Thread 96693636

Okay /tg/, how much do your setting's Gods interfere in the world and what dictates their ability to do so? Why haven't they converted the world to their image? Is it a pathfinder-style "divine cold war"? Or are the divine fundamentally disinterested in the plane the players inhabit and just play favorites with worshippers? Are they just barred from doing too much by some cosmic laws?

I see a shitload of yappery about how impotent, idle, or irresponsible Gods often feel in TTRPGs, so what excuses do you give? My own is pretty much that Gods are dead but not gone, so their corpses and lingering divinity stir in response to worship and ritual as if nerves and muscles shocked by electricity. Mortals get a sliver of what they pray for without realizing there's no will or thought behind that isn't a reflection of their own projected desires.

There is only one true God, and 'gods' of the setting are just rebellious angels who set themselves up to lord over humans in the material world. God is all-powerful but is in no rush and can afford to see things play out on a trillion-year long timescale where things all go according to his plans in the end.

The creatures known as 'gods' have an armistice with the Powers Below, that says of any of one side are let in, those on the other side are allowed in equal powers.
Every angel that descends must contend with the devil that rises to meet it.
Of course, there is only one True God, of whom these strictures need not apply. But invoking Him is akin to setting your house on fire because you saw an ant in the kitchen.

>>96693695
>garbage post
>AI slop
>/pol/tardation
Like clockwork

I don't like gods who exist on another dimension and stuff like that. The gods I tend to use are more like stronger demigods in power who walk the mortal world, but to the mortals they might as well be gods.

>>96693790
Rage bait post

>>96693636 (OP)
The gods require mortals to be aware of their existence, and the easiest way to do that is to establish cults and churches of themselves so that mortal cultures continue to perpetuate their existence. Sometimes they stage conflicts between their followers so that both sides will keep the enemy god in mind as well, but direct intervention can go wrong pretty quick and trying to wipe the memory of another god is a good way to get ganged up on. For the most part they're more interested in their own divine affairs amongst themselves and many only poke mortals to keep their own name on people's lips. Other than "do mortals know of you", the mortal realm doesn't impact them directly.

>>96693636 (OP)
>excuses
Hes just kind of impotent and idle, thats all

>>96693636 (OP)
My gods are too powerful and spiritual “large” to enter the mortal world at full power without causing damage, so they either create lower-power avatars or send angels to do their bidding instead. Is there anything I should keep in mind with this approach?

>>96694574
That post and filename looks awfully Puckee-coded.

in Hackmaster if you encounter a diety you under go an alignment audit and if you have been slacking in your alignment you might be converted to that diety's alignment, though you can use honor to mulligan this

>>96693636 (OP)
Most things that can be called gods are not recognized as such or actively avoid it. The ones that are "gods" are actually pawns of Celestials who helped to create them to get a foothold on the mortal worlds ahead of Fiends and Demons.

Even the Celestials, Fiends, and Demons did not make the universe and don't know who or what is above them even though they understand there is some power greater even than themselves.

>>96693790
>marxist
Like clockwork

>>96696626
>if you don't like my little crusade hyperfixation you must be... A COMMUNIST
What stage of autism is this?

>>96696639
oh shit I got one on the hook

>>96696639
Nobody said anything about crusades. Are you delusional?

>>96693636 (OP)
Traditional games?

>>96693636 (OP)
In the last game I ran they got involved all the time for shits and giggles. They were mostly assholes and the cause of most of the worlds problems though so you really didn't want them to. Priests were pretty powerful because of that but most people considered them complete nutjobs.

>>96693790
That image was slop? I honestly couldn't tell.

>>96702050
I don’t believe it is. Looks like a real painting.

>>96702050
>>96702185
Everything has that fuzzy outline, which could be shitty compression but is also a hallmark of slop. The signature in the corner doesn't really look like a signature so much as a random symbol slapped in because the AI saw that there's usually something like that in the corner. It could just be an artist with an ugly signature though.

>>96693636 (OP)
My gods represent the natural elements that make up the world, so they are technically present everywhere their element is, but most of the time they're not really aware of things where their element is present, a bit like how humans aren't really consciously aware of their hair or nails unless they're actively looking. As a result, the elements behave the way they would naturally unless the god is actively doing something, and they use their empowered priests and divine servitors to do most day-to-day tasks, along with the occasional physical incarnation. This makes sense, right?

>>96702802
For example, Ejaculation of Knowledge is present in every living thing that has semen, and can see through the eyes of any creature that has semen in its body. However, he's not constantly looking through every creature's eyes, because that would be overwhelming. Instead, he only pays attention when something interesting is happening, or when he's specifically called upon. This is why he's the god of knowledge: he can see everything that happens in the world, but he doesn't always care to look. He's also the god of chaos because he can make things happen that wouldn't normally happen, like making a person suddenly ejaculate at an inopportune moment, or making a plant grow in a way that defies the laws of nature.

>>96702856
Hemorrhage of Laws, on the other hand, is present in every drop of blood, and can see through the eyes of any creature that has blood in its body. She's the god of order because she can enforce the laws of nature, like making sure that gravity always works, or that the sun rises every morning. She's also the god of destruction because she can cause blood to boil or freeze, or make a person bleed to death from the inside out. She's the most active of the gods because she's constantly enforcing the laws of the universe, but she's also the most limited because she can only act within the bounds of those laws.

>>96702879
Regurgitation of Fertility is present in every bit of vomit, and can see through the eyes of any creature that has vomit in its body. She's the god of life and death because she can cause a person to vomit up their soul, or to vomit up a new life. She's also the god of plants because she can make plants grow from vomit, or cause them to wither and die. She's the most powerful of the gods because she defeated all the others, but she's also the most distant because she spends most of her time in her Garden of Vomit, which is now the sun.

>>96693790 >>96702309
Fucking spastic piece of shit

So is there a good place to discuss TTRPGs online anymore? Because this board is long past saving.

>>96693636 (OP)
>so what excuses do you give (for that the Gods are impotent, idle and irresponsible)?
They're people. awful people, with no upbringing, usually, living in a system that encourages not just cutthroat behavior, upwards climbing and fierce protection of one's image, but also stasis.
Essentially, a god at its weakest is a wisp craving magic feed: faith. It can build a cult, become a God, go from barely whispering in the ears of mice and ants to having whole civilizations worship it... But if it goes too far, if it becomes too strong, its own feed overpowers it. A godling has no individuality, gains it as they rise in status and in power, and at the zenith of strength they simply lose it - they become a force of nature, a conduit of faith magic that acts according to its image. No God wants to be a slave of their nature, so they balance themselves. They fight to stay above the filth below, while also being mindful of the risk of growing too great. They also must keep each other in mind, because they're inherently predatory and tearing each other apart is in their nature.

True divinity that needs no faith or worship don't get called gods in my setting, because why would they be? It isn't God of the Dead, the all-powerful gatherer of souls who is the pantheon's chief mortician and overall bling-enjoyer. It's just Death, a strange spirit who cuts the tethers of a soul to its body. It isn't the Goddess of the Sea, capricious and cruel and yet fiercely protective of her own, rumored to have entire sea-cities filled with strange creatures granting her so much worship she's unassailable on land, it's just the Ocean, something primordial and elemental, uncaring and unnoticing of you.

There's also that nearly every major god is very cautious about shitting out resurrections and other magic tricks. Besides the expense of it, that wears down the thin film separating reality and the place Fae come from. Fae are awful, you don't want Fae getting to your worshippers.

>>96702309
>>96702185
>>96702050
No, it's not AI, and anybody who thinks that is a newfag who has never been in the CYOA threads because that art is like 10 years old.

>>96707213
>never been in the CYOA threads
Anyone with even a shred of self-respect filters those threads.

>>96707269
Either way you're a retard who can't tell real art from AI art.

>>96693636 (OP)
>how much do your setting's Gods interfere in the world
Not much since vast majority of them are dead or otherwise occupied.
>what dictates their ability to do so?
Whether or not they care.
>Why haven't they converted the world to their image?
What makes you think the world wasn't to their image?
>Is it a pathfinder-style "divine cold war"?
It's divine post-Armageddon.
>Or are the divine fundamentally disinterested in the plane the players inhabit and just play favorites with worshippers?
People don't even really know they exist anymore and they're so busy putting the universe back together that it's less about what you want and more about what you can do for them (which is very little).
>Are they just barred from doing too much by some cosmic laws?
They wrote those laws.
>what excuses do you give?
It's a big universe and we just live in it.

>>96707213
I only go on the CYOA threads on /trash/ and have never seen that image.

>>96693636 (OP)
impotent? like a floppy wang?

>>96707213
>that art is like 10 years old.
20, I've seen it since 2007.

>>96693636 (OP)
What I don't get is how people expect gods to be like these fucking nannies. They expect gods to wipe their ass and spoonfeed them and just make shit appear out of thin air for them and jangle keys in their faces for their amusement. You expect to be fedoracore redditard and get into Heaven when you die?

Fuck off. That's not the deal.

The sun came up in the morning? Guess what: the sun god did his fucking job. Does grass grow? Do birds fly? Are your feet firmly planted on the ground? Guess what fucko: more gods doing their jobs.

>>96706269
Discords servers are circlejerkfests, but they're unfortunately still infinitely more productive than this board.

>>96713115
What about Worldbuilding specifically?

In general fantasy or pagan Gods are less powerful and interventional than the God of Abraham.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJleW4TCQM0

>>96693636 (OP)
There are gods worshiped in the setting, but they don't exactly exist. The miracle attributed to them are real, and there IS a supernatural force at play, but there isn't a pantheon of big dudes causing it.
Rather, something is worming its way into the mortal plane from somewhere else, feeding off of human thought and memory that we radiate out into the cosmos just by existing. Every time a person's mind makes contact with this high plane, there is a transformative event where a massive burst of energy is released from the transcendental realm and cystallizes into a sort of pocket reality that exists as a doorway between our world and the spiritual plane. This pocket reality is defined by how the mind of that person struggles to interpret the cosmic reality that they have glimpsed which is too big for their mind to hold, making real the metaphor that their consciousness supplies, which for obvious reasons tends to have a strong religious bent.

So someone who already believes in heaven will, upon glimpsing the spiritual plane, create something that *looks like heaven*, or at least their own dreamlike version of it. These pocket realities have an acausal relationship with the mortal world, it is entirely possible for someone to stumble into one before the person whose mind shapes it has even been born.

As different gateway realities phase into and out of alignment with the mortal world, they affect it in their passing. Influencing events, causing specific phenomenon, causing widespread visions and dreams, etc. So people know that SOMETHING is happenign, and they ascribe it to the work of gods. Which, then, shapes how people envision such realities in the first place, creating a sort of feedback loop.

Meanwhile, the cosmic horror that is worming its way into our reality just keeps making the cracks grow wider and making it easier and easier for this sort of thing to happen.

>>96693790
You're trooning out right now

They're sleeping to recover from having to kick various other things out of the world they created, because not having been involved in its creation those things are rather incompatible with creation at large and all living things in particular and so they had to go.

>>96713115
Are they really that bad? I've never really used Discord.

>>96693636 (OP)
Nothing in my setting has that level of unbounded power across the multiverse. The gods act to further their interests, but there are many worlds and they don't have the resources to control them all. So they act to further their interests through intermediaries, like churches. Periodically they'll send a few divine agents to provide guidance, or magic items, or spellbooks (my priests prep spells like a wizard, but from a different list). So, they're involved, and not impotent, but they're not directly acting in your backwater little plane, they're busy running their own demiplane or leading their army on a military crusade or the like.

>>96719483
Depends on the board. Every board has its own moderators who run it, they're all dependent on invite codes. If the moderators are shit the Discord will be shit. I mostly use it for a group chat with friends, but I've gone to the GURPS Discord before. It's moderated by Christopher Rice. I dislike him, so I generally avoid it

The Gods don't really have any kind of plan or agenda. They're mostly content to just kick back and farm the mortals for tribute and worship, regularly throwing out some divine favor to keep the supply of tribute and worship flowing.

>>96702856
>Ejaculation of Knowledge

>>96693636 (OP)
The senior deity in the pantheon is the god of Power. Has all of it, is all of it, knows all of it.

They have no purpose.

The rest of the pantheon is subsidiary fragments of the core entity, of which attempts mainly to interact with mortals either through the things they are (forms of power, ways of accomplishing tasks or achieving goals) or in disguise offering tiny piecemeal deals to increase their abilities, but never so much that they don't have to have ambition or drive to act.

Power cultivates people's ambitions, goals, and aspirations. They have none of their own, for they can do everything. Thus, the people of the worlds over which they preside are encouraged to act toward their own goals as they see fit.

Mortals only get a little because the deities know that giving them everything ends up in a state lacking progress or activity of any sort.

Occasional mortal ascendancy will happen; individuals who are able to gather enough of their own power to leverage circumstances to their advantage where they can deal with the divine in more direct terms, and having a handful of examples of "This is what you could be if you git gud" for the mortals of the world to see and aspire to either Be or Serve or Strike Down suits the divines just fine, resulting in Walking gods rather than the typical distant entities.

The whole situation is one in which someone achieved everything, and is endeavoring to live vicariously through mortality, viewing themselves somewhere between a supernatural venture capitalist and a doting grandparent giving the kids treats when no one else is looking.

>>96716849
Did they leave angels or other constructs behind to handle their duties?

>>96693636 (OP)
Franky, I keep it how it was somehwat described in some IRL religious texts, where God and other divine things aren't allowed to interfere too much (or overtly) in the mortal plane, which coincidentally also takes care of any unholy or demonic inhabitants, as they have to obey the same higher laws or face annihilation by God.

>>96693636 (OP)
Nah, but they are doing more important shit, like sustaining the forces that underpin the natural world, and constantly battling the forces of anti-creation.

So you should thank your local sun god, for rising every morning, and your sea god for making sure there's always fish to eat, and your harvest god for making plants and shit grow,

"Gods" only seem ineffectual if your cosmology is set up as an essentially mechanical universe, with some big brain superbeing just squatting on the top reaping the dividends of godhood like a Marxist caricature of a landlord.

Actual theistic cultures see the gods as actively performing the tasks that sustain the world, and regulate it's cycles.

See; Runequest, for an approach to religion that goes a little ways beyond what fighting spells your god grants you when you level up.

>>96693636 (OP)
The gods in my setting rarely interfere directly, to the extent that different parts of the world worship them under different names, iconography, and roles. After a near-apocalypse thousands of years ago, the world was left in such a precarious state that careless action on their part could easily finish the job. So they act through guidance and prophets, patiently working towards a stronger, more resilient world.

Different religions conceptualize this differently.
>In Hüliš, it’s believed that the gods actually died during the near-apocalypse, which was the final battle in their Titanomachy-esque overthrow of their forebears, and are presently journeying through the underworld to return to life and resume their role as masters of the cosmos.
>In Hanāša, by contrast, it’s believed that the gods gave up so much of themselves to keep the world together that they are too weak to act upon it with the necessary precision and delicacy, and so they must be fed by bloodletting rituals and burnt offerings to restore their strength to the point of being able to rebuild the world in full.
>In the religious text of Karatšja, it’s stated that the queen of the gods had actually intended to scrap the world and rebuild it from scratch after the apocalypse, but the prayers of mortals and the entreaty of one of her wounded siblings convinced her to wait and see how things played out.
>The religion of Sekál was inspired by a combination of Mandaeism and Manichaeism, so the gods—properly “angels” in that religious perspective—are actually more concerned with mortals learning to separate the light and darkness within themselves so that this tainted world can be disentangled and its components can be properly returned to the world of light and the world of shadow. As a result, they’re portrayed as less attached to fixing or preserving it.
And so on. Before you ask, yes, the gods do objectively exist. That is an incontrovertible fact.

>>96694057
>gods require mortals
I never understood the idea of gods losing their godhood if they're not being worshipped.

If a stubborn child declares that their parent doesn't exist, because they hate them so much, that wouldn't erase the parent from existence.

From the perspective of mortals, god is an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent evil. The world is already made exactly in his image, it’s impossible for it to be otherwise. Mortals and the emanations of god worshipped by them are simulations in the vast mind of the creator. The struggles and suffering of all living things are nothing more than entertainment for this unknowable eldritch being.

>>96693636 (OP)
My setting has One Goddess.

She fucks. Actually, she fucks quite a lot, and has something of an unhealthy obsession with all things hedonism (though she sees it the other way).

She is also something of an idiot, as an omnipotent Goddess doesn't need to wise up and be smart about things about her creation really.

It's been the responsibility of her High Priestess' for uncounted centuries, to not just head the church, but also tard wrangle her away from implementing the latest idea to flit across her tiny brain, and accidentally cause a mass breakdown in society and/or the apocalypse.

>>96732056
>I never understood the idea of gods losing their godhood if they're not being worshipped.
IRL it's just a matter of how pagan beliefs function. If the local village's guardian kami is forgotten, his shrine destroyed, his name lost not spoken by anyone alive, then does the God exist. Localized beliefs simply don't survive if the locals die or move, and so Gods die with the end of their faith.

In fiction usually an aspect of settings where Gods are just ascended mortals or nebulous forces of nature that only acquired sapience because collective belief bestowed them with sapience.

In one setting I even saw those two combined as humans ascending to Godhood by claiming pieces of the original Creator God after he god fractured upon creating the universe. Problem was that a mortal's mind, even ascended, could really handle the madness of divine knowledge/foresight, so hearing faith and prayer became a grounding force that "kept away the whispers". Being forgotten isn't a problem of losing powers then, but of losing sanity and then getting euthanized by the other Gods before you fucked anything up.

>>96732056
>I never understood the idea of gods losing their godhood if they're not being worshipped.
IRL it's just a matter of how pagan beliefs function. If the local village's guardian kami is forgotten, his shrine destroyed, his name lost not spoken by anyone alive, then does the God exist? Localized beliefs simply don't survive if the locals die or move, and so Gods die with the end of their faith.

In fiction usually an aspect of settings where Gods are just ascended mortals or nebulous forces of nature that only acquired sapience because collective belief bestowed them with it.

In one setting I even saw those two combined as humans ascending to Godhood by claiming pieces of the original Creator God after he fractured upon creating the universe. Problem was that a mortal's mind, even ascended, couldn't really handle the madness of divine knowledge/foresight, so hearing faith and prayer became a grounding force that "kept away the whispers". Being forgotten wasn't a problem of losing powers then, but of losing sanity and then getting euthanized by the other Gods before you fucked anything up.

>>96730646
But who or what created the rules that keep divine beings relatively hands-off and can actually enforce said rules?

>>96735014
The upper-case 'g' God, that for whatever reasons made the universe such. God him (it?) self doesn't have to do much, because I just incoporate Karma as being a computer program in the background that keeps track of everyone's sins.

Sure, that is hard to apply to players, but on the other hand it's interesting to interpret what actions are good or evil.

Last time we decided that a beggar stealing bread for his family (or just himself) is alright IF it doesn't cause considerable harm to whoever was stolen from (rich merchant having one article taken from them? Passable. Stealing from another family that can't easily afford bread? Bad.)

In the same vein Black Magic was interpreted as: "Any form of magic, which diminishes, robs, or subverts another person's autonomy, free will, or individual choice." This is also the reason that demons or other evil factions couldn't just do whatever they wanted.

Unfortunately, such setting doesn't allow for much drama between higher beings and mortals.

>>96693636 (OP)
What settings handle the question of divine interference the best and why? I like how in the Discworld Om can’t use much of his power openly due to his faith’s beliefs.

>>96738733
kill yourself bumpfag

>>96738733
In the Percy Jackson books, the gods have so many demigod kids in part because they're bound through ancient contracts, so they use the heroes to get around them.

Why personally intervene when they can outsource it to someone else?