What are some reasons why a deity would want/need worshipers other than them gaining power from worshipers?

Prayer and worship is the primary method of contacting deities. They are essentially long distance communication rituals.

Gods don't necessarily want worshipers, so much as they want business partners. Worshipers give them something they want through sacrifice, the gods give the worshiper something they want.

Prayer is basically stroking the ego of a god in an attempt to get their assistance without actually giving anything, or to at least reduce what they need to do. Its the divine equivalent of complimenting someone when you ask them to do something instead of just shoving money in their face until they agree.

They condescend to assist and protect humanity out of their boundless compassion.

Didn't mean to quote that but it's a fair response anyway.

They get so frustrated by how wrongly people do things that they come down to show people the correct way to do things and get worshiped as a result.
Basically a Lawful Neutral God.

To stoke the fires of jealousy in the other gods. Imagine the feeling of having more instagram followers than someone else multiplied tenfold.

I'm intrigued by this. Any more to it?

Monika's writing tip of the day: don't worry about the small, intricate details of your setting. They'll almost never come up and you're just making things harder on yourself. Instead just try to move the plot forward and create fun missions and challenges for your players. Your setting will grow organically and you can always elaborate on the finer details whenever they come up.

Doki Doki D&D Club when?

Yes actually. Big timeline.

At first they ignore the first sentient life (called the First, basically human), until they grow to a post-scarcity society.

Realizing they First could kill the gods (they aren’t inclined to, but the sheer possibility is enough) they try to take them out immedietely. At that point though the First are too strong and put up an equal fight.

The head God in its anger and hate creates an abyssal darkness from which eldritch demons spew forth. This forces the First and Gods to join forces to seal the darkness.

The Gods are left weakened, and the First blasted to the stone-age. The Gods later create dragons to try finishing off the job. This backfired in a few ways. Dragons take to using the First as slaves rather than exterminating, establishing dragon worshipping civilization, dragons and First get it on leading to lizardfolk, and the First end up as really good dragon slayers.

So the Gods then try to just destroy the world with all manner of natural disasters. This only succeeds in destroying dragons of the land, who along with some others, are shielded in a lost-world region far-far away by a sympathetic god.

The Gods then decide to just hide their time before they can reset creation properly, and create beastfolk and split the First into human and demihuman races as a means of hampering and dividing them.

Their current strategy is unleashing hordes of demons to cull sentient life from growing too powerful, and maintain the official religion to exert soft power control.

Dick waving contest with other deities

You could take the Pratchett approach and say that a god's power and ability to influence the world is proportional to the amount of people who believe in that god.

While there is a bit of truth to that, I have a healthy antipathy to messages advising not to think. Why not go all the way through and determine what the gods disposition means for the player experience?
No need to drop the current thought.

What is this a shiva for ants

>Why not go all the way through and determine what the gods disposition means for the player experience?
The question is: does it even matter? I don't mean it in a cynical way, I honestly mean if it matters. If it matters, if you've decided that either the gods will intervene in some way or that the players will have to meddle in godly affairs, go for it. If not you're wasting time better spent on expanding on things that will come up.

I like that a lot. Its quite a nice way to put gods into a setting

They think its cute.

Because deities are not merely powerful dudes, but personal manifestations of concepts. They aren't characters per se, with selfish wants and needs, but rather forces of nature that simply seek to perpetutate what they stand for and guide people towards that, to shape them in their image.
Worship is the acceptance - surrender toward, even - of what the deity stands for, and this therefore pleases them.

The god is looking for someone — perhaps a friend or lover who was with them when they ascended to divinity, but has not been seen since. The god doesn't care for being worshipped, but it's the easiest way to convince people to spread their name to faraway lands, in the hope that someone will recognise it.

Thank you. Sharing it I’m worried people will say it’s too JRPG gods are evil.

Also there are ranks to the divines. Angels are a slave race, but genuinely think they are there to help people.

Lesser Gods are just the ‘face’ of true gods, who are the ones that humans are such are worshipping.

The True Gods are this dharmic style almagamation, cannot comprehend their true form, style.

To do their jobs better. How is a god of rain supposed to know that his believers need rain unless they pray?

They want their doctrines followed.

Iomedae, Goddess of Justice honesty and righteousness, wants the sentient races to follow be righteous, honest and to pursue justice. She doesn't derive power from it but she wants people to follow her because she thinks it's best.

Asmodeus believes that the strong should rightfully govern the weak, who in turn owe their masters unwavering obedience. He loves negotiations and contracts, especially those that give one of the parties a distinct, hidden advantage over the other. He expects and appreciates flattery, but its never fooled by it, seeing it as a negotiation tactic, as well as a duty those in inferior positions owe their betters. He no doubt loves to see that happen to mortals as well as it's the cosmos proving him right. (Also when they die they end up as his servants in Hell so that helps too)

>Even if they are poor people though? Like I don’t think it even counts at that point.
To a god there's little difference between a pauper and a king.

Piggybacking/Adding to this: Some Deities actually would want to help people. If they were benevolent enough. Or hurt if they were Malevolent.

Boredom? That's how I imagine the Daedra of the Elder Scrolls series worked, for example. Though I'm definitely no lore fag/scholar.

Eternity just existing might have been good enough when it was all the quasi-sentients that are the gods knew. But once the freak accident of life and creation as we know it happened they got intrigued and addicted to participation. The old way of just existing in your sphere of existence where everything is your way seems dull in comparison.

Worship is actually a kind of a natural psychological compromise in interacting with the prime material when you're dealing with beings that are used to all reality being an extension of themselves.

gods don't want worshipers so much as worshipers want gods. Pitiful mortals beg for the aid of the great, and occasionally one of the more compassionate deities might deign to show a modicum of interest in such lowly affairs.

For most gods, it’s The exact same reason why real people want followers and celebrities want fans. For the darker, evil aligned gods, the same reason why people like trolling or shitposting

Possibly because deities, for one reason or another, can't harm each other, but mortals can. So if they were to ever wage war the only way to be victorious would be for their worshipers to kill the other deity.

In my setting, all gods are constantly trying to climb a hierarchy of power and get to the top where they gain total omnipotence (most of them can only percieve what their followers can or are limited to the "dormain" they control) along with a guarenteed surplus of followers. Thus, worshippers are required to grow in strength, and carry out many other duties such as converting others, spreading the word, etc, etc. Back in the old world, it was a massive shitfest since the numbers of Gods and Pantheons was massive, not to mention plenty of em were greedy little fuckers but to the modern times have been quite peaceful as their numbers have greatly decreased.
Should a God lose all its followers, they become mere spectres and are doomed to merely..watch as the other deities continue on their path to the top. These powerless deities merely do nothing at all and are merely waiting for a chance to jump back into action (Like the Norse gods who have recently gained a small numbers of worshippers in Iceland but they are still shadows of their former selves). The sitting at the throne of this hierarchy shapes the common Heaven, along with the forces that cone to his aid..and the ones that seek their fall.

They like it: .
They want an army to fuck someone else up: that idiot cthulhu-thing twisting reality around like he's not a guest here, fuck that guy.
They want to help: there, live by those commandments and you shall be happy.
They have a project in mind: I'm gonna build myself the most hugest citadel in all histories and carve my face in every room I can fit inside.

Vanity. Pride. Entitlement. There's a host of very mundane emotions that might lead someone to believe that they should be worshipped.

Because it is a comfort to have companions in hell

>To spread their message because its true or they think it is.
>To eat
>As warriors against a rival
>To demonstrate greatness in their name, as they cannot manifest physically.

You're really bad at this OP.

If you're going to have gods, they should at least have a modicum of personality. I agree giving them goals and humanizing them is idiotic, but giving gods personalities is well worth your time. Things like economics, branching linguistic and cultural families, and a concrete origin for everything in the world are unnecessary to varying degrees though.

Seems interesting.

A deity may want worshippers because they believe the path they suggest is true and brings about the correct type of people.

A deity might need worshippers it their origin was out of the collective mind of sentient beings, and reinforcing that makes the fake deity exist longer.

Why do mortals want gods?For that matter why do mortals want friends, lovers and family?

Same reasons.

They just sort of naturally like helping out those little human dudes.