I’ve been sitting on this one for some time. See, a while ago, I made this comment about how you could use the concept of thematic conflict to build a great pantheon of gods for your homebrew D&D setting. In the same breath, I also said that five was the perfect number of gods. And, if you happened to be watching on Twitter, I even briefly explained the basic idea. And then I went quiet. Because I do that sometimes. Yes. Sometimes I actually go quiet.
The thing is, I sat on the idea for a while because I wasn’t ready to start talking about creating settings just yet. See, the instructive parts about my website – the How to F$&%ing GM parts – have followed a progression over the years: how to run a game, how to build encounters, how to create basic content, how to build an adventure, and how to build to a campaign. It’s only after you know how to build a campaign that you really start thinking about creating your own setting. After all, campaigns and settings are two different things. I didn’t want to jump the gun. And I didn’t want to start setting building with a mythology.
But, recently, people remembered I said that thing and asked for it, and I decided to place the groundwork for it by discussing thematic conflict. So, fine, here we are. I’m f$&%ing doing it. Sort of.
Here’s the thing: in a game like D&D, mythology CAN be a big part of the world. If done right. And it can do some amazing things. D&D has stopped doing it right. And there’s a general anti-mythology sentiment in the community these days. I’d love to talk about those things. I plan to, in fact. Because, in a sort of crackpot conspiracy theory kind of way, several recent topics I’ve discussed – or found myself thinking about – can be loosely grouped together as “the death of fantasy.” And there’s a whole philosophical and literary thing behind that. But it will make me sound like a crazy person. More of a crazy person. So, I’ve got to hold off on that.
So, what am I going to discuss? Well, briefly, today, I’m going to discuss a system for building a top-level mythology for your D&D or Pathfinder setting based on thematic conflicts. But I’m not going to get too deep into the philosophy as to WHY you want to build a mythology in your game. Or WHAT the mythology does. Or WHY D&D’s mythology has become such a disaster. If you want to use it, fine. If you don’t want to use it, next week, there’ll be another different topic. But if you want to discuss your personal feelings about gods and the divine in games and whether there’s a place for them or whatever? I don’t care. That’s off topic. And comments will be moderated the f$%& out of existence if they go beyond discussing the system I prevent here. Because I’ve learned – recently – that this is a hot issue among a certain demographic of the gamer community. And I don’t want to deal with it.
A Storied Approach to Mythology
In most D&D games, the mythology of the world – that is to say, the gods, the creation myth, and the metaphysical rules of the cosmos – is just sort of there. And unless you’re a cleric or paladin, you don’t have to give a s$&% about it. In fact, thanks to a general evolution of the way this s$&% works in the game, even clerics and paladins don’t have to care. There’s two reasons for that. First, the gods’ major jobs have been outsourced to boring, stupid s$&% like science. When you’re creating world based on your piss-poor and limited understanding of plate tectonics and climate which you think is all that because of that one Earth science class you took, and when all of your monsters have evolved, and you’re trying to build real ecosystems, you are start to wonder why you even need gods.
Second, there’s the alignment thing. Most gamers these days balk at the idea of any sort of objective moral standard existing at all. Even a loose one where we can just agree that certain things are terrible under pretty much all but the most extreme circumstances. The watchword of the day is moral absolutism by means of moral relativism – that is, “I know the difference between good and evil and therefore anyone who disagrees is evil” – and the fact that anything you do in the pursuit of a presumed good is, by extension, good – that is, “the ends justify the means, b$&%, now shut up or I’ll punch you” – the idea of any sort of moral guidance that comes from anywhere other than inside is just crazy.
Just to be clear: I’m talking about the attitudes of GMs and players inside the game. Any resemblance between that and any actual, personal, real-life moral attitudes is purely coincidental. And no, that is not me being sarcastic. I’m talking about actual discussions I’ve had with players and GMs about the role of gods, science, and morality IN THE GAME. If you read any more than that into what I said, maybe you need to spend some time looking inward to see why you feel so guilty or self-righteous depending on whether you want to AGREE or DISAGREE with my “statement about the world today.”
Now, this is sad because, one of the greatest things about stories – especially the interactive kind – is that they let us explore different ideas in imaginary settings to learn more about what it means to be a human in the real world. A D&D game is a what-if scenario. And the mythology of D&D is based mostly on classical mythology. With a very small number of Judeo-Christian influences thrown into the mix. Very small. Tiny, really. Which is weird because the time period that D&D describes was a time period in which classical mythology, polytheism, and pantheism were dying out and Christianity and monotheism were on the rise. But the old mythology still had a lot of sway. A lot of the things that used to be gods or god-like beings became spirits and boogey monsters and faeries and s$&%. So, the monotheistic God above all shoved all of the other stuff down the totem pole a few steps, as it were.
And that’s because classical mythology was more about explaining the world than it was about providing a moral framework. Oh, sure, there were lessons for people about how to behave. Greek mythology was full of cautionary tales about pride, for example, which was pretty much the greatest sin you could commit against Zeus and his ilk.
Classical mythology was full of stuff where the gods set stories in motion. The Trojan War was all about a beauty pageant between the gods. Sort of. Jason and the Argonauts? Clash of the Titans? That was all about the gods driving heroes to act and then sitting back and watching the fireworks. The gods provided the impetus for the stories. Occasionally, the gods would set down obstacles in the form of monsters or natural hazards. Why? Because the gods of classical mythology were embodiments of natural forces and of social and philosophical forces. I mean, Wonder Woman demonstrated that Ares wasn’t just the god of war, he was the embodiment of the aggression in the hearts of all people. Which drove them to do both terrible and wonderful things. Yeah, I liked that movie. Even though it’s understanding of World War I was a little stupid and it should have been set during World War II. But I digress.
A well-crafted mythology in D&D can serve the same sort of purpose. It can provide the impetus for stories by framing the gods not merely as all-powerful beings who create the world, give spells to clerics, and otherwise sit on their a$&es, but as beings who represent different forces and ideas that drive stories and occasionally provide obstacles. And, if set up properly, you can create a world where the gods’ influences are felt without the gods having to act directly.
And I think that’s the biggest obstacle to creating a good mythology. GMs don’t know how to bring the gods to life in a world where the gods don’t directly influence the affairs of mortals. Where they are chess players, manipulating pawns, or where all the cool stuff they did to set things in motion happened before the beginning of time. Basically, the only time a god is involved in the game is when an evil cleric or cult is enacting some plot or scheme, or the god itself is just blasting the world.
You don’t need your game to be God of War – the original good ones – to have gods in your world.
Look, if there is a god like Ares in the world, every time a war breaks out, and a bunch of people suffers as a result, they are going to blame Ares. Is Ares really behind every war? Maybe. Maybe not. It doesn’t matter. Ares represents war. Hell, Ares didn’t even have to show up at the end of Wonder Woman. He even said that. He pointed out that he didn’t start the war and had no direct hand in it. Did that make Ares any less of an influence? Of course not. Ares is just a symbolic representation of something the story is about.
If only there were a word for that…
Themes in Disguise
Yes, we’re back to themes. Themes – those big concepts that the story is really about – that’s what the gods are really good for. They are good for embodying themes. The gods become the stand-ins for the themes. And the themes become the descriptions of the gods. Set up your gods as representative of the themes of your story and you have names you can invoke in pretty much every story. And you also have story seeds you can use to create stories when you’re out of ideas. And those stories will actually play with important ideas. Which makes them better stories. They resonate with people.
So, when you’re telling a story about, say, the importance of family and community, the townsfolk at the heart of the story worship the god that represents that theme. Maybe the temple has been defiled. Fallen into disrepair. Which represents the fact that so many men and women have been called off to war and left broken families behind, struggling to survive. Which makes war another theme. So, both armies call upon the war god to support them in their righteous conflict. Because the war god isn’t good or evil. He’s just war and there are just, righteous wars and there are terrible, vile wars. But they all have an effect on family and community. Now, even though your story may have nothing to do with the gods themselves – they don’t have cults or clerics or anything taking action – those gods are still influencing your story. And, of course, if someone is playing a paladin or cleric, they’ve chosen a theme that’s important to them. When stories revolve around that theme, they are super interested.
Of course, themes don’t drive stories. Conflict drives stories. That’s the whole point of that “themes in conflict” article I wrote. So, you don’t just want to make your gods any old themes, you want to set up conflicting themes. That’s the key. So that the gods are constantly tugging on the world and the themes are constantly tugging on your stories.
On Good and Evil
Now, gods and alignments have always been tricky bedfellows. As I described in the themes in conflict article, good vs. evil is a terrible conflict. It doesn’t let you explore more than surface ideas because it assigns certain themes to “good” and certain themes to “evil,” and then just makes them fight until the good themes win. That’s good for one story. Even one epic story. But if you’re looking to drive multiple stories and if you want those stories to be interesting and engaging on a deeper level, you just can’t do it like that. Recall that whole Lord of the Rings thematic conflict about fate versus free will. LotR never claimed that fate was always good and free will was always bad. It bounced back and forth and looked at them in different situations. That’s why it was such an interesting question. Same in Star Wars. Both the Light and the Dark Side of the Force relied on destiny and their perceptions of destiny. Obeying the will of the Force wasn’t good or evil. It was just something you did. Good or evil resulted depending on your motives.
As noted, morality didn’t really enter too much into the Classical mythology that influences the religions of D&D. In a way, that makes it the perfect influence for D&D. But it all falls apart when you assign alignments to the gods. Because that does make the gods about morality. Now, you can do that. But that’s when your D&D mythology becomes a D&D religion. The distinction – and this is only my distinction – is that mythology is about explaining the world and its forces. Religion is about morality and philosophy. And, while I’m cool with religion also in D&D, for the gods, I prefer to stick with mythology.
That means we keep the alignment system away from the gods. People are good, evil, neutral, whatever. The gods are beyond that. Because they represent different fundamental forces. They represent the forces of the narrative. And each god can be both good and evil. Though some will naturally tend more toward the usual definition of good and others will tend toward what we might consider evil.
Five is the Perfect Number
The basic idea behind designing a D&D mythology is to create a number of thematic conflicts that will reflect the stories you want to tell in that world and throughout that campaign. That’s the plan. And I will show you exactly how. But, first, I want to talk about why the number five is the perfect number for this sort of s$&%.
First, games like D&D have a huge problem with asking people to keep too many details in their f$&%ing heads. Too many spells, too many abilities, too many races, too many options. Which means that, at any given moment, things are not accessible to players. Or to the GM. The thing is, if you want to create a world which feels like the gods are always tinkering and toying with it, you’re relying on your own ability to invoke the gods easily and freely. And you’re relying on the players’ ability to remember the gods and to be able to identify their influences. If you’ve got a hundred f$&%ing gods – looking at you, Forgotten Realms – that is never going to happen. The gods are just a giant list that no one can remember. Remembering all of the gods of the Realms is a parlor trick. It’s like remembering the 50 U.S. states and their capitals. Fun for Animaniacs or a game show about hunting a super criminal, but terrible for quick access as part of a D&D game.
People generally remember three to five things pretty easily. You can see this by asking people to remember the names of the seven dwarves or the eight reindeer or any other long list of things. Notice, most people start counting on their hands. The first three or four happen quickly. The fifth comes a little more slowly. And after they move to the second hand, that’s when they generally stop and say “wait, which ones did I say already?” Five fingers, five things to remember. It’s a good rule.
Second, when it comes to the idea of multiple conflicts and multiple oppositions, odd numbers are better. Especially five, seven, nine, and so on. Richard Garfield observed this when he was designing the core mechanics of Magic: the Gathering. He chose five colors specifically so that each color would have two allies and two enemies. And because of the way allies and enemies were shared, that meant alliances would always be shifting. Balance of power was maintained through an ongoing conflict. If one color starts to get too powerful, it would face two enemies. And if that powerful color tries to join with one its own allies, it will draw a third enemy into the mix, creating an uneasy bedfellows scenario on the other side but nonetheless ensuring it can’t achieve dominance. It was a very clever setup. It works with seven as well, though the alliances get bigger before balance kicks in. But, with three, it doesn’t work at all.
For those reasons, five is the perfect number of major deities in a gaming mythology. Now, note that I say major. If you want to fill out your mythology, you can always add minor deities. Lesser gods. Each god might have a few underlings, servants, children, or whatever. That adds some fun detail and variety, but it doesn’t increase the complexity of the religion overall. And it allows clerics and paladins to have a few more options. If five options aren’t enough for some f$&%ing reason. But those specialized deities only play more specific, pop-in, pop-out type roles. The major five deities really run the cosmos. They are the ones everyone has to remember.
Setting Up the Fights
So, how do you build five deities around thematic conflicts? Well, it’s actually pretty simple. It’s a three-step process. The first step is to choose five different thematic conflicts that you want to build stories around in your world. That is, you choose five pairs of themes that can end up running into each other. Because these are literary themes, you want to ensure that those themes aren’t just “good vs. evil” type conflicts. For example, while you could make a minor case for the positive aspects of selfishness and the dangerous aspects of compassion, the reality is selfishness pretty much always lands on the traditionally evil side, and compassion is pretty much always a good thing.
On the other hand, justice vs. compassion is a better example. Those are both good ideas. We want people to get what they deserve. We want bad people to be punished. We want good people to be rewarded. But we also want to recognize the worth of every person. To recognize the value of life. To give the benefit of the doubt. To give second chances. Both are good ideas. Until someone steals a loaf of bread to steal his starving kids and then beats up some cops to escape justice and vanishes while on patrol. Or until someone drags their kid along during the commission of a crime. Then, things get complicated. Which is where all the interesting exploration comes from. And where we learn and grow as people.
Anyway, you take a piece of paper, and you write down five good thematic conflicts you’d like to see crop up in your stories.
For example, I’m going to use that justice vs. compassion one. That’s a good one. And I’m going to use four more.
First, let’s go with tradition vs. progress. Traditions are ideas that hold society together. They enable us to function as a community and ensure we have values in common. And traditions are ideas that have stood the test of time. They have worked for a long time to keep society together. But tradition is also stagnant. And resists examination and question. It can be stifling. And it doesn’t respond well to change. On the other hand, progress is exploratory. It drives us to seek the radical. The new. The untested. It is where new ideas come from. It lets us keep up with a changing world. But, being radical, progress also breaks down the ideas that hold communities together. It requires everyone to go their own ways and experiment with their own ideas. Which means that people lose their common ground. They can’t come together. They lose their connection to people. And radical ideas are untested. By their nature. And therefore, they can be wrong. They can lead us down wrong paths and take us to dangerous places. We need both tradition and progress, but both have their dangerous downsides.
Another classic conflict is the freedom vs. security. Or freedom vs. safety. It is the natural right of all people to be free from laws and restrictions, to determine the best course for themselves. Without freedom, people can’t explore new ideas, they can’t learn and grow. Beyond that, without the freedom to pursue what gives your life meaning, live become meaningless and miserable. Of course, ultimately, freedom is inherently selfish. It’s the definition of selfishness. If you pursue only what you want, if you put your needs and desires above all, you become a threat to others. You ruin other people’s freedoms by pursuing your own. But the world is dangerous. And living in constant danger is exhausting. If you spend all of your time protecting yourself, worrying about your own survival, you’ll have no time to pursue any of that. People need to be kept safe. Safe from the ravages of the world and safe from each other. And so, we use social and physical boundaries. We build walls, we pass laws, we follow rules. Each of those things is a restriction on freedom. But, it allows us to live safe and comfortable lives and pursue things other than our survival. Too much security, too many rules, though, and we’ve given up all of our freedom. We have no self-determination left.
Personally, I’ve always liked the conflict of idealism vs. pragmatism. Idealism is the belief in higher causes and in philosophical pursuits. Honesty is good for its own sake. Love. Justice. Virtue. These things have value. And being a good person is a worthwhile pursuit, even when it goes unrecognized. But we don’t live in an ideal world. We live in a real world. Overly idealistic people can’t function in a world where sometimes, the only choice is deciding between the lesser of two evils. They cannot coexist with people who do not share their extreme idealism. They might be preachy, overly moralizing, and they might take extreme actions in the pursuit of impossible ideals above all. Pragmatism is the focus only on practical outcomes. The only thing that matters is how things play out in the real world. There are no ideals. There’s just practical judgment, from situation to situation. The consequences are all that matter. Truth is defined as whatever works. Ultimately, we live in the real world. And pragmatism empowers us to adjust and adapt to whatever situations we find ourselves in and to maximize the outcomes of every situation. But pragmatism can be cold and calculating. It emphasizes expediency over principle, and it can be short-sighted, selfish, and cruel. After all, if there are no ideals, there is no reason to pursue anything other than the best practical outcome.
Finally, I’m going to go with determinism vs. free will. Determinism is the belief that everything is predetermined. From a spiritual perspective, that can be interpreted as fate, destiny, or the plan of God. From a realistic perspective, determinism provides the bedrock for science. The idea that the universe follows physical and mathematical laws that cannot be broken. Ultimately, determinism teaches you to accept that things are mostly beyond your control. The universe – through law or fate – moves as it will, regardless of you. And trying to fight against that is both dangerous and futile. But, if you recognize those laws and how they affect you and your life and learn to live with them instead of in opposition to them, you can survive. Even flourish. You can turn those laws to your advantage. Unfortunately, the end point of determinism is that you are responsible for nothing. After all, if even you are subject to the absolute dictates of universal laws and all of your actions and their outcomes are predetermined, you cannot hold yourself responsible for your choices. What does choice even mean? Obviously, on the flip side is a belief that what makes you – and all humans – unique are the choices you – and they – make. Your choices change the world around you, they have consequences. That’s empowering. It means you are the master of your own fate. You create the future you want to live. It also means that you can take responsibility for your actions. That’s how you learn and grow. By learning from your mistakes. But a belief in the supremacy of free will can be dangerous. Because the universe is beyond your control. Your will is not supreme. And if you can’t accept that, if you try to control everything, you are destined to fail.
Now, you may not agree with my assessments or my choices about the five conflicts. I’m just offering an example of how to think through the sorts of conflicts that will create interesting stories. I’m not trying to start any moral or philosophical debates. You’re welcome to disagree. Somewhere other than my comment section. Don’t forget that. This article is about a process, not a philosophy. I’m just using my philosophy as an example.
Anyway, here’s my five conflicts in a nice, easy list:
Justice vs. Compassion
Tradition vs. Progress
Freedom vs. Safety
Idealism vs. Pragmatism
Determinism vs. Free Will
Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock… Sort Of
Now, you might notice that you have ten ideas on that list. Five pairs of sometimes opposing forces. And you need to get five gods out of it. Now, you’re not going to make each god represent a conflict. That’d be crazy. It’d just be a set of five completely separate, bipolar supernatural entities. They wouldn’t interact. No, instead, each god is going to embody two different ideas. And they are going to be arranged in a set of opposites.
Here’s how we do it.
First, pick a conflict to start with. Write the opposing themes on a piece of paper at opposite ends of a line. I’m going to start with the top of the list. Like so:
Now, pick another idea from another conflict and pair it with one of the ideas you already wrote down. Try to pair up two ideas that are thematically close, but not too close. We want things to be a little askew. A little interesting. For example, I’ll pair Idealism with Justice. Those go well together. Justice is an ideal, after all. And after I do that, I draw another line across from Idealism and Justice. And that’s where Pragmatism goes.
If you haven’t figured it out, we’re drawing a star with each line representing one of our thematic conflicts and each point having two themes that are closely related but not too related. So, I match one of the unmatched themes on the star with another theme off the list. I’m going to put pragmatism with free will. I’m not sure those ideas sit well together, but they feel okay to me. And that puts determinism on the other side.
And we keep going. I’m going to pair up determinism with safety. Those feel nice together. They are both about surrendering yourself. Accept the universe, accept your place, and we can all live safely and harmoniously in accordance with whatever plan the universe has. And that puts freedom on the other side.
And that leaves just one conflict. Progress thrives in freedom, so they make a natural pair. And that puts compassion with tradition. And we have a star.
Yeah, I made a typo. So, shoot me.
The Easy/Hard Part
Your star diagram defines your five gods and their basic relationships. We have a god that embodies justice and idealism, one that embodies freedom and progress, one that embodies pragmatism and free will, one that embodies compassion and tradition, and one that embodies determinism and safety. And now, the hard part – or the easy part, depending on your creativity level – is actually describing the five gods. Who are they? Do they have names? Or at least archetypes? Are they tied to certain races? Or elements? Or biomes?
I mean, Magic: the Gathering builds on its five-fold imagery to death. Because there are elements of just this sort of structure in the Magic lore, these days. Much of it is a bit of revisionist development, but it’s there nonetheless. And you can see how it’s built into everything. For example, green embodies the nature half of the nature vs. nurture conflict and the interdependent half of the interdependence vs. independence conflict. It’s basically evolution, and natural order meets the circle of life. And it is symbolized by the natural world, by forests, by communal races like elves, and so on. It is also exemplified by game mechanics that provide buffs – allowing creatures to evolve and adapt – and by building strength by summoning large numbers of creatures.
Your job is to take two words, two ideas, and build an god around them. And then, for bonus points, to tie that god into other elements of the world so it feels like the mythology is the heart of everything. And to connect to that a clerical path or divine circle or whatever the hell they are called in whatever game you’re playing. And then, to erase explicit mention of the themes by replacing the two themes with one bigger, broader theme or archetype. For example, I might call my compassion/tradition god “the Mother Goddess.” She’s the goddess of home and hearth, family, and everything in a Norman Rockwell painting. That encompasses my two themes and adds a bunch of related baggage and wraps them into a nice, recognizable archetype. Or, alternatively, that same goddess might be the Mara, Mother of Halflings. Or it might be represented as a stern High Priest type figure. Or a Martyr figure. Those all work well.
Now, I’m not going to build out the gods for my system today. If there’s demand for it – let me know – I’ll do it in a future article. It’s creative, fluffy bulls$&%. I hate wasting time on that. And I need some time to work out what to do with those gods. In the meanwhile, though, I encourage you to take a stab at doing your own thing. Either with my gods or with your own.
Taking a stab (picked 5 runes to inspire me just for the heck of it):
Lagu – adaptability vs predetermined routine
Pertho – familiarity vs unexplored/taking chances
Wunjo – gratitude vs striving for more
Fehu – matter vs spirit
Dagaz – hope/future vs pragmatism/now
That gave me the five following “gods”:
adapt+hope – maybe a river god? always something new around the next corner
chances+striving – mountain god. An ally of the former, probably, although more encouraging of Getting Stuff Done
matter+pragmatic – soil and earth. Your basic farming deity.
routine+familiar – city/community god. This is how we do things in our town.
gratitude+spirit – I think I want this to be some sort of forest god, I’m imagining the forest spirit from Mononoke, but of course it needs more work.
This is amazing man!! Thanks, this is super useful!!
One thing tho: aren’t “Tradition vs Progress” and “Freedom vs Safety” too similar? Eh, maybe it’s just me.
I kind of feel the same, because Tradition + Freedom or Progress + Safety don’t really fit together, but the pairs don’t exactly match. That would make a great first angle of a pentagram, though.
Tradition + Safety would make a nice Inflexible Guardian of Order type of god, with one opponent being Freedom + ? (an artistic-hedonist type of god, maybe) and the other Progress + ? (something around knowledge would do great). The last two are mostly allies but not quite the same. And depending on the last two, that could be interesting.
Or, starting with Freedom + Progress (It could do with an Elven feel of slow natural progress toward Light, driven by the freedom of every living things), with two opponents, one about safety (a guardian maybe, but with a different feel), one about tradition (some pastoral/agrarian god would probably work). It also depends on the two other conflicts.
I could see Progress + Safety, maybe — what it made me think of first was a devotion to technological progress in order to protect yourself from disease and your property from criminals. But also perhaps the concept of emotional safety in the service of social progress. (I.e., the concept of a “safe space” — if there are some things we don’t talk about here, or that we don’t talk about in a certain way, and we make that sacrifice in order to further a particular purpose or cause. I don’t mean to pass judgment on whether it’s good or whether it works, just thinking about how the concepts fit together.)
Tradition + Freedom sounds like a colonial manifest destiny sort of thing to me. Like, go off to found a society somewhere else, but with our same religion / race / gender roles / etc.
Admittedly, though, these are more examples of organizations or societies than something that could be gods. I think I’m being influenced by this article on the MTG color wheel, which talks about things like “a blue organization” or “a person acting in a red/green way”.
They often overlap, but they’re not the same. A democratic and open society that suddenly becomes concerned about safety might erode its tradition of freedom, while a philosophy built around progressing to a utopia might decide progress and utopia are easier to achieve if everyone would just shut up and do what they’re told. A traditional warrior culture might likewise consider too much concern with personal safety to be contrary to their values, while a safety-conscious culture might realize its traditional approaches to security can’t cope with new threats and thus has to seek out new ideas to deal with them.
And that overlap is just fine. if you wind up with two gods that are quite similar, there’s story potential in that no matter how you spin it!.
If they believe in similar things they ought to get on. They probably have an alliance. How does that affect their relationships with the other gods?
Or what if they don’t get on? They’re so similar so WHY have they fallen out?
[[ Off topic comment removed. – Angry ]]
I really like to see this here again in more detail. I came across the twitter stuff a while back, and, having used it, I’m really happy with how the pantheon for my home game has turned out. For years, I was using the ideals from the easydamus ‘real alignments’ page as inspiration for character ideals/motivations. Once I saw the article before, I easily transformed the ten ideals into 5 opposing pairs that formed the god structure.
It’s also been pretty easy tie the available 5E cleric domains to said ideals which allow for each god to be represented by two domains that tell you right away what god that NPC cleric serves and what the cleric’s ideals are (since my gods require that a cleric actually believe in their ideals to grant those powers).
Overall, thanks for the article; I had the foundation from before, and this just fleshes it out that much more.
In the campaign I’m running, I did something similar but stopped a step short it seems. I have ten gods and they represent a major ideal (Life, Death, Civilization, Order, etc.). I gave each of them an allied ideal and an opposed ideal, then I sorted them into seasons to represent when they were strongest. Summer and Winter are the three god seasons and the heavy hitters in scale, and Spring and Fall are support that balances the two main groups. It leaves some conflict in the season itself, since they are not perfectly united and may ally with other seasons. It also leaves conflict between the seasons themselves. I then based the personalities on Norse and Greek gods and called it a day. It works well, but I do wish I had less to manage.
I very much like your design system, but I have some questions :
1. Where does evil stands, and I mean devils and demons. Are they just some outer creature trying to overthrow the gods by corrupting the living, because you know, they’re demons ? Or can there be an actual Lolth or Tiamat-like Evil god without being an easy theme to dismiss in a Manichean fashion ? Or a black-like color in Magic, or whatever ? Or a fully evil pentagram instead, with good side effects of evil gods fighting each other, instead of dark sides of mostly-good gods fighting each other ?
2. Thinking of a lesser kind of evil, would Gruumsh, or some monster’s god be some kind a lesser god ? A spiteful god that was betrayed by his brothers when the world was shared (“to the elves, the deep forests, to the dwarves, the high mountains, yadi yada, sorry orks, complaining is evil”), a god of vengeance (vs mercy/compassion) + change (vs tradition). Would it unbalance too much the pentagram ?
(Actually it feels like a cool start, I’ll try one from here, and share if anyone cares)
3. Can the gods die or be replaced in a Planescape-like agony of slowly unbelieving a god to death ? Like a old theme we don’t really care about now (outdated greek pride, or something), or a new one taking its place. Is it going down the path of so many gods we don’t really care anymore ? Or can it be an onion campaign, unveiling old pentagrams under the current one ? Or an unbalanced one that goes too much toward 2 vs 2 and needs to be restored by reviving an old faith ?
Those seem like questions for you to answer in your own campaign
If you’ve got a god representing justice, he could be the origin/boss of both angels and devils. After all, isn’t hell a just punishment for sinners?
It is, obviously, but vengeance doesn’t have the same feel as justice, even if both can be opposed to mercy. Vengeance isn’t really about punishment, morals nor even society. It has to have a gut feeling, and an ‘even against everyone’, ‘even if I know it’s wrong’ feel to it.
Gruumsh isn’t an avenging angel, or a demon punishing sins. He is just fighting for himself, to make them all pay, even at the cost of meaning or peace or beauty or whatever can be destroyed and is dear to their very hearts. Just because they care and can suffer if it dies.
Justice always pretend to build something, even with genocidal angels and demonic tortures, to redeem the world or at the very least regulate it ; while vengeance just destroys its nemesis for the sake it.
I suppose Justice is necessary then, opposed to mercy too. Not quite the enemy of an avenging rampage, but also not the same and with different allies.
Could the problem be that you’re approaching it backwards? It seems much more difficult to figure out “where would Gruumsh go?” in this set of themes, than to start with Vengeance as one of the themes (with Gruumsh as your preferred deity there) and build around that as a conflict point.
Actually, the problem was to oppose vengeance to mercy, instead of acceptance of the wrong done ; that way I can also use Justice vs compassion as a nice counterpoint.
I tried a few combinations and tweaked a few bits here and there and it works pretty well, but I’ll try something else with defining a vengeful god with Justice + Free will, opposed to mercy on one hand and fate on the other.
If there’s a lesson here, it’s to build themes together so respond well to each other. It will open nicer combinations of arcs to a campaign, so that it doesn’t feel like some themes are just slapped together and make the episodes-adventures too unrelated to each other
Like everything, Terry Pritchett was there before you:
“The good are innocent and create justice. The bad are guilty, which is why they invent mercy.” Witches Abroad.
1. I think that “evil” in the absolute sense doesn’t really work here, but I might have a solution for you. What if devils and demons were “selfish”, instead of “evil”? What if evil simply meant egotistical? Where the ultimate expression of it is that one is willing to destroy anything and everything in order to preserve themselves. And what if “good” was “selfless”, where the ultimate expression is that of someone who would destroy themselves to save something or anything of value? I think this works better than building devils and demons as inherent corruptors of the good. If that were the case, then they might as well be a force of nature with no individual personalities at all.
2. I’ve got nothing on this besides that’s a cool idea.
3. I think replacing gods is an interesting concept. I imagine that the gods simply take on new aspects/identities. Like how Jupiter is essentially Zeus, etc.
You could do the same thing you do to get these gods except you take things that are “bad”.
That’d make some of the evil gods natural enemies of each other.
On the other hand, they could also simply be born out of lesser evil gods.
I like this idea. I’d personally switch the Safety and Compassion endpoints – which makes Determinism & Compassion (two important elements of Abrahamic religions)
The way I’d shape them to “fleshed out” Gods would be to match them with archetypes – Idealism/Justice might be a god of the Planes, Determinism/Compassion a god of the Seasons, Pragmatism/Free Will a god of Creation, Tradition/Safety a god of Society, and Freedom/Progress a god of Rebellion
It needs a little workshopping, but one of the more interesting things about it is that it doesn’t reflect a normal dualism – e.g. Moon vs Sun, Winter vs Summer, Wilderness vs City, Altruism vs Selfishness. Maybe with the borderline exception of Society vs Rebellion
As long as your god of rebellion isn’t modern Loki, you’re good. Although you may want to look into ancient Loki before marvel made him some misunderstood younger brother annoyed about not being heir or whatever (He killed someone because his parents were all proud of themselves for making that guy immortal, is literally the father of Fenris wolf, who starts the apocalypse, S^&* like that).
Actually that leads me to an interesting thought about how deeply rooted determinism vs free will is in Norse Mythology, because every single person knows their fate in the end (dying gloriously in Ragnarok) but their free will can change certain details and outcomes.
Just used this system for my own campaign, using 5 egyptian gods as basepoints, so thanks for making this. I also decided to use the themes in place of alignment, so the characters are aligned to certain themes or gods. I’ll see how it works when the campaign starts, but what do you think?
Oh man, I was so excited to see this article! Just the other day, I remembered reading the original Twitter thread (the one linked from the Angry GM Facebook page) and tried to read it again…only to find a page saying “Storify has shut down and there’s no archive!” And site-searching Twitter came up with some subset of it, but not the whole thing. So I found this replacement very timely, and a good read.
Personally, I’d be interested to see some of that fluffy worldbuilding crap to flesh out these gods sometime.
Also just drafted one of these up after reading.
Life vs death
Tradition vs progress
Empathy vs retribution
Law vs chaos
Valor vs wit
Mother earth, goddess of life and tradition
The Warrior, god of valor and retribution
The Time Keeper, goddess of law and death
The Traveler, god of progress and empathy
The Trickster, god of chaos and wit
This is some good creative fluffy bull####. I’m gonna try.
Revenge purifies the soul / Revenge is a hollow victory
Bad people should be killed / Bad people should be imprisoned
There is a higher purpose in life / There isn’t
Some people are born better than others / Everyone is born equal
Undead are an abomination / Undead are just as good as the living.
Revenge purifies the soul and Bad people should be killed = The Devil.
There is a higher purpose in life and Bad people should be imprisoned = The Angel.
Everyone is born equal and There isn’t a higher purpose in life = The Other.
Undead are an abomination and Revenge is a hollow victory = The Afterlife.
Some people are born better than others and Undead just as good as the living = The Lich.
Now I’m just reminded of the 13 icons from 13th Age.
Super, super useful system here. Good practical application of the musings on themes. I’d be fascinated to see the “next step” at some point – how you’d go about fleshing all this out. I think it’d be really informative.
What room would a grand god of “good” have?
For instance could you have an arbitrary number of gods, lets say three, and then instead of them self-balancing (because there are only three and not five) the Great Goddess Gaia (of Growth and happiness or whatever generic good thing) holds all things in balance, including the upper pantheon.
I’m afraid this would quickly lead back to the old, superficial good vs evil.
By setting up a bigger god of “good” holding everything in balance it really quickly looks like you implied that balance ist good and imbalance is evil.
And i think that would defeat the purpose of letting the players encounter different ideas and thinking about them for themselves without a clear “right” and “wrong”.
I love this idea, I will definitely be giving this a try!
My question though, is why a set of three is too few for alliances to shift. The biggest it can get is 1v2, with one power getting too big and getting ganged up on, but eventually the allied pair is going to have to worry about each other, one of them will get a little bigger than the other, the others will ally against them, and now we have a new dynamic. Planetside used this to great effect.
Consider a three way game of rock-paper-scissors. One person has to beat both of the other two to win. All three throw at the same time each round. Now imagine one player says “I’m just always going to throw rock.” And he means it. Now you have a unbreakable stalemate forever. I can’t remember the name of the issue, but it’s been discussed in a couple of books on game theory. You don’t want an unbreakable stalemate forever. Balance is a bad story. You need ever-changing, unwinable conflicts.
I’d also be interested in seeing this fleshed out more. And how others were questioning above, how would you handle monstrous gods. I find it difficult to see monsters worshiping the same gods as men, but having separate gods defeats the point of the five point pantheon. Then we’re back to good vs evil.
I’m thinking there’s still room for “lesser” gods, as long as they are notably lesser.
Angry mentioned the possibility of having lesser gods represent more specific incarnations of the established themes.
Personally I’d change perspective and have 5 “greater” gods represent the primary themes with their influence felt throughout the land, with their children/servants/incarnations representing the more specific aspects of their themes, along with an arbitrary number of “lesser” gods having themes unrelated to the central conflicts, mostly worshipped by sapient monsters and NPC tribes (to be encountered during the story. Religious PCs should choose one of the five greater gods to worship).
I also considered different races having different pantheons, except they are all the same gods taking different forms to better communicate to a given race. So the elvish pantheon and the dwarvish pantheon are actually the same five gods taking different forms (and emphasising different aspects in order to influence different cultures with different values).
Kind of like the Greek/Roman gods, but with fantasy races.
I’m seeing a lot of classic dichotomies, but I wonder how many of them represent opposing ideals. Let’s see what I can come up with…
Retribution vs. Rehabilitation: Which is the true nature of justice or purpose of law?
Individualism vs. Collectivism: Should each person live for themselves unfettered or is it better to cooperate and compromise?
Impartiality vs. Loyalty: Should you always stand by your family, friends, or liege or is justice a higher calling?
Striving vs. Acceptance: Is it better to fight to change the outer world or accept its flaws and find a deeper peace within?
Materialism vs. Asceticism: Is wealth a real route to happiness or a distraction?
Impartiality/Retribution – Some kind of tough but fair lawgiver deity, maybe a sky father (lightning bolts!) or lord of the underworld
Collectivism/Rehabilitation – A deity of peace, cooperation, and forgiveness, possibly a nurturing mother nature type figure
Individualism/Materialism – God of the forge and of merchants, who promises rewards for those who work hard and get results
Asceticism/Acceptance – A sort of bodhisattva figure for those who believe what really matters is the inner world; right thought before right action
Striving/Loyalty – Friendship, effort, and victory, so… the god of Shonen Jump? Or better yet, a god of war and patriotism
Needs some of the details filling in but not bad for a first try, I think.
Angry, I want thank you very deeply for this article. I can’t sleep tonight because my mind is racing so much trying to apply this to my games. I do have two questions:
First, how could this type of pantheon fit with the overworld/underworld dynamic? Do you conceive of the Gods as something separate from that dualism because they colour the entire setting and campaign or do they take sides organically?
Do you think you could rattle off five more of these conflicts that are as compelling as the ones you listed here or have you picked most of the key ones? I have about fifteen including the ones you wrote down here, but I find many of them are collapsing into one another because they are similar (for example mysticism/knowledge, intuition/logic, tradition/progress, spirituality/technology are all quite parallel). I want to find different axes if possible.
Sorry, ignore the second question. I am just reading the comments and they have some fantastic suggestions, particularly Luke.
You’ve basically detailed the color pie from Magic: the Gathering, my favourite alignment/philosophy conflict array. It’s really versatile for everything and I’m excited to know if you had heard of it before. There are dozens and dozens articles written on this from converting each view point to an entirely new alignment system to the interpretation of personality tests.If anyone is interested I can provide more, but this should be an overview:
https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Color
Notes and references at the bottom has even more articles and that’s just scratching the surface.
The one he talks about repeatedly through the article? Nah, you’re the first to bring it up. Congratulations!
On that note, because it’s the first thing that came to mind while reading the conflicts:
Justice vs. Compassion – White vs Red
Tradition vs. Progress – Green vs Blue
Freedom vs. Safety – Black vs White
Idealism vs. Pragmatism – White vs Black
Determinism vs. Free Will – Blue vs Red
The descriptions of Freedom and Determinism were the hardest to place. Freedom is more of a Red concept but the description much better matches Black’s value for individualism and ambition. Similarly, the description of Determinism didn’t just fall back on the usual ‘accept your place’ which is Green’s mantra, but it emphasized learning from the deterministic rules of the universe and exploiting that knowledge, very Blue.
As a result:
Idealistic Justice: White
Freedom and Progress: Blue/Black
Pragmatic Free Will: Black/Red
Compassionate Tradition: Red/Green
Deterministic Safety: White/Blue
I like this structure, and I’m reminded of a couple of cases I’ve seen where gods come in fives, though by having one group of five Good gods and another of five Evil gods it loses a lot of the effectiveness here. Still, groups of five makes it way easier to remember these lists.
The Critical Hit podcast cribbed from the standard 4e pantheon this set:
Erathis, goddess of civilization
Bahamut, god of war and leadership
Corellon, god of freedom and beauty
Melora, goddess of the wild
The Raven Queen, goddess of death and fate
There’s strands of a pentagram in the Pentatheon, with each god in the list more allied with the ones adjacent. They’re all on the same side and some of those pairings are to fit the mold (Raven Queen/Melora and Bahamut/Corellon) but it makes sense. The enemies are a little less straightforward, Erathis vs Corellon/Melora makes sense as the wild types dislike rigid structure, but Bahamut vs Raven Queen doesn’t make sense in isolation – though it does evoke free will vs determinism as rulers wage war in a possibly-fuite attempt to change the world.
The Dark Five were:
Asmodeus, god of tyrants
Lolth, goddess of dreams (and spiders)
Gruumsh, god of battle and chaos
Tiamat, goddess of greed
Vecna, god of magic and secrets
Gruumsh is the frustrating one here, there’s a bit of a 3v2 dynamic between the sophisticated evil of Asmodeus/Lolth/Vecna and the barbaric evil of Gruumsh/Tiamat, or a 2v2 with Vecna hiding away in a tower.
I started off trying to analyze those lists by looking at allies, but the conflicts are the important part of the story.
Marth, one thing that might be interesting was that if the good gods and the bad gods were actually linked. Paired good and evil faces of the same thing:
Asmodeus and Erathis
Bahamut and Gruumsh
Lolth and Corellon
Vecna and the Raven Queen
the only pair that doesn’t really work is Tiamat and Melora and you’d probably want to rearrange to have Bahamut and Tiamat opposite each other, but I like the idea that the secret underlying everything is that people think the gods adhere to alignment but in reality they are misunderstood and there were only five. It would go a long way to explain why alignment doesn’t make much sense if it were a construct created by mortals to explain the gods.
Taking Angry’s Themes and tweaking a bit for a Dwarven pantheon:
Tradition vs. New Ideas/Progress
Justice vs. Compassion
Community vs. Individualism
Fate vs. Free Will
Action/Valor vs. Caution/Diplomacy
The Forge Father:
– Craftsmanship, metalworking, the Dwarven Way (Traditions, Rituals, Fate)
The Maiden of Battle
– War, mastery of arms, honor in battle (Action, Valor, Free Will)
The Soul Speaker
– Politics, social interaction, poetry, writing and music (Compassion, Caution, Diplomacy)
The Wealthy
– Trade, prosperity, Self-made Dwarves (New Ideas, Progress, Individualism)
The Hearth Mother
– Healing, family, education (Community, Order, Justice)
And a dark god for the evil ones:
The False
– Greed, lies, stealing
I’ve been working on a pantheon for my homebrew setting, and this article was just what I needed to bring together all the ideas I’ve had. The setting is based largely on American history and folklore, and I wanted to play that up in the gods’ themes.
Civilization vs. wilderness
Conservation vs. consumption
Practicality vs. philosophy
Independence vs. community
Secrecy vs. transparency
Orakoan, the Builder: god of civilization
– Cities, craftsmen, invention (Civilization, Community)
Lehn, the Scholar: goddess of knowledge
– Magic, science, discovery (Philosophy, Transparency)
Tiwalia, the Gardener: goddess of nature
– Medicine, agriculture, preparation (Wilderness, Conservation)
Mireptere, the Hunter: god of conflict
– Death, war, perseverance (Independence, Secrecy)
Kachesh the Traveler, the god of comfort
– Arts, revelry, creativity (Consumption, Practicality)
I’ll give it a try but themes sound complicated so i’ll go with whatever opposition I can think of:
salt vs suggar
alcohol vs sodas
king kong vs godzilla
male vs female
cat vs dog
king kong totally goes with male => The hairy bodybuilder
female goes with cat => The sexy catburglar
dog goes with alcohol => The smelly hobbo
sodas goes with suggar => The scottish clown
finally salt goes with godzilla => The rampaging megalodon
And that’s one of the best panthéons ever so thanks Angry!
I love it! 😀
Seriously though, I think it works.
The whole point was that your gods represent your themes, so if you’re playing a silly campaign with silly themes then these gods are perfect! 🙂
I checked the campaign document Angry released for his seafaring campaign, and sure enough there are five gods mentioned:
Pelor, Bahamut, Kord, Melora, Avandra.
Arranged in a circle in that order, I think I can see the allies but I can’t quite identify the conflicts. This is what I’m thinking so far:
Pelor vs Kord: Compassion vs Vengeance
Kord vs Avandra: Independence vs Cooperation
Avandra vs Bahamut: Progress vs Tradition
Bahamut vs Melora: Safety vs Freedom
Melora vs Pelor: Nature vs Civilisation
Doesn’t quite feel right to me, but that’s all I got. Reverse-engineering designer intent is hard. 🙂
While not necessary for running a game, another set of themes that allied pairs of gods share could be defined for completion’s sake. If for some reason you wanted to define the non-antagonistic relationships between gods beyond “enemy-of-my-enemy”. Simply choose a theme or value that each pair of adjacent gods share. This would form a pentagon around the star.
I really love how this pantheon allows for religious characters whose alignment is unknown. The last session I GMed, the players knew the paladin would want to help them kill the necromancer. But this necromancer was raising the dead to protect the people he loved. I just made a test pantheon, and I think both the necromancer and the paladin would follow a ‘progress and ends-justify-means’ god, whereas the players would follow more of a ‘order and logic’ god. I really don’t know what the paladin would do, and the players shouldn’t be so sure either. And I think that’s great.
Chewing on this process, I realized you could use it or a modified version of it to create the internal conflicts of a five-man band. The possible modification would be deciding which members of the team are in conflict with the other members first and then picking conflicts according to some of their typical tropes. For example with my picks:
leader vs lancer (consistency vs adaptability)
lancer vs smart guy (action vs planning)
smart guy vs chick (reason vs emotion)
chick vs big guy (femininity vs masculinity)
big guy vs leader (playfulness vs seriousness)
Or five power centers in the home base city of your campaign. Or the five schools of magic. Or five powerful guilds. Or the five major races in your world. Or the five planes of existence. Or five galactic empires. Or…
I actually did something quite similar after reading the article. I did not want to redesing my pantheon of gods since I’ve been using them for years and my players know them all even though there are 16 of various power level.
I figured that the system could be used to design about any conflictual relation between 5 things. So I created 5 factions within the pantheon were 2 to 6 Gods join force on common interests.
My point is that it seems that this pantagram system can act has a fix for a ”traditionnal pantheon” that needs more conflicts beyond good vs evil. I’m eager to use the new factions in my next campaign … but that is still a few month from now…
Maybe I just haven`t got your point, Angry. But the dilemma I have is two themes I want to have in my games, that contradict each other: Evolution – Invention pair and Stability – Change. The difference is that both evolution and invention are nuances of Change, so they always ought to oppose each other and idea Stability. Or maybe that just “needlessly complicated” (c).
I’m not sure if that is actually a dilemma – it might work out really well. If the pantheon is the five-sided star, Change sits North. On the left is Evolution and on the right Invention. That puts the two at odds with each other but also puts them ‘allied’ with Change. The only real trick is to figure out which is closer to stability – my guess is invention as it is an intentional/guided (and perhaps stable) process, whereas evolution is chaotic and unpredictable.
Great Idea, thank you.
Though, when I really tested it, that made some some alliances stronger then others, (that`s fine, it is just bothering me), so I just merged the themes alltogether, so pair of themes is Evolution – Instant Chages
The other ones were:
Retribution – Mercy,
Endings – Beginings,
Choice – Fate,
Individualism – Community.
So, The Five Gods are:
Response, godess of retribution and choice – “The choice is yours, so is the reckoning”.
Harvester, god evolution and pragmatism – “Your childerns` lifes are in your hand and mind”.
Mother, godess of community and mercy – “Abandon noone, so everyone succeeds”
Destiny, god of fate and idealism – “goodness is inescapable, but you can bring it closer”
Trickster, god(ess) of individualism and instant changes – “Moment later, the universe is not the same, so why should you?”
So the two themes, that represent a deity are not always close, but their conjonction makes the gods more diverse. A judge and a crimelord both can pray Response, a necromancer and a craftsman both can pray Harvester, etc.
I am so here for the Carmen Sandiego references…
Loving this! Here’s a quick five from a campaign setting I’m Building:
Asceticism v Materialism
Individualism v Collectivism
Liberty v Equality
Competition v Cooperation
Dynamic v Static
I was sure to keep themes on the left as heterodox and liberating, and those on the right as orthodox and moral.
God of Æther: Asceticism/Static
God of Earth: Materialism/Collectivism
God of Air: Individualism/Liberty
God of Water: Equality/Cooperation
God of Fire: Competition/Dynamic
I obviously based these off of the 5 classical elements of history/mythology.
Now, I seek to add seven more Gods to make a nice pantheon of 12. I understand that more gods equal more work, but many cultures have a vast amount of gods, and I at least want twelve, to mirror the Dodekatheon.
Cool system. But it is meant to be a polytheistic religion where all people believe in all of them, or different conflicting religions?
I have a lot of thoughts on this:
It could probably be either – though I would arrange by scale of adventure. The Greek Gods are a good comparison for that one-upsmanship style squabbling gods versus the clash of religions in other real-world scenarios. Classic polytheism (or literature involving it) generally had people worship the god that they more identified with (or whose domain they were in) while other gods were sought out for their specific domain. (My mind is going more towards Hinduism as the best example of this).
“Believes in” heavily implies a Judaeo-Christian worldview perspective (ie.. to have faith in as a feature of belief) whereas the D&D gods seem more thing that people don’t disbelieve, that is to say, there are not atheists, but there are those that reject certain gods or all of them, but the majority of people appease the gods or try to avoid the scrutiny. A very few mediate with the gods as priests, and some are devout, but these become questions of culture and setting (is religion something cultural but not sincere?).
Religious wars make for an interesting setting, but they would not generally be about which god is true / real, but rather which god is better, and does our god want us to kill that gods’ followers?
In Western polytheism, you don’t generally “follow” a particular god so much as you make your offering to whichever one handles the particular type of blessing you seek. So, to use a Greek example, you wouldn’t be a follower of Demeter, Hera, or Ares; you would pay to Demeter for your crops, Hera for safe childbirth, and Ares for success in battle.
I would love to see this fleshed out. I have never had an original idea in my life, but I am great at improving or combining other peoples stuff. Thank you for doing what you do. Hope this ends up in the RPG your not writing
This is super interesting! I never would have considered using the magic color wheel as inspiration for arranging a pantheon. I would definitely love to see you expand on these gods in a future article.
Lois McMaster Bujold’s books The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls have five gods, known as Father, Mother, Brother, Sister and Bastard. They are linked to the fingers of the hand, with the Bastard assigned to the thumb. There is a great symbolism in the Bastard, like the thumb, is opposed to the other four. The second book explores the idea that while it is true that the thumb is opposed to the fingers, that opposition is actually required for the hand to work.
I really liked the article and I have a non-setting which I wish to expand. The problem is I had introduced one god and one saint already which would be two of the five points of the star already, and also the campaign already had several themes woven into it. So, the first big challenge was trying to find the themes I already had inserted less than consciously. The second one was to keep playing with the five-pointed star until I felt it was a good match to the setting we had been exploring for months.
The setting itself is a frontier that got ruined fifty years ago, first by a decades-long war with an expansive neighbor kingdom, then an orc invasion ravaged most of the lands, and ironically also ended the invasion and brought strife to the neighbor’s lands. Settlers are now trying to find some new homes here in spite of the dangers, and in the far north the players have uncovered an ancient ruin whose exploitation will trigger a gold rush.
This selection of themes seemed to fit during exploring the existing setting:
* chaos vs order (also wilderness vs civilization)
* community vs individual
* pragmatism vs idealism
* expansion vs contentment
* us vs the other (as in “being similar or the same” vs “being (vastly) different”)
* mystery vs the knowable/knowing
I folded “us vs the other” into the “community vs individual” because when I used it in the star it showed too much duplication for my liking. The two existing religious entities became anchor points – St Cedric the Heretic, a sort of apocalyptic doomsayer and Pall Tallon, the god of life and death (who opposes undead which there are plenty here).
(had to split post)
(Continued)
After rewriting the star several time, shifting axis a few times, I came up with this:
INDIVIDUALISM and MYSTERY – St Cedric the Heretic (who spoke of unknown forces and the need to seek repentance)
EXPANSION and IDEALISM – The Light Bringer (shining light into every corner)
ORDER and THE KNOWABLE – The Twin Gods of Cycles (Pall Tallon becomes the god of the proper cycle of life, death, and rebirth – the human cycle – as opposed to the disruption of undeath, Silene is the goddess of the celestial cycles – the heavenly cycle – the movement of stars, night and day, and seasons)
COMMUNITY and CONTENTMENT – The Hearth Mothers, a group of deities with different names in different places (also symbolizing the idea of “staying home” and thus suspect of those setting out, usually revered in household shrines)
CHAOS and PRAGMATISM – The Lord of Rivers (as several rivers dominate and fragment the setting map and their unpredictable nature drives the lives of farmers, requiring acceptance of the natural forces, basically a god which druids might want to associate with and that could be “the old religion” in this area as it is also full of druidic and witch sites)
I think the whole thing helped me sharpen the idea where conflicts might arise in the setting and where for example animosity might arise in tightly knit communities against those that arrive or those that leave, both important themes of their own (the breaking of communities, the growing of communities, and the search for one’s own place).
The star is a good tool for shifting around stuff until you find a fit for what you had in mind. Thank you for that, Angry. 🙂
Please, please, PLEASE do an article about the death of fantasy. As someone who’s noticed the magic and awe being drained from the fantasy genre, both in literature and in games, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject.
Is there a fantasy rpg that uses a monotheistic world view?
After reading Charlemagne’s tales in Bulfinch’s Myrhology. I set my D&D game in a similar mythology. There was one god, a demiurge, and the angels, demons, fey, primordials, and shadowfell things were former gods, now supressed by the demiurge. Those could easily represent five themes.
My problem is that every other session some race or class feature or, most often, a spell would undermine my pages of world building. I should have banned everything and done opt in. But what would really solve the problem is using your genius idea in your own genius angry rpg.
So when is it coming out? Help me Angry. You are my only hope.
Now that I’ve thought about this more. It wouldn’t work with a monotheistic god above the god-theme pentagram. He would have to be in the pentagram with his own themes. Does that mean the world is thematically out balance if the other four points are no longer considered gods? Good article. Thanks Angry!
I would LOVE to see you go through the fluff work of building this out into an actual pantheon.
This article came at a great time for me while prepping my setting, however I struggled to make it work perfectly. The first challenge was not too hard. My setting was derived from my feeling that non-human races were portrayed or played frequently just like humans with some different traits. I think that the races should be much more varied in what they think is important in life. This led me to create a setting where the main conflict is between the races of the world because of their outlooks. I called it ‘A Clash of Cultures’ where each race represented a distinct culture. As Angry noted in his comment above, the concept outlined in this article can work well for many things beyond religions. Thus I tried to apply this to the major cultures (races) in my setting. Assuming the PCs come from different races or interact with them through adventures, then the conflicts between the cultures can come into play.
My second challenge has been more difficult to overcome. Initially I designed the setting with four major cultures derived from the mythology of the world. In drafting the mythology of the setting I started with a creator god who first brought to life for groups of powerful immortals (titans, sidhe, great worms, and chthons) who could not reproduce. After teaching them the creator departed the world, but promised the immortals that more races would be born whom they could raise as their ‘children’. The first four new races each were chosen by one group of immortals and were the giants (titans), elves (sidhe), dragons (great wyrm), and demondim (chthon). After a war the immortals also departed the terrestrial realm leaving the Firstborn races to establish the dominant cultures of the world. These cultures were partly shaped by the religious beliefs of each race, primarily about what happened at the end of the world, what the creator good expected of his children, and what comprised faithful behavior. Subsequently eight more races appeared, including humans, though these are less powerful. PCs are likely to come from one of these races as only giants and elves are playable races out of the Firstborn.
In this set-up I tried to create the conflicts that Angry argues so well about including in a campaign. While the classic good vs. evil conflict seemed simplistic I didn’t won’t to exclude it entirely. The demondim are considered evil by almost all the other races due to their beliefs and attempts to conquer the world.
(continued)
However with four major races the conflicts diagram was also simpler. While the giants, elves, and dragons (partially) had allied to defeat the demondim once their alliance was of necessity, not common interest. For example, the giants represent law and order while dragons were all chaotic and extremely individualistic. Elves were matriarchal and believed in the growth of life and were opposed in many ways by the demondim who wanted to enslave or destroy all the other races. There were subtler conflicts in place though that could flare up, such as the giants building into the land of the elves (constructed vs. natural). However I didn’t have a ready construct to keep in mind that would lead me to how these conflicts might develop.
To use this framework I needed to add a fifth culture to the mix. Humans were developing a strong culture of their own and had their own religion so they seemed like the best one to add. Here’s what I ended up with as a first draft:
Nature vs. Construction
Self-growth vs. Survival of the fittest
Defiance vs. Acceptance
Law and Community vs. Individualism
Tradition vs. Discovery
The result of matching these and applying them to the races/cultures was:
* NATURE and SELF-GROWTH (Elves) – A race focused on an individual’s self improvement through the cycle of life, death, and reincarnation making all life forms equally important and valuable as each person strives to each union with god.
* LAW & COMMUNITY and TRADITION (Giants) – A culture ordered by its organizations, laws, and traditions where each person knows his role and place, the strong protect the weak, and together they can make the world a better place until the creator god returns.
* SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST and DEFIANCE (Demondim) – A race that believes that the struggle against the world and current conditions makes the victor stronger, which is the only important thing since the creator god isn’t returning.
* CONSTRUCTION and DISCOVERY (Humans) – Being of the Secondborn races, humans value the quest to catch up to the Firstborn races and build a culture accepted on equal standing, a shorter term view not looking to the end of the world.
* INDIVIDUALISM and ACCEPTANCE (Dragons) – A race of individuals, not really a culture, that believe each individual must stand on their own and accept what fate has to offer, with the belief that the end of the world brings nothing.
At first reading it sounde cool…
But the more I was thinking about it, the more I found majority of conflicts are duplicit.
JUSTICE vs COMPASSION is cool, it is unique.
But
FREE WILL vs FATE
CHAOS vs ORDER
FREEDOM vs LAW
INDIVIDUAL vs GROUP
CHANGE vs STABILITY
REVOLUTION vs TRADITION
NATURE vs CIVILISATION
sure, it is not same, but it is close enough and especially as aspects all is equivalent. You can even exchange things in first column to different in second and it will make sence.
The other group where I see heavy similarity is
KNOWLEDGE vs FAITH
REASON vs EMOTION
PRAGMATISM vs IDEAL
I have really have hard time to find different conflicts which are not very similar to one of above and at the same time I know how to play it in game.