Not long ago I was teaching Greek Mythology to my students. They read the Greek creation myth (Kronos and Zeus's killing of him) and had to infer the personalities of the Greek gods by their actions. The consensus was that the gods were messy bitches: murdering each other, having sex with relatives, and starting drama. More telenovela than force of nature. It got me thinking about how different gods act in D&D.
A baseline question to ask about gods in your campaign is how human they are. Human-like gods can be reasoned with, tricked, bribed, or seduced while abstract gods cannot be reasoned with, only appeased and avoided. You can have multiple of these archetypes in the same pantheon and one god can switch between archetypes depending on the story and context. Likewise, different cultures in a campaign may have pantheons with different degrees of human-ness. But when thinking about how the PCs can interact with those gods, here’s some food for thought.
Like People
They are the most comprehensible to mortals because they’re us, only super-powered. These gods have their own selfish goals and are deeply invested in their relationships with each other and humans. They are fallible and can fail spectacularly. They may have domains or responsibilities to the universe but will bend the rules to satisfy their own desires.
The Greek gods or Trickster gods like Anansi or Coyote are a good example of this. They fall in love with each other and mortals, take revenge for personal insults (usually in creative and spiteful ways) and generally come into conflict with each other.
To have the gods act like this in a campaign creates interesting points of contact. The PCs might need something from a particular god and must find or do something they want. They might choose to serve one god over another and come into conflict with opposing pawns. They may have social encounters with a god that change their opinion of the PCs. These gods give the most agency to the PCs because they can be persuaded.
These gods might be...
- In a love triangle
- Getting petty revenge
- Hung over
- Looking for an item of great power or significance
Like Myths
These gods are partially ideas: death, war, judgment, etc. When they have goals that are simple but extremely consequential to the world. They are creators and destroyers. When they come into conflict with each other it results in floods, famines and catastrophes. The Egyptian gods would be a good example of this archetype or the Great Forest Spirit from Princess Mononoke.
Their goals are beyond the understanding of mortals because their perspective is so infinite compared to ours. When they make interventions in the world it is to accord with some aspect of the universe or fate rather than to personal desire. And when they interact with a mortal it is entirely on their own terms; they are not fallible but their minds can be changed if they wish. They have demeanors (stern, stoic, jovial) but not personalities.
These gods serve well as world-building in a campaign without being active participants. To have one of them appear to the PCs would be a campaign-defining event and they may sit at the end of a long quest to be granted a wish or rescue someone from the land of the dead. They give a sense of grandness to the campaign and elevate the world to myth rather than something material.
These gods might be...
- Protecting a civilization
- Ruling the land of the dead
- Creating new landscapes and beings
- Working endlessly at a celestial forge to create an artifact
Like Nature
These are the old gods who are so far beyond human desires that they live entirely in the realm of the abstract. They’re a fact of life or a law of the universe: you follow it and nothing bad happens or you go against it and suffer the overwhelming consequences.
These gods are scary as hell because there is no negotiating with them. They’re more akin to spirits of the land or places and are communicated with through ritual rather than speech. Their presence is indirect. Their motivations are more like urges or expectations and humans have a deep generational obligation to them, if they haven’t been completely forgotten by humanity.
These gods work well in an episodic context; the PCs are passing through a remote and ancient area and are warned of the presence and power of a god. The god might shift or lash out and the PCs need to escape the consequence (an earthquake or blizzard) or they may pass peacefully through their domain (an oasis or garden of fruit trees). The god is experienced but it’s influence does not continue.
These gods might be...
- Destroying the countryside
- Waiting, unmoving, in a cave for centuries
- Rolling across the sky in a thunderstorm
- Felt when you enter the old-growth forest
