Jan 14 2009
Designing a Religious Pantheon
As promised, I am leaving the Wikipedia topic and moving on to another issue of Threshold’s game design. The religion system is probably one of the most robust and popular role playing features on Threshold. In this post, I am going to talk specifically about how the deities were created. I am assisted in this task by the recent discovery of an article I wrote for the webzine Imaginary Realities back in December of 1999. In fact, why don’t you click over to that article, then come back for a few more thoughts from me and some discussion: The Making of a Pantheon .
A Little More Insight into Threshold’s Religious Pantheon
As I noted in the article, what I basically did was compile a long list of concepts I wanted the deities to represent. Then I grouped them into categories as best as I could. Once I had it narrowed down to about 13, I started making the actual deities. I wanted a good balance between male and female, so I went half and half with Bilanx (the God of Balance) being either neuter or bi-gendered. There’s another first for Threshold: the first transexual deity in a MUD/MMO!
It might interest you to know that all of the deities, and specifically their detailed stories, were written on a pen and paper notepad while I was in various law school lectures. Instead of listening to the lecture, I was sitting there created and writing about the deities for Threshold’s pantheon. In a round-about way, my student loans were my first game developer paychecks.
Between classes, I would sometimes go to the law school computer lab and type some of them up. Then I would email them to myself so I would have them on my home computer. The other students would sit at their computers with Lexis/Nexis or Westlaw going, and I was typing away in notepad and email.
How comes your removed Calypso from Threshold? Taking the name of a rather well known nymph 1:1 for a deity, not sure about that… but otherwise, a goddess of luck is usually my favorite. I used to pray to Fortuna/Tymora/Tyche in various RPGS. OK, seems Threshold players will have to make do with Loviatar and Bast. I am a bit confused by the two gods of war and Gethsemane seems utterly unappealing to me, he seems to be a mix of a god of freedom with a thief.
The pantheon of gods you describe is mostly of the greek type. No chance for monotheism, but there is still a place for a god who wants his followers to only worship him and noone else for example. There might also be groups of individuals praying to the same god, but following rather different interpretations of his words/writings.
The next question is how involved the gods will be in your MUD. Will they send their messengers or act by themselves, or give mortals tasks without appearing on the scene at all.
Another problem are conflicts between the gods. The Asen/Æsir had their counterparts in Hel and Fenrir and a third party in the Vanir… and actually it was a bit more complex than just good and evil. Vishnu and Set are crystal-clear opposites of each other, and this is good. On the other hand, these gods are very general to the point that we have gods that pick up certain traits that can be considered good or evil. This usually leads to a dualism, two different factions of gods, the good guys and the bad guys.
The issue is that all these gods exist in the game, whereas deities in our world are usually restricted to their believers. So we can have Christians, Devil-Worshippers (which are just the anti-part of christianity, actually), Norse, Roman, Native North American and Indian god followers. This makes for interesting conflicts and similarities that the typical mud-pantheon does not have.
One thing I totally agree with is that the gods have to be similar to real world mythology. Either the name or the concept behind them need to be very clear and somehow known, so that people do not get confused and have to read up what the god actually represents or does.
I think one step further would be to make the Pantheon a bit more complex than the basic dualities of light and darkness. The god of balance and chaos and whatever is usually a prime example for this.
Makes me wonder why fantasy worlds so often become medieval worlds with greek/norse god pantheons!
I can also imagine followers of the ONE AND ONLY TRUE GOD fighting versus the pagans that worship other gods that are NOT TRUE, at least to the followers of the one god, of course. 
There is the german fantasy series where the followers of the one god Tjured fight the pagans of the north who are in league with the elves and other fantasy creatures that actually exist for real there. The funny thing is that the followers of Tjured follow the eternal crusade of a demon who twisted the by nature positive religion of Tjured to be the instrument of his vengeance.
I think it is possible to make things accessible and easy to follow while not re-creating the classic greek or norse mythology pantheon. Maybe I have given you some food for thought.
P.S.: You must tell me what happened to the goddess of luck.
For those who do not know the Threshold history you might understand Longasc’s post better if you read two cuts on a Huge RP event that ended up with some big changes to the Pantheon. They can be found on the Threshold homepage www.thresholdrpg.com in the Tavern section, named “Beginning” and “Failure”.
Maybe this is a bit of an insiders curiousity, but I would love to hear some of your experiences with what worked and what didn’t and why you ended up changing some things on the way. If the Aethereal Shift is too close to discuss without ruining the ongoing RP you might be able to comment on some of the things from back when Bast, the Goddess of Lust was addeded to the Pantheon.
All of the deities we removed or added were the direct result of how role play progressed in the game world. It really was all about the players and which religions actively worked to preserve and grow their faith. I don’t want to go into too many specifics, because readers of the “dead” gods might take it personally and think I am criticizing their RP. I am definitely not. Things just played out the way they did, and we have always tried to preserve the fact that players shape the world in Threshold.
Well, as you all know, I like focusing on my mistakes. Maybe I just like wallowing in them so I can hopefully learn from them. So a few examples of mistakes that we learned from:
We have learned to be very careful about giving multiple extremely popular concepts to the same deity, and give it no drawbacks. In a system of religious conflict, a deity like Vivoria presents a huge problem. There is no reason for anyone to dislike her. She brings EVERYONE’s followers back to life. None of her concepts were contentious.
For Calypso, we put magic and luck on the same deity, and then made luck the main stat for thieves (and as a result they identified strongly with luck). As a result, about 95% of both mages and thieves went Calypso. That was not only unbalanced, but it made it hard on people in those guilds who wanted to go a different way (especially if they wanted to worship Chronos).
For Kylamane, we made the mistake of designing a deity whose principles were inherently passive. Role playing games tend to focus on actions. It is hard to actively role play apathy or a lack of emotion. There are certainly examples from literature or movies (Spock, for example), but in a work of literature/movie you have writers who can develop situations specifically to demonstrate their cold reason and logic. In a game, trying to “stand out” through apathy and lack of feeling is extremely difficult. Most people just end up ignoring you or assume you are a dullard. That made what was an extremely cool religion in concept really hard to enjoy as a player.
You are probably right. I never thought that much about it, but “luck” is very hard to roleplay. On my free Ultima Online shard, Tymora never had much followers besides me, too.
I interpreted Tymora as a goddess of adventure, the motto being “fortune favors the bold”. So I gambled a lot in games of chance and took aggressive risks. Plus I always helped people during very daring and bold dungeon trips. And in doubt, I always rolled a dice.
But the god of magic, Azuth, and Tempus, the god of War (even the name sounds similar to Threshold’s god of war) always had more followers. I usually prayed that Tymora would turn away from them and leave them to Beshaba, her evil sister, the goddess of misfortune…^^
You said Kylamane had not too much followers either? Hm… the idea of ICE and WINTER is usually connected with the god of death. It is a pity that the moon goddess dropped out of the Pantheon.
Interesting: I played on a small german roleplaying server, and the relative unpopularity of my favorite goddess seems to be quite similar to her role/popularity in the bigger Threshold community. I still wonder how Gethsemane could make it instead of Kylamane.
Seems your theories about crafting Gods for a MUD-Pantheon are right on spot! It is quite disturbing that GOOD, EVIL, DEATH(+LIFE, usually less popular somehow, not cool enough?) BALANCE and WAR always surface on top!
P.S.: Please use your administrative powers and call it the “Rage of a Mad God from Outer Space” and lower the stats of all infidels who opposed the goddesses of luck and the moon permanently.
I am reading the story of Calypso right now. Calypso seems to be a pretty cool goddess. I blame evil admins and players! I did not read anything of her removal, actually. She was playing a rather active part in the story, but it seems not so much in the player created content.
To Longasc:
Luck: Oh Luck was super popular on Threshold. That was not the problem for Calypso at all. It was TOO popular. Almost every thief was a Calypso follower. We had to take steps IC to ameliorate that a bit (same as with the mage guild).
Gods of War: The popularity of a God of War is why we eventually added a new god, Belphegore, as a God of Battle. He was a more aggressive deity, and story-wise had been one of Tempest’s greatest Generals. This gave people a different way to go with the War theme, and broke it up a bit. That helped tremendously. Both religions are still very popular.
Kylamane: Yes, it is a pity this religion took off. It is still one of my favorite religious concepts of all the ones I created. It just turned out too difficult and too “un-fun” for people to play. Almost everyone who joined the religion eventually got frustrated and either re-rolled or quit.
Gethsemane: You wonder and how this deity could make it? Everyone loves Chaos and Betrayal!
This religious has actually almost destroyed itself a few times when the followers got a little too irrational/crazy with some of the betrayal stuff.
To Anonymous:
If you go to the tavern section of the Threshold web site, you can find global spam logs from some of the big events. Other than that, we generally leave it to players to record the on-going history. They do an extremely good job of it too. We have a library, a museum, and two newspapers in game that are totally player run (with code support).
I was the anonymous guy, sorry.
I hope someone else comments on this article, I am sick of reading myself making the first, third and whatever else comment.
I should start playing Threshold, but I am already spending too much time playing too many games. Really outstanding is Mount & Blade, if you have a love for the middle ages, you will adore it. Just as the IGN editor who loves George R.R. Martin’s fantasy novels and the middle ages, too: http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/943/943930p1.html (Mount & Blade, positive review - I lost two hours to this game yesterday. It is programmed by a turkish husband and his wife, and it makes many high budget games look bad. It is an exercise in game design and pure fun. It has several rough spots and severe flaws, too, but this does not change the fact that this game just rocks.)
Yummy. This is the sort of thing I was requesting, yes. I’m short on time and Threshold knowledge, so for now, I’ll just note that I’m hooked and will be digging into this further.
Many thanks!
I’ll reply just so Longasc doesn’t have to talk to himself.
I’ll address the deeper problems of roleplaying a follower of Kylamane, even though I took a central part in helping to develop a part of the personalities of her followers. Kylamane was a goddess that eschewed all strong emotions. (This is a little bit like Buddhism only warped.) How do you roleplay this? Most of the roleplay required complete inaction, which can be viewed as completely passive. Too many of the players had to act like they just didn’t care because that’s how they interpreted the goddess. It’s actually very hard to roleplay a non-reaction when everything your character does (or doesn’t do) has to be communicated in text.
So, ultimately, Kylamane operates much better as she is now, a demigoddess under Set’s dominion. Kylamane actually has an extremely strong following, and worshipers are working to bring her back to deity-hood. I have no idea if that will happen or not, but I’ve learned never to say ‘never’ when it comes to Threshold.
P.S. I like this color a lot more than the red.
> P.S. I like this color a lot more than the red.
Success!
> I should start playing Threshold
Yes, you definitely should Longasc. Threshold is free, so you can play as much or as little as you want and not have to sweat a subscription.
> Yummy. This is the sort of thing I was requesting, yes.
Good!
I love this post and the futher discussion. I would love to hear some more but don’t know what to ask.
How do you avoid that some religions die out and others get crowded?
How has the death and birth of the Gods affected the game, the ongoing RP and the players?
> How do you avoid that some religions die out and
> others get crowded?
I’m not sure you really can. You can plan ahead, and think about the concepts you have for various deities, but other than that many things are unpredictable. I would not have thought the thieves would flock to Calypso simply because the luck stat was a requirement for joining their guild. Stats play a very small purpose in Threshold, so I was surprised by that.
> How has the death and birth of the Gods affected the
> game, the ongoing RP and the players?
It has definitely added a lot to the game. People talk about the historical events with a sense of awe and amazement that adds to the immersiveness of the world tremendously. It also makes people who are part of a religion aware that their deity can perish if they do not work to maintain his/her power (through active, devoted worship).