[Doomdreamer]

Inspired by the Good/Evil discussion, I think I will bring up another wonderful topic, Dieties and your campaign.

Should Deities play Grecko-Roman religion and sometimes come down for dinner, picking who they like and basically using super cool powers to facillitate disaster or solve problems?

Should they be like Native American Religions where dietys are more akin to a power and use visions and dreams to pass their ideas along, where evil finds beasts to champion there causes but basically leaveing the people to use their own skills to solve things?

Should they be more akin to a Haitian/Voodoo stand point where powers often use subtle hints to trick you into following them and when invoking their power, posses you and take your actions, while being possesed earns you all rights and status pertaining to their lwa(god-spirit-thing).

Should it be more of a Norse description, where the Gods have their own problems/flaws/frailty and are apart from the people, but when people show they're worth, they descend to give gifts and elevate them to the halls of Valour?

There are many approaches, just give your opinion.

[ladyofdragons]

I go along with the whole Norse/Celtic view, where the gods are beings as well, and have their own frailties and issues. This allows me to have another level of campaign history and interaction that does impact the campaign world, but may not impact the campaign itself. As a matter of fact, a great part of my campaign world history was shaped by the acts of an insane god.

As for godly interaction with lesser beings, I take a page from Ed Greenwood and Forgotten Realms. While the gods aren't generally walking down the street on a sunday morning, they do make appearances and communicate with worthy followers, be it directly or indirectly.

[Hob]

I on the other hand prefer to use the whole bloody spectrum. Let those areas inspired by a culture have there traditional interection level with the gods. In my games there are no generic western cultures. Every where the characters end up has a unique feel. An important part of that feel is the interaction between the devine and the mortal.

Right now I am running a very tribal shamanic game. It doesn't have any gods as are typical thought of in a fantasy setting but each character has a mythical animal totem that regularly communicates through signs, portents, and vissions.

The next culture over is a race of giants. There gods hardly speak to them at all excetp to tell them occasionally to do something to further there plots against one another.

The orcish dieties in my comapain are constantly contacting there followers (much to there detriment) seeing them as peices on a game board.

And the Fairy gods actually live amounge them and travel the world in troup.

I think a multi cultural fantasy game has a hell of alot of room for many deific expressions.

I also use the optional rule that a cleric or druid may get there spells from a force such as Nature or Earth or Rightiousness bypassing the dieties all together. But the don't take that well.

Well that is my two coppers.

[Rintaran]

Although the gods in my campaign setting do have the ability to interact on a personal level with the people of the realm, this has long been forbidden. The reason spawns from the results from too much meddling by them in the early ages of the world. Of course, this doesn't mean that they don't occasionally pop in physically and cause a little bit of havok, only that it's very rare.

The gods tend to communicate with their followers through visions, dreams, and divinatory practices not unlike tea leaves, tarot cards, runes, mirror gazing, etc. For the most part, these brief and often difficult to properly interpret messages are the only sign of their existence on the world apart from the rare Cleric.

[Post Sleeper]

I just tend to leave gods out of the picture. I have them there for the sake of the Cleric, but mostly, they are rarely seen.

[Hob]

can D&D be pulled off well with out gods at all. Tolkien the pappa of modern fantasy could be said to have had a setting with out them but then again look at Sauron and say he wasn't close enough to an evil god to count. Look at how simply evoking Galadrial's name brought solace to Frodo.

I have my own point of view but would love to hear others.

[Darius]

I usually run my gods like Lankmar God's , You leave them and their worshipers alone they will leave you alone but if you piss them off(steal from temples , kill their followers and priesthood ,accidentaly thwart plans etc) life becomes miserable.They usually wont kill you(Unless their really annoyed , in which case you want to live in a house with 200 metre tall lightning rods and earthing wire the width of a Dwarves shoulders because they will be doing their level best to make you Nosially and messially dead as an object lesson ) , Most of the time your luck will change or you will have more nasty encounters until you make ammends.
The god usually dont care about people and are more interested in screwing each other over and games of oneupmanship.

D

[Doomdreamer]

I wanted some opinions because I have been of two minds lately when dealing with Divine Power.

On one hand, Gods are these neat super beings (like Galactus, but their heralds usualy don't betray them...usualy) who can rock out with kewl abilities and allow these epic stories to unfold and allow the players a calvary when Nerull for Example try to send untold amounts of Daemons to eat their friends. Gods allow the characters to aspire for more and have the knowledge that there is a higher purpose (sometimes) to work for.

On the other hand, I had this crazy Idea to take monsters no one generally uses (CR to high to silly) and make them unique and call them gods. Like if you had a pheonix in your game, it could be the rightious god of healing and fire, and then you have a ready HS and dogma. Or the Hellfire wyrm can be a very neat God of evil. Also, if your PCs truly hate a specific diety, such as the Hellfire Wyrm, they can just go find it and peel it open for XP. They would still have the NPC clerics and such to wade through, but you could base a campaign around the slaying of this "diety" and the PCs would have made a dramatic change to Campaign setting.

Just a couple thoughts of mine. I thought they maybe interesting.

[Axel]

I'm in the "leave 'em out" camp. I typically leave out the gods, actually I designed entire campaigns ignoring any divine interaction at all. I figure that the gods aren't terribly interested in the affairs of mortals, except perhaps to irritate each other.

This should help:
http://www.rpgmud.co...opoets/tmm.html

[Chios90]

i think that gods are not so much as a neccesity in dnd but more of a role playing concept. its fun think that there is more to the game then becoming powerful, you might want to dig deeper into the word powerful. perhaps being a uber-powerful mage doesn't work for you, perhaps being a near invincible warrior is to weak. godome and divine interaction is fun, but not essential. just like any other fantasy storyline, i think, there is always a needed divine interaction or storyline.

forgotten realms has gods, and story wise there was nothing more important.

dragonlance has gods, once again, the battles are always fought for gods and by gods. takhissis is always fighting paladine for dominion over Krynn.

lord of the rings was run by gods, but far more subtly. the silmarillion showed that the valar (good gods) were created by illuvatar (great god, you know, up there with Ao, and the dude in dragonlance) and melkor, the greatest of the valar, (evil god) fell from power because of his greed and avarice for ultimate strength, which led melkor to ammass massive armies with his liutenant, suaron (evil demigod?), who was as well was once good.
i know that this isnt mentioned in lord of the rings, but it is the background of middle earth, so, why not. i love lord of the rings (i had to talk about it somewhere/thanx hob for giving me this chance)

im the magnificint example of a bookworm

i think that gods in dnd are a good story and roleplaying thing, but, considering dnd isnt an epic story altogether but a game. its a play mechanic, for dm' to wield at their will. so in short, i guess dnd could live without deities, and consider clerics just drawing energy from a diferent source.

incredibly sorry for the ridiculous rant.

[corellon]

since i am a big fan of tuetonic mythology(norse) i go with that view...
in my campaigns they usually do have flaws, like boccob might be over excited about magic and extremely absent minded....

[WoeTheSinner]

I lean the way of the dragonlance gods...in my campaign there is a goddess that has been trying to 'pacify' the planes for milenia and that ofcourse affects the rest of the gods and world, but mostly the gods try to do grand things and wont bother with people unless they prove to be extremely capable (i.e. lvl 15 or more) then they might ask you do do a task for them.

I do like the idea of making unique creatures a sort of 'demi god thing' like having a continent (big island maby) of kobolts and lizardfolk and such that all worship an ancied wyrm or a hellfire wyrm or some such thing. Or maby having a cult that worships the terasque and is waiting for it to wake up and devower them so they can get on the mothership or something ...then you can have the heroes lock horns with a 'god' and destroy a peoples way of life ..wait erm...yeah

[Shadowborn]

The book Spells and Spellcraft has rules for "small gods," which are essentially beings that gain a sort of divinity through worship. They have disciples rather than clerics, which are pretty much the same except that they don't have access to domains, but can receive more direct intervention from their god. You just pick a creature, and it's CR determines the number of disciples it can have, the highest level a disciple can attain, and how far its area of influence reaches (i.e. how far away a disciple can be and still prepare spells/receive intervention.)

It's a perfect way for a group of adventurers to destroy a "god" and its followers without unduly upsetting the pantheon or local theology overmuch.

I tend to usually use elementals and outsiders as small gods, but I've also thrown in the occasional creature of legend as well.

[Cymraegmorgan]

Deities in my campaigns interact on every level. Having divine beings be a "real" part of the action heightens the experience.

[Blake Storm]

I tend to have the churches of each deity involved in certain activities with and against certain creatures and groups. If you want their assistance then you must assist them. If you are working towards their goals (unknowingly) then the deity or church may aid/reward you in some way.

For example the church of war trains people in combat skills but work against demons for a discount/free if there's a demon invasion. You don't have to get involved with their crusade (but hey if there's a demon invasion some allies would be handy).

It seems a shame to neglect gods and churches in realities where there is no doubt of their existance and influence.

For any character, daily or even weekly prayers are a small price to pay for discount board and healing from a church, not to mention the trading of information a large organisation can bring.

As for how they interact with mortals, well at first I use dreams, messages and coincidences in the targets lives. Then minions and aid in some way, then as the stakes increase more powerful assistance. But VERY rarely direct intervension, the PCs should be the heroes, not bag carriers for NPCs (gods or otherwise).