creation or destruction, too busy with their obsession to even care about anything they have done before, the god of creation literally running off after creating the largest part of the gods who operate on a lower level, and who are considered 'over-deities' who basically define "good" or "evil", and the elements. These rule over said element, and like the highest gods really don't care about what happens to mortals, as they are too busy with the arguments of all the other gods. Sometimes imposing laws, other times arguing for literally aeons. These top guys are in effect infinitely powerful, and even to the other gods are 'like forces of nature' which they can't really do anything about except complain or praise. (they are also completely ignored in all manner of play except when I need a convenient excuse for why a certain god doesn't just do X, if gods even appear in a story)

Then there are the gods that were created by mortals, the ones that actually do care and need to care about divine power and worship. Depending on the specific setting (and how much time I invest into it) I randomly roll, think up, ask around, and/or steal from existing mythology to create a pantheon, often crudely imagining on a map where they are worshiped, and why (river gods don't do well too far from a river, for example). Very often in my setting, the 'good' and/or 'stronger' gods are distracted by the godly arguments, giving the evil and/or weaker gods time to create cults, spread disease and/or whatnot for a plethora of plot hooks where the PC's slowly but steadily (and absolutely) gain favor with one of multiple gods through their actions, without the players really knowing of course.