Most settings have polytheistic deities with clearly defined portfolios

>Most settings have polytheistic deities with clearly defined portfolios
>In many settings mortals can ascend to godhood, like Herakles did in Greek mythos

Don't gods run out of portfolios after a while? Wouldn't all the good portfolios be taken after a few millennia of mortals ascending to godhood? You'd then end up with bizarre shit that only exists to please the now oversaturated supply of deities, like
>Water being split out among the god of seas, god or rivers, god of lakes, god of springs, god of tears, god of bottled water, god fo tapwater, god of saliva, god of stagnant water
>Gods of emotions like love and rage, but also of more obscure emotions like second hand embarassment or schadenfreude
What would these deities even do? Who'd even worship a goddess of tapwater?

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>High fantasy problems

You could have multiple gods who govern the same aspects and have them in conflict with gods who do the same thing. All of them are competing to prove themselves to be the one true god of fire or whatever.

All of them could have different approaches to how they govern those aspects too.

That's pretty much how Japanese shintoism (and other animistic religions) work. There's a god/spirit for every notable landmark or natural formation, as well as one for every object or concept. One manga poked fun at this by introducing gods such as the god of the floppy disk and the god of the CD, both rendered obsolete by the god of the DVD (who himself worried about getting replaced by the god of the Blueray). Every time a new technology is developed, a god associated with it also comes into existence. In this case it wasn't worship that powered the gods, as much as people interacting with the objects they represent.

As long as gods can die it all works itself out.

Local pantheons with differently styled gods fulfilling broadly the same portfolios, but in different ways. Apollo might be a god of the sun, yeah, but his resemblance to Ameterasu or Huitzilopochtli is passing at best.

The way I see it you can not ascend to a major god. If you wanted to ascend to the position of a major god you'd have to rebel against the current ones and get rid of them just like most major Gods god rid of whatever was before them.

For lesser gods they do not need their own portfolio or it gets so specific that the amount of portfolios are limitless. Especially if it comes to mortals ascending to godhood, some are simply heroes like herakles other just founded a city and are now worshiped by that city as a deity like Alabandus.

The gods delegate. If there's already a sun god and some young upstart also has the Sun portfolio, they may end up with a subset of the sun depending on their other portfolios. A newbie with Sun and Travel may be given control of the sun's rays and now it's HIS job to make sure they reach all the necessary places, while an even newer god that pops up some centuries later may have Sun and Time, so that schmuck is now the one stuck carrying it through the sky at a snail's pace.

All this while the original God of the Sun is spending his newfound free time boinking priestesses and eating grapes on not!Olympus.

You don't just become a new god, you need to gain a portfolio.
Typically by killing an old god.

You're assuming once a new God appears, they just stick around for eternity.

What's to say that Gods don't fight with each other and dissappear? Creating new denominations of the religions of older gods, setting holy wars in motion to gain followers and power. Pantheons forming around different places or peoples and conduting their own scheming and politics.

>while an even newer god that pops up some centuries later may have Sun and Time, so that schmuck is now the one stuck carrying it through the sky at a snail's pace.
>This is the equivalent of applying at a prestigious law firm as an intern and becoming the guy who just brings everyone their morning coffee

In order to be The Guy, you've got to kill The Guy.
Do you wanna be The Guy?

Most mortals who ascend to godhood don't get a portfolio, they just get a divine title, and if they're lucky, become patron god of their hometown or something. There are quite a lot more towns than domains, so it works out until the civilization falls.

>god of second hand embarrassment
That sounds like something you'd find on Discworld. You could tell me there was a passing reference to "the god of secondhand embarrassment" in any one of the books and I'd believe you.

>Who'd even worship a goddess of tapwater?
If I gets rid of the fucking iron taste in my tap water I'll worship the fuck out of them.

>The goddess demands endless praise, free meals and regular footrubs lest she curses you with water that tastes like iron

Get back in the barn damegami. You wasted all your skills on party tricks.

In D&D's major settings, there are multiple gods with similar portfolios. It isn't a big deal, apparently, so long as you can get sufficient worshippers.

Basically you are expecting monopolies, when really it is more of a competitive free market.

Most settings following those rules also state that a God's power level is directly related to the number of worshippers they have.

So you could easily have multiple gods of fire, but one can create a raging inferno of hellfire, while a lesser known God in the boonies can barely even start his own worshippers' bonfires.

Stop being so analytical about the supernatural and spiritual, you plank. Giving gods rigidly defined portfolios is a mistake.

...You just made being a lesser known god in the boonies sound incredibly comfy. In fact, it might even be beneficial to those villagers.

>Do you want the favor of Vulcanus, god of the eternal inferno? Slaughter a thousand cows and he'll consider your request
>Or you could just approach Sparks, the entirely unknown goddess of the village. Brew her a nice cup of tea and she'll light your bonfires for you.

So in other words she's my wife, except magic and without the irrational obsession with using her period to prove things.

Where do I sign.

you can also kill Gods and so the portfolios probably get shifted around sometimes

Tribal deities aren't unusual.

How can she make water taste like ir-?
>using her period to prove things.
-Nevermind

What kind of things? Like "I bet I could eat three chipotle burritos in a single sitting' type shit?

>Who'd even worship a goddess of tapwater?

Government workers in charge of the municipal water supply.

>polytheism
One of the many things I don't like about D&D is its childish portrayal of religion.

My setting:

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Michigan doesn't have gods. Just look at Detroit.

>kamichu
either you have taste, or we are both trash

>Brew her a nice cup of tea and she'll light your bonfires for you.
bit of a catch 22 there, isn't it?

> but also of more obscure emotions like second hand embarassment or schadenfreude

Nah, promise tea beforehand, then deliver once fire is obtained.

Look at the way the Romans did it. Almost all of their major gods are gods of Agriculture, Fertility, and War.

Our lord, who is Brita, filtered be his name

How many people have ascended to godhood? Maybe the players are the only ones who can?

I ain't reading that shit nigga, summarize it in a paragraph or don't even bother.

But yeah, monotheism is underrepresented in fantasy settings. It's always The One True God or a pantheon, never a mix of competing religions.

Right? I hate that. Especially when Christian bitches do it since, by their own beliefs, all it proves is that literally everything bad is their fault.
Someone's never had a girlfriend. Don't worry it's really overrated. All of the smart guys have moved onto traps. I can't think of one good reason to tolerate the presence of an estrogen powered over emotional problem machine. Leaving my last one for a hot Chinese femboy was the best decision of my life.

>Leaving my last one for a hot Chinese femboy was the best decision of my life.
Hah, gay!

Why not a monotheistic new religion that demoted the old gods into saints? Basically christianity, because it has a nice syncretic compromise in it.

In fact, my setting has something of the kind, except it clearly has a roman flare, like Sol Invictus Augustus Jesus or something, with various saints(gods) being given with a war-related portfolio. Like the god of the forest is now the saint of forests AND gorilla warfare.

>my religions are better than DnD religions!

No one cares about your stupid homebrew shit.

>But yeah, monotheism is underrepresented in fantasy settings.
>It's always The One True God or a pantheon, never a mix of competing religions.
>One True God
>monotheism is underrepresented
Breh.

Even so, it's more often than not a pantheon.

>demoted the old gods into saints
>Basically christianity
t. history channel

>gorilla warfare

Oh shut up, this isn't even a jab at christianity, but a legitimately and cool thing to cherish. And Roman influence had served the Church well,

>water that tastes like iron
I fail to see the problem. I like the taste of iron. I like my water irony.
Isn't that ironic - the irony of irony water?

...

Polytheism is a bit easier to swallow than monotheism, but I don't even think that's the reason.

Players like choices and options. Different races, different classes, different kinds of magic, different gods.

I should really watch that show. The more I hear about it the more insufferable the characters start to sound.

You're losing your touch Carlos. 2/10, see me after class.

It's all in how you present it though. We have monotheism and polytheism in the real world. To use D&D as an example, why couldn't say Pholtus have declared himself the One True God and worshippers of St. Cuthbert, Pelor, and the other deities to be pagan heretics.

Or take a page from many early monotheistic religions, including early Judaism. They acknowledged that other gods existed and had powers, but only their god was worth worshipping, because only their god has "true power" or cares for all followers or isn't a giant douchecanoe.

That's more or less the approach I've taken with my setting. All the gods acknowledge the others exist but most discourage paying any sort of respect to the other gods. There are a few exceptions.

>A few pantheons of lesser gods who banded together.

>Animistic religions like shinto.

>God of money doesn't need your worship, just your dosh

>Chaos god is actually just gravity and isn't really a god in the traditional sense.

>Then there are some gods that just don't give a fuck so long as you don't piss them off.

>We have monotheism and polytheism in the real world.
As separate religions, sure. Not as a single, coherent whole.
Sure, polytheistic religions have been absorbed into a monotheistic one here and there, but that doesn't produce a combination of both. It produces a monotheistic religion with entities that lost their status as deities in favor of the one 'real' deity.

>Why couldn't X have done Y
This is all fiction, user. If X didn't do Y, it's because the writer(s) didn't feel like telling that story. You can tell your own stories in an RPG, if you want to.

Glorantha might be up your alley. Religion and myth play a substantial part in that setting, because it's something the writers felt like focusing on and playing around with.

Gods die, other gods fill their role. Mortals don't ascend to godhood very often.

>Who'd even worship a goddess of tapwater?
No one. Like, five people, maybe. That's why she's the goddess of tapwater and not something world-shaking like life and death.

Isn't Glorantha that clusterfuck PF setting?

No. It isn't.

You're right, that was Golarion. My mistake.

I worship the goddess of tapwater and the god of disease so I don't catch some nasty shit when I go to a foreign country.

>And Roman influence had served the Church well,
by turning it into the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.

That always throws me for a loop too.

I've actually bitched about Glorantha and defended Golarion, much to my embarrasment, thinking one was the other.

>bit of a catch 22 there, isn't it?
That's what you get for worshipping the goddess of unfulfillable promises.

Oh don't give me your uninitiated layman protestant interpretations. The Catholic Church is the last remaining direct connection to THE Roman Empire. Poniflex Maximus was seated by Augustus Ceasar AND Saint Peter.

The Church as consumed folk worship and added that to extra-biblical canon, such as various roman festivals given a new Christian meaning. And how is that not something to love?

To be Roman Catholic, is to be /Roman/. Fuck your heresy, Sol Invictus, Mithras and Jesus are the True Trinity.

There are four big religions:

Church of the Holy Maiden
Technically monotheistic as they believe in a Supreme Being kind of god but do not worship it as it has no relevance in their life. They instead follow the teachings of a powerful cleric named Adrastea, in exchange for access to a pleasant afterlife. It's like Pure Land Buddhism, Gnostic Christianity, and Zoroastrianism with a Waifu Pope.

Kantorism
Believe that a former rad emperor named Kantor achieved apotheosis when he sacrificed himself to stop some ambiguous calamity. Kantorists recognize immanent divinity and they practice it like Hermetic Shintoism.

The Small Faiths
The closest thing to traditional D&D gods, the Samll Faiths are a set of disparate religious traditions devoted to a specific "god".

Five Cults
They worship really powerful living creatures as gods. Some of them are like Cthulu cults, but in general they are a peaceful group.

Saint Peter was just an apostle.
You're mixing Pontifex Maximus with Pope (wich didn't exist when Cesar and Auguste where here).
The Pope was only Rome's bishop and didn't have more power during the roman era.

>Kantorism
>Believe that a former rad emperor named Kantor achieved apotheosis when he sacrificed himself to stop some ambiguous calamity. Kantorists recognize immanent divinity and they practice it like Hermetic Shintoism.

Talos worship is outlawed, you heretic

Wrong. The Pontiflex Maximus is specifically the head priest of the pagan religion of the romans, and specifically Augustus Ceasar formally held that title way before becoming emperor.

Of course that office was usurped by Christianity when it became the Empire's official religion under Constantine, and retroacticely giving the seat to Peter by virtue of the long unbroken line of the Patriarchs of Rome (Pope) now hold it.

This is what Petty God's for Labrynth Lord is for, OP.
Because Lord knows you need the god of Travellers Dieharea.
not an actual god from the book, I believe, but still.

So, like an internship?

Actually Augustus had to wait long after he become emperor to become Pontifex Maximus. Lepide lived a long time.

Its only gay if his balls are masculine.

How often do you ravage his boy pussy?

Pls go you useless goddess

Oh no, I'm not wise-user who gave up women. I'm still a slave to their witchery.

You don't understand, fool. The gods are not middle-managers, running around taking credit and assigning out responsibility for existing phenomenon.

It doesn't work like 'We need someone to handle Volcanos. Vulcan, that's you.'

Its "Vulcan is a guy, and he makes volcanos happen when he gets mad."

The presumption is that, without the god, those things would not happen at all.

So when you get a new god, you don't have to find somewhere in the already exiting spectrum of occurring phenomenon to slot them into. When you get a new god in a fantasy setting, the rules of the world change. Whole new phenomenon happen which only occur because that god exists.

"Oh hey, a shardstorm. You never seen one of those before? Guess you haven't been up north much lately. Ever since Terosmat ascended to become the metalshaping forge god, he keeps building shit in the heavens. But whenever he doesn't like how it turns out his smashes it to pieces and throws the scrap metal down to earth. That's why jagged pieces of metal fall from the skies sometimes."

>It's two thousand fifteen
>There still isn't a mortal ice cream man who has ascended to godhood
>He still doesn't live on the clouds
>He still hasn't replaced snow with calorie free vanilla ice cream that gently floats down from the sky
>We still can't have snowball fights where we try to catch the enemy's ammunition with our mouths
Polytheism was a mistake

Dude, I'm a Christian, and I sort of assume that lesser gods exist to some extent or another, and that they absolutely aren't worth worshiping. I generally treat it as a matter of mysterious, possibly powerful beings with huge egos who are mostly, as you phrased it, "giant douchecanoes."

The phrasing used in various passages of both the Old and New Testament seem to back my opinion up, but it's not a hill I'll die on if someone offers up a better argument.