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
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 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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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!"
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 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.
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. 😄
One of my favourite videos on TH-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.
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.
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
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.
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 😂
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Sure! You’ll definitely get very different results, since those cards are much darker - and it might be tougher to look up alternate meanings since there’s not as much history of Tarokka - but it would definitely create a very interesting pantheon!
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
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
6:15 Yeaaaaaah, the jedi suck at explaining what they mean by balance. Essentially, they view the 'Light' side of the force as the natural order of the world. The 'Dark' side is viewed as an unnatural corruption, something that wasn't there in the beginning. It's very presence unbalances the universe. For them, to bring 'Balance' would mean Light conquering the Dark.
Your comment at 6:12 about the Jedi isn't accurate. Balance very specifically does mean justice and "good", the Jedi serve the Force/Balance, which means there can only be Balance if there are no Sith using the Force selfishly. The Sith represent imbalance, they're not all necessarily evil. In Korra it indeed makes less sense, because balance was the eternal fight, yet when "good" won, there was no 10 000 years of "good" in the world, so it ended up not having an effect.
So I’m returning to this video for inspiration after doing a big overhaul of the gods in my world. And I’ve gotta ask: where do you come up with these killer names?? I feel like naming things is my weakest world building trait
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 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.
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.
Maybe Somariel _does_ have a counterpart. it's just a being that few know of and almost no one would worship. It's Entropy. It could be represented by The Tower, but it wouldn't just break the building, It would _ummake_ the building. It deletes things from reality. Not only do those things cease to exist into the future, they also cease to exist in the past. No one worships it because trying to do so will irrevocably break a sound mind. The force of Entropy has no proper name. That may have been deleted, along with any concept of gender. The only correct answer to questions about 'The End' is "No".
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?!?"
When The Jedi speak of Balance, they do NOT mean the same number of Jedi and Sith. That is just a theory fans came up with because after RotS, there are 2 Jedi and 2 Sith. Bringing balance to the Force means getting rid of the Dark Side, because the Dark Side corrupts the Force and distorts it, ridding it of its natural, "balanced" state.
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.
16:43 What if Mara and Carsos and Alynore are a trifecta with familial bounds and Alynore is a god of order, mediation and family instead of marriage (maybe they are even triplets) that are mortals who ascend to godhood? ..with Mara first then Alynore and finally Carsos. With Alynore being a mediator between them mortal world and undeath through making sure that the other two don't mess things up in their feud, while also keeping a balance between the living, the undead, and the undying of the mortal planes as well as the afterlife/lives. Having Mara bring souls to a celestial after life and Carsos gift individuals undeath in exchange for their souls waging war against Mara and her afterlife for him. Mara could be symbolized by a fox or coyote, Carsos by a Raven and of course Alynore could be both together in harmonious balance. Maybe a Raven perched on a Fox. Or drop the triplets keep everything else exept the family part (at least between Mara and Carsos) maybe Alynore is just related to one of them like a brother or something and Mara and Carsos are current or ex-lovers and Alynore is the one who presided over the ceremony for them as the first marriage if you want to stick to the marriage flavor. Probably dropping all familial bounds and making it a life defining friendship would be coolest I think personally.
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 like this pantheon. I wonder what using the major arcana from Ravenloft's tarokka deck would make. In defense of the Realms pantheon. There are many relations amongst them, but page count and other space truncates much of the information about them.
Balance in the Force doesn't mean that there would be an equal amount of Sith and Jedi. The dark side and the Sith gain their power from emotional imbalance and create imbalance in the Force as a result. Therefore balance in the Force can only be achieved if the Sith are not allowed to rule. At least that is how it used to be. I think a lot of the new stuff went for a more "evil must exist for good to exist" but the Force was never meant to be good vs evil, it was harmony vs disharmony. It's just that those who embraced disharmony would be...unstable, and let their negative emotions rule them, which would make them 'evil'.
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 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.
I'm not sure that "life isn't fair" thing tracks. Given I think you could apply a similar logic to several real world religions and i dont think any of them would have a problem with that specific phrase
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)
Balance is, hm, inherently a form of order. You cannot have a balance between order and chaos because that would be paradoxical. I think many properties use balance as, hm, a form of natural harmony, and portrays the evil as a sort of malignant disease that upsets that harmony.
Ah commen misconception of the Force; their is no light side. the dark side is the corruption, the unbalance. Korra is bad but even then that's only because in the original it's the balance of life itself.
@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
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.
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
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.
Interesting. I like much of what you did but I do think there was both a lot of overlap as well as a lot of gaps. You don't have much in the way of "bad" gods and I wonder if those then become lesser gods with cults who operate outside of the boundries of the "balanced pantheon". Does this mean that they are left to be mortals problems or does Somerial consider them unworthy and actively endorse their destruction with no chance of mercy?
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.
In fairness to the the legend of Avatar franchise balance doesn't mean balance between good and evil but between the physical and spiritual worlds as well as between the four nations. The Avatar is supposed to be a little mediator between the four nations as well as the physical world and the spiritual world. Now on to the Star Wars universe the Jedi and Sith are both Splinter factions of a another order that is now extinct. This original order of force users preached balance between the light side and the dark side of the force, in fact this was such a big thing because the planet that this order was on was extremely sensitive to shifts in your alignment in the force you swing too far one way or the other you will be causing storms on a global level which is why the balance of one's self was so important.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 don't think balance means that the number of good vs bad has to be the same. Natures is balanced when there are enough rabbits, so that the wolves can eat them and both populations remain stable. And not that there are an equal number of wolves and and rabbits.
12:56 what if when you cast the spell an image of those guides of souls to the afterlife appears and hops into the chest or mouth or where ever of the dead person and that’s how the dead can speak. once it’s done a mist/energy releases the same color as the guides’ spirit/energy color to show it’s gone and the spell is done.
Great method, I appreciate your work, just powered through to current on your VM:D series this last two weeks. Only thing that keeps me from supporting is your CA/Tumblr/DEI language, cheers.
Thanks for watching. I hope at some point you learn that diversity, equity, and inclusion aren't actually the problems in modern society, and complaining about diversity just leaves you alone with the other frustrated folks who refuse to change with the times or confront their own internal biases. i promise you'll be all the better for it.
@@cq9269 The whole world is also not the corner of the internet that has decided to very recently start using "DEI" to describe any form of inclusion in a reductive and dismissive way, implying that any inclusion was only done to fulfill some sort of quota - as if it is somehow a bad thing for the world of art to reflect the world we live in, when that is in fact one of the primary purposes of art.
@@SupergeekMike But it is corporate language, we know it is quota'd, it is top-down- not organic. "reflective of the world we live in" is subjective and does not align with the statistics. Been playing dnd well over 20 years, only recently is it "cool", before us nerds were happy for anyone to play, or even entertain us about it and not go "Chick Tracts" on us- for that very nature it has always been diverse and inclusive, at least in my experience. (As far as Equity, keep it to real estate). I appreciate a lot that you have taken the time to respond to me, you certainly could have wrote me off as a troll, but please understand that i am sincere- i do support our fantasy game hobby for everyone, I just think that if we have talk about it, it isn't happening naturally.
@@cq9269 I'm so glad your group has been inclusive for years. Lots of groups were not. People have shared horror stories for decades of being pushed out of gaming groups due to their identity. So the most certain way to ensure that behavior is reduced at as many tables as possible is to normalize diversity in the game. And that can be done at every level - from the designers, to the influencers who discuss the game, to the audience requesting better representation. In a game like D&D, it's actually really important to make sure anyone who picks up the book can see themselves as one of the heroes, so better diversity in the text and in the art actually helps reach a broader audience and make the game stronger. Additionally, I'm very wary of any claim that "we know" whether representation is organic vs. quotad. When 5e was being developed, Hasbro didn't seem to care what they did with it (D&D was not a successful brand in their eyes), so I highly doubt they mandated that the game should have more people of color in the artwork - that choice was made by the designers. Is that not an organic decision? One of the lead designers is gay, so that's one of the reasons he has pushed for more LGBT+ characters in the game. Is that not authentic? "The Book of Many Things" features an autistic character because one of the writers is autistic - not only was this a chance for her to include someone like her in the game, but she also felt it made sense for the story ("Who better to fall in love with a medusa then someone who struggles with eye contact?") You also mention statistics - the statistics of what? Where? I haven't seen any stats to reflect how many diverse characters exist in D&D today, but you're right that they likely don't represent the racial makeup of rural America. Nor, I would argue, do they represent New Orleans. Nor Florida, someplace with a far greater Hispanic population than anything close to what we've seen attempted in the game. You mention LA (which is a pretty heavily segregated city, actually), and New York, but both of those cities have huge East Asian communities, and we don't have very many D&D characters who appear East Asian. And if your point is more gender and sexual diversity, that's also very difficult to compare to real world statistics, given that there are many places in the country and the world that are openly hostile toward LGBT+ people, so many of them remain closeted. That's yet another reason why it's so valuable to include more representation in art - to normalize the topic, so people can feel more free to live authentically as themselves. I would recommend a few videos that go further in depth in this topic. One is Matt Colville's "The Sociology of D&D," which discusses the importance of including diversity in D&D (th-cam.com/video/EHUCi6ZbVxU/w-d-xo.html), and the other is LegalKimchi's "Does Representation Matter," which tackles this topic from the broader subject of current-day art (th-cam.com/video/e93Uc1_H6Nw/w-d-xo.html). If you are open to the idea that this subject might be more complex - and more important - than you had previously believed, then I welcome you to ask any additional questions, and perhaps I can point you to other helpful resources or address this topic in a future video. However, it's very possible this won't change your mind, and if that's the case, then I still wish you the very best. Mike
I really like this idea and it makes me wonder if there are any digital tarot decks online where you can just freely draw since I dont own a deck myself.
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
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.
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!
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)
I'd add something related to plagues to the god of war, too. Or a distinction between the god of *war* and the god of *fighting*. Or, as the ancients did, different temples worshiping different attributions of the same entity, which eventually were conflations of previous entities.
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'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
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 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
This is actually a brilliant idea for creating a pantheon. I'll use it to flesh out my pantheon a little.
World building brain is going now. Must make a pantheon. Masters dissertation can wait a few days.
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
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.
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.
Serial killer who strikes specifically during the new moon because they were raised in the church of amari
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.
Can't believe i've never thought of this! I love it!
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!"
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 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.
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 was incredible and inspiring. You have the exact way of thinking/worldbuilding I love. So creative and unique. Take my like and subscription.
Participated in a west March server with Tarot themed gods, it was a blast and it was very well made.
One of my favourite videos on TH-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.
Could use the book American Gods as inspiration.
Has gods like God of Technology. God of Guns. Etc.
Modern worship.
Cool concept.
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.
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
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.
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 is a really cool concept. If I ever want to homebrew a campaign setting, I'll definitely create my pantheon in a similar way
Ooh I love the themes you came up with for these gods! Sounds like a really interesting world to play in
Have you ever created your own D&D pantheon?
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I don't have a tarot deck, but I have the Strahd Tarokka deck
Could it work as well?
Sure! You’ll definitely get very different results, since those cards are much darker - and it might be tougher to look up alternate meanings since there’s not as much history of Tarokka - but it would definitely create a very interesting pantheon!
I'd say so! Tarokka, or even the Deck of Many Things do a lot of the same things as a standard Tarot deck so they can be used in a very similar way.
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!
We like Mike.
Be like Mike
Can’t wait to see this pantheon!
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
6:15 Yeaaaaaah, the jedi suck at explaining what they mean by balance. Essentially, they view the 'Light' side of the force as the natural order of the world.
The 'Dark' side is viewed as an unnatural corruption, something that wasn't there in the beginning. It's very presence unbalances the universe.
For them, to bring 'Balance' would mean Light conquering the Dark.
Your comment at 6:12 about the Jedi isn't accurate. Balance very specifically does mean justice and "good", the Jedi serve the Force/Balance, which means there can only be Balance if there are no Sith using the Force selfishly. The Sith represent imbalance, they're not all necessarily evil.
In Korra it indeed makes less sense, because balance was the eternal fight, yet when "good" won, there was no 10 000 years of "good" in the world, so it ended up not having an effect.
So I’m returning to this video for inspiration after doing a big overhaul of the gods in my world. And I’ve gotta ask: where do you come up with these killer names?? I feel like naming things is my weakest world building trait
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 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.
Interesting that you and Montyglu, DM of The Unexpectables campaigns gave your sun gods the same names, Orin and Orun respectively.
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.
Maybe Somariel _does_ have a counterpart. it's just a being that few know of and almost no one would worship.
It's Entropy.
It could be represented by The Tower, but it wouldn't just break the building, It would _ummake_ the building. It deletes things from reality. Not only do those things cease to exist into the future, they also cease to exist in the past. No one worships it because trying to do so will irrevocably break a sound mind.
The force of Entropy has no proper name. That may have been deleted, along with any concept of gender.
The only correct answer to questions about 'The End' is "No".
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?!?"
When The Jedi speak of Balance, they do NOT mean the same number of Jedi and Sith. That is just a theory fans came up with because after RotS, there are 2 Jedi and 2 Sith.
Bringing balance to the Force means getting rid of the Dark Side, because the Dark Side corrupts the Force and distorts it, ridding it of its natural, "balanced" state.
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.
16:43 What if Mara and Carsos and Alynore are a trifecta with familial bounds and Alynore is a god of order, mediation and family instead of marriage (maybe they are even triplets) that are mortals who ascend to godhood? ..with Mara first then Alynore and finally Carsos. With Alynore being a mediator between them mortal world and undeath through making sure that the other two don't mess things up in their feud, while also keeping a balance between the living, the undead, and the undying of the mortal planes as well as the afterlife/lives. Having Mara bring souls to a celestial after life and Carsos gift individuals undeath in exchange for their souls waging war against Mara and her afterlife for him. Mara could be symbolized by a fox or coyote, Carsos by a Raven and of course Alynore could be both together in harmonious balance. Maybe a Raven perched on a Fox. Or drop the triplets keep everything else exept the family part (at least between Mara and Carsos) maybe Alynore is just related to one of them like a brother or something and Mara and Carsos are current or ex-lovers and Alynore is the one who presided over the ceremony for them as the first marriage if you want to stick to the marriage flavor. Probably dropping all familial bounds and making it a life defining friendship would be coolest I think personally.
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 like this pantheon. I wonder what using the major arcana from Ravenloft's tarokka deck would make.
In defense of the Realms pantheon. There are many relations amongst them, but page count and other space truncates much of the information about them.
Balance in the Force doesn't mean that there would be an equal amount of Sith and Jedi. The dark side and the Sith gain their power from emotional imbalance and create imbalance in the Force as a result. Therefore balance in the Force can only be achieved if the Sith are not allowed to rule.
At least that is how it used to be. I think a lot of the new stuff went for a more "evil must exist for good to exist" but the Force was never meant to be good vs evil, it was harmony vs disharmony. It's just that those who embraced disharmony would be...unstable, and let their negative emotions rule them, which would make them 'evil'.
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 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.
I'm not sure that "life isn't fair" thing tracks. Given I think you could apply a similar logic to several real world religions and i dont think any of them would have a problem with that specific phrase
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 just finished rewatching Jojo part 3. Do you have eyes on my watchlist or what??
Balance is, hm, inherently a form of order. You cannot have a balance between order and chaos because that would be paradoxical.
I think many properties use balance as, hm, a form of natural harmony, and portrays the evil as a sort of malignant disease that upsets that harmony.
Ah commen misconception of the Force; their is no light side. the dark side is the corruption, the unbalance. Korra is bad but even then that's only because in the original it's the balance of life itself.
@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
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.
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
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.
Interesting. I like much of what you did but I do think there was both a lot of overlap as well as a lot of gaps. You don't have much in the way of "bad" gods and I wonder if those then become lesser gods with cults who operate outside of the boundries of the "balanced pantheon". Does this mean that they are left to be mortals problems or does Somerial consider them unworthy and actively endorse their destruction with no chance of mercy?
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.
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.
In fairness to the the legend of Avatar franchise balance doesn't mean balance between good and evil but between the physical and spiritual worlds as well as between the four nations. The Avatar is supposed to be a little mediator between the four nations as well as the physical world and the spiritual world. Now on to the Star Wars universe the Jedi and Sith are both Splinter factions of a another order that is now extinct. This original order of force users preached balance between the light side and the dark side of the force, in fact this was such a big thing because the planet that this order was on was extremely sensitive to shifts in your alignment in the force you swing too far one way or the other you will be causing storms on a global level which is why the balance of one's self was so important.
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.
Thats an amazing idea. I did it backwards for my own worldbuilding. I assigned the gods major arcana cards once i had enough.
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.
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.
I sometimes roll 1d6 for how many domains each god has: 1-3 for one, 4-5 for two, and 6 for three.
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.
Lobe the video! Ironically, now I am going to steal these now existing deities for my own game. And add some with the method.
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 don't think balance means that the number of good vs bad has to be the same. Natures is balanced when there are enough rabbits, so that the wolves can eat them and both populations remain stable. And not that there are an equal number of wolves and and rabbits.
I like the idea a farmer grumble about Orin forgetting to feed their crops when they had a bad yield.
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.
12:56 what if when you cast the spell an image of those guides of souls to the afterlife appears and hops into the chest or mouth or where ever of the dead person and that’s how the dead can speak. once it’s done a mist/energy releases the same color as the guides’ spirit/energy color to show it’s gone and the spell is done.
Your death goddess sounds really cool, reminds me a bit of Billie From supernatural
Personally I love homemade but store bought are fine, although none could be fun but adding them in later as a plot point
Great method, I appreciate your work, just powered through to current on your VM:D series this last two weeks. Only thing that keeps me from supporting is your CA/Tumblr/DEI language, cheers.
Thanks for watching. I hope at some point you learn that diversity, equity, and inclusion aren't actually the problems in modern society, and complaining about diversity just leaves you alone with the other frustrated folks who refuse to change with the times or confront their own internal biases. i promise you'll be all the better for it.
@@SupergeekMike Thank you for taking your time to reply, however I am very much not alone, the whole world is not just CA and NY.
@@cq9269 The whole world is also not the corner of the internet that has decided to very recently start using "DEI" to describe any form of inclusion in a reductive and dismissive way, implying that any inclusion was only done to fulfill some sort of quota - as if it is somehow a bad thing for the world of art to reflect the world we live in, when that is in fact one of the primary purposes of art.
@@SupergeekMike But it is corporate language, we know it is quota'd, it is top-down- not organic. "reflective of the world we live in" is subjective and does not align with the statistics.
Been playing dnd well over 20 years, only recently is it "cool", before us nerds were happy for anyone to play, or even entertain us about it and not go "Chick Tracts" on us- for that very nature it has always been diverse and inclusive, at least in my experience. (As far as Equity, keep it to real estate).
I appreciate a lot that you have taken the time to respond to me, you certainly could have wrote me off as a troll, but please understand that i am sincere- i do support our fantasy game hobby for everyone, I just think that if we have talk about it, it isn't happening naturally.
@@cq9269 I'm so glad your group has been inclusive for years. Lots of groups were not. People have shared horror stories for decades of being pushed out of gaming groups due to their identity. So the most certain way to ensure that behavior is reduced at as many tables as possible is to normalize diversity in the game. And that can be done at every level - from the designers, to the influencers who discuss the game, to the audience requesting better representation. In a game like D&D, it's actually really important to make sure anyone who picks up the book can see themselves as one of the heroes, so better diversity in the text and in the art actually helps reach a broader audience and make the game stronger.
Additionally, I'm very wary of any claim that "we know" whether representation is organic vs. quotad. When 5e was being developed, Hasbro didn't seem to care what they did with it (D&D was not a successful brand in their eyes), so I highly doubt they mandated that the game should have more people of color in the artwork - that choice was made by the designers. Is that not an organic decision? One of the lead designers is gay, so that's one of the reasons he has pushed for more LGBT+ characters in the game. Is that not authentic? "The Book of Many Things" features an autistic character because one of the writers is autistic - not only was this a chance for her to include someone like her in the game, but she also felt it made sense for the story ("Who better to fall in love with a medusa then someone who struggles with eye contact?")
You also mention statistics - the statistics of what? Where? I haven't seen any stats to reflect how many diverse characters exist in D&D today, but you're right that they likely don't represent the racial makeup of rural America. Nor, I would argue, do they represent New Orleans. Nor Florida, someplace with a far greater Hispanic population than anything close to what we've seen attempted in the game. You mention LA (which is a pretty heavily segregated city, actually), and New York, but both of those cities have huge East Asian communities, and we don't have very many D&D characters who appear East Asian.
And if your point is more gender and sexual diversity, that's also very difficult to compare to real world statistics, given that there are many places in the country and the world that are openly hostile toward LGBT+ people, so many of them remain closeted. That's yet another reason why it's so valuable to include more representation in art - to normalize the topic, so people can feel more free to live authentically as themselves.
I would recommend a few videos that go further in depth in this topic. One is Matt Colville's "The Sociology of D&D," which discusses the importance of including diversity in D&D (th-cam.com/video/EHUCi6ZbVxU/w-d-xo.html), and the other is LegalKimchi's "Does Representation Matter," which tackles this topic from the broader subject of current-day art (th-cam.com/video/e93Uc1_H6Nw/w-d-xo.html).
If you are open to the idea that this subject might be more complex - and more important - than you had previously believed, then I welcome you to ask any additional questions, and perhaps I can point you to other helpful resources or address this topic in a future video. However, it's very possible this won't change your mind, and if that's the case, then I still wish you the very best.
Mike
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!
I really like this idea and it makes me wonder if there are any digital tarot decks online where you can just freely draw since I dont own a deck myself.
In antiquity, some believed that dead souls traveled to the moon on their way to the afterlife
Me over here using random name generators for my world’s pantheon XD 😅
Mike is the type of GM I would love to run a campion with.
I accualy based my worlds pantheon on the major acrana🤣
this is such a genius worldbuilding idea omg!
What ever happened to Androgynous?
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.
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!
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!
This is a good channel. I like Mike
I really like this guy.
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)
Ah, yes, legally distinct Raven Queen xD
I'd add something related to plagues to the god of war, too.
Or a distinction between the god of *war* and the god of *fighting*.
Or, as the ancients did, different temples worshiping different attributions of the same entity, which eventually were conflations of previous entities.