How to Create Interesting Gods and Pantheons

Religion is a big part of Dungeons and Dragons and many tabletop rpgs; hell, it's a large part of plenty of our lives. Creating a cast of gods and mythological figures is a fun and worthwhile pursuit; though it's one that often produces lackluster results.

By focusing on the worshippers in your world, you can entwine the members of your pantheon into your cultures, focusing on the meaningful ways in which characters in your worlds can interact with their faith, you can create something a lot more interesting than a carbon copy of the greek gods.

[sergejkaschuba]

This is great advice! I especially like the the concept of different cultures worshiping different aspects of a god. It is close to the way how historically gods started in the near east and by way of the greek pantheon endet up in the roman pantheon, completely transformed.

[ChrimiKat]

I've always found these kind of videos interesting. A few years ago i made a minecraft SMP and during a battle it started raining, thus meaning the god of the rivers was blessing us and granted us victory. After this i created a temple to worship the god i created, Ayses.
After a while we added three more gods to the list; Elychi the god of hell/nether, Arxeus the god of the void/end and the father of the Aysesian gods, and Rehaita who is the goddess of chaos.
Over nore time, more concepts were filled with these gods and stories were written to give each god/goddess their own background and story.
Now we have three factions of gods which are all making alliances and fighting amongst each other. These factions are the Aysesian gods (Arxeus, Ayses, Elychi, Rehaita, Ataris, Falexius, and the fallen god Ward), the Psychic gods (Suexar, Trusea, Falta, and Ceatrix), then the Angelic gods which are Falexius and Ceatrix's children (Ceatrix, Falexius, Taurignis, Luxius, and Ventus)

Overall tho, great video and thanks for more advice on how to better strengthen the religions of my improv RP SMP!

[hushRD]

This is really interesting and helpful, a more realistic and believable take of deities, I think

[slydrakegaming]

Very good advice not only for DMs but also aspiring authors! Thanks!

[hashtaganimal]

Heard, start with the worshipers. Why didn’t I think of that?! Thank you so much!

[cjams]

There was a lot of parallels between the names of the MTG theros deities and yours. As well as the relationship between the two god of wars

[dox]

My god of death is a Morrigan inspired one, and people worship them because it is comforting to know that everything they suffered for is leading to something, if not for them, than for their children or their grandchildren. Just to let you know as well, when you reach a certain age, you are forced to worship only one god. The most pious followers become clerics and the like.

[johnmichaelcule]

If you build from the worshippers up then you make gods who have no reality where they don't touch human lives.

You get gods who only stretch as far as human imagination can reach.

Quirks are not just for mortals. Gods need them as well.

[damnthisisalongname_]

That’s actually such a good idea! I need to implement this for a book idea I have. Thank you so much!

[LunaProtege]

I suppose the idea of creating the god from the worshipers first isn't too far removed from how I first started concepting out certain deities. Namely, to start with a mortal who will later become a god; what aspects define them, and what powers best augment those traits. One might even say that worship can come from following the example of a hero who has come before.

[DamienZshadow]

This is probably the greatest advice I've ever heard about pantheons. It really echoes what a lot of reconstructionist pagans actually talk about, too!

[atlasnox]

this was really helpful actually thank you !

[Zumbs]

Starting with worshipers is a good idea! A related approach is letting gods (and religions) be created by the various peoples and cultures. Religions and gods would change as the culture changed.

This could also be used to explain similarities between pantheons. For instance, the Nordic, Greek and Hindu pantheons were likely derived from a common Indo-European source that was modified according to local history and development.

Often themes are recurrent, for instance both the Indo-European and Babylonian religions have the notion of generations of gods, where the old generation (titans in Greek mythology, representing the chaos of nature) are replaced by the Olympian gods (representing order, but not really law). This could represent the gods of hunter-gatherers being supplanted by the gods of farming and pastoralist cultures, or that farming and pastoralist cultures were reliant on a certain degree of regularity in nature, so their gods needed to have control over nature.

[elegantoddity]

I find it helps to consider gods as combinations of domains. Otherwise you could just use a beast lord or elemental lord or just go pathfinder oracle style and tap the power directly from the domain itself sans personification. As with any character writing its what gives detail to rough archetypes, separating an indistinct "war god" from a god of mobile skirmish, or a god who rewards the highest kill count, or a god of love and war alike.

More than just adding domains together though, it's about the interplay and synthesis, how the gods adapt to changing circumstances and how mortals' own actions shape their worship. To pick some examples I like, Sigmar of Warhammer fame got the Griffon symbol incorporated into his church because of the heroic deeds of Magnus the Pious, who used it as his personal symbol, while Jergal, original Death God of the Forgotten Realms, straight-up retired, his aspects making their way to a bunch of other deities.

[DyIanGaming]

This was posted a very but this was very very helpful although I’m not using it for dnd but my own gave and this made me reconsider and add somethings so thank you

[andrewgoddu]

This is a really helpful way to handle making deities. I'm working on making my first pantheon and was struggling to fill in each domain and making them relevant. Going to give this method a shot now

[artmanha]

Meanwhile I'm over here with 150+ gods and entities, with at least 30 cultures around the world (and more to come).

Each overall region may worship a certain pantheon. Depending on the specific city, nation, or settlement within said region, they might worship just a specific group of few gods of said pantheon, or the pantheon as a whole, but with a focus on the Gods that matter the most for them.

Some of the Gods may have different names or aspects in different cities or even in a different pantheon altogether (Take Poseidon and Neptune as an example).

And there are also the "pantheons" of entities that are not entirely gods, such as archdevils, demon lords, primordials, great old ones, the multiple archfey courts...

Considering all I have written more than 1.500 pages of Google docs summing up all the pantheons up until now (and still going)


Of course, my players don't remember all of them, and neither do my NPCs. And they don't need to. Kinda similar to real world religion where we don't know all the Gods... I do have a pretty good memory tho, so I can remember most os the Gods I've written about up until now, give or take one or two lesser ones that weren't worked on that much, such as the lesser god of petty revenge or of the demigod of physical strength of a given region (there are many demigods tied to physical strength)


I mainly made their portfolios all unique for greater and lesser deities. There are not two gods with a shared portfolio, expect for 2 exceptions (twins, so it was a very specific case and I allowed them to share the archery portfolio). Demigods do not apply for this rule since they're not full fledged gods. So there can be multiple "physical strength" demigods, but only one actual lesser or greater deitiy with this specific portfolio.


5 years working on this setting and I always get excited to include a new god and find out how they work with the rest of the setting, worshippers, history and mythologies

[joewelljackson]

Are you familiar with the Pathfinder pantheon? I think it follows a lot of what you’ve explained here well! Great video, btw!

[snoopy]

J R R Tolkien started his by finish a poem he found in Oxford. Then he created languages before he made the gods.

[Hobbyman]

It’s okay you can just say you love magic!