Somehow, I almost forgot to talk about temples, shines, and other holy places. This is particularly ironic because I originally got the idea for Divine Trappings when I read Raging Swan’s Urban Dressing: Temples, which presents temple features based on domains and subdomains. Domain aspects don’t just apply to the …
The other day I discovered I need to change my Entity Template. It turns out that goals — which work very well in adventure design — might not be so great in world building. The reason surprised me when I understood why they didn’t fit. Goals are supposed to be …
Ah yes. Halfway through writing the post I wanted for ‘R’ day, and I realized it would be a much better renamed and used on ‘S’ day. One of the hazards of being me, it means I moved it and have to start over again. Bugger. Okay. The Pathfinder Roleplaying …
Quests and trials are structurally almost the same thing. A task of some sort is set before the questor/trial candidate, who will strive to complete it. The difference lies in the intent behind the task. A quest is to try to achieve something, working toward a goal or purpose. A …
For the first time in a week or so, I’m actually getting ahead of things! And this should be an easy one to write, too. A little over five years ago I published Polyhedral Pantheons, a PDF inspired by The Rose of the Prophet series by Margaret Weiss and Tracy …
The basic deity descriptions in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game are very basic indeed. Name, alignment, domains (and later, subdomains) assigned, and favored weapon. Some deities have expanded descriptions, needed to support some feats and prestige classes that grant power (including spell-like abilities) in exchange for performing obediences, ritualistic activities done …
I have basically two primary methods of naming deities. One is random selection, the other is thematically guided. The one I use is determined by my expectations and plans when I start. Since I often don’t know what those plans are and have no expectations, I fall back on my …
Well, one mistake at least. In King of the Gods, I looked at the new pantheon I’m building “as if it were a dwarven pantheon”. The purpose of that post was to show how it’s possible to determine relative positions in the divine hierarchy by weighting domains linked to concepts …
I made a dwarven pantheon in my last post by taking the new pantheon I’m building and assigning a weight to each domain. This let me calculate a value for each deity so I could determine the deity’s grade (demi-god, lesser, intermediate, greater). It worked out pretty well, I think, …
Deities in Dungeons & Dragons have, for decades, come in four grades: demi-god, lesser, intermediate, and greater. These are a measure of the relative power of the deities, and of their position in the pantheon. Is there a way to build this into developing a new pantheon? If the pantheon …
