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.
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.
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.)
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?