I was immediately reminded of and just have to share a quote from scifi character Marcus Cole: "You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe."
Glad I wasn't the only one who remembered that line. That said, I think a common phrase in this world might be something like, "life never gives you challenges you can't handle."
I love using these sorts of prompts! And on the topic of "balance" in media like Star Wars and Legend of Korra, I think that comes down to the difference in western and eastern philosophy. A lot of western moral theory, influenced by Christian traditions, tends to focus on moral absolutes- being loving, forgiving, and generous is good, while being cold, angry, and greedy is bad. Eastern influenced philosophy like the Dao/Tao meanwhile focuses on finding the stable middle point- love for instance can become evil when it is either lacking or too intense, or otherwise not balanced out by some other force, so the good isn't love itself but love in the right balance. I think you still have a valid criticism though, since the works you referenced were instances of western writers taking inspiration from eastern philosophy, and either poorly communicating or poorly understanding the ideas they were working with.
In addition, if a property like that is around long enough there is more and more chance that the original intent will drift. IIRC the term "light side of the Force" doesn't show up in the original trilogy, or I think the prequels. The original idea wasn't that Jedi were light, and Sith dark, and you balanced between the two, but that Jedi represented balance and harmony with the Force, and the Sith/Dark Side were expressly unbalancing. It was Sin and Yang, not Yin and Yang.
Atla is a better example of eastern philosophy than Korra. For example, they TALK about balance between Raava and Vaatu, but Vaatu is just evil, he makes everything worse. Also compare Aang talking to Heibai vs the "spirit waterbending" in Korra.
It's also worth noting that the Avatar rpg does this well in my (admittedly amateur) opinion. Each playbook (class) has a balance track between different core themes in it, for instance Duty vs Freedom for The Heir. (might not be the exact terms. Or the playbook's actual name) Moving away from your centre can empower you, but it also puts you at more risk, since if you become too unbalanced, it actively damages your character.
The wild animal goddess as a war goddess also parallels the termite vs ants that guard their hill members from the other animal specie by literally guarding the trail with soldier ants/termites
I have a deck of tarot cards that are Celtic-themed/inspired (the Celtic Wisdom Tarot, for anyone curious), and their major arcana is very different from a more conventional deck. After watching this video, I realized that not only does Mike have a fantastic idea, this deck that I have might work even better than a "standard" deck. I thank you, good sir, for introducing me to this idea. I think this is going to make a particular book I'm writing much, much more comprehensive!
I wish I could have found celtic themed one, I found a manga tarot deck. Unique art but very strong and interesting designs help with things to so not bad. I'll have to look for this celtic one two in case I go wild lol.
Something I like a little more is tying your psychopomp to the moon since people die during the day more often. Maybe tie it to the tides. Something like there's more passengers when you die during certain phases of the moon/day because the tide isn't high enough for the psychopomp to take you to be judged. And it's considered cruel to murder someone when they'll have to wait longer or the psychopomp charges more to take you across. And the Godess is more flippant when then there's a large back log, and is willing to take their time / kinder when things are slower.
Years ago, I created a dragon-based Pantheon with a friend to sue for a personal RP we were doing. When I started DMing a few years ago, I still had the notes of that lying around, and decided to use them as a pantheon. Now these "Dragon Arcana" are the gods of this homebrew world of mine, which we are currently playing our second campaign in. They are the "Third Pantheon". After the Age of the Creator gods, who are thinly-veiled versions of the baseline D&D Gods, and an Age of the ever-warring Mortal Gods.
Love this. I also use tarot cards & symbology a lot in my games, but not as gods - I used the Zodiacs for those. - Cancer, Pisces & Scorpio are the "royal family" who run the show - Virgo, Taurus & Capricorn are their strategists/war councilors - Aries, Leo & Sagittarius are their spies and informants - Gemini, Libra and Aquarius are their "weapons" and soldiers
For the God Carsos, I could see him quoting Xivu Arath the Hive God of War from the Destiny franchise. With lines like "Our dance will never end. I . . .Am . . . War!" and "I am the mountain upon which all swords shatter, hone your edge against me!"
Mara sounds interesting. What if knowledge was actually a finite resource, because knowledge can either be lost, consumed, or simply perish as the world continues to develop. So death is not necessarily shepard but a custodian/librarian?
My DM actually has a really interesting way of dealing with the gods. Basically each god has a set domain in the physical realm, for example a city and the surrounding countryside or a single island in the ocean. They get power from the number of worshippers in that area and more worshippers lets them expand their territory to cover a larger area. These gods don’t have fundamental themes like the Sun God or the God of Justice, instead they each just have different personalities and interests. The god of City A might be beautiful and enjoy getting involved in people’s love-lives while the god of City B enjoys war and sports. And anyone can worship any god regardless of where they are or where they were born, it just requires a greater level of devotion and alignment to their personality the farther you are removed from their domain. There are a handful of extremely powerful gods who cover huge portions of the continents, but also dozens to hundreds of smaller gods scattered around who also have various alliances with each other. It’s basically a second layer on top of the normal nation states vying for power and influence, and the two levels influence each other where for example a god might take steps to prevent two countries within its territory going to war but it can’t outright stop them without losing a bunch of power as people stop worshipping them.
@@SLorraineE It’s a very fluid system that basically allows for any god you want as a player, the only major downside is that the gods have very limited powers especially when extending their influence beyond their borders. Though it does provide a nice way to hand wave away why the gods don’t just solve everyone’s problems all the time, by total coincidence they only ever have enough power to do the most narratively appropriate thing.
I'm using the 4e/exandria pantheon for my game right now, but I am definitely a throw it all out and start over dm with each game so I might give this a shot next time. It's definitely a super interesting idea - thanks for sharing
One of my favourite videos on UA-cam by a small creator in a long time. The use of tarot card visuals and archetypes as inspiration to build out a pantheon and the way you pulled tgt different threads to create unique deities that I’m genuinely curious about and somehow already invested in - amazing. What a novel, standout idea, and what a fun ride it was to hear about your thought process for each deity and the connections btwn all of them. Absolutely loved this far beyond what I was expecting.
Imagining my character in a D&D campaign run by Supergeek, culture jamming the lore: "Among my people, Dasaar is god of karma, collector of outstanding moral debts, loan shark to the unredeemed, patron of the vengeful, the bail bondsman, and organized criminal guilds. Dasaar likes to think himself as right-hand man of Somariel, who merely tolerates him as a petty fool... who is nonetheless sometimes useful." Justice too close to Somariel, indeed.
When I got into tarot card reading, I was actually really interested in creating a world with a pantheon of Tarot Gods. This video is such a great help to develop my own worldbuilding.
This is just so much more dynamic and creatively freeing while also giving some helpful controls (using the card and a roll table) than what I originally came up with
I enjoyed your approach to this! I do enjoy when people get the tarot cards involved in any project, so this was quite enjoyable! I think I’ll use a method similar to this for my next set of pantheons if I run into trouble. 😄
This a really cool way of making pantheons. I might have to use it myself at some point. I have two gods in my homebrew pantheon who are both Nature domain but one has Peace, and the other war to have that prey/predator circle of life feeling. The Nature/ Peace deity was once a Harengon, the Nature/war a Tabaxi too.
You could argue that Somariel can bring balance by giving one person a wonderful life while another person has a terrible life. After all, that is still balanced but not exactly fair to the person with a terrible life.
After watching your patreon stream working with tarot cards to make the pantheon I "stole" the idea to make my own. However, I decided to create one god for each domain because it was my first time and making a god for several domains felt more complicated. Also, I used the description of the card meaning to help me to create ideas for the prompts for each god. Also, I started doing this to create the pantheon for my fantasy comic and I'm thinking to import them into my homebrew. But all in time for when they're needed. So thank you for that stream that gave me a huge inspiration for my creative process.
@@SupergeekMike I'll share just one of the domains so you can see how it worked for me. The prompt for Grave Domain came with the Wheel of Fortune card and I created a religion that understands that living is always a bunch of chance events and that life ends at the same time our luck ends. For the comic I don't need more because deities aren't going to be a big thing currently, but I want to give them more depth if I include them in my homebrew.
See, now I'm actively thinking about how a god under The Fool archetype would be as a ruler of a pantheon. The first mental image that comes to mind is basically if Loki ruled his own pantheon, which is an idea that both fascinates and worries me 😂
Wow I LOVE these gods! Thats such a cool way to make a pantheon, and Ive always been fond of 'equal and opposite' in a list of gods or god-like beings. This is making me want to make my own setting too, though I am currently running a Dragon Age game so my setting is pretty set lol
Nice idea to use tarot cards in creating a pantheon. In the homebrew world with my group I used the 7 deadly sins and 7 virtues to create a pantheon of seven gods. Basically mix and match one virtue to a sin. A god of wrath and justice, greed and hope or wisdom and gluttony. This created an interesting inner conflict within each of the gods and a nice flaw and ideal for player characters should they decide to follow a god. Rulewise in game, we have not connected aligments or specific cleric domains to the gods though.
Been (very) slowly putting together a world/campaign setting for the last 2yrs. Started writing and rewriting the pantheon a few days ago. Was using a mishmash of D&D gods as a base but then realized I don’t want to flesh out NPCs and plot hooks and then have to go back and retcon things to match the custom pantheon I wanted to create. So now I’m just here fervorously rewriting every god I took from D&D 😅 got my work cut out for me but I’m actually enjoying it as it’s naturally helping me flesh out more of the world’s lord and pre-history
Ok I actually NEED this video cuz this is exactly what I wanna do for the game I'm trying to make and have been stumped for weeks trying to figure out a good way to do it. Thank you for the ideas!
I've been working with using the tarot in my game world building. Not just for deities but classes and pretty much everything. So I hesitated to watch this particular video of yours. But I saw the video you dropped today and you referenced that it didn't do too well so I booked it back over here to check it out. Im always cautious about seeing things that are similar to what im doing but this was great. We pretty much use Tarot in the same way. I tend to get a little more into it just because I've been fascinated by it most of my life. But I love the ideas that came out for you and, as always, your videos get my brain working. Thank You for all you do.
Interesting! Pantheons tend to be an afterthought in my games mainly because I don't engage with religion in real life. But I can see using this method if I feel the need to create religious influence in my fantasy world.
Fascinating video. I went considerably more direct. Each domain is managed by a single deity, but they each have a couple of secondary domains they are associated with as well. Another thing I did is I made it so that although the whole pantheon is recognized by civilization, some deities are favored over other, depending on the region. My favorite aspect is the fact that the the true nature of the gods is somewhat ephemeral. They could be real. They could be different facets of a single monotheistic entity. They could be powerful celestial entities masquerading as gods, playing to the whims of mortals as entertainment for themselves.
In what is a semi-random theme with you, the idea of Amari being more or less powerful (and crossing over into the realm of the dead being harder or easier) depending on the phases of the moon is similarly used in Eberron, where each existing moon is connected to one of the (other) planes. And depending on whether the moon is close to Eberron or distant they have more or less effect, usually more so in the areas connected to that plane. :) (That one is not covered in RftLW but in Keith Baker's own Exploring Eberron)
I really liked this process. It mostly made me think of design ideas for the gods themselves, but I like the backdrop they provide. And thinking about how in a way they would all agree that being in balance is good if they don’t align themselves with «evil» gods to gain the upper hand. Like a sibling dynamic where you want to best your sibling but if someone outside the family approached you about ganging up on them you’d be offended and maybe inlist that same sibling to take them on.
I am inspired! I am going to make a pantheon of thirteen gods three that cane from nothing and ten that rose from mortality to deification together based off of these ideas. Two families born from one androgynous prime deity having two partners that they birthed from their right and left halves one male, one female, and their children will be the rest of the ten separated into two symmetrical families one of life and death and the other known and unknown.
This video and process jas given me such a good jumping off point! I've been struggling with creating a full pantheon for ages now. I have maybe 3 deities that I really like and think are solid but beyond that I always end up falling into standard tropes or just straight up slapping a new name on an existing god. But this has helped massively with giving the whole process some focus. Now to get a tarot deck or a deck of many things to flesh out the rest of the pantheon. Thanks Mike!
Honestly, this sounds like a really neat way to devise a pantheon. I'll absolutely have to try it out. Also, given the use of tarot cards and repeated mention of mortals "becoming" gods, I got more than a few Malazan vibes off of this pantheon. So, maybe in this world, it's possible (though incredibly difficult) for mortals to ascend to godhood? If nothing else, it's an interesting premise, and IIRC, that was possible in earlier editions of D&D.
That’s really cool. My personal pantheon for my homebrew world is inspired by the Christian creation myth with different gods representing the different days of the creation myth. With some liberties and d&d lore added in.
I can see myself using this method, especially because I am a fan of the persona series so I already have idea about which mythological creatures and gods I associate with which arcana. I also use the dawn war pantheon and have organized them into opposed pairs similar to your gods in this video. Avandra-Asmodeus, Bahamut-Tiamat, Bane-Erathis, Corellon-Gruumsh, Sehanine-Lolth, Moradin-Torog, Kord-Ioun, Raven Queen-Vecna, Melora-Zehir, and Pelor-Tharizdun.
I may well now have to guy buy a tarot deck for this. The process helps one issue i always have...to many options and nothing to base off of. The goss them selves are all fantastic to i really love the moon one ya did.
This is such a cool way to do things. I feel like it might be interesting to have a different tarot deck with different art for each campaign so that artists interpretation of the card's meaning can inspire you differently. Like you referenced with Death, if you had seen standard grim reaper iconography, you might have taken your pantheon in a very different direction. In the second campaign I ran I used the Tarot as inspiration for my pantheon, but in a much more literal sense. With an idea stolen from the Rollplay campaign Court of Swords, where the Major Arcana are revered as gods, I don't know how they ended up portraying the gods since I fell off that show after a couple dozen episodes, I took the standard meanings of the Tarot and had each of the major Arcana fleshed out according to their card. While the players initially didn't latch onto it like I was hoping they would (I'm the only one that had any knowledge of Tarot going into the campaign) by the end they had their half a dozen dieties they knew really well. It was also a world where powerful spirits were immortal lesser gods that while not named or depicted as minor arcana, I would occasionally draw a card from that set to see what sort of spirit they were dealing with if I didn't have a specific plan for it. The other big inspiration was Norse Mythology which flavored a lot of the choices and relationships the gods developed. In my world the Emperor was an eons old gold dragon that positioned himself as the emperor of the world and began uniting it 1000 years ago. As the players came to find out there were other powerful beings he gathered or forced to serve him as the other Major Arcana. At the beginning of the campaign, the Emperor had just tragically and mysteriously died in his chambers just a few months after the 1000th anniversary of him declaring the empire complete. The Empress had died 700 years ago and his only true dragon heir was killed during a demonic uprising 300 years ago, so the thin blooded descendants had begun warring to see who claimed the golden throne. They party didn't care about this war of succession in the least and only tangentially had dealings with it. Most of the campaign was collecting powerful ancient elven artifacts so the bard turned warlock could protect herself from her father. They discovered over time that her patron was The Tower (inspired by Fenrir) who had been prophesied to destroy everything The Emperor had built and was locked away with the help of the Magician (a trickster god). The warlock's dad turned out to be The Magician and had made a deal with the Emperor to let High Elves be immortal, but his power was waning and with it the elves immortality. He had created his daughter to serve as a vessel for his godhood, so that she could renew the deal once he wasn't around. They freed The Tower from his prison and broke his bindings, gathered the artifacts and fought The Magician, took his power and decided that the elves didn't need to be immortal anymore. Then with the party's druid having gotten the Blessing of The Wheel (god of the reincarnation afterlife) and the rogue having snuck back from death, they killed the World (a giant snake) who was trying to unite the world Neon Genesis Evangelion style as the remaining gods that didn't fall in with the new order dictated by the new Magician and her right hand The Tower all scrambled to find some way to honor their oaths to the Emperor, who they discovered had actually faked his death, gotten bored and left this world because he was never a nice guy to begin with. Also his "dead" sister had just been banished to The Hells for challenging him and became Tiamat and was now ruling the realm that was meant to imprison her. Also our paladin had been The Fool all along and it was revealed (after their player theory that was too funny to ignore was made canon) occasionally so they don't get too bored The Fool chooses to abandon all it's power and live the life of a mortal until it's time to ascend, do some course correcting with what it learned in the most recent life then start over. Thus we ended the campaign with The Fool deciding to start a new journey and continuing the cycle of the arcana.
Just started doing this for fun and as you said "I could've pulled The Fool...or The Devil" I pulled The Devil AND War Domain. I choose to believe you somehow willed that into existence
I’m currently working on a pantheon, and the main ones are the survivors of a war. I also have two brothers, one whom was tricked into stabbing his brother by a temptress, who herself was blackmailed. The stabbed brother survives, but his second, the Elven king died. The two brothers are known as the first dragons. The stabbed brother in his humanoid form looks similar to the Elf King. The lands are essentially Wales and England. With the Welsh worshipping the stabbed brother while the English worship the Elven king. It’s the same god overall but the humans don’t know this. So I have a god whom one country believes is dead and one who knows he’s alive. The Elven king commands the maidens, essentially Valkyrie’s. It’s been fun to build it.
I think randomly rolling for domains and attributes, or using cards like this, is great and I would really encourage worldbuilders to embrace and lean into getting results that appear contradictory. The whole point should be stretching yourself to figure out how the god of War and the god of marriage are SOMEHOW the same being.... Now after you've tried to do it if it's just too hokey and it can't work don't feel constrained throw it out, but part of the whole joy of using a tool like a deck or random chart is trying to stretch your brain into places it would never normally go.
This is a really neat idea, I'm gonna try it out for the homebrew world I'm working on! I think it'll be interesting to try pulling from the whole deck, not just the major arcana. I've used tarot cards as writing prompts before, as inspiration for characters. The idea is you draw a card using the entire deck which then is a jumping-off point for the character. It can inform their personality, a backstory event, philosophy, whatever you want! I find it to be a really fun starting point, especially since there's so many variations of tarot decks out there (I've got a a "corrupted/fallen" one, for instance) (I didn't come up with this idea myself, I got it from a forum thread on a petsim)
I'm definitely going to use this system for a more dark souls inspired world. I have one that's super in depth and closer to dragon age or elder scrolls, 3 major religions (polytheism, monotheism, and philosophical) as well has powerful alien demon princes and in depth nations. But I also wanted to make something closer to a classic dark fantasy world with one detailed kingdom in a mysterious world.
This is so cool! I love this idea! It makes me want to get some tarot cards for inspiration, but I'm not sure yet what my party wants to do after we finish The Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure.
this is brilliant, i love the lovers, they make a lot of sense, i love how they play against each other but still love each other, it makes me curious how they met. I'm also a big fan of the canon vs non canon side of religion in settings where the gods are known to exist, i like how confusing and conflicting it can be without worrying about "heres the real story" the gods are real, but the stories, maybe not as much? I use it a lot in my deity ideas. one of the deities i created was for a village i made and really liked, their main export and trading good is grain, so their deity is a small harvest god, with association with cats, the stories says that the goddess feeds her essence to cats every winter when she passes, and is reborn in the spring, so the village has a bunch of cats they care for as a collective and in turn believe it will grant good harvests... but is this because the goddess sees this worship and rewards it, or is it just that the cats are eating the pests in the fields and grain stores, or is it both at once, she sees it as worship, and rewards the followers by having the cats hunt the pests. Is it purely logical, or purely supernatural, or a mix, no one knows for sure, and i find that super interesting. another deity i created is for harpy folk, the deity of the sky, and one of the earth, the one of the earth has associations with death, as logically, most the danger for harpies are land based predators, and that as one ages, they cant fly as high, and eventually can no longer fly at all, as they get closer to death, they get closer to the ground, so is it just logical fear, or supernatural forces at play dragging them closer, or both? One of the more interesting associations they have is with lightning, they dont see the source of a lightning strike in the domain of the sky like with zeus, or thor, or many human beliefs. The sky is life, for there to be one thing that went against that wouldnt make sense, and there is plenty of lightning in the clouds that isnt dangerous, so they rationalized it as the deity of the earth reaching up and stealing light from the clouds in the sky, and if someone is caught in the way of the deitys theft, their body is dragged down along with the light, and their soul taken into the earth when their body stops against the ground. I was really happy with this idea cause it seems very original, and it fits super well for them.
I absolutely love the lore surrounding each of these gods. Makes the world seem real. I do have one question though. How do you come up with the names. I find that the hardest part of creating any fantasy character.
Two things. One, I did a similar thing regarding balance when I made my own pantheon. I went with the idea that gods and demons were true neutral and their domains could cover both good and evil. The gods were based on natural phenomenon and tended to look rather inhuman while the demons were based around societal things and looked more human as a result. Second, the actual play The Unexpectables has a sun god named Aurin (I think, not seen it spelled) and it made me giggle to see you choose such a close name
I was talking with a friend about how you can pull inspiration from just about anything in world building and threw out the idea of building a pantheon around wrestlers from different eras.
Your god of war, which you said was influenced by the picture of Thor and with the carrion reference for Odin. As a guy that studies old norse literature, you made what is basicly a really interesting variant of Odin, Odin has a bunch of names but a commonly used on is Valfadr, which is literally "father of the slain", and he collects his warriors in Valhall where they fight all the time (fitting with the warriors not wanting to die) but yours are fighting because of stubborness whereas Odins bois are there for glory and prep for Ragnarok. There are like 5 or so gods of war in old norse myths.
I’m not a DM, Im mainly here because I find these topics interesting rather then something useful I actually use. However this is one of the most fleshed out and interesting entirely original set of gods I’ve seen for a whole and kinda makes me want to try just for fun.
I devised my pantheon by focusing on clerical domains actually, and knew I needed to have a fleshed out pantheon for my campaign because the BBEG I wanted to run was a lich attempting to join the pantheon and become a God of Undeath. I also knew that because I wanted the ability to "achieve divinity" to be possible for that BBEG, I wanted each of my gods to be one of a few who achieved massive power in one of the other planes and all came together to create the material plane. With a domain and a source plane, I was able to structure out who each of the gods was and what they contributed to the creation of the material plane.
The empress card made me think of a Goddess of birth and life who cannot actually have a child of her own so she reveres her followers as if they were her own children and is fiercely protective over her followers regardless of how that affects the other Gods. Her followers use mother bears as a symbol for her. She is ironically in love with the God/Goddess of Death who treats the souls sent to them with love and care, ensuring her "children" are eternally loved. I'm not a good DM so anyone can feel more than free to snatch this concept from my little fingies lmfao I'd love for this idea to be used by a good DM
This is a great idea, and I’m so inspired, I ended up with an entire pantheon centered around a tyrannical queen who twist her kin into new aspects of divinity
I didn't use tarot cards, but I have done something kinda similar to this before. I took a list of every single domain I had access to (included published 3rd party ones) and a list of "portfolios", and then rolled 3 times on each. The most memorable god that I came up from this was one I named Erebos, whose Domains were Arcana, Lore, & Darkness and portfolio included Patricide, Eclipses, & Self Reflection. Erebos is thus the bastard son of the setting's Sun God, a scholar and mage who seeks to take his father's throne for himself. His primary interaction with mortals who aren't scholars or mages themselves is from what is either his greatest gift or most wicked curse, depending on who you ask: introspection. He's the one that gave mortals the ability to not just remember past events, but look back on them in the context of who they are in the future. He isn't a *popular* god, but his priests are often wildly accepted as the equivalent of real world therapists. They travel throughout the land, and when performing their duties, they don't preach gospel, they don't tell people how to live morally, or anything like that. They ask questions. Questions to make the listener look back on their past actions and decisions, and think about them. Similar to Tyr and Kratos's interactions in the Ragnarok DLC.
Some great ideas here - I'm not much good with randomly generating deities, but it could be a great way to pull inspiration! I never give alignments to my deities, since I lean heavily into the idea that deities are created, and shaped, by their worshippers, and can manifest differently depending on the beliefs different peoples have about them. My gods also lack the interest or understanding to intervene in the material world unless specifically spurred by instigation (positive or negative) by mortals. My own world's pantheon was designed based on the cosmology of the world, centred on a concept of "three spheres" where the material world is understood to be the place where the three elemental planes of water, earth, and air overlap. The "mother-goddess" of each of those domains then has a coterie of subordinate deities filling niches that are associated with them. I then had a mid-tier of detities considered lesser status but independent.
Man, I'm sitting next to a big pile of Magic cards as I work on building a couple decks, and, y'know, not that I'm in need of gods for a setting right now, but using them (and not just the actual God cards) for something like this sounds fun. And at least at this exact moment, the Magic cards are closer to hand than either of my Tarot decks... (On the other hand, the Jessica Hayworth Welcome to Night Vale tarot deck would absolutely inspire some wild deities. Maybe if I ever do some sort of weird, science-fantasy setting like Planescape or the implied setting of Troika!, the Hayworth Tarot could certainly inspire it)
6:08 - Its one of the things I really enjoyed about Dragonlance as a setting, whether it pkayed out well in all the books I cant say because there are a lot of them and a lot of authors, but the concept of balance was its core. The Priest King and Cataclysm was specifically an example of what happens when the balance of "Good" is too high, an implication that with a lack of "Evil" in the world the good guys become just as oppressive and start to question if they even need to worship the gods anymore. Or in the War of the Lance where the balance of "Evil" becomes so high that you're left with power hungry backstabbing warlords cutting each other down just to scrounge a little more glory or treasure until theyre so fractured that "Good" can step in and start widening those cracks and reclaim the world. It felt like the Wizards of High Sorcery were the best example of that balance. They may not have liked each other but they could all meet peaceably when they had to.
to me a pantheon is much more relevant to behavior of the people of a single faith rather than that of reality, but people are biased to reinforce their beliefs within the setting I'm not personally a fan of gods being involved in mortal affairs, and often times I prefer their existence to be in question I find it makes for more interesting discussion when conflicting religions come into contact. my current world has like 12 different religions and the history has made it that they interact quite frequently
That's what I also try to do, keep it personal and people-centered. And even if gods do somewhat intervene what stops people interpreting them differently? You can have in the same world an alliance of city-states worshipping a pantheon of tens of mostly overlapping gods, basically a mix of each city's pantheon, an animist colture that believes clerics and mages to be vessels for their own personal spirits to influence the world, and a monotheistic religious kingdom that believes powerful clerics and rulers to be incarnations of their own all-powerful god, meant to guide the kingdom to victory. And you don't need any of them to be right, they could all be worshipping the same 4 gods under different names, or there could be no gods at all
@SupergeekMike I love this idea, and I am stealing it, but instead of using a tarot deck I am using the deck of many things since I bought the physical one last year and it came with a card reference book explaining how to use them like tarot cards
An aspect of this that I really like is actually nothing to do with the tarot part - it's the taking two domains and trying to figure out how one figure could connect them. "This is the god of death and knowledge" set you down a whole character-building spiral. And it creates a feedback loop, since it suggests things about what death and knowledge themselves mean to people within the setting - maybe seeking great knowledge is seen as dangerous because it's stepping into the domain of death. A popular proverb might be "if you want to see the whole world at once, wait until you're standing outside of it". Going to try playing with this idea of combining domains at random and see what comes out.
After reading Kingdom Come I based a pantheon on the Justice League. 20 years later one of the players figuired it out and was like, "How could you not tell me I could have been a Priest of Batman?!?"
This is actually really funny because I did the exact opposite. I came up with my deities and then when a player wanted their character to be all like luck and card themed I went in and made in world tarot decks where the major arcana features the primary deities from every pantheon. You have things like The Magician becoming "The Celestial Dragon" and depicts the wizardly deity who is the primary source of the Arcana domain, Wheel of Fortune is The Fey Lord, a deity of luck related to the Trickery domain and is the overseer of the Feywild much the same way that Death is The Mistress of Fate and is a deity of fate related to the Shadowfell and is a Raven Queen esque figure. Instead of the normal suits of Cups, Wands, Pentacles, and Swords, I decided on Moons, Suns, Clovers, and Feathers. The sun and moon deities in my world are basically the Zeus/Hera duo of the primary pantheon of greater deities, so it made sense. They are Light and Life domain respectively, and Cups is the Water / Emotion suit which ties in well with the flavor of the moon goddess, with Fire/Creativity/Passion suit fitting the sun god. Clovers and Feathers are due to The Fey Lord being in some part inspired by the whole leprechaun/lucky charms thing so a four leaf clover is his symbol, which fit the earth/physical suit that is also often related to money in readings. Then you have Air/Intellect suit of swords in normal tarot that seemed to translate well to feathers, since The Mistress of Fate has ravens as her primary symbol since she is inspired by The Raven Queen in many ways. I did rename some of the things as well. Where as you have Ace through Ten as numbers, Instead of "Page of" "Knight of" "Queen of" and "King of" for the suits, my "face cards" for the deck are Visier, Champion, Lady, and Lord respectively. So you might get the Vizier of Moons, Champion of Suns, Lady of Clovers, and Lord of Feathers instead of Page of Cups, Knight of Wands, etc. I definitely tried to not fall into the pit trap of having all of the deities feel unconnected though. There's a whole world lore of a world existing before the current world where the mortals were met with calamity and some were chosen to ascend to fight it, becoming the gods that now rule the current world. Sort of nicked that idea from the Magi anime/manga with the whole Alma Torran idea, but I just reversed it. Instead of a bunch of monstrous races becoming humans in the new world, everyone was human in the old world, and the introduction of this divinity altered them making elves, orcs, etc. And a lot of the old conflicts ring true. My stand in for Asmodeus as ruler of the hells and my stand in for Shar, who in my setting serves as the Asmodeus parallel for The Abyss, were once a prison warden and bandit queen. She was the one bounty he could never bring to heel, her bandits sowing chaos from their deep canyon base that seemed to stretch to infinity (a little tie in of the geography as foreshadowing for how their planes would be shaped once divinity struck). So even though the goddess of knowledge wiped all their memories of the time before, all of the gods have those tensions and bonds still present. Devils and demons are locked in this bloodshed for my world's version of The Blood War due to this subconscious feud between the two greater deities that they don't remember, but it's at the core of their very being. And then there's the actual power distribution of the gods. I even have what in "normal" D&D might be not considered gods as gods. You have Archaics which are like elder gods lost to time that no one remembers that tie into things like Great Old One, you have Paragons, there are 15 paragons, one for each of the cleric domains I allow in my setting, and they serve almost as Ego from Guardians of the Galaxy. They are cosmic batteries for their specific domain and that magical energy shapes the planes. So like that Asmodeus stand in deity is the Paragon of the Death domain, and the Death domain is very linked to the Hells and infernal / necromantic soul magic and what not. Then you have Exarchs. There is one Exarch for each combination and I know that sounds like a lot, but at the end of the day, these wouldn't be considered "gods" in faerun per se. Using that same example of the Asmodeus parallel, I basically just took the lore of archdevils, applied lore of the seven deadly sins to them, and then bam. You have "The Deadly Sins" pantheon. Likewise, my moon deity has a pantheon called The Moonweavers, which are all Life domain, and you've got things like Life, Blood is the deity of lycanthropy and is associated with the full moon and moon druids, Life, Forge is a wildfire druid deity centered around rebirth and the waning moon, Life, Trickery since trickery is tied to the feywild in my setting and circle of dreams is hinted as being fey based in its text is a new moon deity about remedies since dream druid has a lot of healing / soothing mechanics, and then you have Life, Nature and since nature domain is a very primal, bestial domain, the Paragon for which going by the title of The Beastmaster, and its plane being similar to Monster Hunter or the MtG Plane of Ikoria where there's always predator after predator, she is the shepherd druid / waxing moon deity. I just love the flavor of the four core phases of the moon, tying them into druid subclasses flavor wise, etc. I won't continue to ramble because with 15 paragons, that's 15 pantheons, ranging anywhere from a small pantheon like the Moonweavers, up to larger pantheons like the ones that are my Archdevil stand ins. I'd hit the comment character limit 10 times over gushing about it haha. Oh also there are no duplicates. I had to do that to cut down on the number and that's WHY some pantheons have 4 or 5, whereas others have 8 or 9. So like if there's a Grave, Life deity, there will not also be a Life, Grave deity because that combo was already used.
For Mara and Amari names...if you want them to possibly be related think about having one be the other's name spelled backwards. Like maybe use Amari, and Irama. Or Amara and Arama...or Imara and Arami. So many possibilities! 😃
i did this aswell, though what i did was that the lovers arcana are both male dieties. The wheel of fortune is the diety of childbirth, noth the lovers. The lovers in my setting represent all forms of interpersonal connections. they arent the god of childbirth, but they are the gods of family. they arent the gods of war, but they are the gods of agreements and alliances. they arent the gods of sun and moon or night and day, but they are the gods of dawn and dusk. they both represent the peace domain, and another represents war and the other represents life. My favorite though is my death god. hes not even really a god of death. he doesnt have the death domain. Instead, hes the god of funeral rights, darkness, magic, storms, and crossroads, and most importantly, the god of nihility (but not loss). Everything ties into nihility. Funeral rights represent the absence of life, darkness the absence of light, crossroads the absence of certainty, storms the absence of peace, and magic the absence of meaning and reality. To him life is illusiory. absense is nothingness. all is nihility. he roams far, watching gods and men draw meaning from routine tides, and crumble in routine time. hes the youngest of the gods. from a world destroyed by a black hole. and he is the only god that resides exclusively in the human world.
Why not use the emperors as the ruler? It’s part of the natural order, but quiet is not always peaceful, it means not to much not to little, and balance is a good thing, so that tips the scales if it’s between good and evil.
Mike, have you ever considered getting into game design, because if you flesh this out a bit more (maybe replacing the tarot deck with a d66 table of prompts, but tarot works fine for solo play, tons of solo games use tarot as part of the gameplay loop), attach a framing device for a more roleplay oriented sense of discovery if you want it to be more of a journalling game than a world building game (both are valid), and remove the D&D and instead frame it as a fantasy pantheon, you could probably stick this up on itch and/or drivethru as a journalling game. (I could also see this idea working as the basis of a collaborative world building game in the vein of microscope but... With pantheons)
I like the idea that "your life flashing before your eyes" is Mara collecting the knowledge of your life in near death moments
Ooh I love that!
I was immediately reminded of and just have to share a quote from scifi character Marcus Cole:
"You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe."
Glad I wasn't the only one who remembered that line.
That said, I think a common phrase in this world might be something like, "life never gives you challenges you can't handle."
God, so much fire worldbuilding. The phase of the moon upon death affecting your afterlife? Communing with the dead for blackmail? *chef's kiss*
I love using these sorts of prompts! And on the topic of "balance" in media like Star Wars and Legend of Korra, I think that comes down to the difference in western and eastern philosophy. A lot of western moral theory, influenced by Christian traditions, tends to focus on moral absolutes- being loving, forgiving, and generous is good, while being cold, angry, and greedy is bad. Eastern influenced philosophy like the Dao/Tao meanwhile focuses on finding the stable middle point- love for instance can become evil when it is either lacking or too intense, or otherwise not balanced out by some other force, so the good isn't love itself but love in the right balance. I think you still have a valid criticism though, since the works you referenced were instances of western writers taking inspiration from eastern philosophy, and either poorly communicating or poorly understanding the ideas they were working with.
In addition, if a property like that is around long enough there is more and more chance that the original intent will drift. IIRC the term "light side of the Force" doesn't show up in the original trilogy, or I think the prequels. The original idea wasn't that Jedi were light, and Sith dark, and you balanced between the two, but that Jedi represented balance and harmony with the Force, and the Sith/Dark Side were expressly unbalancing.
It was Sin and Yang, not Yin and Yang.
You're totally right. It gets muddied when these stories value balance but then also have one side that is literally evil.
Atla is a better example of eastern philosophy than Korra. For example, they TALK about balance between Raava and Vaatu, but Vaatu is just evil, he makes everything worse. Also compare Aang talking to Heibai vs the "spirit waterbending" in Korra.
It's also worth noting that the Avatar rpg does this well in my (admittedly amateur) opinion. Each playbook (class) has a balance track between different core themes in it, for instance Duty vs Freedom for The Heir. (might not be the exact terms. Or the playbook's actual name)
Moving away from your centre can empower you, but it also puts you at more risk, since if you become too unbalanced, it actively damages your character.
The wild animal goddess as a war goddess also parallels the termite vs ants that guard their hill members from the other animal specie by literally guarding the trail with soldier ants/termites
I have a deck of tarot cards that are Celtic-themed/inspired (the Celtic Wisdom Tarot, for anyone curious), and their major arcana is very different from a more conventional deck. After watching this video, I realized that not only does Mike have a fantastic idea, this deck that I have might work even better than a "standard" deck. I thank you, good sir, for introducing me to this idea. I think this is going to make a particular book I'm writing much, much more comprehensive!
I wish I could have found celtic themed one, I found a manga tarot deck. Unique art but very strong and interesting designs help with things to so not bad. I'll have to look for this celtic one two in case I go wild lol.
Something I like a little more is tying your psychopomp to the moon since people die during the day more often.
Maybe tie it to the tides. Something like there's more passengers when you die during certain phases of the moon/day because the tide isn't high enough for the psychopomp to take you to be judged. And it's considered cruel to murder someone when they'll have to wait longer or the psychopomp charges more to take you across. And the Godess is more flippant when then there's a large back log, and is willing to take their time / kinder when things are slower.
Years ago, I created a dragon-based Pantheon with a friend to sue for a personal RP we were doing.
When I started DMing a few years ago, I still had the notes of that lying around, and decided to use them as a pantheon.
Now these "Dragon Arcana" are the gods of this homebrew world of mine, which we are currently playing our second campaign in.
They are the "Third Pantheon".
After the Age of the Creator gods, who are thinly-veiled versions of the baseline D&D Gods, and an Age of the ever-warring Mortal Gods.
Love this. I also use tarot cards & symbology a lot in my games, but not as gods - I used the Zodiacs for those.
- Cancer, Pisces & Scorpio are the "royal family" who run the show
- Virgo, Taurus & Capricorn are their strategists/war councilors
- Aries, Leo & Sagittarius are their spies and informants
- Gemini, Libra and Aquarius are their "weapons" and soldiers
World building brain is going now. Must make a pantheon. Masters dissertation can wait a few days.
This is actually a brilliant idea for creating a pantheon. I'll use it to flesh out my pantheon a little.
For the God Carsos, I could see him quoting Xivu Arath the Hive God of War from the Destiny franchise. With lines like "Our dance will never end. I . . .Am . . . War!" and "I am the mountain upon which all swords shatter, hone your edge against me!"
Mara sounds interesting. What if knowledge was actually a finite resource, because knowledge can either be lost, consumed, or simply perish as the world continues to develop. So death is not necessarily shepard but a custodian/librarian?
Participated in a west March server with Tarot themed gods, it was a blast and it was very well made.
My DM actually has a really interesting way of dealing with the gods. Basically each god has a set domain in the physical realm, for example a city and the surrounding countryside or a single island in the ocean. They get power from the number of worshippers in that area and more worshippers lets them expand their territory to cover a larger area. These gods don’t have fundamental themes like the Sun God or the God of Justice, instead they each just have different personalities and interests. The god of City A might be beautiful and enjoy getting involved in people’s love-lives while the god of City B enjoys war and sports. And anyone can worship any god regardless of where they are or where they were born, it just requires a greater level of devotion and alignment to their personality the farther you are removed from their domain. There are a handful of extremely powerful gods who cover huge portions of the continents, but also dozens to hundreds of smaller gods scattered around who also have various alliances with each other. It’s basically a second layer on top of the normal nation states vying for power and influence, and the two levels influence each other where for example a god might take steps to prevent two countries within its territory going to war but it can’t outright stop them without losing a bunch of power as people stop worshipping them.
That sounds wonderfully complex and interesting!
@@SLorraineE It’s a very fluid system that basically allows for any god you want as a player, the only major downside is that the gods have very limited powers especially when extending their influence beyond their borders. Though it does provide a nice way to hand wave away why the gods don’t just solve everyone’s problems all the time, by total coincidence they only ever have enough power to do the most narratively appropriate thing.
Can't believe i've never thought of this! I love it!
I'm using the 4e/exandria pantheon for my game right now, but I am definitely a throw it all out and start over dm with each game so I might give this a shot next time. It's definitely a super interesting idea - thanks for sharing
One of my favourite videos on UA-cam by a small creator in a long time. The use of tarot card visuals and archetypes as inspiration to build out a pantheon and the way you pulled tgt different threads to create unique deities that I’m genuinely curious about and somehow already invested in - amazing. What a novel, standout idea, and what a fun ride it was to hear about your thought process for each deity and the connections btwn all of them. Absolutely loved this far beyond what I was expecting.
Imagining my character in a D&D campaign run by Supergeek, culture jamming the lore:
"Among my people, Dasaar is god of karma, collector of outstanding moral debts, loan shark to the unredeemed, patron of the vengeful, the bail bondsman, and organized criminal guilds. Dasaar likes to think himself as right-hand man of Somariel, who merely tolerates him as a petty fool... who is nonetheless sometimes useful."
Justice too close to Somariel, indeed.
This is a really cool concept. If I ever want to homebrew a campaign setting, I'll definitely create my pantheon in a similar way
When I got into tarot card reading, I was actually really interested in creating a world with a pantheon of Tarot Gods. This video is such a great help to develop my own worldbuilding.
Mike, this video has made me wanna rethink my pantheon IMMEDIATELY-thank you! ❤
This is just so much more dynamic and creatively freeing while also giving some helpful controls (using the card and a roll table) than what I originally came up with
I’m so glad!
You named the main god Samriegel ^^?
😂
Could be fun to turn the Critical Role cast into a DnD pantheon. 😆
Emblazoned upon the Samriegel's robes is an embroidered image that always appears to depict the one who gazes upon it.
I enjoyed your approach to this! I do enjoy when people get the tarot cards involved in any project, so this was quite enjoyable! I think I’ll use a method similar to this for my next set of pantheons if I run into trouble. 😄
This a really cool way of making pantheons. I might have to use it myself at some point. I have two gods in my homebrew pantheon who are both Nature domain but one has Peace, and the other war to have that prey/predator circle of life feeling. The Nature/ Peace deity was once a Harengon, the Nature/war a Tabaxi too.
Ooh I love the themes you came up with for these gods! Sounds like a really interesting world to play in
You could argue that Somariel can bring balance by giving one person a wonderful life while another person has a terrible life. After all, that is still balanced but not exactly fair to the person with a terrible life.
After watching your patreon stream working with tarot cards to make the pantheon I "stole" the idea to make my own. However, I decided to create one god for each domain because it was my first time and making a god for several domains felt more complicated. Also, I used the description of the card meaning to help me to create ideas for the prompts for each god. Also, I started doing this to create the pantheon for my fantasy comic and I'm thinking to import them into my homebrew. But all in time for when they're needed. So thank you for that stream that gave me a huge inspiration for my creative process.
I’m so glad it helped!
@@SupergeekMike I'll share just one of the domains so you can see how it worked for me. The prompt for Grave Domain came with the Wheel of Fortune card and I created a religion that understands that living is always a bunch of chance events and that life ends at the same time our luck ends. For the comic I don't need more because deities aren't going to be a big thing currently, but I want to give them more depth if I include them in my homebrew.
See, now I'm actively thinking about how a god under The Fool archetype would be as a ruler of a pantheon. The first mental image that comes to mind is basically if Loki ruled his own pantheon, which is an idea that both fascinates and worries me 😂
This was incredible and inspiring. You have the exact way of thinking/worldbuilding I love. So creative and unique. Take my like and subscription.
Can’t wait to see this pantheon!
I like the idea a farmer grumble about Orin forgetting to feed their crops when they had a bad yield.
Wow I LOVE these gods! Thats such a cool way to make a pantheon, and Ive always been fond of 'equal and opposite' in a list of gods or god-like beings.
This is making me want to make my own setting too, though I am currently running a Dragon Age game so my setting is pretty set lol
Thats an amazing idea. I did it backwards for my own worldbuilding. I assigned the gods major arcana cards once i had enough.
Nice idea to use tarot cards in creating a pantheon. In the homebrew world with my group I used the 7 deadly sins and 7 virtues to create a pantheon of seven gods. Basically mix and match one virtue to a sin. A god of wrath and justice, greed and hope or wisdom and gluttony.
This created an interesting inner conflict within each of the gods and a nice flaw and ideal for player characters should they decide to follow a god. Rulewise in game, we have not connected aligments or specific cleric domains to the gods though.
Id love to see more world building videos of different kinds. Also even one of you using this style of generation. Im about to give it a try my self.
Been (very) slowly putting together a world/campaign setting for the last 2yrs. Started writing and rewriting the pantheon a few days ago. Was using a mishmash of D&D gods as a base but then realized I don’t want to flesh out NPCs and plot hooks and then have to go back and retcon things to match the custom pantheon I wanted to create. So now I’m just here fervorously rewriting every god I took from D&D 😅 got my work cut out for me but I’m actually enjoying it as it’s naturally helping me flesh out more of the world’s lord and pre-history
Ok I actually NEED this video cuz this is exactly what I wanna do for the game I'm trying to make and have been stumped for weeks trying to figure out a good way to do it. Thank you for the ideas!
Glad I could help!
Lobe the video! Ironically, now I am going to steal these now existing deities for my own game. And add some with the method.
Mike is the type of GM I would love to run a campion with.
this is such a genius worldbuilding idea omg!
I've been working with using the tarot in my game world building. Not just for deities but classes and pretty much everything. So I hesitated to watch this particular video of yours. But I saw the video you dropped today and you referenced that it didn't do too well so I booked it back over here to check it out. Im always cautious about seeing things that are similar to what im doing but this was great. We pretty much use Tarot in the same way. I tend to get a little more into it just because I've been fascinated by it most of my life. But I love the ideas that came out for you and, as always, your videos get my brain working. Thank You for all you do.
Interesting! Pantheons tend to be an afterthought in my games mainly because I don't engage with religion in real life. But I can see using this method if I feel the need to create religious influence in my fantasy world.
We like Mike.
Be like Mike
Fascinating video. I went considerably more direct. Each domain is managed by a single deity, but they each have a couple of secondary domains they are associated with as well. Another thing I did is I made it so that although the whole pantheon is recognized by civilization, some deities are favored over other, depending on the region. My favorite aspect is the fact that the the true nature of the gods is somewhat ephemeral. They could be real. They could be different facets of a single monotheistic entity. They could be powerful celestial entities masquerading as gods, playing to the whims of mortals as entertainment for themselves.
In what is a semi-random theme with you, the idea of Amari being more or less powerful (and crossing over into the realm of the dead being harder or easier) depending on the phases of the moon is similarly used in Eberron, where each existing moon is connected to one of the (other) planes. And depending on whether the moon is close to Eberron or distant they have more or less effect, usually more so in the areas connected to that plane. :)
(That one is not covered in RftLW but in Keith Baker's own Exploring Eberron)
I really liked this process. It mostly made me think of design ideas for the gods themselves, but I like the backdrop they provide. And thinking about how in a way they would all agree that being in balance is good if they don’t align themselves with «evil» gods to gain the upper hand. Like a sibling dynamic where you want to best your sibling but if someone outside the family approached you about ganging up on them you’d be offended and maybe inlist that same sibling to take them on.
I am inspired! I am going to make a pantheon of thirteen gods three that cane from nothing and ten that rose from mortality to deification together based off of these ideas. Two families born from one androgynous prime deity having two partners that they birthed from their right and left halves one male, one female, and their children will be the rest of the ten separated into two symmetrical families one of life and death and the other known and unknown.
I keep coming back to this awesome video to see if he'll ever add the link or the file with his pantheon's information in it!
This video and process jas given me such a good jumping off point! I've been struggling with creating a full pantheon for ages now. I have maybe 3 deities that I really like and think are solid but beyond that I always end up falling into standard tropes or just straight up slapping a new name on an existing god. But this has helped massively with giving the whole process some focus. Now to get a tarot deck or a deck of many things to flesh out the rest of the pantheon. Thanks Mike!
I’m so glad it helped!
Okay, I really dig the rolling on the domain table idea. I might just have to yoink it for myself.
Honestly, this sounds like a really neat way to devise a pantheon. I'll absolutely have to try it out.
Also, given the use of tarot cards and repeated mention of mortals "becoming" gods, I got more than a few Malazan vibes off of this pantheon. So, maybe in this world, it's possible (though incredibly difficult) for mortals to ascend to godhood? If nothing else, it's an interesting premise, and IIRC, that was possible in earlier editions of D&D.
That’s really cool. My personal pantheon for my homebrew world is inspired by the Christian creation myth with different gods representing the different days of the creation myth. With some liberties and d&d lore added in.
I can see myself using this method, especially because I am a fan of the persona series so I already have idea about which mythological creatures and gods I associate with which arcana.
I also use the dawn war pantheon and have organized them into opposed pairs similar to your gods in this video. Avandra-Asmodeus, Bahamut-Tiamat, Bane-Erathis, Corellon-Gruumsh, Sehanine-Lolth, Moradin-Torog, Kord-Ioun, Raven Queen-Vecna, Melora-Zehir, and Pelor-Tharizdun.
I may well now have to guy buy a tarot deck for this. The process helps one issue i always have...to many options and nothing to base off of. The goss them selves are all fantastic to i really love the moon one ya did.
This is such a cool way to do things. I feel like it might be interesting to have a different tarot deck with different art for each campaign so that artists interpretation of the card's meaning can inspire you differently. Like you referenced with Death, if you had seen standard grim reaper iconography, you might have taken your pantheon in a very different direction.
In the second campaign I ran I used the Tarot as inspiration for my pantheon, but in a much more literal sense. With an idea stolen from the Rollplay campaign Court of Swords, where the Major Arcana are revered as gods, I don't know how they ended up portraying the gods since I fell off that show after a couple dozen episodes, I took the standard meanings of the Tarot and had each of the major Arcana fleshed out according to their card. While the players initially didn't latch onto it like I was hoping they would (I'm the only one that had any knowledge of Tarot going into the campaign) by the end they had their half a dozen dieties they knew really well. It was also a world where powerful spirits were immortal lesser gods that while not named or depicted as minor arcana, I would occasionally draw a card from that set to see what sort of spirit they were dealing with if I didn't have a specific plan for it. The other big inspiration was Norse Mythology which flavored a lot of the choices and relationships the gods developed.
In my world the Emperor was an eons old gold dragon that positioned himself as the emperor of the world and began uniting it 1000 years ago. As the players came to find out there were other powerful beings he gathered or forced to serve him as the other Major Arcana. At the beginning of the campaign, the Emperor had just tragically and mysteriously died in his chambers just a few months after the 1000th anniversary of him declaring the empire complete. The Empress had died 700 years ago and his only true dragon heir was killed during a demonic uprising 300 years ago, so the thin blooded descendants had begun warring to see who claimed the golden throne. They party didn't care about this war of succession in the least and only tangentially had dealings with it. Most of the campaign was collecting powerful ancient elven artifacts so the bard turned warlock could protect herself from her father. They discovered over time that her patron was The Tower (inspired by Fenrir) who had been prophesied to destroy everything The Emperor had built and was locked away with the help of the Magician (a trickster god). The warlock's dad turned out to be The Magician and had made a deal with the Emperor to let High Elves be immortal, but his power was waning and with it the elves immortality. He had created his daughter to serve as a vessel for his godhood, so that she could renew the deal once he wasn't around. They freed The Tower from his prison and broke his bindings, gathered the artifacts and fought The Magician, took his power and decided that the elves didn't need to be immortal anymore. Then with the party's druid having gotten the Blessing of The Wheel (god of the reincarnation afterlife) and the rogue having snuck back from death, they killed the World (a giant snake) who was trying to unite the world Neon Genesis Evangelion style as the remaining gods that didn't fall in with the new order dictated by the new Magician and her right hand The Tower all scrambled to find some way to honor their oaths to the Emperor, who they discovered had actually faked his death, gotten bored and left this world because he was never a nice guy to begin with. Also his "dead" sister had just been banished to The Hells for challenging him and became Tiamat and was now ruling the realm that was meant to imprison her. Also our paladin had been The Fool all along and it was revealed (after their player theory that was too funny to ignore was made canon) occasionally so they don't get too bored The Fool chooses to abandon all it's power and live the life of a mortal until it's time to ascend, do some course correcting with what it learned in the most recent life then start over. Thus we ended the campaign with The Fool deciding to start a new journey and continuing the cycle of the arcana.
I've yet to homebrew an entire world, so I'm going to just put this into my back pocket for later :) Thanks, Mike!
Just started doing this for fun and as you said "I could've pulled The Fool...or The Devil" I pulled The Devil AND War Domain. I choose to believe you somehow willed that into existence
He cast divine intervention without verbal or somatic components.
I’m currently working on a pantheon, and the main ones are the survivors of a war. I also have two brothers, one whom was tricked into stabbing his brother by a temptress, who herself was blackmailed. The stabbed brother survives, but his second, the Elven king died. The two brothers are known as the first dragons. The stabbed brother in his humanoid form looks similar to the Elf King.
The lands are essentially Wales and England. With the Welsh worshipping the stabbed brother while the English worship the Elven king. It’s the same god overall but the humans don’t know this.
So I have a god whom one country believes is dead and one who knows he’s alive. The Elven king commands the maidens, essentially Valkyrie’s. It’s been fun to build it.
I think randomly rolling for domains and attributes, or using cards like this, is great and I would really encourage worldbuilders to embrace and lean into getting results that appear contradictory. The whole point should be stretching yourself to figure out how the god of War and the god of marriage are SOMEHOW the same being.... Now after you've tried to do it if it's just too hokey and it can't work don't feel constrained throw it out, but part of the whole joy of using a tool like a deck or random chart is trying to stretch your brain into places it would never normally go.
I’m loving this pantheon. This has inspired me
This is a really neat idea, I'm gonna try it out for the homebrew world I'm working on! I think it'll be interesting to try pulling from the whole deck, not just the major arcana.
I've used tarot cards as writing prompts before, as inspiration for characters. The idea is you draw a card using the entire deck which then is a jumping-off point for the character. It can inform their personality, a backstory event, philosophy, whatever you want! I find it to be a really fun starting point, especially since there's so many variations of tarot decks out there (I've got a a "corrupted/fallen" one, for instance)
(I didn't come up with this idea myself, I got it from a forum thread on a petsim)
Interesting that you and Montyglu, DM of The Unexpectables campaigns gave your sun gods the same names, Orin and Orun respectively.
I'm definitely going to use this system for a more dark souls inspired world. I have one that's super in depth and closer to dragon age or elder scrolls, 3 major religions (polytheism, monotheism, and philosophical) as well has powerful alien demon princes and in depth nations. But I also wanted to make something closer to a classic dark fantasy world with one detailed kingdom in a mysterious world.
This is so cool! I love this idea! It makes me want to get some tarot cards for inspiration, but I'm not sure yet what my party wants to do after we finish The Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure.
Could use the book American Gods as inspiration.
Has gods like God of Technology. God of Guns. Etc.
Modern worship.
Cool concept.
I really like this guy.
this is brilliant, i love the lovers, they make a lot of sense, i love how they play against each other but still love each other, it makes me curious how they met. I'm also a big fan of the canon vs non canon side of religion in settings where the gods are known to exist, i like how confusing and conflicting it can be without worrying about "heres the real story" the gods are real, but the stories, maybe not as much? I use it a lot in my deity ideas.
one of the deities i created was for a village i made and really liked, their main export and trading good is grain, so their deity is a small harvest god, with association with cats, the stories says that the goddess feeds her essence to cats every winter when she passes, and is reborn in the spring, so the village has a bunch of cats they care for as a collective and in turn believe it will grant good harvests... but is this because the goddess sees this worship and rewards it, or is it just that the cats are eating the pests in the fields and grain stores, or is it both at once, she sees it as worship, and rewards the followers by having the cats hunt the pests. Is it purely logical, or purely supernatural, or a mix, no one knows for sure, and i find that super interesting.
another deity i created is for harpy folk, the deity of the sky, and one of the earth, the one of the earth has associations with death, as logically, most the danger for harpies are land based predators, and that as one ages, they cant fly as high, and eventually can no longer fly at all, as they get closer to death, they get closer to the ground, so is it just logical fear, or supernatural forces at play dragging them closer, or both?
One of the more interesting associations they have is with lightning, they dont see the source of a lightning strike in the domain of the sky like with zeus, or thor, or many human beliefs. The sky is life, for there to be one thing that went against that wouldnt make sense, and there is plenty of lightning in the clouds that isnt dangerous, so they rationalized it as the deity of the earth reaching up and stealing light from the clouds in the sky, and if someone is caught in the way of the deitys theft, their body is dragged down along with the light, and their soul taken into the earth when their body stops against the ground. I was really happy with this idea cause it seems very original, and it fits super well for them.
I absolutely love the lore surrounding each of these gods. Makes the world seem real. I do have one question though. How do you come up with the names. I find that the hardest part of creating any fantasy character.
Your death goddess sounds really cool, reminds me a bit of Billie From supernatural
Two things. One, I did a similar thing regarding balance when I made my own pantheon. I went with the idea that gods and demons were true neutral and their domains could cover both good and evil. The gods were based on natural phenomenon and tended to look rather inhuman while the demons were based around societal things and looked more human as a result.
Second, the actual play The Unexpectables has a sun god named Aurin (I think, not seen it spelled) and it made me giggle to see you choose such a close name
I was talking with a friend about how you can pull inspiration from just about anything in world building and threw out the idea of building a pantheon around wrestlers from different eras.
Your god of war, which you said was influenced by the picture of Thor and with the carrion reference for Odin. As a guy that studies old norse literature, you made what is basicly a really interesting variant of Odin, Odin has a bunch of names but a commonly used on is Valfadr, which is literally "father of the slain", and he collects his warriors in Valhall where they fight all the time (fitting with the warriors not wanting to die) but yours are fighting because of stubborness whereas Odins bois are there for glory and prep for Ragnarok. There are like 5 or so gods of war in old norse myths.
I’m not a DM, Im mainly here because I find these topics interesting rather then something useful I actually use. However this is one of the most fleshed out and interesting entirely original set of gods I’ve seen for a whole and kinda makes me want to try just for fun.
I devised my pantheon by focusing on clerical domains actually, and knew I needed to have a fleshed out pantheon for my campaign because the BBEG I wanted to run was a lich attempting to join the pantheon and become a God of Undeath. I also knew that because I wanted the ability to "achieve divinity" to be possible for that BBEG, I wanted each of my gods to be one of a few who achieved massive power in one of the other planes and all came together to create the material plane. With a domain and a source plane, I was able to structure out who each of the gods was and what they contributed to the creation of the material plane.
This is cool. I love creating pantheons.
The empress card made me think of a Goddess of birth and life who cannot actually have a child of her own so she reveres her followers as if they were her own children and is fiercely protective over her followers regardless of how that affects the other Gods. Her followers use mother bears as a symbol for her. She is ironically in love with the God/Goddess of Death who treats the souls sent to them with love and care, ensuring her "children" are eternally loved. I'm not a good DM so anyone can feel more than free to snatch this concept from my little fingies lmfao I'd love for this idea to be used by a good DM
Brilliant video
This is a great idea, and I’m so inspired, I ended up with an entire pantheon centered around a tyrannical queen who twist her kin into new aspects of divinity
Here’s an idea. An orc god of various intellectual pursuits, science as a whole, and medicine. And most followers multi class as cleric/ artificer.
This is a good channel. I like Mike
that's a dope method
I didn't use tarot cards, but I have done something kinda similar to this before.
I took a list of every single domain I had access to (included published 3rd party ones) and a list of "portfolios", and then rolled 3 times on each. The most memorable god that I came up from this was one I named Erebos, whose Domains were Arcana, Lore, & Darkness and portfolio included Patricide, Eclipses, & Self Reflection.
Erebos is thus the bastard son of the setting's Sun God, a scholar and mage who seeks to take his father's throne for himself. His primary interaction with mortals who aren't scholars or mages themselves is from what is either his greatest gift or most wicked curse, depending on who you ask: introspection. He's the one that gave mortals the ability to not just remember past events, but look back on them in the context of who they are in the future.
He isn't a *popular* god, but his priests are often wildly accepted as the equivalent of real world therapists. They travel throughout the land, and when performing their duties, they don't preach gospel, they don't tell people how to live morally, or anything like that. They ask questions. Questions to make the listener look back on their past actions and decisions, and think about them. Similar to Tyr and Kratos's interactions in the Ragnarok DLC.
Some great ideas here - I'm not much good with randomly generating deities, but it could be a great way to pull inspiration!
I never give alignments to my deities, since I lean heavily into the idea that deities are created, and shaped, by their worshippers, and can manifest differently depending on the beliefs different peoples have about them. My gods also lack the interest or understanding to intervene in the material world unless specifically spurred by instigation (positive or negative) by mortals.
My own world's pantheon was designed based on the cosmology of the world, centred on a concept of "three spheres" where the material world is understood to be the place where the three elemental planes of water, earth, and air overlap. The "mother-goddess" of each of those domains then has a coterie of subordinate deities filling niches that are associated with them. I then had a mid-tier of detities considered lesser status but independent.
awesome video Mike. So much to think about - very useful!
Personally I love homemade but store bought are fine, although none could be fun but adding them in later as a plot point
Man, I'm sitting next to a big pile of Magic cards as I work on building a couple decks, and, y'know, not that I'm in need of gods for a setting right now, but using them (and not just the actual God cards) for something like this sounds fun. And at least at this exact moment, the Magic cards are closer to hand than either of my Tarot decks...
(On the other hand, the Jessica Hayworth Welcome to Night Vale tarot deck would absolutely inspire some wild deities. Maybe if I ever do some sort of weird, science-fantasy setting like Planescape or the implied setting of Troika!, the Hayworth Tarot could certainly inspire it)
6:08 - Its one of the things I really enjoyed about Dragonlance as a setting, whether it pkayed out well in all the books I cant say because there are a lot of them and a lot of authors, but the concept of balance was its core. The Priest King and Cataclysm was specifically an example of what happens when the balance of "Good" is too high, an implication that with a lack of "Evil" in the world the good guys become just as oppressive and start to question if they even need to worship the gods anymore. Or in the War of the Lance where the balance of "Evil" becomes so high that you're left with power hungry backstabbing warlords cutting each other down just to scrounge a little more glory or treasure until theyre so fractured that "Good" can step in and start widening those cracks and reclaim the world.
It felt like the Wizards of High Sorcery were the best example of that balance. They may not have liked each other but they could all meet peaceably when they had to.
to me a pantheon is much more relevant to behavior of the people of a single faith rather than that of reality, but people are biased to reinforce their beliefs within the setting
I'm not personally a fan of gods being involved in mortal affairs, and often times I prefer their existence to be in question
I find it makes for more interesting discussion when conflicting religions come into contact.
my current world has like 12 different religions and the history has made it that they interact quite frequently
That's what I also try to do, keep it personal and people-centered. And even if gods do somewhat intervene what stops people interpreting them differently?
You can have in the same world an alliance of city-states worshipping a pantheon of tens of mostly overlapping gods, basically a mix of each city's pantheon, an animist colture that believes clerics and mages to be vessels for their own personal spirits to influence the world, and a monotheistic religious kingdom that believes powerful clerics and rulers to be incarnations of their own all-powerful god, meant to guide the kingdom to victory.
And you don't need any of them to be right, they could all be worshipping the same 4 gods under different names, or there could be no gods at all
Yooooooo 👀 So many ideas, thank you for this video!
@SupergeekMike I love this idea, and I am stealing it, but instead of using a tarot deck I am using the deck of many things since I bought the physical one last year and it came with a card reference book explaining how to use them like tarot cards
Nice those are all great
Thanks!
An aspect of this that I really like is actually nothing to do with the tarot part - it's the taking two domains and trying to figure out how one figure could connect them. "This is the god of death and knowledge" set you down a whole character-building spiral. And it creates a feedback loop, since it suggests things about what death and knowledge themselves mean to people within the setting - maybe seeking great knowledge is seen as dangerous because it's stepping into the domain of death. A popular proverb might be "if you want to see the whole world at once, wait until you're standing outside of it".
Going to try playing with this idea of combining domains at random and see what comes out.
Very true!
Serial killer who strikes specifically during the new moon because they were raised in the church of amari
After reading Kingdom Come I based a pantheon on the Justice League. 20 years later one of the players figuired it out and was like, "How could you not tell me I could have been a Priest of Batman?!?"
This is actually really funny because I did the exact opposite. I came up with my deities and then when a player wanted their character to be all like luck and card themed I went in and made in world tarot decks where the major arcana features the primary deities from every pantheon. You have things like The Magician becoming "The Celestial Dragon" and depicts the wizardly deity who is the primary source of the Arcana domain, Wheel of Fortune is The Fey Lord, a deity of luck related to the Trickery domain and is the overseer of the Feywild much the same way that Death is The Mistress of Fate and is a deity of fate related to the Shadowfell and is a Raven Queen esque figure.
Instead of the normal suits of Cups, Wands, Pentacles, and Swords, I decided on Moons, Suns, Clovers, and Feathers. The sun and moon deities in my world are basically the Zeus/Hera duo of the primary pantheon of greater deities, so it made sense. They are Light and Life domain respectively, and Cups is the Water / Emotion suit which ties in well with the flavor of the moon goddess, with Fire/Creativity/Passion suit fitting the sun god. Clovers and Feathers are due to The Fey Lord being in some part inspired by the whole leprechaun/lucky charms thing so a four leaf clover is his symbol, which fit the earth/physical suit that is also often related to money in readings. Then you have Air/Intellect suit of swords in normal tarot that seemed to translate well to feathers, since The Mistress of Fate has ravens as her primary symbol since she is inspired by The Raven Queen in many ways.
I did rename some of the things as well. Where as you have Ace through Ten as numbers, Instead of "Page of" "Knight of" "Queen of" and "King of" for the suits, my "face cards" for the deck are Visier, Champion, Lady, and Lord respectively. So you might get the Vizier of Moons, Champion of Suns, Lady of Clovers, and Lord of Feathers instead of Page of Cups, Knight of Wands, etc.
I definitely tried to not fall into the pit trap of having all of the deities feel unconnected though. There's a whole world lore of a world existing before the current world where the mortals were met with calamity and some were chosen to ascend to fight it, becoming the gods that now rule the current world. Sort of nicked that idea from the Magi anime/manga with the whole Alma Torran idea, but I just reversed it. Instead of a bunch of monstrous races becoming humans in the new world, everyone was human in the old world, and the introduction of this divinity altered them making elves, orcs, etc. And a lot of the old conflicts ring true.
My stand in for Asmodeus as ruler of the hells and my stand in for Shar, who in my setting serves as the Asmodeus parallel for The Abyss, were once a prison warden and bandit queen. She was the one bounty he could never bring to heel, her bandits sowing chaos from their deep canyon base that seemed to stretch to infinity (a little tie in of the geography as foreshadowing for how their planes would be shaped once divinity struck). So even though the goddess of knowledge wiped all their memories of the time before, all of the gods have those tensions and bonds still present. Devils and demons are locked in this bloodshed for my world's version of The Blood War due to this subconscious feud between the two greater deities that they don't remember, but it's at the core of their very being.
And then there's the actual power distribution of the gods. I even have what in "normal" D&D might be not considered gods as gods. You have Archaics which are like elder gods lost to time that no one remembers that tie into things like Great Old One, you have Paragons, there are 15 paragons, one for each of the cleric domains I allow in my setting, and they serve almost as Ego from Guardians of the Galaxy. They are cosmic batteries for their specific domain and that magical energy shapes the planes. So like that Asmodeus stand in deity is the Paragon of the Death domain, and the Death domain is very linked to the Hells and infernal / necromantic soul magic and what not.
Then you have Exarchs. There is one Exarch for each combination and I know that sounds like a lot, but at the end of the day, these wouldn't be considered "gods" in faerun per se. Using that same example of the Asmodeus parallel, I basically just took the lore of archdevils, applied lore of the seven deadly sins to them, and then bam. You have "The Deadly Sins" pantheon. Likewise, my moon deity has a pantheon called The Moonweavers, which are all Life domain, and you've got things like Life, Blood is the deity of lycanthropy and is associated with the full moon and moon druids, Life, Forge is a wildfire druid deity centered around rebirth and the waning moon, Life, Trickery since trickery is tied to the feywild in my setting and circle of dreams is hinted as being fey based in its text is a new moon deity about remedies since dream druid has a lot of healing / soothing mechanics, and then you have Life, Nature and since nature domain is a very primal, bestial domain, the Paragon for which going by the title of The Beastmaster, and its plane being similar to Monster Hunter or the MtG Plane of Ikoria where there's always predator after predator, she is the shepherd druid / waxing moon deity. I just love the flavor of the four core phases of the moon, tying them into druid subclasses flavor wise, etc.
I won't continue to ramble because with 15 paragons, that's 15 pantheons, ranging anywhere from a small pantheon like the Moonweavers, up to larger pantheons like the ones that are my Archdevil stand ins. I'd hit the comment character limit 10 times over gushing about it haha. Oh also there are no duplicates. I had to do that to cut down on the number and that's WHY some pantheons have 4 or 5, whereas others have 8 or 9. So like if there's a Grave, Life deity, there will not also be a Life, Grave deity because that combo was already used.
For Mara and Amari names...if you want them to possibly be related think about having one be the other's name spelled backwards. Like maybe use Amari, and Irama. Or Amara and Arama...or Imara and Arami. So many possibilities! 😃
i did this aswell, though what i did was that the lovers arcana are both male dieties.
The wheel of fortune is the diety of childbirth, noth the lovers.
The lovers in my setting represent all forms of interpersonal connections. they arent the god of childbirth, but they are the gods of family. they arent the gods of war, but they are the gods of agreements and alliances. they arent the gods of sun and moon or night and day, but they are the gods of dawn and dusk. they both represent the peace domain, and another represents war and the other represents life.
My favorite though is my death god. hes not even really a god of death. he doesnt have the death domain. Instead, hes the god of funeral rights, darkness, magic, storms, and crossroads, and most importantly, the god of nihility (but not loss). Everything ties into nihility.
Funeral rights represent the absence of life, darkness the absence of light, crossroads the absence of certainty, storms the absence of peace, and magic the absence of meaning and reality. To him life is illusiory. absense is nothingness. all is nihility. he roams far, watching gods and men draw meaning from routine tides, and crumble in routine time. hes the youngest of the gods. from a world destroyed by a black hole. and he is the only god that resides exclusively in the human world.
Why not use the emperors as the ruler? It’s part of the natural order, but quiet is not always peaceful, it means not to much not to little, and balance is a good thing, so that tips the scales if it’s between good and evil.
Mike, have you ever considered getting into game design, because if you flesh this out a bit more (maybe replacing the tarot deck with a d66 table of prompts, but tarot works fine for solo play, tons of solo games use tarot as part of the gameplay loop), attach a framing device for a more roleplay oriented sense of discovery if you want it to be more of a journalling game than a world building game (both are valid), and remove the D&D and instead frame it as a fantasy pantheon, you could probably stick this up on itch and/or drivethru as a journalling game. (I could also see this idea working as the basis of a collaborative world building game in the vein of microscope but... With pantheons)