How can I make gods that are fun or interesting without being complete mary sues

You make them socially awkward/unaware, with fluctuating morals, and moments of apathy.

Well, one I enjoyed was one where the gods were as dickish as they historically were.

So it was okay to deal with ishtar if you were giving her praise and sacrifices, but it is NOT okay to deal with ishtar if you are dating her.
Also never spurn ishtar.

That's not an entirely accurate assessment of the Hellenistic deities, to be honest. It's the popular one because so much of the material we have on them that is widely known is the dramatized stuff, but the nature of divinity was highly debated and a fair bit more nuanced than that.

One bit of advice: never have a pantheon of evil deities. Basically no religion has ever had anything like that. Most don't even have an evil deity - the antagonist is usually something else, like a primordial dragon or a giant or whatever.

what if all the gods are evil? Because like, that was the story with a couple, and becomes more true the further you go back.
Like, the ancient mesopotamian gods were all more evil than the ancient roman gods.

Ishtar is a thot.

bitch ishtar better not catch you saying that or she'll break open the doors to the underworld to allow the dead to devour the living.

AGAIN.

Fucking ishtar, always releasing the bull of the heavens or cursing a man with a fate worse than death once she gets bored of them.

Combine disparate elements. Gods are rarely clean cut.

Gods and their identities reflect the politics and development of their people.

Pantheons largely consist of cobbled together mythos of many different gods, reflecting the followers of those gods also coming together.

Bringing up Ishtar in relation to the gods' dickishness is kinda funny. By any measurement, the Annunaki are some of the most morally upright deities I know of. The Enuma Elish contains an entire segment where Anu presides over a heavenly debate on the ethics of creating living, thinking beings, what rights a created being have and what rights the created have. Their conclusions are actually relatively fair.

There is another debate when the noise of humanity starts to disturb the world, about whether it is moral for the creator to destroy a creative life for being incompatible with the eat of the world. Eventually they decide that it would be wrong to full humanity en mass, and instead give humans a set lifespan.

Make them lazy and only answer prayers to shut them up. They empower clerics so they don't have to do everything themselves.

Gods are parents, mortals are the shitty hyperactive children downstairs, clerics are babysitters.

Ishtar ain't going to do shit. She'll whine to her dad, and he'll tell her to fuck off... well unless she threatens him with zombies.

Ah shit. There's a bull outside.

What I mean is, don't have multiple gods of [evil things] who are on their own or in an opposed pantheon. Pretty much no religious system has ever done that. Even Set was only a bad guy after his cult got fucked.

Also that statement about the Mesopotamian deities is plain wrong.

the gods are gods because they have power, in other ways they are as "human" as anyone else, as prone to the vices of mortals as the mortals are (although they'd smite you for saying it)

basically ape the greeks

Gods are aliens lmao

Thot is thot.
what are you talking about?

>Like, the ancient mesopotamian gods were all more evil than the ancient roman gods.
if all you are reading is christian propaganda

IIRC Ishtar argues in humanity's favour both times. Though in, I think, the Assyrian translation she's completely absent.

Gods can be complicated. Ishtar was a wrathful lady of war but she was also the patron of love and compassion, and understood mankind better than, say, Enki or Enlil. But not Shamash, Shamash was absolutely based.

This

First post best post.

Nah Thot(h) ain't a thot, Thoth is anime.

There is a legitimate point that Sumarian mythology assumed the world was a place of evil, where you might have to make bargains with dark powers to keep away from worse things.

For example, people having children and places infants were kept had shrines and markings for Pazuzu, evil god/king of the daemons of the wind. Because as much of an asshole as Pazuzu was he was also the greatest enemy of Lamashtu, a goddess that brought disease and death to women in childbirth and infants.

Make them transactionary and clearly defined, with enemies.

Maybe making a sacrifice of a defeated enemy's weapons to the shrines of the god of storms and battle gives you a mark that will bless you in battle, but carrying that mark means the god of winter and his cult consider you an enemy.

I'm still upset it doesn't say ouch! on his robe in Aztec or something

I am now confused

>There is a legitimate point that Sumarian mythology assumed the world was a place of evil

This isn't really accurate. Applying a post-Zoroaster good/evil dichotomy to Sumerian mythology is folly. Sumerians didn't believe the world was primarily evil, they believed it was full of powerful forces beyond man's ability to control, with little care for or stake in man's existence.

I dont think you can broadbrush the mesopotamian religions though.
They differ pretty greatly even between cities and especially through the ages

>they believed it was full of powerful forces beyond man's ability to control, with little care for or stake in man's existence.
which is pretty much how every pagan viewed the world.
an interesting thing you'll note is that pretty much NO pagan society LIKED nature. Nature, after all, is chaotic and dangerous. It's not before society become more urbanized and educated that they start longing "back to nature".

Väinämöinen

My nigga, this is one of my favourite things to to confront my players with.

>How can I make gods that are fun or interesting without being complete mary sues
>in a lot of campaigns I've been in the gods are usually "The good god of healing", "The evil elder god". with all the other gods, if any, barely even being mentioned

Honestly the D&D 4E World Axis mythology is breddy gud, if very derivative.

1d4chan.org/wiki/World_Axis

First, let's split some words: You said "Gods" but because games have rules and labels there's space for confusion.

4E D&D has four different kinds of gods, only one of which is actually labelled "Gods" or presented as such in the literature.

These are the
>elemental gods "Primordials"
>the astral gods "Deities"
>the natural gods "Primal Spirits"
>the abyssal gods "Demons"

>The elemental gods created, destroyed and rebuilt many worlds in a very greek-titan kind of way. Neutral-to-evil aligned
>The astral gods liked the current world and waged war against the elemental gods so they woldn't destroy it. Good-to-evil aligned
>The natural gods arose from this actual world and stopped the ruinous war between the other gods, barring them from manifesting in the world
>The abyssal gods are one astral and many elemental gods corrupted by the Shard of Evil

This sets up a situation where the Astral gods - the ones that can make you a cleric - don't necessarily always work against each other because while they may hate each other, it's all of them against the Elemental gods.

And you can have a Good and nurturing spirit of healing that won't let your Lawful Good astrally-powered paladin pass because it serves one of the natural gods.

Well yeah, even restricting it to Sumarians you run into the small problem that the Ubaid period was 27 centuries long, and followed by 9 centuries more before you get into even properly protoliterate cultures.

>One bit of advice: never have a pantheon of evil deities. Basically no religion has ever had anything like that.

...

uh

OK which one do you mean:

"no pantheon has ever had deities that"
>1: "had the 'evil' D&D alignment"
>2: "were immoral by our standards"
>3: "Were disliked by local standards"

Because while 1 is obviously true it is also stupid, and 2+3 are wrong, I can find examples of both.

>I'm still upset it doesn't say ouch! on his robe in Aztec or something

>Black symbol on green background

4. Were a pantheon of explicitly evil antagonists opposed to the good deities.

Generally speaking, ancient religion does not have that kind of good/evil dichotomy among its deities. There's usually a troublemaker and an antagonist but rarely a bunch of gods aligned to 'the bad side.'

That role is usually given to some kind of monster.

I'm an idiot, I misread your original post to say "there were no pantheons which contained evil deities," which was obvious nonsense. My apologies.

don't make them omnipotent regarding their own domains, just above mortals by a big enough margin

One man's god is another man's devil. Have gods vary in appearance and interpretation, or even name, between cultures.

Rogar, god of the forges and industry, heralded by the mountain-men as a bringer of steel and protection. But he is also called Ro-Hakkar, the Fire-bringer, by the forest-druids, known for sending mountain raiders down to steal away their women and cleave their men in two with a strange gleaming iron.

No prob bruv.

This.
You often get primordial chaos-related divinities though, like titans or jotuns, whom the gods have to defeat before humans can exist, and quite often making the world of their corpses.

Make them behave like fucking people! Give them motivations which are internally consistent, if not necessarily comprehensible to humans. Give them flaws, lots of flaws.

Who is more fun to read about, the Greek pantheon, or the Abrahamic-capital-g god? If you picked the justification for people to cause our social issues in the last two centuries, you're wrong.

The Greeks, Romans, and Norse are the most recognizable pantheons the Eurosphere, and they are fun to read about because they weren't made out to be all-powerful, they're just domain-specific badasses with motivations related to their domain. In Zeus' case, his domain was fuckin' bitches and getting money, so that's where his flaws got put. I jest.

Really, though.

Aphrodite was a cheatin' bitch, who went to the chad Ares over the virgin Hephaestus repeatedly. She was vain and full of herself, and wildly jealous of attention. She was not the goddess of love, but the goddess of beauty, and its associated trappings.

Zeus was the king of the gods, but that didn't stop him from using his power to be a horny motherfucker. "Don't put your dick in it!" called everyone, "Too late!" came Zeus.

Dionysus was a chill god, but he was slothful much of the time and drunk practically all of the time. His revelry and good cheer reminded people to chill the fuck out and party now and again, but god damn was that dude a wino.

Hera was the queen bitch, annoyed with her brother-husband Zeus. She nags at him, rightly so, and is generally a pain in everyone's kiester. Amusingly, her domain was women and marriage. Smartass sexist dickheads, anyway.

>leaving out Poseidon

Poseidon is the king of shit. He's everything you think of when someone brings up the 'Greek Gods were evil chads' meme. Bigger rapist than Zeus, bigger meathead than Ares, bigger bitch than Aphrodite, bigger vengeful whiny cunt than Hera. Off the top of my head I cannot think of an instance of Poseidon not being shit.

Hades, on the other hand, was a total bro. good to his subjects, rich, kind to his wife (whom he kidnapped and did not rape - Zeus got a piece of that cute daughter of Demeter while looking like Hades, because he's a bastard) and allowed the dead to forget the trials and tribulations of their lives if they wanted.

Hades wasn't exactly a bro. He was like death in every sense - uncompromising, grim, and deprssing, but also entirely fair.

He and most versions of Athena are the members of the dodekatheon most likely to treat people in a just and impartial manner.

Honestly, this trend of "every character in fiction has to be a flawed piece of shit just like me" is getting pretty tired. Get a new shtick, you faggot.

Well, in one campaign I ran, the entire thing was framed as basically a contest between the Goddess of Luck and the Goddess of Conquest, with the former being the patron for the party and the later being the patron for the evil warlord and his four lieutenants.

The gods of my setting do contests like this every thousand years as a sort of tournament, betting potions of their divine power on the results. New gods sometimes rise up since there's a hard "cap" on how powerful gods can get (it's self-imposed), while old gods might go all in and end up losing their divinity (although they tend to remain immortal beings thereafter and, provided they don't die, might play a part in the next round of gambling 1000 years later).

It always involves picking mortal champions, although combat isn't necessarily involved - it depends on what the gods agree to, which might be a race, a battle, a weaving context, a cooking contest, whatever fits their personalities.

The thing is that the gods can only interact to set up the situations and in extremely limited ways once the contest between mortal champions actually begins. In the case of the campaign above, the Goddess of Luck granted the players the opportunity to draw from a stacked Deck of Many Things that had (most of) the bad cards removed, replaced by copies of the good cards. She also had an "everybody gets one" effect in play - every member of the party could grant themselves a free pass against dying ONCE in the campaign. Came up several times.

The thing is that there's nothing preventing the gods from interacting with the champions or the world verbally - either their own or that of their opponent's. They just can't affect the world in any way beyond that for the duration of the contest.

Long story short, the Goddess of Luck occasionally popped up with advice for the players. Sometimes it was even good advice. And the Goddess of Conquest showed up to yell at and belittle the players.

>mary sues
You have no idea what that phrase means. Stop using it.

medusa would beg to differ

My gods were based on how they acted in Xena and Hercules, by the way and in case you couldn't tell.

youtube.com/watch?v=LxfJnX0SFWM

By making them and then not having them interact with the game directly until much higher "levels". How the fuck is this a hard concept?

Make all gods represent real facets of life like wealth, health, dreams, family, food, and stuff like that rather than "good" and "evil" then give them a small backstory of what the did in their corporeal form whoch determines the nature of their character.
I just made a god named myke (easy to remember) who is the titan of dreams, when he was alive he wanted to bring peace and prosperity after easily obtaining the throne, but he started using dreams to trick people and as he got more and more selfish and uncaring, the dreams he gave to people started getting darker and darker until the ruling elf class at the time became twisted into pale, lanky, white-haired psychos who were plagued with waking nightmares. His worship is still permitted across the kingdom as he was killed with a ballista to the head 1000 years ago and then burned at the stake until nothing remained, but his essence still gives the faithful pleasant dreams but he is a chaotic evil god.

>Roman revisionist propaganda

Absolutely disgusting, never ever believe a Roman.

Initially Medusa's 'curse' was simply the ability to turn men who looked upon her to stone, as a defense against assholes like Poseidon. Athena was protecting her. It wasn't uncommon for Greek women to wear talisman's depicting Medusa to borrow some of this protection.

Interestingly if you follow Persephone back far enough you'll find her as Kore/Cora, who was possibly a bigger bitch than the rest of the pantheon combined. Only to the dead, sure, but for eternity. It's really no wonder the worship of Hades got expanded to cover the whole afterlife ruler bit too, and the goddess whose name was a curse softened bit by bit into his wife.

During an old 3.5 D&D campaign, I remember that Kord was "australian body builder and surfer" while Pelor was "stoned hippie walking in leather sandals". They were trully bros.

Think about a phenomenon of the nature and/or emotions. Turn it into a god with similar behaviour to it's phenomenon.
For example, a volcanic god may be a chill god one time and a ultra angry motherfucker the next for some insult that nobody ever noticed.
A god of war may be bloodthirsty, but as all warrior societies, he'll still be a honourable god, the kind of god that you can expect to fulfill his promises.

>stop doing the thing that has made plots work since the first story ever told

Different poster here. I had no idea (but considering the Romans it makes a whole lotta sense) that the Medusa is a bitch version came post Roman conquest.

Honestly, I assumed that the split would come from local cults--presumably Athens would have Athena being bro tier protective, you know?

This.

No you're all just whiny bitches hopping the grimdark trend of faggotry.

>One bit of advice: never have a pantheon of evil deities. Basically no religion has ever had anything like that. Most don't even have an evil deity - the antagonist is usually something else, like a primordial dragon or a giant or whatever.
Angra Mainyu (the all consuming god of evil) and the daeva (gods to be rejected) of Zoroastrianism exist.

They didn't liked the destructive aspects of nature like droughts or diseases but they do honoured the more "benevolent" aspects of nature like rain or anything related with crops.

Doubleposting (I'm ) but I'll mention Zoroastrianism again. Beyond just Ahriman (chief and darkest evil) who opposes Ahura Mazda (chief and greatest good god [unless you're looking at the denomination where Spenta Mainyu is the greatest good, and Ahura Mazda is the omni-everything who contains all good and evil]), there are the six Amesha Spenta (Wahman, Ardawahisht, Amurdad, Hordad, Shahrewar, and Spendarmad) opposed by the six Arch-Daeva (Akoman, Indar, Zarik, Tauriz, Sawari, and Nanghait), and countless lesser Yazata (gods to be approved of) and Daeva (again, gods to be rejected) warring beneath them.

>The gods are this but human-like!
*yawn*
Also, quit using the term "Mary Sue" when you definitely don't know the meaning.

There is absolutely no way to have any sort of "real" gods in a TTRPG setting. D&D's influence over the hobby is so great that players will automatically assume that worshiping a god gives them powers.
>What do you mean worshiping the god of nature doesn't let me summon dire bears from nowhere?
>What do you mean I can't ascend to godhood once I reach 20th level?
Churches are best set up as factions like everything else, and the actual existence of gods left intentionally vague or not mentioned. It's simply impossible to balance.

If you want, anthropomorphize gods like the Greeks did. Their gods all had relatable human passions and flaws and did things, and importantly were not completely beyond human ability.

Or, make them really inactive and mysterious.

The Getae apparently had only one God, Zalmoxis, who they had a love/hate relationship with. They believed he stole their immortality, and would shoot arrows at the sky when he brought thunder to threaten him away.

I think the worst people had was an antagonistic relationship with their gods, not that they were evil.

You could make them actual characters beyond a basic formula. They don't need to be the GOOD GOD or the EVIL GOD but rather just some immortal being that reigns over a concept. Even in actual mythology Gods aren't so basic as to be "the good guy" or "the bad guy" they have their own motivations and politics.

Gods are incredibly powerful, but also dumb and incompetent.
Literally all of the world's problem is directly or indirectly related to a god fucking up his only job really hard.
Think greek mythology feat. Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller.

t. contrarians who think they know better than several millennia of storytelling and myth

The gods' motivations don't need to be clear to puny humans, but they should be internally consistent. Flaws contribute to motivations.

Flaws give characters depth and dimension. Flaws make character growth possible, and make drama and political movements more plausible. If there is to be a pantheon of gods, they'll be way more fun to interact with if they're at eachother's throats for relatable reasons. You can, of course, just have god of order vs the god of chaos, get ready for the infinite round fight when the bell rings. Having two diametrically opposed dieties be opposed just because they exist is a one-trick pony of interactions.

Even "good" gods without "flaws" have some character traits which make them interesting. The goddess of nature, for example, might be so fervent and fanatical about the natural way of things that she goes out of her way to destroy cities which encroach on her forests. Wouldn't exactly be the goddess of her domain if she had any chill about fuckery with it.

Or you could keep your puny, shitty 1-dimensional "gods" and bore everyone to tears with how unilaterally great or evil or meh they are. Everyone hates the black and red colored god because he's bad, and everyone loves this blue and white colored asshole because he's good. Even though there is no justification for their goodness or badness, we'll still love the good guy and hate the bad guy. That "good" god that everyone loves without him having fucking earned it? That's a "Mary Sue".

make gods weak

I like this post.

Zorastrianism straight up reads like a religion from a fantasy novel, with weird fetish-y stuff included just for good measure.

>Gods need to be like me and edgy
>NO, YOU'RE THE CONTRARIAN
Lol 12 year olds think they're hot shit now.

yeah, I gotta say, you're sort of doubling down on being a contrarian.

Not that guy, but simplifying the Amesha Spenta and the Daeva into gods is... I wouldn't consider that correct.

It sure does. Nothing new under the sun.

Make them NOT GIVE A FUUCK

But he wasn't the god of death, he was the god of the Underworld, wealth and whatnot. Also, he was basically this disgruntled older brother who wasn't quick enough to get good shit like the heavens or the ocean, so he had to settle for the least favorable dominion.

I like to model gods after ancient greek gods. They are extremely powerful, but not omnipotent, their knowledge is beyond mortal comprehension but limited, they are wise but act in the heat of the moment.

Have your gods have passions. Vices. Your god of war for example might really fucking hate some countries, so in a war he aids the other side, while some other god aids them.
Or your god really wants to fugg that hot tavern wench. He might go into all sorts of tricks to seduce her.

Have them be somewhat petty from time to time. That one mercenary who blasphemed against the Goddess of Beauty? Yeah she will fuck him up. She is not above that. Not by any means.

In other words have them be stupidly powerful, far beyond mortal reach, able to shape the reality around them in their own way, but also have them have vices. Look up the Greek Mythology. It's pretty much the best way to model a god with actual character imo. Also it breaks apart from the typical Christian thinking of the almighty, infallible being, and has more flavour and opens up questlines.

A lot of religious people like to claim that their religion is very special and not like the other religions. That doesn't mean it is. The Hindus did the exact opposite of the Aryans and demonized asuras and elevated devas. Asuras and daeva are gods by any other name.

Talking shit like this is how best friends get killed, user.

Once read a thought experiment by a crazy guy saying that the difference between Hinduism and Zoroastrianism, combined with the idea that cultures usually either have a myth about a good thing kept enclosed that was lost to invaders, or a hero that broke down walls to steal something valuable, implies that everyone is descended from different sides of an ancient conflict in some ridiculously advanced proto-civilization. Don't remember much about his reasoning or conclusions, though, which makes this post something of a waste of space.

Like this dude
>desires human souls
>has many powers like time manipulation
>prefers to screw around, granting wishes and making pacts
>clearly the bad guy but you can't help but find him funny

They're magic spirits that rule and personify the facets of reality, even if Ahura Mazda is the big poppa ruler of everything overgod. What else would they be considered but gods of varying stature?
Though I get that they are transcendent beings that are both an existence and a concept, it's still pretty much divinities.

Make them human when it comes to behavior, with rises, falls and betrayals in their history, ups and downs etc. Basically do what several people already said in this thread and make em like the greek pantheon.

Dionysus was also the god of madness and savagery.

Incidentally, Aphrodite was not always seen as married to Hephaestus. If you read the Iliad, she and Ares are the item, while Hephaestus is married to Charis. It's the Odyssey story that pairs them the most.

>How can I make gods that are fun or interesting without being complete mary sues
Give them interesting tidbits, like how vampires in D&D consider Pelor the god of death and destruction.

>interesting tidbits
>pangolin bitty tids
I see what you did there

Go to the DF wiki and use the list of spheres as a bigass table. Roll two. Generate a random combo of colors, animals, tools, symbols, etc. for the diety. Between it something should "click" and you get an interesting deity.

Shut up, queer. Nobody cares about your shit opinion. You're nothing but a trend-hopping faggot. Retards like you are exactly why The Magicians has focused so much on edgefaggotry instead of actual magic. Retards like you RUIN media, you don't help it.

I quite like the behavior of the Norse pantheon along with other germanic and celtic Pantheons as it follows the trends of the Greek Drama's depiction while simultaneously being much more down to earth in their behaviors and being much more directly reflective of the everyday life and challenges, they even constantly have to worry about their mortality. Ullr is pretty much nothing more than a Hunter but he's the GOD of hunting. Freya is a pretty women who misses her husband and she's the GODDESS of pretty women who miss their husbands. Loki is just a foreign guy and does weird shit, sometimes he's alright but you know lately he's been an asshole so he's the GOD of foreign assholes now.

Pretty much the only everyday story in the Greek mythos is the one about the craftsmen who married above his station getting cuckolded, proved it in court, had the bittersweet victory between a clean cut divorce in his favor and getting shamed in public for it, spending the next few years absolutely pissed before marrying a younger and more pleasant girl who isn't a bitch. Everything else is just overly proud Kings and heroes getting put back in their place by the Gods and pretty women getting raped and no one getting punished for it. How does farmer bob who damn well knows his place and is happily married relate to that?

Kill them

>56576407
>t. illiterate troll with no taste

Nobody is saying that characters have to be always tragically flawed all the time. That's just as boring and stupid as being without any fucking flaws. Flaws make characters with depth much easier and much more plausible, though. Flaws don't make something edgy. Trying too hard, having internally inconsistent angst, having overly dramatic backstories, that kind of stuff, and other things not listed here, make something edgy. If you can't see that, then you're a hipster fucboi with shit taste

>trend hopping faggot
Yes, the trend of compelling character development that has been going on for at least 4 millennia, surely it will die soon.

Literally the contrarian, shitposting fag in this thread, where the mode average of the posts agree that dynamic, internally consistent, flawed gods are more interesting than flawless ones.

This fuckin' guy.

Give them absolutely protected niches. In Dune, Paul Atreides has the greatest ability as a truthsayer ever- not only can he tell when someone is lying, which is something any truthsayer can do, and not only can he tell how much they're lying, which is something a skillful truthsayer can do, he can sometimes tell they're lying even when they think they're telling the truth. His prescience somehow synergizes with his truthsaying in such a way that he can draw absolute truths from the universe on rare occasion. His son bests him in every regard but that one.