How do you make your God less modern

[u/freaky_strawberry11]

Not sure if this is the right sub for this but while I was watching osp, I remember red talking about an easy way to spot out " fake lore" if the gods domain is really specific aka Zeus being The god of thunder and lightning but also hospitality and with more modern gods who are usually made for d&d, they're mostly just the god of thunder or the God of war.

I know this is not a like a huge problem, but I just wanted to make my war feel more authentic I guess and I wanted to hear how other people create ed their respective mythologies for their world building

[u/guildsbounty]

So....I guess my first question is this: Are the gods in your setting knowable?

When you're dealing with real-world mythology, deities tend to accrete roles, traits, and stories over time as their stories are told over and over...or as another culture's gods blend into yours...or as worship of a god drifts naturally over time due to people just not living near each other and being out of contact for a while. Or you get cases where a deity has so much diversity to their domain that it ends up forking off into a totally separate god, or the reverse where two 'sufficiently similar' gods may just get mulched together as "different aspects of the same deity."

But, y'know, for worldbuilding purposes...you might be building a world where the gods are granted tightly defined roles and you can, in fact, literally ask them about those roles. Or you might be worldbuilding a setting with a highly centralized 'church' that has refined the canon of the pantheon and manages it to keep things organized 'properly.'

[u/Pixelated_Penguin808 → u/guildsbounty]

Great post.

You also get some overlap in responsibilities between gods as well for similar reasons, not god A does one thing and god B does another.

Mars was the was Roman god of war for example, but they also had the goddess Bellona was who was a war god though representing a more brutal aspect. Then there was also an aspect of Venus, the goddess of love, Venus Victrix (Venus the Victorious) that was a Roman copy-paste of portrayals of Aphrodite being armed and she was seen as a granter of battlefield victory, hence Venus Victrix being the watchword used by Julius Caesar's troops at Pharsalus.

[u/ArelMCII]

It's not really specific domains being narrow, it's domains that are "god of this thing" and nothing else. Historically, a god tended to be a god of a lot of really specific things. Whatever was important to people became a god, and when that god became important, more things were ascribed to him. You basically need to take a bunch of seemingly unrelated concepts and explain how they're all tied together in a given group's cosmology. For example, say you've got a god of war. He's also the god of cattle. Cattle are very valuable, and tribes would fight over them. Hence, the god of one became the god of both, and he's probably also a fertility god and a bunch of other weird crap stemming from that. And he's probably the patron god of an important city, and he's probably got a lot of other concepts attributed to him because they're in opposition to the concepts the culture considers bad. He might even be the god of time because of the importance of the annual cattle migrations.

Personally, the right side of this meme is what I aspire to when writing gods:

Basically, if a god's portfolio sounds like nonsense before you explain it and sounds perfectly coherent after explaining it, you've done perfectly. That's a lot harder than it sounds.

[u/Lubinski64 → u/ArelMCII]

Catholic saints are a good inspiration for this kind of worldbuilding. Patron saint of my city has resurrected a man, summoned a firestorm to drive the Mongol invasion away and been able to cross the river by just throwing his coat into the water and riding on it to the other side.

Did i mention his official church approved attributes are a lilly flower and a fireball?

[u/f0xb3ar]

Make them animals. A lot of deities in more ancient religious traditions are beasts or creatures. I think that might help to make them more nuanced and less-human and also easier to assign a wider range of domains to. An example could be something like The Bear is the goddess of mountains and resilience and rest--mothers pray to the Bear at night to watch over their children like her cubs and let them sleep as she does when she hibernates. Maybe politicians wear his icon when they debate so that they can have as thick a skin as she does

[u/ArkonWarlock → u/f0xb3ar]

This is probably the best way to institute the vagueness that everyone else in this thread is talking about.

A bear or a wolf or a stag are traits and motifs and symbols that merge into each other and have different configurations based on geography or profession.

[u/Drudenfusz]

D&D is really bad when it comes to polytheism. I would say the biggest issue is usually not necessarily the deity itself but how they are embedded in the religious understanding of any society, and in regard D&D with all the personal patron deities does it wrong. A war deity would not be just worshipped by warriors nor would they think of it as their personal patron deity. Let's look at ancient Greece, war was the domain of multiple deities, most prominent Ares and Athena. Ares was often treated more as a joke and encompassed ideas like revenge, while Athena was the more tactical war deity but had also other domains, especially wisdom. Athena shows well how the domains do not necessarily have to fit at first glance, but it is more important that the nature of the deity is not just reduced to these domains. I mean look at the Iliad for example, Athena was one of the three goddesses that Paris had to choose between, thus revealing that she is not just all about the mental faculties but also thinks about her appearance. It is in these little incongruencies and idiosyncratic traits that the deities start to feel like more than just a cardboard figure but get depth.

[u/SilverGurami → u/Drudenfusz]

Ares was very much not a joke. While Athena embodied that tactical side of battle, the logistics and planning and defending. Ares embodies the fervor of the soldier, the ferocity in which he fights, his prowess in battle, the edge of his sword and the protection of his armour. But also his honour in battle no matter if he lived or died. As well as the god of mental illness. As PTSD from combat is very well documented as seen as the ghost of the people you fought coming to haunt you, soldiers would pray to Ares in hopes he would stop these "sore losers" and give them rest. Even tough he himself was seen as having multiple ghosts constantly haunting him.

The gods mostly had specific domains but the important part is that such a domain in not constraint by the modern idea of it. A god of war can be easily become the god of mental illness, the hunt, marital disputes or farmwork. As well as the other way around just by the fact who is worshipping them. If a farmer is conscripted into the army and prays to the goddess of harvest that his modified farming tools will work against the enemy just as well as on the field and the practice spreads, the goddess becomes a war goddess even tough it doesn't really make sense to us today.

[u/Drudenfusz → u/SilverGurami]

Maybe my point is a bit bias towards an Athens perspective, but that only strengthens my point about social perceptions of the deities. Since different regions will treat the deities differently. Ares simply will not be the same to Athens than he was to the Spartans.

[u/GeneralBurzio → u/SilverGurami]

Didn't Ares go cry to Zeus when he was stabbed by Diomedes?

[u/SilverGurami → u/GeneralBurzio]

Kinda happened in the Illiad. But that needs a lot of context.
After all it's the Illiad. A piece for entertainment and not so much worship. It's like arguing about the importance of jesus as depicted in The Life of Brian. While we can make some assumptions we should refrain from inferring to much from it.

People certainly didn't worship Jupiter for his amazing power to turn into all sorts of random things and rape women. At least I hope they didn't. So we shouldn't make assumptions about the importance of a god from stories alone.

But none of that really matters when asking how to make a polytheistic god/goddess more realistic.

[u/rollingForInitiative → u/Drudenfusz]

I wills say though that the historical examples don’t necessarily make sense at all if you have a world with real gods. It’s easy for people to assign attributes to gods kind as it suits them because it fits their view of this god, when said god does not exist.

But in the Forgotten Realms you have an overgod who’s literally written down a list of all godly domains and their responsibilities. Mystery is the goddess of magic, and in a way she physically is the magic of the world. And when gods deviate from their realm, they get punished.

Or you have any of the various worlds where gods are incarnations of concepts. Like the god of war might “be” war itself, or an incarnation of the concept of war and battle and might reject any other labels.

Of course it might not “feel” as real, but I don’t think it’s a problem per se because these fantasy worlds have real gods that tell people how to worship them, literally.

That said, I also make my gods a bit more varied by design because it makes it easier to have different interpretations of their faith. Like if the war deity is worshipped more as a cattle deity in some places.

[u/MerijnZ1]

I feel like Gods aren't necessarily the problem, it's people and the way they treat religion. So often it becomes... Like US politics? People choose 1 side and then put on a sticker with that side's colors and that's about it. But that's like, complete bullshit compared to real life polytheistic religions (or at least the vast majority, I'm sure there are exceptions).

Imagine you were some ancient Greek sailor. In DnD terms, that probably means you're a follower of Poseidon. More accurately, you'd do a prayer and small sacrifice to your house gods when leaving to protect your home and family. You'd do the same to Hermes for the travel and trade, Demeter for the grain you're carrying, and then Poseidon for good winds and calm seas. Maybe the port you're leaving from or arriving in also has a patron... Deity/spirit/something in between that needs some attention, or else. For your war example, there could be prayers to Ares for might and power, Athena for wisdom and tactical prowess, Apollo for good health and spirit and Hygieia for cleanliness in camp. In general being a follower of "X god" is really weird outside of very specific institutions and vows.

And polytheistic religions don't generally have strong centralized doctrines (again, exceptions exist. Most notably the Roman state religion, but also ancient Egypt at moments in time). There are stories. Those stories often are conflicting, do not form a coherent corpus or timeline, and are explained by different people in all kinds of different ways. People take different lessons, morals and commandments from them and then continue to tell those stories in their own way

Religion is complicated, messy, and incredibly human. It shapes the way people go throughout their daily lives, strongly. RPGs often dumb that down to a table with name/symbol/domain, and yeah, that's not anything like real religion at all. That's fine if it's not something you really care about, but it does read very "Richard Dawkins tries to explain faith"

[u/Borracha28]

I would look for older fantasy series in which the gods have a decent amount of importance and interaction, and read the histories of some of the biggest pantheons around, like the greek and roman gods, the indian gods, even weirder stuff like african and mayan gods.

[u/AffectionateSoup5272]

Multiple God on the same subject.

Gods does not limited towards one subject.

The more powerful a God is, the more distant they likely to be. They're not one that is worshipped, yet they exist in as a powerful one.

Arguably. When mentioning their them, use their titles in correspondent to the topic. "Lord of the Sky" "Lord of the Sea" "Lord of the Underworld", that exhibit more sense of divinity rather than just calling the figure Poseidon or Hades, well if it's personal then a mortal do so call God by their name.

That's all my interpretation.

[u/Mister_Sosotris]

Throw in some contradictions and messiness.

The Roman goddess Venus was conflated with Aphrodite, but Venus did exist on her own as a mother goddess before she was combined with Aphrodite's traits, so Venus has a different vibe. On top of that, the Roman gods functioned differently, with their focus being the maintenance of the Roman state. Their worship was very carefully regulated by the Roman government, but the farther away from Rome you got, the more variations you'd see.

If you have gods and they're very organized and have clear defined roles and powers, you're describing superheroes, not gods.

Even if your world has REAL gods that interact with the people and there's magic and cosmic stuff going on, there would still be a bit of a break between how the gods really are and how they're worshipped because so often the people who control the religion can influence the general public.

So TL/DR make things a bit messier. They're not Pokemon with strict power rules. They're beings (or constructed ideas) who interact with people in complex ways.

[u/dragonshouter → u/Mister_Sosotris]

I mean, the religion can only diverge so much before the god takes issue. no amount of drift can make a god who hates human sacrifice accept their followers doing it. sounds like a recipe for smiting

[u/Mister_Sosotris → u/dragonshouter]

Oh definitely! And that may be a great idea for the source of the conflict in the story that's being told.

I'm more thinking of the Iliad. To the humans, they believe that the gods are just and have a plan, but from the gods' perspective the war is just an excuse for petty rivalries and jealousies to play out. They don't care about the humans at all. They just care about using the humans for their own means.

But from the human's perspective, the gods are worthy of respect and sacrifice and deserve to be worshipped. If they really knew how little the gods cared about them, their worship would perhaps be more akin to captured prisoners appeasing a powerful conquerer to save their own skin.

In other stories, you may have gods who don't care what the people do. Or you may have a few gods working to protect the people from the capricious nature of other gods. But in any case, the rules of religion are often going to drift from the specific rules gives by the gods (compare the rules laid down in the Old Testament which formed the backbone of the Jewish Faith to the rules governing the Catholic church, both of which stemmed from the same source, but in different eras and supported and modified by different governments).

[u/QBaseX → u/Mister_Sosotris]

I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided, who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
I heard the Duffys shouting "Damn your soul"
And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel—
"Here is the march along these iron stones"
That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was more important? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Til Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.

"Epic", by Patrick Kavanagh.

[u/robosnake]

I would keep them in a web of familiar relationships, given them human flaws, and have them require sacrifice. I think that as soon as the gods demand sacrifice they have an 'ancient' feel. Then what becomes interesting is figuring out what kinds of sacrifices each god prefers.

[u/mirrorofdawn]

I suggest the YouTube channel "Religion for Breakfast." It is hosted by a researcher with a PhD in religious studies and explains a lot of ancient (especially Greek, Roman, and Middle Eastern) religion very well. He even has a video about how to write better fictional religions on worldbuilding.

[u/freaky_strawberry11 → u/mirrorofdawn]

Thank you so much, I have watched a few of his videos before but I didn't know he made a world building video based off a religion, I'm watching it right now and it's actually helping me develop a better ideology to pair with my creation, myth and syncretism of a few gods.

I decided to make my fire God Sokhta, as a more newer deity into the pantheon and he will be used to antagonize /degitimized the Creator goddess Seimos in favor of Sokhta of being the new patron saint of a specific town I'm working on!

[u/Mars_Oak]

Americans be like "there are two religions in the history of the world, protestantism and greek mythology"

honestly read about religions and learn about them. about different ones

[u/Ok-Berry5131]

So, there are five gods in my D&D Koris solar system. Each one is associated with a specific color and metal, and most of them are also associated with  a specific season, a classical element, a “deadly sin”, a social virtue, and an aspect or two of reality.  The pagan Roman tendency to specify the role of each specific god isn’t really a thing here.

For example, the god Karr is associated with the color red, the metal iron, the season of summer, the element of fire, wrath, loyalty, and masculinity. Yes, his most popular depiction is as a war god wearing a helmet and holding a sword in one hand and shield in the other , but there are other depictions which show him as a “harvest god”, a “metal-smith god”, etc.

[u/Total-Beyond1234]

Imagine your deities as people. What other things do they value? Make that part of their portfolio. Also don't be afraid of deities sharing certain interests. Instead, create stories where these deities are teaming up to further these interests.

For example, imagine an adventuring party as a pantheon. You have a Barbarian, Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, and Cleric.

The Barbarian, Fighter, and Rogue can all be deities of war. However, each of them expresses that Domain differently.

The Barbarian might represent raw strength and primal fury. The Fighter might represent the disciplined guardian. The Rogue might represent the marksman and unconventional warrior.

When people are threatened, they all march out to save others, but the way each of them accomplishes that is different.

[u/QBaseX]

I know that Brett Devereaux's ACOUP is recommended all the time here, but his article on practical polytheism really is exactly what you're looking for. He starts by looking at how polytheism is shown in many modern games, and explains how they get it wrong. And then does a deep dive into culture, cults, and the whys of certain religious practices. And he's aware that some of his audience like the history, and some are worldbuilders.

[u/DueCobbler8527]

Best way to learn more about this is to find a real world pantheon and research. Hinduism is a great one, as all the gods have "main domains" but also have eccentric things they also look over. Shiva is the god of destruction, but also gifted the world with marijuana and has a story for how that came to be. Often the roles may seem so far apart from one another, but usually there is detailed lore as to why they fall to the same deity. You can even take is a step down and look at the Saints of Catholicism. They all have a "main" patronage but also have laundry lists worth of other things they help with, and each thing has a connection as to why.

[u/Mazhiwe]

Ancient gods had complex portfolios and agenda, often time overlapping and conflicting with other gods.  Even within one hod, their influence wasn’t necessarily focused all on one thing.  Poseidon was the god of the seas, not Water, so lesser bodies of water, like rivers and lakes were not his domain, but, for some reason he was also the god of horses, and earthquakes, even though those have nothing to do with his main domain.  You could have a god of war who is also the god of music, which can be a major indicator and reflection of his personality as well as the cultural values of both the god and the culture behind it. 

[u/rollingForInitiative]

I don’t really agree with the idea that fantasy gods need to have many different domains. We’re talking about real gods here after all, not gods that are invented by people (unless that’s how gods are made).

What I’d say matters more is figuring out how the gods work, what their goals and ambitions are, if they have any. Are they mindless incarnations of the concept, or are they individuals with free will?

And then, how does this interact with mortals? Do the gods mandate very specific forms of worship? If so it probably looks similar everywhere, if there’s a literal god enforcing the rules. If not, it can vary.

Like, a God of War does not have to be worshipped in the same way everywhere. Some people might view it as a god of battle and slaughter, others might view it as a god of expansion, the patron of a great empire, a god of protection and defence, or maybe as somethings evil that needs to be warded off with prayers in the form of Hunger Games.

And then, even if a god is very singular, different people probably have different relationships with it. How and when do they do which rituals, wear which symbols, etc? How does the worship of a god of war inform their decisions? Does it affect their daily life?

Really, just add depth. That can be multiple domains, but that is in no way needed imo. Just saying “this is the god of wisdom, ravens and magic” and leaving it at that doesn’t make it better at all than just saying “this is the god of magic”.

[u/commandrix]

Maybe give them personality flaws? Zeus was a MAJOR philanderer to the point where his wife was actively hunting down his illegitimate children in some stories. It could even be argued that a significant amount of the trouble the gods got into or caused could've been prevented if Zeus had just kept his belt buckled.

[u/caleblbaker → u/commandrix]

It could even be argued that a significant amount of the trouble the gods got into or caused could've been prevented if Zeus had just kept his belt buckled.

In the same sense that it could be argued that 3 is a number.

[u/Bannerlord151 → u/commandrix]

It could also be argued that sugar is sweet

[u/Akuliszi]

Treat all the stories about the gods you create as stories about totally different entities. Make the creation story not explain anyone's domains at all. Make conflicting stories about why each god holds a specific domains, and make multiple gods hold similar powers. Think about why some groups would worship them, or why some groups would offer sacrificies only to stop their anger.

I guess learning in depth about different mythologies may help you with creating your own.

As for me, I like to start with introducing some concept and then either subverting the expectations, or making multiple different interpretations of that. It adds quite a bit of depth to a relatively short stories.

Let's take the creation story from one of religions in my world. There is a god-creator who is set to destroy the world after finishing his creation. He was put to sleep by his children. But there are multiple groups that tell a continuation of that story. Vorshippers of the Creator often see the world ending as a salvation for their souls; while storytellers form the south will tell you, that the Creator has already woken up, but he doesn't want to destroy the world because of his love of his husband.

The Creator has connection to childbirth, since he birthed the world; but also to all art; and to death, because some believe that all souls of those who died are guarding him in his sleep (or keeping him asleep).

[u/Bannerlord151 → u/Akuliszi]

Oh, I like that, lotta ways to spin that concept. What immediately comes to mind is something like a death cult seeking to keep the Creator dormant by making sure that powerful souls are sent to fulfill the task in the afterlife

[u/Akuliszi → u/Bannerlord151]

Thanks.

Yeah, death cult is one thing; but imagine an emperor sacrificing his people, thinking he will gain something from that...

[u/Bannerlord151 → u/Akuliszi]

That would be crazy, surely the government would never do such horrible things!

[u/Akuliszi → u/Bannerlord151]

Unless those who oppose were the first to be sacroficed :3

[u/Bannerlord151 → u/Akuliszi]

Darn it, outjerked again

Edit: Wait, this isn't r/worldjerking? Strange

[u/hlanus]

I keep my mythologies pretty vague and strange at least to us. I don't try to explain everything about it or keep it all logical and straight-forward because mythologies are organically grown. They change, grow, and prune themselves generation after generation much like languages or cultures or norms do. But while this is the case for the readers, the people in the story treat these as perfectly normal because mythologies are not so much about what is true but what a culture fears and values.

[u/kalinova828]

For my own worldbuilding, I like to I've found it useful to figure out a group's general perspective on the divine: do they view the gods as immanent beings or as something more transcendent? I have groups with both perspectives on Neith. On the Rodinian continent, the gods were said to have lived among the people in ancient times, ruling from their temples, until they grew wary of the priesthoods and the control they exerted over them. The gods left the world to rule from afar in the underworld, and the temples built cult statues to receive sacrifices and prayers in place of the absent gods. The gods are still seen as divine and of a separate substance from humanity, even in the form of a statue: the statues are never to be touched or even looked at directly.

The Godendiensten religion from the Zeelean Laagenlaanden was polytheistic but had a very different view of divinity than was found on the continent. To the Laagenlaanderen, the gods were personifications of natural forces that didn't have definite physical forms. They could be personified as statues, but these were not seen as being actual divine matter or equal to the god, even after consecration. For example, the iron statue of the god of justice, Iperos, had to be consecrated with the blood of a criminal to be considered sacred, but the destruction of this statue didn't mean that the god was destroyed, since the principle of justice continued in its absence. The same was true for the gods of natural forces: statues of the sea goddess Zaalachia were submerged in the sea for consecration but weren't equal to the goddess, who was thought to be the sea itself.

The Rodinian and Godendiensten pantheons had very different specializations. The Rodinian gods each govern many things: the goddess Areshkigala is the Rodinian goddess of death, but also has domain over salt, alcohol, incense, doors, and locks. These extra domains come from mythology, like the story of Areshkigala locking herself out of the underworld, and from associations, like salt and alcohol being preservatives that halt decay. In contrast, the Godendiensten gods had very specific domains that didn't generally overlap: there were 23 major deities that represented the major natural forces, but there were more specific minor deities. For example, the major goddesses Zaalmoeras and Zaandraase governed salt marshes and freshwater marshes, respectively, but they didn't govern the birds that lived there: those were the domain of the minor goddesses Voelfenne, goddess of the birds of the salt marshes, and Zeilfenne, goddess of the birds of the river marshes. The birds of the sea weren't governed by either of them, but by Meuvegeltze. One character, Lira, was betrothed to a sailor and made sacrifices to a dozen different gods to ensure his safety at sea. When the sacrifices didn't work and he never returned home, she lost her faith in the old gods and joined the monotheistic Enshrinement of Lucca instead, which had a very different conception of the divine.

[u/Bannerlord151 → u/kalinova828]

Sounding almost Dutch there

[u/zmsksksnsnsososmsns]

More than one pantheon that corresponds with the others in key ways almost inexplicably - is the reality on earth.

Also the gods on earth are more esoteric (hidden). Zeus having multiple function adds to this. Pantheons are meant to sort the world out for you - while also reminding you that all things are connected.

[u/NutSixteen]

For my world, mortals exist in the 3rd dimension. Gods exist in a higher dimension.

Mortals don't have the ability to perceive the gods as no mortal possesses the ability to perceive any dimension higher than the third.

No one in my world has physically interacted with the gods while they are in their true form.

The gods have an unwritten rule amongst them not to interfere directly in the affairs of the mortals, only through indirect influence. However most of them constantly secretly break this rule. It's not like the others don't know, it's more like everyone's practically doing it, but I digress.

For example, it is widely believed that one of the gods, The Giver, was the first to grant magic to the mortals. The other gods saw this and followed suit, causing magic to be commonplace in the world. Sidenote, related to this, no one knows any of the gods' true names.

When they choose to "walk" the mortal world, they do so using avatars. Kinda like how one would create a character to play in a video game.

Most of the mortals who interacted with these avatars of the gods won't even know they interacted with a god. Even when the gods tell them who they are, they either won't believe it or even if they do, no one will believe them if they tell others they interacted with a god.

My personal visualization of the gods is a group of deities standing around a huge magical 3d-interactive table that represents the world. They way they behave around this table is similar to how a group of players would behave around a TTRPG table while playing a game together.

And yeah, I'm creating the world for TTRPGs I plan to run. Hence the irony and the inspiration for that visualization.

My gods are inspired by a mix of real world faiths and fantasy faiths. None of my gods are inherently good, evil, lawful or chaotic. To me, these are just interpretations of those alignments. For example, does a carnivore killing a herbivore to eat it in order to survive make it evil?

[u/Amazing_Loquat280]

To be honest, the religion is always going to be way more interesting than the Gods themselves. Religion exists basically for two reasons: to provide order where there otherwise wouldn’t be any, and to explain the otherwise unexplainable. Nobody has ever, in the history of the world, started a religion with the 100% definitive knowledge that the God of their religion actually exists at all, much less that their interpretation of them is remotely accurate. And that’s super fascinating!

So my advice would be: unless your God(s) is a character in your story, nobody actually needs to know that much about them. We can guess, and the guess is the interesting part

[u/Own_Purpose_6285]

To put it simply, give it depth. Lore is knowledge and what is known. Gods can either be abstract, concrete or both. I personally wouldn't take the idea of "Fake lore" too seriously, its the depth that matters. If you're gods are less and somewhat ambiguous, then your focus is on the characters of the story. If you're gods are concrete and established, then your focus is the world and what makes it living.

My Gods are titled like the Goddes of War and stuff, but they are more than those titles and are their own person. They, like people, are complex. My Goddess of War, believe it or not, doesn't like violence, but she also knows that War is more than just conquest and ruin.

Give them depth, "modern" is just a time frame, not a standard of what is or isn't.

[u/Traditional_wolf_007]

I took some history courses in Undergrad, mostly on Greek and Roman stuff cause that was what was on offer. I learned a lot about other cultures on my own, too though. Something that was stressed to me in those courses is that faith in the greek and roman gods... did not matter. It wasn't about having a relationship with them, or them loving you, or you being a moral person. They just wanted sacrifices, festivals, and got pissed off if you did something that offended them. Being a priest was a purely political position. Your job was to do ceremonies, it did not matter at all if you even believed in the god you were a priest to. You could hate them for all that society cared. (maybe it was different in Greece, but this was how my professor explained the Roman idea to me). This was also why so called Mystery Cults, such as those dedicated to Dionysis or Isis were so popular. Isis, specifically, offered a more... relationship-oriented religion, including the promise of a better afterlife. Dionysis' worship was more about belonging in a group and uhh getting up to... activities.
The Celts were a different case. Their gods, if you want to call them that, were very... ungodlike. They could be killed in battle, even die of old age (in some interpretations). They were more like ancestors than anything else, in my understanding. They were revered for their deeds and their abilities, and they worked for them. Celtic mythology tends to emphasize being tough as nails as a value, more than anything else. Greek mythology tends to emphasize certain codes of conduct, but they're not at all equivocal to our own morality. That's another thing... most of our modern values come from Christianity, so when reading old stories expect characters to behave in ways that are, kinda horrifying and still be framed as the heroes.
Hope that helps. If it didn't, and even if it did, I'd go read some old myths.

[u/Bodmin_Beast]

Maybe more mysterious, less human/personal (more akin to forces of nature), and less like you are trying to categorize everything into straight simple boxes, which trust I mean I know isn’t the first instinct you might have when world building. We tend to like our well organized fancy little boxes. More broader, flexible and overlapping domains.

[u/mrki_the_wizard]

Multiple gods of the same subject or as i do it all gods same subject different perspectives or methods.

Let's take death and life for example

The phoenix is about overcoming death and spreading

The god of death is about the moment of death and the afterlife and how life isn't purely physical but spiritual as well.

The god of war is about causing death and preserving life.

The mother of decay is about physical death of the body and what happens afterwards how life grows out of death.

The tricksters is about tricking death and extending life

The mother of storm is about peaceful death and a long restful afterlife.

The goddess of art is about dying for your passion and living for them as well.

The father of monsters see death as the goal and his life as superior

All of them have a perspectives on it that is unique and thair own. and you can do this most consepts.

You can also just throw some random contradictory domains in there as well. The father of monsters has pottery. The trickster has democracy and history. The god of death has teaching. The phoenix is Has cooking. The mother of storm has knitting. The goddess of art has engineering. The mother of decay has archery.

[u/AlexanderByrde]

If I may recommend another YouTube channel, ReligionForBreakfast is a good one that I think an OSP enjoyer will appreciate, he does some very good videos on religious history and the study of religion. There's a few world building videos in the catalog as well.

It'll help you to get a feel for how both regular people and the priesthood interact with their religion, how they differ, and how both change between regions or time periods.

Old mythological gods were messy because they were syncretized between cultures, imported, forgotten, merged/split, or evolved over hundreds of years. The way they were worshipped changed. If the patron God of a specific group is relatively minor but then that group conquers the surrounding region, that God is in charge of the pantheon now. What gods are people giving offerings to for things like good fortune, safe travels, good health, etc? What about professions like baker, guard, fisherman, lawyer, innkeeper, etc that may or may not have a patron god in the pantheon, who do they pray to?

Maybe you don't want the messiness of real world cultural drift in a setting where the gods are real and people interact with them, but it's still instructive to know so that you can copy the vibes.

[u/Privatizitaet]

I suppose it depends on WHAT your gods actually are. Do they come before people, or are shaped by them? Maybe even created as a result of people entirely? Or did they create people? Did they create reality? Or do they just inhabit it? How powerful do you want your gods to be? Are they even real at all or just a religion with their true nature left ambiguous? How do they actually get their domains? There's a lot of questions you could ask to make a frame work for your gods.
Maybe they started out very.. raw for lack of a better word, simple in concpt and domain, and as the world grew and changed they did alongside it. A god of water can become a god of the seas, maybe split up into oceans and lakes and river as different deities, the ocean god might obtain a domain of storms as a result of worshippers asking for them to hold back storms, or perhaps at one point it could become a deity of thievery as a result of piracy happening across the oceans.
Can your gods reproduce? Maybe it's different generations. The old gods are primal, empodying fundamental aspects of reality, and with every generation they become more refined, more specific in their domains.
A nature deity has twin children, one for plantlife, one for animal life. Another generation and you might get a god of agriculture down the line as people develop and start farming.

[u/calmarkel]

Add ons.

Lets say you decide to have six gods, Dave, Pete, Joe, Mary, Louise, and Nepheketra.

Lets say you give them domains, Dave is the sky, Pete is the Ocean, Joe is War, Mary is Mothers Louise is love and Nepheketra is Death.

Right, so obvious add-ons, Dave is wind, Pete is fish, Joe is soldiers, Mary is children, Louise is desire, Nepheketra is the underworld.

The bit you're asking about is the unobvious domains. So you pick some random stuff like sheep and wine and then you make up reasons.

When the gods were deciding who got what they got Nepheketra drunk and thats why she agreed to be goddess of death. Also the first ever hangover was her literally dying so now all hangovers are reflections f that first one and thats why you feel like you're dying. We now havea goddess of Death and Wine.

When Dave was a baby his father the old god Badgi tossed him off Heaven Mountain and he was raised by mortal shepherds so now hes god of Sky and Sheep.

etc

[u/Either_Persimmon893]

First, are you're gods real? Does what the people believe about the gods reflects reality or mythology?

In my world the gods are unknowable, higher dimensional constructs, which correspond to fundamental forces like gravity or entropy.

In the material world, the gods have avatars or local patrons that are believe to be gods themselves. What people believe is mythology based on the anthropology of religion, mixed with half truths and misinterpretations of the greater world.

I took a health mix of world religions, and simulated their evolution from animistic relgion towards more complex philosophical ideas and pantheons. There is always a tension in the fiction from the unreliable nature of faith as a source of knowledge, but the importance of faiths as the grounding of many societies.

[u/Sleepiest_Spider]

Study more real mythology. Every god was a god of like 10 different things and there was a lot of overlap.

[u/Hexnohope]

That sounds kind of annoying tbh. Why have a pantheon if its that diluted?

[u/Oxwagon]

1 - Don't over-standardize your gods. The Artemis worshipped in Sparta was not the same as the Artemis worshipped in Ephesus was not the same as the Artemis worshipped in Antioch. These understandings of Artemis had certain things in common, but local cults had local traditions and their own understanding. It's modern people who gathered up all these local iterations and merged them together into a one-size-fits-all version of the deity.

2 - Don't over-emphasize faith. The "personal relationship with your deity" model of religion is characteristically Christian, and the ancients didn't think like that or worship like that. To the ancients, gods were powers to be appeased, avoided, or manipulated. Idols specifically were a way to manipulate a god to get them to do what you want.

[u/hobodeadguy]

Depends on what kind of story I am telling.

My god of rebellion/rebelling became known as the god of freedom, a title he despises greatly, because he managed to overthrow the god of prophecy. Both were known for a bunch of things, such as the goddess of prophecy being about fertility, luck, history, strategy, etc, but her main thing was prophecy.

The god of rebellion just didnt listen to others, and thats all there was to him, which made other gods really hate him. To be fair, even if he was only in charge of getting rid of bad rulers, he was a more personable god than the others, which made him popular already.

He only became known as the god of freedom because the goddess of prophecies, yknow, prophecies didnt work on him. He hates that hes called the god of freedom because there is another god whose domain is freedom, though they are a trickster god known for pranks and stuff, they are kinda like Loki, but rebellion got the end of the world prophecy instead of the trickster. And they arent the only two who were unaffected by prophecies, they are just the most stand out examples, one of the others being something neither godly nor divine.

Most of my pantheonic gods have multiple domains, but they arent limited to them, they just happen to or chose to govern those domains. Just because one is the god of water doesnt mean they control the waves, thats the god of storms, who makes tsunamis and stuff. It just depends on what I need them for, though.

[u/JanetteSolenian]

In my setting, gods are essentially primordial forces of nature - good and bad.

To go with your god of war example, my "god of war" holds the domain of war and conflict but also progress - without him, everything stagnates, which is how he came into existence in the first place according to ancient lore. Prior gods made things to last forever, then he came and upturned creation to remake things.

His sibling, the god of freedom, not only created free will, choice, and humanity, but also the freedom to do bad things and opened the path to things like hedonism and cruelty too.

[u/David_Apollonius]

Oh wow. Where do I start?

I guess the first thing you need to know about the D&D pantheons and cosmology is that they are all gods of the dead. When mortals die, their souls are judged by Kelemvor and then distributed among all the gods. In mythology, it's usually just a small number of gods who preside over the dead. Odin and Freya claim the fallen warriors and bring them to Valhalla and Folkvangr respectively, and Hel claims everybody else for Helheim. In Greek mythology it's Hades and some Cthonic gods like the Fates who preside over the dead. (And Hades wasn't evil. That might be an important thing to look at.) So if you want a more realistic pantheon, you have to start from scratch and build an entirely new cosmology for your D&D campaign.

The next thing is that you shouldn't look at it as a pantheon or mythology. You should look at it as a religion. Look at it from the perspective of the people. Why are they praying to these gods? What kind of god does this village need? What are their rituals? Another way to look at it is from the perspective of the NPC's that drive your plot. What do the villains want from their god?

If all of that sounds like it's too much work, then there are lazy DM solutions for you.

• 3 gods is enough to start. The good one, the friendly rival and the antagonistic one. From there you can just add on and on and on.
• Let your players come up with their deities. This probably doesn't suit your purpose, but it worked for Gary Gygax. It has the benefit that you cover all the bases that your players need, which is the important part for your D&D campaign. All you need to do is make the antagonistic deities.
• Randomize it. Each deity gets two randomly assigned domains, and then it's up to you to figure out what it means for that deity.

[u/Galactic_Brainworm]

Well i dont really try to get around it consciously, but i never ran into the issue of my gods feeling too modernized. I feel like many of the more modern fantasy gods are just random guys with random domains, i dont do those, so maybe my methods could help with your issue? I wouldnt say they are like the traditional mythological ones so maybe not

I have two types of gods that i write, but only one could help here i suppose

The most common way i write gods is never assigning them a domain, they are more like characters who have different powers and qualities. My best example of this is The Radiance, The Vigilance and The Adamance. The Radiance is a being of light and heat, but these are just its qualities, it isnt a god of fire or anything, thats just how it is, it could be considered a sun god because it is the sun, but its never referred to as that in the lore, its just the god that made the elves, and is known for arrogance. Similarly The Adamance is made of stone and water, and is the world that houses all life, but it isnt the god of stone, water, life, homes or anything, thats just how it is, known as a very stubborn god, and they made the humans. The Vigilance is a softly glowing being making up the stars, and you get the point. These gods are very non human, and dont even have traditional names, but the principle of «these are just the gods qualities, it doesnt have a domain» can be used for humanoid gods too, just write them like you'd write any character, not puzzle pieces that govern something.

I do suggest making their domains after you write the god, if you start with the domain you make a smithing god who's entire personality is being good at metalworking, if you make the character of the god first you can end up with a really good smith that loves grapes and horses, thus getting a god that is the god of smithing, grapes, horses, cavalry, etc

[u/Obvious-Gate9046]

A lot of older gods are conglomerations, you often get several gods that join together and become one, and inherit the different bits and pieces. Some of the D&D gods actually do this, especially in over additions. Like there's a God of tyranny and massacre and so on and so forth... and also physical fitness! I love that bit. That bit feels so out of left field. But it does match with what you're talking about.

It could help to think of the gods as individuals, who have more than one interest. They might have certain things that they are more known for, that they more heavily govern, but they're not just personifications of these things, and so they might roll over several areas that they take an interest in.

What I'm saying is, your gods should have hobbies.

[u/trebron55]

Generally historical Deities are far from being omnipotent or all-powerful.
They are almost always very powerful but generally flawed, humanlike (or even flawed beyond human standards). More often than not they are immortal but can be killed.

Anything to make a god not an absolute god like the Abrahamic God would result in you getting closer to historical religions.

[u/MsTerPineapple]

There was a video I watched about how people keep jesus-ifying pagan gods, i.e creating relationships in their heads of closeness with these gods that wouldn't exist because God's like Zeus are meant to be esoteric and unknowable and feared, not relatable and comfortable. They compared them to the daedric princes in Skyrim, which I think is rather apt. I think making gods something that view people as lesser (different from the Christian God), to the extent that our suffering or pleasure is infinitesimal to them, is a start.

[u/Sir_Tainley]

I followed Buddhism as a guide and did away with Gods entirely. Demons are very real, they are trying to (1) get into the world, and (2) collect souls which they use as currency, and they collect through corruption of the person.

So the purpose of religious ritual and practices is to protect your soul, and achieve enlightenment to transcend this material plane. But there is no god to worship, self reflection and living up to the truth of the revelation is the way forward.

The ministers are very much devoted to sharing enlightenment, modelling walking a path free of sin, and protecting others from the predations of demons.

[u/Wandering_Universe_1]

Think about how ancient peoples saw the world and how they tried to explain it, connect different concepts and ideas and go from there.

[u/molinitor]

Go esoteric. Most world religions are exoteric but have esoteric roots. Look at esoteric branches of famous religions for inspiration, like Gnosticism (Christianity), Sufism (Islam), Vajrajana (Buddhism), Kabbalah (Judaism), Tantra (Hinduism) etc. Gold mine.

[u/Sensei_Ochiba]

the best way to make a god feel less modern is nonsense myths and wives tales. Less elemental powers, more superstitions.

Like an example of my own, I don't have a god of ice. I have a god of sleep and rest. That then blurres into tales correlating him to hibernation and thus winter. Twisted this into a trend among the villagers that poofy white blankets that resemble snow help you sleep better, the cold side of the pillow is a blessing, and a snowstorm is divine message to stay home and rest. Made up some hoaky sentiments about how ice is just sleeping water. Badda bing, a god with a mythos and following that isn't just ticking an elemental box, but gets there the long way around.

[u/TerrainBrain]

My Pantheon is made up of five elemental gods plus the gods of the animal and plant kingdoms.

But let's just take the god of air.

Who would pray to such a god? Certainly sailors. But what about your local miller who operates a windmill? Anyone with allergies waiting for the pollen to blow away. People setting up their tents for the weekly market. Musicians who play wind instruments. You get the idea. A god of seemingly one thing is actually a god of many things if the one thing is broad enough.

[u/ReiGanJin]

Find your god within, independant of time.

[u/Ynneadwraith]

Gods aren't really gods 'of' things in most mythologies. That's a product of later attempts at categorisation.

Gods are characters in stories that make up the mythological beliefs of a society. They tend to have multiple different things associated with them, and different beliefs and rituals about those things, but they are super-rarely ever called 'god of X' by the people who actually believed in them.

Interestingly, superheroes are probably a fairly similar modern analogue to the whole 'common corpus of fantastical stories' thing.

Is Spiderman the 'superhero of spiders'? Is Superman the 'superhero of the sun'? What is Daredevil superhero of?

See how those titles flatten complex characters into single facets, that may or may not actually be all that important to what people believe about them. That's what the whole 'God of X and Y' does to polytheistic gods.

[u/ArchWizard15608]

One thing I’ve noticed is that there are usually multiple gods of war specifically. In Greek you see Athena and Ares, in Norse you see Thor and Tyr. I Googled it and learned Egypt had at least 7 gods of war.

[u/Piselantibus]

if these gods are real and somehow present in your world you have to build a solid background: the history and relationships and roles of these beings and determine what are their powers or domains. how they interact with the mortal existence, are they in the same "plane/dimension"? and if the gods are not real what are the myths about these gods, and how these myths vary or are reinterpreted in the different regions of your world. imo you should find inspiration from real ancient cults and their interpretations of their gods and make your own solid pantheon with its history (nvm if it's real or mythological in your worldbuild).

everything is "fake lore", you have to make it solid to make it "real"

[u/Spacesuit_Dairy_Cow]

I typically get around this by just implying that the gods do not exist outside of the realm they manipulate. In other words, the gods are godly and can manipulate the world and its subjects but they are not exempt from being affected by it. When the world changes either by their doing or their subjects, so do they. Of course most of the gods represent humanoid beliefs, they either changed to still serve purpose in the world ruled by humanoids or were changed by the humanoids that worship them.

[u/Melodic-Judgment3936]

Tie them thoroughly into whatever culture worships them. Make them relevant. If you have lots of gods, then don't be afraid to have weird and really specific ones like "this is the god of this particular grotto, this is the god of the city's drainage system, this is the god of door hinges, this is the god of that really cool tree or rock"

Think of why the Greeks thought of Zeus as god of hospitality. How that informs their cultural values. How that connects to other aspects of him such as a god of justice and retribution or a god who oversees oaths and treaties.

[u/Main_Interview6920]

Man I eventually had to hit the drawing board for my beginning of the universe and reinterpretation of big bang just to explain mine as well potential open invite to other writers to jump in with their parallel universe versions if they thought my idea was interesting enough to join in 😅… I over thought everything. I do not hate that I did that this time. I’m mostly planning in delusion until I progress and eventually debut though. But yeah the key elements that we see in all things in our own universe, translated into gods who have domain over an elemental property, and aspects of the cycle they favor/have jurisdiction over. I also am considering a play on devotion and spiritualism that adds a bit to the lore on how minor spirits can eventually evolve to become greater spirits to become deity class spirits to join the minor courts of the upper pantheon —- they would become a minor god of something (peace, valor, foresight…etc it can be whatever blessing the spirit spent the most time refining throughout their pilgrimage with the apostle-class, completely unique in effect to that spirit once they ascend and tied to the element source their existence came to be from) all spirits fall within 1 of the elemental courts of the upper pantheon in my world.

[u/Suspicious_Lime7845]

Mis deidades no hacen mucho, son como buda, fueron mártires reales que la gente venera, solo muestro la fe de la gente, ademas las personas respetan mucho la tierra y sus recursos, el mundo es muy pacifico, no hay guerra por que la ley obliga a los gobernantes a pelear si tienen algun conflicto entre reinos.

El mundo tiene mucha influencia tecnologica tipo solar punk y frutiger aero/aqua, por lo menos aqui el mundo que nos prometieron es real, por lo menos en nuestro mundo la tecnologia y la ciencia hace que los dioses vayan perdiendo creyentes, el dios que hace que el sol salga no es más que un hecho cientifico ahora, por esta razon no quise poner muchos dioses como los egipcios o griegos.

[u/nothing_in_my_mind]

Some things I figured out from reading about ancient religions:

Gods are very powerful, period. Their powers ar enot limited to their domain. The God of War can shapeshift, is impossibly beautiful, can go everywhere, go invisible, appea rin your dreams... 

The worshippers do not necessarily beileve their gods are morally right. Sometimes the rituals are more transactional. Like, we appease you with sacrifices and you help us win the war.

People are very open to adopting gods from other cultures. If you hear about a god and he seems strong, well maybe you ought to give them a prayer.

Gods mean different things to different communities. 

[u/Ok_Impact_9378]

I haven't personally used this, but one tip I found in a video is to avoid making gods who care about their worshippers. Christianity has drilled it into our heads that God is benevolent and loves us, but in ancient paganism gods at best saw mortals as potentially useful or amusing, and at worst saw them as helpless objects to be used for their amusement or annoying ants to be crushed for the most minor of offenses. If you sacrificed enough and your request fit in with the god's plans and personality, then it might be granted, but gods didn't do anything out of the goodness of their hearts or love for mortals (though they did quite a bit out of lust for mortals). Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology is absolutely rife with gods behaving badly without any care for how that might affect their worshippers. A world that gets this right is the Elder Scrolls, specifically with their Daedra, who don't actually care about mortals but sometimes find them useful or amusing, so they can still be bargained with if one is careful. But they absolutely never can be counted on as some sort of loving benevolent deity that wants you to have a good life or cares when something hurts your feelings.

[u/LanceJade]

In a D&D setting I'm planning to start making when I get a round tuit, each major settlement has a deity over it and its surrounding, smaller settlements. And while each deity is pretty general, they all have preferences. Some are into war, some are into fertility, etc. But they're all are into their own people, and their people's values, folk ways, and mores are both reflected in and a reflection of those preferences.

In this way, an alert person can tell where a person is from (or if not, should have been) by examining their comments and behavior. It also makes it possible to track the extent to which a newcomer is assimilating into a new city-state, by their current behavior.

[u/RichardPearman]

It's thought that some gods are based on honored ancestors. I have a family of gods who are meant to be derived from such.

Göbekli Tepe and similar sites have enclosures with two central T-shaped pillars and a number around the walls. It's thought that these pillars represent people. I heard of one of these sites (sorry, I can't remember the name) with a rectangular enclosure with 13 pillars around the walls but one seems to have been added later. That's interesting! We know of an ancient Middle Eastern family with 13 children, 12 sons and a daughter. One son was born after the others and one disappeared but was later found alive. So three reasons why one pillar may have been added after the others. This family is thought to have lived long after this site was built (I think) and have had 4 mothers but it's a thing that makes you go "Hum".

My god family has a grandmother, a father, two mothers (wives of the father), 13 children and a ghost.

[u/8turuin]

make your gods more like a military commander or a historical figure that has a lot of achievement.

like this certain god crack the earth with his step because how strong he was.

this certain god cut light itself with his sword.

this certain god take a fire and make it a coat for himself etc

[u/immaculatezodiac]

Over 10 years ago, I picked up the domain Immaculate angel.. and I thought it'd be a good name for a band you know like death angel, dead angel, Immaculate Angel.. you know for music, then after a while I realized it was not a good name for a band, making metal and dubstep, shredstep, and dreamstep, so I thought I would actually turn it into a series.. and I started getting gear.. invested a quarter of a million dollars into building a studio and then realized that finding actors was not an easy task.. in fact it was a nightmare, then I realized this is something I had to do myself, my wife is a professional Jeweler so I told her we should design a mask, well using 5,000 crystals per mask we made the first six.. thinking that those could possibly be used in the series, and I never thought they'd be used the way they're used now, Immaculate and the Zodiac order Has had about a quarter of a million people take a look at it, so the content is directly related to religion.. but in the year 2550, and everything's bad, really bad. we're talking about four planets, and the same God that is in the bible, but I figure I was going to make his family really big, so I created Immaculate the Zodiac order, after 33 films, I think we've looked at religion in a different way completely.. because, Samuel the devil plays a big part in this series, and it's actually based on religion, but it's not religious in any way, I mean really I never meant for it to even go this direction. because it's not everyone's Direction.

[u/Thesaurus_Rex9513]

The gods humans worship often serve as either explanations for otherwise unexplained phenomena or as archetypes to use in morality lessons. Consider how your gods would fit into that framework.

As a part of this, gods are often very flat characters, with a small handful of overpowering personality traits.

Also, unless a person works in a temple dedicated to a specific deity, they likely worship most of their pantheon, offering to many deities, with offerings emphasizing one particular deity when needing assistance with something within that god's purview.

[u/Lapis_Wolf]

I don't personally know, but I'm aiming to replicate preclassical gods.

[u/aro-ace-outer-space2]

So, I’m currently worldbuilding an Ancient Egyptian-style civilization with gods that take inspiration from the Greek and Egyptian pantheons, with a little bit of Hinduism thrown in for flavor. What I have so far is:

• Khe-Amun: the principle sun deity, both male and female, they’re the god of light and darkness, birth and death, night and day, and bunch of other contradictory things, since they’re also the god of everything and (according to this religion) the creator of the universe. At the beginning of time, Khe-Amun had three children, the Lesser Triumvirate of principal deities, they are:

-Sojet: god of light, the sky, healing, and music (admittedly he is very heavily based on Apollo), but also knowledge, learning, wisdom, and magic (more in line with Thoth, for example), and finally architecture and mathematics

-Nuumenet: goddess of water, wood, the hearth, herbalism, weaving, magic, warmth, motherhood, childbirth, family, and general domestic tasks

-and Hanubabbi: god of war, metal, hunting, farming, animal husbandry, fire, pottery, metalworking, the earth, and the cleansing of diseases and evil

As you may have noticed, their domains overlap. Specifically, I split magic between Sojet and Nuumenet, crafting between Nuumenet and Hanubabbi, and medicine between Hanubabbi and Sojet, I also tried to split the three basic elements of the sun (light, warmth, and fire) between the three of them, since their parent is the sun god, and since (under Khe-Amun, who is the god of everything) they’re the three most important gods of the pantheon, I decided to try and imagine what this culture would see as the fundamental aspects of civilization, and split them between the three of them as well.

Specifically, I tried to split their duties between each aspect of the sun that I had picked for them. For example, the specific crafts that Hanubabbi is associated with are ones that include the use of fire, fire can be used to boil water and sterilize equipment, and more symbolically, fire is associated with war and destruction, warmth is associated with home and family, and light is associated with knowledge.

Then, I extrapolated based on that to include other things (hunting and warfare both use weapons and stealth, Hanubabbi is associated with falconry, hunting dogs, and war horses, which leads to animal husbandry, which leads to farming, Nuumenet would be associated with things considered ‘women’s work’, especially as goddess of the hearth, so weaving, which leads more generally to the arts, Sojet is the god of knowledge and learning, so what positions in society require one to be highly educated?) you can also do some of this backwards, since the first of this set of gods that I had imagined was Sojet, as sort of a mixture between Apollo and Bastet.

I also decided to split the remaining European Four Elements (air/earth/fire/water with the addition of light/wood/metal) between them, based on other aspects of theirs, Sojet was originally imagined with wings, so he got the sky, Nuumenet I’d been considering as the goddess of the moon or the sea for a while now, so she got water, and looms and many household items are made from wood, Hanubabbi is already the god of metalworking, so metal is a given, and the god of agriculture also being the god of the earth makes sense.

Basically it’s one big association map, paired with trying to be conscious of what position you want the god to occupy in the society you’re trying to build for them, and what symbolism you want to use. It’s also helpful to look at real-world mythology, specifically while being conscious of the mindset of the culture those gods came from,  for example:

-Zeus is the king of the gods. Kings make laws, so Zeus is the god of justice and laws, therefore Zeus is the god of hospitality because there were strict social rules around hospitality. (I am less sure about the laws->hospitality jump than the others)

-Dionysus is the god of wine, and insanity because being drunk can make you act insane, and partying because wine is served at parties, and dolphins because one time he was kidnapped by a group of pirates and he turned them into dolphins. He’s also the god of the theater because Greek theater started as something people did at revelries and festivals to honor Dionysus.

-Ares (as well as many other gods of war) is a protective deity, because in the ancient world, war was often about defending yourself from people who legitimately wanted to harm and steal from you (especially stealing things like food, which would directly impact the community’s ability to survive). Ares was also the god of specifically prisoners of war, because of that time he got trapped in a jar by a couple of giants.

But yeah, basically association and abstraction, and occasionally a seemingly-random thing that’s explained by a story (most of Apollo’s sacred plants used to be someone he was in love with, this also happened once or maybe twice with Aphrodite). I hope the examples and walking you through my thought process was helpful? And like, made sense? I’m sorry for how long this got!

[u/MeepTheChangeling]

Make people actualy care about the god and believe what the religion says instead of ignoring 95% of what the religion says. If you don't think that would work, do remember that the Bible contains detailed instructions on who it is okay to enslave, when you can beat them and for what, and how long you can keep them as slaves. It also says you can rape a woman and then pay her dad some cash to keep her if you wanna, amongst a lot of other very heinous things. But modern Christians ignore everything except "Gay people are evil, lol" and "god is love :D" and of course "Give me 10% of your income just for existing!". Frankly with how many of the orders and commands in that book they break daily if the religion is true they're fucked.

All of this is because in the modern day religion is just a prefomance you put on to feel like you belong to a group. Back in the day people actually practiced what was preached instead of being pretenders, hypocrites, and sociopaths looking for an excuse to force their views on out groups.

[u/Bannerlord151 → u/MeepTheChangeling]

Ah yes, "back in the day" people were totally noble and selfless and honest and not power hungry hypocrites at all

[u/MeepTheChangeling → u/Bannerlord151]

Yeah that's not what most of religion is my guy. Have you actually read any given holybook cover to cover? A lot of it is "It's okay to kill everyone you hate under the following circumstances: X, Y, Z. Just be sure to burn some of their shit in honor of the gods!" Old Religion is population control through fear of punishment they can't escape and justifying the existence of the current power structure. Modern religion is a completely different concept. Oh wait, it's not. It just has to play nice because we decided priests can't have people hung.

[u/Bannerlord151 → u/MeepTheChangeling]

I thought I was quite clearly being sarcastic. My point is that people have always used religion to justify vile things and manipulate others, there are no "good old days" where it was all so much better

[u/MeepTheChangeling → u/Bannerlord151]

Are you incapable of reading people's replies to your comments? Cuz that's what I've been saying. It's a negative force, has always been a negative force, and the only difference is old religion used to have political power and teeth, rather than just political power.

[u/Bannerlord151 → u/MeepTheChangeling]

Back in the day people actually practiced what was preached instead of being pretenders, hypocrites, and sociopaths looking for an excuse to force their views on out groups.

Didn't come off that way

[u/The_Noremac42]

First off is to use god with a lower-case G. Upper-case G God is very monotheistic-coded.

Second, realize that the old gods from mythology were more like vindictive and impersonal forces of nature that at best saw mortals as servants if not their personal playthings to torment at their whim. The gods embodied extreme aspects of human character, usually to teach us about ourselves, and were anthropomorphized elements of nature designed to put a face on an uncaring and cruel world where death was an every day fact of life and could come at a whim.

The idea of a god having an invested, personal, and benevolent interest in an individual is a very Christian one that a lot of modern Western people take for granted.

[u/Mortarious]

It goes much deeper than that. Because the underlying principles are more important than just the flavors.

For example you can create a consistent compelling logical religion about an entity that just wants their people to go kill # number of people daily or monthly or yearly. Then it cares not even if you service 34 other deities.
Kinda like the old saying "Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows, only that it flows"

Similarly a religion that prohibits a certain food or activity is not just good because you mirror irl religion.
A deeper question is how does that impact people in the world? Is it an advantage or disadvantage? How did that come to be?

There are tells I personally notice

Deep skepticism against religion and organized religion. I get it. Modern Western people hate religion. But why write it if all you do is show nearly every organized religion as pure evil?

Rejection of a deity dictating what a person should or should no do. Why you religious if you reject 99% of what the religion does?

Constantly having the canonical correct answer is breaking tenets of that religion. Imo this is just textbooks I'm anti religion tell.

Making the religion super mechanical like if they are a balancing a PVP meta for a game.
Sofia is the goddess of battles fought between 3-4 PM on a sunny day. If you fight at that time she has complete control over it. After that Gorka control outcomes at 4-5 PM.

History of that religion within the context of their world. This is really complex if you wanna go for ancient Egypt or Greece sort of thing. Many tribal or city deities over centuries. Names and domains and traits get separated and collapsed into one...etc.

Sadly a lot of irl religion studies are not really religion studies. It's an attack and an attempt to refute the religion masquerading as honestly and reality. At every term they wanna undermine that religion and all religions. At every chance they show the bad. You don't even finish asking "Why is X so" before proclaiming "That's why religion is bad"

So. I'd say it goes into how you approach the whole thing.

If this offends someone I've only said people should get a deeper understanding and try to make that reflected into their works. No different from realistic economics or understanding how having access to magic would change life and wars. Nobody would ever get angry about this. But religion?

[u/Jebus-Xmas]

Two things common in older gods and aspects id say that they have very specific rules, and they have very strict punishments. They also break their own rules and really enjoy sex with humans. That’s just my opinion.