My Go-to Pantheon to Plagarize for Fantasy Religions (Majesty)

I am addicted to the process of world-building. Creating new places with interesting cultures, unusual people, and compelling disasters is something I never get tired of. I have home-brewed dozens of worlds.

In fact, if I have a weakness, it is that I have a hard time staying happy with a world for very long. It is a rare thing if I keep a world running across multiple campaigns. There have been only two of my home-brewed worlds that have seen more than one campaign.

Building worlds and hacking a game to make it fit that world give me incredible pleasure... except for one pain in my rear end: gods. I have had a terrible time in the past coming up with gods. I don't generally like using real-world pantheons for a number of reasons. I have used the Greyhawk, Eberron, or Golarion pantheons from time to time... but they have some pretty significant limitations to them:

The Greyhawk Pantheon is burdened by a mountain of heavy lore, and some very odd choices about the portfolios included. What's worse, I love the lore and hate to change it, even if it feels confusing and wonky.

The Eberron Pantheon is very much built on the assumption that only a mournful hell-realm exists for most people, and every religion is built on either accepting that with stoicism, escaping it through undeath, union with a divine life force, or making deals with evil gods to go someplace else. And the gods tend to be remote, silent, and barely felt (except the Silver Flame, perhaps...) That isn't what I am looking for 90% of the time.

The Golarion Pantheon (the base setting of Pathfinder) when I was using it was still a sketch you could impose a lot of your own ideas onto. Which made it a great one to impose your own ideas onto, but I do find that, like the Greyhawk Pantheon, it has an odd scope to it. And now it is encumbered by a lot of lore I don't like very much.

Gods in my games have usually been distant, remote, and only marginally interested in humanity because I have not really owned my in-game pantheon. In some cases they existed only as a predicate for clerics in game. I was accordingly often disappointed in how things like commune spells paid off.

I was well aware that I needed to make the gods more interesting, but the how of it often eluded me.

Upping My Deity Game

Once I started looking for it, I have come across some fantastic advice on Pantheon Design over the years. The Angry GM's article Conflicted Beliefs: Building a Perfect Five-God Mythology for D&D was a game changer. D12 Monthly issue #5 also inspired me to look for ways to make gods feel more important and immanent in the setting.

As I started working with these tools, I realized that you didn't need to do much to a deity to make it fresh or interesting to me, and a legitimate contributor to the campaign.. There are only a few tweaks you need to create something memorable. And the more of a blank slate you have to start with the better off you are.

But, of course, it never pays to totally reinvent the wheel. Especially if you are trying to create a whole world. The more I have tried to come up with a good base set of fantasy of gods to work with the more I have returned over and over again to one particular source: Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim.

A Quick Overview of Majesty

Majesty was an obscure little game from 2000 that was a poignant take on fantasy gaming. As king of a simulated kingdom, you would spend gold collected by your (ever-so-squishy) tax collectors as they roamed from building to building and use it to build a mix of businesses, guilds, and temples. From the guilds and temples you could pay to have adventurers trained. The heroes would then start to explore your environment, fight off monsters, raid monster lairs, and collect treasure. Like D&D characters they would level up and improve their abilities. They would then spend their treasure in the businesses to upgrade themselves.

You never had direct control over the heroes, however; if you wanted a particular area explored, monster slain, or dungeon raided you had to place a gold piece reward on it and hope it was tempting enough for the adventurers' fairly dopey AIs to decide it was worth going for. The presence of things like inns, statues, and fairgrounds make them more likely to be patriotic and take you up on things.

Some of the temples, towers, and guilds also gave you a power you could activate for some gold: for example, the thieves' guild could round up and deliver taxes (minus a cut) to prevent tax revenue from being lost to burning buildings or your collectors being eaten by trolls.  The Wizard's guild gave you spells to make a hero in trouble invisible, let you scry out invisible parts of the map, or strike a pesky monster with lightning.

Every building and hero had a few paragraphs of setting lore you could peruse when the game got slow, most of which was funny and tongue-in-cheek.

It is a simple, slow, very chill game, and a great metaphor for being a DM in a lot of ways. (It is also dirt cheap on gog.com, and worth it.) One of the most compelling parts, however, was the temples.

You could build temples to give you access to some of the best heroes and spells in the game, but as some of the religions were hostile to one another: when you build one temple, you close off access to several other temples, and thus the spells and heroes they made available. the gods were:

The Pantheon

Agrela: The goddess of life and rebirth. Agrela's clerics, the healers, are passive mystics who sometimes choose to follow warriors. They can heal other heroes. Occasionally they plant healing herbs that rangers can harvest to make free healing potions. Agrela clerics, when killed, become spirits and run back to the temple where they are automatically resurrected. They can also emit a peace aura that stops monsters from attacking them. Their temples can be used to heal heroes, give them temporary stat boosts, or bring back recently dead heroes.

Crypta: The goddess of death and repose. Her temples are eerie tombs. Crypta's clerics, the Acolytes heal themselves with their blood draining spell. They can create skeleton minions and charm the undead. They dislike intelligent undead and destroy their lairs. The temples can be used to raise recently dead heroes, paralyze monsters, or cause powerful monsters to become weak and feeble.

Crypta and Agrela are opposed: you cannot have temples to Cyrpta in a town with an Agrela temple and vice-versa.

Dauros: The goddess of knowledge and law. Their temples are gold-roofed libraries. His clerics, the monks are hard to hit, even though they don't hit very hard themselves. They patrol town and defend peasants, guards, and tax collectors from invading monsters. They can give themselves several boosts. Once you have a temple of Dauros you can also recruit paladins at the warrior's guild. Paladins are tough and can augment their attacks, they also will defend infrastructure, and will go for quests even if the reward is terrible. The temple can increase the attack or armor of a hero or petrify an enemy temporarily.

Fervus: The hermaphroditic goddess of wildness and chaos is worshipped in stone circles on hills. Their clerics, the Cultists behave pretty randomly, and often plant poisonous toadstools rangers can turn into free weapon poison. Cultists who get to higher levels can transform into bears and charm bestial monsters. Once you have a temple to Fervus you can recruit hulking leather-bound Chaos Warriors from the warrior's guild These guys are incredibly tough, prone to berserk, and have a chance of instantly killing any enemy with a power attack. Fervus temples allow you to slow enemies, entangle them, or grant healing powers.

Dauros and Fervus are also opposed: you cannot build a Dauros temple in an area with a Fervus temple or vice versa.

Krolm: The magic-hating god of heroism. Dauros's temples are rings of monster bones around a sacred altar including a giant's skull and anvil. The clerics here are Barbarians, they are fast, hard-hitting warriors, and you can produce 6 of them per temple (all other buildings produce only 3-4 heroes.) at the lowest price for a fighting hero. You can also activate a war cry that boosts the speed and fighting ability of all your heroes temporarily through their temple. barbarians will follow and serve as bodyguards for rangers while they explore.

Krolm is exclusive, they have a grudge against all other temples. If you have a temple to krolm you can build no temples to other gods.

Helia is the fiery goddess of the Sun. Her temples are gigantic sundials and bondires that eventually incorporate massive lenses for focusing the rays of the Sun. Her clerics, the Solarii are terrifyingly powerful women who can hurl flaming hammers and deal crushing blows with their morningstars. They hunt and destroy monsters in a large area, and particularly target the undead. The temples allow you to strike monsters with fireballs either singly or in massive area effects.

Lunord is the god of night, the moon, winds, and mystery, and their temples are egyptian pyramids. The clerics called Adepts move incredibly fast, and have superior teleportation powers to other heroes. They race around guarding construction sites, markets, and trading posts. The temple can be used to make heroes faster, or mass teleport monsters away from a designated spot.

It's a pretty cool set, and your choice of Gods radically changes how your fief will play. (it does the same by making you choose between three demihuman races who won't live together)

How I Use Them

What I love about these deities is that they are simple. There is only a few paragraphs of lore about them, and it is beautifully simple. The portfolios of each deity makes sense and is nice and broad. Sun & Moon, Life & Death, Law & Wildness, and an odd-man out barbarian god. Each one has very uniquely flavoured clerics prone to doing very different things, and changing the dynamics of the community.

Specifically the game told you:

• The basic portfolio of the god.
• Which other gods they got along with.
• What their temples were like.
• Who their clerics were.
• What the clerics did for the community and what sort of adventures they go on.
• How their faith affects a couple of other common guilds.
• What services they had available to the rich and powerful.

When I build a new campaign setting I start by mapping out this really simple pantheon in something close to these points, and then do minor  tweaks to each point.

For example, here is a few of my deities for the upcoming Hot Springs Island Campaign:

Zeph (The Messenger) [Neutral] A wizard who cheated death by making himself indispensable to the Gods and many potent demon princes and planar potentates, he is a diplomat, messenger, mediator, and arbitrator among the gods who uses rhetoric and brilliant logic, mixed with clever insight to solve problems. It is said that Zeph managed to talk his way out of being eaten by a Titan so cunningly that the Titan instead ended up teaching him spells used at the dawn of time. Zeph’s cleric use an alternate spell list and instead of turning undead may create a powerful rush of air, like a gust of wind or create air spell if they succeed a Turn Undead check against the most powerful creature they might affect. Zeph’s clerics may not wear chainmail, plate mail, or tassets.

Zeph keeps Lunord's wind and mystery traits. I gave him more of a backstory and lightened his connection to Night and the Moon.

Sulana (The Shining Way, the Sun Queen) [Lawful] is an immortal queen from the South who has turned her culture into a race of war-priests dedicated to bringing all beings to her glory and worship. She is at the heart of a new Empire that intends to conquer or convert the world. At the moment, only her missionaries are found in the Swordfish Isles, but many fear the Sun Queen’s true forces will arrive soon enough. Clerics of the Sun Queen wear shaven heads and elaborate henna. Their holy symbols are copper-painted solar discs. The Clerics of the Sun Queen have strict moral codes, and failure to live up to them is sometimes punished with spontaneous human combustion. They turn undead as if they were two levels higher.

Sulana is a take on Helia where I make it the spearhead of an imperialistic army of zealots. While I gave her title of "Sun Queen" it seems more of an honorific than a portfolio. I took inspiration from the temple spells in the idea of her Divine Wrath being expressed as spontaneous human combustion.

Atryta (the Cryptmother) [Lawful] is a goddess of death, consciousness, and rebirth. Her cult is small and dedicated to managing funeral rites, banishing the undead, and relieving suffering of the dead and dying. Their red cloaks and face paint draw stares and warding gestures from those who do not understand. The holy symbol of Atryta is a rosary of ebony or obsidian beads.

Atryta starts with Crypta, but then I add in the elements of being interested in consciousness and the wearing or rosary beads inspired by the inner mysteries of Kali-worship. I then made them feel more compassionate and pro-social.

A few tweaks and maybe adding or subtracting a god will leave you with a pretty solid pantheon.

HSI of course has a few gods of its own that add some variation to the pantheon. In this case I also wanted to add in a few lovecraftian horrors for a potential twist later in the campaign.

Cthuga (The Fire Star, The Whispering Void) [Chaotic] Cthuga is a living inferno from beyond the stars who has sent his wisdom across the Void to a few sensitives. They in turn have built cults that often scatter before they can be purged. Clerics of Cthuga not able to turn the undead: instead they are able to perform auguries once per day. But as they level up, cultists of Cthuga have a chance of mutating in the most horrid ways. They see such mutations as a blessing that shows they are moving beyond the flesh.

You never know when you need one of the Great Old Ones!

If you steal a good base, building a solid fantasy pantheon out if it is miraculously easy. Some other great ones to plunder might include the Nine Divines and Deadric Princes fro The Elder Scrolls or Lois McMaster Bujold's World of the Five Gods.

And, of course, those bullet points also offer a simple and effective framework for describing a god if you are rolling your own.