Is that fedora-ish if my Gods are just really big spirits?

Is that fedora-ish if my Gods are just really big spirits?
Like the Hearth God was once the spirit of a house, then grew up to add concepts of family, communauty to its purview until they made it really big and became a self-referencial god getting fed on the faith of its followers rather than really being the spirtual reflection of anything?

That depends on if you're doing it because you think it's a good lore idea or just using it as a soapbox to flaunt your atheism

Why would that be "fedaro-ish"? It is a completely legit way of doing pantheons. Same with basing power levels of God's to their amount of worshippers.

>Gods are just spirits that gain power from the faith of their followers

I don't see anything fedora-ish about that at all.

That's how da Loa work, so I would assume that's how voodoo/whatever other religions that Blizzard was copying when they made troll lore, are also like that.

Not all mythology has gotta be your standard western angels n' the devil n' shit.

Not really fedora-ish, no.

I like the idea.

fbpb

what said, but also as a specific setting it works. Like is it just a local culture? There have been all kinds of gods and most of the gods in these kinds of games seem to end up viewed from a very modern perspective.

What you're saying sounds more realistic for the Romans for example. When you have the gods as superstitions that evolved over time like they come about in most cultures, then you're not doing the usual fantasy game thing of having the gods being actual beings out there with actual power.

But maybe you want to go the Discworld route and say the belief is what gives them power or something.

Or you could just say the gods are a power, a vague being not really similar to a human mind or a thing you could make a statue for, but by being attuned to that power you can draw strength from it.

I guess it depends on if the gods in your game are a source of power or just a bit of the cultural background.

I mean, that's basically what Animism is and maybe early Pantheons.

It's an easy way to craft proper story and folklore about them at the very least. Honestly when it comes to god's their "origins" rarely have to be more than tales passed down unless you're doing some kind of godslayer campaign. There are plenty of existing tales that talk of men ascending to godhood, which is almost the same thing in essence. Besides, if gods are tangible things with real power they probably shouldn't be omnipotent blobs that control everything of an aspect anyway, else things are likely to get messy.

Makes more sense than there being one massive god who won't admit when he fucks up and lets warlords, drunkards, and child molesters convey his immutable, final words several times to the people in overly idiomatic non-trade languages so everything bad that happens is everyone else's fault.

Basically what most religion was until monotheism got big. Even in the early days, Yaweh was just the god of the tribes of Israel. They recognized that other deities had power and ruled over other peoples. Back in those days it was just accepted that your god could beat up the foreigner's god. The Old testament is full of what are effectively dick waving contests where Israelites priests perform miracles and dare the priests of other faiths to do the same. Sometimes they could match them, and sometimes they couldn't. The Egyptian priests kept up with Moses's miracles until he started the hardcore summonings.

And I know it's a tangent, but going off your picture... most traditional African faiths do believe in an all powerful creator deity. They just believe that it's a remote entity that doesn't do much and that it's the spirits (including badass ancestors) in the world that do all the actual supernatural work.

And it's not really animism, as not every rock/tree/animal/etc has a spirit. Rather there are spirits all around and they can choose to live in any given object or creature in the same way a person can choose to live in a tent/hut/house.

They're very mobile and a big part, at least in west African religions, involves making nice places for spirits to live and performing rites that can convince a specific spirit to possess a person so that it can interact with other people, answer questions, etc.

if someone complains that it's too "fedora" at the table drop them like a two ton hammer. that person obsessively browses Veeky Forums for the memes and you know it.

First Best Post Best?

Well, in most religions the distinction between gods and spirits are just degree of badassness. Can't really see the problem, is pretty better for polytheism than DND approach.

It's an entirely legit method and how several early animistic faiths did it.

>And I know it's a tangent, but going off your picture... most traditional African faiths do believe in an all powerful creator deity. They just believe that it's a remote entity that doesn't do much and that it's the spirits (including badass ancestors) in the world that do all the actual supernatural work.
As I understand it a lot of the distant creator stuff comes from the introduction of abrahamic religions. The distance is a way to validate it without losing the traditional animistic practices.

>And it's not really animism, as not every rock/tree/animal/etc has a spirit. Rather there are spirits all around and they can choose to live in any given object or creature in the same way a person can choose to live in a tent/hut/house.
That IS animism. It's not about everything having a spirit, but about the idea that even mundane objects can be inhabited by spirits. Whether any specific object does or not is up to the beliefs of that individual faith.

No, your setting, your fluff.

>Is that fedora-ish
The fact that you give a shit enough to actually ask this means you're trying too hard.

How so?

It's not fedora. But if it was, who cares? Being a good setting is all that matters

No.

How could it possibly be pandering to atheists to include godlike spirits in your game? Have you ever met an atheist who believes in godlike spirits? How would that be at all fedora-ish?

>As I understand it a lot of the distant creator stuff comes from the introduction of abrahamic religions. The distance is a way to validate it without losing the traditional animistic practices.

It predates the introduction of the Abrahamic religions. When they came in, they found natives pretty readily willing to accept the idea of a singular supreme creator deity.

It was convincing them all that the other lesser spirits had no power that was (and in many places, continues to be) the issue.

>>That IS animism. It's not about everything having a spirit, but about the idea that even mundane objects can be inhabited by spirits. Whether any specific object does or not is up to the beliefs of that individual faith.

No, animism describes a kind of belief system in which things that we usually wouldn't consider "living" like rivers and rocks and the like are actually "living" things with their own souls and spiritual manifestations.

In traditional African religions, the spirits are considered extensions/emanations of the creator, not the manifestation of souls/spirits of that which exist in the world.

Animism often conflated with other traditions, especially those identifying the existence of multiple spirits, but it's not the same thing.

Well I'll take your word for it

Dammit, wish I had my copy of 'On Strange Tides' around.
When Don Pedro talks about what the Loa are, and how they grow in power over the years. It's a fun quote, perhaps useful/relevant for the discussion. Though admittedly, those are ghosts rather than spirits. Still, similar idea.

Congratulations, you invented yokai.

More like kami

Aren't Kami born that way even if they are not fundamentaly different from lesser spirits or even the dead?

"Fuck, better post bait"?

So what *exactly* is kami? I've seen it described as both their gods as well as some kind of life energy. And then there's the phrase "Kami-sama" which kind of implies adressing an individual? Yet kami can also refer to landscapes, the human mind and even certain great emperors?

To my ignorant mind, it feels like "kami" is a thing westerners/Christians would have five different words for at least.

They are things worthy of reverence. Equating it to the word "divine" is probably the best translation

Guess that makes sense. Thanks bruh.

Household gods becoming tribal gods as a household gains more political control over its tribe is not a weird idea at all.

Should a tribe become particularly powerful in the word, their tribal god may even end up being considered the only god.

This isn't some veiled reference to Judaism, it's just a chain of events that sounds logical.

So kami-sama is basically "Lord on high"?

Basically belief became power, not very fedora

This is pop history at best. There was no straight line from animism to polytheism to monotheism, and indeed some early forms seem to indicate a sort of monotheism that later evolved into polytheism non-deities were elevated to deity status or angel-like beings were.

Things only become fedora when you start making obnoxious remarks about how great not having a religion is or use your setting as a method to directly insult real world faiths.

If you aren't making a statement then it's just part of the setting.

Is it too fedora if the gods in my setting are largely devoid, due to the state of godhood requiring you sit on a scary soul destroying throne for as long as you can stand it?

Eventually, all gods break down and have to be refueled/replaced with another dude.

You're a big spirit.

Shoulda been /thread

I had a campaign idea kicking around for a while about a low tier god.
The gods are basically playing a tgc using PC level hero's and this minor god (of a light summer breeze) is trying to get more units to fight for her team. As the PCs beat other gods "decks" she gets better

Mana objectified/personified/accumulated.

If by kami-sama you mean how they refer to the christian god, that's another issue altogether, but I think it's pretty common in Asia, they used Tien-something in China too.

>But maybe you want to go the Discworld route and say the belief is what gives them power or something.
this is what I do

Nah, that's pretty much animism in a nutshell. Shinto, for example.

In this case read Small Gods for a pretty good case study.