It turns out that the gods were simply heroic, highly accomplished mortals - maybe sorcerers or actually possessing some kind of supernatural power, but maybe not, and certainly not divine.
Too cliche, or still makes for a good twist (at least it beats "they were advanced aliens" by this point)?
That's how the gods in Wakfu work if I remember correctly.
There are a few ways you could play with that and have it still be interesting. Maybe the gods are all mortals who have, through, substantial deeds, been believed in by enough people that something of them has survived and grown, becoming more than human on their death.
They don't know how or why it happens, and they are themselves questimg across the plane for the source of their divine power - some to capture, harness, or abuse it, some to defend and uphold it, some to simply understand it, each according to their nature.
>>43996510
>certainly not divine.
That's not really something I'd want the narration to take a stance on.
>>43996632
>That's not really something I'd want the narration to take a stance on.
This. After you get down (or up as it were) that line of thought it REALLY ends up as a - in my opinion THOROUGHLY uninteresting - technicality that isn't really all that meaninful to explore. Y'know, if it quacks like a duck and all that.
>>43996623
>They don't know how or why it happens, and they are themselves questimg across the plane for the source of their divine power - some to capture, harness, or abuse it, some to defend and uphold it, some to simply understand it, each according to their nature.
That seems like a neat approach.
>>43996522
>That's how the gods in Wakfu work if I remember correctly.
Eh, not QUITE. It's more that the 'mantle' if you will can pass onto followers living up to the ideals.
>>43996510
In the setting I'm making that's what ties Psionics, martial arts and divinity together.
Low spectrum = Mid-class to high-tier fighters.
Mid spectrum = Martial artists.
High spectrum = Psions.
Ultra-high spectrum = Demi gods/deities.
By cultivating one's abilities one's will begins to 'resonate' with the underpinning truth of reality, allowing for superhuman feats that eventually allow one to transcend physical limitations altogether.
Magic is distinct by providing a shortcut, though the rituals required are far more involved and tend to be viewed as the dilettante's way to mysticism.
>>43996510
Too Cliche.
I actually want to see a setting where good gods are actually good, since edgy settings where "DA GODS R ACKSHEULLY EBUL XDDDDDDDDDD" have outnumbered the former.
>>43996914
>I actually want to see a setting where good gods are actually good, since edgy settings where "DA GODS R ACKSHEULLY EBUL XDDDDDDDDDD" have outnumbered the former.
Where did he say they were evil?
I just take the Dark Souls approach to gods. They have a power that can be passed on so humans, or anything else, can become gods hence why they always change and pantheons come and go.
It's fine, not amasing but hey, it works.
>>43996510
the gods of my setting were all innovative magic users. One brought white magic (the like of which clerics use), one brought green magic (like a druid), and one brought blue magic (like a psion). So they bought massively advanced magics to the continent and thousands of years later there are temples devoted to them.
black magic (for wizards) was created by the dark gods in 'the time before'.
>>44000328
>black magic (for wizards) was created by the dark gods in 'the time before'.
I'm glad you put in some difference in timing there. I was just thinking that it seems odd that it sounds like magic was just made in a similar period of time when I think it's more fun if it all came about in different ways. Like, say, elemental magic was create by a coven of witches with no matriarch, transmutation magic was only made just over a thousand years ago, magic based wholly on power within is magic only practiced by eastern monks and western people don't even acknowledge the field of magic nor their god, etc.
Because for some reason, just saying there were a few powerful wizards a long time ago that made all the magic sounds, hmm, too coincidental? Something like that.
>>44000328
>>44000517
oh, I think I know why it sounds like too much of a coincidence, it's because all the magic sounded like it was made in a close period of time with no catalyst that caused it or reason why it happened, such as the alpha world mcguffin that introduced to the world.
If magic was always there then it would be more likely to have the 'innovative magic users' spread out and likely wouldn't have even lived at the same time.
>>43996510
That's not a twist at all. It's a minor note of theology.
Y'know, if it quacks like a duck and all that.
>>44000667
Myths evolve. In a fantasy game, that might become relevant because there's an assumption that legends are true and should be taken at face value. There're all kinds of interesting ways a story might go if it turns out that the myth of the god of war facing the dragon was really just an incredibly overblown story about some tribal chief who defeated an invading army two-thousand years ago.
>>44000601
I feel like it would almost make more sense for them to be created at the same time, as long as it's explained as a sort of magical renaissance or golden age of sorts
>>44000753
Yeah, like how the philosophies of China stem from Spring and Autumn.
>>44000517
>>44000601
Maybe more details would help.
Before time existed there were the Many, which are pretty much great old ones. There was a war, and most of them were sealed in the sky as stars. A few of the more powerful had to be sealed beneath the earth.
The only survivors were the wife and the husband. They gave birth to the gods.
The birth of the children was the dawn of life, and for a thousand thousands the gods created the small races and ruled them, entrusting their dark magics to their chosen servants.
Then came the giants, who were the children of the star gods and the earth gods. They battled a war that would scar the lands and the sky.
Refugees fled to the continent where the campaign is based, which is about the size the british isles. In turn, the dark gods of this land raged across the shallow sea to join the war. They entrusted to the lands to the forty-five sorcerer-kings until they returned, and sealed off the continent until they deigned to do so.
It took generations for the freefolk to rebel and remove the sorcerer-kings from power. This was mostly made possible with the use of a new kind of power that rivalled that of the dark gods, but did not require their blessing. The wizard Kyan personally killed all but the last of the sorcerer-kings, but was avenged by his apprentice Regina. Regina later established the church of Kyan and a cable of black magic users (mostly wizards) who hunted other black magic users (mostly sorcerers and warlocks).
>cont
Eh, why can't gods just be gods? If something has become powerful enough for someone to call it a god, it better damn well live up to the name. If it isn't actually divine, it should be incredibly powerful and practically unassailable except by beings of great strength or possessing mcguffins. When taking the mortal route, I like it when they basically have such a devotion to something (a quest, an ideal, an item or power) that they simply ascend beyond the mortal ken at their death too stubborn to actually die. The only condition for this is it can never happen if the mortal is aware of this process and actually pursues itunless they were so devoted to this concept that this ascends them which inevitably leads to the most wretched of gods know can know no peace having no purpose. It's a bit weeaboo, but I like the concept.
>>43996510
Sure, it works.
Make it like Malazan Book of the Fallen. Gods aren't actually that big a deal, they're just extremely powerful mortals who retreat into the realms of magic to have their own little political landscape amongst themselves.
>>44000923
Many generation passed and the mistress of the city of Landing came to have strange dreams after a carriage accident resulted in a blow to the head. During her waking hours, she built strange and terrible devices, and began harvesting from the land.
A young boy declared himself the returned Kyan, and warned the mistress of landing of her folly. He threatened destruction if she did not slow the advance of her technologies.
She did not listen, and even today there are only forty-four cities. Where landing once stood is now a ruin of trees and fierce animals, for Kyan brought with him the green magics.
In recent times, the nations of Prande and Inylven have declared war on one another, and three different persons claiming to be Kyan's returned form have stepped forward. Each has amassed a cult and, strangely, have introduced the same blue magic.
>>44001077
Kyan sounds like a jerk, killing Sorcerer Kings for no reason and destroying a city because he's a luddite.
>>43996914
> where "DA GODS R ACKSHEULLY EBUL XDDDDDDDDDD"
What about a setting that's not even subtle about God's being antagonistic to the interests of Mortal's?
Also, /tg/ has a disturbingly low tolerance for ambiguity.
>>43996510
How they started to exist doesn't really matter, does it? As long as there's no omnipotent creator being.
>>44001298
>Also, /tg/ has a disturbingly low tolerance for ambiguity.
It's easy to tire of a tune you hear too often. Also, 40k and SR are all ABOUT being ambiguous so yeah.
>>44001353
Whats wrong with omnipotent creators.
>>43996510
>What is Karameikos / Mystara?
>>44001416
I guess I haven't heard the tune enough then. A lot "tropes" /tg/ bitches about aren't actually in many fantasy settings as far as I can tell.
>>43996914
It's not surprising, given that the Greek pantheon is full of assholes and is also the most common reference point for what Gods are like.
Even in other mythologies/religions while Gods can sometimes be good, they are almost never nice. Nice Gods don't really make a lot of sense.
>>43996510
One of my homebrew settings actually has that as a well-acknowledged fact. The gods that are most active in earthly affairs and most frequently worshipped are nearly all legendary figures from a distant age early in the history of the earth, when all mortals held greater power and a stronger spark of potential divinity. They exemplified some virtue or value, left their mark on the world in a big way, and ascended to divine status after departing this life.
For instance, the sun goddess was once simply one of the mortals in the very early days of the world. In those days, there was no sun, only the moon and stars, and people lived tenuous, fearful lives in the dark, endless night. The sun goddess, even before she was a goddess, had an extraordinarily caring and compassionate disposition, and even more than she lamented her own difficult life, she was heartbroken for the struggles of those around her. Ultimately, her compassion and generous charity welled up and overflowed in a great outpouring of warmth and light, creating the sun.
It's only in our heavily Judeo-Christian-influenced worldview that we consider ascended humans in some way not "real" gods. Gods who were once mortal are all over the place in real-world polytheistic religions, and there are even religions that don't really worship "gods" in the extremely powerful cosmic entity sense we understand the term, but only ancestors who are attributed scarcely more power than your average spellcaster in an RPG could muster. The bar for how mighty and lofty something needs to be for people to willingly and devoutly worship it is honestly pretty low.
>>44002095
It depends on the geography and culture.
The Sumerians lived along the Euphrates and Tigirs flood plains, got their shit wrecked regularly by rising waters and other natural disasters with the looting and rapes that come with events that make shit hit the fan, so they thought whoever was in charge must have been an uncaring asshole.
The Egyptian Nile on the other hand was calm, predictable, and made life easy leaving more time for leisure and weird sex, so their gods were like that. The only times that changed was with Set, who represented foreign conquest, that always eventually got defeated by Horus and a story about Ra murdering nearly everyone with Serqet and Hathor because they got lazy and stopped worshiping him because everything was so good for so long.
>>44001263
Sorcerer-kings were servants of the dark gods, who the religion views are bad guys.
The entire religion is pretty intolerant of technology. That's why people aren't using laser-swords and teleporters.
>>44003244
>Sorcerer-kings were servants of the dark gods, who the religion views are bad guys.
What religion? Was the original Kyan part of some religion based on 'Sorcerer hating' before the religion based around him and his Sorcerer hating that was created posthumously?
Why do they hate the gods? Sounds like the world is still in it's mythical development era stages with titans and such fighting and the gods wanted to protect the humans.
'That's how the religion works' isn't really a satisfying answer since there's usually a reason it's a part of the religion. Right now, it just looks like Kyans been hanging out with the Dryads too long and let their 'Nature 1st, Screw everyone else' biases get into his head.
>>44003244
>>44004372
I just read your story again, I though you said "treefolk" instead of "freefolk", the misconception only being reinforced in my mind by the whole green magics later.
>>44001534
That's the joke behind the threads.
>>44001493
Beat me up to it. Mystara was awesome. Why no love for it since WotC?
If the gods arent gods, then are the gods then? who made shit, why there is magic and who allowed it to be used then?
Not roleplaying, just something i dont get about this type of trope, magic exists, then who put it there? the not god?
>>44013000
Maybe reality is eternal and time cyclical, so it's just always existed as far as even the eldest of immortals can remember.
>>43996914
No.
A setting like Warhammer Fantasy, but everybody is an atheist for the lulz.
>>44013000
Nonexistent?
>>43996522
Wakfu is more 'If you become better than the god at his own themes, you become the god'.
They still very much are gods.
>>44014404
In games about magic and shit, sometimes the trope of god not being a god, appears, but then i ask, who is the god then? the supernatural is canon and obvious in that setting, so who put/made it that way, its not bad or good, i just dont get it.
In the homebrew I'm working on gods are oddly placed. Mostly because it's animism + angels.
The angels are great divine beings of song and light. Fragments of the great song that was the start of everything.
Gods are tied to the world itself and much less powerful. They are local gods, gods of a town or a great river but all tied to the physical in some way. Where angels are tied to metaphysical concepts like Humility or Charity.
It's not really very creative imo but I'm hoping my players enjoy it. I was going for a rather high fantasy gothic horror (That sort of Castlevania gothic horror where the correct response to seeing a giant undead monster could easily be 'Ima stab it')
>>43996510
Not too cliche, but it's not a really great twist. It's like a decent twist at best.
>>43996510
How do you define what's divine or not?
>>43996510
>It turns out that the gods were simply
when will /tg/ stop with these pathetic attempts at being original? if the gods aren't actually divine beings but level 50 wizards or radioactive adjective bananas nothing fucking changes, we're still on "there you got your fucking gods with a tweest"
>>43996510
I personally feel that "Advanced Aliens" is and always will be a shitty cop out that betrays the ideals we try to strive for when creating fantasy (wonder, nostalgia, mystery). Keeping it vague and ever so idealistic, with room to excel and ample to be damned, is stuff I can quickly get behind.
Wandering ascended mortal Gods are great when pulled off right. All powerful, but tethered by a thread to what they once were and, deep down, still love. I feel that they should be fallible in that their mortal shortcomings (doubt, jealousy etc) follow them into godhood but their better human traits eventually get them off their asses and govern their ethos.
Avoid overdoing the shades of grey shtick. Runescape ruined their entire pantheon by trying to force every God into neutral-evil overdrive.
Decent twist, as has been said in the thread. The primary motivation of mortal Gods is to have fallible divinities, but I feel that this is an easy way to smear Gods instead of deconstructing what morality should mean to divine beings.
In my homebrew the twelve waking Gods were singular abstracts dreamt by the Maker, but have since evolved and have found capacity for choice. At the start, all twelve were Ideal states that Ranged from Ideal sub-extremes (entropy at a universal balance) to Ideal moderation (Justice moderated by mercy).
In the current state, Three Gods have shifted into a state best described as "evil" - the God of Zeal has devolved into blind hate, the God of Entropy blindly consumes, and the God of hierarchy, once responsible for helping people to fully realise their gifts, has bent into a God of Slavery. Three more Gods in clearly righteous aspects - Justice, hope and love - walk the razor's edge and constantly risk a similar fall. The God of hope, for example, is slowly turning sour on Man's greedy and self-serving ambition.
To me, creating a fallible God is not about having a God that picks his teeth or who killed a million people once in a drunken rage. Simply revealing how an ideal state can walk the small stepped, rose-scented path to hell places a huge amount of responsibility on them to conquer their basic desire to excel and shows that there is always a window for them to ruin everything.
>>44018383
There's no consensus on any fantasy ideals, and aliens can be every bit as mysterious as gods. More, often, because gods are in the end made by people to comfort them, warn them, as an explanation for the things that happen around them, etc., while aliens can, if done well, be as or more mysterious since they're not limited to being beings which relate to society and emotions like gods are, or at least ought to be, if we're going to talk about the ideals or function of gods in society.
>ascended mortal Gods
Yeah, that doesn't demystify divinity or anything.
Are there other gods which actually set the standard for what is "divine"? If not, what defines divine, such that these people are "certainly not divine"? In many real-world systems of belief, people may become gods after great deeds in life, or even that this is what gods are in the first place.
In my setting, only the two original Gods are truly divine while the others are all ascended mortals/beasts/spirits that have embodied certain concepts/polished their abilities to such levels that the two Gods allowed them to take authority over some of the realms they originally governed.
What if every time a God's position opened up for whatever reason, the remaining ones held a random drawing between all sapient mortals to determine who would take their place?
>>43996510
>muh gods aren't divine
>muh humanism
In my campaign, gods are descending to earth in order to fight a greater evil - Thanatos, sort of the First God, who is looking to ressurect. How would you guys depict them as npcs? I want the PCs to fight them when they are really high level.
>pic related, Kord, one of the gods they will meet (and one whom one of the PCs worship)
>>44001070
>Gods aren't actually that big a deal, they're just extremely powerful mortals
i'm not sure we read the same malazan books since A) gods are a big fucking deal, wich is why quick ben, for all his absurd amounts of power, never tries to tangle with shadowthrone and the rope head on and B) only some of the gods are former mortals. Mael, Krul, Draconus, father light and Mother Dark are very much "other"
>>44019532
That would be a bowler hat. Do not defame the poor thing.
>>43996510
Reminds me of Mosaïc:
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Setting:Mosaic
If I remember correctly, at the beginning they was no gods, but only vague concepts/planes/essences for all of the six great runes: Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Life and Death.
But with time, more and more people started to discover the runes and to study them. Legends say that a very few of them became so in touch with one of these runes in particular that they became a part of it. With only one person in a major rune, nothing would really change, but with three or more, that's a different story. The runes have awakened, one after another, not really as conscious beings with advanced minds, but already more than mere concepts. Now, all of them have their own cults, even if they barely notice them. The runes themselves still exist in their plane, but it is said that a few have managed to summon them on earth, using their power to destroy entire cities.
Another thing to know is that the most powerful Rune, the rune of Truth, has never been studied, not even discovered, but we can assume that no one is ready for it to take place, even only as a semi-conscient being
>>44001070
>>44019691
There's a reason they differentiate between Ascendants and Old Gods. It gets kind of blurry in that there are some Ascendants that don't act like gods proper, or perhaps aren't gods at all, but are on a near-equivalent power level.
>>44014539
>>44013000
The supernatural/magic in many fantasy settings has simply started to become another aspect of their universe in a sense that "magic" is just another force or form of Energy like Gravity or Light. This is also why "wizards are basically scientists and academics, rather than mystics and wisemen" is becoming more and more common.
