So, I'm making a setting for my next campaign, called Westhold, and I'm looking for advice on deities. More specifically, I can't decide if I want to go with a "the gods are definitely real, here's a pantheon" thing or more of a "many people believe in one or more gods, but there's no concrete evidence they exist" kind of setting.

I'm leaning towards the latter, but the former would be much easier to implement. If you have any more ideas, throw them into the comments.

If I were to go with a solid pantheon, there would be 9 "greater" deities, each representing an alignment (mostly taken from Forgotten Realms, such as Corellon, Bahamut, and Tiamat) and several "lesser" deities (such as Vecna, the Spider Queen, and Mask). High priests and clerics would get powers and abilities from any deity they worship as usual, but the greater deities would be less inclined to grant power than the lesser ones.

If you’re leaning towards the second of your two ideas (which I personally find more compelling, as the first one has IMO been done to death), I highly recommend looking at how the Eberron setting treats religions. In effect, faith is what grants divine magic, so no one knows if the “real“ religion is the Sovereign Host, the Blood of Vol, or something else entirely.

Have you considered a form of animism akin to Earth's santeria and/or shinto?

The basics of would align with the "no one's sure" thing and shake up the staid habitus of the status quo.  The world itself is filled with spirits who are out there and they may or may not respond to someone's entreaties, which are often a bargain of some sort or in some way -- if you do this for me, I will do this for you.

(note: I am not saying use the Loa or Kami, I am talking about the typology in rough)

This would combine with a form of ancestor worship easily (it does in real life), and mean that a there are small shrines in every store and every home, sometimes just sitting out there in the middle of nowhere, and they may not always be immediately recognized as such.

The format gives you some flexibility in world creation -- is it a monster or is it a spirit? Is it a spirit or is it Fey? is a fey a spirit?  It also gives you the ability to have clerics linked to an alignment, or incorporate the faith aspect mentioned as well, or even allow you to have some spirits who are very popular with the locals kind of get raised up to the level of a deity.

In this case, it does make Clerics something more akin to those who make deals for power, lol. and it means they can serve several dozen spirits, as well.

As said, the pantheon stuff (pretty much all of it D&D wise is derived from the proto-indo-european pantheon that spread out through Europe and western asia between 20 and 30 thousand years ago and only stopped when it ran into the areas east of the Black Sea and the currently described Kurgan peoples and the proto-Egyptian folks of the southern Mediterranean) has been done to death and often doesn't add much in a role playing sense unless serious effort is put into divinity set up.

OF course, as you likely know, I tend to see the entire divinity bit as a playground, lol.

Quote from Myastan_Torinn >>

If you’re leaning towards the second of your two ideas (which I personally find more compelling, as the first one has IMO been done to death), I highly recommend looking at how the Eberron setting treats religions. In effect, faith is what grants divine magic, so no one knows if the “real“ religion is the Sovereign Host, the Blood of Vol, or something else entirely.

 Good idea. In truth, I haven't had a good look at Eberron, though I really should read through the wiki page. I've heard it has a load of awesome, unique ideas.

Quote from AEDorsay >>

Have you considered a form of animism akin to Earth's santeria and/or shinto?

The basics of would align with the "no one's sure" thing and shake up the staid habitus of the status quo.  The world itself is filled with spirits who are out there and they may or may not respond to someone's entreaties, which are often a bargain of some sort or in some way -- if you do this for me, I will do this for you.

(note: I am not saying use the Loa or Kami, I am talking about the typology in rough)

This would combine with a form of ancestor worship easily (it does in real life), and mean that a there are small shrines in every store and every home, sometimes just sitting out there in the middle of nowhere, and they may not always be immediately recognized as such.

The format gives you some flexibility in world creation -- is it a monster or is it a spirit? Is it a spirit or is it Fey? is a fey a spirit?  It also gives you the ability to have clerics linked to an alignment, or incorporate the faith aspect mentioned as well, or even allow you to have some spirits who are very popular with the locals kind of get raised up to the level of a deity.

In this case, it does make Clerics something more akin to those who make deals for power, lol. and it means they can serve several dozen spirits, as well.

As said, the pantheon stuff (pretty much all of it D&D wise is derived from the proto-indo-european pantheon that spread out through Europe and western asia between 20 and 30 thousand years ago and only stopped when it ran into the areas east of the Black Sea and the currently described Kurgan peoples and the proto-Egyptian folks of the southern Mediterranean) has been done to death and often doesn't add much in a role playing sense unless serious effort is put into divinity set up.

OF course, as you likely know, I tend to see the entire divinity bit as a playground, lol.

 

 I love the animism idea, and incorporating aspects of Japanese mythology and philosophy into the setting. My only worry is the possibility of misrepresentation and accidentally drawing from misconceptions about the topic. And that it might make clerics, paladins, warlocks, and monks thematically very similar.

I've almost entirely abandoned the idea of a typical medieval fantasy pantheon. I've never been interested in religion and deities (probably why I'm an atheist hah), though religion is fascinating from a cultural standpoint. The Shinto religion is especially interesting, and I'll probably end up drawing inspiration from it and other non-western religions and cultures.

I've decided to ignore alignment as a mechanic. The topic (I believe) is too nuanced and complex to neatly fit into a set of 9 boxes. As such, clerics won't be worshipping concepts of Lawful Good or Chaotic Neutral. Obviously, characters are going to act in ways typically attributed to such concepts, but there won't be a mechanical or thematic definition of a character's behaviour.

Quote from deadPan_c >>

Quote from AEDorsay >>

Have you considered a form of animism akin to Earth's santeria and/or shinto?

The basics of would align with the "no one's sure" thing and shake up the staid habitus of the status quo.  The world itself is filled with spirits who are out there and they may or may not respond to someone's entreaties, which are often a bargain of some sort or in some way -- if you do this for me, I will do this for you.

(note: I am not saying use the Loa or Kami, I am talking about the typology in rough)

This would combine with a form of ancestor worship easily (it does in real life), and mean that a there are small shrines in every store and every home, sometimes just sitting out there in the middle of nowhere, and they may not always be immediately recognized as such.

The format gives you some flexibility in world creation -- is it a monster or is it a spirit? Is it a spirit or is it Fey? is a fey a spirit?  It also gives you the ability to have clerics linked to an alignment, or incorporate the faith aspect mentioned as well, or even allow you to have some spirits who are very popular with the locals kind of get raised up to the level of a deity.

In this case, it does make Clerics something more akin to those who make deals for power, lol. and it means they can serve several dozen spirits, as well.

As said, the pantheon stuff (pretty much all of it D&D wise is derived from the proto-indo-european pantheon that spread out through Europe and western asia between 20 and 30 thousand years ago and only stopped when it ran into the areas east of the Black Sea and the currently described Kurgan peoples and the proto-Egyptian folks of the southern Mediterranean) has been done to death and often doesn't add much in a role playing sense unless serious effort is put into divinity set up.

OF course, as you likely know, I tend to see the entire divinity bit as a playground, lol.

 

 I love the animism idea, and incorporating aspects of Japanese mythology and philosophy into the setting. My only worry is the possibility of misrepresentation and accidentally drawing from misconceptions about the topic. And that it might make clerics, paladins, warlocks, and monks thematically very similar.

I've decided to ignore alignment as a mechanic. 

Appropriation is a thing, but here's some points to keep in mind: I used Shinto as it is something that folks can look up fairly easily (for varying degrees of fairly). There are also the Numen and Genius of Greece, the Loa of Santeria, the orisha of Yoruba faiths (that led to the creation of santeria), and the world spirits of Ireland that we call Fae in the game.

The trick to it is go to the big picture. We are talking about spirits that represent natural places or events or thoughts and ideas. and feelings. In the end, that's what they are. How they appear, what they do, how they do it -- well, we have pixies and goblins and brownies and fairies in the game, and all of them are ultimately derived from the same kind of source as the rest -- we just use them as monsters, lol, instead of capricious little entities that might help, might hurt, might not give a dang. 

So you start with the idea of spirits. You don't have define them, you don't have to find ways to appease them or figure out how shrines work, or any of that. To really avoid the kind of accidental appropriation, add in some element that is different -- hence my also including the loa. The Loa are amazing, and cool, and combining them with the kami makes for a very similar set of principles and some interesting guidelines.  In my case, I also tossed in some stuff that I had about the Numen, who were the household spirits of ancient Rome and Greece.  Dash of ancestor worship (a la Mulan) and now you have a very different kind of animism, and if you ever want to go crazy, you can mix in some of the stuff about humours, vapours, bile and phlegm. 

The amount of stuff out there can be mixed in many different ways -- and that helps you step away from the risk of appropriation. It also makes what you do very creative, which can be shockingly rewarding. 

Here's an example of how I used one of those elements: The Undead. In Wyrlde, the undead are a class of re-animated beings. They are driven by particular humours, vapours, and miasmas from a dimension in the Necrotic Plane called Euthania. Now Vampires don't have it, nor do liches. But this means that the animating force isn't a worm or a sickness but a planar force that won't let the corpse stop even if you do cut off its head. I used them to describe how Golems and the equivalent of the warforged work, as well.  But it is a different kind, one that isn't impacted by the cleric's ability to turn undead. necromancers are putting these things into the corpses to raise them, and in return they are making deals with the planar beings and now I have explained a lot, and changed how vampires work, lol.  While I used an old way of seeing medicine and sickness as the foundation, I added in elements of shinto (the sentience of the humours and vapours), spiritual possession (will an exorcism work on undead? absolutely), and tied it together with an old native american story I hadn't thought about in decades.

I am all in on abandoning alignment. I mean, I know the purpose is to give a very light framework for role playing, but it is so incredibly simplistic and there are better ways to do it (albeit not as fast, lol). I even readjusted my set up to make it simpler after a recent thread here, so i am down to seven elements that go into it (so 14 possible points) based it off "woke stuff" as one of my younger players calls it. Who also aced a high school quiz about sociology because of it.

Honestly, unless you're planning to actually delve into the issue at some point in the campaign it's largely semantics. One of the core pillars of D&D is that several flavors of higher powers exist and take an active interest in the actions of mortals on the Material Plane. Whether they're anthropomorphic figures who've made their existence demonstrably known or are something more nebulous and abstract, unless you're going to outright ban clerics, paladins, and possible druids from the setting then one way or another the populace is going to be aware that certain people can, via such mechanism as ritual, ceremony, and dedication to certain precepts or doctrine or suchlike, tap into powers that are obviously supernatural but are (for now) distinct from arcane magic.

Honestly, I think the "gods are just constructs of mortal belief" bit is what's overdone anymore, and less engaging. If a deity exists as a discrete being then it can have agency and an agenda and interact with the setting, whereas the "oh, the power just comes because people believe it should" bit just makes them like a cosmic vending machine. Put your faith in a slot, say a few prayers, and out pops magic powers. Obviously not a perfect description, but it just seems a bit boring and/or like bad faith to say that clerics and paladins can exist but you can't point to a definitive source; especially if you're going to have things like fiends in the setting.

For alignment, frankly I think people are too quick to toss it anymore as well, but discussions on that point tend to get messy so I'm just going to say that on the mortal level they're indicative of a general pattern of behavior, not hard boundaries. Even for deities and other more conceptual/abstract beings, there's a lot of room for interpretation within a given alignment; Azuth, the LN Forgotten Realms deity of Wizards, is going to have a very different set of interests and priorities than Helm, the LN deity of Protection, even though they have the same alignment.

The_Ace_of_Rogues, that is interesting.

I too, am kinda over the "faith is power" approach. Likely for a different reason but I am also familiar with the source materials used that ultimately set up the current system, and the idea there is that "the gods are now separated from us, so the conduit is priests" as well. As I already noted, I am really done with the "gods of X" deal. Moreso, after watching people completely unable to understand how one can have a deity that isn't a god of x.

As for clerics, they are one of the ways that D&D breaks its own rules for magic, which can disrupt the willing suspension of disbelief, and because D&D has never actually written out its rules for magic, it is all kinds of unstable and unreliable and able to be wifflewaffled at will. Which I get is a design feature after 40 years of screwing stuff up, lol.

Alignment is just, well, a tool. No good, not bad, merely a tool. Back in the days of reagan and bush, those two LN gods had to act a very limited set of ways -- there wasn't much interpretation allowed by the rules lawyers (this was the era of LG being goody two shoes, after all). The flexibility was supposed to be there in the game, but a lot of folks didn't take it that way -- and as a tool it lost its function and purpose of being a super fast way to figure out your character's basic values and personality. Then it was tied to the planes as a kind of "afterlife light" and things went haywire, lol. Which is why it gets caught up in discussions of religion:

part of religion's purpose and goals is to explain and determine what happens to the "us" after we die. Is there a life after this one, what is it like, how do we go there.  The Planes are direct representations of what is supposed to be the end result of how someone lives their life. FOr the traditional "Gil-Gamesh went to the underworld to rescue Enkidu" storylines so old I can talk about a 15,000 year old one and have a lot of folks know what I mean, lol.

But, like theologyofbagels, I tend to have a bit more depth around this area of faith, religion, and worship than the "typical" person, so I may not be the best commentator on the topics due to social conventions of the day.

Why you change the concept. In the world i'm creating the "gods" aren't gods, they are agents, guardians of the powers they had, was agents they act in the world long tima ago, but now they only appear when the same dangers they fight appears. They give teachings and artifacts for some people and this itens are what give powers to the clerics, so clerics doesn't need to be priests of particular deity, but members of a Order i connection with this itens

Quote from deadPan_c >>

So, I'm making a setting for my next campaign, called Westhold, and I'm looking for advice on deities. More specifically, I can't decide if I want to go with a "the gods are definitely real, here's a pantheon" thing or more of a "many people believe in one or more gods, but there's no concrete evidence they exist" kind of setting.

I'm leaning towards the latter, but the former would be much easier to implement. If you have any more ideas, throw them into the comments.

If I were to go with a solid pantheon, there would be 9 "greater" deities, each representing an alignment (mostly taken from Forgotten Realms, such as Corellon, Bahamut, and Tiamat) and several "lesser" deities (such as Vecna, the Spider Queen, and Mask). High priests and clerics would get powers and abilities from any deity they worship as usual, but the greater deities would be less inclined to grant power than the lesser ones.

 I find that the latter method allows for more variation in what people can believe in the first place. If you look at real world religions, it’s not just a matter of when god or pantheon you worship, they’re completely different paradigms of what is the nature of reality, what divinity even is, and humanity’s place in all this. You could probably emulate this with more definite gods. Maybe there are different groups of them that accuse the others of lying to mortals, or maybe the gods themselves don’t have all the answers (maybe some even believe in and worship higher divinities). But those aren’t what immediately come to mind when thinking of pantheons.

What I’ve done is have some divine beings that mortals can interact with, but it’s clear that these are the “managers” of reality, not the creators.

As an aside on the belief creating gods conversation: whenever that comes up I wonder if people in those settings could create anything by believing in them, divine or not. Are there actual monsters under beds because some children believe in them? 

The “if they believe it, it exists” element does have a final solipsism of they believed themselves into being, and the rest is a step along the route — but the usual step out is that it requires a greater zeitgeist to engage, turning to Jungian influences and the notion of a shared higher order consciousness among thinking beings — which then makes one wonder how that operates; is it just among a given species, or is it part of an even greater system, and why is it divided or limited and is there a level beyond that?

Magic is inherently tied to all of this, as well — so the manner and structure of Faith directly impacts the manner and structure of magic.