Cleric Deities? Do we make them up?

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Pirate GM13
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Re: Cleric Deities? Do we make them up?

Post by Pirate GM13 »

Pirate GM13 wrote: Mon Jun 07, 2021 5:57 am
Weegeeman256 wrote: Sat Jun 05, 2021 8:31 pm So I've aged the system for a while hut never had a cleric or played a cleric. Reading the rules it mentions that they get their spells from a God they pray to each morning and are restricted by which one they pray to. Meaning If they pray to a healing do they won't really be able to receive damage spells. That being said are there actual gods in the book somewhere I can find or is this to the description of the PC to create their God and religion?
I think BFRPG avoids trying to force you down into one setting, since there isn't a standard setting and almost all of the adventures they have on the downloads page can be used for your specific setting.
I think that instead of making deities up and all these pantheons and what not, start with asking your Cleric what they want believe in : healing /peace for instance, or maybe war, or perhaps even death. Then you make a deity (or a billion) around that idea. And then from there I put in more deities starting with an "enemy" deity, so in this case if your Cleric wanted to worship the being of volcanoes, I would create an opposing deity of glaciers, and you can choose whether or not to use this deity at all. Then I add friends (in this case the one of lava or earthquakes) and then enemies of those friends and repeat the cycle. And soon you get an entire pantheon of deities.
Of course you could also have your Players work on a deity or two. It is more fun like that for me.
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Solomoriah
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Re: Cleric Deities? Do we make them up?

Post by Solomoriah »

Generally, you don't need a lot of detail. You just need enough to hint that there might be more.

I've used my campaign world of Glain since 1982. It has a substantial pantheon of gods, but until just very recently I never fleshed them out very much. I now have an interested player with a cleric who asks the kind of questions that I have to think up answers for, and I write them down.
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borgar
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Re: Cleric Deities? Do we make them up?

Post by borgar »

daryen wrote: Sun Jun 06, 2021 11:54 am (Sure, the Norse have their own peculiarities, but they are generally not serial rapists and murderers.)
Yes, they do have theire own peculiarities for sure. Loki is father to some facinating personalities, Jörmungandr (The Midgard serpent), Fenrir and Hel. In addition he is the MOTHER of Slepinir (Odin's eight-legged horse). I sort of doubt we will see the last one officially in the MCU, but you never know.
daryen
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Re: Cleric Deities? Do we make them up?

Post by daryen »

borgar wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 5:50 am
daryen wrote: Sun Jun 06, 2021 11:54 am (Sure, the Norse have their own peculiarities, but they are generally not serial rapists and murderers.)
Yes, they do have their own peculiarities for sure. Loki is father to some fascinating personalities, Jörmungandr (The Midgard serpent), Fenrir and Hel. In addition he is the MOTHER of Slepinir (Odin's eight-legged horse). I sort of doubt we will see the last one officially in the MCU, but you never know.
Oh, sure, but Loki is ostensibly the "bad" one, so he's supposed to do "bad", or at the very least, weird, things. But the other gods aren't absolutely horrible, and all of them generally keep their focus on their own spheres, not continuously meddling with the mortals purely for absolutely horrible purposes. They *do* steal, fool around, make dumb decisions, are petty, and have loads of bad traits and actions. But, Odin doesn't continuously go around raping every pretty mortal he can find with Frigg killing and punishing those same women for having the audacity of getting raped by a literal god.

As for Loki in the MCU, let's wait to see what they do in his Disney+ series. It sounds like they are willing to head in some interesting directions ...
Seven
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Re: Cleric Deities? Do we make them up?

Post by Seven »

Odin's counterpart is Mercury. Magic and knowledge.
Thor is the equivalent of Jupiter. Thunder.

Odin is a lot more creepy than Mercury.
The spying, the gallows, the hangings, the sacrificing of body parts, the gathering of the dead, etc...

The Roman gods have limited tradition compared to the older Greek ones.
The Norse ones are more recent still.
So, the Greek gods focus on the Titanomachy--the birth of the gods and the Norse ones focus on Ragnarok, the end of the gods.

It could be fun to write an epic in which the Roman gods move north and turn into the Norse ones. Way too much work for a campaign setting though.
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Re: Cleric Deities? Do we make them up?

Post by shaneward »

In the last game I ran, I decided to have the players tell me their deities name. My player came up with "brundle fly", an amalgamated name from the fly movie. I had decided their were immortals, but that's as far as I got.
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Tazer_The_Yoot
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Re: Cleric Deities? Do we make them up?

Post by Tazer_The_Yoot »

shaneward wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 7:37 am In the last game I ran, I decided to have the players tell me their deities name. My player came up with "brundle fly", an amalgamated name from the fly movie. I had decided their were immortals, but that's as far as I got.
I want to know more. What specific benefits would Brundle Fly confer upon his devout? What is the nature of such a person? Do they bathe? Do they eat a lot of sugar and raw flesh?
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Re: Cleric Deities? Do we make them up?

Post by shaneward »

Interesting! I didn't think that far ahead. They did stop for a rest at the God's meeting place, it was a small copse of trees near the roadside, with 5 large tree stumps. The area was protected and they woke up with more hp and felt refreshed.
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Seven
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Re: Cleric Deities? Do we make them up?

Post by Seven »

Typically, religion is a great source of conflict as there are few settings, real or imagined, with a universal god or pantheon that everyone agrees on and worship. On the other hand, national god(s) are fairly common.

Maybe the Amber series in which the main characters are basically the gods themselves.
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Wolf619
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Re: Cleric Deities? Do we make them up?

Post by Wolf619 »

For my game I've just been generating basic god names online with www.fantasynamegenerators.com.
Search in google for 'Generate gods names' and it should come up. That way if I need a god on the fly I can pick and choose the name/type of god.

Example list generated gods:

Udros, God Of Light
Edite, God Of Judgement
Qyglo, God Of Strength
Wateus, God Of Justice
Dumnir, God Of Love
Qotia, God Of Storms
Oveyr, God Of Education
Eeus, God Of The Ostracized
Cydarr, God Of Knowledge
Satarr, God Of Nature

Btw I'm not in any way affiliated with that site so it's not a plug/ad, just how I am currently 'doing it'.
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