In my homebrew setting, anyone (or anything) that is worshipped by sentient beings receives divine power.
For example, when a dwarven civilisation began worshipping a smithing hammer as an icon of craftdwarfship, it slowly began accumulating divine power until it gained sentience and, in time, godhood. It is now the main god of craft, can aid anyone holding it in making whatever they (or it) desires, and can transform into any tool, etc. Gods can shape their form and abilities through worship, but they are also influenced by it against their will.
Most of the major deities made a divine concorde centuries ago, where they would divide the aspects of worship between them, and guide their followers to destroy any new divine beings threatening their power.
I feel that a system like this allows for more interesting situations than a traditional pantheon would have. Gods now need use their power to maintain control and faith, rather than only acting on morality. There are also a myriad of opportunities for backstabbing and other fun politics at a layer above nations.
My questions to @DnD are:
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Do you see any potential pitfalls in D&D a system like this might have?
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Do you have any good ideas, suggestions, or interesting aspects to your pantheons which might benefit a system like this?
This is similar to how gods work in the diskworld.
The more beings that worship a god, the more powerful it becomes. As people stop worshipping it loses power and fades away.
One hook could be the old gods try to stamp out the new but do not realise how weak they have become.
Guess I’ll finally have to start reading the discworld series then. Thanks for the suggestion
One book in the series is devoted to exactly this premise. Small Gods.
I really like the idea of the divine concorde. Lots of room for ideas of old religious wars over encroachments on aspects. Secretive cults take on more importance. Sects of religious zealots who root out cults and believers of new gods. Sounds fun :D.
Isn’t this an extension of what already exists in D&D (or earlier versions of D&D)? A god’s power is based on the number of worshippers, so this just adds the ability to create a god.
I don’t think there are any pitfalls, as GM it’s basically up to you to run the world you create in a way that’s fun and has enough internal consistency for your players.
Also the setup for politics won’t be too far from how the Greek gods were portrayed; flawed and very human.
I re-read through the 5e DM’s guide, and it just off-handedly mentions thats gods in a multiverse could have different levels of influence on a world, based on their worship. I suppose my system just takes that idea to the logical extreme, where worship defines a god rather than just give it influence.
More than just the ability to create a god, it would allow my PCs to destroy or become one (in the end-game), making a god as an enemy a more interesting proposition to me than just being able to reduce their influence for a while. One of my PCs is a paladin with a wish to become a famous hero, so if he becomes a local hero or icon, he could start the path to godhood, and perhaps find himself in more trouble if his deity finds out he is inadvertently taking their power away.
Yes, I’d think that’s a potential great arc for your paladin. Heroes ascending to godhood is a thing among folklore, see Guan Yu in Chinese mythology for one. Definitely can work well. Then have him tangle with godhood-politics. I think there were some interesting themes that were brought up in that area in Discworld (Sir Terry Pratchett is a master of mixing satire and pointed social commentary), and also Order of the Stick if you want something D&D themed.
This is very well done in Dimension 20’s Fantasy High live-play games. One of their dieties hates part of itself because they have 2 different worship bases, and one base REALLY hates the other base and ended up nearly wiping out the original worshipers. This has resulted in the god having the personality worshiped by the second base, with traces of the first personality still coming through, and hating itself for when that happens.
Something like would probably require the Gods to be very active in the world, just to protect themselves, since it enables the option of a hostile takeover or pseudo-mind-control of a greater power. With how easily cults are formed here, a world where the Gods are demonstrably real and mind control actually exists would just make it that much easier to create offshoots and true believers.
This is very similar to my own personal lived experience that I recently posted in @[email protected]. I stopped believing in the christian god about 7 years ago, but only recently did I recognize that the voice in my head that I created in response to my belief in God (which identified as God) was a real entity and a seperate person from me, while still being part of me. Not precisely the same, but the concept that a god gains power by being worshiped is not a new one, and it’s a pretty good one.
Have you ever watched Stargate SG1? They have a similar concept with the ori, which gain power by being worshipped as well.