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Saturday, April 29, 2023

Deity Generator

Been having a bit of fun combining some of the d100 Tables I’ve put together over the years to repurpose them in interesting ways. I find that by looking at them sideways sometimes, they have much more utility beyond their original intended purpose. One that continues to produce pleasing results for me is this Deity Generator I whipped up a little while back.

As I’ve previously mentioned in my Holy Taboo post, I like to handle Deity Disfavor a bit more tangibly in my games, and I tend to avoid more monotheistic approaches to Religion in these games. Instead of just “one God/Goddess/Source” of Spells, Clerics depend on a Pantheon of distinctive Beings, each granting a particular Prayer:

The results that this Generator spits out sometimes have that lovely tendency of establishing unforeseen connections, and even do a little bit more heavy lifting sometimes to flesh out a particular faith or motivation. Sometimes the incongruencies do require a little bit of fiddling to fit together of course, but such contradictions often make for something much more interesting in the long run.

The Generator is embedded below, for somewhat serviceable faiths on demand with a quick click:

It might be interesting to adapt this to generate full-fledged Pantheons, with their own names, internal relationships (who doesn’t love a bit of divine internecine squabbling and conflict), and maybe even some “closest Shrine” details as a bit of an Adventure Hook. Then, when a Cleric Player starts looking in askance about their Religion, a simple button push can spit out their first eight Spells and their respective Sources.

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