The Gods of Ameron

When I was creating the world of Ameron, where my current 5E campaign is set, I knew I wanted to do something different with the religions. The major event in the recent past was a war between Elemental Lords and the pantheon, and it ended with the Elementals driven back, and several of the gods destroyed.

To shake things up, I borrowed an idea from the Forgotten Realms, and brought in an "Overgod" (known as Ao in the Realms). This Overgod saw this whole fiasco as a failure on the parts of the pantheon of Ameron. So, he dispersed them all into the vast multiverse, and brought in two pantheons from another world, where they were viewed as little more than myths and legends by the majority of the current population.

This allowed me to avoid building an entire pantheon from scratch, and instead, I imported the Greek and Norse pantheons, and mixed them together. Currently, this new pantheon has no clear "leader" and most of the gods are still trying to gather followers. However, I also decided that some of them are not interested in re-creating the history they had on their previous world, and are instead using their godly powers to influence events by communicating secretly.

This all has actually worked out well. While my cleric and paladin characters have chosen specific deities, I have left it up to them how they worship, what their dogma is, etc. It has also allowed me to have other deities step in from the shadows and influence the game without being named or even known of. Without giving anything away (because my players might actually read my blog), the characters may get a few surprises pretty soon.

All in all, this whole experience has been kind of cool. In the past, I would try to lay out my entire world down to as many details as possible, before a single player character steps foot in it. This way I just started with a bare-bones idea, and am adding to it as I go. A lot of the details come in when players ask specific questions, and I have to make something up on the spot. I never thought I'd be good at that, but I find that I actually have to retcon very little as we move forward.