Do Fantasy Pantheons Make Sense?

How does Polytheism function? Why do so many Fantasy worlds seek to emulate it? And do they do a good job at doing so? Let's discuss Worldbuilding, Fantasy, and Faith, and why Fantasy style Polytheism is such a strange concept.

#dnd #fantasy #history #worldbuilding #religion #ttrpg #polytheism

Credits:

[drewforchic]

There's a detail in the Forgotten Realms' city of Waterdeep that I love that relates to this: There exists in the world a chaotic evil sea goddess named Umberlee, who rules over sharks, evil shark-people, krakens, and ship-sinking storms. She is temperamental, evil, petty, and hated by most folk in the world. But ironically, the good city of Waterdeep does worship her... because it's a port city. The lighthouse is a temple to her. There is a tax on all ships in her name. There's a weeklong festival every year in her honor.
Because if anyone doesn't pay respects to her, they don't sail out the city alive.

[EisenKreutzer]

Great video! Fantasy polytheism is actually very close to a very specific form of real world polytheism: Henotheism. In henotheism, one god in a pantheon is worshipped exclusively, while still recognizing the existence and importance of the other gods.

[Linux_Fan_Boi_]

My theory is that Murder Hobos are a small but disproportionately powerful minority within D&D. And their existence alone give Bhaal enough strength to continue their existence.

In a way, those murderous adventurers are the best adherents Bhaal could ask for. As they ritually cut down npc's and mobs to empower themselves. Earning Boons in the form of levels and skills. As an reward for their bloody handed actions.

[notoriouswhitemoth]

This is a pet peeve of mine as a theology nerd: a polytheistic religion is _one religion._ Polytheism isn't the same thing as multiple monotheisms, the gods don't have competing sects.
The PHB even goes out of its way to point that out, but most D&D players seem to ignore it.

Hades wasn't classically associated with evil, hospitality (a cornerstone of ancient Greek morality) plays an important part in his most prominent myth (the one that retconned him into existence to upstage Persephone, Mycenaean goddess of the dead)

[theonetodefyall]

What most people don't understand about worship in DND is that performing an action in a domain, even if not in their name, still grants the god power. For example, while people might not murder in Bhaal's name, the murder itself gives Bhaal power, so the red dragon that just burned a town and murdered its inhabitants while uncaring of Bhaal still gave Bhaal power.

[KitKatHexe]

It's one of the reasons why I particularly like TES as a setting. The imperial cult has 9 gods, and each and every temple in the 9 major cities of Cyrodiil has 10 altars, a main altar dedicated to the pantheon as a whole, and in 8 of the cities this central altar is then ringed by 9 smaller altars dedicated to each god specifically, placed in a different order depending on which god is the 'pateon deity' of that specific temple.

The only reason there aren't an equal amount of patron deities to temples, is that the temple in the capital has no patron, and the major cities were originally divvied up to the gods that freed the empire from the elves, with no foreknowledge that a human would one day ascend to the ranks of the divine.

The religion as a whole, is a single organized church body, where all the gods are expected to be given there due deference, but priests dedicate their lives towards furthering the domains of a single god, in the knowledge that others will dedicate themselves to the other 8.

In some of the outer provinces, the imperial cult then begins to break down from one omnipresent pantheistic religion, into multiple separate monotheistic religions, that just do happen to recognize certain other monotheistic religions as equally legitimate like in a TTRPG setting.

[titojdavis]

a fascinating parallel that this makes me think of is how weird the Jonah and the Whale story is for being in a monotheistic text and shows just how differently religion used to be thought about. Basically when Jonah is on the boat god brings a storm but then it says that all the people on board are like "hey whose god is doing this, I'm cool with mine who pissed off their god?" and instead of some lecture about there being one god Jonah just says "oop, it's mine, my bad guys, don't worry your gods are probably still cool with you but i pissed mine off" then they toss him overboard.

[Drudenfusz]

I don't need convincing, I am saying for a long time that people have no idea how polytheism works and always create those through the lens of monotheism.

[Yessumo]

One of the things that I love that the Elder Scrolls does that not a lot of others do is the admission that, at least to our modern sensibilities, many stories of mythology are kind of ridiculous. The obvious one is Sheogorath. But one of my favorite little details is the God "Tu'whacca" of the Redguards. Now, this God is generally accepted to be the same as Arkay, the usual God of Death. However, most stories say that Arkay was an elf that ascended to Godhood. If you know the Redguards you know they aren't going to worship a filthy elf. So Tu"whacca has a different origin. He had always been around. However, before the creation of the world there was no death. So he was the "God of Nobody Really Cares." Actual quote and it is treated completely straight. From Malacath being "shat out" of Boethiah to the psilocybin fueled screeds that constitute the "Sermons of Vivec" The Elder Scrolls is ridiculous. And it fits. Mythology is kind of silly. Life is kind of silly. I hate how serious Gods can be in fiction. So serious barring maybe one or two designated tricksters. Zeus is one of the prime inspirations for so many fictional Gods but he transformed himself into a Swan to get laid. How many bearded old sky Gods did that huh?

[badwrongfun]

I'm remembering that in a Pathfinder campaign I was in, I occasionally had my character pray to different deities when relevant: to Pharasma for a dead loved one's safe passage into the afterlife, to Desna for safe travels, to Sarenae for her own atonement, to Iomedae for strength and valor in an upcoming fight against a wicked foe, .etc.I had fun with this and felt like I was engaging with the setting. But I was surprised when I was informed that this wasn't the case at all and I was accidentally playing her as some weirdo heretic. And I understand it's 100% my fault for just assuming gods having dominions meant they worked like real world polytheism. But it was still frustrating.

[FattyMcFox]

I think in D&D we have a rather skewed view because the players, being adventurers, were interacting with churches and institutions, or if they had a cleric, a single point of reference of someone with a patron Deity. In one campaign, one of my characters was a Warlock with a religious streak, but he venerated multiple gods for various situations do counter the idea of the Monotheistic coded polytheism. He had a Primary deity but he didn't cast the others aside. He used his religion skill to set up alters to or explain the various gods to the rest of the party, most of who were new players.
Then we eneded up transported to play in a world without gods or worship so that aspect of his character was a little pointless, but it was funny that the creep mind bending warlock was more pious then our light domain cleric.

[TheStartrek]

There are two solutions to the "any deity can grant any cleric any spell" problem. One is to have each deity have a code of conduct, similar to a paladin's code of conduct, and violators lose their powers. The other is to do what I am doing in my Pathfinder game as part of a bigger rework of Pathfinder's magic system and make it so which spells a deity is capable of granting at all are dependant on the domains they have dominion over.

[Alpha_Digamma]

There seems to be a little misunderstanding regarding Bhaal in the Forgotten Realms. When he still was around he was the god of death itself. Meaning he had the power to refuse to let your soul get into whatever afterlife dimension your personal divine patron had chosen for you. Your soul was damned to stay in the material plane with all the unpleasant things that belong to that. At the same time he had the power to refuse any kind of resurrection. So you just did not want to raise his ire.

[rynowatcher]

Divinity differs from world to world in d&d, but since you are coming at this from a Forgotten Realms centric place for all d&d, a god of murder makes perfect sense. The domain of a god in the Realms is more than clever marketing; it is the area they influence and try to cultivate. Every act of murder is an act of worship to that god, so they might not have an organized religion (as most chaotic deities tend not to). You are increasing the reach of murder as a power in your world with every murder, though. That is why the greatest deities in the setting are for things people cannot help; like gods of races, classes, basic acts or aspects of humanity (ie, love, murder, honor, death...) it is not that there is a grand temple to murder so much as there is no way to completely stop murder in a society that makes the god of murder powerful.

Furthermore, you also have the relationship between gods and worshipers backwards. Worshipers give gods power through acts of worship, but not all acts of worship are created equal. Donating a copper does not give as much divine power as say taking a vow of silence as an act of devotion, so you can easily have a greater god with a small but devoted following willing to do whatever they wanted; hence why human sacrifice is so popular with evil gods in the Realms. Gods literally die without worship in the Forgotten Realms, so they are more dependent on worshipers than worshippers are on them.

Lastly, pantheon in the Realms are gods grouping up for mutual self interest. The head of the pantheon gets a percentage of the worship of those under it and in return, they get protected from those whose interests conflict. Interests conflicting is not what you might think either because the god is there to spread the poser of its domain, so a god of murder and justice might work together; ie, murder god incourages striff so a peaceful person strikes out in anger and kills someone while the justice god draws a witnesses gaze towards the scene so the murderer is caught. They both get a hit off of that sweet, sweet divine power because everyone sees how murder and justice are working and have power over their lives.

Mr. Rexx has a video that explains this better if you are curious, and other d&d worlds sometimes work different (ie, Mystara has mortals that achieved Divinity in place of gods who have domains as an area of interest more so than an area to rule so you can have a Thyassian god of war, an Oslandic god of war, a Henn god of war... and none are "the war god" in the entire world.)

[mushroomsoup]

One of the things that always bugged me about a lot of fantasy gods (especially in games like D&D) is that they feel so "elemental". Like if people saw a lightning storm, thought "hey I bet that's a god", and then built a guy out of it. So now the fantasy world has Lightnor, the lightning god, who's job is just to make lightning happen.
Real world gods feel like the exact opposite way round. Thor and Zeus are both gods associated with lightning, but they got there in different ways.
Zeus is the most high of all gods, so high and mighty is he that he can smite you down where you stand in an instant. Now, what's something that is 1) high up, and 2) can kill you instantly if you're unlucky? Lightning. Zeus is a whole guy, and he acts in a way that is similar to lightning, so he gets a lightning association.
Thor, on the other hand, is a different person. Thor is the protector of humanity, standing just outside of our world to fight off the jotun who would invade us, and so strong that a swing of his hammer can flatten mountains. What is something that is 1) from outside of our world, and 2) sounds like a hammer destroying mountains? Again, its lightning, and so Thor gets a lightning association.

The thing about having a whole god with a personality and things they offer aside from just their more elemental domain is it makes worldbuilding so much more interesting. A worshipper of Zeus might hear a lightning storm and feel fear, because someone out there has annoyed Zeus and his wrath might spill over onto them. A worshipper of Thor might hear a lightning storm and celebrate, as it's a sign Thor is still there protecting them.
Zeus isn't the king of the gods because he's a lightning god, he is a lightning god because he is king of the gods. Thor isn't protector of humanity because he's a thunder god, he's a thunder god because he's the protector of humanity.

[Jessie_Helms]

Rime of the Frostmaiden in D&D 5e is a good example of people “worshipping” a god to protect themselves from them.

Auril doesn’t actually care about the sacrifices of warmth, food, or even people, that the towns are making. But the people hope it’ll stay her wrath a little.

[intergalactic]

important to note that, especially in the case of Hades, some of these "evil" reputations are a completely modern interpretations that would not have been how the actual worshipers will have seen them (gods were never paragons they were people with flaws too, and god of death was not out to get you, nor was he the devil, he just had a job to do). Hades actually has one of the least disturbing reputations in the Greek pantheon.

[basilnottheherb]

appreciate that we aren't just shitting on fantasy polytheism but constructing and de constructing why it can work and why it doesn't. good video.

[ThePiachu]

This kind of reminded me of a system that did polytheism pretty neatly - Exalted. It was an eastern-style polytheism, so all the gods were a part of a vast celestial bureaucracy, and people were expected to worship them according to a prayer calendar (so as to keep the power balance between gods and people since the system is very corrupt). All the gods worked in a hierarchy, where you'd have, for example, the god of war, and their subbordinates - the gods of war of a given direction, and each of those would have more regional gods of war and so on and so on. All in all the buraucracy had probably over a hundred named gods in the RPG, and in-universe their numbers were in the tens of millions in the highest eschelons alone, let alone the billions of more local gods...

[BobMcBobJr]

I could see a god of the undead being worshipped in the "please protect me from the evil skeletons that pop out of the ground randomly" way.