RPG Blog Carnival: Divine Worldbuilding Roundup

A couple days late, for which I apologize. I hadn’t realized just how much losing three of my senior staff — my two peers to retirement, our (former) director to a reassignment — would take out of me.

Regardless, time for the round up.

I led the charge with a couple of posts.

Divine Worldbuilding in the AGE of Rediscovery described the role of gods and religions in my AGE of Rediscovery campaign. I was able to repurpose some of the pantheons from Polyhedral Pantheons, and found a gap. I didn’t have a pantheon for the kingdom of Bandisal, where the PCs came from.

Divine Worldbuilding: Bandisal Deities fixed that, though. A quick application of Polyhedral Pantheons gave me a set of deities accepted back in staid, calcifying Bandiscal, and a larger set that are not as welcome there — but can be found in the Outlands, where the PCs will be adventuring.

Tommogen of The Library of Lost Legends was next up with January 2019 RPG Blog Carnival: In My Campaign: Divine World Building, which describes how Tommogen develops a new campaign setting by starting with the divine elements and how they affect and shape the setting. Since I do that myself, I’m inclined to think it’s a good idea.

Brian Rubinfeld of Daemons & Death Rays believes that rock & roll never dies… and in Rock & Roll Deities, proves it by providing a small pantheon for rockers of all alignments.

Sean Holland of Sea of Stars answers the question, Did the Gods build the Sea of Stars? with conflicting stories, because the truth is lost… or rather, hidden by those who would not want it known.

Mike Bourke of Campaign Mastery took two tries to get me the link (I poke fun here only because I have a bad habit of forgetting to include links in email — Outlook and gmail check for attachments, they don’t make sure I include links) to Divine Worlds To Conquer: Four Campaigns for the Jan 2019 Blog Carnival. Never mind ‘adventure seeds’, Mike provides the seeds of four full-blown campaigns. I thought I was doing well with my Campaign Cosmology, Mike found four times the seeds… prompted by just the words ‘divine worldbuilding’.

Faith of Pitfalls and Pixies gave us Divines and the Worldbuilding Process, describing the dragon-gods of her campaign. I really like how they fit together, each with a complement or foil within the pantheon… and yet, having only four deities described seems that the pantheon may be imbalanced. This is a good thing in my view, because it suggests that other divine aspects and interests will be handled in other pantheons. This approach looks like it gives plenty of campaign fodder for further development.

Steve Rakner of the Roll4 Network describes The Gods of Mitica, The High Pantheon. The sixteen deities are presented in a minimalist format, but the portfolios identified intrigue me.

It seems Doctor Necrotic might be Brian Rubinfeld’s other side; both post via Daemons & Death Rays and Doctor Necrotic mentions wanting to ‘return to [the blog carnival] once more’… but perhaps Brian doesn’t know? After reading Divine World Building — Arothe, describing the how the world came about as part of a mad god’s dreams, and how touching on the divine can destroy mortal minds… this might be so.

Finally, Frank Meinecke slid in just under the wire with a post at The Frank GM. Divine Worldbuilding — Wordbuilding Exemplified goes back to fundamentals of pantheon design. It exemplifies several themes I try to describe in my campaign and scenario design series, and because it consists of concrete examples with plenty of tension between them, is a much more engaging read than my theory posts. The post goes from “how many gods do I need?” through pantheon and mythology development and into the consequences for the mortal world. It’s a fairly long read, but entirely worth the time. I’m glad Frank shared this post with the Carnival, it’s a piece of art.

Closing Thoughts

I honestly thought for a while that this Carnival might end up being a dud, it was much slower to start than my earlier one. The grade of the posts received was worth the slow start.

I see a few names I recognize here from older blogs, and several that I’ve never seen before that I’ll be digging into to read more.

Thank you for participating!

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One comment

  1. Thanks for the kind words, glad you enjoyed what I had to offer :)

    As for the slower responses, I’ve noticed something similar with the last couple of times that I’ve hosted: that on most occasions, you get more submissions in the latter 1/2 to 1/3 of the carnival than in the early days. There are rare exceptions, but you can never predict when they will occur.

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