Let's face it, designing Gods is a daunting prospect. Far too often the golden opportunity to inject deities as stunning in power as they are complex and mysterious into a campaign is squandered by fledgling gamemasters or game designers. Gods must awe. They must drive the overarching plots of your campaigns and most of all they must inspire the players to take up steel and spell either in their name, or against their heinous blasphemy. When designing your own adventures don't let the opportunity to create gods that will terrify, even as they inspire, slip by. Your players will appreciate your hard work when you reveal a pantheon that blows them away and instantly has the whole table yelling "I'll play the cleric!"

When tackling gods for Dark Vistas #1: Razor Coast, I wanted to deliver deities unlike any seen before. I started with Dajobas (see the Indulgence of the same name). A god of hunger immediately intrigued me...and sharks have always frightened me more than any other creature on this planet. He was born of my fever dreams, phobia of deep water, and one too many viewings of Jaws in my tormented childhood (thanks Chris...that's my older brother for you readers who don't know me well). From the ravenous Eater of Worlds we take our first lesson on deity design: Don't settle for a mundane concept. When I set out to design the antagonist at the center of my campaign, I didn't want to go with God of Evil, God of Darkness, God of Undeath, or any other such cliched trope. I wanted a fresh way to approach a dark god, and "Hunger" was the choice I went with. Hunger is an awesome force, especially one which cannot be sated, especially if its given the power of a God. And thus, Dajobas was born.

The Many Faces of the Divine

I've never been a fan of flat, one-sided gods. To me, every god is multi-faceted, worshipped in dozens of ways, by myriad followers, each seeing a different shimmering reflection of the same indescribable majesty. No one can really know the true face of a God, and why oh why would something of such awesome power limit itself to one definable shape when appearing to dozens of different peoples. I instantly applied this concept to Dajobas. He began as a Shark God, for nothing else could encapsulate the awesome power of Hunger better than a shark, but quickly I decided that this form was limiting to a deity. How does he gain followers among land-dwellers if his only real definable form is that of Shark. Hence the Karikanti (see Still Waters) and the Gator - a new face for Dajobas, and one which can walk among men and feast on their children in the night. Hunger given scales and bumps instead of a fin. If Dajobas were to spread to a plains environment, or a desert might he not take the form of a Jackal or Hyena, or appear as some ravenous Sand Worm 100 feet long? When designing your Gods, keep in mind they may appear before their followers in many forms. Beyond forms, ensure that your God's theme is multi-faceted as well. Hunger is pretty easily defined. Eating stuff. But what if we want to suggest a more complex Dajobas. Hunger could easily be adapted to other acts involving eating, such as cannabalism - a hunger so powerful it forces us to eat our own. Perhaps it is abstracted further to be associated with Slaughter, that butchery of life that must precede the Feast. Blood cults now abound in Dajobas' name. Take Hunger even further and we could go to Consumption, the using-up of resources (which plays quite heavily into Razor Coast truth be told). The whaling fleets along the Razor, slaying whales by the hundreds in order to supply oil to those who consume it by the barrel-load are of Dajobas, they slay the Whale, traditionally the watcher who keeps the Shark at bay, and the Consumption of her oil feeds Dajobas' power.  

Gods should never be too simple in my opinion. They also need to avoid being too blase, and too transparent. Next time you are designing a god for your home campaign, think about some concepts you can really play with. Maybe instead of Evil, choose Disease. Instead of Darkness, choose Nightmares or Insanity. Maybe go with Toil (like Droskar from Crown of the Kobold King), or Conquest, or The Hunt, or Shame, or Time, or Murder (a Crow) or Judgement, or Eyes (He Who Sees All), or Worms (Decay, Ruin...Kyuss...so cool!). Give any of those a dark spin and you may have a fairly interesting God to play with.

When Gods Grapple

The most important next step of God design is creating a second god to serve as their hated enemy, or at least determined rival. Think of the big baddies of classic D&D. What would Orcus be without Demogorgon really? Rivalries and deific antagonism are the stuff of our world's best legends. The Greek Pantheon was especially dysfunctional and that's what makes those Gods so much fun. Gods that betray one another, plot to kill one another, oppose one another on the field of battle on the Material Plane. These are Gods we want to know more about and get involved with. Any great thing alone is static, but give it an opposite or an antagonist worthy of its rancor, and now you've got sparks, smoke and fire!

When looking for a suitable opponent for Dajobas, the choice was simple. It is amazing to me that Pele, ostensibly the most interesting Goddess in real world myth, has been so shamefully overlooked in our beloved hobby. When coming up with another Big Damn Deity of the Razor Coast, it was an easy decision: Pele, Goddess of Fire, as fickle and deadly as she can be beneficent, with the power of the Volcano, the power to give birth to islands, and at the same time destroy everything foolish enough to inhabit them - there is no Goddess more awesome and inspiring than Pele as far as I'm concerned, and the concept of a Volcano goddess is a sweet one, with loads of possibilities. The myths, chants, dances and legends surrounding her power enchanted me during my time in Hawai'i and considering I wrote most of Razor Coast while I was on the islands, I knew Pele would play an intrinsic role in the campaign. And so, as a treat, and by way of apology for my long absence from the blog and site, I offer you, gentle readers, your first glimpse of Pele in all her fiery glory. Behold her power and burn.

Thanks for reading. If you have any questions, thoughts, or ponderances of any kind, fire up a thread on the messageboards about gods, Pele, Dajobas, or whatever and I'll happily chime in. Good sinning!