Transcript
A mass of skeletal fiends, a field of undead, claws and rips its way from the once-consecrated, now-defiled earth. On the hill overlooking the ancient cemetery stands an odd band of heroic mercenaries, there a cloaked silver-haired rogue, here a brutal dwarven fighter, and stepping into the center, backlit by the swollen moon, a figure in glittering full plate commanding the attention of the shuddering blight below.
They bolster their shield, that gleaming symbol of stout defiance in the face of creeping death, vowing the light of faith shall never darken beneath the onslaught of evil. Raising one gauntleted fist to the heavens, seeking to call down a great smiting of the enemy from their god above, in their heart of hearts beseeching their deity for the privilege of being a conduit for the divine’s cleansing wrath. And as the tide of shambling death surges forward, gnashing rictus grins, mad rattle of the unholy risen, they call upon their lord –
“What’s my god’s name again?” The player’s looking at you. It’s an honest question. You hold up a finger, pull out your iPad and hastily flick through your notes. Where’s that damn google doc with the links again?
A guide to the gods! Yes! For your players, for your world, just for fun even? Let’s talk about how you even start creating a complete pantheon of deities to rule and harass the denizens of your world.
Greetings good humans and welcome back to Tabletop Alchemy, where your host has a face for radio and we chat about all kinds of weird and wild tabletop hobby stuff.
So you’re creating a world – I’m sorry, your BUILDING a world, you’re world-building – and your world needs religion! Cause the denizens of your world need something to fight over. And something to blame their troubles on. Something to have faith in and from which to draw power. Beings of light to worship and plead with, shadowy things to bargain and make deals with.
So yeah, you need some gods. And some demi-gods. Maybe some saints, maybe some devils, some celestial family squabbling that leads to world-shattering cataclysms. The fun things gods can do!
All right, today I thought I’d share how I’ve gone about creating the pantheon for my homebrew DnD world. And maybe some of these thoughts can inspire or help you in creating your own set of tyrannical, power-hungry, soul-eating deities.
What’s the main goal of having a pantheon for your rpg world?
To me, there’s the obvious game mechanic of player characters needing some outside forces that justify entire character classes – cleric, druid, warlock, et cetera. In fact, there are probably more classes and sub-classes that need some kind of deity in the game than don’t. Wizards yank power from some ethereal aether of magic and everyone else needs to tap into some kind of divine essence to justify where their lightning bolts come from.
But another reason a pantheon exists is to literally help shape the societies in a world. There’s just something extremely fundamental about humans believing or having faith in something unseen, something inscrutable and vastly more powerful than our mere human-ness. And these beliefs basically create instant methods of introducing conflict and factions within your world.
A third reason is, in my opinion, creating stuff is just fun. It’s actually another fundamental human drive, this need to create. So coming up with a pantheon is just another facet of your world you get to pour creativity into. And you can literally do anything you want! I mean, it’s gods, you’re the ultimate god of your world.
So here we are, at the stereotypical “dreaded” blank page. As most successful artists and writers say – put something on the page, just make it “not empty”. Doesn’t matter what it is, just put something down.
The first thing that occurred to me was a number sequence. Three. Six. Nine. I like the implied symmetry of that sequence, even though it’s not really symmetrical. Now, you’re gonna generate ideas based on stuff you’ve been exposed to, ideas you’ve encountered and considered, media you’ve watched and read, everything out there you’ve processed through your own personal filter. And your imagination is gonna do it’s thing, it’s gonna run its algorithm on all that stuff and synthesize new ideas that you can slap down on this blank page and bloody it up so you can get into the mess of creation.
Now I come from a writing background originally and as much as I wish I could paint, sketch or draw original art – I really do wish I could do those things, we might talk about that in another video. So the next thing that occurred to me after the 3 – 6 – 9 sequence was alliteration: the words “Six Saints of Sinners” popped into my head so I wrote ‘em down. Then “Nine Daemons of Darkness”. At this point, nothing you write down is a waste, no matter how silly or random it feels initially. It’s all sorta raw material you get to work with and refine as you go.
As this idea sorta coalesced, I also got an image in my head from the number sequence. A triangle. Or more specifically, a pyramid. The gods are a pyramid scheme. Perfect. Anyway, I felt there was this geometry forming, which of course is not really geometrical in the maths sense. The actual geometry of fitting triangles inside a pyramid would probably be 1-3-5, and that’s actually a completely viable hierarchy if you wanted to go with that.
Also, I’m definitely not trying to say you should start your pantheon creation process with a number sequence. Not at all. My point is that you should just start writing down or drawing stuff and see where it goes. Go with the flow is exactly what this is all about.
I didn’t have any verbiage for the number three, but the number sequence and these two phrases – Six Saints of Sinners and Nine Daemons of Darkness – kicked off my overall pantheon idea. Personally, I find a lot of published pantheons to be overly crunchy, insofar as the number of deities they include. I thought with this 3 – 6 – 9 structure would help me keep a handle on just how many gods I was gonna create. Keep things simple, stupid, that’s what I told myself. But of course, we all know, there’s not a single thing in the universe that is as simple as we’d like to believe. Well, in some cases, maybe a lotta cases, things are often more simple than we assume. Okay, okay, I’m trying to stay away from rabbit holes, let’s move on.
So, keep things simple, stupid and – case in point – I immediately made the idea more complex. I thought the top three gods might actually have multiple facets, or perceived entities that were actually the same being. You know, a diamond has facets and which facets you actually see depends upon your viewing angle. So if each facet of this hypothetical diamond was a different color and you and your friend are looking at this diamond from different sides, you might say, “This diamond is blue.” And they might say, “Nope, it’s yellow.” Instant conflict. Over the same object. So my top three gods are perceived or interpreted as twelve entities by different factions in my world. Hold on, it’s getting confusing, I know. Let me explain.
So I have a background in Catholicism because I grew up in a very Catholic household. When I was like nine or ten I had to read the entire Bible. I’ve never been truly religious, in fact, I’d call myself agnostic going back as far as first grade when I was surprised by my realization that everyone seemed to be interpreting the Bible *literally* rather than figuratively.
No offense is meant toward any faithful out there – I’m agnostic, that means I’m just saying, “I don’t know.” But this is all content for some other channel. Yeah, the proverbial rabbit hole channel.
Here though, my admittedly shallow knowledge of the Bible became inspiring. I considered the idea that Christians have this strange sort of almost “soft magic system” type of pantheon. Specifically what’s known as the Holy Trinity. So there’s God, there’s Jesus, the Son of God, and then there’s the Holy Spirit. And these three entities are individuals and yet simultaneously are aspects of the same entity.
Yeah. It’s like a soft magic system – something that’s deliberately obscure in comprehensibility. This type of thing imparts an “other world-ness”, a “beyond-human-understanding” quality. And I thought, yeah, that can be cool in my pantheon. Gods should be inscrutable. And it allows me to basically have more gods than the number three implies.
So I kept riffing. Three S-tier gods. Each one has four worship-able – worship – worship able – worship-able aspects.
I decided there were probably two humanoid aspects based on perceived gender. And then, what does every rpg need in its cosmos? Gargantuan creatures! Of course, right? So that’s a third aspect right there, the monstrous aspect.
And my own background of fiction and non-fiction consumption has definitely left me with this feeling that symbols are often ascribed with power by humans, and so I decided the fourth aspect would be a symbol, or even cooler, a “cypher”, a facet absolutely devoid of gender of any type, of even nature or corporeality, physical-ness, et cetera – a symbol that some people might worship as representing and simultaneously BEING the god itself.
So this got real complicated real quick but ultimately it’s just a stream of consciousness, I was just writing down whatever came to mind. It’s kinda like sculpting. You have a mass of medium – in this case, connected ideas – and you just sort of mold it and shape it – you can use this same technique for writing or drawing, whatever, just let the ideas flow. You can – and WILL – prune that crazy out-of-control banzai tree of ideas soon enough. It’s always gonna be better to have too many ideas and be able to cut ‘em down than not have enough. And giving yourself freedom to write down anything, no matter how dumb it sounds, that’s, well, that’s freedom. You feel free. And that’s very conducive to creativity. Although limitations are also conducive to creativity.
Anyway, I took a break on the S tier gods and moved on to the Six Saints. Now at this point, I knew that graphically speaking, since there were going to be Nine Daemons of Darkness, there was this implied geometric or visual structure to the Pantheon that included a gradient from light to darkness. Very simplistic, of course. Light and Dark, that’s the way of the world, or at least how a lot of us humans see it. So I knew that this middle tier of deity was the gray zone. Where the light and dark mix. And what or who in a universe lives in the gray zone the most? To me, that’s humanoid emotions and intelligence.
Just a note, I keep saying “humanoid” rather than human because of course in my D&D world and probably most of yours, there are plenty of D&D races – elves, dwarves, goblins, tabaxi, you know, whatever. It seemed wrong to just lump them all into the term “human” if “humans” are in fact just another race of beings. So I’m leaning into “humanoid” to collectively refer to all the people or races in my homebrew world. I don’t particularly like the word “humanoid” because it’s still “human” centric.
So I’d love a different word that refers to the collective intelligent life on a fantasy world but I just – I don’t know what that should be. Probably because I’m just under-read. Maybe … Anthropomorphity. All of humanity! All of anthropomorphity! I don’t know. Panthropomorphity. Panspyria! These aren’t words, I know that. But if you have any ideas for what to call the collective intelligence on a world that isn’t all human, help me out in the comments. Seriously. No, seriously, I need help. They won’t let me outta here.
So back to the gray zone of anthropomorphity. I don’t think that’s gonna stick. Anyway, my Six Saints of Sinners are gonna represent humanoid-type mental aspects and drives. The Nine Daemons’ll represent the darker emotional aspects of those same people. But I also notice the math again, the numbers. Six is cleanly divisible by three and so I can to align two Saints with each S-tier god. I figure these Saints are all demigods, whatever that means. I mean, I know what a demigod is – beings with partial or lesser divine power than those s-tier entities – but really, demigod can mean whatever you want it to mean. Cause the space between a human and an all-powerful god is vast indeed. And within these two-by-two-by-two separations, I can have each pair of Saints be of an opposing gender.
Now, I know the idea of gender in our society is rapidly evolving, and that’s totally fine and to be honest probably an inevitable part of human evolution. More and more as we progress into the future, I’m often reminded of the excellent comic book series Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis – I mean, the concept of Hunter S Thompson dropped into a cyberpunk city? It’s glorious. I highly recommend it.
In my own head space, when I’m referring to “gender” as far as my Pantheon goes, I’m thinking more along the lines of how languages other than English have word conjugations referred to as “masculine” or “feminine”. One of the deities in my Pantheon is called Saint Sellastian, nominally the “masculine” half of the god Umbrael’s pair of Saints. Masculine in this case doesn’t mean biological, it just means some members of society might ascribe certain attributes of their choosing to that particular entity.
And this notion of different people ascribing different attributes to the same entity is an intrinsic part of my home brew world’s religions. It’s back to that hypothetical multi-colored diamond thing I talked about earlier. Here in our real world, on a personal level, I feel that many of the religions and religious factions that exist are describing and worshipping and arguing about the same thing, just from different perspectives. And I find that endlessly fascinating.
I also specifically did not want to create a separate pantheon for different races – that, to me, is a road into mind-numbing chaos as far as world-building goes. For me! Just for me. I ran with this idea that, for example, the elves worship the same four aspects of Umbrael as the lizard folk do, but they would argue about the look and qualities and scriptures pertaining to Umbrael, even though it’s the same entity. It allows for the inevitable religious conflicts that are part of any world, even with a limited pantheon. I mean, look at just Christianity! There are who knows how many factions of subtle differences of belief in the same damn thing! We create so much fun and games for ourselves, don’t we?
So the Nine Daemons of Darkness, a.k.a. The Shroud, these things are basically embodiments of the seven deadly sins with a couple extra to round up the number. Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Pride, Lust, and Envy. Hold on, this not even my desk.
And again, we have some satisfying math: each S-tier god can have a pair of Saints and a triptych of Demons. And thus, there are three more triangle geometries within the greater structure – pyramids everywhere! So I just like the coolness of the sequencing, it feels both organized and poetic, even if all the mathheads out there are freaking out about the falsehood of any actual geometry in my nonsense here.
Sorry, guys. It’s okay to get twitchy – I get that way about words sometimes. Aesthetic vs aesTetic? Makes me shudder.
All right, so now I’ve got a list of 18 entities and an established hierarchy. Organization is a key part of a pantheon, because pantheons are just like literally everything else we experience in this life – structured, in some way. Everything is fractals!
So having the organization nailed down, for me, is a big deal. Now I feel like the foundational work is over and the fun work is just beginning. Cause next we get to come up with all the details, all the cool attributes for these entities: fancy names, bizarre symbols, spheres of influence, powers, followers, congregations, even stuff like where they live, you know, if you’re into the, like, extra planar stuff, you know like the Ethereal Plane, the Elemental Planes, all that cool stuff.
Here’s a quick overview of how I broke down the spheres of influence for the pantheon in my world. Each tier gets a title, the Luminary, which is the S-tier gods, the mightiest of the almighties. The Silver or The Sinners’ Saints, those are our six demi-gods who operate within the grayest area of influence. And the Shroud, the nine demons of darkness, those things crawling out of the shadows. The titles were just a way for me to sort of reinforce this light to dark gradient thing.
World Anvil, which produces this page we’re looking at right now, offers a really helpful series of prompts in their world-building templates. One of those was a suggestion for coming up with idioms, phrases people might say when referring to the gods or swearing or just general exclamations in conversation. And again, these are just fun ideas I am continuing to work with that lend a bunch of consistent flavor to the world for my player characters. Stuff like “Saints be damned!” or “By the gray!” or “What in nine shades is that?!” Just good little dialogue bits for NPCs.
Here are the S-tier gods, their two masculine/feminine aspect names, their monstrous aspect name, the name of their symbol or cypher aspect and their spheres of influence. You see I’ve got one entity presiding over and within the sphere of Nature – this includes the four elements and the biosphere; I’ve got one presiding over and within the sphere Spirit and Mystery – this covers time, magic, death, the unknown; and the last presides over and within humanoidkind, encompassing language, intelligence, art, philosophy, and emotion. It’s all highly scientific!
Then we have the Six Saints, pairs of which align with or serve one of the S-tier gods. And all I’ve got so far for these are crazy titles and nicknames, which kind of evoke what they have influence over or affect in the world, and that’s all I need for now. Development on these entities can and will continue for a long time I’m sure.
Last, the demons and the list of their areas of expertise. And you see here I’ve got a note for myself: Other things that fall under demonic influence within the hierarchy of the three pyramids are plague slash sickness of the body (that’s Izosh the Nature god’s purview), insanity slash sickness of the mind (that’s Athron’s purview, the god of humanoidkind), and corruption slash sickness of the soul (Umbrael’s purview, the god of Spirit and Mystery). You can see here exactly how my original random idea of using numbers and math to sort of structure out the Pantheon continues to sort of focus and direct my future musings on possible additions and details concerning the religious aether of my world.
Now all of this is just using my own world building as an example. You’re building your own pantheons and worlds in ways that make sense to you and what you wanna see and tell stories about. There are tons of ideas out there and your mind is gonna work differently than mine. Almost certainly it’s gonna work better than mine.
Basically the bottom line is, maybe there are some ideas in here that can help you crank out your own pantheon. Technically, as I said before, the only idea I’m really trying to share here is the notion that you can just start slapping ideas down and start futzing with ‘em – pretty soon you’ll have a something interesting and cool and above all else, usable! Playable!
So, go crush some dreams with the whims of your deities and make your world tremble with their unearthly presence. And always remember to have fun while doing so. See ya!