• Home
  • About
  • TABLES!
  • Gods
  • Monsters
  • Reader Requested Content
Rolang's Creeping Doom

Random God Generator

May 23, 2012 11:53 am / 13 Comments / Chris
Print Friendly Version of this pagePrint Get a PDF version of this webpagePDF

This last post in the Bring It series of reader requests comes from Twitter (my handle = @creepingdoom). [update: I got a request in the comments yesterday, so this is penultimate. I will take a short break from reader requests to get some ideas out of my system then we’ll get back to reader requests.]

All right, Daniel (may I call you Daniel?). I hope this is useful to you.

Random God Generator for Fantasy Campaigns

(also makes saints, bodhisattvas & demigods)

Nature of Being

First, if you haven’t decided what this being is, roll for nature

Roll 1d8 Nature of Being
1 Saint
2 Avatar
3 Demigod
4 Reincarnated Emanation/Bodhisattva
5 Local Diety/Spirit
6 Titan/Being/Alien
7 Omnipotent/Omniscient
8 Personified Concept (no strictness or jealousy)

Domain

Then, you can either skip ahead to roll the Deity’s purview or you can roll here for a domain.

Roll 1d10 Deity’s Domain
1 Household
2 Household + roll again
3 Human Endeavors
4 Human Endeavers + roll again
5 Nature
6 Nature + roll again
7 Personal
8 Personal + roll again
9 Spirit
10 Spirit + roll again

Deities in the personal domain are or were living beings who either were gods/demigods/avatars or they became them after death, coronation, etc. They might not have a particular purview or they might develop one after generations of worship.

Purview

Roll d100 for a totally random purview in any domain or if you already have a domain chosen, roll 1d20 and consult columns 2 and 3. Note that some purviews are opposite sides of a coin. You can choose, flip a coin or make the same god responsible for both sides of the coin (one might pray to the goddess of slavery for freedom, for example).

Roll d100 Domain Roll 1d5 for Domain then 1d20 for Purview Purview
1 Household 1 Play
2 Household 2 Fertility/Harvest/Babies
3 Household 3 Health/Disease
4 Household 4 Hunt
5 Household 5 Hearth
6 Household 6 Doors/Household Safety
7 Household 7 Baking
8 Household 8 Wine/Beer
9 Household 9 Sewing/Weaving
10 Household 10 Wealth
11 Household 11 Household Item
12 Household 12 Food (particular)
13 Household 13 Important Commodity
14 Household 14 Male Virility
15 Household 15 Bridges/Gates/Crossing/Crossroads
16 Household 16 Fidelity/Adultery
17 Household 17 Animal Husbandry
18 Household 18 Gossip/Reputation
19 Household 19 Books/Scrolls
20 Household 20 Important Domestic Animal/Insect
21 Human Endeavors 1 Invention
22 Human Endeavors 2 War
23 Human Endeavors 3 Indulgence
24 Human Endeavors 4 Theft/Kidnapping
25 Human Endeavors 5 Travel/Hospitality to Strangers
26 Human Endeavors 6 Sailing
27 Human Endeavors 7 Building
28 Human Endeavors 8 Exploration/Adventure
29 Human Endeavors 9 Cannibalism
30 Human Endeavors 10 Honor/Justice/Vengeance
31 Human Endeavors 11 Trade/Commerce/Unexpected Windfalls
32 Human Endeavors 12 Slavery/Freedom
33 Human Endeavors 13 Learning/Ignorance
34 Human Endeavors 14 Hiding
35 Human Endeavors 15 Art/Poetry
36 Human Endeavors 16 Healing
37 Human Endeavors 17 Protector of Our People
38 Human Endeavors 18 Mining
39 Human Endeavors 19 Sport
40 Human Endeavors 20 Gambling
41 Nature 1 Animal
42 Nature 2 Mountains
43 Nature 3 Night
44 Nature 4 Oceans
45 Nature 5 Season (1d4: Spring/Summer/Autumn/Winter)
46 Nature 6 Plants/Woods
47 Nature 7 Predominant Local Climate/Weather Type
48 Nature 8 Fresh Waters
49 Nature 9 Natural Disasters
50 Nature 10 Thunder / Storms /Monsoon Season
51 Nature 11 Death/Destruction
52 Nature 12 Sun
53 Nature 13 Moon
54 Nature 14 Planet/Stars
55 Nature 15 Air
56 Nature 16 Fire
57 Nature 17 Earth
58 Nature 18 Water (all)
59 Nature 19 Natural Beauty
60 Nature 20 Decay (and rebirth)
61 Personal 1 King/Pharoah/Emperor
62 Personal 2 Queen/Empress
63 Personal 3 Consort
64 Personal 4 Parent of (roll again)
65 Personal 5 Child
66 Personal 6 Aescetic/Hermit
67 Personal 7 Bastard
68 Personal 8 Hero
69 Personal 9 Villain
70 Personal 10 Monster
71 Personal 11 Traitorous Advisor
72 Personal 12 Criminal
73 Personal 13 Folk Hero
74 Personal 14 Wise man/Wizard
75 Personal 15 Brother/Sister
76 Personal 16 Twins
77 Personal 17 General
78 Personal 18 Physician
79 Personal 19 Martyr
80 Personal 20 Roll Twice
81 Spirit 1 Wisdom
82 Spirit 2 Compassion
83 Spirit 3 Tricks
84 Spirit 4 Protection from Spirits
85 Spirit 5 Miracles
86 Spirit 6 Afterlife
87 Spirit 7 Pre-life
88 Spirit 8 Karma
89 Spirit 9 Undead
90 Spirit 10 Laughter
91 Spirit 11 Song
92 Spirit 12 Love/Sex
93 Spirit 13 Destiny/Fate
94 Spirit 14 Dreams
95 Spirit 15 Fear/Bravery
96 Spirit 16 Greed/Generosity
97 Spirit 17 Jealousy/Equanimity
98 Spirit 18 Hate/Love (non-romantic)
99 Spirit 19 Abstinance/Indulgence
100 Spirit 20 Bardo (Trial grounds between lifetimes)

Form

Roll 1d8 for appearance (if applicable). If you roll twice, combine the two (animal headed human, panther made of swords, whatever).

Roll 1d8 Form
1 Human
2 Humanoid /Demihuman / Unusual Human
3 Animal
4 Object from Nature
5 Natural Process (wind, fire, etc.)
6 Man-made Object
7 Monster
8 Roll Twice

Symbol

Roll 1d8 for a symbol. If you roll twice, there are more than one (cross and fish, tree and wheel, fire and winged man, etc.). Or combine those as well.

Roll 1d8 Symbol
1 Weapon
2 Tool/Household Object
3 Animal
4 Manmade Symbol/Letter
5 Natural Object
6 Monster
7 Body Part
8 Roll Twice

Colors

Every team needs a color or two. Roll 1d10.

Roll 1d10 Color(s)
1 Red
2 Orange
3 Yellow
4 Green
5 Blue
6 Indigo
7 Violet
8 Black
9 White
10 Roll Twice: Mix or Pattern

Offerings

This is what you have to bring to appease/propitiate the deity. Obviously roll again if the result doesn’t fit your campaign.

Roll 1d10 Offerings
1 Animal Sacrifice
2 Plants
3 Humans
4 Money
5 Work
6 Art
7 Goods/Commodities
8 Food/Water/Drink
9 Fasting/Deprivation
10 Help Others

Other Aspects

Roll 1d10 to determine other aspects of that deity on a scale of 1 to 10.

Strictness 1 = Forgiving 10 = Unforgiving
Jealousy 1 = No Proselytizing 10 = Convert the World
Opacity 1 = No Revelations 10 = Many Scriptures
Posse 1 = Random Lone believers 10 = Ecclesiatical Hierarchy

There you have it. As always, these tables are meant to inspire and you should feel free to pick and choose, ignore rolls or entire tables if you already have some ideas where you care going with this.

Any ideas for additions? Post them below.

Still reading? You must love Tables or Clerics!

Share

Related posts:

  1. Random Hermit Generator   Heikki Hallamaa said: If it’s OK to ask for another, then I’d have a use for a table full...
  2. Crazy Old Cleric 2: Priest of No-God There is a small chapel along the main road, the shrine to no gods. It is kept by a cleric,...
  3. Random Campaign Apocalypse It’s been noted before that OD&D is a post-apocalyptic setting. Much of what was amazing and wondrous has been lost. The greatest...
YARPP
Posted in: content, legacy D&D / Tagged: bring it, clerics, gods, tables

13 Thoughts on “Random God Generator”

  1. Chris on May 23, 2012 at 12:02 pm said:

    I didn’t include an alignment table. That was by design. You should definitely decide that yourself. Me, I make all gods and devils lawful, period. Even ‘gods of chaos’. So if I have no plan, I can flip a coin between good and evil and I’m done.

  2. Chris on May 23, 2012 at 12:06 pm said:

    I’m going to try to get this made into a nice PDF.

  3. Daniel on May 23, 2012 at 12:31 pm said:

    You have outdone yourself. Since casually telling my players they live in a land of 10’000 gods it’s been a game of How Many Gods Can The GM Make Before He Snaps. Thanks for the save.

  4. Chris on May 23, 2012 at 1:07 pm said:

    Note: change #31 on the purviews table to commerce/unexpected windfalls.

  5. Chris on May 24, 2012 at 8:17 am said:

    @daniel, some cultures use large numbers to mean “more than worth counting”

  6. Daniel on May 26, 2012 at 12:05 am said:

    That was generally how it’s been implied so far. I’ve always disliked the standard fantasy RPG’s adherence to sombre Judeo-Christian monotheistic religious systems, it’s just unrealistic and dull. We need more gods of kidnapping and cake!

  7. Crom on June 2, 2012 at 5:36 pm said:

    I love these tables you’ve been coming up with.

    Would it be too much to ask if we could get a table of tables so that it’s easier to look through all of the tables rather than have to scroll through your entire blog?

  8. Chris on June 2, 2012 at 7:21 pm said:

    Hey,

    I will try to put together some sort of index. In the meantime, you can click the TABLES link in the menu above to see all articles tagged TABLES.

    -mgt

  9. Dovah on June 23, 2012 at 1:46 am said:

    Thanks! I’m writing a book, and each race has a pantheon or two.
    6 races, 8 pantheons! Should be 5-12 gods in each, so 40-96 gods unless shared gods in pantheons!
    Yikes

  10. Duncan Beach on December 24, 2012 at 5:31 pm said:

    Not to nitpick, but under the ‘Gods’ bit, in the purview section, you forgot ‘naughtiness’ in the human endeavors. I’ve always thought there’d ought to be a God of Naughtiness.

  11. Chris on December 24, 2012 at 5:56 pm said:

    Perhaps. I think we have many kinds of naughtiness covered by Beer/Wine, Male Virility, Fidelity/Adultery and Indulgence, Tricks, Laughter, Love/Sex and Gambling. In general, I tried to avoid adjectives in favor of nouns and verbs, since things are activities can be interpreted many ways. If I did it over again, I’d work the fool/jester and the lothario into the personal domains.

  12. R. Donald James Gauvreau on January 25, 2014 at 11:08 pm said:

    I’m working on a book of comparative mythology with an eye toward use for worldbuilding, and I was wondering if you would mind if I included the tables here in an appendix because, well, RPGs: do we /need/ an excuse to include random tables?

  13. Powder Miner on January 31, 2016 at 9:24 am said:

    Thank you for having this out there — it’s probably the most interesting table or generator for something of this sort I’ve seen, and while I mainly use it to create deities to play for forum games, it helps me come up with stuff that goes beyond your typical cliche’d pantheon.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Post Navigation

← Previous Post
Next Post →
Creative Commons License
This work by Rolang's Creeping Doom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
rules ettin Greek magic-users meta labyrinth lord hydra nerdnyc tables lotfp wf rpg monsters clerics art rethinking halflings Medusa santicore religion urban bring it swords and wizardry gods kids Metropolitan Museum story-arc dcc spells elves zombie classes undead Freamon Norse familiar recess poison death frost doom npcs vornheim content table humor magic items classical mundane

Recent Posts

  • Santicore 2015
  • DCC Magic Items to playtest
  • Side Hustle – Bandits and a Wizard
  • Simple pleasures are the best
  • One Day Left to Get in on Santicore 2015

What People Said

  • Emmy on LotFP Illusionist Class: Please Help Me Kick the Tires
  • Chris on Side Hustle – Bandits and a Wizard
  • Powder Miner on Random God Generator
  • Len Brennan on The RPG Hydra
  • Chris on Random Hermit Generator

Suggested Reading

  • Ancient Vaults & Eldritch Secrets
  • Blog of Holding
  • Dreams of Mythic Fantasy
  • Giblet Blizzard
  • Grognardia
  • Jeff's Gameblog
  • Lamentations of the Flame Princess
  • Lord Kilgore
  • Old Guard Gaming Accoutrements
  • Planet Algol
  • Playing D&D with Porn Stars
  • Sea of Stars
  • Swords & Wizardry
  • Swords and Dorkery
  • The Mule Abides
  • The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope
© Copyright 2021 - Rolang's Creeping Doom
Infinity Theme by DesignCoral / WordPress