Organizing Pantheons

[MNBlockHead]

I feel like this has been addressed before but didn't pull anything up when searching for it.

How are other organizing pantheons in their realms?

I made a "deities" topic by duplicating and customizing the entities topic. I use relationships to show how different deities are related and to connect them to religion topics. I also have a pantheon tag that I use the deity topic.

Since I have a number of pantheons, I would like the deities organized by pantheon when listed in the menu. My thoughts here are:

1. using a character list
2. Making the pantheon a top-level deity topic and using that as a container for that pantheons deities.
3. Using the Religious:Group topic for the entities as the container. This would put all the deities under the religion topic. This is the approach I'm leaning towards. Though, I would have links to all the gods from the "contents links" list in the religion topic, so it does seem a little redundant.

 

[Dark Lord Galen]

What you are describing is pretty much my approach.

After experimenting I liked this method best for my world. I have several Deities that actually where multiple hats. So the ability to place one of my Deities into multiple pantheon belief structures via variant names as recognized by their selective worshipers is helpful.

Example:

Ehlonna is variously depicted as an elven or human woman, and often associates with unicorns and other sylvan creatures. When in human form, Ehlonna appears as a dark-haired human woman, but as Ehlenestra, she appears as a golden-haired elven maiden.​

This allows me to utilize alias even for the gods that have differing followers, in this case Humans and Elves.

Just my 2cp
DLG

 

[MNBlockHead]

So are you saying that you have one entity who is known by different names in different religions but you make two topics for him rather than one with aliases?

I thought of taking a similar approach and was just going to use the "aliases" feature for this but quickly realized that this would become too complicated, since besides the names changing, their stories would also vary from religion to religion.

Since the gods in my campaign are not entities that the characters are ever going to "meet" or interact with any any other than an abstract way, I felt it was not particularly important to keep a single topic containing all variants. Rather, I've decided to take what seems to be your approach of create a topic for each god in each pantheon and make notes where some in the world believe they are just different aspects of the same entity.

I'm finding that the "concept" topic is also helpful as I can add concept topics to various religions as well as concepts that span religions. The role and nature of gods and arcane magic is an important plot line in my campaign, so I think that putting the gods as subtopics of religions and creating links with tags and relationships is the easiest approach.

Thanks for helping me bounce these ideas around.

 

[rob]

Here's one approach to consider. It happens to be the way I would do it, but there are many different ways to slice and dice it.

1. I'd create each deity as an Entity topic.
2. I'd create a Cast List topic for each pantheon, with each of the deities contained by its appropriate pantheon.
3. If each pantheon has its own history or special context, I would create a Concept topic for each pantheon. Each deity of the pantheon would be listed, perhaps with a very short summary and a few basic attributes (e.g. alignment), providing a convenient cross-linkage to the deities themselves.
4. I'd create a Concept topic for "Religions of My World" that would outline the basics and then contain each of the pantheons.
5. The interplay between the deities would be modeled through relationships.
6. If a god has many names, I would use aliases.
7. The exception to #6 is if a god is believed to be two separate entities by two separate cultures and that distinction is important to the story. In that case, I would create two separate deities and associate them through an "equivalence" relationship. At the point in the game where the PCs discovered the two were actually the same, I could then reveal that fact through the relationship, but the PCs would otherwise be in the dark about it until the "big reveal".

For me, I would keep all the deities within Cast List topics so that they lived in the People grouping, but that's just because I mentally put them there. It would be perfectly reasonable to eschew that approach and put the deities beneath the Concept topics for each pantheon. It would also be perfectly reasonable to have all the deities be top-level topics and just cross-link them to the pantheons. I happen to like containers so I can collapse them all out-of-sight until I need them.

Food for thought...

 

[Dark Lord Galen]

Here's one approach to consider. It happens to be the way I would do it, but there are many different ways to slice and dice it.

1. I'd create each deity as an Entity topic.

I considered this, but decided against it mainly due to campaign structure. IMW there are Greater, Lesser, Demi & Quasi deities as well as Archons, Archions, Planars, & Heroes. The former being "divine" (divine implied in this case meaning any non mortal good or bad) in nature, the latter being their supporting cast.

On the advent of 3.5 I merged the 2e structure I had and combined ALOT (the deity count had exploded from 70 or so to well over 200 (thanks WOC)) of deities "roles" as they overlapped different cultures.

That in combination with the possibility now of PCs becoming epic level (again thanks WOC) there was a possibility of ascensions. So in anticipation of that it seemed prudent to create a Separate Topic Titled Deities & Demi-Gods to capture the "divine" beings and kept the Entity Topic for capturing their "minions" (ie Archons, Heroes etc).This allowed me to keep the default Entity Topic as the receptacle for the "unique NPCs the characters might interact with or in someday might come to represent.
As you say lots of ways to slice and dice.

2. I'd create a Cast List topic for each pantheon, with each of the deities contained by its appropriate pantheon.

I started to do that, but again, decided not to mainly to keep my "PCs world" separate from the one above and below so to speak. I do use the casting type structure you describe just in the new Deities topic I created, leaving Cast list for the Mortal Supporting casts such as Houses, Clans, etc.

3. If each pantheon has its own history or special context, I would create a Concept topic for each pantheon. Each deity of the pantheon would be listed, perhaps with a very short summary and a few basic attributes (e.g. alignment), providing a convenient cross-linkage to the deities themselves4. I'd create a Concept topic for "Religions of My World" that would outline the basics and then contain each of the pantheons..

had not thought of that topic in that approach, will have to look.

5. The interplay between the deities would be modeled through relationships.
6. If a god has many names, I would use aliases.

Ditto

7. The exception to #6 is if a god is believed to be two separate entities by two separate cultures and that distinction is important to the story. In that case, I would create two separate deities and associate them through an "equivalence" relationship. At the point in the game where the PCs discovered the two were actually the same, I could then reveal that fact through the relationship, but the PCs would otherwise be in the dark about it until the "big reveal".

hum I separate them, but took your advice (noted elsewhere buried in the forum) to use alias to separate "alter egos" what would be the differences, or advantages of using the "equivalence" relationship instead?

All in All interesting alt approach and food for thought, thanks.

 

[Exmortis]

I feel like this has been addressed before but didn't pull anything up when searching for it.

How are other organizing pantheons in their realms?

I made a "deities" topic by duplicating and customizing the entities topic. I use relationships to show how different deities are related and to connect them to religion topics. I also have a pantheon tag that I use the deity topic.

Since I have a number of pantheons, I would like the deities organized by pantheon when listed in the menu. My thoughts here are:

1. using a character list
2. Making the pantheon a top-level deity topic and using that as a container for that pantheons deities.
3. Using the Religious:Group topic for the entities as the container. This would put all the deities under the religion topic. This is the approach I'm leaning towards. Though, I would have links to all the gods from the "contents links" list in the religion topic, so it does seem a little redundant.

I have attached how I have done it and I included my own custom category for deities. As much as I think LWD and team did a great jobw ith RW, the more I use it the more custom categories I create. However the fact I can do that is a huge pat on the back to the team.

I had to scale image a lot in GIMP to meet reqs, but this should give you an idea of what I did.

 

[MNBlockHead]

Thanks Rob, very helpful. I find it interesting that you are not using the group:religion concept. Or do you, but treat it as a sub-topic contained by your concept topic for the pantheon? That could make a lot of sense. For example, if you have the Greek pantheon and then have multiple mystery cults as religious groups. As I read how you structure things, I'm rethinking how I do. I've been starting with the group:religion topic. So I would have a topic for, say, the Greek "Religion" and then put the mystery cults as contained group topics and also have the gods and concepts as contained topics. Your approach seems more logical. I think I need to make better use of the concept and character list topics.

1. I'd create each deity as an Entity topic.

Yes. In my campaign, while the gods are not treated like NPCs that the characters interact directly with, religious disputes and intrigue are wrapped into many of the plot lines. Using separate topics for each is important to manage all the lore and beliefs related to the deities. However, instead of the entity topic, I created a customized version specifically for deities.

2. I'd create a Cast List topic for each pantheon, with each of the deities contained by its appropriate pantheon.

Still thinking about this, but right now I have the individual deity topics contained in the group:religion topics. Also, not all religions have pantheons.

3. If each pantheon has its own history or special context, I would create a Concept topic for each pantheon. Each deity of the pantheon would be listed, perhaps with a very short summary and a few basic attributes (e.g. alignment), providing a convenient cross-linkage to the deities themselves.

For me the pantheon is just part of the overall religion and I use the group:religion topic for this and just use the concepts topics to flesh out in more detail certain religious concepts or disputes. But I'm rethinking this. The group:religion topic really should be about organizations and not a topic on a general religion or philosophy. Also, I think I should have a general religion topic rather than a pantheon topic.

4. I'd create a Concept topic for "Religions of My World" that would outline the basics and then contain each of the pantheons.

Good idea. Would you have the pantheons act as containers for related religious groups? What would you do for monotheistic or nontheistic religions? I'm still thinking that that instead of a pantheon topic, I would just use a religion topic. I have one religion that started as a polytheistic/shamanistic religion, but has been turning to a monotheistic religion, and followers of both interpretations are contemporary. So, for this, I would have something like a general concept topic for the shared culture of a particular belief system, subtopics for the polytheistic/shamanistic traditional form and for the newer monotheistic form. The polytheistic subtopic could contain the pantheon.

5. The interplay between the deities would be modeled through relationships.

Yes. I also use relationships to indicate how different religious groups, governments, and cultures feel about different deities. Certain types of deities would be honored in one culture but would not be acceptable or tolerated in other cultures. On man's god is another's devil and all that.

6. If a god has many names, I would use aliases.
7. The exception to #6 is if a god is believed to be two separate entities by two separate cultures and that distinction is important to the story. In that case, I would create two separate deities and associate them through an "equivalence" relationship. At the point in the game where the PCs discovered the two were actually the same, I could then reveal that fact through the relationship, but the PCs would otherwise be in the dark about it until the "big reveal".

The equivalence relationship is a good tip. That approach works well where the pantheons developed separately but there are groups that are trying to argue for relationships. I think I would use it less as a a big reveal but more as a way to indicate which deities are seen as playing similar roles and could be seen as equivalent.

For me, I would keep all the deities within Cast List topics so that they lived in the People grouping, but that's just because I mentally put them there.

But if I put the Cast List topics as subtopics to a concept topic, they would no longer live under people, correct? That would, however, be fine for me. In my current campaign, deities themselves are more like concepts. It is easier to treat them as entities in terms of the topic to select as that is how their believers treat them, but, again, gods are not encounterable beings in my campaign.

Great discussion, I'm going to play around some more based on your suggestions.

 

[AEIOU]

For deities, I opted for one cast list to contain all deities with a custom tag group for pantheons. I also identify which continent the deities are most common to. Some deities cross multiple cultures due to conquest, missionaries or deific intervention. The list of deities for the Lost Lands was last cited as 264 and still growing.

For pantheons, I opted for one group list to contain all pantheons with each pantheon being a religious group. Within each religious group, I provide religious background, a list of the deities and history. And of course, the list of deities links to the individual deities nicely.

An interesting pantheon to model would be that from The Book of Malazan which has gods dying and mortals ascending with alarming frequency. So much flux.

 

[MNBlockHead]

Exmortis, thanks for sharing the screenshot. Like you I created a custom topic for deities, so I could add alignment, domain, etc.

Aeiou, thanks for sharing your approach. Do you also have religious denominations, factions, cults, etc. within the various religions? If so, do you just make these subgroups of the religion that they are faction/denomination/cult of?

 

[rob]

I find it interesting that you are not using the group:religion concept. Or do you, but treat it as a sub-topic contained by your concept topic for the pantheon? That could make a lot of sense. For example, if you have the Greek pantheon and then have multiple mystery cults as religious groups. As I read how you structure things, I'm rethinking how I do. I've been starting with the group:religion topic. So I would have a topic for, say, the Greek "Religion" and then put the mystery cults as contained group topics and also have the gods and concepts as contained topics. Your approach seems more logical. I think I need to make better use of the concept and character list topics.

Still thinking about this, but right now I have the individual deity topics contained in the group:religion topics. Also, not all religions have pantheons.

For me the pantheon is just part of the overall religion and I use the group:religion topic for this and just use the concepts topics to flesh out in more detail certain religious concepts or disputes. But I'm rethinking this. The group:religion topic really should be about organizations and not a topic on a general religion or philosophy. Also, I think I should have a general religion topic rather than a pantheon topic.

For me, a "Group: Religion" topic represents the FOLLOWERS of a particular philosophy. That could be the followers of a deity, or the followers of a mortal prophet, or those who believe the word in ending next Tuesday, or the followers of a holy gourd, or the nihilists that are working to bring about the end of the world next Tuesday. It doesn't matter what they believe in, nor whether they believe in an actual deity.

So a "Group: Religion" topic is completely decoupled from the deities themselves and any pantheon. There would merely be a relationship between a group and the deity, as appropriate.

You could also have a religious group that THINKS it's following a good deity when it is actually duped into working for an evil deity by a particularly devious cult leader. Or you could have a religious group that honors a collection of deities, such as a agrarian culture that collectively worships the gods of the sun, the weather, and good fortune as a trio - not as individuals. So it's folly IMHO to directly link the groups to the deities. This kind of ties to your questions below.

Good idea. Would you have the pantheons act as containers for related religious groups? What would you do for monotheistic or nontheistic religions? I'm still thinking that that instead of a pantheon topic, I would just use a religion topic. I have one religion that started as a polytheistic/shamanistic religion, but has been turning to a monotheistic religion, and followers of both interpretations are contemporary. So, for this, I would have something like a general concept topic for the shared culture of a particular belief system, subtopics for the polytheistic/shamanistic traditional form and for the newer monotheistic form. The polytheistic subtopic could contain the pantheon.

As I indicated above, the religious groups are completely orthogonal to the deities themselves in my model. Only relationships exist to tie them together.

For monotheistic or nontheistic religions, I would use a Concept topic to outline the belief system. This is one of the reasons I advocated use of Concept topics for the various religious philosophies in my original response. That approach extrapolates nicely to belief systems that have no ties to a traditional deity model. It also extrapolates smoothly to a hybridized model in much the way you described above.

But if I put the Cast List topics as subtopics to a concept topic, they would no longer live under people, correct? That would, however, be fine for me. In my current campaign, deities themselves are more like concepts. It is easier to treat them as entities in terms of the topic to select as that is how their believers treat them, but, again, gods are not encounterable beings in my campaign.

Correct. The Cast List topics will end up beneath whatever you assign as their container. That's why I would keep them as top-level elements. I would instinctively look for deities beneath the People grouping, so that's where I'd keep them. However, YOU should put them wherever they make the most sense to YOU.

 

[MNBlockHead]

Rob, your approach makes a lot of sense to me. I'm reorganizing my religions, pantheons, etc. using topics and keep groups to organizations of adherents. This is already working out well for me. Concepts is one of those elements that I have been seriously underutilizing the concepts topic.

I also need to become more comfortable leaving some things as top level rather than file everything in a container. The new custom views helps with this and I'm creating a "religion view" as things are getting complicated enough that I need a quick way to access the religious information and lore during the game. I'm also using views for the major realms so I can filter down to just info on a specific realm or area where the party is travelling

 

[Exmortis]

Love these kinds of discussions, not only do I get a great sense of what the team was thinking when they designed the core functionality of RW, but I also get a great feel for what others have done within this frame work.

I have attached two screens to show similar thoughts as Rob, each of my factions uses a different category to represent its place in the world. It could be an ethnic, racial, religious, academic organization or even a paramilitary organization. Each icon helps me and the players remember the type of organization/faction they represent.

I also show my Major NPC races as well as player races, all which are defined in Herolab using the Race Builder rules. Each keeps the spirit if its Vanguard heritage.

 

[MNBlockHead]

Thanks Exmortis, your screens shots are very helpful.

But just as everything has started to gel, I've hit another decision point. For one of my realms, I'm modeling it on a hybrid of ancient Rome and the Etruscan cultures. Basically, imagining what things would look like if the Etruscans had resisted the Romans, evolved beyond powerful coalitions of city states to build an empire. I'm assuming that the religion would look similar to the Romans with an even higher emphasis on divination and ritual and it being far more of a revealed religion and perhaps less practical/contractual in their dealing with the gods.

The issue in organizing this is that religion was really inseparable with the state, especially in Rome. The College of Pontiffs was just another government branch. My thought on how to handle this in realm works is to have a high level group:government topic that generally describes the government structere. Under it I have more detailed topics. The College of Pontiffs would be under the top-level government topic but I would enter it as a relgious group. Or should it be a government group? It really would be both.

Also, what about institutes of religious instruction, which would often provide instruction in a range of disciplines outside of just religious topics. I'm thinking of using either Groups:Other, or Location (most would be stand-alone places of learning, rather than a system of institutions).

 

[Dark Lord Galen]

Thanks Exmortis, your screens shots are very helpful.

But just as everything has started to gel, I've hit another decision point. For one of my realms, I'm modeling it on a hybrid of ancient Rome and the Etruscan cultures. Basically, imagining what things would look like if the Etruscans had resisted the Romans, evolved beyond powerful coalitions of city states to build an empire. I'm assuming that the religion would look similar to the Romans with an even higher emphasis on divination and ritual and it being far more of a revealed religion and perhaps less practical/contractual in their dealing with the gods.

I like this idea!! though not really fitting my world its an interesting historical slant! (my minor in Historys' is showing)

The issue in organizing this is that religion was really inseparable with the state, especially in Rome. The College of Pontiffs was just another government branch. My thought on how to handle this in realm works is to have a high level group:government topic that generally describes the government structere. Under it I have more detailed topics. The College of Pontiffs would be under the top-level government topic but I would enter it as a relgious group. Or should it be a government group? It really would be both.

Also, what about institutes of religious instruction, which would often provide instruction in a range of disciplines outside of just religious topics. I'm thinking of using either Groups:Other, or Location (most would be stand-alone places of learning, rather than a system of institutions).

While I have done less of this from the religious aspect (lack of time more than anything) I did do the latter part of your statement as it applies to knightly orders (which are kinda religious) and with Magical Academies.

Just my 2cp
DLG

 

[rob]

The issue in organizing this is that religion was really inseparable with the state, especially in Rome. The College of Pontiffs was just another government branch. My thought on how to handle this in realm works is to have a high level group:government topic that generally describes the government structere. Under it I have more detailed topics. The College of Pontiffs would be under the top-level government topic but I would enter it as a relgious group. Or should it be a government group? It really would be both.

I would take a cue from the modern world in how best to model this. There are countries that have been under religious rule that fit your example perfectly. In a few cases, the religious rule has given way to some degree, but the religious groups themselves have not changed - only their political control. So that means the religious groups should really remain distinctly religious IMHO. They just happen to also be the political power in the region.

That being said, there is nothing that precludes you from adding aspects of political groups to religious groups. It would also be perfectly reasonable to have separate religious and political group topics, with the two simply reflecting those aspects of the same organization and having lots of cross-linkages. When a religious group rules, there are going to be branches of that group focused on the aspects of political rule, and those don't have to be put under the same topic. This could be an instance where you have an equivalent relationship that is revealed from the start. It's merely two halves of a whole.

Also, what about institutes of religious instruction, which would often provide instruction in a range of disciplines outside of just religious topics. I'm thinking of using either Groups:Other, or Location (most would be stand-alone places of learning, rather than a system of institutions).

Again, I would take my cue from the real world here. For example, there are lots of Catholic schools in the area where I live. What's their focus, though? Their focus is on education first and foremost, even though they sprinkle in a religious component to their teachings. That makes them educational groups to me and not religious groups, per se - of course, they would have ties to the religious groups, but that's not their purpose. In contrast, the local seminary school is a completely different matter, as its foremost purpose is on the religious teachings and would probably make more sense as part of a religious group. Obviously, this is just one way to model it that makes sense to me. You should model it however makes the most sense to you.

But hopefully this gives you some useful food for thought...

 

[MNBlockHead]

Rob and DLG, thanks again. I'm having a lot of fun with this. I don't know how much of this is particularly adding a whole lot to the players' experience, but I get a lot of plot ideas while filling in the background information to my realm.

One other thing I've learned in this present exercise is that changing a topic category actually is pretty smooth, so changing my mind on some of these decisions is not that big of a deal.