Gamers and Gods
Cocytus on Gamegrene has a nice article on Fantasy Cosmogony 101. A cosmogony is a story or theory of the creation of the world. Because every good game setting needs a sense of the divine,
As is the case with all NPCs, players tend to remember the characters they feel strongly about. If you want to make religion a distinctive aspect of your setting, you must develop gods that characters will love, hate, and even find inspirational. Your gods should be the best-drawn NPCs of all... they help define your universe and how it works.
The key to getting your players to care about your gods--one way or the other--lies in developing a cosmogony for your fantasy setting. More than a simple description of your gods and their attitudes, a cosmogony is a story, or better yet a collection of stories, that describes the origins of your gods and their relationship to the universe.
Go read it; it’s interesting, it’s a lot longer than the Gods section in the Gods & Monsters Adventure Guide’s Handbook, and it has a good source list. You’ll see a little more of the default Gods & Monsters cosmogony (which Cocytus rightly advises you not to use) when I get Vale of the Azure Sun up.
- Fantasy Cosmogony 101
- “Any good fantasy setting needs a sense of religion, be it largely implicit, as in Tolkien's Middle Earth, or a major part of the action, as in Moorcock's Elric tales. There is no default conception of how religion works in a fantasy world. This ambiguity leaves GMs a great deal of latitude in creating settings that are unique in flavor.”
- The Adventure Guide’s Handbook
- Weave fantasy stories around characters that you and your friends create. As a Gods & Monsters Adventure Guide you will present a fantastic world to your players’ characters: all of its great cities, lost ruins, deep forests, and horrendous creatures.
- Vale of the Azure Sun
- There are things in this world that defy all logic. Places that no door enters and no road goes, where the maps exist only in the minds of madmen. This Gods & Monsters adventure is suitable for three to six characters of 3rd to 5th level.