So my next campaign is a homebrew setting where there are Gods of Civilization and Gods of the Wild (with more focus on Law vs Chaos than Good vs Evil), and I wanted to have some moments here and there where the party actually encounters a god or two. Something like what you see in the Percy Jackson books or in the He Who Fights with Monsters LitRPG (if you’re familiar).
So anyway, I was wondering if any of you ever run games where the gods are a little more “up close and personal.” Not that they wander the Earth as mortals all the time, but that the appearance of a god in the town square, during a battle, in a temple service, or in response to a fervent prayer is not rare, though still uncommon.
If so, what affect does this have on gameplay or the story (if at all)?
If you strictly accept only proper, formal deities, thus far the campaign has only featured one (
the One, to be precise), and only under extremely limited circumstances.
In all other interactions with "the divine," it's been through representatives (read: priests, powerful semi-mortal proxies) or servants (read: powerful supernatural beings who act as agents for another), second-hand. This is very intentional. I wanted a setting where characters were
genuinely free to believe what they wish, including to believe in nothing at all. The servants of the One (specifically, a couatl named Tlacalicue) have made clear that the One knows,
and is perfectly fine with, the fact that They cannot prove Their divinity beyond any doubt. There is no magic, no science, no tool, no reasoning, genuinely nothing that can conclusively prove nor disprove Their claim. They simply say it is true, and They very intentionally leave it up to mortals to decide what they believe or don't.
There is sacred power in the freedom to choose. This is, according to the servants of the One, precisely by design. The One does not desire herds of passive, unthinking devotees. The One desires a universe
filled with new perspectives and thoughts. To impinge in any way on a sapient mind's freedom to choose for itself would thus be fundamentally contrary to the goal of Their (claimed) creation in the first place. It would be
irrational for Them to desire the tapestry of existence to be woven with the unique colors and thoughts of each mortal mind, only to then bleach and reweave each thread--the whole point is to get a tapestry of
new thoughts, not just endlessly recycle the same old ones.
If, however, you allow a broader range of what counts as "gods," as in beings of great power that receive reverence but aren't strictly
divine in context, then there have been several, they just don't tend to be directly involved in the lives of mortals very much. They're rather busy being the sapient (or sometimes only partly-sapient) essence of all the
stuff that makes up the world. The World-Serpent, who both guards and shakes the earth and fulfills the cycle of the seasons; the First Oak, from which all forests draw some measure of strength; the Elder Flame, ditto but for fires; etc. Of these, the only two the party has personally interacted with are the World-Serpent and the Spirit of All Winds. The former was a direct conversation. The latter was an indirect calling on the part of our (now-retired) party Druid.
Are there other gods? Not known. No other religions that actually posit distinct gods have been encountered thus far. Most religious traditions other than the Safiqi (who revere the One) are either animist in nature or hierarchical (e.g. the "Celestial Bureaucracy" of Yuxia, the Jade Home, with the "August Jade Emperor" at its apex, whom the Safiqi Priesthood recognizes as a different name for the One.) At least one now-lost culture seems to have used a lot of triune/trefoil/trinity symbolism, but exactly what this means is no longer known.