Multiple pantheons

[Mr. R]

I was recently reading a site where they were commenting on how in Greyhawk there were multiple pantheons among the humans and that to him, this made the setting more real. I guess it is like the Greek/Egyptian/others, where there could be multiple sky gods (Horus and Zeus). 

 

So how many of you have multiple pantheons in your games?

 

How did you set it up?

 

Do you feel it added or detracted from your setting!

[archer]

I've wanted to have multiple pantheons. But players had trouble keeping track of one pantheon so there wasn't much point in introducing a second one.

 

In real life, pantheons were created by cultures which were separated by significant distances and often significantly different time periods.

 

For example, the Egyptian pantheon was pretty well established by 3000 BC while the Greek "12 major gods" pantheon was established no earlier than 600 BC. Yeah, their worship overlapped into the Roman period but the heyday of Egyptian pantheon worship was well behind them by that point. The Norse and Mayan pantheons didn't come into existence until widespread worship of the Egyptian and Greek pantheons were long over.

 

If I were to attempt it in-game, I'd try to establish a border region between two empires or cultures and let the worship of two different pantheons exist there. If the players don't care for the mix, they can leave the border region. And if they find one of the pantheons boring or annoying, they can escape it by going to the other culture.

 

I'd also explicitly talk to the players about whether there was tolerance or intolerance between the religions. Modern times have gotten people used to Christianity and Islam which are exclusive and intolerant of competition rather than Shintoism, Sindoism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism which don't require exclusivity.

 

So I'd be sure to explain that context for each of the religions. They could both be exclusive. They could both be inclusive. You could have one which was exclusive and the other which was inclusive which would make for very confused converts.

 

But you don't want a player misunderstanding his religion and create a Shinto paladin who runs around trying to forcibly convert people or smiting the heathen.

[drunkonduty]

I don't see there being a problem with multiple faiths in the game. There's no reason for there not to be. Every human culture has come up with their own version of what the god(s) is/are.

 

Depending on how active (or even real) gods are in your campaign this can have any range of effects on the campaign world. At the end of the spectrum where gods are imaginary or transcendent and take no hand in the material universe, there could be inter-faith rivalry or open hostility. At the other end, where the gods wander the world interacting with mortals on a daily basis then you can have loads of interpersonal conflict and/or friendships between various deities. Basically, at this end of the spectrum, they are just other (admittedly powerful) NPCs. You could even give a nod to Terry Pratchett's Pyramids and have all the various sun gods fighting over the sun like it's a football match.

 

The game I'm currently running has 2 main faiths in it. One for the good guys, one for the bad guys. Of course each side sees themselves as the good guys and the others as the bad guys. For this campaign the gods are at best impersonal beings, possibly non-sentient forces, possibly non-existent. It doesn't matter because they do not, nor shall they ever, appear in person. It's a Pathfinder game and we have in-game proof that things like ghosts exist. There is also circumstantial evidence that there is an afterlife and the continuity of the soul therein. 

 

It's definitely added to the setting. Hell, the conflict between the faiths is the basis of the campaign. But it also adds to the day to day interaction between PCs and NPCs.

[Asperion]

I have believed that the best way to get multiple religions in a game is to copy what RL did.  Reality didn't start with multiple religions,  it started with one,  then another group came along and conquered the original.  The first religion was not destroyed but incorporated into the new religion.  Over time,  this made a complicated mess for people to learn.  Add in different regions developing their own religion independently gets added to the mix and we have the huge plethora that we see today. 

[Lord Liaden]

During the late Roman Republic/ early Empire, the Romans had a very pragmatic approach to foreign pantheons. They didn't try to convert conquered peoples, and they made a point of propitiating the local gods to keep from angering them. Some foreign gods, such as Isis and Mithras, became very popular among Romans. Theological purity had very little impact on public policy, at least until Christianity became the official state religion.

[DShomshak]

My "Magozoic" D&D setting has many pantheons, and only one. Theologians know there are 10 transcendent Godheads, called Archons, each associated with one of the celestial planes. However, mortals cannot interact directly with Archons -- only with avatars of the Archons, shaped by mortal imagination, whom mortals call gods. Gods seem to have distinct forms and personalities, can be born, die and reborn, get in fights, and generally behave like people with big magic powers. None of this affects the Archon, any more than a battle between two hand-puppets affects the puppeteer. A god can be forgotten for ages, but can be re-created if the ancient myths are rediscovered and the rites performed again. (One of the PCs just became the first cleric of such a long-forgotten god.)

 

This permits an unlimited number of pantheons, which are all true and all false. Humans tend to have pantheons modeled on human royal families, because that's such a common human system of authority.

* The Yidmiri pantheon (modeled rather obviously on the Greco-Roman pantheon) has a multiple generations, and many of the gods are children (legitimate or otherwise) of the ruling sky-and-storm god.

* The Marolici pantehon (modeled on Norse) has two families, with some intermarriage, and a few oddballs of obscure origin.

* The Drohashgi pantheon (modeled on Egyptian) has a primordial creator sun-god with several generations of descendants.

 

But there are exceptions. The broad Macrine plain is a land of city-states who have spent millennia conquering each other. Each city had its own pantheon: the gods were nearly identical, but the names and relationships differed. When one city rose to dominate the rest, it declared its own gods the "real" versions and the gods of the conquered peoples were versions of them. After many millennia of this, the Macrine people stopped giving their gods names and just refer to them by the roles: the Thunderer, the Emperor and Empress, the Hierophant, the Overseer, the Priestess, the Charioteer, the Star-Maiden, the Fool, and so on.

 

Nonhumans have different models of authroity and, consequently, different pantheons.

* The region's dwarves seem to have a divine family -- but the other gods aren't the children of the dominant creator-god; they were made in the creator's forge. Dwarves take the artisan, rather than sexual reproduction, as their model of creative power.

* The region's elves have a pantheon of deified heroes whose deeds made them living expressions of the Archons: for instance, the great general Ferrai became one of their war gods, while the mage Eboriax became their God of Magic by codifying the eight schools of wizardry. Most of their gods are deified elves because, well, obviously no one is more perfect than an elf (Admit it. In your heart you know it's true.) But not all.

* The gods of the gnomes are also deified mortals, but they are gnomes who ascended to divinity through various comical or unlikely means; they are modeled on the Chinese Eight Immortals.

And so on.

 

Prophets are important in this system, because they shape mortal belief and so change the nature of the gods. This may result in radical re-interpretation. For instance, the cult of Jeduthon Soteira turned a randy and temperamental sun-god into a figure of mystic enlightenment. Many people worship Jeduthon Soteira who don't give a rat's ass about the rest of the Yidmiri pantheon. Another prophet re-interpreted the Drohashi sun-god Sorath (son of the primordial god Suzeratos; "active" ruler of Heaven to his passive authority) as the true and supreme god whom all must worship; and invented, basically, Jihadism.

 

Conversely, there's also a lot of syncretism, as believers in Macrine gods assimilate gods from other pantheons to Macrine deities: as the Marolici storm-and-war god Talse and the Drohashi storm-and-war god Barakel are assimilated to the Thunderer.

 

All this is in support of a campaign whose premise is one of mortals being responsible for the world they live in. There is no supernatural Big Bad, whether Satan, Sauron or Cthulhu, to blame troubles on. And if mortals get it wrong, there is no Daddy in the Sky to save them. Or even to tell them what the right course is.

 

This is of course not suitable for every campaign. (And I threw out most of the bog-standard D&D cosmology.)

Dean Shomshak

[theinfn8]

One of the major differences between real world pantheons and game pantheons is that in a high fantasy setting you have (or had) that set of gods literally involved personally with affairs on the world. It would be difficult for a society to ignore the existence of a god in that respect. They might all have different ways of worshipping (due to culture), but it isn't unreasonable to think there would only be one.

 

The only time I did multiple pantheons was to say "this is the meta idea of each god, name it as appropriate for your need". Same gods, different names and/or aspects. It worked ok. Most of my players haven't ever been that interested in exploring the spirituality/religion of their characters.

[Mr. R]

36 minutes ago, DShomshak said:

My "Magozoic" D&D setting has many pantheons, and only one. Theologians know there are 10 transcendent Godheads, called Archons, each associated with one of the celestial planes. However, mortals cannot interact directly with Archons -- only with avatars of the Archons, shaped by mortal imagination, whom mortals call gods. Gods seem to have distinct forms and personalities, can be born, die and reborn, get in fights, and generally behave like people with big magic powers. None of this affects the Archon, any more than a battle between two hand-puppets affects the puppeteer. A god can be forgotten for ages, but can be re-created if the ancient myths are rediscovered and the rites performed again. (One of the PCs just became the first cleric of such a long-forgotten god.)

 

This permits an unlimited number of pantheons, which are all true and all false. Humans tend to have pantheons modeled on human royal families, because that's such a common human system of authority.

* The Yidmiri pantheon (modeled rather obviously on the Greco-Roman pantheon) has a multiple generations, and many of the gods are children (legitimate or otherwise) of the ruling sky-and-storm god.

* The Marolici pantehon (modeled on Norse) has two families, with some intermarriage, and a few oddballs of obscure origin.

* The Drohashgi pantheon (modeled on Egyptian) has a primordial creator sun-god with several generations of descendants.

 

But there are exceptions. The broad Macrine plain is a land of city-states who have spent millennia conquering each other. Each city had its own pantheon: the gods were nearly identical, but the names and relationships differed. When one city rose to dominate the rest, it declared its own gods the "real" versions and the gods of the conquered peoples were versions of them. After many millennia of this, the Macrine people stopped giving their gods names and just refer to them by the roles: the Thunderer, the Emperor and Empress, the Hierophant, the Overseer, the Priestess, the Charioteer, the Star-Maiden, the Fool, and so on.

 

Nonhumans have different models of authroity and, consequently, different pantheons.

* The region's dwarves seem to have a divine family -- but the other gods aren't the children of the dominant creator-god; they were made in the creator's forge. Dwarves take the artisan, rather than sexual reproduction, as their model of creative power.

* The region's elves have a pantheon of deified heroes whose deeds made them living expressions of the Archons: for instance, the great general Ferrai became one of their war gods, while the mage Eboriax became their God of Magic by codifying the eight schools of wizardry. Most of their gods are deified elves because, well, obviously no one is more perfect than an elf (Admit it. In your heart you know it's true.) But not all.

* The gods of the gnomes are also deified mortals, but they are gnomes who ascended to divinity through various comical or unlikely means; they are modeled on the Chinese Eight Immortals.

And so on.

 

Prophets are important in this system, because they shape mortal belief and so change the nature of the gods. This may result in radical re-interpretation. For instance, the cult of Jeduthon Soteira turned a randy and temperamental sun-god into a figure of mystic enlightenment. Many people worship Jeduthon Soteira who don't give a rat's ass about the rest of the Yidmiri pantheon. Another prophet re-interpreted the Drohashi sun-god Sorath (son of the primordial god Suzeratos; "active" ruler of Heaven to his passive authority) as the true and supreme god whom all must worship; and invented, basically, Jihadism.

 

Conversely, there's also a lot of syncretism, as believers in Macrine gods assimilate gods from other pantheons to Macrine deities: as the Marolici storm-and-war god Talse and the Drohashi storm-and-war god Barakel are assimilated to the Thunderer.

 

All this is in support of a campaign whose premise is one of mortals being responsible for the world they live in. There is no supernatural Big Bad, whether Satan, Sauron or Cthulhu, to blame troubles on. And if mortals get it wrong, there is no Daddy in the Sky to save them. Or even to tell them what the right course is.

 

This is of course not suitable for every campaign. (And I threw out most of the bog-standard D&D cosmology.)

Dean Shomshak

 

 

That sounds like a lot of work, but is also SO COOL!  Can I get into your games!

[Scott Ruggels]

I had multiple pantheons among the humans. I don’t remember but they rarely were significant in game. I don’t rememer inch of them. 

[bluesguy]

I stole the Harn Pantheon for my campaign world.  It works pretty well for us.

[DShomshak]

On 9/7/2021 at 12:58 PM, Mr. R said:

 

That sounds like a lot of work, but is also SO COOL!  Can I get into your games!

Aw shucks, I'm blushin.' Yes, it has been a lot of work. Fortunately, it's work I enjoy. A little of it has even come up in play!

 

Moving on... I will say, two of my favorite Fantasy settings are distinguished by having only one pantheon -- though those pantheons are about as different as could be imagined.

 

In Lois McMaster Bujold's "World of the Five Gods" there are, yep, only five gods: the Father, the Mother, the Daughter, the Son, and the Bastard. These are quite enough for the setting. Bujold not only makes the gods important to the setting, she makes religion and theology important, too. These gods are not just entities with Big Magic Powers: They are fundamental to the world and to how people live in it. And while the gods are transcendent and mysterious in many ways, there is no doubt about their existince and their power, or that they receive the souls of the dead. Or that there is both justice and mercy.

 

At the other extreme, White Wolf's game Exalted has a pantheon of billions of gods. At the apex of power are the Celestial Incarnae -- the Unconquered Sun, Luna, the Five Maidens -- with Gaia, who is something quite differeent, and her five deputies the Elemental Dragons. Below them is a Celestial Bureacracy of gods in Heaven, encompassing five bureaus, and another host of terrestrial gods who live and work in Creation. Some gods are unique with personal portfolios, such as Amoth City-Smiter, God of Tumbled Ruins; Ahlat, Southern God of War and Cattle; or Grandmother Bright, god of a single city neighborhood. Other gods are common types, such as the dryads who are gods of individual trees, or the pattern spiders, little robot gods who operate the Loom of Fate. Many of these gods are petty and greedy, concerned more with extorting mortal prayer than doing their jobs maintaining Creation. But then, the Unconquered Sun did delegate the Creation-Ruling Mandate to his mortal champions, the Solar Exalted, who have been missing for quite some time. As Exalted (Solar and otherwise), restoring the proper administration of Creation is one of the potential challenges faced by PCs.

 

The two settings have one thing in common: Mortal free will is central. In Bujold's world, the gods are just but require mortal hands. In Exalted, the gods have autonomous power but not much moral sense.

 

Dean Shomshak

[assault]

I sometimes get caught up in the "one sun, many sun gods" dilemma.

 

Partially, that's a matter of overthinking, and no answer is actually necessary.

 

To the extent that I have an answer, it's that the gods (and similar spirits) are really just emanations of more fundamental forces. Angels, I suppose, although with free will.

 

Of course, only heretical theologians and philosophers make arguments like that.

[LoneWolf]

How big is your setting?  Unless you have a huge setting multiple pantheons don’t make a lot of sense.  Pantheons are usually created from merging smaller religions when a large nation is formed.  Often the individual cities would have their own gods and when someone conquered the region and conciliated the region into a nation the individual religions where merged into a pantheon. 

 

It might be interesting to play in a setting without pantheons and instead have individual gods.  Each city would have its own god.  Dark Suns did something similar where each city was ruled by a god.

[assault]

I tend to do that. In some cases, there's a small pantheon: Father, Mother, Son or something like that.

 

There's still the one sun, many sun gods issue.

[DShomshak]

12 hours ago, LoneWolf said:

How big is your setting?  Unless you have a huge setting multiple pantheons don’t make a lot of sense.

It's a question of multiple cultures more than area, and the metaphysics of your world.

 

If you're doing, say, Celtic Twilight fantasy or a Mythic China riff, obviously there should be only one pantheon -- even though the former campaign might be set in Fantasy Wales that's geographically smaller than many American counties, while the latter covers a gigantic area but will still just use a version of the Chinese Pantheon. Either way, these are the gods of your world -- period.

 

OTOH the prototypical Fantasy city of Lankhmar, from the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories, has people worshiping many gods from diverse sources, because Lankhmar is a big trade city, crossroads of its world, and people from all over have brought their gods. What's more, mortals create gods by belief, so new gods can appear (this happens in one of the stories). Though that makes the concept of "pantheon" a little squishy.

 

 

12 hours ago, LoneWolf said:

Pantheons are usually created from merging smaller religions when a large nation is formed.  Often the individual cities would have their own gods and when someone conquered the region and conciliated the region into a nation the individual religions where merged into a pantheon.

 

This does not seem consistent with various cultures I know about, that had multiple gods long before they were unified states or even had cities. But I am always willing to learn. Source, please?

 

Dean Shomshak

[assault]

LoneWolf has overstated things, but worshipping with your neighbours is a useful form of diplomacy, and leads to the expansion of your pantheon.

Groups that are religiously exclusive can be a pain to deal with.

 

EDIT: religious exclusivity also correlates with marital endogamy, ruling out that form of diplomacy too.

[mallet]

I think in part this would also depend on how "Active" the Gods are in your campaign world. 

 

If it is like say, "Dragon Lance" where the Gods actually show up on the planet and interact with the mortals, then there is probably less ambiguity and variation in their names*, while if there is no interaction between the Gods and the mortals, at least none that the mortals can ever fully know, then that could lead to greater variation in their names and details over the centuries as different areas adapt the "myths" to their own evolving beliefs and rituals because they have no direct examples/knowledge of the Gods and what they want/like.  

 

*(unless they appear different to each species/race (like Fizban did, but from what I remember the Dark Queen, didn't. She was called the same name by everyone.))

[Michael Hopcroft]

If I can bring some fictional insight into the discussion, I have postulated a micro-cosmology shown to my readers by an Angel character in a different world. At one point, she describes in some detail the funeral rits fo an alien culture, and the religion behind them, then dismisses them, saying "It's a lie, of course.". It is a matter of record for her that her Goddess is the true Goddess and the others are "lies" oir "untrue".

 

Maybe she has only experienced that single deity, or maybe that being is also lying to her, about possibly many things. In the Western worldview of today, the idea of a God who lies is almost inconceivable.  So too with this angel -- she cannot concieve of her Goddess deceiving her or anyone else. At ther same time, she views otherfaiths as false by definition.

 

But it is possible -- likely, in fact -- that she may be wrong. Perhaps there are other true gods she has yet to encounter. Perhaps her Goddess can be a bit flexible when it comes to telling the truth.

 

And even though there likely won't be PC Angels, the reality or unreality of the various pantheons your PCs experience could be interesting.

 

The original Pantheon, by the way, was a Roman structure where images of all the officially-sanctioned deities from across the Empire could be worshiped. Of course, Judaism and Christianity were excluded. When the Chiristians came to power in the 4th Century, they took all the idols out of the Pantheon and replaced them all with images of the Chiristian Saints. I do not know what happened to the original statuary, but I doubt any of it survived.