Thursday, May 06, 2010

Gods & Deities, Mk. II

I pulled the gods and deities info from this post from my Modular Campaign Setting Elements Wiki and posted it more or less exactly as it was originally written. Since that put it in front of my face again, I've been reviewing it, and I think there's a problem with it.

Basically, it's too "cute." Which, granted, in the spirit of the games that I've used them for, was OK. Those were pretty silly, almost parody games. So having obvious D&D demon lords repurposed as the pantheon felt more like an attempt at a clever in-joke rather than something that could be taken seriously. Which was too bad; I first got the idea from Green Ronin's Armies of the Abyss where it was meant to be done straight, and lead to a notably darker vibe to the campaign. In practice, I didn't find that it worked quite as well as I'd hoped. Like I said, it more resembled a wink and nudge esoteric joke than something that added an element of "darkness" to the game.

So, I'm going to scrap them. I've been trawling through real-life mythologies looking for names that I can adopt or adapt into my new mythology. Or, I might just make up my own names. I'm not sure yet. The only thing I'm sure of is that I don't want these obvious and overt D&Disms in my setting anymore.

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