Why I HATE Gods in my fantasy worlds...

Let's talk about Gods in your fantasy worlds. The Good. The bad. The in between.

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[josephhallam]

I generally work with Matt Colville's framework of Saints and God's, where a Saint might interact with you occasionally but very rarely, but your God's never gonna speak to you directly

[iamfilam]

My setting has a sort of Buddhist analogue to divinity- there is a Heavenly Realm with gods, but in order to reach it, mortals must become divine natured (become saints) by following the Three Paths. Angels tend to be ascended mortals, and the gods don’t directly interfere with the world (they’re too busy dealing with cosmic horrors)

[affarinoxa]

Funny I just had a God interact with a player in my campaign for the first time. The group is level 7 so only now is the cleric getting some attention from them. The cleric had a dream of a sandy, stone ridden, broken barren land. All it showed him was a glimpse of a mountain that has been cracked in two while rushing winds were so loud he couldn't properly think. On the ground was a skeleton with a green dagger lodged in one of its ribs. The skeleton pointed to the mountain and all the noise disappeared in an instant and all the skeleton said was "you must endure". The player then began to sink in the sand while more skeletal hands pulled him lower causing him to wake up.

The God gives him direction but remains mysterious and even kinda scary. Something a powerful being should in my opinion.

[RelativelyBest]

I'm actually the other way around: I think gods tend to be _too_ distant and detached in fantasy stories, to the point where they can end up these nebulous concepts who only interact with the world in very vague ways. If they're not treated as actual characters, I just have a hard time seeing the point of them even being in the story.

Hence I much prefer the old-school polytheistic style gods, like the Aesir of Norse mythology. In one of my several novel projects I went all-out with this idea and had the gods be physical people walking around and behaving more or less like the mortal folk, and often being extremely casual about it. Sure, they were ancient, basically immortal and very powerful, but it wasn't unusual seeing a god randomly show up at the local market or finding one running a tavern just as a sort of hobby. The idea was that they were originally these bizarre, alien-looking Lovecraftian entities, but over time they became fascinated with mortals and started looking and behaving like humans as a way to better understand them. As for why regular people still had to get stuff done by themselves, basically the gods all agreed to stay very passive since last time they tried the hands-on approach they ended up breaking the whole world, an event that also got a lot of them killed or banished from reality. That and they didn't want regular people to get too dependent on them regardless, the same way parents want their children to grow up to be responsible and self-sufficient.

[himinee]

I just started running a world where the gods are inspired by the Shinto religion. They are everywhere and innumerable but much lower power than most pantheons. When someone prays they hear the whispers of countless gods but as they pray the voices of the gods who resonate with their wishes and desires become more clear and they may be able to help. Most though are just able to offer advice or small bits of information due to their limited range of influence.

[deltasquared]

Just made a pantheon of 22 gods, got your book in the mail a couple days ago, and now this video released!? As Kronk would say "Oh yeah, it's all coming together."

[TheShepherdFilms]

I enjoy Greek style gods, that intervene with powerful parties frequently, but they always have their own motivation, the players are pawns, but I also love the Idea of IO the god of gods that prevents gods from intervening directly, unless there is a reason to allow it. (the framework of my current campaign, an elder entity is coming to eat worlds, IO loosens his grip on the gods to somehow allow the gods and great heroes to stop this elder being. But my campaign was based around my players eventually becoming gods, or at least having the option.)

[prosamis]

I am worldbuilding a setting from scratch in my DND game and the greater gods are basically entirely distant. There are remnants of them that people cling to, but for all intents and purposes, they're dead for the people on the material plane

They do have remnants though, and divine magic is people attuning with those remnants. The result though is that people think they're connecting to and talking to gods and their prayers are being answered when none of that is actually happening

[chaosphoenix]

4:00 Tobias. My setting gods do not interact with the players much as I use dawnwar pantheon, but I do use my own home-brew goddess of fate to just randomly appear or be seen. My players instantly know who she is and try to avoid her as she likes to toy with them for fun. Yvonne is always.. watching.

[maskedmenreiki]

One of the ways I've handled it
is by leaning into it a bit. The "gods" in my story ARE detached, but their messengers are extremely active. The big thing with this is that in my world, the gods don't actually exist, and the messengers in question are just powerful people keeping up the illusion of deific figures to keep the population under their control. Any real forces in the universe that COULD be classified as gods treat the world like an anthill, completely ignoring it aside from the rare instance where one might take interest in stirring up the ants out of boredom or childlike amusement.

[sigmawarlord]

4:00 Tobias is the best-est boy. good kitty!

[devanlaubach]

4:00 next to Hercules :>

Also I can't express how much your channel has helped me recently. I just got into being a DM and im writing one from scratch. You have given me so much invaluable advice and I appreciate your videos a lot :)

Thank you, seriously.

[mcgee]

In my homebrew campaign, I have a pantheon of gods also handwritten. They were once inhabiting the mortal plane (10, 000yrs prior to the start of the campaign) a catastrophic event with the BBEG and his group caused most of the gods to flee the mortal plane and at present time only a couple still remain, but they aren't active in the affairs of the mortals. I have written instances where my players will interact with them, but those moments won't be game changing, just more lore really. I have planned on a couple of my pcs being religious and praying, but there won't really be direct contact with the gods they follow.

[JohnDoe-dhjg]

Honestly reminds me of a dumb idea I had: At least some of the gods, probably the more primordial ones, storm, nature, death; are less sapient than typically depicted. More instinctual, like you can lure them and their favor by doing things or creating an environment that attracts them, but you can't fully tame them.
Kinda puts on an interesting spin on their clerics, where they're less the chosen herald of a benevolent god, and more the chosen person of an immeasurably powerful cat. And there's nothing stopping people from anthropomorphizing them anyway.

[arienmartinez]

0:54 To argue you point about it being weird that gods choose to present themselves as humanoid. In the bible it is made clear that god made man (or Adam) in his own image, meaning that adam when he was alive looked similar or exactly like god himself. Therfore it would make sense that most religions would have a similar belief and in fantasy, where there is no question whether the gods are real, the gods could has made the choice to create their humanoid species in their own image just like the god Yahweh did.

[Deep]

Well when I thought about Gods in the fantasy world I just replaced them with like celestial beings( or just say transcendent beings)

The idea was to replace gods with mana, when humans or other beings die they might just become a part of mana or merge with it

Like someone was very proficient in divine magic thereafter they became a part of it and other users of the same sub mana type can interact with them and receive help, guidance, or power up etc ( just like receiving their legacy)

Same for martial artists or sword, spear master etc maybe they use pure raw mana for enhancing their body's limits eta

This way we get the mana as the one true God and people who achieve something special or noteworthy leaving a part of them with the mana and can easily interact with the world more frequently

Edit : feel free to leave your suggestions in the replies and it was not really for d&d but generally fantasy world etc

[timetrnr]

I tend to go Biblical with the gods in my settings. Gods will very rarely speak to certain people, whom they have chosen. Unless you are a cleric, paladin, warlock, or a character who has undergone extensive development involving a god, you will probably never converse with one (and you might have only one or two interactions in a whole campaign). However, you will probably encounter things you will understand to be signs from your deithy very often if you are in tune with them, since gods leave signs in all sorts of places.

As far as rewriting events, this doesn't happen. Gods don't change time for their mortal followers. They do, however, endow their followers with strength to overcome adversity, or weaken the enemies of their followers.

[ugxsan]

4:00 and good touch he's still there in the next shot!

I definitely agree about divine intervention being frustrating as a story telling device. It's one of those things like time travel that sort of creates the ever present issue of "why was it used that one time and not here?" If the characters can just go back in time to solve problems it gets harder and harder to justify not using it. Except that in the case of time travel that at least has some interesting story potential. Divine intervention in the players' hour of need just sort of robs the scene of the impact the players' choices had on it.

Maybe if you can justify why the gods wouldn't just be handling this themselves if it was SO IMPORTANT, but otherwise better to find more grounded excuses to get your characters out of danger. Or if that's your kind of game, let the consequences strike true and enjoy knowing your players won't forget it. For better or worse. XD

[feththeexorcist]

4:00
Gods sitting on their clouds. "Awwww you need help? That's cute!"

[Salt_discriminater]

Cool idea: what if a gods temple was being destroyed by bandits, and the party comes to stop them, and the clerics god gets real pissed and empowers the cleric and says to them *"You will be the conduit for my wrath"* then after some fighting the cleric spares a bandit, then a beam of light shoots from the clerics hand leaving a fist sized hole in the bandits head. This could also deal radiant damage to the cleric, and the god would reiterate *"You WILL be the conduit for my wrath".*