Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[AnOminous]

And scattered in the remains of these dead civilizations are the tombs and bones of their gods, so I'll usually toss an altars or shrines (or a few) to some long dead god I'll make up on the spot - because even a dead god is still powerful beyond mortal reckoning.

The dead gods are the scariest, and they are usually really pissed off, too.

 

[JJLiautaud]

What gods in RPGs are fun or interesting?

I like Elistraee and her alt myth counter part Vandria if we're talking dnd and Glorantha has a really cool myth and religion background thing that would be too much to go over in a thread.

 

[Joshua Connor Tomar]

What gods in RPGs are fun or interesting?

I never cared for fictional pantheons, and when a setting book opens with "here's 27 gods, their domains, and who worships them" my eyes glaze over and I skip the section. Which is all the more strange there are entire expansion books on the subject. So far, the only gods I found interesting were in Starfinder. Abadar and Triune. Being the god of money and civilization (and space Amazon) and a machine god that invented The Drift (the games equivalent of The Warp).

I've been told that DnD used to have a god of love that did wedding and matchmaking, but was never mentioned in 5e for being problematic in current year.

There was also a moon god that Spoony said everyone would choose for convention games because they were OP.

Kobold press has a good set of pantheons in their Midgard world book which steal a lot from other places but it's very well organized.

Running God games is a way to fill out your pantheon and keep it pretty unique.

 

[Overly Serious]

For campaigns, I usually take the default 4e pantheon because, minus the knife-ear gods where there are some seams from them bolting on celtic mythology to vaguely greco-roman pantheon, it works pretty well and it covers a good gamut of domains and its pretty easy to tweak the pantheon to where you can gloss over the frictions between the dieties and have it so all the (surviving) gods get along in a Roman sort of way so that by the default the players don't need to murder each other over theology. Or you can exagerate them and really up the olympian drama, petty butthurts, and scheming.

I agree but the other thing that I liked about the 4e gods were that they were closer to Celtic or Scandinavian gods in power level than the mish-mash of Abrahamic and Pagan that older editions often were. That is to say they could conceivably get involved, they were more like real individuals. You had proper stats and you could mix it up with them. That all feels more fitting for a D&D game and fitted with the more intimate feeling of 4e background where you had the shadow realm and the feywild next door and some low-level PC could easily wander down the wrong path that appeared one day and end up in one of them. Like the Raven Queen's domain was actually in the Shadowfell. Gods in 4e felt more lifelike.

 

[FatR]

I have yet to encounter any decent gods in RPGs. Or, at least, in DnD (but not many fantasy RPGs deviate in this respect). DnD never really settled down on what its gods are, perhaps out of desire to keep them as inoffensive and inactive, except when the plot demands them to be active, as possible. Are they just super tough guys who cultivated power a step beyond the normal level scale and get to be worshipped for the same in-setting reason the pagan gods did (when surrounded by vast and capricious powers, you need to appease them, and maybe, if you're lucky, buy their favor)? Are they worship parasites? Are they pillars of the universe and embodiments of concepts that keep it running? DnD gods were all of this. More often than not, at the same time. The game never committed enough to a definitive answer to actually explore it and weave it into the setting's past, mythology and current workings. 4E came the closest to writing gods decently, making them more involved with and integrated into the setting, while at the same time actually challengeable, but well, that approach did not last.

 

[SadLonelyLoser]

What gods in RPGs are fun or interesting?

Given D&D's dark age roots, I generally just have one abstract God the humans worship known as "The Holy Light" or something and the local monarch interprets it in the most convenient way possible. Elves worship a pantheon like the filthy pagans they are, but for most races only caring about a single God makes a lot more sense.

 

[anti SJW]

Wotc and WizKids just disrespected one of the most iconic fantasy artists in history.
I believe most of us have seen this classic Larry Elmore piece.



WizKids licensed from WOTC, are putting out a mini of the warrior in the painting.



Larry Elmore said that it's a male in the painting.



Nothing is sacred. Heaven forbid they do what the artist intended.

 

[AnOminous]

I have yet to encounter any decent gods in RPGs. Or, at least, in DnD (but not many fantasy RPGs deviate in this respect). DnD never really settled down on what its gods are, perhaps out of desire to keep them as inoffensive and inactive, except when the plot demands them to be active, as possible. Are they just super tough guys who cultivated power a step beyond the normal level scale and get to be worshipped for the same in-setting reason the pagan gods did (when surrounded by vast and capricious powers, you need to appease them, and maybe, if you're lucky, buy their favor)? Are they worship parasites? Are they pillars of the universe and embodiments of concepts that keep it running? DnD gods were all of this. More often than not, at the same time. The game never committed enough to a definitive answer to actually explore it and weave it into the setting's past, mythology and current workings. 4E came the closest to writing gods decently, making them more involved with and integrated into the setting, while at the same time actually challengeable, but well, that approach did not last.

Doesn't anyone even remember the original Deities & Demigods?

 

[BlazikenLover]

What gods in RPGs are fun or interesting?

If you want good or interesting lore on gods check the AD&D 2E books, they're fantastic for that sort of thing and others said: Check the Deities and Demigods book (the one with the cthulhu mythos pantheon), that book has some deities from well known pantheons which often get overlooked.

Personally I like to take deities, demons, spirits, etc from middle easter religions and mix them up a little, so far I have borrowed from zoroastrism, ancient mesopotamia and a few others whose name I cannot remember. Other times I borrow from more appropiate religions like that time I ran an age of discovery game set in a fantasy south america I grabbed gods from the mayan, aztec and inca pantheons, or when I had to make a pantheon for aarakroca in my world I took a few gods from hinduism and made them into the wind dukes of aaqa.

As for actual D&D deities I personally like Jergal the god of death, who in one version of the lore is said to have been a member of an alien species who had some pretty powerful magic and mostly erased themselves off the universe after a ritual that went wrong.

Tharizdun being another I enjoy, it is because of him that the abyss and demons exist, since he got tricked into planting a seed by creatures from a ruined universe, said seed would make the universe more like theirs and allowed them to survive. Every god had to team up to seal him away into a pocket dimension where he can't do much except nudge mortals into releasing him someday.

I like Elistraee and her alt myth counter part Vandria if we're talking dnd

Had to look up Vandria and faerun wiki says she is Elistraee's sister, is that what you meant?

 

[Ghostse]

ancient mesotopia

I was working on a Bronze Age setting where every "City" (and by "city" I mean what would be over the medieval equivalent of a village.) had a local deity and included the "capturing the neighboring city's idol to subjugate your opponent's god" thing, as well as few gods with wider areas of power but less direct effect.
I'd still like to run that one day.

 

[Henri Barbusse]

God /tg/ can be unbearable at times, I came across a thread and saw some people unironically arguing that Tolkien is pagan

For my sanity, I'm going to pretend the person saying that is a really hardcore evangelical who thinks all Catholics are pagans.

 

[JJLiautaud]

Had to look up Vandria and faerun wiki says she is Elistraee's sister, is that what you meant?

Vandria was created for 5e core and then backimported into Forgotten Realms, Eilistraee is a FR exclusive.

 

[Adamska]

I pretty much just freewheel absolutely when it comes to religion in my games. In my current game I statted out some deities and stuff, mostly borrowing from older myths. Or in the case of the world they're now on, codifying and bolstering deities pre-established for the setting.

 

[Gingervitis]

Or they show a complete lack of understanding of what is appropriate and go charging at the king's army because the king has the most loot. Nor do they learn, instead repeating this process over and over like Dr. Strange going to Dormammu at the end of the movie saying "I have come to bargain".

They do this until the GM quits the game in despair and declares the only adventures he will ever run if he ever runs one again, will be a single corridor with no branches, one entrance and a defined sequence of monsters who do nothing but sit and wait for the PCs to arrive for a self-contained encounter because his players are too stupid to understand the difference between "there is an ancient dragon in this mountain" and "there is an ancient dragon in this mountain and you are supposed to march up to the mouth of its cave and wave your tiny fucking sword at it instead of dealing with the band of goblins who have been waylaying travelers."

Ah, not speaking out of personal experience here at all. No way.

Are your players retarded? More retarded than most players, I mean.

 

[Tom Bombodildo]

Are your players retarded? More retarded than most players, I mean.

I severely underestimated how stupid players could be until my brother moved to a new city and tried running games there.

Our group from our home city is amazing, we still (most of us) play together and we have a history of fun games. We're all fairly normal guys; wagies, desk workers, one is a doctor, nothing out of the ordinary. And we're all average to above average smart.

But my brother went to a different city for a job for a few years and started running games there and all the players he ran into were not only not that bright, but they also played like every r/DnD complain post about retarded players. Full bore "tee hee, I'm le heckin CE rogue and I steal from the party", "your character doesn't like my character? I roll to hit", "Bro my character is literally this thing from Dark Souls/Skyrim/WoW/whatever" type shit. Super obnoxious and the group almost never had a game that was fun to play most of the time or ended well.

I had always assumed those types of players were relatively rare, but apparently they're everywhere and you can run into entire tables full of them. Makes me sad just thinking about it.

 

[Ghostse]

I severely underestimated how stupid players could be until my brother moved to a new city and tried running games there.

Our group from our home city is amazing, we still (most of us) play together and we have a history of fun games. We're all fairly normal guys; wagies, desk workers, one is a doctor, nothing out of the ordinary. And we're all average to above average smart.

But my brother went to a different city for a job for a few years and started running games there and all the players he ran into were not only not that bright, but they also played like every r/DnD complain post about retarded players. Full bore "tee hee, I'm le heckin CE rogue and I steal from the party", "your character doesn't like my character? I roll to hit", "Bro my character is literally this thing from Dark Souls/Skyrim/WoW/whatever" type shit. Super obnoxious and the group almost never had a game that was fun to play most of the time or ended well.

I had always assumed those types of players were relatively rare, but apparently they're everywhere and you can run into entire tables full of them. Makes me sad just thinking about it.

This is the shit I keep warning you motherfuckers about only to get "well my table just ignores that" in response.
One day you're going to need a new group, and this shit is what awaits you.

 

[Overly Serious]

Are your players retarded? More retarded than most players, I mean.

Yes. And I hope. Respectively.

I severely underestimated how stupid players could be until my brother moved to a new city and tried running games there.

Our group from our home city is amazing, we still (most of us) play together and we have a history of fun games. We're all fairly normal guys; wagies, desk workers, one is a doctor, nothing out of the ordinary. And we're all average to above average smart.

But my brother went to a different city for a job for a few years and started running games there and all the players he ran into were not only not that bright, but they also played like every r/DnD complain post about retarded players. Full bore "tee hee, I'm le heckin CE rogue and I steal from the party", "your character doesn't like my character? I roll to hit", "Bro my character is literally this thing from Dark Souls/Skyrim/WoW/whatever" type shit. Super obnoxious and the group almost never had a game that was fun to play most of the time or ended well.

I had always assumed those types of players were relatively rare, but apparently they're everywhere and you can run into entire tables full of them. Makes me sad just thinking about it.

I hear this! I didn't start out as a "gamer" in any sense. Never really been part of that culture if I can dignify it with such a phrase. My first RPG experience was seeing a book in a shop and buying it and running it for some friends. Later on, I did it again with a different game system and it was just regular mates who'd also never played an RPG before (maybe one had but he didn't stick around - there may be a connection here).

Where I'm leading with this is that it's not just an issue of intelligence but learned behaviour as well. I've pretty much ditched the hobby because like your brother I moved to a new area and for the first time I'm not running a game for friends but looked up local gaming groups and recruited some from there.

The difference is stark. They have all sorts of jokes and habits that are just alien to me. I could practically see one person tuned out most of the session waiting for an "encounter" to start. When what he perceived as an "encounter" did start, he suddenly perked up and started rolling his dice. But he said later that the game wasn't what he was used to. What he was used to was D&D where he had starting and ending level appropriate encounters, people took their turns, he could get up and go and come back for his turn and someone would fill him in on "oh, so and so took out the goblins" sort of stuff. Mine had lots of dialogue and plot twists. It was far more like a story we were telling together.

So expectations are very different but it's also a whole other culture. Which is why I'm wrapping up my last game and hanging up the hobby. To me it's something I enjoy doing with friends. It's not enjoyable to run for an alien group who I don't know or have anything in common with outside of it.

 

[ZMOT]

This is the shit I keep warning you motherfuckers about only to get "well my table just ignores that" in response.
One day you're going to need a new group, and this shit is what awaits you.

public groups have always been more miss than hit. it's simple statistics when you remember who is most likely to end up in those - usually not the people that have a good group and are good players (not to mention highly depends on region and area).

 

[Judge Dredd]

Might lose a player over SBI shit.

One of my players has a personal Discord server. On that server, a third party started shilling TZU ZAU. Basically saying how it's one of the best games ever, so deep and meaningful and blah blah blah. I asked if that was the same game SBI worked on. Immediately, player flies into a rage, deletes my post, and goes on a tirade defending Sweet Baby Inc.

After an hour of him tard raging, he did eventually calmed down and returned to normal. He's not in my current campaign due to schedule issues so it's too early to say, but we'll see.



Sorry to bring up the mech shit again, but after the first session of the campaign, I've been inundated with a recommendation. Mech Hack (Seriously, can OSR games stop calling themselves "X Hack"?). From that another game called Salvage Union, which is yet another communist utopia setting.

Part of me is tempted to say "fuck it" and make up my own game, but then it join the countless OSR games languishing in obscurity on DriveThru and Itch. And I'd have no way to really play test it. If there's interest, I can start a thread and crowd source ideas from KF, but if not, then it was a stupid idea anyway.

Edit: Fixed game title.

 

[Mexican_Wizard_711]

Might lose a player over SBI shit.

One of my players has a personal Discord server. On that server, a third party started shilling TZU. Basically saying how it's one of the best games ever, so deep and meaningful and blah blah blah. I asked if that was the same game SBI worked on. Immediately, player flies into a rage, deletes my post, and goes on a tirade defending Sweet Baby Inc.

After an hour of him tard raging, he did eventually calmed down and returned to normal. He's not in my current campaign due to schedule issues so it's too early to say, but we'll see.

Red Flag Material right there, I'll ditch that player if I were in a game