Gods in Eternity

[Darth InSidious]

I'm hoping for a kind of Egyptian/Mesoamerican/Mesopotamian mashup, with a good dose of Sumerian pessimism and a heavy gnostic flavour. I want gloomy, mysterious cult, full of strange sacred books that hover on the edge of comprehension, and dark, disturbing, hidden rituals.

Edited November 29, 2012 by Darth InSidious

[Cryticus]

I don't know to what extent will gods take part in the plot, but I would love to see Mesoamerican style deities and myths but with a twist of having western styled church, you know how when missionaries came to new world, and thouse who converted interpreted saints and divine figures in their terms? Now what I mean is that use this but invert situation and let it be that western world takes on their faith

[Serguei]

Cosmology : first draft

 

All souls find their origin in a Greater Being. In a cosmological event, that Being got "fractured" and lost parts , tiny dust-size , sparkles of itself, that becames souls. All those fragments try to rejoin with the original part.

But they cannot.

Because the gods wish to gather as much souls as they can in order to harness the power inherent to souls.

Most racial gods (affiliated to a particular race) made a pact : they would gather the souls from a race. But some other gods, more chaotic and greedy, chose to size with no one, and hunt souls whereever they can.

 

so we have no good gods, only power-hungry.

Some of them behave in a lawfull way and seemingly with benevolence toward a specific race.

There's room to invent a creation mythos, several gods, and lesser gods working for them in hope to gain a part of the power greater gods could have.

The Afterlife is a maze designed to lose the souls and hide the way back to the Progenitor. But the Greater Being, though Reality is veiled from Him by the gods, is not powerless. He created the reincarnation cycle as a safety exit from the Maze, in order to give souls another chance to rejoin with him, should they fail upon the attempt they're given at death.

Edited November 29, 2012 by Serguei

[Cryticus]

Cosmology : first draft

 

All souls find their origin in a Greater Being. In a cosmological event, that Being got "fractured" and lost parts , tiny dust-size , sparkles of itself, that becames souls. All those fragments try to rejoin with the original part.

But they cannot.

Because the gods wish to gather as much souls as they can in order to harness the power inherent to souls.

Most racial gods (affiliated to a particular race) made a pact : they would gather the souls from a race. But some other gods, more chaotic and greedy, chose to size with no one, and hunt souls whereever they can.

 

so we have no good gods, only power-hungry.

Some of them behave in a lawfull way and seemingly with benevolence toward a specific race.

There's room to invent a creation mythos, several gods, and lesser gods working for them in hope to gain a part of the power greater gods could have.

The Afterlife is a maze designed to lose the souls and hide the way back to the Progenitor. But the Greater Being, though Reality is veiled from Him by the gods, is not powerless. He created the reincarnation cycle as a safety exit from the Maze, in order to give souls another chance to rejoin with him, should they fail upon the attempt they're given at death.

 

Idea is okey, but I really can't stand idea that there are no good gods, Mostly because I hate idea that there are beings that are all inhearently evil, what I would prefer is that gods may start as evil but with time passing they learn that evil and hunger for power is pointless and stop with intervining with world and ultimatly join greater source. This can be taken one step more , with gods being just souls that would try to reach source by colecting and joinig with souls of thouse people that have smaller will.

[Serguei]

More on that :

 

So there are two kinds of gods :" those of the Pact" and "those who hunt."

The Progenitor and the gods where utterly opposed at first. Until they realized that souls could be strengthened by the events in Life. so the Progenitor and the racial gods agreed on the cosmic wheel of reincarnation in order to augment themselves.

The "gods of the pact" do not consume a soul when they gain one, they depleat it from its power and throw it back in the reincarnation cycle.

On the opposite, "those who hunts" simply devours them, hoping to reach such a size that they could at last devour the Progenitor itself.

 

of the God of death : Most sentient living being believe that death is univocal, the end of life, plain and simple. and so they believe that there is only one god of death, even though it seems to have a split personnality. They are in fact two separate entities : the Arbiter and the Rejuvener. The first is an agent of the gods of the Pact , whose task is to ensure that the lawfull gods have their due share of souls, while the second is an agent of the Progenitor and makes sure that all souls may have an attempt at reincarnation. So they are really opposed in their goals.

Edited November 29, 2012 by Serguei

[Domigorgon]

I don't think religion should be limited to god-worship, even if gods do exist, i.e. have a tangible presence and show of power. Think of the Athars (hardcore atheists from Planescape), or any other Planescape faction for that matter. They do not believe in gods, but in certain ideas and ideals, and can get quite *religious* about them.

 

I don't know if anyone here played Discworld Noir, a British game based on Terry Pratchett's books (and inspired quite a lot by film noir), but in that setting there is a hilarious character working at a Temple of Small Gods (a temple dedicated to gods of things like ants' crossroads, or somesuch trifle matters not particularly popular in the greater scheme - imagine worshipping a God of Cutlery and rattling your spoon drawer in his honor, or sacrificing pigeons because your church can't afford a bull...). The character is a worshipper of Errata (a play on the Discordian Eris - just google up "Principia Discordia" and you'll get the picture), the goddess of confusion. In his words, "Everyone is a worshipper of Errata... they just don't know it yet!" The point being that nobody actually bothers to worship Errata, for it is a completely disorganised religion. Like Discordianism, its tenets are whatever you want them to be. Errata could care less, and her 'worshippers' are pretty much left to themselves.

 

It would be fun to solve some encounters through theological arguments with NPCs. NWN 2 let you choose a deity, but it didn't affect the gameplay much. Whenever I play a cleric or paladin, I sure would appreciate an opportunity to try and convert people to my cause.

[Raithe]

Or that point where a single god is worshipped under different names by different cultures.. and each one has slightly variant beliefs and touches the aspects of the god in different manners. Causing the single god to actually split into almost "multiple personalities" depending on who is around....

[Zoma]

Not exactly God related, but more of unexplainable force of nature that involves the Gods.

 

I'm always fascinated with Kinoko Nasu's concepts and rules of the worlds he created for his novels and games. One of this concept revolves around "Counter-Force".

 

The counter force is a safety system created by a group unconscious will. A phenomena exists to erase other phenomena... The counter force appears the moment that a factor that may cause the destruction of the world and will move to destroy that factor. As they (The counter force) are unconscious forces, even when they does appear, nobody will see them, nobody will notice them.

 

A counter force is a whirl of formless power that will appear and adjust their magnitude in accordance to the target to be destroyed. To allow for absolute victory, it will appear with greater force than the target. In the situation where the threat is unable to be handled through human hands, the Counter Force will take the form of a natural phenomenon and wipe out the designated target and its surroundings...

 

If the world dies, then so does humanity. If humanity dies, it'll likely be something that'll affect the fate of the world. The results may converge but there's a difference in the factors that work.

 

To put it simply, this concept revolves around preserving the state of the world through the world's own unconscious will if the world is endangered, either by the hands of foolish mortals or reckless Gods who threatened to destroy it. So the world will, in a subtle approach, create unexplainable incidents, or forced coincidences, that will result in people becoming heroes or even villains just to remove the threat specifically no matter what the cost.

 

Now, we understand that the world of project eternity may have natural laws that even the gods will never understand. Such as the origin of souls and why they exist in a flow of reincarnation cycle. But if there are any factors threatening to disrupt the natural flow such as permanently disrupting the flow of human souls into the world, which the destiny of the world is interlinked to it, the "Counter Force" will go into effect to prevent it from happening.

 

With this concept, we could explain from the player's point of view why our character plays a big role in the world, either as a hero of villain, to remove the threat by all means. If he is given a means to kill a God because a God threatens to upset the balance of the world, he will be given one.

 

Its similar to Chrono Trigger where

The Planet Earth was actually the one manipulating time travel incidences for the heroes in order to protect from itself from world destruction by Lavos.

 

 

Just a concept I thought the developers might want to know about. Sorry for the off track.

[ngreennz]

I'd like to see how gods relate to the soul thing. If you worship a god, does he get custody of your soul when you die? Does that influence how you worship in the next life? Or is it more like egyptian mythology in which one or two gods preside over all dead souls and the process of dying? Is there a psychopomp god, or lots of little psychopomps that one god presides over? How do souls get back into the world? Do psychopomps handle that too? Maybe there's a warrior goddess standing guard over conception/ensoulment to avoid a demon getting in instead, or something.

 

I'd also prefer if they avoided/put a twist on some of the classic archetypes. What if the trickster god was also the goddess of love, for example? Maybe the Boss God is a Poseidon-type ocean god instead of a Zeus-style sky god. I'd also prefer if they'd avoid the Worshippers = Power thing. If you're not going to do anything interesting with it, a la Terry Pratchett's Small Gods, or Hogfather, then I think it's sort of a cop-out for explaining why gods care about people.

 

Also, churches. We could do with some mixing-up of churches. Mystery cults in forest glades, creepy fanatical isolationists in mountain strongholds, deranged charismatic prophets of down-and-out gods staging a comeback, expansionist state religions, I'd prefer to see any/all of these then just more martial clerics with chainmail and warhammers.

There's also potential for reincarnation-oriented holy men, like tulkus or the Dalai Lama. This can be hubristic or not, I suppose, depending on whether or not he's actually a prophet, though dying, spending time with the gods, and coming back sounds like a pretty good way to get divine revelation into the world.

[PsychoBlonde]

How is this different from what you have in D&D?

 

 

The gods in the various D&D settings are generally unified into a cosmological system--they are a part of it, but have no ultimate control over it. Greek-style gods are somewhat more independent and thus much more erratic and interesting. The difference is subtle but discernable.

[PsychoBlonde]

Are you implying that if, for instance, the Christian god, I am that I am or whatever, would actually appear for real in a public place and start announcing commandments that people would become less religious? Surely not. Believing in a proven God who has actually shown himself is still believing in him.

 

Certainly. Such a being would probably not even be able to convince a sizeable number of people that it was, in fact, God.

 

This is also the reason why, the more religious someone is, the fewer defined attributes their deity has, turning from specific descriptions like "Zeus hurls the thunderbolts from the sky!" to "God is omniscient!" which is about as non-specific as you can get. The pagans were fairly secular in their outlook even though they had gods everywhere, heck, their GODS were worldly and spent a large part of the time drinking, feasting, and screwing anything that moved.

[Domigorgon]

Not that there's anything wrong with that. :D

[Kurumi Morishita]

Just two things..

 

1. I don't want an overgod aka AO!

2. Please add some kind of sylvan/nature god!

 

About the Pantheon itself, I really don't care if it's like the D&D or Olympian or Pharaonic or Asgardian or ... Pantheon.

[Tsuga C]

My preference is for gods that are truly divine and beyond the reach of mortals. Maybe a mortal might ascend to demi-god status and become a powerful champion of their deity and exemplar of their faith, but true godhood should be reserved for the divine powers. Let there be tricksters and gods of death, war, art, love, etc., and let them command a high level of majesty and puissance that lets one and all know beyond any doubt that they worthy of worship, or at least of placation.

 

The divine should not be a joke and needs to be taken seriously by the peoples of the world, albeit to a greater or lesser degree dpending upon the individual in question.

[AGX-17]

I've always like Taoism's focus on balance and harmony, so I've always thought the idea of two deities representing two opposites that complement and balance each other out interesting (similar to the yin and yang representing the opposite aspects of the world which together form the united whole: yin represents femininity and darkness, among other things, while yang represents masculinity and light, also among other things,) especially because life in the real world really hinges on balance.

 

I'd imagine obsequious zealots of one half of the unified duology opposing the other half, i.e. overzealous followers of a god of light and the sun might hate the goddess of night and the moon (for the night is dark and full of terrors, as the Red Woman would say,) without recognizing the need for balance, as eternal day would scorch the world sterile, just as an eternal night would freeze it; but with the caveat that what can be frozen can be thawed, reflecting the female capacity to bring about new life (look up parthenogenesis if you think a male is mandatory for this.) Some casual observers of Taoism see the female association with darkness as a form of misogyny, but they overlook the necessity of night to balance temperature, and that there are nocturnal animals who depend on the protection of darkness to survive (our own mammalian ancestors among them.) There are animals that can survive being frozen solid, but there are none that can survive being burned to ashes.

 

Are you implying that if, for instance, the Christian god, I am that I am or whatever, would actually appear for real in a public place and start announcing commandments that people would become less religious? Surely not. Believing in a proven God who has actually shown himself is still believing in him.

 

Certainly. Such a being would probably not even be able to convince a sizeable number of people that it was, in fact, God.

 

This is also the reason why, the more religious someone is, the fewer defined attributes their deity has, turning from specific descriptions like "Zeus hurls the thunderbolts from the sky!" to "God is omniscient!" which is about as non-specific as you can get. The pagans were fairly secular in their outlook even though they had gods everywhere, heck, their GODS were worldly and spent a large part of the time drinking, feasting, and screwing anything that moved.

 

"The pagans (latin root paganus, meaning 'country dweller' - it only came to mean 'non-christian' once Christianity became the dominant religion of Europe,)" weren't a single cohesive group, and different cultures had different pantheons, different rituals and differing levels of devotion. Some cultures had priestly classes, others didn't. The ancient Britons who erected stone circles (Stonehenge simply being the largest of them,) obviously didn't have that secular an outlook on life, considering they also put a great deal of effort into the tombs of their dead (or at least their honored/high ranked dead.) Throughout the Americas, you see "pagan" religions building grandiose monuments for religious reasons. Direct contact with the Aztecs confirms a priestly class and pyramids devoted to religion, religious beliefs fervent enough that they justified human sacrifices (a common thread in the religions of all the Mesoamerican and South American civilizations,) the translation of the Maya language led to the understanding that these were also a deeply religious people. The Nazca Lines serve no reasonably imaginable secular purpose, the Moche civilization seems to have revolved around a religion of death and human sacrifice.

 

 

At any rate, if a monotheistic religion's one true God did appear before humanity to prove his own existence (which he wouldn't do because gods don't exist,) I think he could easily prove himself by just killing half the world's population in an instant, leave them dead for a sufficient period of time (several days or even a week,) that their loved ones could no longer reasonably believe it was merely a big prank, then resurrect them. Or turn them into pillars of salt. Or even just make everyone have faith in him, free will be damned. How does anyone argue that he's not god once they're filled with overflowing zealous faith?

Edited December 7, 2012 by AGX-17

[Mr. Magniloquent]

The most important concept is to decide upon is whether deities are derived from mortals or visa versa. I personally prefer deities being secondary to mortals.

 

A different take, with soul-centric philosophy would feel something like this:

1. The cosmos predate deities.
   
   
2. Gods should be incomprehensibly powerful, but exist within the framework of the cosomos--not above or outside of it.
   
   
3. Being derived from souls, gods should only exist for things which have souls. IE: Only gods for living things--not gods with an explicit portfolio of Storms or Fire.
   
   
4. A diety should embody only the innate aspects of the sentience they are derived from. War, Invention, Healing are not part of sentient beings--they are products of their qualities. Anger, Curiousity, Love, Ambivalence--these are the things which make a soul/mind.
   

This is the only way I can think of truly distinguishing P:E pantheons apart from every other mythos ever created. Life begets souls, souls beget deities, deities beget life.

Edited December 7, 2012 by Mr. Magniloquent

[Corvus Metus]

My two cents.

 

The cosmos itself should be sentient, although not necessarily sapient. It is the source of all things.

 

The gods, however, should not truly exist. Instead, they are echoes of mankind's beliefs given a spark of life by the cosmos. They are manifestations of what man believes is true. They can die and be reborn as people change their ideals.

 

Bare bones, but that's my ideas.

[Tsuga C]

One wonders what sort of interactions we'll have with the Powers.  Will we experience their will and influence only through their clerical orders, semi-divine intermediaries, or will the possibility of direct interactions present itself? 

[Sarky]

Steven Erikson's Malazan books had the most believable deities I've ever read. They should be more than just eleventy thousand extra hit points and 10 of every spell. They should be beyond mortal in every way. Their plans take centuries to unfold, and make little or no sense to mortals. Some of them have no plans at all and just wander the worlds looking for excitement or mischief. Some of them have total mastery over a certain aspect of reality, while being powerless in others, or even weak to some material/word/emotion. Most of all, they're kinda bored. Living for eternity can only make you jaded and cynical. You really have seen it all before.

 

I'd really like to see some gods like that. Presumably the events of the game are the first really interesting thing they've seen in millennia. That should get them interested in the things the player gets up to and the choices he/she makes. Surely they'd want to influence the outcome, but how does a being which transcends mortal comprehension make itself understood?

Edited January 19, 2013 by Sarky

[Luridis]

I don't have any preference for what the developers choose to do in PE... But, I do have a related question for the participants here.

 

What if you stared a new RPG and there were no gods to be heard of? And, in fact, upon further investigation you discover that the mere mention of the deities in conversation with NPCs was viewed as silly & nonsensical superstition? Finally, when you find someone who manages to stop pointing at you and laughing over your own talk of black cats and broken mirrors; the person casually mentions that genuine "worship" was outlawed in most places thousands of years in the past?

 

Kind of interesting, I think...

[Cryticus]

I don't have any preference for what the developers choose to do in PE... But, I do have a related question for the participants here.

 

What if you stared a new RPG and there were no gods to be heard of? And, in fact, upon further investigation you discover that the mere mention of the deities in conversation with NPCs was viewed as silly & nonsensical superstition? Finally, when you find someone who manages to stop pointing at you and laughing over your own talk of black cats and broken mirrors; the person casually mentions that genuine "worship" was outlawed in most places thousands of years in the past?

 

Kind of interesting, I think...

Soo... Basicly Crusader Atheist wishfullfilment : the game ?

Edited January 19, 2013 by Cryticus

[Luridis]

 

I don't have any preference for what the developers choose to do in PE... But, I do have a related question for the participants here.

 

What if you stared a new RPG and there were no gods to be heard of? And, in fact, upon further investigation you discover that the mere mention of the deities in conversation with NPCs was viewed as silly & nonsensical superstition? Finally, when you find someone who manages to stop pointing at you and laughing over your own talk of black cats and broken mirrors; the person casually mentions that genuine "worship" was outlawed in most places thousands of years in the past?

 

Kind of interesting, I think...

Soo... Basicly Crusader Atheist wishfullfilment : the game ?

 

No, basically was the central plot a module for NWN1 that I started, but never got around to finishing in 2003ish.

[Aenor]

Gods in style of D&D would help to make project eternity to a complete rpg, but they should have more sense/ usefulness.

[CottonWolf]

Steven Erikson's Malazan books had the most believable deities I've ever read. They should be more than just eleventy thousand extra hit points and 10 of every spell. They should be beyond mortal in every way. Their plans take centuries to unfold, and make little or no sense to mortals. Some of them have no plans at all and just wander the worlds looking for excitement or mischief. Some of them have total mastery over a certain aspect of reality, while being powerless in others, or even weak to some material/word/emotion. Most of all, they're kinda bored. Living for eternity can only make you jaded and cynical. You really have seen it all before.

 

I'd really like to see some gods like that. Presumably the events of the game are the first really interesting thing they've seen in millennia. That should get them interested in the things the player gets up to and the choices he/she makes. Surely they'd want to influence the outcome, but how does a being which transcends mortal comprehension make itself understood?

 

Yeah, I'd love some Malazan style gods/goddesses. Preferably some totally crazy stuff as well though, like worshipping the luminiferous aether or something (though I guess that moves dangerously close to the realm of druidry).

[Osvir]

Could Gods interrupt/interfere with mechanics somehow?

For example, if you'd try to pickpocket an entire town, a God of Shadows could come in and wave "its" finger "No no". If Gods could fulfill such a use, it could both be fairly (and magically) reasonable for the developers to design "restrictions" that'd be content by itself. In Journey, there is such a mechanic, when you try to walk outside the screen you get pushed back by this invisible wind. Many gamers don't mind it, and is immersed by its feature. Kind of like that, but with Gods   

If you Rest all the time, you end up in the Realm of Dreams or something, transcending into spiritual form (and it wouldn't be a nice place to be at because, presumably, a God could've sent you into a trap).

Saving and reloading too much could send your character into a Doctor Who loop, meeting or seeing yourself as you moved before as a "Ghost", before you reloaded. It doesn't necessarily have to happen all the time, but Gods could function in "random encounter" scenarios and "restrictive" scenarios such as the Pickpocket scenario.

For example, imagine a God being annoying towards you, obstructing you on your path, so you decide to go after it and take it down. You take it down and take a breather, no more annoyance. Likewise, you could've thought you took down the God, but in fact you took down another one, manipulated by the first one to take out the other one.

Edited January 20, 2013 by Osvir