Religion

[Daos]

Okay, here are some thoughts on deities. Nothing concrete yet. I was thinking of five major powers. I'm sticking to gender neutral pronouns for the moment.

The Nurturer
This deity has the philosophy that all life is precious, and views mortals as children who need to be protected and cared for. It propagates the idea that people should help each other out. It emphasizes peace over war, life over death, kindness and mercy over greed and malice. Its primary agenda is to create a peaceful utopia all over the world, where everyone lives in harmony without sickness or violence.

The Harbinger
This deity has the philosophy that mortals belong to the gods and were created solely to serve them. It believes that it, especially, is the most important and powerful god and that all mortals should eschew the others to serve it. Non-believers should be converted or killed, because real peace and prosperity can only be obtained in unity under the Harbinger. Sinners are not forgiven, but punished. Its primary agenda is to dominate the entire world.

The Arbiter
This deity has the philosophy that the universe is chaotic, and it is up to the gods to impose order upon it. It believes that mortals need structure to survive, which includes laws, societies, cities, and nations. Whether it's a benevolent democracy or a iron-fisted tyranny doesn't matter. All that matters is mortal-kind moves forward and advances, as opposed to living in the wild like savages. Its primary agenda is to advance mortals to the point where the gods are no longer needed, and they can handle things themselves.

The Crusader
This deity believes very strongly in entropy and change. Life without death creates stagnation, as does creation without destruction. It also propagates the belief that the most important things are freedom and choice. Mortals have free will and must be allowed to make their own decisions if they are to ever grow and learn. Power should never be concentrated in one area or belong to one person (or group of people), because this leads to corruption. This deity's agenda is to shake things up and keep things from getting stagnant.

The Keeper
This deity cares very little about mortals. Rather, it is more focused on preserving and protecting nature. This includes the animals, plants, land, seas, and air. The Keeper will work together with mortals or other gods if it serves its agenda, but overall doesn't really concern itself with them. Those mortals that do worship and commune with the Keeper try and live in harmony with nature and not disrupt it in anyway.

[Airellian]

I like it. The latter three deities sound very Neutral. I think that will be a strong point of the setting, as the setting won't have to revolve around an epic battle between good and evil.

[Daos]

Yes, that was something I wanted to avoid. Not to say good and evil don't play important roles, but I didn't want everything to basically boil down to clear cut 'good guys' versus 'bad guys.'

Another thing I like about this pantheon is that there's more flexibility in what your characters can worship. In most settings, your beliefs are dictated more by your occupation and race than anything else. You're an elf? You worship the gods of elves then. You're a mage? You worship the god of magic. With this new system, it's based more on your character's beliefs. Do you believe that helping people is good or that it makes them weak? Do you believe that people need stability to learn and grow, or constant change so they can learn to adapt?

Also, like with Cradle, it's possible for multiple sects to exist for each deity. Not everyone has to worship the same god the same way. For instance, there are those followers of the Harbinger that are violent warmongers who insist on attacking and killing all non-believers. But there could also be a very pacifist sect that encourages its members to breed as much as possible to create new members, or to try and get their members into key positions in government so they can mandate their beliefs. Or maybe a sect that relies heavily on brainwashing or even magical charming to spread its message. And so forth.

[Airellian]

I also like the titles. I think we should keep these. We could also have multiple names for each deity, depending on the culture or sect, similar to how Zeus and Jupiter might be different names for the same god.

[Daos]

Yes, I also went with titles over names, it's often said that to know something's name is to have power over it. So it makes sense the gods would not give their followers their true names.

It also makes them seem more distant, less knowable. Gives them a bit more air of mystery, at least from a mortal's perspective.

[Airellian]

I suppose the gods won't care how the mortals worship them. Or would they? Were these gods going to be more active in the events of the world? Last Amtar setting, they were just as distant and unknowable (and uncaring), which was a weakness of the setting.

[Daos]

I would say the gods don't really care how they are worshiped, as long as their agendas are met. Thus, if worshipers of the Nurturer started hurting people, the Nurturer would speak up.

As for impact on the world, the gods have a very big impact. In fact, I'd go as far as to refer to them as 'meddling.'

In the beginning, the gods tried to control and shape the world directly. But this didn't work out, because the gods all oppose each other and are equally powerful. So for instance, let's say the Harbinger saw a town of people who didn't worship it. This upset the god, so it decides to send plagues upon the town to either coerce them into worship or to die. Well, all the people would have to do is pray to the Nurturer, and all of those plagues would vanish. So direct intervention was somewhat pointless.

Instead, the gods developed a system. First, they worked primarily through their believers. In the example above, the Harbinger would sends its believers and priests to attack the town, burn its crops, or what have you. If the Nurturer wants to stop it, it will need to send its own believers and priests. Thus, whoever has the most numerous and powerful believers wins the conflict. Consequently, having the most worshipers is a big deal among the gods. Without them, the gods find it much more difficult to further their own agendas.

There is, however, one way for the gods to act directly in mortal affairs. An avatar can be made. However, each god is only allowed one avatar at a time. These avatars are incredibly powerful, but subjected to all of the same limitations as mortals. That means they can't do anything a mortal could not also do. It also means they can be defeated, even killed. If an avatar is killed, there is a period of time they must wait before they can make a new one. I don't know how long, maybe 100 years? Long in the eyes of mortals, but the blink of an eye for a god.

Oh, and one more thing. Avatars are not created from scratch. An avatar is created when a god possesses a mortal. The mortal need not be willing, but they must be a worshiper of that particular god (the Crusader cannot possess a worshiper of the Arbiter, for instance). Thus, here's another important reason to have worshipers. Also, I imagine many cultures would consider it the 'greatest honor' to be possessed by a god.

[Airellian]

Hmm. It doesn't really seem like much of a difference from the last Amtar setting.

[HorizonsDream]

Actually, it is different from the old Amtar. The Gods never got involved in Amtar, and we certainly never had avatars.

[Daos]

Yeah, I don't get how you are not seeing a difference.

The gods of the original Amtar had a pact of non-interference which was formed after the Carnage War. Kulak was the only god who ever tried to violate that pact, and he was banished to the Abyss for it.

They never interfered, directly or indirectly. They certainly never took mortal form and walked the earth. Really, the original Amtarian gods were nothing more than spellbooks in the sky. They had no personalities, no agendas, and each one had a universal church that was the same throughout the world.

[Airellian]

I guess I should say that "big picture" I don't see a difference.

For example, in a previous campaign, Daufer's agenda was to build up the D'lokkan temple in town. He believed it was the will of D'lokka, but in reality, the goddess probably didn't care about some temple in a small out of the way town. In the next setting, I guess maybe D'lokka would give direct commands to Daufer and tell him to build up that temple or raise up an army or something like that. Or perhaps something like incomprehensible, like, seek out a lost artifact. In the end, it doesn't matter whether she told him to do that or not, because Daufer would have done that anyway (except for maybe that last task), as per the edicts of her dogma or the dictates of his church. In the case of the new setting, all D'lokka becomes is the head of her own church, which is a little limited to what I had been imagining when I brought up the Iliad reference in the original thread.

I mean, I suppose the use of avatars is somewhat different. But it's not really much of a game changer if they're still bound by mortal limits. What about the story of Poseidon taking offense at being ignored his due offering by Odysseus and as a result cursing Odysseus so that he wouldn't reach his home in Ithaca for another ten years? I wonder if that could happen in this new Amtarian setting, with the rules governing divine action, and I conclude that no, it couldn't, at least not in that way. If, for example, the Harbinger started harassing one of the Nurturer's top followers, the Nurturer'd just go right around and dick around with one of the Harbinger's followers, and it'll just escalate from there, until there's almost no point to the rules they've established amongst themselves.

Instead, using the story of the Odyssey, Poseidon would have sent his priests to chase after Odysseus' ship and try to founder it before they ever reached Ithaca. Perhaps lob a few watery armies at Ithaca and invade it while he's away. Still an interesting story, but it's a different story nonetheless.

I don't know, I just really want the gods to cut loose in this new setting. I guess I see this new setup as similar to Sauron. He's kind of god-like. He's a maiar, a lesser angelic spirit, so he's close enough. He's got an avatar, right? He's got to be really careful about his safety, as he can be slain, and if his body's destroyed, it'll take millenia to regenerate (as long as the One Ring remains). So, he moves armies of orcs against Men, Elves, and Dwarves, and he's got the Nine to take care of really important business, but takes no personal direct action himself. But, what I'd really like to see is more the Silmarillion or the Iliad, where the Valar took part in world-shaping wars, the gods of Olympus took sides one against the other, Apollo sending plagues against the Greeks, Athena slaying Trojans with the use of the Aegis of Zeus, and Zeus, of course, sending divine wrath every which way with the mighty thunderbolt, et cetera. Stuff like that.

[Daos]

Okay, I see what you're saying. But the question to ask, is that while it may make for better stories, would it make for better games?

The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Silmarillion are all non-interactive stories. AD&D, however, is interactive and has multiple players that all give input aside from the DM. As much fun as it is to read about those kinds of things, how much fun would it be to play them out?

Let's take your example of Odysseus being cursed by Poseidon for ten years. How many players would enjoy being forced to suffer for that long (longer than most campaigns, even)? How much fun would it be for the other players to suffer right alongside the joker who mouthed off to a god?

Or using the example of Athena, how many players would appreciate a god showing up and stealing all of their glory and the spotlight? If a god is fighting the battle, why even have the PCs at all? They're nobodies now. Imagine if, in the final battle against the beholder in the Slayer campaign, D'lokka herself just showed up and killed the bad guys. Actually, that goes beyond just combat. If the gods are directly shaping all events, what are the PCs supposed to do?

The local miners were chased away by kobolds? An evil dragon has nested nearby and is a threat to the trading routes? Bandits plague the roads? Why can't the gods handle that?

Basically, you get the Elminster problem, but on a far greater scale (a common complaint about Forgotten Realms is that there are so many high-level heroes in the setting, that it seems like they could take care of everything and the PCs would have nothing left to do).

While PCs are not always the most important people in the setting, they are always the most important people in a game. And they generally don't like having more powerful characters (whether high level GMPCs or the gods themselves) constantly invalidating their efforts.

This is why you generally don't see D&D settings where the gods are anything more than names and domains.

[Airellian]

Okay, but you don't have to construct the rules to the "divine game" so that the only actions they can take are either through their followers or through their mortal avatar. Perhaps they don't flex their divine muscles all the time, but it should be an option at least. For example, perhaps they have a system in place where if one god did something god-like, the other gods are allowed to do something in response of an equal god-like measure. Some might respond right away, while others might wait years on down the line. It would be a system of debts that they were continually adding to and repaying. They might even exchange these debts with each other in a complex and byzantine divine game.

Or perhaps they have physical domains that are exclusive to them, and their word is law in that domain. For example, Zeus was king of the sky, Poseidon the sea, and Hades the underworld. Aphrodite had love and Ares had battles. So on and so forth.

On a tangent: Kobolds? Dragons? Bandits? Why should a god take care of those problems? It's like when you're the boss at work and the guys working under you comes and asks you to solve all of their little problems for them. Multiply that on a god-like scale, and maybe you'll see why gods wouldn't take care of every little problem that might be going on in the world. Besides, they might not care about those particular problems because they don't possess human morality.

Anyway, I think it can be done. Certainly, you had great heroes in the Iliad who weren't diminished by the presence of all of these gods running around messing up their day. Some of them were made even greater, because they were able to wound those gods and send them running.

Or, how about this. The gods will act through their believers, followers, and whatever supernatural creatures they have that are loyal to them. They also have their avatar, as in your original setup. But it's not their "avatar", as such, but their own true form, of which they have only one. If they die, they are slain forever. Their perspective is limited, and they can't divide their attention around the whole world, unless they use an artifact that lets them do this, like Manwe's throne which lets him see all of Middle Earth. However, this form is not limited by mortal constraints and can do things that you would expect a physical god to do. Kind of like the forest spirit, that strange deer-like creature in Princess Mononoke. His form was physical, but he could give and take life at a whim.

So, followers are still important, because each god can only be in one place at a time, and can only observe one place at a time through their own physical eyeballs. So, they need eyes and ears in the world. Also, they're usually in the heavenly realms, doing divine business things, so they're not usually around in the mortal realm to interfere. But if they want, they can go down into the world, shake up a storm, send some plagues, and other godly things. But then, they risk either dying forever, or having their attention focused on that particular bit of action while the other gods are doing something else.

[Daos]

It sounds like what you are proposing are not gods at all, but just very powerful ascended beings. You imply they cannot deal with small problems because they have limited resources and time (comparing them to a boss whose underlings keep bothering him), and state outright they can die permanently.

So what happens if/when a god does die? What happens once they are all dead? No more clerics? No more healing magic?

Actually, if the gods are mortal, why wouldn't they all focus all of their attention on killing each other, until only one remains? Then that one god would get free reign to do whatever it wanted forever without opposition.

[Airellian]

What's wrong with a setting where gods can die?