Come up with reasons why gods wouldn't interfere with the mortal world other than 'they have a deal with the evil gods...

Come up with reasons why gods wouldn't interfere with the mortal world other than 'they have a deal with the evil gods because otherwise counterinterfering would cause a lot of damage.'

Gods are fickle creatures with inscrutable and complex minds and they get bored by mortals pretty quickly.

Are gods childlike or are children godlike?

It's against the rules.

Because god isn't real, duuuh.

The gods are dead. The world is dying under their rotting corpses. The BBEG killed them.

They do. All the time. They live their, even.
But they have little influence beyond their shrines or wherever they happen to be.

Which ruurs?

The Gods are hyperspecialized to the point of retardation, so completely focused on their own individual portfolio that they can't think to even the degree of an ordinary person.

The gods are not monolithic in intent or interests, and even the good gods squabble amongst themselves as to which is the best way to change the world, as do the evil gods, as do the neutral ones, as do the lawful and as do the chaotic.

The gods ARE constantly running games of interference and counter-interference, and counter-counter interference and counter-counter-counter interference.

Well the main god is dead, the evil god is imprisoned in his own realm, all the minor deities are constantly escaping from the void into the place between places but never really get out after going in so yeah.
All they can do is give a vision and a dream here and there.

Gods are lazy little shits who expect sacrifices and worship just for being Gods.

We have to overthrow the system!

because multiple pantheons exist, and after the god wars, there are trillions of treaties and pacts that they have sworn on, and nearly any direct action on the material plane would violate these, and cause trouble
best case scenario, eons of paperwork and negotiations followed by being forced to punish your own followers responsible to save face
worst case scenario, it escalates into another god war and destroys vast swathes of the multiverse and deicides by the hour
better to just stay at home and negotiate who gets sun duties for the week with the other sun gods

The ones the gods made.

because the gods are completely exhausted after making the world. it's like that post fap feeling where you just want to lay there, but stretching for aeons

At least for my world, the strongest god is pretty heavily lawful neutral, and is also a god of war. He's content to give out spells to civilized and honorable warriors while sitting around in not!Valhalla watching sick fights.

The only time he would interfere more directly is if there was an actual challenge he wanted to face personally, or if one of the gods who wants to wipe out all sapient life for the lulz shows its face. And those gods don't do so, because the last half dozen of them that tried got their shit pushed in, so they scheme in the shadows.

The blessed and immortal is itself free from trouble nor does it cause trouble for anyone else; therefore it is not constrained either by anger or favour. For such sentiments exist only in the weak

The gods aren't gods so much as embodiments of virtues and concepts, given form and strength by fervent enough belief and attention toward A Thing.
So there is a god of Justice, there is a god of Truth, but there is also a god of Death, a god of Fire, a god of Sex and so on.
Don't expect much in the way of direct attention unless you truly embody one of the virtues as a Paragon of it, and even then, you basically act as a conduit toward that god, rather than that particular god acting directly to assist/hinder you.

The whole reason they created us in the first place was to watch us grow. Mortalkind is not a hedge, to be shaped and trimmed, but a child, to on occasion be steered away from harm, but to be allowed to become in it's own right. Mass interference would only tarnish that goal.

They don't care
The border between the mortal and immortal realm is incredibly strong, only the gods can even barely penetrate it
Their fuckery almost caused the apocalypse in ancient times so they have a noninterference pact
The gods spend eternity guarding the prison of the ancient evil

They're busy interfering with a different mortal world.

Humans are on a scale roughly equivalent to any in terms of significance. The gods are used to using actual gardening tools on the scale of shovels and towels and it's only rarely that they'll bother to interact with individuals. When they do, it's usually because it's simpler--only have to talk to one prophet, and if they don't listen you can kill everything and pick a new prophet.

They usually listen better after the first genocide.

The world is like a story to them. Most of the time they just want to see what people will do, and only interfere directly when something triggers their autism and they feel it needs to be fixed. Or they toss their OCs in to stir shit up when things get boring.

Do you explain your actions to ants or goldfish?
Do you expect them to understand even if you do?

The gods are the creators and the world is predefined, it cannot be altered externally because everything that happens has already been written from the perspective of the creator. The gods exist on a different level of physicality and consciousness than the world, like an author to a book.

neither
gods are to humans what humans are to ants
do you interact with every ant you meet?
they only care of we are their pets (ant farms) or attack them (infestations)

Because the world is their plaything. A perfect world where status quo is eternal, delicious ambrosia flows freely and nothing bad ever happens? Booring. That's a cheap Olympus knock off. Why would they bother with a lousy imitation when they have the real deal already?
No, what the God's want, what the God's crave is not your Saturday Morning Brunch Show where all the pretty people brag about how perfect their pretty plastic world is. No,what they want is what the themselves do not have. They want for Nothing from a World of Everything. They want Chaos, they want dirt and grime, they want the vicissitudes of mortal life, the constraints of the human condition, the melodrama of tragedy and the temporal joy of safety exacerbated by the dangerous uncaring world we mortals must endure.
Yes, that is right. The World is a Play and Life is the joke. Your face I believe is the punchline.

Because whenever they interfere mortals complain and whenever they don't interfere, mortals still complain, so they save themselves the trouble and don't.
>World is perfect
>WAH there's nothing to do, no meaning in life
>World isn't perfect
>WAH this sucks there's suffering
>Everyone is brainwashed into being happy
>WAH I want my free will back

Free will.

>>Everyone is brainwashed into being happy
>>WAH I want my free will back
That doesn't sound very happy brainwashed to me.

>Come up with reasons why gods wouldn't interfere with the mortal world

But they do constantly, nigga. You see that flash in the distance? That booming sound? That's Taranis, doing battle with Alisanos. It's certainly not an electrical discharge.

Greek answer: gods are proud and petty. They do as they please, and questioning them causes trouble.

Norse answer: they gods aren't here to coddle you. Sacrifice for their blessings, then earn what you need through warfare and work, mortals.

Chinese answer: gods embody a certain ideal so completely that they are just too alien to really have a human perspective on morality. They do what they do and you work with that.

Lovecraft answer: you are insignificant. All the lives of all humans everywhere are no more meaningful to them than the lives of harmless bacteria are to you. They could casually destroy all existence as we know it, forward and backward in time, simply as a side effect of taking an action like scratching their junk.

Protestant Lite(tm) answer: mortal lifetime is a test, not the end in and of itself. Day-to-day moral choices during the test cannot be forced or they have no meaning.

Pop Gnostic answer: the mortal world is the Adversary's world. Our task is to make the right choices and bring God into this world in preparation for the last days.

What a Twist answer: the gods are neither creators nor rulers of the universe, just very powerful beings who feed on worship and control certain aspects of existence in an uneasy balance with each other to enhance their own personal power; no one wants to end up like Al-Kazoth, the dead god whose body drifts through the astral.

Futurama Answer: If they interfere directly and obviously, mortals stop doing anything themselves. Their lives become meaningless as they sit around waiting for the almighty to do everything for them; anything they do can be done or undone effortlessly by an actively micromanaging, omnipotent master, so why bother?

Obviously I'm skipping volumes of nuance here for the real-life inspired ones, but those are easy enough to look up if you want to incorporate them into a campaign.

They do it with a smile on their face that time.
When mortals ask the gods
>Omnipotence, Omniscience, Omnibenevolence, pick two
the gods reply
>Change, Free Will, Universal Happiness, pick two

The gods, in making the world fit for mortal life, sacrificed their own ability to interact with it directly.

Take the Mage the Awakening approach, Gods and Godlike entities are in a constant MAD Mexican Standoff with eachother and interfering with the normieverse can start out an all out war between dozens of different factions.

Or do the Mage the Ascension version, reality is static and poisonous to anything too bizarre and alien to it, Gods stay in their realms because coming to earth would weaken or kill them

They don't care, they're busy partying and having incestuous orgies.

The gods can and do interfere in the mortal world usually indirectly through chosen champions gifted great power.

A god could choose to come down to intervene directly, but the only way into this world is through birth and the only way out is through death. During the time that the god is living as an avatar he is limited to humanlike (or animalistic) senses and can give no aid to anyone outside of his immediate surroundings. All gods choose to either settle doing things indirectly through others where they can watch the whole world and give or take gifts from mortals, or they are birthed as an avatar to handle things directly the specific way they want it done while forsaking their followers on the other side of the continent for a lifetime.

Because the UNSPEAKABLE EVIL would find it far more embarassing to be defeated by a man than by a god.

>they have a deal with the evil gods
Because there are no evil gods, but the worshiped gods have a deal with each other not to use their power to tread on others' territory.

yfw Yahweh broke this pact and exterminated entire pantheons

>the gods of Egypt were eventually cowed whe YHVH's archangels proved too tough to waste resources on
>but Horus never forgot
>and Horus never forgave

Because God no longer exists, what was once God is now the world. What was once pure unity is now fractured into the disparate and divided existence that gave rise to mortals in the first place.

Gods are very distant from humanity. As in, physically. Light-years away. There is a hell of a latency when transmitting data between mortal realm and the realm of gods. You find some decent person, decide that he would make a good prophet and throw some divine power in his direction, but in a couple of years it would take to reach him he turns into a corrupted faggot who uses his newfound powers for evil. And it's a few more years of divine-powered assholery before you'll be able to notice it and take them back. Awkward. Better to let things take their course unless absolutely necessary.

They don't have to worry about collateral damage from their struggle with the evil gods, they've actually figured out how to keep it all confined to various astral realms. The good gods are therefore constantly warring with the evil gods to keep the evil gods too busy to do anything nasty to the mortal realm. This keeps the good gods too busy to do anything nice for humanity, too, but they have faith in humanity to be able to do what's right for themselves if placed in a theologically neutral environment.

The gods, even good god to good god, are constantly fighting over the souls of mortals, against one another, etc.

Leaving their realms directly (instead of acting through dreams, shrines, or clerics) would leave them exposed to another god's attacks, which would FUCK them over.

The gods don't age, but they can be killed. Especially by other gods.

In my setting, the gods can't enter the material realm because of the way the cosmology works. The universe is like a well; heavy objects will sink to the bottom of well while less dense things will float to the top. Conversely, the gods sink to the "bottom" of the universe because they are powerful, while mortal men float to the "top" because they are weak. This doesn't mean that the Gods can't influence the realm, they most certainly can. But Gods have limited resources and they use those resources when they influence outcomes in the material realm.

The reason why mortals exist in the first place is directly tied to this. The Gods once fought against each other in a war of divine proportions. They soon found out that whenever they expended their power, it was "evaporated" and returned to the top, then fell down like rain. This "rain" wasn't powerful enough to sink back to the bottom the be reacquired, and thus got caught in the mortal realm, as if it were a filter. The Gods created mortals to give that power back to them. The mortals willingly sacrificed power in the form of pacts and prayer. In return, the Gods would sometimes bless an individual or even whole groups of people for the worship. Thus, this formed a mutually beneficial relationship; the mortals would get blessings that would ensure their survival while the Gods got the power that was "stuck" in the mortal realm.

It'd make a boring story

They're not babysitters & don't want to coddle humanity or whoever.

The gods are mostly preoccupied with bracing reality and keeping it from collapsing back into primordial chaos. Reality is volatile, and direct interference with the physical world requires tremendous caution lest things escalate out of control.

>Free Will and Universal Happiness. If both of these were to occur, any change from that state would affect one or both of those two factors and therefore become undesirable. Of course, this does not mean total stasis as that would mean that there could be no free will.

>reasons why gods wouldn't interfere with the mortal world
They have legions of angels/lesser spirits to do that for them. The mark of a true leader is delegation.

Gods are so unimaginably powerful that even if a mortal were mere seconds away from becoming a new god, all they'd have to do is merely glance at them to destroy them utterly.
Think of it like this, to a human, an ant is rarely anything more than a nuisance, so we permit their existence, but when they become a problem, or when we become bored, we kill them, or sometimes torment them. A human to a god is an ant, and unless they've somehow managed to go unnoticed through magic, they will never attain a power strong enough to warrant the god's full attention. Now, if they DO manage to attain that power, well the gods are gonna flip their shit.

the only other reason they would dabble in mortal affairs is to prevent another more evil god from gaining more power, breaking free from celestial prison, or gaining a physical form on the material plane. A cult of Tiamat, for example, would likely be beset first by dragonborn,. then by metallic dragons if the dragonborn failed, and then finally by a manifestation of Bahamut himself.

Because the Gods want their mortal creations to be able to fend for themselves. The Gods wish for them to eventually become independent, so eventually the mortals themselves can become Gods one day to their own creations.

The Gods only interfere when something incredibly drastic, or in other terms "unfair" happens. If two nations start fighting with each other they will not intervene in their conflict. However, if say a dimensional rift was made and eldritch creatures from another plane of existence began to threaten them, then the Gods would use their powers to protect their creations, seeing how these beings are something the mortals wouldn't know how or ever be able to take on themselves.

Everyone is free to do everything they want, they're just pleased with the outcome.

The gods only exist in ever spinning myth cycles, usually less glamorous than the iterations they are known for. While they do interact with the mortal world, it largely goes unnoticed because with each turn of the cycle the details change. The gods may have new names, end up in new bodies or apparent levels of mortality, several gods exist in multiple cycles with different identities. The lethal accident outside your apartment may have been the result of the ancient Canaanites playing out their destiny-locked roles, with Kothar-wa-Khasis acting as a rogue hitman cutting the brake cables of two cars at the request of Ba'al Hadad so that when the target, a modern day dirty fishing mogul Yam saw the cop car in pursuit to bring him in his car became this iteration's Driver and the cop's this iteration's Chaser and fate ended the confrontation as it always does.
Until Anat goes to steal Yam's estate and distribute it across the land, there will be no "rain" in the area, either metaphorical or literal.
The most important way that gods interact with mortals is by who is caught in the crossfire.

Except that everyone is pleased with the outcome.

This can happen in a few ways:

1: They are brainwashed, or otherwise forced to be happy. This violates the requirement for free will.

2:Each person is unaware of any actions which would make them unhappy. This would mean that only those people who agree upon all things would live in the same area and that there would be no interaction with those outside that area. Again, this would not work as it would infringe upon the free will of those who wish to travel.

2a: As no people would agree upon all things completely, each person would dwell entirely alone. A human cannot remain happy in these circumstances.

2b: Each person lives within a solipsistic delusion, creating the world around themselves. Assuming this to not already be the case, this would lead to the end of the human race without outside intervention. This would be change, forbidden by the choice made.

3:Both humanity as individuals and society as a whole has grown beyond the need for unhappiness, or the need to take actions which would cause it in others. This would necessitate, among other things, a post-scarcity society. This society would also not develop further, as there would be no pressures upon it, meaning that it can be sustained without change once it is reached.

Nigga, it makes great story. Have you heard about dominions? Imagine titans, divine beasts and immortal archmages ruling over nations with iron fist and waging apocalyptic war on each other and doing crazy shit like stealing the sun or aging everyone in the world. It's definitely something fresh in stale fantasy genre.

It is not the job of gods to interfere with our lives and to give us everything we so dearly wish for. They wish to watch us grow, and should only make themselves known when there is dire need. The visitation of a god or goddess should not be a time that people desire, because it means that man has failed to the point of needing divine assistance.

I dunno, I generally have gods at least show their hand once or twice, but that's the mentality I give to the more reserved gods in the pantheon.

>We gotta overthrow the system!
Kay, how?
>Don't sacrifice!
That's easy. We could have destroyed them long ago.
>and by sacrifice, I mean kill each other intentionally

What then?

Gods are focused on defending existence against beings outside it.
Maybe the God of Rape and Torture is bad and all and the more benevolent and pro-"humans" still try to limit his influence but he is still a part of reality and it would be hard to remove him without unraveling it, and he is also needed inn the fight anyway.

Life is but a manifestation of the gods of life, eternally at war with the gods of death/inanimate. Humans are the bit where these Platonic ideas meet, in all forms either seeking to preserve/encourage life or end it. The gods don't really even notice individuals, only seeing their war in a macrosense. A plant or a human or an animal or a microbe is the same to the gods. Just foam created as the tide of life hits the shores of death. We are the flotsom offspring of these dualities. The gods of life are eternal & thriving. The gods of death are static & entropic. What we see as life is caught in the middle. We do not live eternally & we are flawed, but we are not static, & we build things to resist entropy. We were not created by any conscience decision, merely spawning from the twisting forces. The gods do not care for us outside their plans on using our dual nature to rally against one side or the other. This is why gods of life abhore murder & depravity & laud fertility & protectiom. The gods of death seek only death & ruin of everything, but do have the capacity to build something up if it has he ability to knock a bigger thing down. Many humans see them as natural antagonists.

There are no gods, do something different for a fuckin' change.

Ugh.

Well, last time a god was pissed enough to intervene directly in mortal affairs three different races were driven to extinction and every other god of the world had to work to set things right before the world was swallowed up.

Now interactions with the mortal world are strictly regulated and skirting the rules is a good way to get a dozen or so angry celestial beings curbstomping your dumbass for being an idiot.

The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson actually did something interesting with this.

The Aesir and the Jotunns would do their fights through mortal proxies because a direct conflict would mean an end to the world they were fighting over (Ragnarok.)

Basically the Cold War as applied to the divine.

Or maybe it's appeasement, or there's a hostage situation.

In the Points of Light setting for 4th Edition the mortal world was guarded by outrageously powerful Nature Spirits who were ready to fuck up any interloper who overplayed their hand in the Prime Material.

No gods, good or evil, really wanted to stick their dick in that particular hornet's nest, and mostly contented themselves with working through mortal agents.

I'm running a PF campaign that is heavily tied to the gods and their interactions with mortals and vice versa.

my players are currently trying to stop a group of conspirators from unleashing an ancient destructive force that was sealed away by several orc gods.

my reasoning why the gods do not intervene again is that it was a collaboration between more than one god, the act of sealing away this cataclysm maimed all involved and they are in no position to do it again.

the stongest of those weakened gods "volunteered" the party to stop the conspirators which boiled down to one of the party members gaining a fraction of the gods power. which makes him basically orc Jesus.

the only other god who has the ability to help, and has played a semi active role so far, is less inclined to suffer the same fate as his sibling (the other one that helped) and figures that seeming his sibling chose them to fix the problem the orc god of fates must know something he does not and takes the "see where it goes" approach.

that being said I am a personal fan of the "I can, but I choose not to" excuse for why omnipotent beings don't just snap their fingers and fix issues

Which still makes for a boring story for the players unless they are playing gods.

Because if the Gods were too constantly intervene or have a hand in Mortal Affairs, how could mortals ever grow, learn, or improve?

Kinda diggin' it.

>God is not perfect, only pretends to be so people will love him.
>He's a creator, not a destroyer, he realizes that he cannot destroy evil without destroying good as well, the floods probably killed a lot of good people, but God took the risk by saving some people he thought as good.
>Turned out the world didn't change all that much and he said fuck it, this is how it is.
>He tries helping out here and there but can't possibly change the world at a micromanaging level like he'd want.
>Hides in heaven and hopes for a revelations-esque event to happen so he can end it and try again, or enjoy the company of all the Christians in heaven who love him.

Think of a father figure who's afraid to let his child down, so he acts big and courageous because of his son.

1. they dont know
2. they cant
3. they dont care

pick your poison

They don't care love

They're scared of humanity

now they just interfere by sending visions to various people to set them on quests. Some of the more lair back (and dickish) Gods make a game out of it, betting on the outcome of these adventures.

In my setting, most of the gods got banished to a different plane. They can't really interfere, and the ones who banished them take a laissez-faire approach to humanity, for the most part.

Interfere too much and you might damage the bindings of the ancient horrors locked deep within the earth.

The world is like a stew, and the gods like fire; interference with the world literally causes it to be cooked into a less perfect state.

Hmm. For gods, I'd want omniscient and omnibenevolent.

As for humans, change and free will are the only acceptable choices.

Divine mutually assured destruction.

There are non-divine beings on the material plane that would slap their shit.

There are higher order divine beings that would slap their shit.

There is a barrier between the material plane and the divine plane that limits interaction.

Interfering with the material plane is more taxing than interacting with the divine plane, so any god that gets to active on the material plane will fall behind in the divine plane.

They have better things to do and/or just don't care that much

But user what if your world is seared with alcohol and needs some torching to be just right

The world was created by so many gods, that few of them have any real power. Those that do have cheated their way to more influence down the timeline. Some worked to make life possible, each creature in return feeding their power. Some created entropy. Some work in subtler ways.

They got bored at some point and started looking to other worlds for entertainment. So if you went to another planet and met the aliens there, they might have lots of godfoolery happening around them.

Dude, user, the prompt was 'make a reason': now you went and made me hungry. Why would you do such a cruel thing?

The gods are too powerful for their own good. Imagine someone the size of Godzilla trying to do anything without causing accidental catastrophe with every step. Or someone trying to paint a picture on a grain of rice with a paint roller.

No matter how bad things are, divine intervention could always make things worse.

Probably because they don't know humanity actually exists.

The Gods are beyond the concept of Time.

The universe is made of Time.

They touch it, they break it.

The Gods generally LIKE the world to keep existing.

Looking at you Aku.

For the same reasons why people own an aquarium. The gods generally keep everything on the larger scale of things tidy and make sure that their creation won't destroy itself, but the real joy just comes from watching the creatures inside do their own thing. Constantly interfering and trying to control another living creature takes away from that enjoyment.