Little gods and what they do for a settting.

Petty Gods

It is my birthday as I am writing this and I thought about gods in OSR ttrpgs. I received Petty Gods: Revised and Expanded Edition and it got me thinking about how cooler religions could be with lots of smaller gods rather than one or a couple gods. I don't like clerics as written since they have the most assumptions about a setting. Fighters assume going into combat is a regular thing, magic user assume magic is a thing and a common thing and thieves assume there is crime. Clerics assume that there are undead, religions and gods. That's a lot and I often find in settings that are more distant from the traditional OSR fantasy often rework or replace the cleric all together since an assumption of the cleric clashes with the setting. 

From Rended Press

 

Besides, The only classes I respect are Warriors and Wonder people. Cleric does a decent job at both and it annoys me. The main idea of clerics is they pick from a pantheon and dedicate themselves to one particular god. I don't like this since that is diet monotheism and doesn't really capitalize on the whole multiple gods in a pantheon thing. There is a series of blog posts of how a polytheist world actually looks like and I feel there is unexplored potential. You also run into the problem of "Why can't my all powerful god solve the problem?" since these pantheons often have gods that can do miracles that can eliminate most problems (like resurrection, summoning natural disasters etc.) and the GM has to come up with an arbitrary reason why they can't (They're busy, They aren't allowed, The Material Plane smells awful). 

 

Small gods fix all lot of these problems since first off, they can't do big miracles all the time since they don't have the power or what you want is outside their narrow domain, secondly religion feels more accessible since you and around 3 dozen others know they are a thing so it isn't a class exclusive thing. and lastly the OSR cleric as we know it makes more sense since the god is so small it needs more followers which you can help bring in causing you to adventure while pledged to a deity. Furthermore it adds life to the local region as gods represent things the area cares about strongly. (For example, a god of fishing would be important to a culture that values fishing, which means different coastal villages could hail or not hail this god.)

Selunes Character sheet (shared with permission)

I implemented this philosophy with my lands of legend campaign where two characters were religious and had very specialized domains. One character (pictured above) played Baldur's Gate 3 and wanted to play a Selune cleric. I told them that Selune here was much weaker, only covering the realm of moonlight and the half moon. This was interesting as the cleric used their magic to enhance their ally's weapons using moonlight. The other religious character (the Prima Prestor) was a cleric of a god of their home, Heso (spelled wrong but don't remember the correct spelling). Prima Prestor preached, expanding followers till one, Greg, became a fellow Prestor and learned how to use basic firearms. Heso was the deity of fast metal shrapnel which just so happened to get a surge in power once firearms were invented.

 

From Oldest.org
 

Both gods had very specific domains that allowed the players to be creative. This was cool and added to the setting. Through play, The cleric came from a rough town where crime was common, and moonlight help guide people to safety. Heso came from a preacher's background, where explosives were used in the mines next to the church. Overall, this process is cool, and helps do worldbuilding and adds player buy in in minutes. Small gods also give settlements and dungeon factions interesting angles to approach them if they hail a small god. All this talk has caused me to think further about gods. It is unclear if it will result in a part 2 of this post. 

Clickables!

I Cast Light shows us 1d20 alternatives to B2 

Seedling talks about defining the OSR

Macropertus blends OD&D and Gamma world together

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