Gods in DnD

[keideathstrike]

i think they itervene a little bit but not much

[geckomage]

well, if 1 is our god and 10 is the greek gods? i say....um...6 or 7

[Peddy]

Depends on the DM. Even in a setting that's printed as being deity-heavy such as Forgotten Realms, when I DM divine intervention would be down toward 1 on your scale. I don't care for the gods stepping in and having a direct hand in matters. In my games, gods are a manifestation of overarching ideas or universal constants. War. Fate. The Moon. Nature. Mercy. So on and so forth. They exist independantly of any worship they may recieve - they just are, prayed to or not, and though they may have been anthropomorphized over time, they are in fact, not. They are transcendant. They are the kind of beings that eat paradox for breakfast and s**t out miracles.

They are possessed of infinite perspective. Getting involved in human events would be like the UN getting involved in a war between ant colonies. Only more so. The main purpose of a god's existance is to be. That's about it.

[Psychopathia]

it really just depends on the DM and the DM's skill, i won'd not play a game that involved gods if it wasn't run by an expeirenced DM.

[Psychopathia]

I've been playing one gane for almost two years(with about six months of it not playing) and it does involve gods. I'm enjoying it though. In the game the DM even made a god...Keizer creator of the draconic pantheon, although at that time we only knew about tiamat and bahamut. And when we picked up the Draconomicon(recommended if you play with dragons alot) we found out they had created a draconic pantheon!

[WerewolfPaladin]

Depends... am I playing the party's cleric? When I play a cleric (or Favored Soul, etc.), I tend to play characters who have a much more day-to-day relationship with their deities and so they ask for intervention a bit more frequently.

I'd say the gods frequently intervene in your average D&D world, but it's only rarely the earth shattering, "Torm was here" kind of intervention.

[Butcher Jackson]

The campaign I run has gods mostly working through their churches. Like, one time did I have a God intervene, and that was to give a vengeance-seeking fighter 2 wisdom points (he had crap stats already. he needed something) so he could become a Clr of St. Cuthbert.

The fighter was KO'd but stable at neg 9, and St. Cuthbert spoke to him in the blackness of near-death (he had just hit lvl 4 from the fight xp) and told him what he had to do to be one of his clerics (put the stat bump into wis).

That's actually al the direct intervention. I much prefer characters to gods as far as storyline development goes. Once the god's start doing <i>anything</i>, it's just falls into a rides-on-rails heavy-handed crapfest. I give everybody more freedom than that.

I am having a grand time making up "small gods", like a god of scavengers or a god who brings footsoldiers home. I have write-ups for them in my city thread (plus a link in me sig).