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A Tight-Knit Pantheon

December 10, 2014 /

I mentioned Keith Davies’ polyhedral pantheons in a previous post. Using the process, here is an example using the smallest die in the traditional dice bad; the d4. You only generate eight different gods with this method and their abilities are very closely related. Don't let that fool you, it can still generate a fun pantheon ready to drop into a one-shot setting or part of your campaign.

My modified version of his process is this:

  1. Choose a polyhedron.
  2. Set some values for certain points and faces.
  3. Randomly assign a domain to remaining points and faces.
  4. Group domains for each god.
  5. Determine Alignment for each god.
  6. Determine the name and ‘chosen weapon’ of each god.

1. Choose a polyhedron: d4.

2. Set some values for certain points and faces:

For this step and the next, I made a diagram. Basically, I flattened a d4, numbered the faces, and assigned letters to the points.

d4pp

It may be easier to visualize if you think of point “D” as the top of the pyramid.

I want to ensure that I no god gets ‘weird’ alignment domains, so I am going to assign Law, Chaos, Good, and Evil. This prevents results like Lawful Chaos. I set the values like this: Law Domain for 1, Good Domain for 2, Evil Domain for C, and Chaos Domain for D.

3. Randomly assign a domain to remaining points and faces:

That leaves us to randomly pick 4 out of the remaining 18 standard domains to map out our pantheon. (For our purposes, we are not going to worry about Subdomains yet.) I use a d20 to roll against the remaining list of domains. A result of 1 or 20 is re-rolled.

Roll Domain
1 re-roll
2 Air Domain
3 Animal Domain
4 Death Domain
5 Destruction Domain
6 Earth Domain
7 Fire Domain
8 Healing Domain
9 Knowledge Domain
10 Luck Domain
11 Magic Domain
12 Plant Domain
13 Protection Domain
14 Strength Domain
15 Sun Domain
16 Travel Domain
17 Trickery Domain
18 War Domain
19 Water Domain
20 re-roll

I rolled Animal, Strength, Knowledge, Water. Going in order: 3 is Animal, 4 is Strength, A is Knowledge, and B is Water.

4. Group domain for each god:

Keith does a better job of explaining grouping than I can, so I'll explain by example. Basically, start with face 1 and group the points that touch face 1. Looking at the diagram, face 1 is touched by points A, B, and C. That means our first god will have the domains associated with 1, A, B, and C. In other words, Law, Knowledge, Water, and Evil. Law will be the primary domain for this god.

Then move on to face 2 and group the points that touch face 2, namely, A, B, D. So this god will have a primary domain of Good and the secondary domains of Chaos, Knowledge, and Water.

Continue with face 3 and face 4 in the same way. To determine the last four gods, I start with point A and group it with the faces that touch point A. This results in A, 2, 1, 3 or Knowledge (primary domain), Good, Law, and Animal.

Then continue the process with points B, C, and D.

To make the process less confusing, I used a spreadsheet that Keith will include with his polyhedral pantheons pdf. Here are the results in a form that is easier to read. Domains in bold represent the primary domain for each deity.

1 - Lawful,Knowledge, Water, Evil
2 - Good,Chaotic, Knowledge, Water
3 - Animal, Knowledge, Chaotic, Evil
4 - Strength, Water, Evil, Chaotic
A - Knowledge, Good, Lawful, Animal
B - Water, Good, Lawful, Strength
C - Evil, Animal, Lawful, Strength
D - Chaotic, Strength, Good, Animal

So there we are, eight different gods that are closely related, but still different.

5. Determine the Alignment:

There is no reason that you couldn't just randomly determine the domains and just pick an alignment for each deity. I chose to set alignment domains at the beginning to prevent weird results, so I’m going to use the alignment domains of each god to determine the alignment.

1 – Lawful Evil, 2 – Chaotic Good, 3 – Chaotic Evil, 4 – Chaotic Evil
A – Lawful Good, B – Lawful Good, C – Lawful Evil, D – Chaotic Good

6. Determine the Name and Chosen Weapon of each god:

I randomly determined the names, but put some thought into the chosen weapon. Since there is a lot of water, I wanted to pick weapons that made sense to a pantheon that lives near water. Here are my results:

DEITY

AL

NON-ALIGNMENT DOMAINS

FAVORED WEAPON
Camalanth LG Animal, Knowledge spear
Clawata LG Strength, Water dagger
Broadhead CG Knowledge, Water Kusarigama
Galelile CG Animal, Strength quaterstaff
Villefred CE Animal, Knowledge short sword
Helica CE Strength, Water maul
L'Sak LE Knowledge, Water spear
Nagelot LE Animal, Strength net

With these eight gods, there’s something to work with for a one shot or the beginning of a campaign. Looking at subdomains, you can make Galelile different from Nagelot in more ways than just alignment.

As an unrepentant worldbuilder, there many different directions this can take, especially pondering over my initial thoughts of placing these gods with a community that lives near the water.

More worldbuilding in the next post.

Polyhedral Pantheons and Future Projects

November 13, 2014 /

Keith Davies has been working on a semi-random system of generating new gods and pantheons for a number of years. It began with using the faces and "corners" of a d20 to create entire pantheons.

Recently, he has been posting on G+ about using d12s and d10s. I have especially enjoyed the d10 method and I have been wanting to give it a try.

Somewhat related to this, I have been working on classifying Swords & Wizardry Cleric and Druid spells according to 2e spheres. (This also led to classifying the Wizard spells according to 2e schools.) The goal is to create a system for generating Priests of Different Mythoi that work with S&W.

Yes, it would be much easier to use 3e, 3.5e, and Pathfinder domains and schools to retrofit a bunch of spells, but the spheres and schools of 2e are just quirky enough to feel better to me. At the very least I want to make something as close to S&W Complete Rules as possible before I go after more modern stuff.

So while Keith is working with Pathfinder domains, I am working with something closer to OSR feel. Nothing against Pathfinder, one of my neighbors runs a weekly game. I even wrote a small bit of Pathfinder stuff many years ago at NevermetPress (with a lot of help with number crunching). In fact, the next few posts are going to use domains in the 3.5/Pathfinder SRD.

You're not against new games. You play in a Dungeon World group. You've done some post-Gygax D&D. You still hold a torch for S&W. We get it. You can stop being an apologist for what you play? Where is all this going?

Keith posted today about using other dice as models for generating pantheons. So I thought about how the d4 and d6 could be used with this model. I also thought about to adapt his system to create really interesting Priests of Different Mythoi in S&W. The system not only generates interesting deities and pantheons, it also generates interesting Clerics with different abilities.

I'm going to use SRD/Pathfinder domains to create pantheons from his system as examples. He asked me to post the d4 creation I am working on. I also plan to post about larger examples. After I finish my works with S&W spells and the 2e spheres, I plan to generate more examples with those.

Keith's Polyhedral Pantheon system is not necessarily game specific. It works in Pathfinder or any OSR game. You just need some categories of spells. I imagine it will work well in 5e (and I'll certainly try to make it work.) Heck, you can collect a list of 20 to 30 trappings and make an interesting set of spells for Savage Worlds.

Anyway, future posts will be:

  • a d4 example of Keith's Polyhedral Pantheon system.
  • expansion of the d4 pantheon with serious Pathfinder-based worldbuilding.
  • another d4 pantheon to provide tension (not a big bad) in the region
  • a complete set of S&W spell databases (with descriptions) grouped by 2e sphere (Cleric/Druid spells) and school (Wizard spells).
  • some examples of Priests of Different Mythoi using Keith's system
  • other examples of a modified system

That's a lot, but it will be fun.

For those that may wonder, I haven't forgotten about publishing the mecha rules for S&W in January. I'm also happy to say that the Sum Bach o Hud project is back in development. No set date for this huge project, but I am sufficiently inspired to get it done.

The Living Curse

October 7, 2014 /

Erik Tenkar mentioned something in passing that really struck me. It may not be new to you, but the idea that a creature that appears undead is merely cursed is brilliant.

One example I can find in the various Swords & Wizardry books is the Omgoth. They eat like ghouls, look like ghouls, and hang around other ghouls. Yet, they are not undead. It even says in the creature description that Omgoths cannot be turned.

I've used a similar idea for years for lesser undead. Skeletons and zombies are not undead, but merely animated corpses. The abilities and immunities of an animated object are remarkably similar to undead. It may not be effective at higher levels, but to a low-level party, it is really freaky when the Cleric's Big Magic Trick has no effect.

What do you mean I don't roll to turn them, they're skeletons!

I already do not consider shadows and ghosts as undead, so anyone that has played in a game I run will know that. However, the thing that never occurred to me was to have a cursed creature that looks and acts like a vampire, but is not a vampire. They can even take damage from daylight as part of the curse. How about a cursed lich? A powerful magic-user cursed to endlessly research the same spell in the vain hope of reversing the curse. Then there's new creatures like the phasma from the Pathfinder SRD. In many ways, it is a cursed Cleric. Considering that the Cleric's god did not save him/her from the curse, I almost think that releasing the curse is worse.

There used to be a blog at Monstrous Television that mentioned abdead as creature similar to undead, but not affected by Cleric in the same way. I wish that archive.org could bring back this post. Essentially, abdead skeletons are intelligent and not able to be turned. I can't remember the rest of the idea except to say that it was great.

Still, there's more to reskinning undead that removing the Cleric's Big Magic Trick. I moved traditional incoporeal undead into a new category of creature. In my games, these ghosts (including specters and shadows) can be battled by psionic characters. Whereas the Cleric takes out the undead and horrible amalgams of bone, sinew, and rot, the Psionicist battles the vengeful spirits of mortals that cannot leave this plane with unfinished business.

That's my two cents on reskinning undead. Have you ever reskinned undead creatures?

 

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