Designing gods from scratch || D&D Lifehack
Video Statistics and Information
Channel: MonarchsFactory
Views: 96,107
Rating: 4.9701276 out of 5
Keywords: MonarchsFactory, Dael Kingsmill, Geek & Sundry, Geek & Sundry Vlogs, Geek and Sundry, Geek and Sundry Vlogs, Geek, nerd, australian, australia, vlogger, Greek mythology, myths, mythology, Dael, Kingsmill, Dale, Dale Kingsmill, story, storyteller, story teller, story time, funny, dungeons and dragons, d&d, dnd, homebrew, worldbuilding, pantheon, religion, gods, god, numinous
Id: eMgPgbRb_fA
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 14min 25sec (865 seconds)
Published: Wed Jul 24 2019
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The existence of a light domain feels like a weird thing to take offense to given the number of important sun gods in many world mythologies.
Dael Kingsmill is such a D&D name.
As much as I dislike this kind of information being delivered in video form, this is a good video. However, I think it could have been more, and the title is incorrect - it's more "Designing religion from scratch", rather than "designing gods from scratch".
This is coming from a modern academic approach to religion, where it assumes the religion is, y'know, mythological, rather than real. Where religion is built by people, rather than the result of extraplanar phenomena. If you're going for a world where gods either don't exist or are created by faith, then this is a pretty applicable video because this is talking about how religions work in the real world. But if you're going for a world where gods are real entities that exist independently of mortal races - which is the default for D&D - this video isn't going to help you very much. In these kinds of worlds, a god just wakes up one morning (or rather, before time was invented) and decides "Y'know what I think I'm going to be the god of Nature". In which case, no one can tell them they're wrong. They're a god, they just get to choose this shit. They could be the God of Purple if they really wanted. The thing about deities in D&D is that typically, they're a "What if mythology was real?" thing. That means that there's a lot more flexibility in what a pantheon can actually be. You don't necessarily have to stick to this 'one good story' because when your gods literally exist you can have any story you want. Could even make your pantheon only full of good actors who all get along with each other nicely and never experience treachery.
Really, there are two approaches to deities when you're designing a D&D world - Society first or Deity first. This is a great guide for people wanting to do a society first approach, where humanoids existed and then created deities for themselves. It's not relevant to a deity first approach.
Also, on the topic of domains, Light domain is a pretty good one to have, because there are a lot of "Sun gods" and "Cleric who fires rays of sunlight at bitches" is a really popular and common fantasy archetype. The problem with Light domain is that its fluff is that of like, a poetry domain or something, rather than the fluff of someone who worships a god's ability to purge the unholy will magical space fire. There are also a lot of concessions that need to be made. If Domains were designed to emulate specific reasons a creature might worship a deity we'd need dozens of domains. We'd be splitting Nature alone into three or four domains to represent every possible aspect of "I worship this god because I like that they represent some aspect of the natural world". Life and Death would both be split into multiple facets too, no doubt, as might Trickery and Forge. Domains are generic things, that are supposed to be something you can use to emulate quite a lot of more specific faiths.
Just popped by to say that I liked the video, so last night on my stream I tried to apply it to my world that Iβm working on. At first I thought βthis is a good organizing principle, sure. Letβs do thisβ but you can see on my face at one point the whole thing just clicked, and I had a religious organization that I could work from and use for my world.
It was weird, just looking at the video I thought βthis is goodβ but actually doing it felt so much better and easy and effortless. Thank you Dael!
I got through 3/4 of the video before I realized she wasnβt going to be showing me how to build a Parthenon.
Simple, effective, and evocative ideas for.making something my players may actually remember. Great video and content, thanks for sharing
Are you Australian? There was something confusing me about your voice when I first started the video and that's what my brain settled on. I've watched too many DnD videos by Americans, so hearing a local accent doing it broke my brain's audio processing I think
I used to watch your mythology vlogs religiously years ago, but then life got crazy and i stopped having time. Seeing this reminded me how much i love your content. Im looking forward to catching up on the vids i missed.
Dael, this is fantastic. As a sometimes-DM/GM with experience practicing in several religions and a social scientist with a degree in religious studies, I think the central-story method absolutely hits the nail on the head for making a believable religion that's easy to create and quick for players to understand.
It also allows for as much elaboration as you'd like with other deities and other stories, for conflict among people who have different interpretations of the story, etc. And while it may or may not be how academics would say religion "really" works, it gets across how it feels as a practitioner on the ground.
There's a D&D group in my area composed entirely of Episcopal priests--I'm sending this to them right now!
Do all of you have pantheons in your worlds? I have something akin to Hinduism. There's one God, with different aspects, but safe to say that every cleric, paladin, priest, whatever is above it all worshipping the same thing.
There's a creator, there's a destroyer. That's fundamental. How people worship either (or none) of them is what makes the followers good or evil but there's no such thing as an evil God or a good God, only acts done in their name.