imagine being a god and an animated hat starts clowning on you like this

For the fellow Umberlee lovers, in one game I ran, the temple of Umberlee was decorated with water filled glass coffins that people were drowned in. In the main chamber, Umberlee spoke through the mouths of the drowned dead.

Shinto has a quintillion gods, but you also have to remember: each one of those gods has multiple faces, and many of those gods are secretly the same guy.

Pointy Hat: "DnD has too many gods" Shintoism: "that's cute"

I love how you made a whole video warning against gods as “Plot Contrivances” without ever saying “Deus Ex Machina”

"Lesser Deities have no gyatt, L rizz and get mogged by Sigma, Intermediate and Greater Gods... Skibbidi."

When I was creating my homebrew setting I made it on the surface seem like there were hundreds of gods, but if players actually dig deeper into the lore they would find, for example, that no there are not 40 ocean gods, there are 40 cultures that all have a different name and interpretation of a singular ocean god.

Yes, animism! This is my personal favorite take on doing a D&D pantheon. Just make everything have a spirit, and you have to appease them if you don't want bad luck, or just need a boost. You can have minor side quests about how to pacify the river spirit so you can cross without having to travel days to find a bridge, etc.

I recall one homebrew I was especially proud of. It involved Life and Death's gods being a married Halfling couple. Life was the mother, always cheerful, always wanted to feed her children (the world's people) but also one who would talk to her husband about someone's passing. Her husband, Death, was a rather dour faced grump of a Halfling but never really mean. He knew someone's end scared them, so he took it as a stern but loving father approach to let you know the end was happening. A new death experience or something like reincarnation could be something as simple as them talking over a kitchen table while you sat between them, as if parents wondering what to do with a naughty child. Death telling his beloved, "This one's time is now sweat pea." while she patted your hand to settle you down and say "Ooooh but pumpkin, this little one really does need to say goodbye to their spouse, please, just at least one last message?!" She knew her husband's work was important, it created room for hers, but like all creators it was sad to see her babies go. He loved how she built things, but also knew he had to put things away when their time was done. There was no struggle for ultimate power in the cosmos, there was simply hot apple stellar pies, the smell of sweet weed grass from Death's pipe, and a crackling fire you could admire while they weighed your options if you were a soul of great significance to them.

Fun, potentially live-saving tip: It's funny you bring up the "no service" thing in horror movies, because even if your phone says no service you can still call 911 and have it work. Cellphones ping off every tower, not just their own provider's network, because of this they are legally required to let emergency calls go through on ANY tower it can ping off of. Even if it's out the network and you have "no service."

20:25 As a dweeb who went trough a mythology phase I'd like to point out that the greek and roman (not sure about the norse) mythology also had tons of minor gods of whatever the local landmark was. But since the religion isn't really practiced anymore people only tend to know/care about the big 12.

Eberron has an interesting approach to the divines. It’s even more nebulous and ambiguous. It’s basically like the gods may or may not even exist but it’s the faith of the followers that generates divine magic

Apos'trophee Hyphen-Name must be stopped before he overruns all Examplia.

I think the funniest about the D&D (Specifically Forgotten Realms) gods is that they were like, "Ao the overgod, he keeps the others in their lane," but that wasn't enough so then they were like, "There is the Luminous Being, they keep everything in check because they are the DM, the DM is a canonical god and whatever they say goes!"

The "two god" idea is one I've used myself, with the God of Law and the God of Chaos in my own setting. Law didn't represent "good", but rather rules, order, peace and stability. Chaos, likewise, wasn't "evil" but represented change, freedom, energy and transformations. One could only intervene when the natural balance of the world shifted too far in one direction. So the God of Chaos could only intervene if the world was becoming too rigid or the entire world was being conquered by a single great tyrant. It kept the gods very much real, while explaining why the players were only interacting with one of the two gods. Because they only existed to maintain the balance.

If you don't use either of these methods for any reason in your games, and want to explain the lack of gods, here are 2 major things to think about. 1. Power level: a very strong god has msny worshippers, even across many worlds if you use normal D&D cosmology. This means that if a whole city of people who worshipped them once a week dies, it's not too big a deal to most of them, so they won't send help. Now if it was a whole city of zealous worshippers who dedicated their lives to that God, now you have their attention. Gods aren't going to lend their aid in something that doesn't affect them, so if the story doesn't do so then of course they don't show up 2. Specialization. Even the most powerful gods are still pretty specific. The goddess of crops might have more power than any other god because almost every society farms, but it doesn't mean she can control anything that's not crops. Violent warband is coming to kill her most devout worshippers? She can't send a warband of angels against them, she doesn't have war angels. Most she can do is make the corn into healing portions. So there's some of the major reasons most gods won't get involved in the game's problems. Very few both care, and can do something about it!

Pointy Hat, please make a tip of the hat video about ttrpg travelling, it tends to be SO boring, its aways either a boring timeskip or some goblin encounters, i love the concept of traveling and just dont know how to execute it well, and its also such a big part of an adventure, thank you.

No way, I was literally writing my settings pantheon when I got this notification!!!

One good explanation I've seen for having _huge_ numbers of gods in a setting, with many or even most overlapping, is: different cultures incidentally worshipping the _same deity of a thing/concept but in their own ways._ For example, maybe culture A that lives near the peaks of a mountain range worships Icaros, the handsome young man God of the Sun; while culture B that lives in the deep shadowed valleys and into the underground worships Scoura, the sun-bleached elderly woman Goddess of the Sun; and culture C across the ocean worships Phlrgl, the radiant sunfish God of the Sun; BUT these are in actuality all the _same singular entity._

It makes sense that the gods wouldent freak out everytime the world is in danger.people irl are like that and there is more than one world anyway lol

I'd just like to point out that, in the Greek pantheon, there are at least, like 135 named deities that have specifics known about them and are all directly related to the core pantheon. This does not include the endless variety of nymphs, daimones and other nebulous deity like things that are in fact the god of that rock over there, that are not specifically named.

I was actually just using the shinto style of god swithout realizing it, by combining local area deities of either specific landmarks or common major phenomena, like sandstorms or bush fires, with the idea that dragons are manifestations of magic to be the main gods people worship, and dipping into my teenage mythology phase by also having household gods, like mulan having mushu as her ancestral guardian, where a family with a long history or connection to something will be directly connected to a god that can help them but doesnt have much power outside of where ever they came from

I like the approach fear and hunger took and have started implimenting it in my games. In fear and hunger the old gods are "dead", they have abandoned humanity and disappeared, but being eldritch beings their essence lingers. Their traces haunt the world, giving powers to those who worship them, but in the end being just a thin shrowd of their true selves. The traces power is still far greater than any mortals or ascended beings could ever be.

I love you so much I’m currently pulling my teeth building a pantheon for my homebrew setting and this snapped some things into place. You might enjoy an article series called Practical Polytheism, which is a fun exploration of how the concepts behind polytheism can trip us up as DMs when we’ve only experienced monotheist societies. It crystallized how I’ve felt about CR’s most recent campaign and the weird way they treat the gods as kind of optional. Polytheistic societies aren’t concerned with if they like their gods - worship revolves around the public completion of ritual rather than personal conviction. If you’re impious, you’re not just someone who’s chosen to not prioritize spirituality, you’re putting your whole community’s relationship with gods at risk. Umberlee is a great example in this vein, but the traditional example of Ares. No one likes Ares, but you have to deal with him.

The fun thing about making lots of small gods (and why my home setting is really Exalted inspired) is that you can actually give people a reason to worship them. When the gods aren't amazingly powerful then they can actually show up and participate in their rituals that bring the rains, be a resident in the city that they protect, have office hours in academies, have family drama with their mortal descendants, etc. One of my favorite groups of them in my setting is a series of villages whose gods are petty, heavily drunk, only think between their legs, and who's head priest's main job is to be more of a babysitter than anything else. But they give the residents the ability to breath underwater for a time which makes life in the freezing islands even really possible, so they are fiercely protected out of survival.

"D&D has too many gods" could really translate as "The Forgotten Realms has too many gods". I recall that they did try to pare down the number of gods in 4th Edition Forgotten Realms, but people hated it, so they walked it back in 5E. The number of redundant gods could be chalked up to alignment; there's room for both the malevolent death god that wants to extinguish all life and replace it with undead, and the benign death god that sees undeath as an abomination. It's hard to play as a benign cleric of death when the evil death god is the only option.

Whenever someone asks me as the DM why the gods can't or won't interfere I explain that while the gods are very much aware of the evil sorcerer only a limited number of their faithful are. So intervening on their behalf (in the mortal realm) is impossible because so small of a subsection of the populace is asking for help. If a much larger section of their following were to ask for help, they would. Which ties in nicely because if we're talking greater deities it would take half a continent asking the same thing for them to jump in. But it opens the way for some smaller deities to hop in and help out. If a requirement for interfering with mortals is the majority of the faithful themselves asking for it, it becomes an impractical goal but still a somewhat realistic one.

Your mention of animism reminded me that in canon, Eberron druids are animistic. The druids of Eberron literally see every element of the natural world as possessing a spiritual essence, and they use their spells to communicate with these spirits. Check out the Player’s Handbook for further information.

"so you wanna make a god" no please not again! I have had to make so many gods, entirely due to my own hubris of worldbuilding and homebrewing EVERYTHING for my campaigns and then deciding that ill write a book about it, which meant i had to add and rework SO MUCH

Fun fact about Azura from Elder Scrolls : Her symbols are the Sun and the Moon , but she is the goddess of neither She is vaguely the god of twilight , but mainly its an EGO thing (as is with most Daidric Princess to be honest) She is Vain , that is why she uses the sun and the moon as her symbols despite not having any dominion over them nor creating them .

Your Modron assumption re:Enunciation was correct. This audiovisual medium is within Mechanusian Compliance Code and therefore approved for Mechanus-wide broadcast.

I always go into campaigns with a preset list of dieties, the players dont know which are cannonical and which are purely regarded. I did a cleric campaign and it was an absolute blast having them all discuss how their diety shaped their practice/influenced their multiclassing: -The knowledge cleric going into druid due to believing the truth comes from the land itself -The very confrontational 'challenege your problems like the raging storm' tempest cleric putting levels into monk to accent their signature 'thunderclap' gauntlets -what started as an atypical healer life cleric ended up taking a paladin's oath of redemption after losing an important npc. Having counterspell in such a magic heavy setting was absolutely vital for how far they got Probably one of my favorite campaigns having DM'd with how everyone was so comitted to the roleplay

23:02 I think Theros does this pretty well. There’s only 15 gods- 5 major ones & 10 minor ones. They’re also literally based on the Greek pantheon, so they’re all petty, powerful, & unpredictable. It gives plenty of options for adventures along with reasons for why the gods don’t always intervene (and even when they do, it’s not always a good thing).

So ive had players ask some of the questions you pointed out, and my answer was 1. They only appear to certain cultures, like an elven moon goddess and goblin moon goddess will only appear to elves and goblins 2. They are helping stop other ends of the world and you get help from the clerics god since one of their followers is with you 3. They only appear to their favorite followers And 4. They are busy making their domain function

Hey, thanks for making this video. I haven't finished it yet, but you made something click and I was able to get some work done on my campaign setting. Honestly the work you do is wonderful for the community!

I'm super happy this video exists! I needed a lot of the information you presented, because my first ever campaign is going to have a big mystery centered around the gods and their lack of involvement. This gave me not only more information to keep in mind when dealing with the Old Gods, but also things to keep in mind while making the new ones!

The Queen of DnD God making is Jasmine Bhullar. Hands down. She infuses all her gods with grandeur, mystery and mischief and creates game dynamics to improve engagement over a boring hope roll of the dice. I wrote this on Desi Quest and I'm kinda glad she saw it. If you are gonna create deities then there is a plethora of incredible history and myth to pull from, learn from, design with. I want to design gods from both from ancient German and Zimbabwe.

In my setting, the material plane was ripped from all the other planes by a huuuuge magical accident. sadly most of the gods weren't present in the material plane at that time and so they are not able to interfer in this plane anymore. the hole the devine absence left behind is now filled by 'proto-gods' which are basically local deities that form spontanously and have random domains and effects. a rose-god might cause random rose bushes to bloom near streets or a god of death starts to terrorize a village not really knowing what he is doing yet. They are basically baby gods who try to figure shit out along the way. And its quite fun and gives great opportunity for quests.

This video is pulling me back into your content! Now I am feeling inspired to focus on my prep for a new table. Thanks!!

Undoubtedly you're remarkably good at those edits, I love the flair you put on these videos. Keep the amazing work!

My favourite pantheon of fictional gods are "the Hours" from Cultist Simulator/Book of Hours. They feel incredibly strange, alien and at times paradoxical, like something mortals can just genuinely not fully comprehend, just partially grasp.

An explanation for lack of obvious divine intervention that's usually worked for me is the peace treaty. There's an agreement between all the gods that limits and controls how they can intervene and stuff. It's followed (at least on paper) because 1. The other option is literal open war between the gods which makes nuclear war look like playing with firecrackers or 2. The treaty is enforced by the most powerful beings known to exist. This forces the gods to act subtly and indirectly almost all of the time. And even if they are willing to break the treaty they have to do it VERY infrequently, VERY subtly, or by exploiting loopholes so they don't technically break it. Ideally all three. Meanwhile the beings enforcing the treaty are fine with it being broken. Sure they'll hammer anyone FOUND to be in violation of the treaty but they don't look any harder than they have to because the treaty is a means. Not an end. It exists to keep conflicts between gods at a manageable level. No more, no less. And if the players ever want to see the treaty, just point at a random toddler and ask them if it's reasonable to try to teach them the entirety of a 1,547 year old nation's labyrinthine legal code in one year. Even if specific clauses are quoted to them, those aren't the actual clauses. They're the translated and extremely simplified clauses with most of the context removed. This also sets the stage for a really cool event. A god not bound by the treaty! Maybe they were imprisoned long ago and are trying to /just did break out. Maybe they were locked away by the treaty signers because they wouldn't sign on? Or are they completely new to the scene? A newly ascended god who has none of the experience or power of even the next youngest deity but don't have to follow ANY of the rules. Or were they already a god, just not one here? A god from elsewhere (another plane? another planet?) where the treaty doesn't exist. Or a different one is used instead that doesn't cover here. Are they looking to expand here or are they a Unicron or Galactus type that just travels around eating worlds? Lots of possibilities. Especially if you're the type that likes rules shenanigans.

I paused when I heard the "gods work on tinker-bell logic" and decided it was time to mention that in my homebrew cosmology, gods not only don't need "belief", but mere belief in itself gives effectively nothing, idolization or worship gives very little to them; and what truly benefits them most is striving towards their ideals, taking care of the symbolic objects associated with them ranging from their temples to living creatures or even environments, and acting out the very role that god personifies. Even a god without people intentionally doing these things for their sake is basically eternal short of an apocalyptic event; but conversely, there is also very little stopping any sufficiently powerful adventurer from joining their ranks. Because the actions that can benefit any given god is far reaching, and overlap with countless other gods, power and seniority are basically synonymous; there may be no living mortal alive even aware of the existence of the primordial deities from the beginning of time or those that arrived from "elsewhere" at about the same time even stronger than them, and such deities aren't minded to remind mortals of their existence since the younger gods under their protection do much of their job for them.

In my homebrew lore I have it where there used to be hundreds of gods across all three tiers however there was a massive war that only left a few alive.

Cleric contacts his goddess to deal with an evil cleric. Evil cleric's patron answers by mistake. "Well this is awkward."

"No god of Blacksmithing" - Hephaestus would like to have a word.

The pantheon i use in my game is there's one overgod for the monotheistic peeps, a collection of "true gods" one for each domain, and they just have different names in different cultures, and beneath them there are basically the equivalent of warlock patrons, and there can be as many of them as the players need.

One of my longest running DnD games used a main pantheon of 13 gods with additional lesser deities, some of the gods were connected to party members, others weren't, And the story was centered around a Vampire taking over a Kingdom

Agreed, Umberlee is fantastic, I love her. And as for the main issue: it's simple, really. Just don't have your group fight a threat that would DESTROY THE WORLD. It's cliché and not only would you have to ask "Where are all the gods"? But also: "Where are all the other epic level adventurers? Where the Dragons? The Titans? The elven Archmages? Where is every single being, powerful and knowledgeable enough to help with this threat that would end their existence forever?" With everything less than a world ending threat, it's simple: acting through anything other than clerics is very taxing for the gods and they simply can't afford to do it, unless it is extremely important. Your cleric's deity can help because you literally have a direct line to them in your party. It makes sense. But everyone else isn't going to sacrifice a lot of divine power, just to increase your chances of defeating the local pirate lord, or evil King. They need that power for their own clerics and their good deeds and they simply can't have their clerics helping with every single good deed in the world. And besides: having fewer gods wouldn't solve this problem. You would still have to ask: "Why aren't they helping more, instead of us fighting it out with mostly just our own skills?"

Animism is one of my faves, especially if Fey are going to be big in the campaign as it's easy to blur that line between deity and just really powerful fey thingy.

Very informative video! I stumbled upon both of your solutions in my own worldbuilding endeavors (not a DM, just a worldbuilder), with a pantheon of angels in my sci-fantasy world, and a pantheon of four very powerful gods for my medieval fantasy. It's easy to get caught up in creating too many gods, so it's good to see creators helping fellow creators like this.

I tried and now I've actually accidently made a pantheon of 75 gods and goddesses.....

Funnily enough, what I did for my homebrew world was a mixture of both of the ideas that were described - one extremely powerful creator deity who only cares about observing its creations and doesn't care whatever happens so long as the entire world isn't destroyed, and a huge number of "spirits" created by the creator deity that rule over very specific concepts/phenomena - for example, one rules over static electricity, while another rules over peas. The spirits have agency to support who/what they wish to, but they were created ultimately to be loyal to the creator deity, so they have little true conflict among themselves.

Holy Moly, you wouldn't believe that, but that was actually my first problem with the DnD worldbuilding. I made up three gods, with similar concepts such as yours (two that are basically dichotomy and the third one is for the balance) and players loved them! They were easy to remember and they were so extremely powerful that no one would just ask: Why are they not involved? If they were involved, the planet would just get annihilated. Loved this! Good job!

you have the best timing of all time... how did u know i needed this at this moment right now?

16:00 Yeah the "acknowledge one is there, imply all the others exist" are a problem I was aware of when I started. I went homebrew from the very beginning because I said "If I have to read through 50 years of Faerun lore not even just gods I'm going to lose my mind so we're starting from scratch".

"Maybe one day we'll do Mechanus" Can that day be tomorrow? Mechanus is dope

17:09 Or do what IRL religions did/do and have it be a situation where the gods: 1) Just do not care unless it directly relates to them 2) Have their be bigger fish to fry/things for them to worry about 3) Have their interference in another god's domain be a big taboo

I like how Matt did it for Exandria and Vox Machina. Reduced list of DnD gods, gave them a history of creation, war, betrayal, more war, and then put a gate separating them from the material plane. So they don't interfere directly because they can't. Mortals can plane shift to them if necessary, but other than that they only show up when players seek them out to get guidance or game mechanics.

I’m running a Greek myth inspired game right now. No one is playing a cleric, but one of the main conflicts in the setting is between Boreas and Notus (the gods of the North and South Winds). There is a temple of Zeus in the town, but the players haven’t interacted with it yet.

Option #3: do both. My world has both creator gods (vasr, ineffable beings who built the world and who rarely intervene beyond granting powers to clerics with little oversight) and mortal gods (ascended mortals who have limited powers, including limits on how many clerics they can empower, but can effectively act as the hands-on ceo of their church).

RIP Sophie indeed. I really feel like she was one or two more albums from breaking through to mainstream

I use a limited pantheon (Home-Brew not Store Bought) and the gods have agreed with each other not to interfere unless acting though a follower... The Clerics god can help the cleric, but they cannot come down from the sky and get their hands dirty. Some gods will act behind the scenes propping up the BBEG, but they cannot lend of physical hand, they just provide guidance, advice and blessings; the other gods cannot get involved unless the one propping up the BBEG gets physically involved rather than just lending aide to their follower.

Asking your players to make the lore for the deity they worship is way more fun then you might think! It’s great and takes a lot of pressure off of you to create something perfect for your game.

Also in regards to the gods not getting directly involved with major mortal threats like BBEG Wizard threatening world domination, in the Forgotten Realms Ao the Overgod has forbidden the gods from directly intervening in the material plane or in mortal affairs. Ao is basically the DM of the Forgotten Realms and can literally strip a god's entire portfolio and power with a snap of his fingers, no matter how powerful that god is. So disobeying him and directly interfering with the mortal realm is basically a death sentence for a god. For context, the Time of Troubles when the gods were all made mortal and a shit load of them died was literally Ao grounding the gods for stealing his fancy stone tablets that actually didn't matter at all, but he was just mad that they did it.

My theory is that bc a lot of the evil gods get power via grand Dios rituals ((which is how they gain equivalent power)) the other gods have a tendency to send clerics to help with recruitment to maintain their power or they're stopping evil gods plans

I am so happy you've covered this. So many fantasy worldbuilding attempts burned out bc I struggled to define its gods.

Umberlee campaign idea: Umberlee has made a deal with a group of high priests to consolidate her power over the sea. Basically, the priests force coastal people to worship her and donate gold to her temples, giving Umberlee more power. The priests will get a cut of the gold and she leaves their extravagant ships alone. She gets so powerful that many minor sea gods get worried and start a proxy war with her, choosing those they deem worthy to take down the high priests and try to get local kings to banish the warship of Umberlee.

I actually did the "Level 20 party kills a god" thing. It was the end of about 15 years of regular campaigning, in which Tharizdun had been mentioned in whispers as the big bad. After a massive protracted adventure in the Astral Sea, where my players were searching for an answer to the sudden invasion of ancient demons across the planes, they wound up in the Abyss- the *bottom* of the Abyss, where Obox-ob, leader of the obyriths, and his army were waiting in a chamber above the chained body of Tharizdun for the players to arrive, so he could perform a ritual to spread his maddening influence across the universe. During the fight, he wound up using the Jathiman dagger (an ancient artifact said to be able to kill a god) to free a small aspect of Tharizdun, siccing him on the players. What followed was a knock-down dragout fight of truly epic proportions that ended when the bard flew across the battlefield and planted the dagger in the avatar, earning him the moniker "Godslayer." The final showdown took three full sessions from start to finish, including multiple plot twists, important character deaths, and an Avengers portals moment where everyone the players had helped on their journeys showed up to provide backup. It's not something you can just plop into a campaign, but there's something to be said for just how dramatic a showdown with a literal god can be.

Everything I know about Earth mythologies I learned from High School DxD and associated fanfics. I'm pretty sure the Shinto pantheon has a god of blacksmithing . Even if they don't, they'd just uplift a mortal to make one.

I always think of the reason why (some) gods don't interfere directly in the world through the context of the Mistborn series. In the book The Alloy of Law, the main character Wax is losing his fight against the final boss. In his time of need, he reaches out to his god (as he has done constantly throughout the story), and asks him, _"if this threat was so serious, why didn't you do something about it?"_ And for the first time, his god replies: _"I did do something. I sent you."_ Gives me chills every time.

my personal method is to devide the pantheon into lesser gods, which are the local gods of petty things, and then the greater gods who are so powerful and indifferent that if you are doing something to attract their attention, you're doing something VERY wrong. the lesser gods get more screen time, and I've never actually had anyone manage to bring a greater god into the forefront of the story, they exist more for the abstract faith of a god that exists but works in "mysterious ways"

My world, The Cairn, only has one god. The Void. It is where everyone gets there magic from, it controls everything, yet it has no physical form and cannot be directly communicated with. Eventually it is going to get tired and make some smaller gods to keep things running while it takes a nap, and I love the idea of “The God of… that mountain over there idk” because that is totally the way The Void would handle it. It has so much care for the world that it would definitely make thousands of gods for a type of item or specific place.

I animated the shot of the 2 minions with the hammer, omg I feel so honoured that it’s on a Pointy video ❤❤❤❤❤

A really interesting way I've seen from Hoyo games were either Gods "consuming" the domain of other Gods so in this way you could have a stronger, broader domain take over a smaller specific domain ala War taking over Fear. Or the gods had a big battle and a majority died so only few are left.

I used gods in my D&D games as theme parks basically, they'd have their own cities or temples and the party could buy thematic items from gift shops at the exits where you can buy overly priced but sometimes useful magical items. Oh, but for my Cleric I would have their god give them quests, which doing these quests would give them special points which they could spend on thematic items like the ones in the gift shops, but instead of buying them you can get them through godly favor basically. Also Pointy Hat's art is really good, if you read this keep up the good work.

Honestly, makes me happy with places like Eberron- the religion tends to reflect the way people actually worship, and the only person who knows if the gods are even remotely real is the DM. That makes faith a genuinely important thing to having cleric powers, but it means that there are places for schism, for different interpretations, and for there to be faiths and paths of divine power that are not driven by anthropomorphic personifications. It really makes things more interesting and mysterious.

Honestly, I'd combine the two systems. All those Kami styled "gods" are more like members of the few courts/metaphysical kingdoms of the limited number of true gods. You can like.... make deals with the little ones, get some power..... but they're very limited because they aren't actually gods. They'd be how warlocks and sorcerers gain magic, either by those deals or by blood ties. So essentially, sorcerers are the closest thing to demigods, bur again, not actually related to true gods. All Forge Spirits that oversee individual blacksmiths are really more like a courier, a servant of the Sun God.

In Shintoism it’s actually believed a Kami exists in and for everything. I really like that idea, I believe it’s a good way to remind people to be thankful & appreciative of everything around them.

OH MY GOD I JUST GOT HOME AND WAS GONNA START WRITING A GOD-CENTERED CAMPAIGN (sorry for bad english i'm ñ language)

13:43 Yeah, that was my 4e Campaign. It got pretty far but never finished. Basically had three Gods (Asmodeus, the Raven Queen, and Zehir) who were secretly linked to the players. They didn't find out until the late campaign and the plan was to have them resurrect a forgotten god (who was the Raven Queen's lover, Asmodeus' master, and Zehir's greatest kill) to help save the world.

In my campaign, the gods were bannished from the material plane after waring on it for centuries and scarring the landscape.

I was not expecting for my afternoon to start with a pointy hat that has an eye and wings saying "Hello, my disciple"

My favorite way of making gods follows the "few but powerul" idea, they're so powerful that they can't touch their creations, having to live in an astral plane who only they have access to and manifesting on the material plane with only a .1% of their power, thus, making them way stronger than any lvl 20 player, but still weak enough so that their presence doesn't collapse their creation, wich in turn, leaves them weak enough where a cult could capture and "kill" it. This way, they don't feel like plot holes and the "can't touch their creations" make space for many story ideas about the relation of the gods and the world

Gods, finally! I had so many conversations with my DM what is God in dnd

My reason is they are all too busy in their realms and only have one secretary who tells them important stuff and things get lost because the secretary is over worked and trying to answer their prayers through the prayer phone

Future campaign idea: Too many gods in Faerun. Gotta thin out their numbers.

i know this is my 3rd comment on this video, but every time i watch him, i am blown away by how well written and edited pointy hat's videos are. its honestly some of my favourite on youtube period.

He was so brave for this one, the variety of settings across the community at large is a treasure.

I think that we sometimes forget that Greek mythology also had a lot of small gods, like gods of a single river ect.

The main way I deal with Too Many Gods is by treating the Polytheism seriously (Something that DnD doesn't), and the way to do that from what I know is that there are deities that govern regions in the material world and that to pray for a foreign god in a land they do not govern without asking permission from the local priesthood first is disrespectful and should be avoided if possible. Example: If a cleric of Sune prays for a Guiding Bolt spell in a region where they haven't obtained permission from the local Helmite priesthood that might cause tensions if they're noticed, such as merchants hearing about that being unwilling to sell supplies at normal prices. If they do that to attack what at least appears to be a Helmite priest or cleric that might spark a regional conflict if it doesn't get them arrested or exiled first, using another deity's miracle to commit what is regionally considered a grave sin might cause the small scale equivalent of a holy war and so on. Which most clerics would never get themselves in trouble with because it's considered a basic courtesy to ask for *and give* permission *and* your starting god usually doesn't get mad if you get your miracles from a local deity. Unless the gods are actively beefin', but then that's a big part of the story anyway.

17 seconds and no views wow he really fell off

I was interested in writing a campign setting where all the old gods stopped existing with new ones taking their place so this perfect timing!

Umberlee is 1 of my pirate rabbit's patrons that he secretly gives tribune to.

I made a few gods for a campaign, they were kinda weird because they had a war and if a god defeated anither, they would get the looser's domain. Some tryed to obtain similar domains, like the godess of love, she is also the keeper of secrets, the birthing mother, the spring bringer and the lady of agriculture (that was not by choice, the former god of agriculture challenged her for the spring domain). But you also had gods who went for power, like the god of war, the sea, the storm, earthquakes, and several more.

The semi-canon explanation in the *standard* D&D multiverse is kind of that there are theoretically infinite material planes but only the set amount of outer planes. Like Krynnspace, Realmspace, Greyspace, etc are all within the same setting and can be traveled between via Spelljammers or spells. So yeah there are a ton of gods there’s also a ton of problems going on at the same time so they’ve kinda got to pick and choose what they’re putting their attention into. Not to mention that each Material plane will be providing each god different amounts of worship and granting different amounts of power in their respective space

I wasn't prepared for the 10d4 psyquic damage on 1:20

I use the first method not for gods but for spirits. In a campaign I'm running, I kinda made celestials, fae, and fiends just types of "spirits" for the sake of the setting I went with. There's a specific spirit for a lot of different things, like for example a spirit specifically for the paths that animals walk on. Hunters might try to gain the favor of a spirit to guide them down this path in order to get some dinner, but they'd be wise to not be too greedy about it unless they wish to face punishment.

I literally theory crafted my own pantheon a few days before you posted this. It turned into 4 sperate pantheons of 12 gods who are all part of a single god, but in this plane of existence he separated his conscienceness into 4 pantheons. 12 deities each all based on aspects of the Carl Jung archetypes along with the anima, animus, shadow and self.

pointy hat my beloved