Five Options for D&D Pantheons You May Not Have Thought Of

Creating your own myths and legends for your 5e campaign setting can be a blast. Here's 5 new options to expand your creative options.
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[@MisterAbysmul]

Excellent video, as an old grognard DM this is great food for thought. Thank you.

[@henchmansmemoirs1487]

I'm glad you enjoyed it! Us old guys gotta stick together.

[@yourseatatthetable]

Excellent video, I look forward to seeing more.

[@henchmansmemoirs1487]

Thank you! I'm at GenCon right now, and I'm moving house next week. But after that I'm back to making content.

[@yourseatatthetable]

@@henchmansmemoirs1487 enjoy GenCon, your experiencing something many of us would love to experience.

[@seandremel337]

Really good video, and wonderful topic to talk about with the hobby and settings within it. With the talk between Polytheism and Monotheism in the settings, I’m reminded of the D&D 3.5 version of Deities & Demigods, which includes ways to create your own pantheons in various styles (loose, tight, close, distant, etc) as well as other concepts like monotheism, dualism, animism, and even atheism. Going to look back into it now for some more inspiration for my new homebrew setting 😁

[@henchmansmemoirs1487]

I had that back in the day. 👍 I also remember it had a dualistic faith were there was a single deity of good and a single deity of evil.

[@araworn2141]

I actually just posted for recommendations for a suitable but "cheap" alternative to Dieties & Demigods for use with Basic Fantasy RPG. Timely video.

[@henchmansmemoirs1487]

Thanks! Basic Fantasy is a great product, by the way.

[@araworn2141]

@@henchmansmemoirs1487 Yeah, to replace my original ADnD 1E books is crazy. Prices for nice copies will run hundreds$$$. I am considering a copy of Rules Cyclopedia from Drive Thru

[@furiousTjr]

I liked those ideas.

[@henchmansmemoirs1487]

😄 Thanks!

[@matabrennan8417]

9:11 Yes, there are families of gods, and different groupings might become more interesting to different peope at different times (e.g. Egypt had the nine Ennead in Heliopolis and the eight Ogdoad in Hermopolis, often same figures, but arranged in different relationships, and then the introduction of the new religion Atenism for a brief time, etc.). While the distance between some gods might be through time, some might be space - i.e. an old temple of a forgotten figure calling people to make sacrifices, or a mysterious figure appearing to secret groups and promising power and wealth in exchange for serving the figure's rise to power (this seems to capture someting closer to secret pagan cults offering options to those on the bottom of society, though often in exchange for subversive acts against that society). I'm a big fan of class conflict, so while the upper class would defintely have the power to create dominance of their religious ideals, that doesn't mean the underclass needs to have the same gods or kinds of religions, especially if the underclass is an underclass because they're a colonized people (here again thinking about Gygax's druids being replaced by St Cuthbert, etc. Speaking of secrets, mystery religions are good too, especially if we combine it with a new god, and possibly a very active one who is a culture and civilizing force. Here I'm thinking of something like the role of the Enlightenment in Freemasonry. Possibly a new religion with hidden priest/initiates who travel under the guise of a different trade (in my homebrew, where magic is highly suspicious, orders of mages are a kind of antiquarian society dedicated to collecting knowledge of the society whose ruins still dot the landscape. Priests could be doctors or sages or ... masons). This reminds me of my favorite alternative to alignment, which is the concept of allegiance (which is closer to the OD&D alignment as in picking a side in the war between Law and Chaos). The third party game "Black Death, a Terribly Grim FRPG", set during the Black Death, has allegiance described like this: "Each character has a primary allegiance and a secondary allegiance. Whenever a character serves the cause of his primary allegiance, he earns 2 advancement points (AP; see Advancement below). Whenever he serves the cause of his secondary allegiance, he earns 1 AP. Characters can choose from the following allegiances: Religious: Catholicism, Protestantism, Orthodox, Judaism, Islam, Satan (or others) Patriotic: A state (France, Sweden, Holy Roman Empire, Bohemia) or city Cause: Chivalric code, love, death, money, science, freedom" Of course this would be different in my fantasy world, but I like the idea that one can be committed to a faith, a cause, or a people, and can have conflicting allegiances. I was thinking about this when I mentioned the reinvention of Freemasons into a new religion and secret society. 17:58 I like the idea that two branches of the Church of Odin might have friction when it comes to the crown, especially in a temple traditionally given the role of "making kings", maybe in charge of the coronation or in some other way enacting the "divine right of kings". Maybe some human factions within that church think one heir would make a bad ruler, so obviously doesn't represent the will of the god(s) whereas another faction "connects the dots" to see their "youthful exuberance" and inexperience as an opportunity to reclaim the power of the church after the previous king's intrusion into church power. Any number of options. Anyway, lots of options.

[@henchmansmemoirs1487]

🤯 Lots of great ideas there! Like I said in the video, I'm a sucker for the old gods / new gods tension...

[@EruditeDM]

Good post! In my own world setting I include gods that aren't "real," their clerics and priests do not have divine spellcasting magical powers. Some gods are real in the game and some are not. I also use Ilmater as a monotheistic historical Christian God fill-in sans the divine trinity concept. Also, my priests do not have divine spellcasting powers but clerics do. They are itinerant religious warriors, NOT parish priests, monks or friars. Fun stuff @Henchman! Thanks.

[@henchmansmemoirs1487]

That's cool! In my Ravenloft setting, I use the Morninglord and Ezra to stand in for Catholicism.

[@MemphiStig]

Oh no! Did somebody actually *color* in your Deities & Demigods book? 😆😢 I had a copy of the original once. I loved it, especially the art. Dee's work in the there is some of my favorite, and all of it is just great. I never played in games where the gods had much of a role other than as a flavor choice for *my* clerics. (Yes, I'm the forever cleric.) But I still find the topic infinitely fascinating. Mythology got me into fantasy in the first place. If I ran my own pantheon and religions, I would prefer it in a world unlike our own, where gods are real if remote, and priests are faithful to the cause, not hypocritical, corrupt, power-hungry liars, unless of course that's their god's vibe. Real gods wouldn't permit all the horrors "in the name of" that we witness irl, and you might *actually* get struck dead by a lightning bolt from the heavens if you don't hold your blasphemous tongue. But that's just me. ymmv

[@henchmansmemoirs1487]

Yeah Jeff Dee's illustrations in there are amazing. That book got me into reading Michael Moorcock. Thanks for commenting!

[@macoppy6571]

Why choose when all of these can be true at once?

[@henchmansmemoirs1487]

😁 Now you're getting it!

[@MrGreensweightHist]

Anyone can do whatever they want but... Monotheism does not work well in D&D. It limits character options, especially for clerics, and does not make things any more "grounded" than polytheism. taking your example, you add "Patron Saints" You just made polytheism because you know that monotheism does not work. Yes, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all polytheistic. The longer I listen, the more I realize your entire position is drowning in Jude-Christian biases.

[@henchmansmemoirs1487]

Well, I'm just throwing out some options. I can't deny that being a Christian influences my thinking and world building. But, to each his own. 👍

[@matabrennan8417]

"Yes, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all polytheistic. " No, they really aren't. I can see the ignorant canard that Catholicism is polytheistic because of saints or possibly the Trinity, and we can chalk that up to bias and ignorance, but calling *Islam* polytheistic - a religion whose first principle is tahwid (often interpreted as oneness to the point of nonduality or monism) - is just embarrassing. Anyone can Google for themselves and see this as insane. And I'm not really sure where you are getting Judaism as polytheistic, but I can't see that as a claim made in good faith. But back to the game... In AD&D, clerics receive different spells differently depending on the level of the spell. Some come from one's training, some from minor intermediaries, and some from direct communion with the deity. This doesn't represent "different gods" since each level is aligned to aims designated by the power on the top. Personally, in my home brew world, I like combining this narratively with elements from Runequest (where one sacrifices POW to be given the ability to certain powers) and the domains from 2e such that spells of higher levels or different domains are gained by initiation into mysteries, e.g. a second level cleric who has served as a healer going to a martial aspected temple before going on a crusade to smite those threatening the deity's mission. Then again, I like the AD&D "find a mentor and study between levels" kind of advancement over the "the odometer just flipper over" versions, and giving clerics side quests and pilgrimages to perform rituals, make sacrifices, or learn mysteries is a nice structure for doing that. And the polytheism of D&D is a flat Edith Hamilton blandness that doesn't actually function the way real world polytheisms do - they'd be more interesting if they did function like actual historical cultic practices - I'm thinking of Walter Burkert's work on Greek religion where gods have different aspects and forms depending on the local population. It's not so much "does this city worship Zeus like we do?" so much as "what weird kind of form has Zeus taken here? Or is it really our Zeus in a different form or a different god altogether? Is this actually impiety? And why is Zeus associated with bees here? Is it because of the importance of beekeeping here or to underline his relationship to Dionysos?.. etc, etc." Burkert also describes several layers of religiosity that in modern monotheisms are combined, but were distinct in ancient Greece and Rome - i.e. the same figure could be treated differently by the same person since mythology as literature isn't the same as philosophical speculation, which isn't the same as cultic practice at a specific temple. And there is a tenuous connection between any of these figures and morality as we might understand it. And this fluidity was there in ancient Greece - different often contradictory aspects of deities, different lineages of the same god, different origin stories depending on the region, and more emphasis on religion as something that is done rather than something that is "believed". And then there is the role of deities in contemporary Tibetan Buddhism, which labeling the tradition as "polytheistic" is the least interesting and most misleading one can say, so we should bracket this whole frame of "monotheism vs polytheism" and come up with better, more interesting conceptualizations. When I first moved from 1e to 2e in the 1980s, I was working on a priesthood for an animist religion, wondering if I would have distinct gods at all, and then perversely thought about smashing an almost Shinto animism with a Neoplatonic monism, inspired by the reconciliations of Shinto and Buddhism, but I didn't get far. Still, I think it's an interesting idea with lots of gameplay potential, and yet still avoided the boring flatness of D&D's version of polytheism as well as another caricature of medieval Catholic monotheism. In thinking about monotheism, I also like the OD&D nod to Law vs Chaos as powers whose interests you serve instead of the vague 9 alignment personal morality system. I'm inspired by the Albigensian Crusade and similar events, complicating the idea of "good guys" and "bad guys". Sure, the horrors to the general population were catastrophic - apocalyptic even, but was this movement really just a reaction to excesses of the church, were they a new mission from God, or were they really a seed of Chaos growing in the heart of Law? When Hommlet starts with the memory of a purging of the Temple of Elemental Evil, this is what I think of - the community's memory of an apocalyptic moment and its violent suppression, along with a fear that the "water and land is tainted with Chaos". In other words, I like the ambiguity of sects and how it pushes the human actors and interests into the foreground. And this tension might be lessened if one could say that different gods "agreed to disagree".

[@henchmansmemoirs1487]

Wow! 😲 There are a lot of great ideas in there. In the video, I didn't even touch on Michael Moorcock. I think he was a big inspiration for the Law/Chaos idea in early D&D. Maybe that was a big influence on the Greyhawk pantheon too?