What are the defining traits of a god?

Dark Sun canon has a good example of that, in fact.

(The fact that I wrote up some conversions for dragon-kings and avangion for our Dark Sun campaign is the reason why I went so quickly to the transformation rules in this thread; that’s what I used as a base there.)

I can’t remember right now if I wrote any new mishaps for it, I think I just said they’re always catastrophic.

Minor Mishaps: Accidentally become the god of baggy pants and embarassing anecdotes

ACKS Dwimmermount has a set of immortality rules. That's a decent start, at least. Gods aren't supposed to die.

Did we just jump from B/X to I and skip right over C and M, because I feel like that's what we just did.

The worst part?  That's what all your followers are into and their worship is your source of divine power, so now you just have to go with it.

I'd go as far as to make powerful monsters - though significantly less powerful than an ancient dragon - get worshipped locally and gain certain "divine" abilities on the regional or even local level; things like Aboleths, "Spheres of Eyes", "Brain Lashers" or even sentient undead. They might even grant low-level clerical spells to their followers! But these powers will diminish with distance from the "god".

Ooh, I hadn't thought about making it region-based. Almost like lines of supply!

 

"SAVE ME JEEEEEBUS"
"Sorry Homer, but you're in a no-coverage zone."

This is more or less the way many gods worked in ancient times - they were the gods of this or that country or this or that city-state, and if you moved into that place, you worshipped them as they held sway locally. Omniscient gods with global influence are much newer.

There is also animism as in Japanese Shinto in which there is a huge number of local small-scale gods and spirits (Kami), in addition to certain "greater" gods such as Amaterasu. A tree or mountain could have its own god(ess), with very local influence.

Also, read the 2 Kings and Josephus version of how the Samaritans got their faith; essentially the story goes that when the kings of Assyria deported tens of thousands of Israelites to Assyria, they resettled people from Mesopotamia in their place. Because The Land of Israel belongs to the Hebrew god, and they didn't worship him, he unleashed lions unto them, so the Assyrians sent Jewish priests to teach them the local faith; and, indeed, up to this very day their faith is very similar to Judaism.

 

My sporadic bedtime reading has been the Discworld series; picked it up again from the first when Pratchett died. As it so happens, I've been in the middle of Small Gods, which very strongly relates to this thread.

[quote="Terry Pratchett, Small Gods"] "Right," said Om. "Now . . . listen. Do you know how gods get power?" "By people believing in them," said Brutha. "Millions of people believe in you." Om hesitated. All right, all right. We are here and it is now. Sooner or later he'll find out for himself . . . "They don't believe," said Om. "But- "It's happened before," said the tortoise. "Dozens of times. D'you know Abraxas found the lost city of Ee? Very strange carvings, he says. Belief, he says. Belief shifts. People start out believing in the god and end up believing in the structure." "I don't understand," said Brutha. "Let me put it another way," said the tortoise. "I am your God, right?" "Yes." "And you'll obey me." "Yes." "Good. Now take a rock and go and kill Vorbis." Brutha didn't move. "I'm sure you heard me," said Om. "But he'll . . . he's . . . the Quisition would- "Now you know what I mean," said the tortoise. "You're more afraid of him than you are of me, now. Abraxas says here: `Around the Godde there forms a Shelle of prayers and Ceremonies and Buildings and Priestes and Authority, until at Last the Godde Dies. Ande this maye notte be noticed.' " [/quote]

Small Gods was, I think, my first Pratchett book! The only one my highschool library had. What a lovely book to remember!

I would say that there are four major characteristics of a god. 1. Power on a level far outstripping mortals. 2. Being extremely difficult to kill and not dieing of old age. (plenty of gods can die look at the norse). 3. Being able to affect multiple places and interact with multiple people at the same time. 4. Having something to do with souls and an afterlife.

I recently wrote a short essay on my blog about my take on how deities interact with mortals. I did not go into mechanics because that is just not my thing, but Alex's work as well. I posted it in the ACK Google+ group which is were I normally post. 

http://stifflittlebrushes.blogspot.com

Interesting! I think a lot of what you've written is compatible with Alex's soul mechanics, and it overlaps heavily with the ideas I'd already come up with. Making power anathema to mortals solves a lot of the inherent issues with gods.

I think too often people over look the psychology of religon. Religon fills an important role in society and in the mortal realm. The rules (dogma and doctrine) of the different faiths create a psychological framework that allows mortal to feel connected to their deities. This dogma and doctrine is often how mortals interpet the will of the gods not the gods themselves.

The "Cult of Me,Me,Me" causes a lot of players and DM to create situations where Deities too often directly interact with the mortal realm.

In my eyes, this diminishes the whole purpose of deities and turns them into Deux Machina or the Mary Sue. DM's waaaayyyyy over use gods and goddess in an effort to make an campaign and adventure "Epic" as if having deities directly involved somehow raises the the quality of the adventure. I tend to find that it has the exact opposite effect. 

So true! And welcome to the forums. You're at home here, clearly!

I figured I have lurked in the shadows long enough, I might as well contribute

Quite right!  Even in a world in which the "gods" are real, I find that a narrative is much better served by the uncertainty and/or subtlety of higher powers which do not take too direct a hand in the course of human events.

At the moment, my game world is beset by a war which is, in no small part, fueled by theological disagreement over the details of two pantheons which share certain gods in common.  This conflict continues to escalate because the gods in question - despite continuing to grant supernatural power to their clergy on both sides of the schism - remain largely silent on the truth of the matters in dispute.  High priests on both sides of the divide claim divine revelation as to the truth, and since both groups continue to manifest power, there is no further authority to which the faithful might appeal.

Which means that, despite a world in which gods are "real" and grant power to their followers, I get to explore the vagaries of religious conflict in much the same context as it has existed in the real world throughout history.

Good times.

That's a fine setup for religious war, but it does invite an obvious question: why do the gods act this way?

Of course, you probably never need to answer this question in your campaign, but if we consider gods as a special case of NPC, I wonder what their motivation is.

Do they not care that their followers are killing each other? If so, why do they even bother with worshippers.

Or are the gods actually just impersonal forces of nature, granting spells for anyone that worships them, but uninterested in whether a million worshippers live or die?

Or is there some complicated circumstance that the gods can't disclose to mortals?

The defining trait of a god is that...

When someone asks you if you're a god, you say yes!

The motives of the gods are inscrutable to mere mortals, Maladax.

Of course, one might posit that faith is more powerful (and therefore more nourishing to deities) when it is strengthened by difficulty and calamity.  A war between two factions which worship the same god provides that god with super-charged faith on both sides of the conflict.  You might rightly point out that the god is also losing worshippers on both sides of the conflict, but perhaps a single fanatic engaged in holy war produces more faith energy than ten complacent worshippers in a time of peace.

One might further conjecture that mortals worship gods for their own reasons.  If a given god doesn't satisfy their "needs" they may move on to others that better suit their worldview.  Since the gods may only influence the mortal realm through the actions of their faithful and the powers they grant those faithful, perhaps it behooves them to allow these theological disagreements to iron themselves out, rather than risk driving away an entire faction of worshippers by picking a side.

Along alternate lines, one might hypothesize that the gods are shaped by the dogmas and theologies of their worshippers, rather than being the shapers of them.  Perhaps the gods are ultimately powerless in the face of their own faithful, taking on the traits ascribed to them by the very worship that sustains them.  In that case, a god whose worshippers engage in a factional religious conflict literally CANNOT pick a side, as they must await the outcome of the argument to learn who they are to become.

Or maybe another reason, or maybe none of them.  The gods, after all, are inscrutable in their motives.