In my last post I told you about why it is important for me, as a DM, to make up a pantheon and creation mythos for the worlds I create. This post will, hopefully, help you streamline your creation process, or, at the very least, give you an idea of how someone else does it.
There are probably many reasons why most fantasy genre items (books, movies, short stories, fan fiction, roleplayng games, etc.) include a pantheon of gods rather than just one god. Since our modern world is primarily a monotheistic one, it is a way to separate the real from the make-believe. Since most of us have no real knowledge of life with a pantheon, it is a bit exotic and can lend a very fantastical feel to the game/book/movie/etc. Since this hobby includes a large dose of escapism, this is entirely appropriate and is probably one of the main reasons that my setting are almost exclusively pantheistic. Also, it allows for players to have all sorts of different motivations and driving forces, or even similar motivations due to different driving forces. These are the things that drama is made of, and for me, they play an important part at my roleplaying table. Okay, so, enough with the Whys – on to the Hows…
One of the nice things about a pantheon is that no one god has to be responsible for any single thing. That is kinda the definition of pantheon – many gods rule over different aspects of life and existence. The first thing to do when trying to generate your pantheon is to use this as an advantage.
The Pantheon
The first thing to decide is whether or not you want the gods to be “involved” in every day life for the people in your world. If yes, then you need to decide on the major deities in terms of the major professions in your world. Pick three or four (or more if you like, but be careful of over-saturation), and decide the major four or five profession groups (e.g. warriors, farmers, merchants, politicians and the wealthy, teachers, magic users, and craftsmen). Each of these major professional groups would have one patron deity to which they attribute their skill, talent, and good luck in that profession. Since they attribute these things to their patron deity, they actively worship the deity and believe that the deity has an effect on their every day lives. They try and avoid angering the god because it would have direct consequences for them and those around them. This is what I mean when I use the word “involved” above.
If they are not involved, then you need to decide on two or three major deities and a few minor ones and only flesh out the relevant bits that a cleric or paladin needs to know. The non-heroic citizens of your world do not pay much heed to the business of the gods on a daily basis because they are too busy living their lives to wonder what the gods are up to. They may hold yearly feasts or have occasional celebrations, but the people do not see the gods as directly responsible for the good, bad, and ugly day-to-day things in their lives and they also do not see much consequence in offending the gods. I find this to sound extremely boring, and it would be boring in my campaigns, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work or doesn’t fit another’s campaign style. It is a viable option, so I include it here.
Here’s an example of step one: Lets say you have decided that the gods are meddlers and will be involved in the business of the mortal people. You decide that most populations rely upon local farming for food. Therefore, it is appropriate to have a god of the harvest. You name him Fregast. Fregast may be worshiped by farmers, nature lovers, fur traders, trackers, hunters, herders, and livestock breeders (and any other profession you can think of that may rely on the fertility of the planet). Fregast’s worshippers may commonly refer to him as the ‘bringer of life’ because of his role in stocking the world with enough healthy flora and fauna to support their respective professions. Since farming is integral to the survival of all of the civilized races, Fregast would probably be a major deity. This deity, while being revered by those that profess a love of nature (rangers or druids, for example) because of his ties to the fertility of nature, would not necessarily be revered by the healers and midwives because he is not the god of fertility of the ‘civilized races’ but only the non-civilized animals and plants in the world.
Pick three or four other major profession groups and name the god and you are set. If you want to have minor deities to cover other professions, think of it as a hierarchy. Most people might worship a major god and maybe really follow one or two minor deities. For example, you may decide on a major deity that is lawful good and is responsible for justice in the world. Many guards, lawyers, policemen, etc. may worship this god as their major deity, but they may not actually be lawful good (it is a hard thing to live up to). This could create a moral problem, so they may also worship a minor god that is important for law enforcement officials, but also mercenaries and weapon-smiths. This minor deity may just happen to be unaligned or good, rather than lawful good. This allows the common folk to have a redeeming belief (“perhaps the unaligned minor god Haluin will influence the lawful good major deity, Bresho, that I am worthy, even though I am not lawful good”).
Creation Mythos
This is, believe it or not, the easy part. There really is only one thing to do here: decide the two main gods and make up a story about how they created the world. This is where your creativity needs to take over. I tend to go back to the roman and greek mythologies and pick out elements and then make them my own. The story can be as fantastical or as realistic as you want to make it, but it should have at least two elements in it:
1. It should involve something that normal people cannot do. This sounds like a big DUH!, but it is really important to say. I am writing this from the fantasy perspective and most fantasy themed things include a bit of magic. How much magic is up to the DM, but it definitely exists in the world. That means that fantastical things (magic) can be done by mortals, so the creation story has to have the god doing something even more powerful and more fantastical than magic. This means that the god(s) that create the planet can communicate with the elements and discuss things with time and call on other gods to help with weather patterns (which is how they became the god of rain, and things like that).
The creation of the world can be something as simple as “The god Woosklen slept for a year and when she awoke, an idea came to her and the world was born.” Or it can be much more poetic and detailed, describing the growth of the mountains, populating the planet with creatures, adding water to make oceans, salt for the seas, placing gold in the mountains and having mountain get jealous because it received no gold and become volcanic in anger, etc.
This all sounds like fluff, and it is, but it is good for the campaign if you use it to your advantage. This is your time to create, do it however you want, and make it odd, players love that.
2) Somewhere in the creation event, there needs to be conflict. This is because there needs to be a reason why some of the gods are good and some are bad, it is good if you tie that reason right back to the creation of the world the players live in. A good example is what I said about volcanoes in the above note. This is a very real thing to the people in the world – volcanoes are powerful and cause much destruction when they erupt, which the people believe is a manifestation of the anger of the volcano god Kolkus.
Even if you don’t add conflict between the minor and major deities, you must have it between the major good god and the major evil god. This is the primary rift in the world that is responsible for evil creatures sweeping across the land causing devastation. You need this or there will be no overriding evil in the world for your characters to fight (or join, as the case may be). Think of Star Wars without the Dark side of The Force – yeah, it wouldn’t be anything.
Hopefully that will get you started building a meaningful pantheon in your campaign setting.
~DM Samuel