Well, they can’t all be winners.
I’m not in Norristown at this time, enjoying (for a given value of “enjoyment”) my first day on the job. Because of Le Wokisme Bureaucracy™ my onboarding paperwork has not been fully processed yet. Hopefully tomorrow. Fingers crossed. In other news, my MacBook is dead, more or less. It is not keeping a charge; I’m gonna try and troubleshoot it at the LRC, but if this is it then at least it lasted me a good long while, truly #blessed by Bryon Grigsby himself. I’m getting a laptop supplied by my work, and I have an old gaming laptop that works… sometimes, so I’m not entirely without options. Plus we live in the future™ and carry computers around at all times (which is what I’m typing this on).
In other news, the pool’s finally open here at Anova! I’m gonna have some lunch or an early dinner then go swimming. I’m planning something for this Saturday, we have never been more back.
Appendix: Gods-Bothering, Part I
The world of Narazen was originally created for Spore fanfic, and incredibly rich and detailed cosmologies and mythologies were developed over the years. A shame most of those details never ended up Wikiside.
When I first tried running games set in the Fantasyverse, a persistent issue I encountered was how to introduce said elaborate systems to players, preserving nuance without scaring them away. I eventually determined that, given my generous “borrowing” from real world inspirations, I could use those inspirations instead.
So I did. It’s worked really well so far.
I’m currently running 5e, because everyone and their mother knows 5e. D&D’s no stranger to gamifying real world mythologies, to mixed results, and in one of the Appendices to the 2014 Player’s Handbook are some already worked examples of Fantasy-Historical Pantheons. Perfect.
The question then became “which gods go where, and how?” “Around Here,” the common gods are Greco-Egyptian, with the Egyptian gods being those of the Old Empire and its Collegium Pontificum, and the Greek gods being the Foreign™ (Prymir-ish, I imagine, not too Foreign™) aspects or interpretations thereof. Kind of like the interpretatio graeca but in reverse. The linked page also provides a helpful table listing generally-accepted conversions, though the Norse gods are unfortunately absent.
The following are very rough, deliberately incomplete, vibes-based guidelines, not ironclad rules. Alignments are provided in parentheses, one should probably be within one “step” of one’s chosen patron alignment-wise (e.g. clerics of Osiris being LG, NG, or LN; clerics of Dionysus being CG, CN, or CE; etc.)
Sample patron deities by race/species:
- Dwarves: Hades (LE), Hephaestus (NG), Osiris (LG), Ptah (LN), or by class/alignment
- Elves: Apollo (CG), Artemis (NG), Bast (CG), Nephthys (CG), or by class/alignment
- Halflings: Bast (CG), Bes (CN), Hathor (NG), Tyche (N), or by class/alignment
- Humans: Isis (NG), Osiris (LG), Re–Horakhty (LG), or by class/alignment
Sample patron deities by class:
- Clerics (incl. Bards, Druids): Any (see below)
- Fighters (incl. Barbarians, Monks, Paladins, Rangers): Ares (CE), Athena (LG), Bast (CG), Heracles (CG), Nike (LN), Poseidon (CN), Re–Horakhty (LG), Set (CE)
- Rogues (incl. Bards, Rangers): Apep (NE), Bast (CG), Bes (CN), Dionysus (CN), Hera (CN), Hermes (CG), Set (CE), Tyche (N)
- Wizards (incl. Bards, Sorcerers, Warlocks): Apollo (CG), Hecate (CE), Imhotep (NG), Isis (NG), Ptah (LN), Set (CE), Thoth (N)
Later today I’ll update with more details. Stay tuned!
Sierpinski Tetrahedron 