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Post by geneweigel on Jan 25, 2023 10:09:49 GMT -5
In the campaign, Galhoo-Ghalag is Aethurian and not widely worshipped (Like the common gods of Greyhawk are widely worshipped). Aethur in the campaign is like ancient-medieval Britain (More of a peninsula than an island) with the "Saxon shore" being composed of humanoid invaders and their taken lands while everyone awaits the return of real leadership of the lost high king. Galhoo-Ghalag is not related to the more locally Swordlands popular god of archery Saint Kibbler, who is one of the "holy henchmen", but is more powerful. His pantheon is similar to the "Celtic Mythos" fused with Arthuriana.
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Post by GRWelsh on Aug 14, 2023 7:07:37 GMT -5
Gene, I like your ideas about bringing inspirations from real world mythology to create your own original matter. That's probably the best approach all around in D&D. It would be easiest using the real world mythology itself since most players are already familiar with it and so it is usable and game ready instantly. I prefer the original, DM-created pantheons myself because as a player I enjoy and appreciate the world-building efforts of creative DMs.
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 14, 2023 9:27:08 GMT -5
I had used Odin and Hercules a lot early on but the pile of original badness became so large that it congealed into overshadowing "official badness" then it slowly took up counter originals like the "Zog is every other god or maybe not" madness. I don't think that I mention every deity in Broken Castle but I mentioned a lot. Some of the gods like my Aethurian variant of "Merlin" of King Arthur is more of a god form than a legendary human. He is a total campaign retcon where originally he was a literal multiversal Merlin but then he revealed his relationship with the other powers of the Aethurian pantheon when they found his "real name". You gotta keep the campaign going... So far, the only campaign gods that I have depicted is Malloc the demon "hidden" in the orc image in Broken Castle on page 140. With his 5 eyes and Dungwa Dym the Mind Horror his brother. In D&D terms, both are lawful evil but not directly associated with the devils. Malloc is leaning more towards a "Hextor" or a "Sauron" than a "Gruumsh" but in the campaign most humanoids die for Malloc readily.
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 14, 2023 9:29:06 GMT -5
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Post by GRWelsh on Aug 14, 2023 18:05:41 GMT -5
I've retconned and redefined things as well, many times, over the years... I used to want to completely overhaul my campaigns when I didn't like the way I did things before... Sometimes that would drive my players or my co-DMs crazy. I've come around to a more casual approach of not taking it all so seriously and letting past events stand as remembered.
I haven't given up on my own Theogony of Oerth project, but because it doesn't have a lot of application for play, I haven't made a great amount of progress. I've written some analyses on each of the pantheons, and some drafts of creation myths and legends, but that's about it.
Something I've been struggling with is how Common and Unknown categories apply... If a God is OC that means Oeridian and Common and that is easy enough to understand -- it was a god from the Oeridian pantheon who become commonly known of, probably after the Oeridians migrated into the Flanaess. But what about gods with a Common origin only? Does that mean they only became gods since the time of the migrations? Does it mean they are common to multiple or all pantheons? We know Tharizdun is of Unknown origin, but what about Ulaa, who is a sort of goddess of the dwarves? Why is she of Unknown origin, rather than Common?
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 14, 2023 21:32:56 GMT -5
Perhaps some are "new" gods rather than imports? There is only so much to compare to real religions once the fantastic heroes angle is injected. Real world "common" gods would be Isis in Rome or perhaps more likely the ancient far and wide attraction of Artemis by different faiths coming to the "wonder".
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Post by GRWelsh on Aug 15, 2023 7:36:17 GMT -5
Some of them could be new gods, sure. Like if you think about martyrs in the Middle Ages who became saints, you could have that sort of mortal who was exalted to godhood. This certainly seems to be possible in the World of Greyhawk when you think about the write ups on quasi-deities and hero deities. There seems to be a path to godhood to mortals, or possibly even multiple paths. And existing gods could reproduce to make a new, young lesser deity. Isis and Artemis are good examples of goddesses who became common although they have definite Egyptian and Greek origins, respectively. Maybe a truly common god would be an archetype that emerges out of different cultures to be fairly consistent although perhaps with different names.
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 15, 2023 8:21:02 GMT -5
The mother cult overlaps everything vaguely but the three headed virgin-mother-crone goddess is visibly overlapping. The monster killer overlaps. From "ATLANTIS" (1968) by Donovan ..the magician and... the... uh.. HRUMMM-HAR-HMMMPPH of our legends. In my main city, it is the temple and religion that has the identity and not necessarily the god. This was based on grokking the TOEE and bit by bit conflation of different sessions that conflicted. The City of Greyhawk has open evil temples because there is no fun in "paladin-topia" type campaigns of hypercontrolled civilizations versus orcs. What works for Lord of the Rings extremely well does not work for Sword and Sorcery genre play.
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Post by GRWelsh on Aug 17, 2023 11:55:14 GMT -5
Tell me more about this "paladin-topia." It sounds intriguing....
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 17, 2023 12:56:10 GMT -5
I haven't seen them recently but NYC was abuzz in the 1990's with "total control city/absolute death countryside" type campaigns where if the rules didn't provide for the class in the package (like the paladin) then you were never going to get a lick of treasure. I blame it on 2E but it was a thing.
Level Zero paladin-topia - Not there yet but supplies and treasure are non-existent through "careful" DMing
Level One paladin-topia - Players gravitate towards paladins for the no-brainer healing.
Level Two paladin-topia - Spellcasting works like "Presto" and players avoid. Other "complex" classes are naively allowed to operate off label then clunk and die.
Level Three paladin-topia - DM accommodates paladins with down-sizing magical foes with NPC magic-user (Or multiclass M-U) popping up to be the proxy of the DM
Level Four paladin-topia - Party is now an order knights, prowling is forbidden and a move away from experience in favor of "don't step off the train tracks or die" story quests running into bands of orcs now and then.
Level Five paladin-topia - New players weirded out. Paladin-topia final level.
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Post by GRWelsh on Jan 25, 2024 14:55:57 GMT -5
For Greyhawk gods listed as C for Common do you think that means they are common across different racial origins and pantheons? Some gods are given both a racial origin and are listed as being commonly known or worshipped across the Flanaess. So, for example Boccob is listed as C and Pelor is listed as FC. With Pelor it is fairly straightforward -- he is a Flan god who was known to the ancient Flan and then most likely became known to other human sub-races and cultures after interacting with them (i.e. most likely after the twin cataclysms and the era of the great migrations into the Flanaess). Does that mean Boccob was common to all racial origins (S, B, F and O) or only that he became commonly known in the Flanaess in the current age and that his racial origin is therefore not distinct to one of the four human sub-races? One that throws me a curve ball is Iuz who is listed as FC yet only evidently rose to deityhood within the past few centuries. So, how is it that he is FC?
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Post by geneweigel on Jan 25, 2024 15:37:12 GMT -5
In my campaign (It irks me when people say "IMC" in the "BTB" forum! ) , the gods go all over the place and get twisted in different locales to add flavor. I talked to Gary about "common" and he said the central area which I believe I was directly quoting the boxed set to hom. Doesn't each entry talk about locations? I have to check later.
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Post by GRWelsh on Jan 25, 2024 16:11:07 GMT -5
Yes, for at least most of the god descriptions there is something about locations in the Flanaess where they are currently worshipped.
I am probably overthinking this and should just consider C as "Commonly known currently in the Flanaess." The text in the Guide p. 62 is:
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Post by geneweigel on Jan 26, 2024 0:00:39 GMT -5
To clarify because its fairly common knowledge to us, if anyone else is reading, the main "guide" book of the 1983 "World of Greyhawk boxed set" has the areas that they are worshipped in the individual deity entries. These are separate from the deity stat entries that appear in the 2nd book in the box called the "Glossography" which is has the game mode numbers that the main guide book doesn't have.
The only cutting room floor that isn't in the 1983 set is the info about the Deities & Demigods (1980) deities and how they fit into GH. from DRAGON MAGAZINE #64 (AUG 1982):
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Post by GRWelsh on Jan 27, 2024 17:48:05 GMT -5
So, would each racial origin type be its own pantheon? Or, would the concept of a pantheon have no meaning in a universe where the gods of each racial origin exist and can interact with each other? To put it another way, in the ancient Greek worldview the Greek gods were the only gods, and their theogony was about the Olympians overthrowing the Titans, and that was it -- there were no Norse gods, no Hindu gods, etc. But in the AD&D universe, regardless of what racial or cultural origin gods may be from, they could, in principle, interact with each other and have a hierarchy among themselves regardless of what mortals knew of them.
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Post by geneweigel on Jan 27, 2024 19:16:42 GMT -5
Yeah and the common one would be a future homogenous pantheon. Like Adonis being Tammuz for example. And Artemis becoming a universal female epitome for those coming from far and wide.
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Post by GRWelsh on Jan 28, 2024 11:54:29 GMT -5
Yes, common gods could be analogous to those like Astarte, who was considered to be the same goddess as Attart, Ishtar and Inanna, and perhaps even Isis, Aphrodite and Venus. She's all over the place. I suppose the sky god or sun god is another recurring theme often being the head of pantheons.
Common gods in the World of Greyhawk setting are:
Boccob, Incabulos, Cyndor, Bleredd, Ehlonna, Joramy, Lirr, Myhriss, Olidammara, Ralishaz, St. Cuthbert, Trithereon, and Zagyg.
The inclusion of St Cuthbert and Zagyg in this list makes me doubt that this is the right approach since I've always had the impression that those two were mortals who ascended to godhood fairly recently in the Flanaess, such as within the past few centuries. I suppose it could be a combination of both multi-culture archetype deities and those who arose to be commonly known in the modern Flanaess (i.e. past 1000 years or so).
Gods could be known by different names or titles in different cultures. I was thinking about how Hextor got his extra arms from the "Lords of Evil" and who they were supposed to be. They could be arch-devils, but also could refer to the greater gods of evil for the World of Greyhawk who are/were: Incabulos, Nerull, and Tharizdun.
Here's another set of questions: which of the gods of Greyhawk are ascended mortals, which are descended from other gods, and which (if any) are eternal or else so ancient no one knows their origins? How do the Elder Elemental Gods figure in as 'primordial' gods, and what does that mean in this context? I had assumed that the primordial gods came first before any other gods or spiritual beings, but that not necessarily all are greater gods. I tend to see the greater/intermediate/lesser/demigod rankings as power levels but not necessarily related to whether they are ascended mortals, descended from other gods, or primordial. For example, I've always considered St Cuthbert to be an ascended mortal even though his power level now is that of a lesser god, and Kord is a greater god descended from two lesser gods.
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Post by Scott on Jan 28, 2024 22:16:24 GMT -5
I’d look at is as more Roman than Greek, where the approach was more absorbing/commingling. There is no Flan pantheon. All the Flan gods are F/C. Wastri, Zagyg, Iuz. St. Cuthbert, Heironeous, and Hextor are ascended in my campaign. There could be more, they’re the ones I’ve picked to far.
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Post by GRWelsh on Jan 29, 2024 15:08:44 GMT -5
Yes, I agree with the Roman comparison for the modern, common pantheon in the Flanaess. The Romans had much more of a big tent approach, theologically speaking, than most ancient peoples. They had their own pantheon which was mostly just a reskinning of the Greek pantheon, yet they also absorbed non-Greek gods such as with the worship of Isis or Mithras, or had their own original gods like Janus. The Flan could have had their own pantheon at one time, and the entirety of it could have been absorbed into the common pantheon once others migrated there. Perhaps gods with only a racial origin fell out of favor after the migrations and so are not considered commonly worshipped.
I just reminded myself of the technological wizard of Jack Kirby's design for the THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN cartoon... Gemini aka Janus! He had a look similar to Darkseid.
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Post by geneweigel on Jan 29, 2024 18:51:36 GMT -5
Plus its even to gauge the readiness for deity acceptance heading northwards Germans adopted the Roman days of the week as interchangeable with their gods (Woden for Mercury ;Tiwaz for Mars; Frigga for Venus; Thor for Jupiter; etc) except having trouble converting "Saturn" they kept it over "Saturday".
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