"Weird Gods of Sword and Sorcery" or something along those lines, a big thick monster manual size listing of weird, swords & sorcery deities. It's the same idea of Judges Guild's excellent Unknown Gods, but taken to ridiculous extremes. Mostly a bunch of petty, niche godlings, the kinds that Conan or Elric would stumble across.
Although that's wasn't my original intent, a monster manual of the sort of bush league jerk-demigods that or Conan or Elric would end knocking over, isn't the worst resource for picaresque high-level play...
Anyways, so you have this books and there's a ton of gods in it. There's a god of swords, a god of axes, a god of siege warfare, a god of sharks, a god of earthquakes, a god of forest fires, a god of dancing girls, a god of slime monsters, a god of sea monsters, a god of mules, a god of arson, and so forth and so forth. And none of them have any big, campaign altering elements. And they're all nicely somewhere suitably between archetypal and weird.
When a new player asks if they can have a Cleric of the god of poison, or the god of apes, or the god of flowers, or some other random or way-out god, this book could have a fair chance of providing. Plus, for a DM being able to browse the index and think that "...maybe I want cultists of the god of Wrestling in my campaign..."
Another element could be associated minor artifacts for appropriate deities, with appropriate associated complications; another resource for emulating Elric-esque High Level Sword & Sorcery, "Our adventuring buddy is possessed by this ancient, holy headsmans' axe, and so far has proven to be nigh unstoppable; we can either kill him or kill the god of Decapitation..."
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
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Very nice. A couple of holy rituals wouldn't go amiss either.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly enough, this is similar to an idea I had for a semi-regular feature on my blog, but I never got round to starting it. Maybe I need to change that ...
ReplyDeleteI'd dig that. Back in the day one of my favorite books to read was Deities and Demigods. I loved to trip out on all the cool descriptions, illustrations and crazy powers.
ReplyDeleteGreat shades of Fahfrd and tge Grey Mouser's Avenue of the Gods: Issac of the Jug!
ReplyDeleteI'll buy that.
ReplyDeleteWould they have hit points? I like my swords & sorcery gods murderable. None of that pansy "oh it was just an avatar, he's still alive over on THIS plane" foolishness either.
ReplyDeleteUnknown Gods is such a neat book, very inspirational. I'd love to see something in that spirit.
ReplyDeleteI like throwing some weird little gods into my Nod stuff, mostly inspired by the JG product you mentioned. Makes for a more interesting world.
ReplyDeleteI flashed on Terry Pratchett's novel, "Small Gods" where the basic premise is that a God waxes and wanes in power and awesomeness in relation to the number of followers and believers he/she has.
ReplyDeleteSo, you could have, say, a Mouse God who, by accident or through the work of some loyal PCs, is gifted with a relic that attracts believers and then, suddenly he evolves into Ares, God of War (and Mice).
I'd buy that book.
ReplyDeleteI was hoping for a post on the Halloween Encounter Critical session, but this is awesome instead.
ReplyDeleteThis is an excellent idea. I use the shit out of Unknown Gods.
What Sean said.
ReplyDeleteTwo Amazons, a Dwarf, a Lizard Man, a Klengon, and a Wooky walk into a tower of a stargazer…
(Insert EC session synopsis. End with TPK)
So what do you call this adventuring party? The Aristocrats!
Sean & B. Portly: Part I is up now.
ReplyDeleteI'd by that book
ReplyDelete