If simplifying the divine roster is your goal, there are probably a lot of human gods who can be excised as well. But if I had to choose, I'd choose a lot of briefly defined gods to only a few exhaustively detailed deities. More gods are better.
For that matter, I think some of the races could stand to be taken out of the world. Who really needs halflings? But they should exist, if only to give players more options - it's the same with the gods.
Purge them all!
Down with the foul interlopers!
Ulaa for the Dwarves!
Ehlonna for the Elves!
:hoppingma
If you purge their Gods, why not go all the way and play them as humans with deformaties, which happens too much already given the humancentric flavor of most games.
Why shouldn't the Demi-humans have their own unique gods and culture if every human variation has them?
If you must delete gods, how about some that don't have any planar or cultural basis and were created to try "stuff out", some of the Unknown pantheon could be trimmed, I guess?
Rest assured the fans will scream, depending on whose Ox is gored.
The Demi-humans have so little, leave them be, especially the poor halflings.
Greysmere isn't more significant than Karakast (who worship Clangeddin Silverbeard) or Dumadan (who worship Moradin). Greysmere is population 400, Karakast is population 600, and Dumadan is population 800. If anything, Dumadan is the main clan.
The giantish goddess Diancastra once visited Lyzandred's tomb.
Moradin forged Fortubo's hammer, Golbi, according to Len Lakofka's original write-up of the Suel god. He's allied with Berronar, too.
The "goblinoid Power" partly responsible for the fell magic of Darkpool in Iuz the Evil is likely Stalker, from Monster Mythology.
Erevan Ilesere, Corellon Larethian, and Sehanine Moonbow are the gods responsible for creating the Fading Land known as the Moonarch of the Seldarine (From the Ashes).
There are priests of Corellon Larethian, Labelas Enoreth, and Sehanine Moonbow in the Welkwood, according to From the Ashes.
Warrior-priests of Prince Melf's Knights of Luna usually worship Corellon Larethian (again, From the Ashes).
Kirilarien Allavesse, of the Fellowship of the Torch, is a cleric of Corellon (FTA).
The Honeycombed Halls of the Diirinken are a derro settlement beneath the Abbor-alz, named for the derro god Diirinka.
The fight with Corellon Larethian is part of Lolth's backstory in 1e Deities & Demigods.
The earliest material does not have any race specific deities, but at this point the majority are pretty well connected to GH via various 2nd and 3rd edition products. Rip's list is pretty good at showing that.
I don't really think there is a "Flan" or "Oerid" pantheon any more than there is an "elvish" or "dwarven" pantheon. IMHO, those gods are grouped by the folks they are most prominently worshipped by, but that doesn't mean they are solely associated with them even before the Great Kingdom mixed everything up. Its quite clear that the Flan had multiple religions. There were at least two main branches of the Oerids, who didn't necessarily follow the same gods.
I just think that after the thousand plus years of mingling, the specifics of the gods' origins are not germane.
Ehlonna, Lirr, Myhriss, Trithereon, and perhaps Phaulkon all make pretty good 'elf gods' whose faith as spread beyond that to others.
I think it really depends on what you envision for your campaign. If you don't have the time or inclination to work out the hows and whys of various sects of the gods, its a lot easier and more efficient to go with more gods. Fewer gods only works if you really put effort into making them detailed and their various cults distinctive and interesting. If the elves worship Ehlonna exactly the same way that humans do, then the world is a less colorful place and Corellon and other latter day gods are likely to be missed.
Its also important to consider what your players expect. If your elf players are all keen on Corellon, Sehanine, Labelas, etc and you don't provide them, they may not be as satisfied as they otherwise would be.
I just think that after the thousand plus years of mingling, the specifics of the gods' origins are not germane.
I agree with you on this completely. My point was that, before they mingled, they worshipped largely seperate sets of gods. I don't think nonhuman races have mingled with the human races to the same degree that the Oeridians, Flan, and Suel have mingled with one another; in that way, elves are more like the Baklunish or the Olman or Touv, and probably have seperate pantheons. Even in places where they obviously have mingled, as in the Principality of Ulek, it's more common for humans to adopt nonhuman gods than for the tradition-bound demihumans to adopt human ones - there are obviously exceptions to this, as in the dwarves adopting Fortubo and Obad-hai.
Naturally, your mileage may vary.
Worse, it attains a greater absurdity when we get things like the human "racial deity" in Races of Destiny who is a blatant racist. Apparently racial pride manifests differently for different creatures. For demihumans, it makes them "distinct." For humanoids, it proves their evil.
As I ascribe to the notion that all the Greyhawkian gods are ascended mortals, the pantheons represent which mortals of each culture have so ascended. Thus, I am completely for the demi-human/humanoid pantheons, for they are the demi-humans/humanoids who have ascended.
It wouldn't require the elfs and dorfs to be borrowing from upstart humans if that's not your shtick. THough its obvious that in GH they have. Its humans who've adopted the other races' gods. If you want snooty racist gods "sorry, buddy, but Moradin don't hear tallfolk", that's fine. I do think if you are adding all those gods from Dragon magazine and elsewhere, you are undercutting GH specific gods. Ulaa, Fortubo, and Jascar are pretty irrelevant if you have the full Mordinsamman in play.
IMC, Ehlonna, Lirr, Myhriss, and Trithereon were originally elf gods. And the elves have a very distinctive religion incorporating them that is different than how they are worshipped by humans. Ulaa and Bleredd were originally dorf gods. And so on.
THe sad thing is that they were imported into the FR.
The racial pantheons are not originally part of Greyhawk. They were published in Dragon magazine well after Greyhawk came out, but before the FR came out. They were always part of the Forgotten Realms, but were retrofitted into Greyhawk. So I don't see anything shameful about it at all.
But dieties like Ulaa and Ehlonna have "unknown" as their racial orgin, IIRC (don't have that exact list handy...). There is no reason that they cannot have been originally dwarven or elven.
Both are poly-racial deities. Ulaa is worshipped equally by dwarves, humans, and gnomes. Ehlonna is worshipped by humans, elves, halflings, and faerie folk.
They work best, in my opinion, as either "half-breed gods" or "common ancestor" types. Both are evidence that the religions of humans and nonhumans overlap, but I think attributing either as the primary patrons of elves or dwarves specifically is a bit of a stretch (not for a campaign that alters things to accomodate it, as yours does, but there's nothing in their descriptions that indicates it).
Ulaa, Fortubo, and Jascar are pretty irrelevant if you have the full Mordinsamman in play.
No, this isn't necessarily the case. Fortubo, as I see him, plays a major role as the liberator of Suel dwarves. All dwarves whose ancestors were enslaved by the ancient Suel owe him their present freedom. As such, he's got a distinctive role as the patron of a specific dwarven subculture.
As I have it, he's intermarried with the Mordinsamman, and his children - later corrupted by fell magics - are Diinkarazan and Diirinka, who "adopted" the human/dwarf crossbreeds the Suel had abused (or Diirinka did, anyway), gifting them with their profane secrets in order to give them their savants, and the will to break free of their slavery, just as Fortubo had saved the pureblood dwarves. He thus plays a critical role in dwarven myth, while his human Suel blood still has real meaning in the story. Diirinka and Diirinka are hybrid gods, like the hybrids Diirinka altered and adopted. But the dwarves still have their own distinctive deities.
Ulaa can be seen either as the child of a dwarf and gnome god (perhaps the daughter of Dumathoin and a gnomish goddess) who married a human god and became a significant patron of all three races, or as the ur-mother who mothered both the gnomish and dwarven pantheons, and took a human god as the latest of her many husbands in order to show her children that it was time to ally with the "new" race of humanity.
Ehlonna could be seen as the Great Fey Mother whose permission the Seldarine and faerie powers required to enter the Oerth at all, or she could be seen as a crossbreed, the result of a dalliance or marriage between elven and human gods.
In no case do they need to be irrelevant. The elves and dwarves who worship the pantheons created by Kuntz, Ward, Moore, and Sargent aren't necessarily the only cultures those races have. More religions can result in more diversity and intrigue.
Jascar was never presented as a nonhuman god to my knowledge.
And the elves have a very distinctive religion incorporating them that is different than how they are worshipped by humans.
I'm sure they do, and I'm sure you've done a brilliant job (have you shared what you've worked on to the Greyhawk community at large? I'm sure many would like to look at it).
Ulaa and Bleredd were originally dorf gods.
Bleredd was specifically human, according to the 1983 boxed set, which implies that gods can belong to particular species. Ulaa is presented as a puzzle of uncertain origins, as if a god worshipped equally by three different races is an unusual situation.
The racial pantheons are not originally part of Greyhawk. They were published in Dragon magazine well after Greyhawk came out, but before the FR came out. They were always part of the Forgotten Realms, but were retrofitted into Greyhawk. So I don't see anything shameful about it at all.
The racial pantheons were first introduced in Deities & Demigods way back in 1980, significantly before gods like Boccob and Ulaa. Only the pantheon heads were mentioned, but that they had other gods as well was implied. Roger Moore expanded on that base, and Gary Gygax accepted his version enough to include it in Unearthed Arcana. As I showed above, Greyhawk has always implied that demihumans had their own gods who didn't overlap with the gods of the humans.
There is nothing shameful about retconning that, but it does represent a substantial retcon to the flavor of the gods and the greater setting to turn a bunch of human gods (Trithereon is definitely described as human, for example) into gods of nonhuman origin. I'm sure your campaign's religions are great and I hope you tell us more about how you've made them distinctive, but Greyhawk as published is definitely a place where seperate pantheons can flourish. It's not a "one pantheon, many names" situation like Dragonlance has. Before the Great Migrations, the Oerids, Suel, Flan, Baklunish, Touv, Olman, elves, dwarves, halflings, orcs, and so on had pantheons which were almost entirely seperate from one another. Some of these have subsequently blended as the Oerids, Flan, and Suel peoples blended with one another, but it's perfectly reasonable to think that some would remain seperate, especially among races that remain biologically distinct. Until all elves have become half-elves, there will be a seperate elven pantheon. Until dwarves figure out a way to breed with non-dwarves and entirely disappear in the process, there will be a seperate dwarven pantheon. And so on.
I have absolutely no problem with someone deciding otherwise for their particular campaign, but it's not in any way better or more sensible to think that only human cultures have completely seperate gods, while nonhumans have the same gods and seperate religions.
Jascar wasn't presented as a non human god, but he's presented as having a very multiracial faith and basically having Fortubo and Phaulkon as his only associates.
Anyway, I wasn't saying that the Demi human dieties are total latecomers. I remember when they came out in Dragon. I was just saying they weren't created *for* Greyhawk and I don't think they were mentioned in GH specific material until 2nd edition (could be wrong on that). I was just correcting the idea that they were somehow "native" to GH and stolen by the FR. They were created as generic D&D stuff, to be used whereever the DM wanted. Corellon Larethian was in the original D&DG, but so was Anhur and Cthulhu.
Oh, and for Bleredd I know he was presented as a human god. Every god in the early material was (Gygax's conscious humanocentrism probably, or maybe just a conceit of the Pluffet Smedgar/Savant Sage authorship), though Ulaa and Ehlenestra are somewhat ambiguous. In my heretical mythology he was a dwarf god who long ago befriended humans and taught them lots of neat stuff (basically the shift to iron age) and so has been worshipped amongst humans for as long as there are records. Trithereon turned away from the other elf gods to pursue his personal path of vengeance, an ideology that has gained ground amongst men but not much amongst the elves.
I don't think they were mentioned in GH specific material until 2nd edition (could be wrong on that).
As I said above, Moradin and Berronar were both mentioned in Fortubo's original description in Dragon #88 (page 10). That precedes FR (as a published setting) for sure.
They were created as generic D&D stuff, to be used whereever the DM wanted. Corellon Larethian was in the original D&DG, but so was Anhur and Cthulhu.
Yes, but Greyhawk doesn't have Egyptians or Rl'yeh or Arkham. It doesn't have Greeks, Melniboneans, or Sumerians, either. But it sure has bugbears, elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, centaurs, and drow.
Yes, but Greyhawk doesn't have Egyptians or Rl'yeh or Arkham. It doesn't have Greeks, Melniboneans, or Sumerians, either. But it sure has bugbears, elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, centaurs, and drow.
The "original" Greyhawk had Greeks and Norse for sure.
So why not expect that "generic" demihuman deities left with them?
As for the D&DG deities being included in GH, that leaves open the question of why they didn't appear in the GH deity list since they already had appeared in a book.
Likewise the reference in the Suel articles came after Moore's articles expanding the demihuman pantheon, so that speaks of the possibility of a retcon for their history as well. Given the retcons from L2 to those articles, I don't see why that is impossible.
As for the D&DG deities being included in GH, that leaves open the question of why they didn't appear in the GH deity list since they already had appeared in a book.
It's a list of human deities. When some of the human deities are worshipped also by demihumans, it's so noted, but otherwise they don't go into demihuman religion. The assumption that those are the only gods demihumans worship - or that they worship other human gods not named as demihuman gods - isn't a very natural one. Oerth is a place where each culture has its own pantheon. Demihumans have largely seperate cultures; therefore they have largely seperate deities, as much as the Baklunish and pre-inundation Suel. Some gods of a specific racial origin are noted as also being common in most places, some gods have since their inception been common to most places and have never had a specific racial origin, and some have an origin specifically noted as being unknown or perplexing, as in Ulaa and Tharizdun. Ulaa is mysterious not because she's really a dwarf but because no one knows what the heck she's supposed to be.
It's quite a major hole that the gods are noted as being originally Flan, Suel, Baklunish, Oeridian, common, or unknown in origin, but none are noted as originating among the demihuman peoples. Are we to imagine that the demihumans never considered religion until they talked things over with human clerics? Perhaps - they dynamics of a campaign where the gods "chose" the human peoples first and nonhumans are simply an afterthought might be interesting - but I think it's more likely that the demihuman-specific gods were simply outside the scope of what was already a very lengthy list.
Likewise the reference in the Suel articles came after Moore's articles expanding the demihuman pantheon, so that speaks of the possibility of a retcon for their history as well.
My point wasn't that Fortubo was always conceived as allied with the dwarven pantheon, only that there was at least one mention of those gods in a Greyhawk-specific 1st edition source. I don't know if Lakofka thought of Fortubo as an ally of Moradin back in 1980, or if he had even detailed Fortubo at all before his Dragon Magazine deadline. I think it's likely most of the detail on the Suel gods was invented on the spot.
I'm not sure exactly what you are arguing, though. Those gods were definitely made canon and the definitely pre existed the FR. Perhaps you are confusing my position with that of the gentleman I objected to? He thought the Demi human gods were lifted from GH and used in the FR. I merely pointed out that they were actually created between the two settings' first publications as generic content. They were then added back into GH and were part of the FR from the getgo.
Its perfectly reasonable (and its certainly canon) to use them in GH. I don't, for several reasons. One is that I dislike the baggage they bring in the minds of players, a great many of whom are far better familiar with their FR implementation and development (especially relevant to the elves). Since one of the venues through which I DM is online via NWN, this is a recurring issue for me. The more important reason for me is that, from a creativity standpoint, I prefer a more syncretic system with fewer gods and a lot more aspects and sects, within and across cultures, belonging to each one.
To answer a previous question, I have not published anything related to this at canonfire or elsewhere. I have thought about it, but my entire cosmology is very heretical so I haven't gotten around to trying to break it up into discrete articles that would actually make sense on their own. We'll see how it goes. But even my fairly benign centaur article prompted a number of "err, what's this then?" questions about heretical elements I overlooked in editing.
I'm not sure exactly what you are arguing, though.
I don't necessarily have a greater point I'm making. I'm just responding to specific things.
One is that I dislike the baggage they bring in the minds of players, a great many of whom are far better familiar with their FR implementation and development (especially relevant to the elves). Since one of the venues through which I DM is online via NWN, this is a recurring issue for me. The more important reason for me is that, from a creativity standpoint, I prefer a more syncretic system with fewer gods and a lot more aspects and sects, within and across cultures, belonging to each one.
That's perfectly reasonable (and would be even if you didn't have specific reasons why you preferred to do it that way). It'd be interesting to see exactly how you set that up.
I don't necessarily have a greater point I'm making. I'm just responding to specific things.
Yeah, I understood that. It just seemed a few of your comments didn't quite follow from anything I'd said, so I wondered if you'd confused my point with that of the one I was responding to originally. No big deal.
That's perfectly reasonable (and would be even if you didn't have specific reasons why you preferred to do it that way). It'd be interesting to see exactly how you set that up.
I'll see what I can do, but no promises. Unless I find a way to retire early, anyways.