I find that monotheism, and the one-true-way-ism, that goes with it makes for all kinds of interesting moral dilemmas and conflicts.  It also gives me the opportunity to work on crafting differences in religious practice and belief rather than just having different flavors of gods.

I also like the standard S&S idea of dying pantheons in conflict with monotheism, and demons/otherworldly beings impersonating gods and inspiring insane cults.

Whether gods are active or mysterious and unknowable depends on the setting.

What I don't much like is the vanilla fantasy pantheons found in many generic settings like the FR where there is a god of good/evil/war/the sea/halflings etc. and there is no room for grey areas, ambiguity or much interaction.   In Greyhawk for example, the tampering of demigods like Iuz, Zugtomoy, and Vecna are a lot more interesting than spheres of Boccob, Obad-Hai, Rao and their ilk.

Quote from: Madprofessor;927551What I don't much like is the vanilla fantasy pantheons found in many generic settings like the FR where there is a god of good/evil/war/the sea/halflings etc. and there is no room for grey areas, ambiguity or much interaction.   In Greyhawk for example, the tampering of demigods like Iuz, Zugtomoy, and Vecna are a lot more interesting than spheres of Boccob, Obad-Hai, Rao and their ilk.

Yeah, exactly, and those demi-gods are interesting because they are Involved.  The BBEG is a priest of whoever, cut out the middleman!

Quote from: ThatChrisGuy;927442That has always driven me crazy.  I like lots of bits of Glorantha but the "everyone is right" bit has always stuck in my craw.  Give me a little damn objectivity, please.

Hence my dislike of Amber as a setting (ignoring the mother-may-I thing), all the novels deal with the 'unreliable' narrator, but which the game's creator assumed was objective fact.

Game settings need something solid for everyone playing to anchor on and keep consistent.

Quote from: CRKrueger;927553Yeah, exactly, and those demi-gods are interesting because they are Involved.  The BBEG is a priest of whoever, cut out the middleman!

Your exchange makes me want to run a Godbound game in motherfucking Greyhawk.

For Fantasy campaigns, I prefer to have a handful of deities in each pantheon. I see most pantheons as being linked families of deities with a few primal deities and their descendants, at least that's how it works in Greek/Roman/Irish mythology. However, I don't mind having many minor deities who are associated with the pantheons or are servants of the main deities. Many clans would have a patron deity, most professions would have a deity they call on and so on. Some might be cultural, some might be historical, so one military unit might worship Ares and another Athena.

Quote from: ThatChrisGuy;927442That has always driven me crazy.  I like lots of bits of Glorantha but the "everyone is right" bit has always stuck in my craw.  Give me a little damn objectivity, please.

That's what the God Learner Monomyth is for. It has always been one of the best things about Glorantha for me.

Regarding the "Everyone is right" principle, I see this as people's interpretation of the GodTime events that happened. So, Yelmites see the Sun disappeared as yelm went to the Underworld, Orlanthi see their god killing the Sun God, the Trolls see the Sun invading Hell and attacking the darkness deities. All are right but they see the same events in different ways.

Quote from: Bren;927479Or maybe they aren't even limited omniscient and they don't know how you feel, only what they see you do or hear you say. And maybe they don't even see and hear everything, just the stuff that they pay attention to or that their attention is attracted to, like say by someone calling their name, singing their praises, offering a sacrifice, etc.

I like this explanation. It is a good way to answer the problem of evil if you still want good gods that are active.

Quote from: Madprofessor;927551I find that monotheism, and the one-true-way-ism, that goes with it makes for all kinds of interesting moral dilemmas and conflicts.  It also gives me the opportunity to work on crafting differences in religious practice and belief rather than just having different flavors of gods.

I also like the standard S&S idea of dying pantheons in conflict with monotheism, and demons/otherworldly beings impersonating gods and inspiring insane cults.

This is one of the reasons why the main religion in my current setting is a medieval Christianity surrogate, the Church of Urizen, in conflict with worshipers of Ahania (Islam surrogate) and various druids, worshiping either Urthona or Red Orc. There may be many other religions, but these are all isolated weirdo cults, heresies of the main religions, or the like. Players are free to worship any god they want, but unless they choose to spread the word of their god, they're the god's only follower. And given the aggressive monotheism of the Church of Urizen, that could lead to many adventures...

Quote from: CRKrueger;927553Yeah, exactly, and those demi-gods are interesting because they are Involved.  The BBEG is a priest of whoever, cut out the middleman!

I also love it when the PCs become big advocates for some small time religion and start pushing it.  I cannot tell you how often this seems to happen to me.  Some little shrine in the back of a poor area of a town, and the next thing I know, the PCs start pouring cash and influence into it.

I don't have a specific number that I feel is right, but there should be no more than the setting can make actually interesting. I never bought a Forgotten Realms book until the third edition. My initial period of playing D&D was back when it was just something that popped in the pages of dragon, and I really never got into Ed Greenwood's writing style.

The gods in that 3E book were mostly just a big table of names, alignments and portfolios. It was so incredibly dull.

If you don't have room to give a little of the mythology surrounding a god, some detail on how the god is worshiped, and some information on the political state of that cult in the world, then don't bother. I throw together my own poorly defined, one-line gods that simply exist to act as spell refreshers for clerics.

Quote from: The Butcher;927673Your exchange makes me want to run a Godbound game in motherfucking Greyhawk.

If you go back and look at those old Dragon articles on the Gods of Greyhawk, you'll see they mention Avatars walking the earth (like Nerull, yikes). You got Heironeous vs. Hextor, the Family Drama that is Grazz't-Iggwilv-Iuz. you'd have the Circle of Eight throwing a monkey in the wrench, not to mention the potential all-out Godwar that could occur over the threat of releasing Tharizdun.  Gods in Greyhawk are fun.

Quote from: LordVreeg;927773I also love it when the PCs become big advocates for some small time religion and start pushing it.  I cannot tell you how often this seems to happen to me.  Some little shrine in the back of a poor area of a town, and the next thing I know, the PCs start pouring cash and influence into it.

Yeah that can happen especially if as lowbies they see said shrine as THE place where the heals are. I think that as adventurers, getting a small religion to see you as an ally has all sorts of advantages, first and foremost the previously mentioned healing. And well, they gotta make sure the religion is big enough so at least one of their allies is high enough level to cast Resurrection.

If I run a game in a canon world like Oerth or Toril then I used the canon deities and don't deviate all that much. I've read lots of FR novels up until around 10 years ago, so I understand how those Gods interact. Greyhawk doesn't have a lot of novels that touch on the subject, but I can wreak havoc with Eclavdra so I'm good. I acknowledge that Immortals live on Mystara, but haven't used them yet.

The thing is though, my games tend to all be in the same Multiverse. In my old campaign which I still play from time to time (as well as it's 5e successor, directly related to the lore of the former but new Universe) we have had Gods galore. All the pantheons are there. Particularly along the Law/Chaos axis as we used a LOT of Moorcock material (including weird stuff like the Second Ether Trilogy, Jerry Cornelius, Ulrich von Bek and the whole End of Time thing. Somewhere along the line Zelazny's Amber got mixed in which was before the Diceless game came out but very much enhanced by that book.

Really though in practice you end up only dealing with a couple of Gods at a time at best, well aside from the big war we had with the Worm God, who were Chthonic entities that could eat entire solar systems. RIP Krynn. A lot of the Gods we did use was based on the characters. When I run games, it's the same thing. If the player is interested in playing a game like that, then I give it to them. If they want deep plots with lots of intrigue while working as agents for the Temple of Set, then that's what they get, and if they want to Smite things, I'm okay with that too.

Mind you, in the games I run and play eventually there may be opportunity to slay a God, or become one. Or both. In my old campaign, the aforementioned Eclavdra managed to kill Lolth (with help from the PCs) and take her place, establishing a religion which was more moderate and less insane than Lolth's rule. Sure, they still kept slaves and still did horrible things, but they learned not to attack places with high level Player Characters without good reason.

Religion can make for some decent world building especially if you let the PCs do the leg work. Going back to the quoted comment, having player characters support a smaller religion can be great. The thing is, they can become big deals in that religion and the likelihood of some form of divine interaction or intervention increases. Gods have certain rules, written or unwritten, which dictates how much they can mess with mortals. I think this is enforced by mob rule, where if you meddle too much in Mortal affairs, you're going to get smacked down. Which means that Gods need to use agents, like the PCs, in order to further their goals. At lower levels they will be interacting with Priests and Priestesses, but eventually they may get powerful enough to get attention from the Deity themself. It depends on the Entity. Whimsical ones may find sneaky ways of meddling or poking their noses into mortal business.

Of course if characters get into this, it becomes work for the DM but it can be fun work. As many D&D Deities are based on Earth mythology, reading up on those mythologies can be interesting. I've used Egyptian, Greek, Finnish, Celtic, Sumerian (as well as Canaanite and Phoenician and a few others), Mayan, Hindu and probably others. Reading up on Loviatar led me to reading the Kalevala for instance. The Enki/Enlil (I kinda treat Enlil similarly to the Gnostic Christian Demiurge) rivalry has come up a few times, because I really liked the Enuma Elish and Gilgamesh.

So I guess the answer to how many Gods is as many as is needed which is determined by what interests the players. Now of course that's not entirely true. I like to use groups like the Zhentarim, the Red Mages of Thay, The Scarlet Brotherhood and others as antagonists. Actually I like using just about anything as an antagonist usually determined by the region. If it's Homebrew I have my own stock of NPCs which include divine beings that get refluffed and reused.

Maybe part of the appeal is that in RPGs, the DM/GM is pretty much God themselves. Using religion gives agency to the DM when messing around with metaphysical themes. Missions with morals can be a fun thing sometimes. Especially if I am running Planescape, where alignment and outlook and therefore morality can actually shape the structure of the Multiverse. Or it could be something on a smaller scale, like a murderhobo learning compassion (this often means not immediately attacking everything that moves. >.< ) or a thief reclaiming a relic for their temple.

Quote from: RPGPundit;926561Would you want to have a typical neat & organized pantheon of 10 or 20 gods and goddesses with well-defined portfolios?

Would you rather have hundreds (maybe more) gods all mixed up in a big jumble?

Or would you rather play in a setting with monotheism, maybe?

I don't play exclusively one setting, so I have no preference. Just whatever fits the particular gameworld.

Quote from: ThatChrisGuy;927442That has always driven me crazy.  I like lots of bits of Glorantha but the "everyone is right" bit has always stuck in my craw.  Give me a little damn objectivity, please.

No:D!

Quote from: soltakss;927677That's what the God Learner Monomyth is for. It has always been one of the best things about Glorantha for me.

Regarding the "Everyone is right" principle, I see this as people's interpretation of the GodTime events that happened. So, Yelmites see the Sun disappeared as yelm went to the Underworld, Orlanthi see their god killing the Sun God, the Trolls see the Sun invading Hell and attacking the darkness deities. All are right but they see the sameе events in different ways.

I like thatlevel of objectivity just fine;). Besides, it's always fun to threat the events determinin the current condition of the world as a crimescene to be reconstructe!

Well for my self I like to use a lot of gods, from big to small. Take the setting I,m working on, gods range from really big ones that rarely step in personally, to little ones that do a lot them selves. though the little ones are considerably weaker. In some cases they might only be known in a single village or county.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;927230snip



But if I'm running something a little more unified, then like Guild Wars (the first MMO) I'd have maybe five, with their own defined portfolios.
snip

The fuck are you smoking? Guild wars is in no way the first MMO. Asheron's Call and its sequel , Ultima Online, Runescape and Meridian 59 all predate Guild Wars. Even World of Warcraft.
Meridian 59(1995)
http://www.meridian59.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_59

Ultima Online(1997)
http://uo.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Online

Asheron's Call(1999)
https://www.asheronscall.com/en
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asheron%27s_Call

Phantasy Star Online(2000)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantasy_Star_Online

Runescape(2001)
http://www.runescape.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuneScape

Final Fantasy 11(2002)

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/index.shtml
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XI

Asheron's Call 2(2002)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asheron%27s_Call_2:_Fallen_Kings

World of Warcraft(2004)
https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Warcraft

Guild Wars(2005)
https://www.guildwars.com/en/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild_Wars