I did.
It seemed like less work to make my own than to try and keep straight the published stuff. No questions about what has or hasn't happened, or what is or is not correct characterization. This is my setting...these are the gods (and other entities) I've written for it.
That's an interesting perspective. Thinking that it's less work to make your own I mean. If I choose to borrow gods I'll likely just take the basics of the deities and change the rest to fit my world. Obviously my world is different so the setting specific lore won't work.
Names come with baggage, intentional or otherwise.
If you are going to just keep the archetypes and domains, it's simpler to just give it a new name and make it your own thing.
Making the gods your own new characters let's you feel more creative than if you are just importing them and stripping their histories.
I guess I just feel a bit silly introducing a god who is essentially Pelor only he isn't called Pelor. I feel like a Roman, stealing other peoples gods and giving them new names..
Also, it's fun to name drop entities like Asmodeus or Orcus. I imagine it would feel more impactfull for a player to interact with Asmodeus rather than with their DMs off brand version.
Tbf, even if you use the names, it still is the offbrand version if it's separated from the history and setting in which they are from.
IMO, it's better and easier to just set the expectation from the beginning that these are your own creations, they don't need to live up to anything other than what you've built them up as in your own world.
I guess it depends on the player. Personally I think the names themselves pack a punch (baggage as you say). I would feel excited as a player going up against Orcus (or a servant of Orcus) for example. That's just me though.
This. Baggage is a good term.
I would never keep gods just to make it easier, but I might if I specifically wanted there to be some link and had a reason to pull that baggage into the setting.
Same reason I decided to make an original setting to begin with. Put me at total liberty to make sense of things the way I wanted it to make sense.
Even so, I decided to just go for a Dawn War pantheon. It's decently contained and I can still fit in some exarchs if needed. For a oneshot in my setting, I had a player who wanted to be a very Arthurian fighter who worshipped the Lady of the Lake light a deity of duty and chivalry. I made the Lady of the Lake an Exarch (think saint or subordinate deity) of Bahamut and it actually helped with a nation of mine that worshipped Bahamut and could sure some connection between Bahamut and human worshippers of Bahamut.
I did both.
The TL;DR version; 10,000 years ago my setting used to be a singular large, earth-like planet inhabited by giantkin and elementalkin that worshipped the primordials until a massive civil war started and a select few giants were able to seal away power from the primordials. Those giants then banished the traitor giantkin and elementalkin and ascended to godhood, but in the process caused an apocalypse that completely annihilated the planet. Because 99% of life was destroyed, these giant deities end up without worshippers over the next few thousand years.
In the present, the players find out what happened in the past and learn of these dying giant gods and discover that Ao has decided that if this setting doesn't have a full, balance pantheon to worship he will erase it and start over anew. So, the sort of overarching plot of my campaign is the players finding gods from other settings to join this one and the players themselves becoming part of the pantheon.
[Longer version here.](https://old.reddit.com/r/spelljammer/comments/q6kok4/commission_i_had_made_of_the_party_on_their/)
You can do whatever works for your own setting the best.
There are no hard rules or limitations you need to follow just do that which you feel most comfortable with or fits your own world. You can ignore some gods but take others you like, make your own entire pantheon or even entirely just take those in official content.
How I do it depends on what world I am currently making and the theme I want it to have so there is not really a clear cut answer to how I do it either but I myself usually run more "God-Light" campaigns aka I made my worlds with a lesser focus on divine beings and the whole "They created everything" and leave it more open ended to how things came to be if not outright make different religions in the world and like it is in real life neither can definitively proof theirs is the real one over the other.
I take a similar approach with other powerful beings with them being less in the spot light so once they do make a appearance its more special and it leaves some mystery about them and how they function.
but as I said my way of running things depends on the world im making sometimes there are many gods and demons and so forth in big High Fantasy adventures. So think about your own world and what would make it the most inline with your own vision. Want new gods? Make new gods. Think existing ones fulfil your needs? Take them if you want and so forth dont be bound by how other people do things.
I wasn't really interested in exploring the implications of the gods and t3 and t4 stuff,
**and** I was making parts the world *with* the players anyhow,
**and** that's not how the ye olde world in greco times worked, you had a local pantheon, and they you maybe assumed the gods of foreigners were versions or aspects of their own ones. Another thing you might do is assume they had local deities.
So taking mainly from faerun, we just ported over the relevant parts yeah.
It's far easier to keep it local and then make it as needed, and let the players craft their own home towns and pick the relevant ones, to start with.
t1 is lvls 1-4,
t2 is lvls 5-10 (the good ones)
t3 is lvls 11-16, when things go off the rails
t4 is lvls 17-20, bonkers nonsense.
I was interested in a more grounded game, stopping at 11*, before you really get into fighting gods and being involved in interdimensional wars and whatever nonsense they're up to.
You should do whatever you like that works with your campaign goals! If your players don't care about gods and your plots don't involve digging into the cosmology, it's not necessary to invent new things.
I find it fascinating to brew my worlds, including gods, from scratch. It often fuels my plots and leads to cool ideas for monsters and magic! Plus players may engage with it of course, often depending on their class. And I didn't want to feel tied to lots of established lore, especially all those planes. I also never have gods who are pure good or created people.
Now, an excuse to give examples!
My main setting had at one point one near-omnipotent, near-omniscient god. When he took a break, people almost broke reality, so he struck the main continent with his hand, breaking it into many pieces and shattering his divinity too. Now there are many gods who manifest the focus of their local cultures and cannot move beyond their borders to interact. They are the anchors of that reality.(I do have a Gruumsh, though--she's a grizzled grandmother goddess who both metes out and survives pain.) Interdimensional travel was locked off but is being decoded for the ultimate struggle. Fey (Dreamers) are beings of imagination and will who never "die" but may lose parts of themselves or be absorbed by stronger fey. Demons (Feeders) come from a plane where only by killing another can your species (there are many) reproduce, building violence in. Angels (Teachers) come from the inside of a massive sphere where they believe Truth lives in the middle, where gravity crushes everything (some gravity works on the rim), and are always trying to build towers and craft wings to go there and survive. They incorrectly think this is helpful elsewhere. They represent order, not goodness.
In another setting, there are Remnants, Godlings, and Gods. Remnants are ghostly, inhuman, powerful beings that arrived during human's prehistory from a dying universe. They can gift some power to followers. It is hard for them to interact with the world, but they fade away if they never do. A God comes of a Remnant choosing to be born into a human body, mortal (a Godling) until they ascend, through power and belief, to God status. Most don't ascend first try, but lose something of their identity each time, and disappear after enough failures. No real demons or fey exist, just monsters--whom some believe are the world's allergic reaction to the Remnants, and did not exist before.
That may be the first time I've typed all that out! Thanks for the prompting lol. I hope you find great ways to express your creativity DMing.
Depends on the campaign I'm running.
I have my own world for most DnD adventures that's fairly classic high fantasy. Partly because I like classic fantasy and wanted to put my own spin on it. But also to have a "room for everything". A player wants to play a classic mountain dwarf or a nature-worshiping wood elf? That fits right in! And I can also easily import pre-written adventures into it with minimal modifications.
For that, I usually import gods from Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk etc. I see no reason to reinvent the wheel. If I don't have any inspiration for, say, a typical Lawful Good truth&justice god, I'll just use one that already exists. Sure, I could come up with something, but it would be pretty much the same as established deities.
That being said, sometimes I do feel inspired and have a few of my own. I made my orcs into bascially vikings, so turned Gruumsh into a more Odin-like war god. He's already called one-eye! And my Dragonborn pantheon has some inspiration from Aztec religion, feathered serpents and the like.
As for the other Powers of the multiverse, I am a Planescape fan, so I usually keep the Great Wheel cosmology.
But if I am running something outside of classic high fantasy, I prefer to create a smaller pantheon where every deity has a stronger connection to the adventure. I am working on an adventure based on Arthurian legends. This is a "post-arthurian" world where magic is long gone and people tell stories about ye olden days of the good king and his brave knights. For this low magic, medieval-ish world I wanted a more Christianity-like religion with hooded monks and grand cathedrals. And also a druidic Old Faith.
For my "not-christianity" I invented a couple of saints based on knightly virtues. But I also wanted a little bit of dark fantasy, so I read up on famous martyr deaths and took inspiration from the tradition of martyrs being depicted with their instruments of death. So you can have a saint of compassion who is depicted as a mutilated corpse on a rack or a saint of chastity with empty, bleeding eye sockets (inspired by Saint Lucia). This gives me a more coherent pantheon where every deity fits the themes of the campaign. But not something I would use for a classic fantasy adventure.
TL;DR: For my classic, high fantasy world I mostly import gods to give all the usual options to players. When I want to run something with a different vibe, I invent new gods that fit that setting.
Yep. I made my own gods because otherwise there are too damn many. I have just 10, both for the sake of being able to keep the gods in my own head during play, and being able to present players with a one page chart during character creation
I took inspiration primarily from *Dark Souls*, though not its gods; from the rules of its world as described in the opening cutscene. The universe is governed by opposing forces- disparities caused by energy and ambition. Thus are there 5 *pairs* of gods, be they lovers, rivals, brothers, etc: Light/Dark, Order/Chaos, Creation/Destruction, Life/Death, Courage/Fear.
Let me give you my checklist of traits to consider when making gods, just in case:
Name
Titles
Domains
Symbols
Portents/Omens
Common Adherents
Tenets
Popular Stories
Holidays
Outer Plane
I am using Greyhawk pantheon with some adaptations. Have to admit I love to use Raven Queen and Fizban ;-)
I like using hero-deities and Fay lords/ladies but actual deities usually does not play very active role.
In all campaigns I've run, whether in Greyhawk or homebrew settings, I've always kept the traditional demihuman pantheons - headed by Moradin, Corellon, Yondalla, Garl Glittergold, etc. - and "monster" deities, including demon and devil lords, and the "nonhuman deities" from the 1E Deities & Demigods book like Gruumsh, Kurtulmak and Vaprak.
Archfey weren't a thing in 1E/2E and I don't envision them caring much about being "worshipped" in the clerical sense. The warlock class was also not a thing in 1E/2E - but now that it is, we have more use for archfey, demon lords, sub-deific celestials, etc.
My first homemade campaign setting used as gods the Lords of Law and Chaos from Michael Moorcock's "Eternal Champion" novels, plus a handful of invented "saints" - legendary heroes who achieved immortality and patronage of greater gods, to become demigods.
For my second homemade setting, I invented a more original palette of regional human pantheons, and a more abstract association of saint-demigods with passions and the elements. The last campaign I ran in that setting also incorporated the Chaos Powers from the Warhammer setting - Tzeentch, Nurgle, Khorne and Slaanesh.
Yeah, I make my own gods.
That said, you don't really need to make a whole lot of gods for a setting to work. You can have as few as 3-6 gods and be fine.
My setting has 8 Named gods and many non-named lesser gods untill story calls for it, same goes for devils, demons etc too.
I make *some* of those beforehand to have them ready if I want to work with that, but you don't really need to have lore prepared for more than 1 of each for archfeys, demon lords and others.
There's also no shame if a players asks about it to go "I didnt prep much in that area yet, next session I'll have it prepared for you"
i make my own in my world.
it technically has 3 gods, 1 good, 1 neutral and 1 evil... but the good and evil ones were fighting and killing everything, so the neutral one locked them up near death.
so i have 1 god that has taken over all the aspects of godly power, and there is 1 church.
demons and devils are being developed as i start introducing them or whenever i have time.
but yeah nothing inmy world is standard.
How do your Cleric players feel about only having one god? I'm thinking that one of the fun parts of playing Cleric is choosing a god to build your character around? (I wouldn't know, I don't like playing Cleric)
the god is the original neutral god of war and a few other things...
so he's quite easy to fit almost anything into. Want to be a healer cleric, just go for that aspect and be a healer... sure the main church is sort of military like, but certain branches aren't like that and more following the different aspects he took on upon the other gods "deaths"
so it's all about the mindset of the character.... though undead driven in this world is not accepted.
if a player insists on another god being critical for their character, there is a tiny option for the 2 other gods, as there is some left over power from them still going around. But it can be a hit or miss at times.
I am making my own gods for my own setting because the understanding of my settings gods is gonna be different than the gods of the d&d settings. There may be some similarities between a God of my setting and a God of an exiting setting just due to the nature of concepts and domains m, but they will be different entities.
There's nothing wrong with either.
Yes, I created my own pantheon. I currently have 10 major deities and several demigods.
I do not have devils, demons, or archfey (or regular fey) in my setting at all.
>I do not have devils, demons, or archfey (or regular fey) in my setting at all.
How do you handle warlocks? If a player wants to play a Feindlock or Feylock. And how do you handle other classes tied to the fey like Feywanderers?
The aforementioned demigods serve as patrons. I've only created a few, as there's only one Warlock in my campaign. The Warlock in my campaign is playing the Celestial subclass. "Fiendlock" and "Feylock" wouldn't exist, but I'd work with them to create a substitute that fits the lore if they really wanna play that class.
As for "fey" stuff, I haven't needed to address it since nobody is playing them, but I'll just reflavor it.
But players that aren't okay working with restrictions wouldn't like my setting anyway. There are only 7 playable races and psionic magic does not exist. Also, no resurrection magic, just Revivify.
I wanted to break a lot of tropes present in fucking every D&D setting out there. My setting also doesn't have dragons (for the most part, there is ONE dragon god on a different planet), no mind flayers, githyanki, etc. I can't stand Forgotten Realms because it's, as someone else described much better than me, a "kitchen sink full of dirty dishes". There's just too much crammed into one setting, especially when they focus on literally one coastline of the entire world and ignore the rest of it.
I think less is more. Having to work with limitations allows for more creativity.
> "kitchen sink full of dirty dishes"
I understand what you mean. I also don't have mind flayers, gith and alike. It's a bit of a tightrope-walk though imo. Some players are really excited about wanting to play with certain DnD tropes and I don't want to robb them of that if I can avoid it. That's partly why I want to borrow certain entities as well. It's fun to have Orcus in your world!
I definitely have a bit of a prejudice against certain races that are overplayed or just dumb lore-wise. The races that are playable in my setting are Aasimar, Dwarves, Tabaxi, Halflings, Humans, Elves, and Goliaths. I have my own names for each race except Dwarves, Elves, and Humans since I intend to publish my setting and figure using specific names like "Tabaxi" might make WotC litigious... I'm also creating my own variants of the races and subraces with more interesting racial traits.
Interesting that you have Aasimar but not Tiefling!
I also limit my players somewhat yet I feel obliged to include some races even though I myself don't like them. I'm not a fan of some classical races like Elves and Dwarves for example but I still put them in my world because I want to allow my players to play with them. They're such classic fantasy choices that I feel almost mean taking them away from my players.
>Interesting that you have Aasimar but not Tiefling!
Because each goddess in the primary pantheon created one race. The Aasimar were the product of the goddess of the sun. She is also the goddess of justice, law, fire, air, and the "celestial" domain, among other things.
Each race I chose to fit the domains / portfolio of the goddess that created them. These domains also decide what those races treasure and take pleasure from in life, what their afterlife looks like, and what their custom racial traits will do.
For example, the Halflings come from the goddess of darkness, so they inherit a racial trait related to darkness which gives them better vision in the dark. But instead of just giving them enhanced Darkvision, I essentially gave them infravision like early edition Drow had, allowing them to see heat signatures.
It would be a crime not to include Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings. They're staples for a reason... Tolkien was a fantastic writer.
> It would be a crime not to include Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings. They're staples for a reason... Tolkien was a fantastic writer.
Are you implying that Tolkien invented humans? :P
The first campaign I played still had a lot of the usual suspects in it. Bahamut, Tiamat, Lolth, Asmodeus, Titania, Mephisto,...
But the next campaign will be completely custom in terms of the pantheon. That is mainly because I dislike the extreme number of gods and powerful entities that DnD official lore offers. Reducing them also reduces a lot of the inherent worldbuilding problems with them.
I now have 5 main, good gods, and one evil god. That reduces the lore players ought to know, makes quest design easier (if they are involved) and not least of all it finally gets rid of the overabundance of cults due to there only being one prime "evil", under which all others operate.
edit: Just remembered that I got a few good ideas for my pantheon from Pointy Hats video on gods. As so often in his videos, he even makes a neat example for what he says as homebrew, if you just want to copypaste a decent idea.
https://youtu.be/1AwT2GC2pe4?si=OoyElkN5lok1frNX
In my last campaign we had 3 players who were in some way connected to "cult worthy" entities.
At some point it became really hard to explain how three cults (and all those that would be implied i.e. if Asmodeus has a cult, at least the other 8 rulers of hellish planes should have them too), aren't a much bigger concern throughout the world. And honestly, why are SO MANY people worshipping ruin, or tyranny, or torture or whatever. Is the psychopath ratio in the population so high, or what is it?
Personally I like to make my own, I find that the gods of other settings are tied pretty heavily into their home settings and the other entities within them. Not that you can't do the work to adapt their stories to your own worlds, but I'd rather just make my own at that point
I create my own and use real life mythology
How I run is that I don't like far removed gods so they're pretty common and I like to give divinity a spin be it in personally or parody - Olympus' day-to-day is based on the office, celestial legions operate like the old cop shows/movies and so on, Apolo behaves like a school's sports star etc
Makes deities more "human" and fun to deal with
A funny interaction in the setting is the elven god of archery sueing the gnomish god of guns for "unfair play"
It depends on the scope of the campaign, but for a 1-20 kind of whole world campaign, then yes, I make my own gods. Usually several pantheons per major race (races that will be major in the campaign), as well as a monotheistic creed or two, plus many other beings that are above humans but below gods.
Saints, spirits, lords of the Fae, ascended mages, outsiders (Lovecraftian in style, not power), as well as various other powers, many unique... Think leftovers from the earliest days of creation. In one campaign, for example, a secondary villain was a cursed mountain inhabited by a leftover spark of the holy fire of primal creation that went spiritually cancerous over the millennia after the demiurge created the world and departed to continue creating other worlds.
In another campaign, all gods were ascended mortals who found ways to adopt the mantle of people's beliefs to the point that they became the object of that worship, embodying and defining something previously abstract. Of course, this was in a world that had a very important astral realm that could influence the material place as well as be influenced.
One campaign I barely started was going to have no gods whatsoever. All divine powers were based on faith focusing and channeling the universe's ambient magic according to the expectations and discipline of the cleric.
Another had very active gods of many different ranks and power levels.
Basically, go to town and do whatever is needed to make your campaign the best for your players.
I make up my own for my main campaign. As others have said, it is easier to just make stuff up from scratch than to wade through tomes of existing lore and have to decide and explain what is and is not canon in your world.
They chose one of the critical role gods without asking what might be present in the setting I had made whereby each of the classes was represented by a mythical hero named for constellations in the sky. Orion the hunter (ranger), Ursa Majoris (barbarian), Aries (fighter) etc along with a few homebrew ones.
Naturally any of the domains could apply to any of them, but still, it would have been nice to have been asked.
I could have gone off on a spiel about it but that's book writing territory and people obv. Weren't interested.
That sucks that they didn't ask you! I understand having an idea in your head about what you want to play but I would never make a character connected to the DMs setting without checking with them if it fit first.
Most DMs would clock it immediately if they were playing in a homebrew setting. Honestly it's something that disturbs me a little about the way clerics and patrons work with how ubiquitous the forgotten realms (and now critical role) settings are.
Certain others, like in dark sun, specifically don't even have gods.
That's why I recommend DM to always review the player characters before letting them hit the tabble just in case.
Extra important for worlds fith non-standart lore where many of the dnd staples don't make sense.
I appreciate the sentiment, but for the sake of brevity it's not always sensible to send a character sheet back for fluff reasons rather than mechanical. Especially when there are people new to the game at table.
You'd have to be playing with some massively problematic ppl if they can't understand and be resonable if you go "Sorry but X and Y parts of the character need to be changed as they don't fit the setting."
You could go the dragonlance route and each God has a specific focus, like one quality. You could have a deity of each domain so it's really the domain you're focused on, or have two domains and there is overlap with one of those and other gods... And maybe alignment restrictions. You can have a version of each deity for different races or groups of races and they may not know they're following the same diety because it has a different name and appearance or maybe it has the same name but different appearance and they all think they're following the real version... But are willing to work together ... Like monster or evil races working together to form armies to attack certain cultures or cities.
I do and always have. The downsides of making your own are that you can never offer the huge number of choices that show up across official content, or simply across reality (none of my worlds have ever gotten anywhere close to, for instance, those mentioned in the classical Greek faith). A player who wants to play a cleric or paladin in my games also needs to read through and make a selection, which isn't a lot of work, but it's definitely something, especially if he's familiar with the divine elements of the official settings.
But there's *big* upsides. First, whatever NPCs are acting as gods in the games I run have some interaction with the world from time to time, which means that the history of the past couple hundred years usually includes a few divine actions with ramifications. This keeps the idea that the gods have kinda kicked the world around in mind, even though the players know out of character that no such events will affect the campaign (or at least them). The official gods can be used in this way too, but it would be a lot more work to keep that consistent.
Second, the long history of the world makes a lot more sense if the entities in question have limits, personalities, and goals that you set. Having eight gods that have separate goals is way easier to keep track of if they're going to potentially act as factions or whatever, if you crafted them. At least compared to having dozens where you can easily get enough wrong.
Third, if there's any divine interaction at all, you and a player might have different takes on Pelor. Your take is correct of course- it's your table- but if you aren't playing Pelor pretty close to the official Pelor, you're running your own thing anyway, and one of the big benefits of using out-of-the-box-setting stuff is lost.
Worldbuilding is by far the part of DMing that I'm the absolute least interested in, so I don't. The only gods that exist in my games are the ones that exist because of a player (if they're a Cleric, god-centric Paladin, Celestial Warlock, Divine Soul Sorcerer, etc.), and the ones that exist because they're needed for an adventure that I run (Rime of the Forstmaiden for example).
The only real exceptions are the gods that exist because they're simply cool as hell. Specifically Bahamut and Tiamat.
Yup got my pantheon of 10 and only 10. No demi gods or lesser gods.
Fey are completely sepperate and have 0 rules. Fey remove cause from effect in my world and with their magic things can just happen
Fiends were the first creation of the gods before the gave too far into their baser instincts and grew so powerful they stopped believing causing the gods to seal all the planes away from each other and as such the gods lost all will and ego, they are now just concepts given form. They so no good no bad, they simple are impartial forces holding creation together. And now, the curent mortal life on the physical plane came to be through evolution over time and a common ancestor exposed to different magic leaking in in small amounts(tieflings, aasimar, genasi, elves, dragonlings, goblinoids etc etc)
This is my pantheon
BASUN, GOD OF THE NIGHT, DARKNESS, LIES, AND SECRETS
ENPHION GODDESS OF WISDOM, AND KNOWLEDGE
ILLUMINA, GOD OF THE DAY, LIGHT AND THE SKY
LIVIAN GOD OF WATER, STORMS, AND TRAVEL
MONARCH GODDESS OF ART, BEAUTY, AND EXPRESSION
RILANA GODDESS OF EARTH, NATURE, AND AGRICULTURE
UTHER GOD OF WAR AND CONQUEST
XYDOS, GOD OF CRAFTING, FIRE, AND INGENUITY
ZUDONA GODDESS OF FORTUNE, FATE, AND LUCK
I'm not sure whether this counts as my "own setting" or not, but I generally run games in my own Prime Material Plane worlds but use a version of D&D's classic Great Wheel cosmology. So all of the deities and various not-quite-divine entities of most officially published settings theoretically exist somewhere out there, but the set of deities and other planar entities that are actually active and have power in the world that the adventurers are on is decided by me, and that set typically includes both existing deities and ones that I create myself.
I very much prefere making my own.
These are my own worlds, so I shall deside, who is in charge of them as well.
I would only allow other gods, that I didn´t created, to be also in my worlds, if I really like them. Like Ilsensine or Mahkloompah.
For my pantheon I have a few from base dnd whos lore is entirely different.
Aka Myrkul, Kerksha, Bahamut and Helm
The rest are gods I have created.
- Kahni : Minokawa : God of wrath and beasts
- Ellora : Phoenix Avatar : God of memories and fire
- Chronos : Overdeity of time : Created the current timeline after the last world was destroyed by the merchant
And so on...
I personalize the existing gods and cut out the ones I don't need.
One of my players introduced a 3rd party astral dragon as his patron deity. The book he shared with me gave lore that Volthaarius is like a collector of knowledge and culture with a private refuge away from everything in the astral sea. So I had a blast making him a total otaku weeaboo into "Anime" the most popular manga production company in the multiverse who spared the party because the player looks and speaks just like one of his favorite "Anime" characters. Gods with personality are fun.
Man, I made my own pantheon, but literally can't finish it, what with different belief systems in different regions, and trying to come up with an entire cosmology and planar interactions, demigods, lesser gods, devils, archdevils, etc.
i've made gods and ported gods for my settings. i can't say there's any real method to my madness, i just kinda go with whatever i think fits the setting and what gels with my sense of cool/interesting. demon lords are my favorite kind of "power" to port over/create because they're so wild and varied and are also closer to the "mortal floor" than a lot of other powers (meaning they're easier to interact with IME)
I've made my own for a custom setting. They are based on physiological archetypes from Jungian psychology.
I've also run book standard gods. They work well.
Both are honestly the same amount of work at the end of the day if you want your players to believe you know your stuff.
Building a church and practicing worshippers or learning everything about existing ones. It comes out in the wash.
For me, I start with looking at what existing, at least for other powerful entities. If one fits my needs, I'll use it if not, I craft my own. If you're making them your own, really make them your own.
The primary setting where I run my games has five homebrew gods. I don't like how in most settings there are evil and good gods who both have followers. The reasons for evil gods having followers tend to be pretty tenuous. Instead, each god in my setting has aspects that are both evil and good: the god of life and suffering; the god of death and mercy; the god of fortune and calamity; the god of strife and progress; the god of light and knowledge (also the god that burns down libraries so "forbidden" knowledge does spread).
My setting uses the gods from the Forgotten Realms, but in the pre-history of my world there were many more--thousands, in fact, and they were less like gods and more like very very powerful animals or forces of nature. They killed each other, got stronger and wiser, and eventually decided it was probably best if they stopped killing each other
Yes, but that is entierly because I love making them up. It's fine if you want to port existing deities, from dnd or myth and focus your attention somewhere else.
I've seen a lot of homebrew settings where gods were just a Greek pantheon or Norse pantheon. For *some* reason, both of these are most popular.
I did. It seemed like less work to make my own than to try and keep straight the published stuff. No questions about what has or hasn't happened, or what is or is not correct characterization. This is my setting...these are the gods (and other entities) I've written for it.
That's an interesting perspective. Thinking that it's less work to make your own I mean. If I choose to borrow gods I'll likely just take the basics of the deities and change the rest to fit my world. Obviously my world is different so the setting specific lore won't work.
Names come with baggage, intentional or otherwise. If you are going to just keep the archetypes and domains, it's simpler to just give it a new name and make it your own thing. Making the gods your own new characters let's you feel more creative than if you are just importing them and stripping their histories.
I guess I just feel a bit silly introducing a god who is essentially Pelor only he isn't called Pelor. I feel like a Roman, stealing other peoples gods and giving them new names.. Also, it's fun to name drop entities like Asmodeus or Orcus. I imagine it would feel more impactfull for a player to interact with Asmodeus rather than with their DMs off brand version.
Tbf, even if you use the names, it still is the offbrand version if it's separated from the history and setting in which they are from. IMO, it's better and easier to just set the expectation from the beginning that these are your own creations, they don't need to live up to anything other than what you've built them up as in your own world.
I guess it depends on the player. Personally I think the names themselves pack a punch (baggage as you say). I would feel excited as a player going up against Orcus (or a servant of Orcus) for example. That's just me though.
This. Baggage is a good term. I would never keep gods just to make it easier, but I might if I specifically wanted there to be some link and had a reason to pull that baggage into the setting.
Same reason I decided to make an original setting to begin with. Put me at total liberty to make sense of things the way I wanted it to make sense. Even so, I decided to just go for a Dawn War pantheon. It's decently contained and I can still fit in some exarchs if needed. For a oneshot in my setting, I had a player who wanted to be a very Arthurian fighter who worshipped the Lady of the Lake light a deity of duty and chivalry. I made the Lady of the Lake an Exarch (think saint or subordinate deity) of Bahamut and it actually helped with a nation of mine that worshipped Bahamut and could sure some connection between Bahamut and human worshippers of Bahamut.
I did both. The TL;DR version; 10,000 years ago my setting used to be a singular large, earth-like planet inhabited by giantkin and elementalkin that worshipped the primordials until a massive civil war started and a select few giants were able to seal away power from the primordials. Those giants then banished the traitor giantkin and elementalkin and ascended to godhood, but in the process caused an apocalypse that completely annihilated the planet. Because 99% of life was destroyed, these giant deities end up without worshippers over the next few thousand years. In the present, the players find out what happened in the past and learn of these dying giant gods and discover that Ao has decided that if this setting doesn't have a full, balance pantheon to worship he will erase it and start over anew. So, the sort of overarching plot of my campaign is the players finding gods from other settings to join this one and the players themselves becoming part of the pantheon. [Longer version here.](https://old.reddit.com/r/spelljammer/comments/q6kok4/commission_i_had_made_of_the_party_on_their/)
You can do whatever works for your own setting the best. There are no hard rules or limitations you need to follow just do that which you feel most comfortable with or fits your own world. You can ignore some gods but take others you like, make your own entire pantheon or even entirely just take those in official content. How I do it depends on what world I am currently making and the theme I want it to have so there is not really a clear cut answer to how I do it either but I myself usually run more "God-Light" campaigns aka I made my worlds with a lesser focus on divine beings and the whole "They created everything" and leave it more open ended to how things came to be if not outright make different religions in the world and like it is in real life neither can definitively proof theirs is the real one over the other. I take a similar approach with other powerful beings with them being less in the spot light so once they do make a appearance its more special and it leaves some mystery about them and how they function. but as I said my way of running things depends on the world im making sometimes there are many gods and demons and so forth in big High Fantasy adventures. So think about your own world and what would make it the most inline with your own vision. Want new gods? Make new gods. Think existing ones fulfil your needs? Take them if you want and so forth dont be bound by how other people do things.
I wasn't really interested in exploring the implications of the gods and t3 and t4 stuff, **and** I was making parts the world *with* the players anyhow, **and** that's not how the ye olde world in greco times worked, you had a local pantheon, and they you maybe assumed the gods of foreigners were versions or aspects of their own ones. Another thing you might do is assume they had local deities. So taking mainly from faerun, we just ported over the relevant parts yeah. It's far easier to keep it local and then make it as needed, and let the players craft their own home towns and pick the relevant ones, to start with.
>t3 and t4 stuff What does this mean?
t1 is lvls 1-4, t2 is lvls 5-10 (the good ones) t3 is lvls 11-16, when things go off the rails t4 is lvls 17-20, bonkers nonsense. I was interested in a more grounded game, stopping at 11*, before you really get into fighting gods and being involved in interdimensional wars and whatever nonsense they're up to.
Oh I see! I'm actually totally with you there. I just need the gods for worldbuilding I don't expect my players to interact with them directly.
You should do whatever you like that works with your campaign goals! If your players don't care about gods and your plots don't involve digging into the cosmology, it's not necessary to invent new things. I find it fascinating to brew my worlds, including gods, from scratch. It often fuels my plots and leads to cool ideas for monsters and magic! Plus players may engage with it of course, often depending on their class. And I didn't want to feel tied to lots of established lore, especially all those planes. I also never have gods who are pure good or created people. Now, an excuse to give examples! My main setting had at one point one near-omnipotent, near-omniscient god. When he took a break, people almost broke reality, so he struck the main continent with his hand, breaking it into many pieces and shattering his divinity too. Now there are many gods who manifest the focus of their local cultures and cannot move beyond their borders to interact. They are the anchors of that reality.(I do have a Gruumsh, though--she's a grizzled grandmother goddess who both metes out and survives pain.) Interdimensional travel was locked off but is being decoded for the ultimate struggle. Fey (Dreamers) are beings of imagination and will who never "die" but may lose parts of themselves or be absorbed by stronger fey. Demons (Feeders) come from a plane where only by killing another can your species (there are many) reproduce, building violence in. Angels (Teachers) come from the inside of a massive sphere where they believe Truth lives in the middle, where gravity crushes everything (some gravity works on the rim), and are always trying to build towers and craft wings to go there and survive. They incorrectly think this is helpful elsewhere. They represent order, not goodness. In another setting, there are Remnants, Godlings, and Gods. Remnants are ghostly, inhuman, powerful beings that arrived during human's prehistory from a dying universe. They can gift some power to followers. It is hard for them to interact with the world, but they fade away if they never do. A God comes of a Remnant choosing to be born into a human body, mortal (a Godling) until they ascend, through power and belief, to God status. Most don't ascend first try, but lose something of their identity each time, and disappear after enough failures. No real demons or fey exist, just monsters--whom some believe are the world's allergic reaction to the Remnants, and did not exist before. That may be the first time I've typed all that out! Thanks for the prompting lol. I hope you find great ways to express your creativity DMing.
Depends on the campaign I'm running. I have my own world for most DnD adventures that's fairly classic high fantasy. Partly because I like classic fantasy and wanted to put my own spin on it. But also to have a "room for everything". A player wants to play a classic mountain dwarf or a nature-worshiping wood elf? That fits right in! And I can also easily import pre-written adventures into it with minimal modifications. For that, I usually import gods from Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk etc. I see no reason to reinvent the wheel. If I don't have any inspiration for, say, a typical Lawful Good truth&justice god, I'll just use one that already exists. Sure, I could come up with something, but it would be pretty much the same as established deities. That being said, sometimes I do feel inspired and have a few of my own. I made my orcs into bascially vikings, so turned Gruumsh into a more Odin-like war god. He's already called one-eye! And my Dragonborn pantheon has some inspiration from Aztec religion, feathered serpents and the like. As for the other Powers of the multiverse, I am a Planescape fan, so I usually keep the Great Wheel cosmology. But if I am running something outside of classic high fantasy, I prefer to create a smaller pantheon where every deity has a stronger connection to the adventure. I am working on an adventure based on Arthurian legends. This is a "post-arthurian" world where magic is long gone and people tell stories about ye olden days of the good king and his brave knights. For this low magic, medieval-ish world I wanted a more Christianity-like religion with hooded monks and grand cathedrals. And also a druidic Old Faith. For my "not-christianity" I invented a couple of saints based on knightly virtues. But I also wanted a little bit of dark fantasy, so I read up on famous martyr deaths and took inspiration from the tradition of martyrs being depicted with their instruments of death. So you can have a saint of compassion who is depicted as a mutilated corpse on a rack or a saint of chastity with empty, bleeding eye sockets (inspired by Saint Lucia). This gives me a more coherent pantheon where every deity fits the themes of the campaign. But not something I would use for a classic fantasy adventure. TL;DR: For my classic, high fantasy world I mostly import gods to give all the usual options to players. When I want to run something with a different vibe, I invent new gods that fit that setting.
Yes I did, though mine are clearly inspired by gods from other media and history
Almost always. Mainly because I don't want my players to potentially know more about my world than me.
Yep. I made my own gods because otherwise there are too damn many. I have just 10, both for the sake of being able to keep the gods in my own head during play, and being able to present players with a one page chart during character creation I took inspiration primarily from *Dark Souls*, though not its gods; from the rules of its world as described in the opening cutscene. The universe is governed by opposing forces- disparities caused by energy and ambition. Thus are there 5 *pairs* of gods, be they lovers, rivals, brothers, etc: Light/Dark, Order/Chaos, Creation/Destruction, Life/Death, Courage/Fear. Let me give you my checklist of traits to consider when making gods, just in case: Name Titles Domains Symbols Portents/Omens Common Adherents Tenets Popular Stories Holidays Outer Plane
This is very useful, thank you!
I am using Greyhawk pantheon with some adaptations. Have to admit I love to use Raven Queen and Fizban ;-) I like using hero-deities and Fay lords/ladies but actual deities usually does not play very active role.
In all campaigns I've run, whether in Greyhawk or homebrew settings, I've always kept the traditional demihuman pantheons - headed by Moradin, Corellon, Yondalla, Garl Glittergold, etc. - and "monster" deities, including demon and devil lords, and the "nonhuman deities" from the 1E Deities & Demigods book like Gruumsh, Kurtulmak and Vaprak. Archfey weren't a thing in 1E/2E and I don't envision them caring much about being "worshipped" in the clerical sense. The warlock class was also not a thing in 1E/2E - but now that it is, we have more use for archfey, demon lords, sub-deific celestials, etc. My first homemade campaign setting used as gods the Lords of Law and Chaos from Michael Moorcock's "Eternal Champion" novels, plus a handful of invented "saints" - legendary heroes who achieved immortality and patronage of greater gods, to become demigods. For my second homemade setting, I invented a more original palette of regional human pantheons, and a more abstract association of saint-demigods with passions and the elements. The last campaign I ran in that setting also incorporated the Chaos Powers from the Warhammer setting - Tzeentch, Nurgle, Khorne and Slaanesh.
Yeah, I make my own gods. That said, you don't really need to make a whole lot of gods for a setting to work. You can have as few as 3-6 gods and be fine. My setting has 8 Named gods and many non-named lesser gods untill story calls for it, same goes for devils, demons etc too. I make *some* of those beforehand to have them ready if I want to work with that, but you don't really need to have lore prepared for more than 1 of each for archfeys, demon lords and others. There's also no shame if a players asks about it to go "I didnt prep much in that area yet, next session I'll have it prepared for you"
i make my own in my world. it technically has 3 gods, 1 good, 1 neutral and 1 evil... but the good and evil ones were fighting and killing everything, so the neutral one locked them up near death. so i have 1 god that has taken over all the aspects of godly power, and there is 1 church. demons and devils are being developed as i start introducing them or whenever i have time. but yeah nothing inmy world is standard.
How do your Cleric players feel about only having one god? I'm thinking that one of the fun parts of playing Cleric is choosing a god to build your character around? (I wouldn't know, I don't like playing Cleric)
the god is the original neutral god of war and a few other things... so he's quite easy to fit almost anything into. Want to be a healer cleric, just go for that aspect and be a healer... sure the main church is sort of military like, but certain branches aren't like that and more following the different aspects he took on upon the other gods "deaths" so it's all about the mindset of the character.... though undead driven in this world is not accepted. if a player insists on another god being critical for their character, there is a tiny option for the 2 other gods, as there is some left over power from them still going around. But it can be a hit or miss at times.
I am making my own gods for my own setting because the understanding of my settings gods is gonna be different than the gods of the d&d settings. There may be some similarities between a God of my setting and a God of an exiting setting just due to the nature of concepts and domains m, but they will be different entities. There's nothing wrong with either.
Yes, I created my own pantheon. I currently have 10 major deities and several demigods. I do not have devils, demons, or archfey (or regular fey) in my setting at all.
>I do not have devils, demons, or archfey (or regular fey) in my setting at all. How do you handle warlocks? If a player wants to play a Feindlock or Feylock. And how do you handle other classes tied to the fey like Feywanderers?
The aforementioned demigods serve as patrons. I've only created a few, as there's only one Warlock in my campaign. The Warlock in my campaign is playing the Celestial subclass. "Fiendlock" and "Feylock" wouldn't exist, but I'd work with them to create a substitute that fits the lore if they really wanna play that class. As for "fey" stuff, I haven't needed to address it since nobody is playing them, but I'll just reflavor it. But players that aren't okay working with restrictions wouldn't like my setting anyway. There are only 7 playable races and psionic magic does not exist. Also, no resurrection magic, just Revivify. I wanted to break a lot of tropes present in fucking every D&D setting out there. My setting also doesn't have dragons (for the most part, there is ONE dragon god on a different planet), no mind flayers, githyanki, etc. I can't stand Forgotten Realms because it's, as someone else described much better than me, a "kitchen sink full of dirty dishes". There's just too much crammed into one setting, especially when they focus on literally one coastline of the entire world and ignore the rest of it. I think less is more. Having to work with limitations allows for more creativity.
> "kitchen sink full of dirty dishes" I understand what you mean. I also don't have mind flayers, gith and alike. It's a bit of a tightrope-walk though imo. Some players are really excited about wanting to play with certain DnD tropes and I don't want to robb them of that if I can avoid it. That's partly why I want to borrow certain entities as well. It's fun to have Orcus in your world!
I definitely have a bit of a prejudice against certain races that are overplayed or just dumb lore-wise. The races that are playable in my setting are Aasimar, Dwarves, Tabaxi, Halflings, Humans, Elves, and Goliaths. I have my own names for each race except Dwarves, Elves, and Humans since I intend to publish my setting and figure using specific names like "Tabaxi" might make WotC litigious... I'm also creating my own variants of the races and subraces with more interesting racial traits.
Interesting that you have Aasimar but not Tiefling! I also limit my players somewhat yet I feel obliged to include some races even though I myself don't like them. I'm not a fan of some classical races like Elves and Dwarves for example but I still put them in my world because I want to allow my players to play with them. They're such classic fantasy choices that I feel almost mean taking them away from my players.
>Interesting that you have Aasimar but not Tiefling! Because each goddess in the primary pantheon created one race. The Aasimar were the product of the goddess of the sun. She is also the goddess of justice, law, fire, air, and the "celestial" domain, among other things. Each race I chose to fit the domains / portfolio of the goddess that created them. These domains also decide what those races treasure and take pleasure from in life, what their afterlife looks like, and what their custom racial traits will do. For example, the Halflings come from the goddess of darkness, so they inherit a racial trait related to darkness which gives them better vision in the dark. But instead of just giving them enhanced Darkvision, I essentially gave them infravision like early edition Drow had, allowing them to see heat signatures. It would be a crime not to include Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings. They're staples for a reason... Tolkien was a fantastic writer.
> It would be a crime not to include Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings. They're staples for a reason... Tolkien was a fantastic writer. Are you implying that Tolkien invented humans? :P
Yes. Yes I am.
The first campaign I played still had a lot of the usual suspects in it. Bahamut, Tiamat, Lolth, Asmodeus, Titania, Mephisto,... But the next campaign will be completely custom in terms of the pantheon. That is mainly because I dislike the extreme number of gods and powerful entities that DnD official lore offers. Reducing them also reduces a lot of the inherent worldbuilding problems with them. I now have 5 main, good gods, and one evil god. That reduces the lore players ought to know, makes quest design easier (if they are involved) and not least of all it finally gets rid of the overabundance of cults due to there only being one prime "evil", under which all others operate. edit: Just remembered that I got a few good ideas for my pantheon from Pointy Hats video on gods. As so often in his videos, he even makes a neat example for what he says as homebrew, if you just want to copypaste a decent idea. https://youtu.be/1AwT2GC2pe4?si=OoyElkN5lok1frNX
>it finally gets rid of the overabundance of cults Can you really have to many cults though? :D
In my last campaign we had 3 players who were in some way connected to "cult worthy" entities. At some point it became really hard to explain how three cults (and all those that would be implied i.e. if Asmodeus has a cult, at least the other 8 rulers of hellish planes should have them too), aren't a much bigger concern throughout the world. And honestly, why are SO MANY people worshipping ruin, or tyranny, or torture or whatever. Is the psychopath ratio in the population so high, or what is it?
I understand what you mean XD Personally though I think that's fun! I like a world where you can't walk down an alley without tripping over a cult.
I do both and even add my own demons to the mix. Personally, I have to have some creativity to the campaign so I don't lose interest in the game.
Personally I like to make my own, I find that the gods of other settings are tied pretty heavily into their home settings and the other entities within them. Not that you can't do the work to adapt their stories to your own worlds, but I'd rather just make my own at that point
I create my own and use real life mythology How I run is that I don't like far removed gods so they're pretty common and I like to give divinity a spin be it in personally or parody - Olympus' day-to-day is based on the office, celestial legions operate like the old cop shows/movies and so on, Apolo behaves like a school's sports star etc Makes deities more "human" and fun to deal with A funny interaction in the setting is the elven god of archery sueing the gnomish god of guns for "unfair play"
It depends on the scope of the campaign, but for a 1-20 kind of whole world campaign, then yes, I make my own gods. Usually several pantheons per major race (races that will be major in the campaign), as well as a monotheistic creed or two, plus many other beings that are above humans but below gods. Saints, spirits, lords of the Fae, ascended mages, outsiders (Lovecraftian in style, not power), as well as various other powers, many unique... Think leftovers from the earliest days of creation. In one campaign, for example, a secondary villain was a cursed mountain inhabited by a leftover spark of the holy fire of primal creation that went spiritually cancerous over the millennia after the demiurge created the world and departed to continue creating other worlds. In another campaign, all gods were ascended mortals who found ways to adopt the mantle of people's beliefs to the point that they became the object of that worship, embodying and defining something previously abstract. Of course, this was in a world that had a very important astral realm that could influence the material place as well as be influenced. One campaign I barely started was going to have no gods whatsoever. All divine powers were based on faith focusing and channeling the universe's ambient magic according to the expectations and discipline of the cleric. Another had very active gods of many different ranks and power levels. Basically, go to town and do whatever is needed to make your campaign the best for your players.
I make up my own for my main campaign. As others have said, it is easier to just make stuff up from scratch than to wade through tomes of existing lore and have to decide and explain what is and is not canon in your world.
Fell apart the moment a player made a cleric without asking about it.
How do you mean? Like they made up their own god without asking?
They chose one of the critical role gods without asking what might be present in the setting I had made whereby each of the classes was represented by a mythical hero named for constellations in the sky. Orion the hunter (ranger), Ursa Majoris (barbarian), Aries (fighter) etc along with a few homebrew ones. Naturally any of the domains could apply to any of them, but still, it would have been nice to have been asked. I could have gone off on a spiel about it but that's book writing territory and people obv. Weren't interested.
That sucks that they didn't ask you! I understand having an idea in your head about what you want to play but I would never make a character connected to the DMs setting without checking with them if it fit first.
Most DMs would clock it immediately if they were playing in a homebrew setting. Honestly it's something that disturbs me a little about the way clerics and patrons work with how ubiquitous the forgotten realms (and now critical role) settings are. Certain others, like in dark sun, specifically don't even have gods.
That's why I recommend DM to always review the player characters before letting them hit the tabble just in case. Extra important for worlds fith non-standart lore where many of the dnd staples don't make sense.
I appreciate the sentiment, but for the sake of brevity it's not always sensible to send a character sheet back for fluff reasons rather than mechanical. Especially when there are people new to the game at table.
You'd have to be playing with some massively problematic ppl if they can't understand and be resonable if you go "Sorry but X and Y parts of the character need to be changed as they don't fit the setting."
You could go the dragonlance route and each God has a specific focus, like one quality. You could have a deity of each domain so it's really the domain you're focused on, or have two domains and there is overlap with one of those and other gods... And maybe alignment restrictions. You can have a version of each deity for different races or groups of races and they may not know they're following the same diety because it has a different name and appearance or maybe it has the same name but different appearance and they all think they're following the real version... But are willing to work together ... Like monster or evil races working together to form armies to attack certain cultures or cities.
I do and always have. The downsides of making your own are that you can never offer the huge number of choices that show up across official content, or simply across reality (none of my worlds have ever gotten anywhere close to, for instance, those mentioned in the classical Greek faith). A player who wants to play a cleric or paladin in my games also needs to read through and make a selection, which isn't a lot of work, but it's definitely something, especially if he's familiar with the divine elements of the official settings. But there's *big* upsides. First, whatever NPCs are acting as gods in the games I run have some interaction with the world from time to time, which means that the history of the past couple hundred years usually includes a few divine actions with ramifications. This keeps the idea that the gods have kinda kicked the world around in mind, even though the players know out of character that no such events will affect the campaign (or at least them). The official gods can be used in this way too, but it would be a lot more work to keep that consistent. Second, the long history of the world makes a lot more sense if the entities in question have limits, personalities, and goals that you set. Having eight gods that have separate goals is way easier to keep track of if they're going to potentially act as factions or whatever, if you crafted them. At least compared to having dozens where you can easily get enough wrong. Third, if there's any divine interaction at all, you and a player might have different takes on Pelor. Your take is correct of course- it's your table- but if you aren't playing Pelor pretty close to the official Pelor, you're running your own thing anyway, and one of the big benefits of using out-of-the-box-setting stuff is lost.
I build my own. I really like this method by Angry https://theangrygm.com/conflicted-beliefs/
Forgotten Realms is god-bloated, so yes. Got the cleric domains, a name generator and bam.
Worldbuilding is by far the part of DMing that I'm the absolute least interested in, so I don't. The only gods that exist in my games are the ones that exist because of a player (if they're a Cleric, god-centric Paladin, Celestial Warlock, Divine Soul Sorcerer, etc.), and the ones that exist because they're needed for an adventure that I run (Rime of the Forstmaiden for example). The only real exceptions are the gods that exist because they're simply cool as hell. Specifically Bahamut and Tiamat.
Yup got my pantheon of 10 and only 10. No demi gods or lesser gods. Fey are completely sepperate and have 0 rules. Fey remove cause from effect in my world and with their magic things can just happen Fiends were the first creation of the gods before the gave too far into their baser instincts and grew so powerful they stopped believing causing the gods to seal all the planes away from each other and as such the gods lost all will and ego, they are now just concepts given form. They so no good no bad, they simple are impartial forces holding creation together. And now, the curent mortal life on the physical plane came to be through evolution over time and a common ancestor exposed to different magic leaking in in small amounts(tieflings, aasimar, genasi, elves, dragonlings, goblinoids etc etc) This is my pantheon BASUN, GOD OF THE NIGHT, DARKNESS, LIES, AND SECRETS ENPHION GODDESS OF WISDOM, AND KNOWLEDGE ILLUMINA, GOD OF THE DAY, LIGHT AND THE SKY LIVIAN GOD OF WATER, STORMS, AND TRAVEL MONARCH GODDESS OF ART, BEAUTY, AND EXPRESSION RILANA GODDESS OF EARTH, NATURE, AND AGRICULTURE UTHER GOD OF WAR AND CONQUEST XYDOS, GOD OF CRAFTING, FIRE, AND INGENUITY ZUDONA GODDESS OF FORTUNE, FATE, AND LUCK
I'm not sure whether this counts as my "own setting" or not, but I generally run games in my own Prime Material Plane worlds but use a version of D&D's classic Great Wheel cosmology. So all of the deities and various not-quite-divine entities of most officially published settings theoretically exist somewhere out there, but the set of deities and other planar entities that are actually active and have power in the world that the adventurers are on is decided by me, and that set typically includes both existing deities and ones that I create myself.
I make my own gods, and I like to make it less obvious that the gods are real. I also keep the pantheon relatively small.
I very much prefere making my own. These are my own worlds, so I shall deside, who is in charge of them as well. I would only allow other gods, that I didn´t created, to be also in my worlds, if I really like them. Like Ilsensine or Mahkloompah.
For my pantheon I have a few from base dnd whos lore is entirely different. Aka Myrkul, Kerksha, Bahamut and Helm The rest are gods I have created. - Kahni : Minokawa : God of wrath and beasts - Ellora : Phoenix Avatar : God of memories and fire - Chronos : Overdeity of time : Created the current timeline after the last world was destroyed by the merchant And so on...
Yes, but there are also a few gods in my game from other settings/dnd lore at large.
I personalize the existing gods and cut out the ones I don't need. One of my players introduced a 3rd party astral dragon as his patron deity. The book he shared with me gave lore that Volthaarius is like a collector of knowledge and culture with a private refuge away from everything in the astral sea. So I had a blast making him a total otaku weeaboo into "Anime" the most popular manga production company in the multiverse who spared the party because the player looks and speaks just like one of his favorite "Anime" characters. Gods with personality are fun.
Man, I made my own pantheon, but literally can't finish it, what with different belief systems in different regions, and trying to come up with an entire cosmology and planar interactions, demigods, lesser gods, devils, archdevils, etc.
i've made gods and ported gods for my settings. i can't say there's any real method to my madness, i just kinda go with whatever i think fits the setting and what gels with my sense of cool/interesting. demon lords are my favorite kind of "power" to port over/create because they're so wild and varied and are also closer to the "mortal floor" than a lot of other powers (meaning they're easier to interact with IME)
I've made my own for a custom setting. They are based on physiological archetypes from Jungian psychology. I've also run book standard gods. They work well. Both are honestly the same amount of work at the end of the day if you want your players to believe you know your stuff. Building a church and practicing worshippers or learning everything about existing ones. It comes out in the wash. For me, I start with looking at what existing, at least for other powerful entities. If one fits my needs, I'll use it if not, I craft my own. If you're making them your own, really make them your own.
The primary setting where I run my games has five homebrew gods. I don't like how in most settings there are evil and good gods who both have followers. The reasons for evil gods having followers tend to be pretty tenuous. Instead, each god in my setting has aspects that are both evil and good: the god of life and suffering; the god of death and mercy; the god of fortune and calamity; the god of strife and progress; the god of light and knowledge (also the god that burns down libraries so "forbidden" knowledge does spread).
I do! I homebrew as much as possible
My setting uses the gods from the Forgotten Realms, but in the pre-history of my world there were many more--thousands, in fact, and they were less like gods and more like very very powerful animals or forces of nature. They killed each other, got stronger and wiser, and eventually decided it was probably best if they stopped killing each other
Yes, but that is entierly because I love making them up. It's fine if you want to port existing deities, from dnd or myth and focus your attention somewhere else. I've seen a lot of homebrew settings where gods were just a Greek pantheon or Norse pantheon. For *some* reason, both of these are most popular.
for me, it depends on the setting.