Basic D&D/D20 setting: Single vs. multiple Pantheons

[Cergorach]

The basis of every campaign world are the forces that made and shaped it: the gods, their servants, and followers.

I feel inspired and am in the creative mood to start writing a 'new' campaign world, nothing new there, but there's a twist... I need it to follow the following guidelines:
1. Everything i 'use' from other sources needs to be OGC or in the public domain, because everything written in this project will be OGC.
2. The end result needs to be fully compatible with the 'core' SRD with options open for the rest of the SRD (Psionics, Epic, etc.).
3. The setting must be understandable for new players and familiar to veterans.

So the basic setting needs to be relatively light so that new players (to RPGs/D&D/D20/Setting) can start without needing to read a book on the setting, while DMs have enough material to get their players through a complete campaign.

So i know what kind of results i want, there is also a personal need to be thorough. I want to start at the beginning, when the gods made the world and populated it. I want to chronicle the events that lead to the current setting, that will give the setting a history and a consistency that will help in the campaign development.

Sounds dandy so far, but then i hit a snag, do i use a single (limited) pantheon or multiple panteons. The obvious question i ask myself is "What's more basic D&D like?" and to be honest, i don't really know anymore... So i ask you folks.

A. Go with a single pantheon for the whole world (with different names in other cultures).
or
B. Go with multiple pantheons for each distinct culture.

Any advice?

ps. the general idea is to create a legal free source for beginning RPGers (or RPGers fallen on hard times).

 

[Wyrm Pilot]

I say single pantheon - but not "limited" as you say. There should be 1 or 2 greater deities, 5-10 intermediate, 12-18 lesser, and any number of demigods, enough so that if your players want to worship a particular kind of god you can say "oh, here's one." But, single pantheon is easier to explain than "Oh, well the dwarves worship these gods over here, and the humans from the Southern Planes have this pantheon..." Simpler to have one set, and different names for each god depending on the native culture of the worshipper.

Also, please don't have a bunch of good gods and a "god of evil," one thing I really like about the Forgotten Realms setting is that the main pantheon has a good balance of power and enough breadth to satisfy just about anyone. I don't endorse plagarism, but I would suggest considering the combined pantheons of FR (and probably Greyhawk) as good models for complexity and diversity.

Cheers,
Wyrm Pilot
____________________

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushing glen,
We dare not go a-hunting
For fear of little men.
-- William Allingham, "The Fairies"

The dew has fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning.
-- Douglas Noël Adams

 

[Crothian]

I use a single Panthion but it can have the illusion of multiple. THe dwarves have different names for the gods then the elves for instance. And in a dwarf temple the gods are carved to look like dwarves and what they know while in the elf temple they look like elves.

 

[Feldspar]

I'd say that going with a single pantheon is better for a Basic setting. Its the easiest to pull off and allows you to focus your energy on making that one pantheon as rich as possible (both in flavor text and crunchy stuff like church specific feats, domains and PRC's).

The Kalamar setting goes with the one set of gods many names approach, so you might want to hit devotees of that setting up for info on how they like it. I remember there being some things that I really liked

• a feat that lets clerics convert a turn/rebuke undead use into some other kind of effect depending on which diety was worshipped
• description of the main religious text for each faith
• description of church organization (names of ranks within, identifying garb, etc)

Interestingly, one of the things I didn't like was that it seemed like there were too many evil gods. The basically have an equal number of gods for each possible alignment type. When you have 4-5 LE, 4-5 NE and 4-5 CE gods, well that's a lot of evil gods. Especially since these are overt flat out obviously evil dudes.

I like my evil to come in subtler packages - I want the church of Hextor, for example, to roll in to town saying "we bring Order" not "we bring Evil". But when one of the followers of one of these gods make their presence known ...
Diety:            Church:                     Clergy:
The Overlord      The House of Shackles       Bringers of the New Order
The Flaymaster    Order of Agony              Ministry of Misery
Rotlord           Conveticle of Affliction    The Pestilent Ones
Prince of Terror  Temple of Sleepless Nights  Fellowship of Terror
... then even the dumbest yokel is going to realize that the grass is probably greener on the other side of hill and that they should get outta dodge while they still have feet attached to their legs.

Anyway, while I think multiple pantheons can be really interesting, you then have to deal with how those pantheons interact. Just how many gods of War are there? If they're all brawling with each Highlander style to be the only one left, it does tend to reduce them to gods with a little 'g'. I mean, they're powerful entities, but once they lose that sort of uniqueness, they lose (IMO) a lot of their divinity as well. I hate the way they do things in FR - you expect me to WORSHIP some middle manager who was appointed, possibly being raised from mortal status, to manage a "portfolio" by some other more powerful being? I might make deals and bargains with such powers, but worship them out of awe? Never.

For a homebrew, I'm working on an idea of multiple pantheons, but with gods that are so completely non-interfering that no one can even be sure that they truly exist. Trying to put some faith back into these religions. Of course, how that then interacts with lots of spells, alignment, outsider type creatures, etc is a big old mess I have yet to get a firm grip on.

 

[Nyeshet]

If you are starting with a new world, a single pantheon is easier to work with and work around. That doesn't mean that they can't still have religious strife. Just look at how many wars have been fought over the 'correct' way to worship YHWH/God/Allah in this world - despite most of those religions openly accepting that they follow the same deity. In a world where they are not necessarily aware of that you could make the situation even worse - especially if the deities are distant and communicate mostly through portents, signs, and other less readily legible / understandable forms of communication.

Perhaps the Orcs worship deity A and look upon deity B as a dangerous trickster figure that tries to draw them away from the worship of deity A and towards a weaker lifestyle that breeds only those unable to survive the harshness of their environment. Perhaps the Elves look upon deity B as a benevolent / protective deity and deity A as a savage deity of ill repute - rarely worshipped except for appeasement. Both sides can be right, after all, making the situation even more complex. Perhaps the Elves ever 'recognize' that the deity B worshipped by some uncommon orcs is 'allied' with their own deity B, not fully realizing that they are the same deity. (Well, the higher ranking clergy might realize it, but it was common in ancient times for religions to have Mysteries that were only known to the clergy - esp the highest ranking clergy.)

Kalamar uses such a system incidentally - of a single pantheon with different names in different cultures / races.

As for me, personally, I would use a single pantheon to begin with, but I would start in or near a kingdom that is just recently emerged enough from the Dark Ages to begin explorations (for spices, gold, gems, new trade partners / trade routes, re-discovery of hidden artifacts / knowledge / ruins, etc). Once the party was high enough in level to be approached by some wealthy merchant guild or noble house for exploration abroad, they would soon after begin encountering signs of other deities unknown and eventually other religions and pantheons as they expanded the map of the known world.

 

[drothgery]

Heck, if you're trying to simplify things you might go for straightforward monotheism (or dualism).

 

[rounser]

The simplest, most generic D&D pantheon I could come up with was just elemental lord/prince/archomental worship:

Good:
Zaaman Rul (Fire)
Ben-Hadar (Water)
Chan (Air)
Sunnis (Earth)

Neutral:
Kossuth (Fire)
Ishtishia (Water)
Akadi (Air)
Grumbar (Earth)

Evil:
Imix (Fire)
Olhydra (Water)
Yan C Bin (Air)
Ogremoch (Earth)

(Plus, optionally Cryonax and the Elder Elemental God, along with a dozen odd pretenders and paraelementals, although they throw out the alignment and elemental symmetry if included.)

It's easy to grasp, fits all races, is setting neutral, has strong ties to D&D "shared history", and the elemental stuff is thematically strong for both priests and temples. Plus, these critters are fightable like demon lords and archdevils, making them useful as BBEGs.

 

[Sigg]

I would recommend single pantheon along the lines of Birthright where the same god can have multiple sects who often violently disagree with each other.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Multiple pantheons - this is much more interesting, by default.

While I've nothing against the idea of a single pantheon taking several guises, it's just not my preference.

The forementioned monotheism/dualism should probably have been considered too, though. Are there many D&D/d20 settings that use this as the basis for their cosmology? It's just that I can't think of any right now.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

The forementioned monotheism/dualism should probably have been considered too, though. Are there many D&D/d20 settings that use this as the basis for their cosmology? It's just that I can't think of any right now.

Dragonstar has the Dualist Heresy.