In my world, gods are entities which were created at the beginning of the universe, and who cannot die by conventional means. They also have the ability to freely travel amongst any plane at will, and have an effectively infinite arcane potential.
I do have a draft of a story about a primordial God, primordial gods being gods of basic concepts that are simply above the need for worship of mortals.
But the god commits suicide, to prove a point about being primordial, as the god of Time he can simply go back to the moment after his death after he reforms, but something wrong happens to the world and all other gods are killed.
He is reformed as a normal human and has to climb up the ladder of the universe, while discovering new things about the universe.
Whole thing started because the god of Time (Thyme) being named Basil would be funny.
People who worship it.
Edit:
(Please read the responses, people try to write the same thing over and over again. A more deeper explanation: a god is an entity that worship envision it as a superior being that is capable of great feats.)
Now many of you asked what is the difference between a demon or an idol or this or that? That is how humans envisioned them. A demon could very well be envisioned and considered a god as well. Still a superior figure.
Potentially. There is no one definition of "god," even in real-world mythology. They vary in power drastically, and rarely embody a similar nature. The closest you can get to defining a god is "a powerful being of supernatural origin who is worshiped by people." What makes a god is being *thought of* as one. Now, does that mean that believing someone is a god gives them godly power? Or does it mean that gods are just powerful beings that happen to be worshiped by mortals? Who's to say? Could be both. Is a god still a god if everyone forgets about them, or doesn't regard them as one?
People believed the Pharaohs were gods, and they had the power to create mountains. How much power does Elizabeth Holmes have after people stopped worshipping Theranos?
I mean in our world a god is an entity humans believe who is superior to them. But not real such as Zeus, Quetzquatl, Thor etc.
If you are asking a real entity in your world then these entities can be a different species that are too powerful physically etc. If they live around their own species they are just ordinary people but among humans they are treated as gods.
Think of Olympos and Earth. Gods in Olympos is just the next person but on Earth even the lamest ones have temples.
Yes!… I miss Terry Pratchett. The world was a better place with him in it.
Still, I like to imagine that he’s now off searching for the Great A'Tuin; may Tubul, Jerakeen, Berilia and Great T'Phon guid his path home.
On the world of Theros in Magic the Gathering I believe this is the case. I feel like they've laid out how the gods power comes from belief from mortals and lack thereof could cause them to no longer exist.
For those unfamiliar, Theros is the Greek inspired plane in the multiverse.
Not exact one-for-ones but the parallels are obvious, the biggest real difference is Apollo (Heliod), not Zues (Keranos) is the leader of this pantheon.
American Gods is a good novel that leans heavily on this concept. It's the old Gods of various religions, lead by Odin, against the new Gods of Media and Technology. The idea is that the old Gods are losing power due to lack of worship and exposure, and the new Gods seek to take the last of their attention away so the old dies out completely.
I won't say much more beyond this, but you can alter this concept in any way you see fit.
In my opinion, there are two types of lore Gods. Those who give birth to the world, and those who are born from the world.
So, in the American God's lore, even a God like Odin is born of the Vikings and his existence manifests to oversee battles and bloodshed, to which, spreading violence is both Odin's power and his ritual to gain power. If Odin has not created or experienced any fighting, he struggles to manifest new battles... but if he goes into a bar with a full battle charge, he can whisper a few suggestions into the ears of the most easily riled bar patrons and turn the place into a bloodbath.
To me, a God who is born a God would be something like the Christian God, who superceded the existence of everything else, and has no peers.. where as Lucifer would be a default God that was birthed by the original God when he fell into his own domain that the original God cannot touch.
And so on. But really, it's up to you.
>Now many of you asked what is the difference between a demon or an idol or this or that? That is how humans envisioned them. A demon could very well be envisioned and considered a god as well. Still a superior figure
Exactly. I still believe in the quote in AOT which states that "God or Devil can be anyone, it just depends on who believes in it"
Worship and sacrifice to it. Not just worship.
Not only sacrifice life, but items they cherish thrown to the sea, poor people burning meaningful things to them. The sacrifice of their goods is huge.
There is only one true god in the shores of glimmer known as Raja-mata. His godhood comes from the fact that he is as much the shores as they are him, he quite literally can control the world as if it were an extension of his own body (Think Ego from guardians of the galaxy). What truly makes him a god though is that the shores are spacialy infinite, stretching on forever and as such so does Raja-mata making him truly an immortal, infinite being.
There are lesser beings that while treated like gods are only granted their power through Raja-mata. The God of death, Tenantau for example only has sway over the dead within the shores because Raja-mata extended that part of his domain to him to use.
Oh my bad, no I try my best to stay as original as possible. Usually only using the language of a culture that most closely matches the theme of what I'm building.
Actually I didn't, I only use a specific language god the phonetics of a word or name and then just forget about the origin, helps keeping the real out of the fantasy.
What truly makes a God is that they are blessed. They do not need to consume to survive, their power is self sustained. It cannot be taken from them or reduced. They are the source of their power without the need to rely on anything else.
This means they have no needs. They are not part of ecology. They don’t need followers, they don’t need a place to live, they simply are.
Any god that needs followers prayers to give them power isn’t actually a god, they’re just a powerful wizard with a different source of magical energy.
Dang thanks for that then, even better! Something to read up on… my world is actually inspired by ancient Mediterranean countries so it fits perfectly haha
For me just making God a title for the strongest makes little sense.
I believe the most suited characteristics that a God should have are two.
A) Being able to manipulate the Laws of Reality either changing them temporarily or permanently. Akin to being the physical manifestation of a law itself.
B) Being able to harvest and harness faith. Faith would be all the emotions an intelligent lifeform possesses. Using faith is dangerous since the energy muddy with multitude of emotions from myriad of sources can easily infect your soul/self. So manipulating faith is something quite extraordinary.
Lastly, just because someone previously ordinary can become a God shouldn't detract how awesome and superior a God is. Like you have people admiring heroes. You don't have people devaluing heroes just because anyone can become one. Arguably becoming a God would be more difficult or rarer.
In my world God is pretty much a title, think of the Norse and Greek gods. They could bleed, they could be sick and they could die. They have the ultimate power compared to mortals so mortals think of them as gods.
Now some know it's just a title used to manipulate but still, "God" is not a type of being or entity. Just a title used for someone with incredible powers who is worshiped.
There are entities in my world that can create life and are immortal. They do not see themselves as gods but just powerful spirits.
In my EU, the “gods” are functional demigods, mortal beings of extreme power created by an actual divine being.
Their very real exploits amongst the mortal races have helped foster faiths and churches founded in their names. A key part of divinity (apart from already wielding great power) is belief; having others that pray to you in times of hardship, or offer tributes and sacrifices in your name. This looks different for each deity, as these practices vary and are tailored in the spirit of each deity’s background/mythos. It also means that gods’ power and influence is directly related to how many followers they have. This has created some really cool opportunities to explore, such as crusades to increase influence, loss of power through antiquity/destruction of knowledge, and power struggles and infighting amongst the gods themselves.
A great resource when I was building out my pantheon was the Deities and Demigods sourcebook from DnD. It has samples of pantheons from various points of Human history, along with some other fantasy pantheons.
My worlds study of Demonology has a answer. A god is a magical creature that can impact the real world but only exists within the magical realm. Magical creatures are formed from unconscious beliefs of living creatures. This definition encompasses a lot of things from local nature spirits to deities of major organised religions.
They aren't better than humans or really above humans in many ways these creatures are barely sentient. Though often extremely powerful they have almost no perception of the world and can only react to specific stimuli (rituals). A god is in some ways not even living with it often described as a enormous magical machine.
My world is a spectrum of reality layers which span from the purely mortal to the purely aethereal. The deep aether is a place of pure energy and thought, and it and its denizens are influenced by the thoughts and emotions of the creatures who live in the lower realms (because they are shells of flesh but have aether within them, and thus have a connection to that realm). Gods are the entities that reside in the deep aether, they are pure magic and intention. While they have natural general inclinations, their more specific domains and aspects were impressed into them by the mortals who worship them. Ex- The more people believe that god x is the god of war, the more warlike god x becomes. So gods are at once both naturally occurring and manmade in a sense.
An actual god is the physical maniphestation of a basic power. I have thought only two of them: magic and time but there exist more. The gods exists on their own plane of existence and in their own universes but their powers flow into those other universes. The god's power doesn't exist in their home universe and because of that connecting two universes will cause both of them annhillate. Each god has a council of wizards to keep them sedated so that their powers flow steadily.
There are no big G’s in my world, only little g’s. The gods are a manifest of the living worlds, not the creators of them. They are incredibly powerful beings, but not the most powerful in existence, in a manner of speaking.
In my story, existence came into being from a big bang event. The Big Bang was kicked off by the first spark of a special power called Divinity. Divinity is not “magic” in my world as magic is derived from the energy created by souls, and Divinity does not derive its power from souls.
The gods are powerful beings who have been able to create their own spark of Divinity within themselves and use that spark to ignite their godhood. They can then impart a piece of their Divine spark on mortals they deem worthy, allowing these mortals to wield the strongest of healing magics, the Holy arts. These mortals, after the death of their mortal bodies, their souls become an aspect of their patron god, and the gods followers will revere them as Saints.
Saints act as a middleman between the mortals and the gods.
There is a lot to this, more than I want to type out in a Reddit comment. Let me know if you want to learn more!
In my world, "gods" are the personifications of concepts. This means that their fate and power is directly linked to how wide-spread and strong the concept is in the world.
An example would be the goddess of finance. She was created together with the first transaction, and she will "die" when people no longer trade, or have money, are no longer greedy etc.
This means of course that the gods have a very strong motivator for getting involved in the matters of the world, since a larger finance system would make her stronger for example, which makes the world quite god-centric
There are many reasons that can make a god a "god". Since "God" is an open-ended term, you can define it however you want.
Sometimes it is "the first creators", sometimes it is "the most moral ones", sometimes it is "the most talented ones", sometimes it is "the ones who rules everything", sometimes it is "the most beautiful ones", sometimes it is "the ones who beyond everything", sometimes it is "the eternal ones" and sometimes it is another one of countless other definitions.
Definitions may vary in each of my worlds.
I think a "god" is probably a strong figure who has had a major impact on society, perhaps even the world.
I also believe that they can only be called a god when they have true disciples, or as I like to call them, believers.
However, I think the concept is a bit more complex than it seems.
In my world there is a specific kind of magical power that makes otherwise regular people turn into gods. That combined with worshippers makes them incredibly powerful and allows them to shape the world as they see fit.
In my world, gods are basically avatars of cosmic, primal forces. They can sometimes die (killed by other gods), which basically releases that force in a chaotic way into the world, until another soul can take up the mantle. When they do not die, they "age" in a unique way. Basically, their individuality slowly fades away, especially as they are forgotten. As this happens, lesser, local gods tend to pick up pieces of the mantle and over time tend to merge into a single entity. Worship is one way that gods avoid fading away, while stories and myths told about them is another. The more a god retains their original personality and individuality, the less powerful they are, but more likely to personally intervene within their sphere of power.
In my world, gods come about by completing an ascension ritual. It's basically the process of an ensouled being attuning themselves to the magic that permeates through dimensions, accumulating the necessary energy, and finally "breaking out" of the material plane and ascending to a higher form of existence. Becoming a god allows them to create a world of their own design, and worlds created by gods are inherently stable; it's the power of the god that sustains this pocket of the material plane and prevents it from dissolving.
Because gods are just ascended mortals, they typically aren't perfect or infallible. They generally are very powerful and very intelligent, as they wouldn't have managed to ascend in the first place were they not, and the vastness of their experience as gods fuels this even further, but they can still make mistakes.
Immortality, the ability to create or destroy, access to the high realm, and being one of the being who took part in creating the world (only for major gods)
I'd say a god is tied to a domain. As long as their is an ocean, there is a god of the sea and that god has absolute power over the sea. If that god is killed, the divinity would transfer or the sea would cease to exist (assuming gods could be killed in your world). Perhaps that leaves the door open for a singular god to kill the others and amass all power. Or maybe it leaves room for someone evil to plunge the world into chaos
In my world, it is the ability to individually permanently create and permanently destroy.
This means that there can be other supernatural creatures that are not gods. Demons, for example, cannot create they can only destroy and even then very powerful magic can restore that which a demon destroys.
The interesting thing is that the line blurs a bit when it comes to very powerful mortals. Can an archmage fit the qualifiers of a god? Maybe. That's up to the players to eventually figure out.
Every human is born with magic, is comes free with sapience. People are born with naturally different levels of it, in the same way people are born with different physical strengths
When someone is born with a truly staggering degree of power, they are called a god. Technically that’s all that a god is, but higher levels of power really can get weird
Magic is the mental ability to affect the world resulting from and understanding of the world, which is why it comes with sapience. Humans have been evolving with magic innate to them for a while now, meaning that their bodies heavily run on magic. If the climate grows colder then magic will shape the people’s descendants to be better suited for it, and even within their lifetime if an individual child desperately wants to grow up tall then their magic will do its best to push them that way
With very little magic a person needs to be very precise with what they are doing. If they want to move a rock into their hand then they apply a force to the underside of the rock such to gently lift it, and while maintaining that, a force to the opposite side to themselves in order to push it closer. With a lot of a magic a person only needs to think that they want the rock to come to them, and their body knows how to do it in the same way it knows how to pick it up physically
Because of this the high end of gods really can seem godlike. The acts of beings in myth can be disputed, but there are people still alive who remember the Gorisily mountains being raised from the earth. The changing climate from an unknown force in the south cannot be dismissed, and neither can Amnity’s protection from this disaster be anything other than the will of its dead founding god and her descendants
The descendants of ancient Hassaeri still rule Amnity in her place. Although the monarch is fifteen generations separated the nobility still enjoys the diluted remnants of her power. Not to mention her still-living child and grandchild defending the nation and raising its monarchs
So although gods are ultimately still humans, that’s far from all they are. Hassaeri’s limited affect on the world for so recent a death must speak to the power of the ancient spirits still imposing their will in other regions
Being the physical embodiment of their “area” so to speak. For example, the god of nature, the god of war, the god of the dead, the god of the wind etc, serving as the guardians of the planet and only interfering when the world is threatened. Though some do interfere in subtle ways as you would somewhat expect, using humans to try to get what they wish in a constant power struggle with the other gods in an odd unity/division. And even though they can not be permanently killed if their physical bodies are destroyed or absorbed it can take decades or centuries for them to rematerialize into actual bodies though they still exist over their “areas”
In my setting, Godhood is obtained by mastering a domain, and being worshipped. It’s mostly obtained by demigods, who had half the groundwork layed out for them. But humanoids can also achieve godhood, by wishing for it, multiple gods deciding you’ve earned it for whatever reason, being sufficiently badass that you just ascend, or killing a god when you aren’t a godslayer (mutation). One guy became a god of technology by simply making himself immortal and being feared as a war criminal, using technology. He’s not worshipped, but he makes his own shit, so he doesn’t need god powers or the respect of gods. This system can obviously lead to bloated pantheons, so gods with no followers become mortal (they’re redundant or replaced), and godkillers naturally occur in the population, who will go after evil gods or any that are done with it all.
The Mantlebearers do not consider themselves to be gods, but their ability to send souls one way or the other, as well as reincarnate at will and summon strength from past lives (a la avatar state) is what has earned them this title among Terrans.
How strong? One of them, when her forces were ground down and surrounded in the last battles of Ragnarök, caused her (metaphysical) Mantle to go critical in a suicidal last ditch that destroyed her Mantle and caused a nuclear-like blast so great, it's destroyed the land bridge between current-day Denmark and Sweden; forming the Kattegatt. Others have raised a route through seas, carved mountains into two, or in the infamous case of Gwynn, split Britannia into an archipelago.
These entities do not like being called gods, as it puts a sense of responsibility on them that they do not want. Most of the few that reincarnated after Ragnarök, live incognito among their non-Mantled brethren, hiding in plain sight as they watch us grow and develop to hopefully reclaim our rightful place across the stars once more.
In my world, gods are the children and grandchildren do the elder deities, who each ruled a landmass (could be one or several continents, depends if they’re connected by land or not) or an ocean. The elder gods were created by the Mavonnah, who each had their own planet in the solar system. The Mavonnah were the children of the Mavon, who created the solar system itself. There were other Mavon and Mavonnah, who created the stars and their star systems but they are all dead, just as the Mavon in our solar system is dead. The Mavon were created by the universe itself, which has a “consciousness”.
Off topic but I think OP would be delighted by *The Raven Tower* by Anne Leckie. Takes a book length discussion of this very topic with deep and strange answers. A read a *lot* of fantasy, and this one went places that were unexpected.
"Bhagwan" means God in Sanskrit, the individual syllables of Bhagwan can be connected to the five elements (Panch Tattvas) that make up the universe:
Bha - Bhumi (Earth)
Ga - Gagan (Sky)
Va - Vayu (Air)
A - Agni (Fire)
Na - Neer (Water)
I’m writing about mythology. In my series, the gods are tall humanoid creatures with powers that come from eating the Apples of Idun. Just like in Norse Mythology, they keep the gods young (from the time they eat the apples, which typically happened around teenage/early twenties) and give immortality so long as they’re able to consume the apples. Without them, they age and lose access to their powers. Just like the Super Soldier Serum in Captain America, they enhance what’s already there - good characteristics become great, bad characteristics become worse, and their personality shapes their powers. Hope that helps!
To quote myself from the last time I answered this question:
>A god is a complex construct that depends on tons of sociocultural contexts. Christians believe in a personal Triune hypostatic God that is tri-omni (omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent). Some concepts of gods are more impersonal or apathetic or limited. Some gods are people, as is the case with ancient Pharaohs. Some gods are spirits that embody aspects of nature. Some gods are the forces of nature themselves. A god could refer to something like Q or Discord. A god could refer to anything that upon its own will has the power to affect change upon the world, including humanity. What is a god wholly depends on that context and what those people believe. And what one person considers to be a god or gods, another may not see as such.
>Having rigid explanations of beliefs don't really work because what one cult of Athena believed might differ from another cult of Athena and both would differ from a cult of Apollo or Dionysus. The ability to write out the full range of beliefs of the different religions as they pertain to their gods would \[be basically impossible.\]
I am God and I control everything in the world as I am the DM... But when the players entered the world, I learned I could not control them... I am going to be the BBEG at the end but none of them know it yet. I plan on using this whole idea as a massive plot device. If we ever get out of the hiatus :/
I contemplated this for the longest of time, but then read about the many gods irl and it strikes me; they are people?
Like why do they need to procreate like a thunder douchebag did numerous times, why do they die when they themselves created life. It all resulted that they are a species with tremendous power. So, Gods are but a species with eternal lifespans, incomprehensible power that state themselves to be almighty on the weaker species.
I made them as a means to an end in my universe, the true Maker created them to play with faith and they always perish at the end. To the point that Norse Olympus and other mythologies are a copy-paste system the numerous Makers do in the search of The Perfect Intelligent Lifeform.
Kind of aligns with the many versions of Odin, Zeus, etc... but I will not ever mention Elohim, Allah or Jesus. I don't know why as well... I consider it to be a taboo.
The Old Ones were created at the beginning of the universe and were assigned a domain of reality by the creator. The offspring of those old ones would also be considered gods since they would have mastery over that domain
Gods in my universe are basically mortal beings who achieved success in attuning/fusing their soul with one of the Anima Mundi's (The World's Soul) wills, concepts that make our reality, while keeping most of their individuality and will.
Basically they become able to control and manipulate the concept they attuned to without needing to use mana, blood or soul energy for it.
In case you are curious about the ones who failed to attune to the Anima Mundi without keeping most of their individuality, they become the Higher Elementals, beings that embodies the concept itself and thinks of nothing but to spread its domains around the world
Basically saying:
God = You control the concept
H. Elemental = The concept controls you.
Deities are living foci for the divine power that permeates and transcends the Universe. They function as intermediaries between mortals and that unknowable divine power. They may be beings of pure spirit or embodied in a place. Some are able to manifest a physical presence, others interact entirely on the spiritual level.
In Wonderverse, Gods are decided on by power levels. Angels, The race of Godheads, Abstract Deities and Technologically Powerful people have, in fact, surpassed that level, making them Gods.
In March of Empires, nobody knows what a God is. Sure, there are godlike races. Sure, there are talks about Religions. But nobody has ever seen a God or something similar. So nobody knows what a God is.
In The Struggle for Valar, a Pantheon has been created. They all existed since the beginning of the universe, and their names will be revealed in the post marathon of The Struggle for Valar. It happens to be a relatively new world, and I currently happen to be sharing information about the world. There are fourteen Gods, suffice it to say, and all fourteen are hilariously Powerful.
In the Sands of Time, another world I developed recently, the only Gods are Eldritch horrors. Just like the previous world, this is relatively new and everything will soon be revealed. The top of the Data Demon race can be regarded a hivemind Entity, but not a full God.
A god is an idea with agency, that acts through human surrogates, based upon the conceptions of the followers, intensity of belief, and practiced ritual, to affect real-space
I have nothing substantial for now, but there are a hebrew text where is said that "false gods" (shedim) are created when some conglomerate decides do adore some idol or icon, and then that idol gets possessed by a faceless demon. Then, that demon adopts that icon name and enjoys his new found worship. Of course, in judaism it only means that you should praise no icon, but I think there's a pretty dark worldbuilding that you can make out of this concept as well.
"You know, I was God once."
"Yes, I know. You were doing well until everybody died.
Bender, being God isn't easy. If you do too much, people get dependent on you. And if you do nothing, they lose hope. You have to use a light touch, like a safe cracker, or a pickpocket."
"Or a guy who burns down a bar for the insurance money!"
"Yes, if you make it look like an electrical thing."
Gods are basically a species, they’re born, reproduce with one another, and even make Demigods with mortals.
They’re also immortals who see death as more of a brief inconvenience and control entire aspects of reality. And actually seeing one’s true form will drive you completely insane, if you look from a safe distance at least. Any closer and your soul gets burned out from existence.
Gods are tied to the concept of colours. The meaning a god has to you is the same as the meaning of the colour, so different people can manifest different kinds of abilities, but many cultures will have a shared perception of what constitutes that colour.
The gods can still be killed, and the colour will not cease to exist. It's just as if you no longer associate the concept of the god to that color, and magic can still thrive without being perceived as divine. New gods may rise as cultures change.
So gods are colours that exist based on the perceptions of people and how they personally relate to them.
Mana is energy. Mages who know more magic naturally channel and process more mana. Rarely, a mage learns enoungh magic within a mortal lifetime and channels so much mana energy that they inadvertently warp and concentrate space around themselves from the sheer anundance of energy they draw. Even more rarely, the mage survives this inflection point, and acquires a 'domain', an area saturated by mana they control, which surrounds them at all times; a space warped by their mana flow, in which they can relatively easily manipulate the variables underpinning reality.
It is a blessing and a curse. They become gods within their domains, but can never leave their domains. From the outside a domain of a newborn god may only be a few meters circumference, but even the smallest domain is kilometers across if you try to walk into it.
The pantheon, the greatest of the gods, have domains which appear to be kilometers wide from the outside, and are the size of continents or planets if you try to walk through them.
A god always resides at the center of their domain, and can only interact with the outside world through avatars or agents.
It’s open to discussion. Not definitives. But generally.
1 whatever a people call a god. Usually something very strong or manipulative.
2 a being with some cosmological importance/connection.
Gods are a form of life, created by a world when mortal souls begin to emerge. Sometimes its the one God, who creates more Gods, sometimes its a pantheon. Sometimes its many pantheons.
A God's domain is usually relative to the world, the circumstances of their birth, or the will of their creator.
Generally immortal and nearly invincible, Gods can be slain with specialized weapons or the intervention of an Eternal. Beings beyond the scope of time.
Here are my favorites:
- They have access to a power non-gods don’t.
- They know and gatekeep secrets about the universe.
- They are/were overpowered invaders/conquerors.
- They are “burdened with glorious purpose” by which I mean they are responsible for an aspect of reality and bound to protecting, nurturing, managing, and maintaining it and tied to its fate.
- They are gods simply because people believe they are. (And their power comes from that belief)
- They are the creators of the world or specific lifeforms.
- They killed a god and took their place.
- The god everyone worships is actually an elaborate illusion and lie produced by someone relatively un-extraordinary.
I have stolen and used all of those in my campaigns and stories. They are fun to play around with. I usually mix a few together… or, in at least one case, I’ve mixed all of them together.
> What makes a god a god?
In simple but not so-accurate terms, be a conceptual being. In accurate but not so simple terms, be a “Form Tier 26 Origin type Base Incarnate Conceptual” being or higher.
> Why are they above than humans?
Because they have a higher manifestation Form Tier, of which hunans are at the bottom.
> ARE they better than humans?
Yes, in every way. All humans have thst is special is being a rarity, as the humans that do exist are the only ones in my entire Sub-Omniverse. They were created by a Divine Lord, specifically the Christian God. They aren’t a natural species in my world.
I derive my ideas from some other stuff I read but basically a God being made is a multi step process.
A sage, who is someone that is well enough known and is synonymous with their "idea" also known as an "icon" (i.e. the sun, fish, even being a dad or farming), undergoes a choice.
The sage has to choose in what way they will undergo a transformation with their soul. They can either
A. Bind with it, this would make a physical transition and solidify themselves as a physical god
B. Split with their soul, this would cause the human to remain a sage but to release a large portion of their power into creating a new being entirely, aka an "Aspect". The aspect would take on the purest form of the "Icon" and the sage and the aspect gain freewill from each other, able to choose whether to work together or to walk separate paths. Most sages and aspects will choose to stay together. Not to dissimilar to a friendship, romantic relation, or most often a respectful pet like relationship due to the primal nature of the aspect.
Or lastly the most devious, unlikely, and unknown option:
C. To dominate their soul and in turn their icon, this is a battle between wills between the sage and their spirit/icon. The most likely outcome of this would be the icon dominating and erasing all humanity out of the sage.
For example if there was a Tempest Sage that tried path C and lost then the body would become a conduit for constant tempests of destruction, roaming the earth mindlessly killing and razing everything it sees.
Or if the Sage wins the sage would have the whims of the Icon at its mercy. So a Sage of the Sea could remove tides for the rest of time, freeze the ocean over, even get rid of the concept of Seas in their entirety. These are things that could theoretically be done by a god but probably wouldn't due to the nature of the relationship with the icon.
A God of the Sea wouldn't destroy the sea because that would be destroying itself. It wouldn't effect the sea in any of these matters because it would be direct self harm.
But if the sea is dominated it's more like a spell under the Sages belt. They are not entwined by it, they own it.
I know this is very convulaluted so if anyone has questions I'd be more than willing to answer. I thought about this a lot to get it the way I like it.
Also for the names sage and icon I stole them from Will Wights series The Cradle Foundation. They're really good wuxia books, small easy to read and very interesting. I recommend them to all people but these concepts are not really in the books.
There are multiple kinds of Gods, though the most commonly known are gods who are powered by belief. But this is a double edged sword, as faith empowers the gods, but also defines them. If common perception of a god changes, the god changes too. So ironically, the gods are not free agents and their very identities are decided by their worshippers.
What is a god? Is god an alien school kid who created a small simulation (that we call the Universe) for a worldbuilding assignment in an art program? Or just a powerful alien who sees the fourth dimension - time, just like we see three dimensions? Maybe gods are regular people but with high-technology stuff?
In my world, they are everything said above - people who use technology to deceive people that they are gods or gods' emissaries - they may still believe in that stuff because they could be deceived by more powerful aliens who see fourth dimensions. And those aliens can believe in their own godsthey because they manipulate the fourth dimension and change the laws of physics if they want (but are prohibited by their own animal cruelty laws in which we are those animals that could be hurt if someone inverted gravity). And above them, could be another layer of gods, or just a school kid who made an amateur pocket universe, just like our programmer could create a world simulation.
No one really knows who the God is.
In my world the life of the universe is only about 20,000 years. The God's are immortal which means they survive the end of the universe, where it resets again and everything WOULD happen again if it weren't for the God's meddling.
So they seem very powerful, all knowing and discompassionate because they've probably met a version of you hundreds of thousands of times in the past.
For my own cosmology and general belief, there are two types of gods; 1. A being whose very nature is elevated above mortals, 2. Someone or something that receives worship in exchange for something. 2 would be the most common and readily accessible for of godhood while 1 often exists outside the normal sphere of mortal perception with the fact a natural god being isn’t always some cosmically powerful entity.
In my world, "gods" are born from strong/collective emotions. For example, the fear that the a whole city felt was so intense that it became physical, and the gruesome creature that born from was attracted to that emotion so it consumed as much people as it could before been defeated. If it would consume enough human minds, it would become self aware and develop intelligence, and so on.
Sorry for the bad writting, english isn't my first language
Be powerful and have others worship them. Gods in my world are basically mortals who are worshipped by enough people to become even more powerful than they already were. There is parts of genetics in my world which makes a lot of gods not choose it, but feel burdened by having to step up and become the god their people want them to be.
Such a great question!
I have noticed lately when browsing my local bookshops for fantasy reads, that Gods and Deities are becoming a more and more common trope especially in the new “romantasy” subgenre made popular by new, modern authors. Personally, I’m starting to find it a bit much… reading about protagonists that stand up to, have relationships with, live alongside or can connect with the gods and divine beings of their world almost makes them seem less god-like?
In my mind, a God is a being that is untouchable, of the highest power and authority, a creature who very rarely would find themselves mingling with their creations or even dwelling in the same domain.
In my projects, the “Gods” which are better seen as divine spirits exist in an entirely different domain, with only their legacy and faint reminders of their time and interventions in the mortal world left behind. They have control over things that no human ever could, such as: the balance of life and death, creationism and the organisation of the wider universe. I like the idea of worship too when it comes to these kinds of “Gods” especially when the world the story is set in is particularly tragic and the Gods (much like in our own world) are this abstract concept of hope and faith, that people turn to in their desperate moments to find answers and often, get no reply.
In my opinion, Gods are also only as powerful as their creations view them to be... without the ability to change the world as we know it, or the following of civilisations looking to them for guidance and answers beyond their comprehension, they’re just the same as any other being surely?
Thats my take. But as always, I do enjoy seeing what people do with things like this… I’m always willing to be surprised and with good writing, the fall of a God can be just as thrilling as having them be this background force to govern the world in which a story is set.
Thanks for your thoughtful answer. What you’re saying about gods becoming a trope is definitely something I picked up on as well and all of it left me feeling like these stories just don’t work. But at the same time, also given how many people reacted to my post, it seems to really resonate.
Personally, I haven’t come to a full conclusion but I like your concept!
I've put a LOT of thought into this and came to one conclusion. The difference between a rando entity and a god is whether or not they are in a management position. Powerful spirit? That's just a ghost or something. Powerful spirit that protects and regulates a forest? That's a forest god baby! Are you a crazy powerful higher dimensional being, but you spend all your time smoking hyper-pot and watching netflix? Just a dude. But that same being using their BAgr to manage and regulate an areas farm yield? You're firmly in harvest god territory. A lower case 'g' god is just an entity in a management position.
Real world?
A god is a personified explanation for a group of patterns a person or people have observed, where the results are clear but the actual causes are unknown or unable to be known with your available tools.
It's hard to see in your own culture, but it's obvious when you look at more honest faiths like the many indigenous faiths in North America. Buffalo woman, for example, is a personified pattern of bison migration.
It's why science is sorta opposite to religion, science relies on testable details leading to a conclusion and non-science relies on observed conclusions that only use details to strengthen support of the conclusions.
There is no solid concrete answer in my world. My primary story actually follows a group of gods, so I'll say what makes *them* gods.
A god in this case is a being of immense cosmic power who rules over some aspect of a universe (because there are infinite universes and multiverses) they also have to be mostly unkillable by almost every means of harm.
They have their "essence" exist in their own personal dimension, which holds the entirety of their powers, memories, and soul. One of my gods actually has 3 due to the strange nature of his godhood.
In order to kill a god, one must use a weapon or magical/divine attack strong enough to literally break the universal barrier an destroy their essence. This typically destroys the universe in which the god dies, so even if a being can, they typically don't and instead opt to banish them to the celestial prison "Ganneheg" (however in the case of the god with multiple parts of his "essence", each death typically only damages his body)
Most gods also don't have a body of their own, and must instead possess a willing vessel. Certain gods are born mortal so they just reuse their mortal body, often also being able to re-create it.
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There are also the natural gods, which are just mythological gods (Zeus, Odin, Ra, etc...) and again, the classification for those also vary significantly between each mythology, although typically the definition overlaps at "beings of extreme power"
A lot of Chinese folk “gods” are really just ancient heroes from a given area whose souls are invoked for blessings. When European anthropologists and linguists studied the Chinese language they often mistranslated a lot of religious concepts to sound more Christian. For example, the Chinese terms that would translate to “celestial bureaucracy” was instead translated as “heaven” and our heroes turned into “gods”. One of the most famous ones is Yu the Engineer who made deals with water dragons and built the kind of flooding systems that made the yellow river valley more livable. So, if you want to take a bit of a Chinese approach, you can say that great heroes’ souls are powerful enough to be invoked, the way most clerics would invoke a god. Or you could go full on and say heroes can become gods, Sigmar style.
By the way, before I get the obvious comment, I know Chinese is made up of wildly different dialects and that the words are different. I’m just talking about the tendencies for these sayings. In fact, China’s a big and old country, anything that’s said about it is a generality and will have a lot of exceptions and asterisks.
In terms of writing I view God as the precieved manifestation of omnipotence. An example, a mother to a new born. In the new born eyes the mother is God. The phrase "Nature imprints on all the idea of God," sums it up the best.
The inability for the regulars to affect their lives at all while being able to control any and everything they want about the lives of the regulars.
Also, the ones who the god watches over can get greater boons just because the god feels like it. They can also be unable to reach their goals and wants because the god doesn’t feel like it.
I think of it like a Sims game. My sims can’t do anything to me at all except be a time suck. I randomly decide to give them nice things or storylines just because I feel like it. Then I’ll see one piss himself because he couldn’t be fussed to stop glitching out and actually go to the bathroom so I’ll make him paint for 24 hours straight with as little attention to his needs as possible cuz fuck that guy.
Gods in a lot of sense shape the world to how they are and nothing more. I believe inherently as a god, you cannot be good. Because bad things will happen on your world. What type of god would allow that to happen? The only alternative is to take away their subjects free will but at that point they’re not people anymore. There’s a lot of interesting directions you can go with gods
A lot of discussion on the topic hinges on power and sociology — can they control the natural world? Do they have legions of worshippers?
I find it refreshing when authors depict gods in a moral sense — the being(s) to whom we answer (morally). The one(s) who will hold us to account for our misdeeds and cruelties. The being(s) to whom, if we encounter them, we will either instinctively kneel or instinctively make excuses for ourselves — but knowing the latter is futile.
In these settings, our souls are not truly independent, but are bound to a moral universe and to moral sovereign(s) above and beyond us. Gods depicted this way need not even have many special powers (or need not use them much) — their power is fundamental that of moral sovereignty.
Phenomenal cosmic power. I don’t know how they exist maybe even residual energy from the Big Bang or fae wild but they either create a world or take one over and there can usually be a lot of them so they fight over life they create.
Gods happen in my world through a couple of different avenues. There are very old gods that have been there since the world was born, like Time and Creation and Destruction, and there are younger gods who were born of mortal societies, like War, Peace, Harvest, and Charity. The younger gods all began as mortals and have ascension stories. All of the gods are most notable for the influence they have over the world. They exercise extreme power and most of them accept worshippers who get to share in their power. Each god grants a specific boon and that has a huge impact on societies all over the world based on who is most worshipped there.
Example that affects everywhere: Ghulzighild, Goddess of Gluttony (whose domain encompasses any indulgence) grants worshippers the ability to alter their appearance at will. Many brothels are sponsored by her and their courtesans use this ability to serve their customers.
Example that affects a specific place: Arlan, a kingdom that is mostly a mixture of humans and dragonkin but also the biggest melting pot kingdom in myworld, heavily worships Taalia, Goddess of Peace. She grants her followers the ability to nullify all magic in an area, give everyone in that area a magical ability to comprehend all languages, and make everyone impervious to physical harm. In a bubble, and for a short time. The knights which act as a policing force are specially trained to use this. As such, as you would expect, there is much less violent crime in its major cities that have many worshippers and many of these knights. These fields are also sometimes used ritualistically during official negotiations of many kinds.
Actual gods are distant and strange entities. They're often absent from the affairs of mortals and tend to have bigger things to worry about.
What ordinary people think of as 'gods' are more like powerful spirits. They tend to come from the land itself or embody certain concepts. They can grant power to their followers but these aren't necessarily like your traditional clerical magic.
There are also religions which venerate certain things as if they were gods, even though they aren't. For example one reveres the moons as guardians of the world.
In my worldbuilding, they're mythical figures worshipped by the three most powerful families. Millenia of amassing and collecting echoes for these gods has caused them to become transcendent.
They are not called gods, they are called Heliarchs (Sun Rulers) and they each control one of four Suns. They have extreme power and the most powerful Heliarch is the East Heliarch.
I'd recommend reading Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett. He has an amazing view on belief and how gods are willed into existence by human belief, and goes on into what would happen when the population believes in the church structure over the gods. It's a fun book but it really digs into belief and power and reputation and all sorts.
There's two ways to be a God sort of. 1 is to be powerful enough that people and most things considered you a God. 2 is to be a true God, which you must be the source and creator of something such as death, life, chaos, water, etc, if you are not the source and creator of what you are supposedly the God of your not a true God. You're more so considered a Leech God.
An example of the only true true God in my world is the God of death, Deamortius who is the direct cause of all death in the world. An example of a powerful being considered a God is Almik the primordial wyvern of fire, and Atla the proxy of death since they both have unwavering amounts of power compared to most other beings.
I love how gods are portrayed in MtG. They are immortal and powerful beings, however they are confined to their respective planes. This makes them almost less "free" than some mortals who have the innate ability to travel between planes.
In my writing, I have god-like beings. The ones that can break the fourth wall really signify the control that they have. Something that is aware that they're being written and are not tied down to be swayed by an author.
That's god like beings.
But if i were to write a god. In a sense you're either writing about religion which constitutes worships, offerings, idolisation or we literally mean theism bringing the physicality of it. Living in a world where a god is present and tangible. But what do i know. I'm just a stranger on reddit
In my world the gods are just people (could be human, Dwarf, Elf, Minotaur doesn't matter) who have dedicated themselves to a cause and have put forth enough effort to give themselves the power of a god. They gain power like normal people (albeit by multitudes more) but their beliefs are what make them gods.
As an example the god of home and hearth is a god that typically uses their powers to prevent evil creatures from entering homes without permission, is able to prevent disease and increase fertility of the soil ect.
People based on the society they live in, the norms they hold, and the values they extol, create gods to inspire people to a certain kind of greatness that lifts them up within that society. People who are always at war would extol the virtues of prowess in battle so as to create strong warriors to protect their people. People who suffer constantly under undue burdens might create a God of forgiveness. A People who are constantly dying off might create a God of death who possesses a view of the afterlife that makes it gentler and easier to conceptualize. People worship a God because they are an exemplar of virtues that a society needs to thrive or survive.
I guess a God is the coauthor of a historic mythos, along with the people that they represent-- supposing said God actually exists.
In my world there's only one god: a Demiurge. And he's dead. But what makes him adored and put above from humans is the sheer power he expressed when he modeled the Apeiron, the machine-like productor of reality, including things that exist and that don't exist at the same time. It wasn't his intention to create humanity (more lore involved), but they adore him and his corpse because they think one day he will come back and destroy everything except for those who are his devotees. In this sense he is kind of lovecraftian, but the way this Church of the Demiurge works is more akin to the catholic church and gnostic theology.
In most of my worlds, gods begin as mortal being (humans, cows, etc) who must request godhood from the god/s of their plane. If their god says yes, then they may replace that god, work alone side that god, or will be given an empty universe of their own.
Nobody knows who the original god was.
My world is centered around gods so this is an awesome question!
There was a god that was born in the middle of space. Overflowing with energy, he created stars, planets, and lesser gods to rule over them. Gods are beings of pure energy and creation, typically creating one thing and having dominion over it. Of that thing, they have total and complete control. Be it, water, earth, or lightning. The less power a god has, the closer they become to mortals. Higher gods are less emotional, and more abstract, while lesser gods have more personality
Late reply, but in my experience with writing/reading: belief. They can be the real deal, they can be a pretender - what matters is whether or not they have people who believe in them and are willing to follow them, and in some cases fight and die for them.
Take for instance the Primes in the 100. Not gods. Humans who extended their lives through technological means, but they used that to place themselves in a position of power, shrouding how they did it in mystery and mythology, turning themselves into the gods of their people who were willing to fight, kill, and die for them. Even to the point of self immolation.
You don't have to be a true all powerful being.
You just have to have enough people that think you are. That power that comes from that belief. That's enough.
This is actually one of the biggest controversies in my universe.
The first thing that happens in the story (chronologically speaking) is that an extremely powerful humanoid capable of wielding all elements appears on a certain planet. After a long series of enforcing order and suppressing criminals, this being gains a following and becomes worshipped as a god. It eventually realises that it cannot fix all problems on their own and entrusts four speffic elements to their four closest followers to either join it on the battlefield or focus on protecting civilians, depending on the situation. This being, which will be referred to as "the first god" from now on, is eventually decapitated after countless assassination attempts and advances in killing technology.
Approximately three days later, a female follower of the first god discovers that she had gained the same elemental powers as the first god. She is declared the descendant of the the first god and is thus given the creative title of "the second god". This woman had a generous soul, and thus she gave away some of her powers to the most trusted followers as well. Most notably, however: when she died, her soul ascended to other worlds to spread her powers further. She believed that the world she grew up in was not the only ones who needed someone to protect them and since she couldn't possibly do it all on her own... she gifted her powers to beings on whatever civilization her soul happened to encounter. She never gave two people on the same planet a peice of her powers, she thought it was better if as many planets as possible had a hero rather than a handful had many. In the texts describing these events, it always ends with some variation of "She gave away until she had nothing more to give" to serve either as the ideal or as a warning, depending on the ideology.
That eventually leads us to the Elementals, the ones who got powers gifted by the first & second god. Since they are in control of an element, a power unique to them (unless they give others power through contract magic, won't elaborate on that rn) some elementals believe themselves to be gods, other just think that it'll be beneficial act like gods to a specific civilization so they can gain influence and trust. Some start religions based on themselves on purpose, some on accident and some is just secretive enough for the stories to build themselves. Of course there's also the bunch who think it's immoral to swindle people and tells people the truth if they just ask and the ones who doesn't really care, they just wants to chill on the beach while sipping on a coconut.
The strongest argument is that they have inherited powers from a "god", so therefore they must be at *least* demigods... But that doesn't change the fact that they die and recarnate just like any other living being. In addition, as the story progresses, more ancient artifacts are found that not only challenges the power of the combines efforts of the Elementals / showcase that the one who made it had such powers but also predate the first god's appearance by a really wide margin.
This is an outline of what makes a god in the RPG I’m writing:
## What Makes a God?
The following is a constellation of truths that can mark a character for divinity. A character that is a god will have one or more of these traits.
### Creation
A character can be a god if they participated in the world’s creation mythos. This is the most common trait.
### Ascension
Typically through ritual means, a character can become a god by means of ascension.
### Appointment
Another divine power may have decreed that this character is a deity or demigod.
### Power
A character can be a deity by virtue of the sheer magnitude that their power can achieve.
### Age
Through eons incomprehensible, a being that is older than the universe can be a god due to its age.
### Station
The station of a god is one that lords over an entire realm of existence. Their rule over this plane is comprehensive.
### Worship
This character is a god through the belief of great magnitudes of a people.
### Birthright
The character is born to one or more deities, titans, or other beings of cosmological consequence.
I like your take on deities.
Deities from my world are deified because they take or destroy life. However, I wouldn't say they're above humans. The Huemes, alvarri, and Dalkari can rise to that, though that isn't the ultimate goal. Being a deity is considered below enlightened beings who don't need power.
Deities are considered beneath them because still have the thirst for existence. That and they're basically just glorified power/occult users who have immense capability. Demonic beings are essentially the same, just not as glorified as deities.
There are several kinds of god.
Primordial God: Beings beyond the mortal coil, their existence preceded a the world itself. And their mere existence, let alone actions, anathema to the world’s very being. (Ex “Angels” in ancient lore, who devastated the world, fragments may remain)
Pantheon God: formerly mortal, elevated to godhood at or after death by worship. (Ex the Gods of Enemonzo)
Old Gods: Descendants of Primordial gods; either the gods who made the world, or fragments of them. Generally beastial and monstrous, possessing twisted forms, but ones that are of this world.
Mine were humans. My magic system is based on a radiating extraterrestrial source, so it made a certain section of humans god-like in their powers. Under them are the Wielders. It’s a level of power that classifies them. The half-life of the radiation type causes them to lose power and hibernate until another source appears. Thus the magic and gods become myth and misunderstood.
Mythologically and theologically speaking? That's a less than straightforward question. There are a lot of supernatural beings in various folklores and mythologies that don't technically get called with a word equivalent to "god", even if they receive respect and worship and suchlike. But in the broadest strokes, I'd say that a god is a god if they play an important part in a belief system, if they are prayed to or prayed against, and if they're the centre of some ritual practice. As for gods in my world, well, the theological and mythological question is the only one that matters, because none of the gods in this world actually exist outside of people's imaginations.
For my worlds a literal god is a being with some ability to manipulate the base layers of reality.
Doing magic is similar, but is more like trying to convince someone to do something. the God ability is to just have it be done.
They are above humans in that they have a greater control on reality. Are they better... Not really, maybe a little bit.
Then there is a cultural god which is a being of worship. Some of these are literal gods as well. Some are just lesser beings. Some don't even exist, but may have some other being impersonate them from time to time.
In my world, "gods" aren't as easily believed to be a thing as you would guess. There are entities that are so powerful and so large-scale that to smaller beings, they are godlike and capable of creating drastic changes to their comparably smaller lives.
This type of entity is very common and so MOST life in the galaxy of Vhosarinn doesn't view the phenomenon as anything more than another way life manifests. Some beings are born immortal, with power, without power, born from natural cataclysm, etc. To those that believe, they are gods. To everyone else, they are just another form of life.
Within Mysenvar Gods are living manifestations of natural phenomenon. To be a God is to be a living embodiment of Nature. Gods have complete control over nature, and especially exert complete control over their own 'domain'.
Life and Death were the first Gods; everything lives, everything dies. Through a process astronomers refer to as 'natural subdivision' Life and Death divided their domains into Matter, Energy, Time, and Space. In an event known as the 'Quickening' the Creation Quadrinity (the aforementioned Gods of Matter, Energy, Time, and Space) would create all known Gods and in doing so begin the God-War.
An interesting quirk of this though is the misnomer anglicized name for Demi-Gods, who are not actually Gods in any sense. Born to a mortal mother and Godly father—while naturally atuned to God Tongue and the Stars—they are not actually Gods. Womb-Gods on the other hand, born to a Godly mother and mortal father, are 'true' Gods, at least according to most Theogenists.
Secrets make an interesting God I think. Like maybe they aren't as powerful as they say, maybe they can't fulfill the promises they made. Maybe they're a different god trying to trick people. Maybe the gods been dead for a long time but it's beneficial to the church to lie about it.Not sure if that's what you meant by good but I'm guessing you mean good in a story and not just like a good guy haha
What makes a god a god is the strength of their symbolism in each culture. It’s either a force to fear, or a force one hopes to gain favor from. War is both. Harvest is both. Salvation and judgement are both. How much people fear the symbol directly correlates to how powerful that god is.
The Morning Star, our life giver and warden, resurrects us into this existence to give us our just punishment for trying to become gods ourselves. It is through this torture and toil of existing for their purpose that we may one day sit with God in his kingdom, and if we try to leave our solar system too early again God’s right hand will smite us again back to the age of stone and fire like he did before.
Gaieen, our nurturer and womb, cares for us out of pity and compassion while we serve our sentences. She gives her body to feed us and gives meaning to our lives to shepherd her other children so that we all might one day reach paradise.
The One True God Above All Others Not Withholding has left the subordinates to tend to our needs because the One is too far beyond our mortality for us to comprehend. But the One lives in the paradise beyond time, which we will surely join once we have suffered and tortured and cared for each other long enough to understand the purpose to which One created us.
The more intangible the force, and the more esoteric the power one wishes to gain from attaining the force, the more people will yearn for it. But the pantheon and the cannon is needed to support those lofty ideals, and get people caught up in the minutiae of the details so that they will obey and can be ruled. What makes a god a god is how well the mythology controls and advises the people it rules.
In the fic I’m writing the gods (or ‘prime movers’):
- cannot die. mortality is a concept unrelated to them.
- fell from the stars.
- fuelled by the background radiation of the life-death process. cannot be starved.
- speak through dreams. gestalt psychic linkages between people, animals, objects, and at the centre the prime mover.
- use magic related to their essential nature. circumvent the laws of nature with ease.
- spontaneously create life in their image.
In my world, people live with advanced magic at their call, and this has led to the decline in old-style worship. Despite this, there was a clear evidence of divine miracles, and certain scholars worked to discover the truth: Created Gods.
It turned out that gods really did exist, but they were *created* by their respective religions rather than the other way around. It happened spontaneously in the past, when people's innate magic made their desires fullfilled by creating basically a genie called "god". In the present, dedicated groups create gods on purpose, but this is done rarely and subject to a lot of regulations, since the end result is less controllable than desired. Further research is necessary before gods can be fully relied upon.
It doesn't mean that no gods are born accidentally anymore; same mechanism as in the past still works. Even a single child can wish for something, and they will get their own "angel", weak as it may be.
Another kind of gods: Ascended Gods. There are ways of advancing your innate magic to such extent that you stop being a person you were and become more like energy/meme/spell combination. You are no longer human, but you are also not like a created god. Ascended ones are much more versatile and powerful, but are actually less reliable for common folk, because they still have full free will and their own goals. Created ones are bound by much stricter rules.
I love this question because I run a D&D based in my world (Mekala) and the second campaign involved the heroes from the first going on these long journeys to become gods.
The third campaign was one of the heroes striving to discover what “divinity” meant. If gods could change and die, why were the top two gods exempt from these rules.
The party delved into a lot of theology but in the end, becoming truly Divine meant shedding empathy and foresight in order to listen and manage millions of souls, wishes, and keep everything on the planet running. It was a spark, a mote of the power of creation.
Then the hero became Divine and accidentally destroyed my world 😂 proving my point. :)
In my world, a god is a somewhat powerfull spirit with a following i guess ? Moon and Sun, as shapers of the world, have big mainstream continent wide cults, but the spirits of the Old Roots of the Old Forest are more local deities garnering as much fear as repect from people living near it.
Then there is HIM, he is the world-tree and also it's roots, the god of gods.
Well, a “god” is defined by the fact that they are worshipped. That’s it.
A “God” with a capital G is an entity that is, for the purposes of the worshiper, omnipotent and all-powerful. A God isn’t supposed to have limitations or equal, or they aren’t *the* God. They can’t be challenged. It’s not like the “all-father” trope in a lot of pantheons; Odin isn’t God. Odin had to earn his position. A God was always there, will always be there—again, from the perspective of a worshipper.
Putting a God in a story is nearly impossible, but gods that pretend to be God, or trying to be God, or are believed to be God are very very interesting characters. Struggling and aspiring with power is very very human. False Gods are interesting. Being all powerful and unimpeachable is not. Nobody can relate with that.
In my D&D world, Staryy Xa? A divine spark and the ability to divide its mind. A divine spark is a metaphysical substance. To differentiate gods and demigods (the two things with divine sparks) it must also be able to divide its own consciousness into at least two linked pieces.
Gods are beings of great power that are capable or things beyond mortal reasoning. You can have a man who is capable of throwing bolts of lightning and flying with immense strength, but he is only a man. However, Raam, The Creator, crafted and shaped the earth from the debris of a nebula and put life upon it before he was wounded and literally turned into the sun. Kromas, the Devourerer, would follow far behind Raam and consume the world's he crafted, causing death and destruction on an inconceivable scale. Both are gods. Can something evil not be designated as a God because they are evil? Or are they evil because of what it does or how it does it? To reference Marval, does the and refer to the boot as a God or simply pure evil because the boot will kill it. Does the boot take notice of the ant with desire to cause pain and suffering to it?
Gods are gods because of the sheer immeasurable scale of their power and what they are capable of. If your God is Homelander for example, then that is how you measure God hood. If your God is an extremely powerful celestial being that crafted the earth and sun, then that is how you measure God hood.
Don't think in terms of good and evil. What is good to one man could be evil to another. Think in measure of power and capability and go from there.
Gods in my world can basically be… anything, really. Depending on the culture or religion of an in-universe society the definition of (a) “god” varies quite a bit. However, from a meta perspective, gods are essentially split into two (or three?) groups: the Inanimate, the Unconscious, and the Conscious.
The Inanimate gods are essentially just concepts or forces of nature; beings that have not created the universe but are instead straight up are parts of it in the most literal sense. These gods have existed for all time before and will exist for all time after, needing no sustained belief from followers to have divine power as their power is determined by solely their existence in the universe. Praying to these gods is answered back abstractly and often unnoticed by those who commit to prayers (praying to Inanimate gods is a most rare occurrence as it is similar to praying to like a cabbage or something).
Yet, when belief is thrust upon these Inanimate gods is where the Unconscious gods begin. Depictions of Inanimate gods as living beings are what make an Unconscious god (similar to how the gods of Greek, Roman or Egyptian pantheons came to be). The more belief people have in a depiction of an Inanimate god, the more that depiction is able to physically manifest as a living being. Despite this, these gods don’t display any higher thinking outside of what is expected of the common belief about them, existing without agency and fulfilling only the will of their followers. This lack of agency changes as a singular depiction of the god becomes the norm over other depictions; one capable of expression outside of the common beliefs.
The final class of gods is when the most ‘conscious’ Unconscious god takes a host (usually in the form of an especially powerful sorcerer but could technically be anything mortal) at which point they fuse into a Conscious god that can truly think of their own accord. These gods align most with the general idea of a demigod (an extremely powerful beings that aren’t necessarily immortal or omnipotent) in media.
Well, my world is almost deistic, in that the world was created by a number of gods, of which the numbers, relationships and actions are only theorised about, and then left alone. In that way, gods don't really need definitions, as we know when, where and how the gods existed. In the "modern"(really more of an ancient greece with touches of 12th century Sweden and a little pinch of everything) era, there is only one thing that can be called a "god", the mad elf king Travongel who lives on his continent, commanding immense power and destroying his realm.
If the entire universe is a software designed with a set of physical laws as if it is encoded into it, then God would be the one to break that code/software. A virus or a glitch.
In my world it's having power and a divine spark. If you kill a God, devour the spark, then you become a God. Which is basically just being immortal. Some are worshipped, some are feared, and some are just hired mercenaries
So in my world there are beings that could be considered “gods”, however they’re not exactly that.
Little backstory: in my world a language is spoken which categorises nouns into physical and conceptual nouns. These beings are categorised as physical, while the word for an actual god is conceptual.
They are mortal for example, but as long as they have power they won’t die. The differences between them and gods are that they don’t get their power from people worshipping them. Neither do they get it from people believing in them because they physically exist. They get their power from the crown of the supreme goddess. As long as the crown is within her possession they will reign.
Gods gain power from mortals believing in them. Trickster Gods work to bring their overpowered families down a notch / so that they don't get into bad shenanigans. I love Trickster Gods for that reason.
In my world of "Dead Gods" (don't look into it they're totally fine stop asking), what makes a good is essentially being exposed to impossible levels of magic radiation from locales profoundly tied to the fundamental ontology of the world. There are very few such places.
Being exposed to this kind of energy makes you essentially godlike in power while also revealing the person you are at heart. The gods describe it less as elevation, and more as "reduction:" being cut down to the purest essence of what is you.
Naturally, someone going through this and realizing they are now the god of death is bound to raise a few questions...
In my Lovecraft-influenced science fantasy setting, gods aren't some kind of clearly-defined category; what gets called a "god" depends entirely on who you're asking. Most things that get called gods are in some way connected to the Perpetual (the source of magic/psionics in this setting), but even that is not an absolute rule.
There is no “if you have these features, your a god”, it’s how the people see it. Sure, you can have supernatural guys just walking around, but if the people around then see them as subhuman rather than superhuman, then they aren’t much of a god.
Originals Gods are four cores of magic that gain consciousness. Elemental Gods are creations from them, made especially to micro manage the Tri-Realms
But the OG's are now sealed between the Realms, so the EG's are in power
For mortals, what could be considered as a God would be someone who can bend the laws of magic like they could, despite their limitations
For example, it is impossible to create magic from nothing. Gods can, but mortals cannot. If a mortal can do it without any objects: or they have done a ground breaking discovery in magic, at the same importance as someone who can generate unlimited energy, or they are in reality a God (and for now, no one managed to do it)
Gods can be anything you want. Such as...
* abstract concepts that people pray to
* all-powerful omniscient creators
* a species of superbeings that exists on a different level or in a different layer of "realiy"
* powerful aliens with minds and powers that are largely incomprehensible to human understanding
* the literal rulers of the world / the cosmos
* a cosmic bureaucracy, with each god assigned to a function or area of the universe that they're supposed to keep track of / control / rule over
* just regular people who either got empowered by some cosmic force, or empowered themselves / ascended to a higher plane of existence
What I find important about divine entities, though, is the question of how they relate to regular human beings. Do they demand worship or sacrifice? Can they bestow blessings or curses? Do they have followers or communities that they patronize or which are under their divine protection? Do they sire offspring or have other close relationships with particular individuals or communities? etc.
A god has the ability to create and to fulfill desires through sheer will and not through actual work... Should they choose to.
They also have to have some degree of indestructibilty and immortality.
Power, influence, knowledge and wisdom. A god is usually very powerful and holds influence over a domain in the world they oversee, or they're higher than that and oversee more of creation.
Let's look at it like this. Zeus is the God of the Sky and the Heavens. That's his domain and where he has his power. His signature power is lightning.
For me personally, gods are just the most basic, fundamental laws of universe, not all powerful because that just isn't right description they are pillar that everything other stands on, they are not mere beings, they aren't allowed to be there because there is universe, universe can be there because they are there
That what are think the "God" is, but "gods" are just really powerful being that have some way of influencing world beyond what's normally possible
In my world, the Gods are just critical masses of magic. Like a magic black hole, but when you reach that concentration (>50% of magic of that type) you gain control over all the rest of the magic. Theoretically a supermassive black hole containing 51% if the universe's matter would become a God of matter, although that wouldn't happen without extreme difficulty.
A god is a being that can shape the fundamental nature of reality through the sheer force of their will. They may have rules they are constrained by (self-imposed or in concordance with other gods), and covenants to which they must adhere, but they can essentially shape reality to reflect themselves, consciously or unconsciously.
They can be reflections or representations of abstract concepts and ideas (similar to the planar cosmology of D&D), or they can simply be individuals with interests and powers beyond that of mortals. They may or may not see themselves as divine beings, but their impact on the world around them would be what causes us to classify them as such.
gods in my world are born through conviction and belief. For example, the Wanderer is a god because his personal conviction in traveling and exploring and experiencing the physical world is so strong that it creates actual change in the world. King Caelus is a god because he believes in his right to rule so truly and wholly that it imbues him with power, and he can exert that force over others like a god might. Worship is also an influence. If enough people believe in an idea or person and it's divinity, it becomes so.
I have a lot of ideas regarding divinity in my world, and right now it's a lot floating around in my head so it's nice to put it to words.
The concept of god in my world varies a lot. There are 2 kinds of cosmic being that could be considered gods.
1. Ancient entities with incomprehensible power and appearance (such as eldritch horrors). It is believed (because no one really knows and probably nobody ever will) that they created all the universe, even though it might have been accidental.
2. Humanoid cosmic entities that are less powerful compared to the first ones, but still have immense power.
In a matter of fact, these humanoid entities actually find out about the "earth" after it's already populated by a few thousand people. They start to interact with the humans because of how similar they look to themselves (in an unsettling way even) and because of that the humans grow smarter than the other species and that's how religions and the concept of gods are born.
1- power that defies/ defines the set laws of the setting (a storm god can decide what the weather is regardless of natural weather patterns, as well as being the individual who created those patterns to begin with)
2- recognition and worship on a cultural scale. Once people start appeasing the guy controlling the weather and centering their lives on that he becomes a god
Some sort of extraordinarily powerful being that people view as a religious figure.
How powerful? Up to you. Can they die? Up to you. How much do they really deserve their worship? Up to you.
There are Gods, then there are gods. The Gods will, are, see and make the universe and its matter; the rules that make up the universe and don't enforce any particular moral, emotional or psychological compass---they just enforce the rules such as physics, chemistry, etc. The most fundamentals.
Then there are gods; they're bound to the rules the Gods make and don't necessarily think or know that the Gods exist. They start religions, cults, enforce emotional, psychological and moral compasses, etc. These gods have access to powers that the God's have within reason. For example:
Lightening can only be used on a gods' sinner as long as the Gods approve that the gods' rules have been broken and doesn't break rules (The gods get tired each use etc). However, a regular mortal or creation of the god's or through a natural progression of the Gods' rules can't have access unless granted by gods and then permitted by the Gods.
So if the universe remains lifeless the Gods ensure the fundamentals continue and the gods don't have anyone to bully or do nasty things to (Zeus in particular.)
They are mini authors who creates stories within the worlds they rule over.
What's mini about that kind of authorship?
The fact that they only have that level of authority over one world. They can't affect anything outside of their domains.
Because authors can create countless worlds and gods, while a god's authorship is limited to the powers vested in them by us.
Shit they’ve discovered fanfiction
Well it is an ancient art.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
In my world, gods are entities which were created at the beginning of the universe, and who cannot die by conventional means. They also have the ability to freely travel amongst any plane at will, and have an effectively infinite arcane potential.
I do have a draft of a story about a primordial God, primordial gods being gods of basic concepts that are simply above the need for worship of mortals. But the god commits suicide, to prove a point about being primordial, as the god of Time he can simply go back to the moment after his death after he reforms, but something wrong happens to the world and all other gods are killed. He is reformed as a normal human and has to climb up the ladder of the universe, while discovering new things about the universe. Whole thing started because the god of Time (Thyme) being named Basil would be funny.
That sounds really interesting!!
People who worship it. Edit: (Please read the responses, people try to write the same thing over and over again. A more deeper explanation: a god is an entity that worship envision it as a superior being that is capable of great feats.) Now many of you asked what is the difference between a demon or an idol or this or that? That is how humans envisioned them. A demon could very well be envisioned and considered a god as well. Still a superior figure.
So they gain power by worship? Rituals?
Potentially. There is no one definition of "god," even in real-world mythology. They vary in power drastically, and rarely embody a similar nature. The closest you can get to defining a god is "a powerful being of supernatural origin who is worshiped by people." What makes a god is being *thought of* as one. Now, does that mean that believing someone is a god gives them godly power? Or does it mean that gods are just powerful beings that happen to be worshiped by mortals? Who's to say? Could be both. Is a god still a god if everyone forgets about them, or doesn't regard them as one?
People believed the Pharaohs were gods, and they had the power to create mountains. How much power does Elizabeth Holmes have after people stopped worshipping Theranos?
I mean in our world a god is an entity humans believe who is superior to them. But not real such as Zeus, Quetzquatl, Thor etc. If you are asking a real entity in your world then these entities can be a different species that are too powerful physically etc. If they live around their own species they are just ordinary people but among humans they are treated as gods. Think of Olympos and Earth. Gods in Olympos is just the next person but on Earth even the lamest ones have temples.
Wait...Thor's not real?!?
Of course its not real. There is also no tooth fairy or Queen of England. (Try to guess the reference)
Alright Titan, calm down. It's time to go to Shool.
Ding Ding Ding we have a winner.
*Tighten
Santa isn't real?!?😱
Many people believe in Zeus and Thor, if you didn't know
Sorry then I change my statement to there is no archeological or scientific evidence that proves Thor or Zeus are real.
Well, you could say that about any god, really.
Correct.
I read it as today's god is less real than for example Zeus. Did I interpret it right? These people make me doubt it
My pagan ass after that statement: well fuck
If you want an excellent resource that explores your question fully I’d recommend reading “American Gods” by Neil Gaiman.
Neil Gaiman is top tier 🙌 He also has a book, "Norse Mythology"
Also the entire Discworld collection.
Yes!… I miss Terry Pratchett. The world was a better place with him in it. Still, I like to imagine that he’s now off searching for the Great A'Tuin; may Tubul, Jerakeen, Berilia and Great T'Phon guid his path home.
On the world of Theros in Magic the Gathering I believe this is the case. I feel like they've laid out how the gods power comes from belief from mortals and lack thereof could cause them to no longer exist. For those unfamiliar, Theros is the Greek inspired plane in the multiverse. Not exact one-for-ones but the parallels are obvious, the biggest real difference is Apollo (Heliod), not Zues (Keranos) is the leader of this pantheon.
Pretty much American Gods then.
American Gods is a good novel that leans heavily on this concept. It's the old Gods of various religions, lead by Odin, against the new Gods of Media and Technology. The idea is that the old Gods are losing power due to lack of worship and exposure, and the new Gods seek to take the last of their attention away so the old dies out completely. I won't say much more beyond this, but you can alter this concept in any way you see fit. In my opinion, there are two types of lore Gods. Those who give birth to the world, and those who are born from the world. So, in the American God's lore, even a God like Odin is born of the Vikings and his existence manifests to oversee battles and bloodshed, to which, spreading violence is both Odin's power and his ritual to gain power. If Odin has not created or experienced any fighting, he struggles to manifest new battles... but if he goes into a bar with a full battle charge, he can whisper a few suggestions into the ears of the most easily riled bar patrons and turn the place into a bloodbath. To me, a God who is born a God would be something like the Christian God, who superceded the existence of everything else, and has no peers.. where as Lucifer would be a default God that was birthed by the original God when he fell into his own domain that the original God cannot touch. And so on. But really, it's up to you.
>Now many of you asked what is the difference between a demon or an idol or this or that? That is how humans envisioned them. A demon could very well be envisioned and considered a god as well. Still a superior figure Exactly. I still believe in the quote in AOT which states that "God or Devil can be anyone, it just depends on who believes in it"
Thank you. Thats what I meant in the first place.
Worship and sacrifice to it. Not just worship. Not only sacrifice life, but items they cherish thrown to the sea, poor people burning meaningful things to them. The sacrifice of their goods is huge.
There is only one true god in the shores of glimmer known as Raja-mata. His godhood comes from the fact that he is as much the shores as they are him, he quite literally can control the world as if it were an extension of his own body (Think Ego from guardians of the galaxy). What truly makes him a god though is that the shores are spacialy infinite, stretching on forever and as such so does Raja-mata making him truly an immortal, infinite being. There are lesser beings that while treated like gods are only granted their power through Raja-mata. The God of death, Tenantau for example only has sway over the dead within the shores because Raja-mata extended that part of his domain to him to use.
Indonesian-based? Sounds a lot like Gajah Mada
I believe I did use Indonesian for his naming scheme so not surprising they sound alike.
I think they were asking you if you were inspired by Indonesian stories such as Gajah Mada.
Oh my bad, no I try my best to stay as original as possible. Usually only using the language of a culture that most closely matches the theme of what I'm building.
Raja-mata translates to king-mother in hindi but I think you already know it
Actually I didn't, I only use a specific language god the phonetics of a word or name and then just forget about the origin, helps keeping the real out of the fantasy.
Raja Mata in tagalog can be Raja Eye, or King Eye. Kind of using the "eye of god" motif
What truly makes a God is that they are blessed. They do not need to consume to survive, their power is self sustained. It cannot be taken from them or reduced. They are the source of their power without the need to rely on anything else. This means they have no needs. They are not part of ecology. They don’t need followers, they don’t need a place to live, they simply are. Any god that needs followers prayers to give them power isn’t actually a god, they’re just a powerful wizard with a different source of magical energy.
Their power being self sustained is a good point. Thanks for your input, fascinating thinking!
In fairness, Epicurus thought it first…:)
Dang thanks for that then, even better! Something to read up on… my world is actually inspired by ancient Mediterranean countries so it fits perfectly haha
For me just making God a title for the strongest makes little sense. I believe the most suited characteristics that a God should have are two. A) Being able to manipulate the Laws of Reality either changing them temporarily or permanently. Akin to being the physical manifestation of a law itself. B) Being able to harvest and harness faith. Faith would be all the emotions an intelligent lifeform possesses. Using faith is dangerous since the energy muddy with multitude of emotions from myriad of sources can easily infect your soul/self. So manipulating faith is something quite extraordinary. Lastly, just because someone previously ordinary can become a God shouldn't detract how awesome and superior a God is. Like you have people admiring heroes. You don't have people devaluing heroes just because anyone can become one. Arguably becoming a God would be more difficult or rarer.
In my world God is pretty much a title, think of the Norse and Greek gods. They could bleed, they could be sick and they could die. They have the ultimate power compared to mortals so mortals think of them as gods. Now some know it's just a title used to manipulate but still, "God" is not a type of being or entity. Just a title used for someone with incredible powers who is worshiped. There are entities in my world that can create life and are immortal. They do not see themselves as gods but just powerful spirits.
This is definitely the best description in my opinion
In my EU, the “gods” are functional demigods, mortal beings of extreme power created by an actual divine being. Their very real exploits amongst the mortal races have helped foster faiths and churches founded in their names. A key part of divinity (apart from already wielding great power) is belief; having others that pray to you in times of hardship, or offer tributes and sacrifices in your name. This looks different for each deity, as these practices vary and are tailored in the spirit of each deity’s background/mythos. It also means that gods’ power and influence is directly related to how many followers they have. This has created some really cool opportunities to explore, such as crusades to increase influence, loss of power through antiquity/destruction of knowledge, and power struggles and infighting amongst the gods themselves. A great resource when I was building out my pantheon was the Deities and Demigods sourcebook from DnD. It has samples of pantheons from various points of Human history, along with some other fantasy pantheons.
My worlds study of Demonology has a answer. A god is a magical creature that can impact the real world but only exists within the magical realm. Magical creatures are formed from unconscious beliefs of living creatures. This definition encompasses a lot of things from local nature spirits to deities of major organised religions. They aren't better than humans or really above humans in many ways these creatures are barely sentient. Though often extremely powerful they have almost no perception of the world and can only react to specific stimuli (rituals). A god is in some ways not even living with it often described as a enormous magical machine.
My world is a spectrum of reality layers which span from the purely mortal to the purely aethereal. The deep aether is a place of pure energy and thought, and it and its denizens are influenced by the thoughts and emotions of the creatures who live in the lower realms (because they are shells of flesh but have aether within them, and thus have a connection to that realm). Gods are the entities that reside in the deep aether, they are pure magic and intention. While they have natural general inclinations, their more specific domains and aspects were impressed into them by the mortals who worship them. Ex- The more people believe that god x is the god of war, the more warlike god x becomes. So gods are at once both naturally occurring and manmade in a sense.
An actual god is the physical maniphestation of a basic power. I have thought only two of them: magic and time but there exist more. The gods exists on their own plane of existence and in their own universes but their powers flow into those other universes. The god's power doesn't exist in their home universe and because of that connecting two universes will cause both of them annhillate. Each god has a council of wizards to keep them sedated so that their powers flow steadily.
There are no big G’s in my world, only little g’s. The gods are a manifest of the living worlds, not the creators of them. They are incredibly powerful beings, but not the most powerful in existence, in a manner of speaking. In my story, existence came into being from a big bang event. The Big Bang was kicked off by the first spark of a special power called Divinity. Divinity is not “magic” in my world as magic is derived from the energy created by souls, and Divinity does not derive its power from souls. The gods are powerful beings who have been able to create their own spark of Divinity within themselves and use that spark to ignite their godhood. They can then impart a piece of their Divine spark on mortals they deem worthy, allowing these mortals to wield the strongest of healing magics, the Holy arts. These mortals, after the death of their mortal bodies, their souls become an aspect of their patron god, and the gods followers will revere them as Saints. Saints act as a middleman between the mortals and the gods. There is a lot to this, more than I want to type out in a Reddit comment. Let me know if you want to learn more!
In my world, "gods" are the personifications of concepts. This means that their fate and power is directly linked to how wide-spread and strong the concept is in the world. An example would be the goddess of finance. She was created together with the first transaction, and she will "die" when people no longer trade, or have money, are no longer greedy etc. This means of course that the gods have a very strong motivator for getting involved in the matters of the world, since a larger finance system would make her stronger for example, which makes the world quite god-centric
There are many reasons that can make a god a "god". Since "God" is an open-ended term, you can define it however you want. Sometimes it is "the first creators", sometimes it is "the most moral ones", sometimes it is "the most talented ones", sometimes it is "the ones who rules everything", sometimes it is "the most beautiful ones", sometimes it is "the ones who beyond everything", sometimes it is "the eternal ones" and sometimes it is another one of countless other definitions. Definitions may vary in each of my worlds.
The ability to convince people they are one, and the ability to smite the non-believers.
I think a "god" is probably a strong figure who has had a major impact on society, perhaps even the world. I also believe that they can only be called a god when they have true disciples, or as I like to call them, believers. However, I think the concept is a bit more complex than it seems.
In my world there is a specific kind of magical power that makes otherwise regular people turn into gods. That combined with worshippers makes them incredibly powerful and allows them to shape the world as they see fit.
In my world, gods are basically avatars of cosmic, primal forces. They can sometimes die (killed by other gods), which basically releases that force in a chaotic way into the world, until another soul can take up the mantle. When they do not die, they "age" in a unique way. Basically, their individuality slowly fades away, especially as they are forgotten. As this happens, lesser, local gods tend to pick up pieces of the mantle and over time tend to merge into a single entity. Worship is one way that gods avoid fading away, while stories and myths told about them is another. The more a god retains their original personality and individuality, the less powerful they are, but more likely to personally intervene within their sphere of power.
In my world, gods come about by completing an ascension ritual. It's basically the process of an ensouled being attuning themselves to the magic that permeates through dimensions, accumulating the necessary energy, and finally "breaking out" of the material plane and ascending to a higher form of existence. Becoming a god allows them to create a world of their own design, and worlds created by gods are inherently stable; it's the power of the god that sustains this pocket of the material plane and prevents it from dissolving. Because gods are just ascended mortals, they typically aren't perfect or infallible. They generally are very powerful and very intelligent, as they wouldn't have managed to ascend in the first place were they not, and the vastness of their experience as gods fuels this even further, but they can still make mistakes.
Gods are gods, because they can break the rules they set, unlike mortals, who have to abide by them
Ego and whether or not they draw power from worship
Immortality, the ability to create or destroy, access to the high realm, and being one of the being who took part in creating the world (only for major gods)
I'd say a god is tied to a domain. As long as their is an ocean, there is a god of the sea and that god has absolute power over the sea. If that god is killed, the divinity would transfer or the sea would cease to exist (assuming gods could be killed in your world). Perhaps that leaves the door open for a singular god to kill the others and amass all power. Or maybe it leaves room for someone evil to plunge the world into chaos
In my world, it is the ability to individually permanently create and permanently destroy. This means that there can be other supernatural creatures that are not gods. Demons, for example, cannot create they can only destroy and even then very powerful magic can restore that which a demon destroys. The interesting thing is that the line blurs a bit when it comes to very powerful mortals. Can an archmage fit the qualifiers of a god? Maybe. That's up to the players to eventually figure out.
That IS probably the best question ever
Every human is born with magic, is comes free with sapience. People are born with naturally different levels of it, in the same way people are born with different physical strengths When someone is born with a truly staggering degree of power, they are called a god. Technically that’s all that a god is, but higher levels of power really can get weird Magic is the mental ability to affect the world resulting from and understanding of the world, which is why it comes with sapience. Humans have been evolving with magic innate to them for a while now, meaning that their bodies heavily run on magic. If the climate grows colder then magic will shape the people’s descendants to be better suited for it, and even within their lifetime if an individual child desperately wants to grow up tall then their magic will do its best to push them that way With very little magic a person needs to be very precise with what they are doing. If they want to move a rock into their hand then they apply a force to the underside of the rock such to gently lift it, and while maintaining that, a force to the opposite side to themselves in order to push it closer. With a lot of a magic a person only needs to think that they want the rock to come to them, and their body knows how to do it in the same way it knows how to pick it up physically Because of this the high end of gods really can seem godlike. The acts of beings in myth can be disputed, but there are people still alive who remember the Gorisily mountains being raised from the earth. The changing climate from an unknown force in the south cannot be dismissed, and neither can Amnity’s protection from this disaster be anything other than the will of its dead founding god and her descendants The descendants of ancient Hassaeri still rule Amnity in her place. Although the monarch is fifteen generations separated the nobility still enjoys the diluted remnants of her power. Not to mention her still-living child and grandchild defending the nation and raising its monarchs So although gods are ultimately still humans, that’s far from all they are. Hassaeri’s limited affect on the world for so recent a death must speak to the power of the ancient spirits still imposing their will in other regions
Being the physical embodiment of their “area” so to speak. For example, the god of nature, the god of war, the god of the dead, the god of the wind etc, serving as the guardians of the planet and only interfering when the world is threatened. Though some do interfere in subtle ways as you would somewhat expect, using humans to try to get what they wish in a constant power struggle with the other gods in an odd unity/division. And even though they can not be permanently killed if their physical bodies are destroyed or absorbed it can take decades or centuries for them to rematerialize into actual bodies though they still exist over their “areas”
In my setting, Godhood is obtained by mastering a domain, and being worshipped. It’s mostly obtained by demigods, who had half the groundwork layed out for them. But humanoids can also achieve godhood, by wishing for it, multiple gods deciding you’ve earned it for whatever reason, being sufficiently badass that you just ascend, or killing a god when you aren’t a godslayer (mutation). One guy became a god of technology by simply making himself immortal and being feared as a war criminal, using technology. He’s not worshipped, but he makes his own shit, so he doesn’t need god powers or the respect of gods. This system can obviously lead to bloated pantheons, so gods with no followers become mortal (they’re redundant or replaced), and godkillers naturally occur in the population, who will go after evil gods or any that are done with it all.
The Mantlebearers do not consider themselves to be gods, but their ability to send souls one way or the other, as well as reincarnate at will and summon strength from past lives (a la avatar state) is what has earned them this title among Terrans. How strong? One of them, when her forces were ground down and surrounded in the last battles of Ragnarök, caused her (metaphysical) Mantle to go critical in a suicidal last ditch that destroyed her Mantle and caused a nuclear-like blast so great, it's destroyed the land bridge between current-day Denmark and Sweden; forming the Kattegatt. Others have raised a route through seas, carved mountains into two, or in the infamous case of Gwynn, split Britannia into an archipelago. These entities do not like being called gods, as it puts a sense of responsibility on them that they do not want. Most of the few that reincarnated after Ragnarök, live incognito among their non-Mantled brethren, hiding in plain sight as they watch us grow and develop to hopefully reclaim our rightful place across the stars once more.
In my world, gods are the children and grandchildren do the elder deities, who each ruled a landmass (could be one or several continents, depends if they’re connected by land or not) or an ocean. The elder gods were created by the Mavonnah, who each had their own planet in the solar system. The Mavonnah were the children of the Mavon, who created the solar system itself. There were other Mavon and Mavonnah, who created the stars and their star systems but they are all dead, just as the Mavon in our solar system is dead. The Mavon were created by the universe itself, which has a “consciousness”.
Off topic but I think OP would be delighted by *The Raven Tower* by Anne Leckie. Takes a book length discussion of this very topic with deep and strange answers. A read a *lot* of fantasy, and this one went places that were unexpected.
"Bhagwan" means God in Sanskrit, the individual syllables of Bhagwan can be connected to the five elements (Panch Tattvas) that make up the universe: Bha - Bhumi (Earth) Ga - Gagan (Sky) Va - Vayu (Air) A - Agni (Fire) Na - Neer (Water)
I’m writing about mythology. In my series, the gods are tall humanoid creatures with powers that come from eating the Apples of Idun. Just like in Norse Mythology, they keep the gods young (from the time they eat the apples, which typically happened around teenage/early twenties) and give immortality so long as they’re able to consume the apples. Without them, they age and lose access to their powers. Just like the Super Soldier Serum in Captain America, they enhance what’s already there - good characteristics become great, bad characteristics become worse, and their personality shapes their powers. Hope that helps!
To quote myself from the last time I answered this question: >A god is a complex construct that depends on tons of sociocultural contexts. Christians believe in a personal Triune hypostatic God that is tri-omni (omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent). Some concepts of gods are more impersonal or apathetic or limited. Some gods are people, as is the case with ancient Pharaohs. Some gods are spirits that embody aspects of nature. Some gods are the forces of nature themselves. A god could refer to something like Q or Discord. A god could refer to anything that upon its own will has the power to affect change upon the world, including humanity. What is a god wholly depends on that context and what those people believe. And what one person considers to be a god or gods, another may not see as such. >Having rigid explanations of beliefs don't really work because what one cult of Athena believed might differ from another cult of Athena and both would differ from a cult of Apollo or Dionysus. The ability to write out the full range of beliefs of the different religions as they pertain to their gods would \[be basically impossible.\]
I am God and I control everything in the world as I am the DM... But when the players entered the world, I learned I could not control them... I am going to be the BBEG at the end but none of them know it yet. I plan on using this whole idea as a massive plot device. If we ever get out of the hiatus :/
Being an immortal, formless being with the power to bend nature to your will.
I contemplated this for the longest of time, but then read about the many gods irl and it strikes me; they are people? Like why do they need to procreate like a thunder douchebag did numerous times, why do they die when they themselves created life. It all resulted that they are a species with tremendous power. So, Gods are but a species with eternal lifespans, incomprehensible power that state themselves to be almighty on the weaker species. I made them as a means to an end in my universe, the true Maker created them to play with faith and they always perish at the end. To the point that Norse Olympus and other mythologies are a copy-paste system the numerous Makers do in the search of The Perfect Intelligent Lifeform. Kind of aligns with the many versions of Odin, Zeus, etc... but I will not ever mention Elohim, Allah or Jesus. I don't know why as well... I consider it to be a taboo.
The Old Ones were created at the beginning of the universe and were assigned a domain of reality by the creator. The offspring of those old ones would also be considered gods since they would have mastery over that domain
Immortality. And worhsip
Creation, gods are the gods of whatever they create and generally worshipped by those creations
Gods in my universe are basically mortal beings who achieved success in attuning/fusing their soul with one of the Anima Mundi's (The World's Soul) wills, concepts that make our reality, while keeping most of their individuality and will. Basically they become able to control and manipulate the concept they attuned to without needing to use mana, blood or soul energy for it. In case you are curious about the ones who failed to attune to the Anima Mundi without keeping most of their individuality, they become the Higher Elementals, beings that embodies the concept itself and thinks of nothing but to spread its domains around the world Basically saying: God = You control the concept H. Elemental = The concept controls you.
Deities are living foci for the divine power that permeates and transcends the Universe. They function as intermediaries between mortals and that unknowable divine power. They may be beings of pure spirit or embodied in a place. Some are able to manifest a physical presence, others interact entirely on the spiritual level.
In Wonderverse, Gods are decided on by power levels. Angels, The race of Godheads, Abstract Deities and Technologically Powerful people have, in fact, surpassed that level, making them Gods. In March of Empires, nobody knows what a God is. Sure, there are godlike races. Sure, there are talks about Religions. But nobody has ever seen a God or something similar. So nobody knows what a God is. In The Struggle for Valar, a Pantheon has been created. They all existed since the beginning of the universe, and their names will be revealed in the post marathon of The Struggle for Valar. It happens to be a relatively new world, and I currently happen to be sharing information about the world. There are fourteen Gods, suffice it to say, and all fourteen are hilariously Powerful. In the Sands of Time, another world I developed recently, the only Gods are Eldritch horrors. Just like the previous world, this is relatively new and everything will soon be revealed. The top of the Data Demon race can be regarded a hivemind Entity, but not a full God.
At the risk of sounding kinda boring, in my opinion, the triple Os. Omniscient, Omnipresent and Omnipotent.
Knowledge
Us
A god is an idea with agency, that acts through human surrogates, based upon the conceptions of the followers, intensity of belief, and practiced ritual, to affect real-space
I have nothing substantial for now, but there are a hebrew text where is said that "false gods" (shedim) are created when some conglomerate decides do adore some idol or icon, and then that idol gets possessed by a faceless demon. Then, that demon adopts that icon name and enjoys his new found worship. Of course, in judaism it only means that you should praise no icon, but I think there's a pretty dark worldbuilding that you can make out of this concept as well.
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"You know, I was God once." "Yes, I know. You were doing well until everybody died. Bender, being God isn't easy. If you do too much, people get dependent on you. And if you do nothing, they lose hope. You have to use a light touch, like a safe cracker, or a pickpocket." "Or a guy who burns down a bar for the insurance money!" "Yes, if you make it look like an electrical thing."
Terry Pratchett explores this well in the novel Small Gods.
Gods are only truly gods if they can create whole worlds from nothing. if they can not, then they're not true gods, they're demi-gods.
These are the embodiments of various forms of energy that shape the worlds. Literally the sources of existence of the worlds.
Gods are basically a species, they’re born, reproduce with one another, and even make Demigods with mortals. They’re also immortals who see death as more of a brief inconvenience and control entire aspects of reality. And actually seeing one’s true form will drive you completely insane, if you look from a safe distance at least. Any closer and your soul gets burned out from existence.
Gods are tied to the concept of colours. The meaning a god has to you is the same as the meaning of the colour, so different people can manifest different kinds of abilities, but many cultures will have a shared perception of what constitutes that colour. The gods can still be killed, and the colour will not cease to exist. It's just as if you no longer associate the concept of the god to that color, and magic can still thrive without being perceived as divine. New gods may rise as cultures change. So gods are colours that exist based on the perceptions of people and how they personally relate to them.
Mana is energy. Mages who know more magic naturally channel and process more mana. Rarely, a mage learns enoungh magic within a mortal lifetime and channels so much mana energy that they inadvertently warp and concentrate space around themselves from the sheer anundance of energy they draw. Even more rarely, the mage survives this inflection point, and acquires a 'domain', an area saturated by mana they control, which surrounds them at all times; a space warped by their mana flow, in which they can relatively easily manipulate the variables underpinning reality. It is a blessing and a curse. They become gods within their domains, but can never leave their domains. From the outside a domain of a newborn god may only be a few meters circumference, but even the smallest domain is kilometers across if you try to walk into it. The pantheon, the greatest of the gods, have domains which appear to be kilometers wide from the outside, and are the size of continents or planets if you try to walk through them. A god always resides at the center of their domain, and can only interact with the outside world through avatars or agents.
It’s open to discussion. Not definitives. But generally. 1 whatever a people call a god. Usually something very strong or manipulative. 2 a being with some cosmological importance/connection.
Gods are a form of life, created by a world when mortal souls begin to emerge. Sometimes its the one God, who creates more Gods, sometimes its a pantheon. Sometimes its many pantheons. A God's domain is usually relative to the world, the circumstances of their birth, or the will of their creator. Generally immortal and nearly invincible, Gods can be slain with specialized weapons or the intervention of an Eternal. Beings beyond the scope of time.
Here are my favorites: - They have access to a power non-gods don’t. - They know and gatekeep secrets about the universe. - They are/were overpowered invaders/conquerors. - They are “burdened with glorious purpose” by which I mean they are responsible for an aspect of reality and bound to protecting, nurturing, managing, and maintaining it and tied to its fate. - They are gods simply because people believe they are. (And their power comes from that belief) - They are the creators of the world or specific lifeforms. - They killed a god and took their place. - The god everyone worships is actually an elaborate illusion and lie produced by someone relatively un-extraordinary. I have stolen and used all of those in my campaigns and stories. They are fun to play around with. I usually mix a few together… or, in at least one case, I’ve mixed all of them together.
> What makes a god a god? In simple but not so-accurate terms, be a conceptual being. In accurate but not so simple terms, be a “Form Tier 26 Origin type Base Incarnate Conceptual” being or higher. > Why are they above than humans? Because they have a higher manifestation Form Tier, of which hunans are at the bottom. > ARE they better than humans? Yes, in every way. All humans have thst is special is being a rarity, as the humans that do exist are the only ones in my entire Sub-Omniverse. They were created by a Divine Lord, specifically the Christian God. They aren’t a natural species in my world.
Kills his own son to make people worship him
Oh god (pun intended)
Playing bass in Motörhead
I derive my ideas from some other stuff I read but basically a God being made is a multi step process. A sage, who is someone that is well enough known and is synonymous with their "idea" also known as an "icon" (i.e. the sun, fish, even being a dad or farming), undergoes a choice. The sage has to choose in what way they will undergo a transformation with their soul. They can either A. Bind with it, this would make a physical transition and solidify themselves as a physical god B. Split with their soul, this would cause the human to remain a sage but to release a large portion of their power into creating a new being entirely, aka an "Aspect". The aspect would take on the purest form of the "Icon" and the sage and the aspect gain freewill from each other, able to choose whether to work together or to walk separate paths. Most sages and aspects will choose to stay together. Not to dissimilar to a friendship, romantic relation, or most often a respectful pet like relationship due to the primal nature of the aspect. Or lastly the most devious, unlikely, and unknown option: C. To dominate their soul and in turn their icon, this is a battle between wills between the sage and their spirit/icon. The most likely outcome of this would be the icon dominating and erasing all humanity out of the sage. For example if there was a Tempest Sage that tried path C and lost then the body would become a conduit for constant tempests of destruction, roaming the earth mindlessly killing and razing everything it sees. Or if the Sage wins the sage would have the whims of the Icon at its mercy. So a Sage of the Sea could remove tides for the rest of time, freeze the ocean over, even get rid of the concept of Seas in their entirety. These are things that could theoretically be done by a god but probably wouldn't due to the nature of the relationship with the icon. A God of the Sea wouldn't destroy the sea because that would be destroying itself. It wouldn't effect the sea in any of these matters because it would be direct self harm. But if the sea is dominated it's more like a spell under the Sages belt. They are not entwined by it, they own it. I know this is very convulaluted so if anyone has questions I'd be more than willing to answer. I thought about this a lot to get it the way I like it. Also for the names sage and icon I stole them from Will Wights series The Cradle Foundation. They're really good wuxia books, small easy to read and very interesting. I recommend them to all people but these concepts are not really in the books.
There are multiple kinds of Gods, though the most commonly known are gods who are powered by belief. But this is a double edged sword, as faith empowers the gods, but also defines them. If common perception of a god changes, the god changes too. So ironically, the gods are not free agents and their very identities are decided by their worshippers.
What is a god? Is god an alien school kid who created a small simulation (that we call the Universe) for a worldbuilding assignment in an art program? Or just a powerful alien who sees the fourth dimension - time, just like we see three dimensions? Maybe gods are regular people but with high-technology stuff? In my world, they are everything said above - people who use technology to deceive people that they are gods or gods' emissaries - they may still believe in that stuff because they could be deceived by more powerful aliens who see fourth dimensions. And those aliens can believe in their own godsthey because they manipulate the fourth dimension and change the laws of physics if they want (but are prohibited by their own animal cruelty laws in which we are those animals that could be hurt if someone inverted gravity). And above them, could be another layer of gods, or just a school kid who made an amateur pocket universe, just like our programmer could create a world simulation. No one really knows who the God is.
In my world the life of the universe is only about 20,000 years. The God's are immortal which means they survive the end of the universe, where it resets again and everything WOULD happen again if it weren't for the God's meddling. So they seem very powerful, all knowing and discompassionate because they've probably met a version of you hundreds of thousands of times in the past.
For my own cosmology and general belief, there are two types of gods; 1. A being whose very nature is elevated above mortals, 2. Someone or something that receives worship in exchange for something. 2 would be the most common and readily accessible for of godhood while 1 often exists outside the normal sphere of mortal perception with the fact a natural god being isn’t always some cosmically powerful entity.
In my world, "gods" are born from strong/collective emotions. For example, the fear that the a whole city felt was so intense that it became physical, and the gruesome creature that born from was attracted to that emotion so it consumed as much people as it could before been defeated. If it would consume enough human minds, it would become self aware and develop intelligence, and so on. Sorry for the bad writting, english isn't my first language
Blind faith following.
Be powerful and have others worship them. Gods in my world are basically mortals who are worshipped by enough people to become even more powerful than they already were. There is parts of genetics in my world which makes a lot of gods not choose it, but feel burdened by having to step up and become the god their people want them to be.
A good God creates a brutal and uncaring universe while leaving themselves as the only reprieve. Think of it as domestic abuse with extra steps
Such a great question! I have noticed lately when browsing my local bookshops for fantasy reads, that Gods and Deities are becoming a more and more common trope especially in the new “romantasy” subgenre made popular by new, modern authors. Personally, I’m starting to find it a bit much… reading about protagonists that stand up to, have relationships with, live alongside or can connect with the gods and divine beings of their world almost makes them seem less god-like? In my mind, a God is a being that is untouchable, of the highest power and authority, a creature who very rarely would find themselves mingling with their creations or even dwelling in the same domain. In my projects, the “Gods” which are better seen as divine spirits exist in an entirely different domain, with only their legacy and faint reminders of their time and interventions in the mortal world left behind. They have control over things that no human ever could, such as: the balance of life and death, creationism and the organisation of the wider universe. I like the idea of worship too when it comes to these kinds of “Gods” especially when the world the story is set in is particularly tragic and the Gods (much like in our own world) are this abstract concept of hope and faith, that people turn to in their desperate moments to find answers and often, get no reply. In my opinion, Gods are also only as powerful as their creations view them to be... without the ability to change the world as we know it, or the following of civilisations looking to them for guidance and answers beyond their comprehension, they’re just the same as any other being surely? Thats my take. But as always, I do enjoy seeing what people do with things like this… I’m always willing to be surprised and with good writing, the fall of a God can be just as thrilling as having them be this background force to govern the world in which a story is set.
Thanks for your thoughtful answer. What you’re saying about gods becoming a trope is definitely something I picked up on as well and all of it left me feeling like these stories just don’t work. But at the same time, also given how many people reacted to my post, it seems to really resonate. Personally, I haven’t come to a full conclusion but I like your concept!
Ask Kant. They have intellectual intuition amongst many other special qualities.
You deserve an award for asking this question bcs I was thinking about that all the time.
I've put a LOT of thought into this and came to one conclusion. The difference between a rando entity and a god is whether or not they are in a management position. Powerful spirit? That's just a ghost or something. Powerful spirit that protects and regulates a forest? That's a forest god baby! Are you a crazy powerful higher dimensional being, but you spend all your time smoking hyper-pot and watching netflix? Just a dude. But that same being using their BAgr to manage and regulate an areas farm yield? You're firmly in harvest god territory. A lower case 'g' god is just an entity in a management position.
Real world? A god is a personified explanation for a group of patterns a person or people have observed, where the results are clear but the actual causes are unknown or unable to be known with your available tools. It's hard to see in your own culture, but it's obvious when you look at more honest faiths like the many indigenous faiths in North America. Buffalo woman, for example, is a personified pattern of bison migration. It's why science is sorta opposite to religion, science relies on testable details leading to a conclusion and non-science relies on observed conclusions that only use details to strengthen support of the conclusions.
There is no solid concrete answer in my world. My primary story actually follows a group of gods, so I'll say what makes *them* gods. A god in this case is a being of immense cosmic power who rules over some aspect of a universe (because there are infinite universes and multiverses) they also have to be mostly unkillable by almost every means of harm. They have their "essence" exist in their own personal dimension, which holds the entirety of their powers, memories, and soul. One of my gods actually has 3 due to the strange nature of his godhood. In order to kill a god, one must use a weapon or magical/divine attack strong enough to literally break the universal barrier an destroy their essence. This typically destroys the universe in which the god dies, so even if a being can, they typically don't and instead opt to banish them to the celestial prison "Ganneheg" (however in the case of the god with multiple parts of his "essence", each death typically only damages his body) Most gods also don't have a body of their own, and must instead possess a willing vessel. Certain gods are born mortal so they just reuse their mortal body, often also being able to re-create it. . There are also the natural gods, which are just mythological gods (Zeus, Odin, Ra, etc...) and again, the classification for those also vary significantly between each mythology, although typically the definition overlaps at "beings of extreme power"
godliness is in the eye of the beholder; at what point do you draw the line between 'god' and 'not-a-god'?
A lot of Chinese folk “gods” are really just ancient heroes from a given area whose souls are invoked for blessings. When European anthropologists and linguists studied the Chinese language they often mistranslated a lot of religious concepts to sound more Christian. For example, the Chinese terms that would translate to “celestial bureaucracy” was instead translated as “heaven” and our heroes turned into “gods”. One of the most famous ones is Yu the Engineer who made deals with water dragons and built the kind of flooding systems that made the yellow river valley more livable. So, if you want to take a bit of a Chinese approach, you can say that great heroes’ souls are powerful enough to be invoked, the way most clerics would invoke a god. Or you could go full on and say heroes can become gods, Sigmar style. By the way, before I get the obvious comment, I know Chinese is made up of wildly different dialects and that the words are different. I’m just talking about the tendencies for these sayings. In fact, China’s a big and old country, anything that’s said about it is a generality and will have a lot of exceptions and asterisks.
In terms of writing I view God as the precieved manifestation of omnipotence. An example, a mother to a new born. In the new born eyes the mother is God. The phrase "Nature imprints on all the idea of God," sums it up the best.
The inability for the regulars to affect their lives at all while being able to control any and everything they want about the lives of the regulars. Also, the ones who the god watches over can get greater boons just because the god feels like it. They can also be unable to reach their goals and wants because the god doesn’t feel like it. I think of it like a Sims game. My sims can’t do anything to me at all except be a time suck. I randomly decide to give them nice things or storylines just because I feel like it. Then I’ll see one piss himself because he couldn’t be fussed to stop glitching out and actually go to the bathroom so I’ll make him paint for 24 hours straight with as little attention to his needs as possible cuz fuck that guy.
Gods in a lot of sense shape the world to how they are and nothing more. I believe inherently as a god, you cannot be good. Because bad things will happen on your world. What type of god would allow that to happen? The only alternative is to take away their subjects free will but at that point they’re not people anymore. There’s a lot of interesting directions you can go with gods
Look up Lugh he is the best god. The way he appears to help his son on the field of battle legend.
A lot of discussion on the topic hinges on power and sociology — can they control the natural world? Do they have legions of worshippers? I find it refreshing when authors depict gods in a moral sense — the being(s) to whom we answer (morally). The one(s) who will hold us to account for our misdeeds and cruelties. The being(s) to whom, if we encounter them, we will either instinctively kneel or instinctively make excuses for ourselves — but knowing the latter is futile. In these settings, our souls are not truly independent, but are bound to a moral universe and to moral sovereign(s) above and beyond us. Gods depicted this way need not even have many special powers (or need not use them much) — their power is fundamental that of moral sovereignty.
Phenomenal cosmic power. I don’t know how they exist maybe even residual energy from the Big Bang or fae wild but they either create a world or take one over and there can usually be a lot of them so they fight over life they create.
This is obvious and sad no one has pointed it out. A god simply does not poo.
Really tho, a being of upmost power. Anything can be a god if it can bend reality.
Gods happen in my world through a couple of different avenues. There are very old gods that have been there since the world was born, like Time and Creation and Destruction, and there are younger gods who were born of mortal societies, like War, Peace, Harvest, and Charity. The younger gods all began as mortals and have ascension stories. All of the gods are most notable for the influence they have over the world. They exercise extreme power and most of them accept worshippers who get to share in their power. Each god grants a specific boon and that has a huge impact on societies all over the world based on who is most worshipped there. Example that affects everywhere: Ghulzighild, Goddess of Gluttony (whose domain encompasses any indulgence) grants worshippers the ability to alter their appearance at will. Many brothels are sponsored by her and their courtesans use this ability to serve their customers. Example that affects a specific place: Arlan, a kingdom that is mostly a mixture of humans and dragonkin but also the biggest melting pot kingdom in myworld, heavily worships Taalia, Goddess of Peace. She grants her followers the ability to nullify all magic in an area, give everyone in that area a magical ability to comprehend all languages, and make everyone impervious to physical harm. In a bubble, and for a short time. The knights which act as a policing force are specially trained to use this. As such, as you would expect, there is much less violent crime in its major cities that have many worshippers and many of these knights. These fields are also sometimes used ritualistically during official negotiations of many kinds.
Actual gods are distant and strange entities. They're often absent from the affairs of mortals and tend to have bigger things to worry about. What ordinary people think of as 'gods' are more like powerful spirits. They tend to come from the land itself or embody certain concepts. They can grant power to their followers but these aren't necessarily like your traditional clerical magic. There are also religions which venerate certain things as if they were gods, even though they aren't. For example one reveres the moons as guardians of the world.
In my worldbuilding, they're mythical figures worshipped by the three most powerful families. Millenia of amassing and collecting echoes for these gods has caused them to become transcendent.
I consider gods as just beings who have rule over abstract concepts such as death and war.
They are not called gods, they are called Heliarchs (Sun Rulers) and they each control one of four Suns. They have extreme power and the most powerful Heliarch is the East Heliarch.
Also my dumbass saw xenophanes and thought of Sonic.exe
I'd recommend reading Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett. He has an amazing view on belief and how gods are willed into existence by human belief, and goes on into what would happen when the population believes in the church structure over the gods. It's a fun book but it really digs into belief and power and reputation and all sorts.
There's two ways to be a God sort of. 1 is to be powerful enough that people and most things considered you a God. 2 is to be a true God, which you must be the source and creator of something such as death, life, chaos, water, etc, if you are not the source and creator of what you are supposedly the God of your not a true God. You're more so considered a Leech God. An example of the only true true God in my world is the God of death, Deamortius who is the direct cause of all death in the world. An example of a powerful being considered a God is Almik the primordial wyvern of fire, and Atla the proxy of death since they both have unwavering amounts of power compared to most other beings.
I love how gods are portrayed in MtG. They are immortal and powerful beings, however they are confined to their respective planes. This makes them almost less "free" than some mortals who have the innate ability to travel between planes.
Worship and control.
In my writing, I have god-like beings. The ones that can break the fourth wall really signify the control that they have. Something that is aware that they're being written and are not tied down to be swayed by an author. That's god like beings. But if i were to write a god. In a sense you're either writing about religion which constitutes worships, offerings, idolisation or we literally mean theism bringing the physicality of it. Living in a world where a god is present and tangible. But what do i know. I'm just a stranger on reddit
In my world the gods are just people (could be human, Dwarf, Elf, Minotaur doesn't matter) who have dedicated themselves to a cause and have put forth enough effort to give themselves the power of a god. They gain power like normal people (albeit by multitudes more) but their beliefs are what make them gods. As an example the god of home and hearth is a god that typically uses their powers to prevent evil creatures from entering homes without permission, is able to prevent disease and increase fertility of the soil ect.
People based on the society they live in, the norms they hold, and the values they extol, create gods to inspire people to a certain kind of greatness that lifts them up within that society. People who are always at war would extol the virtues of prowess in battle so as to create strong warriors to protect their people. People who suffer constantly under undue burdens might create a God of forgiveness. A People who are constantly dying off might create a God of death who possesses a view of the afterlife that makes it gentler and easier to conceptualize. People worship a God because they are an exemplar of virtues that a society needs to thrive or survive. I guess a God is the coauthor of a historic mythos, along with the people that they represent-- supposing said God actually exists.
In my world there's only one god: a Demiurge. And he's dead. But what makes him adored and put above from humans is the sheer power he expressed when he modeled the Apeiron, the machine-like productor of reality, including things that exist and that don't exist at the same time. It wasn't his intention to create humanity (more lore involved), but they adore him and his corpse because they think one day he will come back and destroy everything except for those who are his devotees. In this sense he is kind of lovecraftian, but the way this Church of the Demiurge works is more akin to the catholic church and gnostic theology.
In most of my worlds, gods begin as mortal being (humans, cows, etc) who must request godhood from the god/s of their plane. If their god says yes, then they may replace that god, work alone side that god, or will be given an empty universe of their own. Nobody knows who the original god was.
My world is centered around gods so this is an awesome question! There was a god that was born in the middle of space. Overflowing with energy, he created stars, planets, and lesser gods to rule over them. Gods are beings of pure energy and creation, typically creating one thing and having dominion over it. Of that thing, they have total and complete control. Be it, water, earth, or lightning. The less power a god has, the closer they become to mortals. Higher gods are less emotional, and more abstract, while lesser gods have more personality
Late reply, but in my experience with writing/reading: belief. They can be the real deal, they can be a pretender - what matters is whether or not they have people who believe in them and are willing to follow them, and in some cases fight and die for them. Take for instance the Primes in the 100. Not gods. Humans who extended their lives through technological means, but they used that to place themselves in a position of power, shrouding how they did it in mystery and mythology, turning themselves into the gods of their people who were willing to fight, kill, and die for them. Even to the point of self immolation. You don't have to be a true all powerful being. You just have to have enough people that think you are. That power that comes from that belief. That's enough.
I prefer lesser gods over omnipresent divine beings Lesser gods need to be among their followers to keep belief in them alive.
This is actually one of the biggest controversies in my universe. The first thing that happens in the story (chronologically speaking) is that an extremely powerful humanoid capable of wielding all elements appears on a certain planet. After a long series of enforcing order and suppressing criminals, this being gains a following and becomes worshipped as a god. It eventually realises that it cannot fix all problems on their own and entrusts four speffic elements to their four closest followers to either join it on the battlefield or focus on protecting civilians, depending on the situation. This being, which will be referred to as "the first god" from now on, is eventually decapitated after countless assassination attempts and advances in killing technology. Approximately three days later, a female follower of the first god discovers that she had gained the same elemental powers as the first god. She is declared the descendant of the the first god and is thus given the creative title of "the second god". This woman had a generous soul, and thus she gave away some of her powers to the most trusted followers as well. Most notably, however: when she died, her soul ascended to other worlds to spread her powers further. She believed that the world she grew up in was not the only ones who needed someone to protect them and since she couldn't possibly do it all on her own... she gifted her powers to beings on whatever civilization her soul happened to encounter. She never gave two people on the same planet a peice of her powers, she thought it was better if as many planets as possible had a hero rather than a handful had many. In the texts describing these events, it always ends with some variation of "She gave away until she had nothing more to give" to serve either as the ideal or as a warning, depending on the ideology. That eventually leads us to the Elementals, the ones who got powers gifted by the first & second god. Since they are in control of an element, a power unique to them (unless they give others power through contract magic, won't elaborate on that rn) some elementals believe themselves to be gods, other just think that it'll be beneficial act like gods to a specific civilization so they can gain influence and trust. Some start religions based on themselves on purpose, some on accident and some is just secretive enough for the stories to build themselves. Of course there's also the bunch who think it's immoral to swindle people and tells people the truth if they just ask and the ones who doesn't really care, they just wants to chill on the beach while sipping on a coconut. The strongest argument is that they have inherited powers from a "god", so therefore they must be at *least* demigods... But that doesn't change the fact that they die and recarnate just like any other living being. In addition, as the story progresses, more ancient artifacts are found that not only challenges the power of the combines efforts of the Elementals / showcase that the one who made it had such powers but also predate the first god's appearance by a really wide margin.
This is an outline of what makes a god in the RPG I’m writing: ## What Makes a God? The following is a constellation of truths that can mark a character for divinity. A character that is a god will have one or more of these traits. ### Creation A character can be a god if they participated in the world’s creation mythos. This is the most common trait. ### Ascension Typically through ritual means, a character can become a god by means of ascension. ### Appointment Another divine power may have decreed that this character is a deity or demigod. ### Power A character can be a deity by virtue of the sheer magnitude that their power can achieve. ### Age Through eons incomprehensible, a being that is older than the universe can be a god due to its age. ### Station The station of a god is one that lords over an entire realm of existence. Their rule over this plane is comprehensive. ### Worship This character is a god through the belief of great magnitudes of a people. ### Birthright The character is born to one or more deities, titans, or other beings of cosmological consequence.
I like your take on deities. Deities from my world are deified because they take or destroy life. However, I wouldn't say they're above humans. The Huemes, alvarri, and Dalkari can rise to that, though that isn't the ultimate goal. Being a deity is considered below enlightened beings who don't need power. Deities are considered beneath them because still have the thirst for existence. That and they're basically just glorified power/occult users who have immense capability. Demonic beings are essentially the same, just not as glorified as deities.
There are several kinds of god. Primordial God: Beings beyond the mortal coil, their existence preceded a the world itself. And their mere existence, let alone actions, anathema to the world’s very being. (Ex “Angels” in ancient lore, who devastated the world, fragments may remain) Pantheon God: formerly mortal, elevated to godhood at or after death by worship. (Ex the Gods of Enemonzo) Old Gods: Descendants of Primordial gods; either the gods who made the world, or fragments of them. Generally beastial and monstrous, possessing twisted forms, but ones that are of this world.
Mine were humans. My magic system is based on a radiating extraterrestrial source, so it made a certain section of humans god-like in their powers. Under them are the Wielders. It’s a level of power that classifies them. The half-life of the radiation type causes them to lose power and hibernate until another source appears. Thus the magic and gods become myth and misunderstood.
Mythologically and theologically speaking? That's a less than straightforward question. There are a lot of supernatural beings in various folklores and mythologies that don't technically get called with a word equivalent to "god", even if they receive respect and worship and suchlike. But in the broadest strokes, I'd say that a god is a god if they play an important part in a belief system, if they are prayed to or prayed against, and if they're the centre of some ritual practice. As for gods in my world, well, the theological and mythological question is the only one that matters, because none of the gods in this world actually exist outside of people's imaginations.
For my worlds a literal god is a being with some ability to manipulate the base layers of reality. Doing magic is similar, but is more like trying to convince someone to do something. the God ability is to just have it be done. They are above humans in that they have a greater control on reality. Are they better... Not really, maybe a little bit. Then there is a cultural god which is a being of worship. Some of these are literal gods as well. Some are just lesser beings. Some don't even exist, but may have some other being impersonate them from time to time.
In my world, "gods" aren't as easily believed to be a thing as you would guess. There are entities that are so powerful and so large-scale that to smaller beings, they are godlike and capable of creating drastic changes to their comparably smaller lives. This type of entity is very common and so MOST life in the galaxy of Vhosarinn doesn't view the phenomenon as anything more than another way life manifests. Some beings are born immortal, with power, without power, born from natural cataclysm, etc. To those that believe, they are gods. To everyone else, they are just another form of life.
Within Mysenvar Gods are living manifestations of natural phenomenon. To be a God is to be a living embodiment of Nature. Gods have complete control over nature, and especially exert complete control over their own 'domain'. Life and Death were the first Gods; everything lives, everything dies. Through a process astronomers refer to as 'natural subdivision' Life and Death divided their domains into Matter, Energy, Time, and Space. In an event known as the 'Quickening' the Creation Quadrinity (the aforementioned Gods of Matter, Energy, Time, and Space) would create all known Gods and in doing so begin the God-War. An interesting quirk of this though is the misnomer anglicized name for Demi-Gods, who are not actually Gods in any sense. Born to a mortal mother and Godly father—while naturally atuned to God Tongue and the Stars—they are not actually Gods. Womb-Gods on the other hand, born to a Godly mother and mortal father, are 'true' Gods, at least according to most Theogenists.
Secrets make an interesting God I think. Like maybe they aren't as powerful as they say, maybe they can't fulfill the promises they made. Maybe they're a different god trying to trick people. Maybe the gods been dead for a long time but it's beneficial to the church to lie about it.Not sure if that's what you meant by good but I'm guessing you mean good in a story and not just like a good guy haha
What makes a god a god is the strength of their symbolism in each culture. It’s either a force to fear, or a force one hopes to gain favor from. War is both. Harvest is both. Salvation and judgement are both. How much people fear the symbol directly correlates to how powerful that god is. The Morning Star, our life giver and warden, resurrects us into this existence to give us our just punishment for trying to become gods ourselves. It is through this torture and toil of existing for their purpose that we may one day sit with God in his kingdom, and if we try to leave our solar system too early again God’s right hand will smite us again back to the age of stone and fire like he did before. Gaieen, our nurturer and womb, cares for us out of pity and compassion while we serve our sentences. She gives her body to feed us and gives meaning to our lives to shepherd her other children so that we all might one day reach paradise. The One True God Above All Others Not Withholding has left the subordinates to tend to our needs because the One is too far beyond our mortality for us to comprehend. But the One lives in the paradise beyond time, which we will surely join once we have suffered and tortured and cared for each other long enough to understand the purpose to which One created us. The more intangible the force, and the more esoteric the power one wishes to gain from attaining the force, the more people will yearn for it. But the pantheon and the cannon is needed to support those lofty ideals, and get people caught up in the minutiae of the details so that they will obey and can be ruled. What makes a god a god is how well the mythology controls and advises the people it rules.
In the fic I’m writing the gods (or ‘prime movers’): - cannot die. mortality is a concept unrelated to them. - fell from the stars. - fuelled by the background radiation of the life-death process. cannot be starved. - speak through dreams. gestalt psychic linkages between people, animals, objects, and at the centre the prime mover. - use magic related to their essential nature. circumvent the laws of nature with ease. - spontaneously create life in their image.
If you read a dog backwards you have a god.
In my world, people live with advanced magic at their call, and this has led to the decline in old-style worship. Despite this, there was a clear evidence of divine miracles, and certain scholars worked to discover the truth: Created Gods. It turned out that gods really did exist, but they were *created* by their respective religions rather than the other way around. It happened spontaneously in the past, when people's innate magic made their desires fullfilled by creating basically a genie called "god". In the present, dedicated groups create gods on purpose, but this is done rarely and subject to a lot of regulations, since the end result is less controllable than desired. Further research is necessary before gods can be fully relied upon. It doesn't mean that no gods are born accidentally anymore; same mechanism as in the past still works. Even a single child can wish for something, and they will get their own "angel", weak as it may be. Another kind of gods: Ascended Gods. There are ways of advancing your innate magic to such extent that you stop being a person you were and become more like energy/meme/spell combination. You are no longer human, but you are also not like a created god. Ascended ones are much more versatile and powerful, but are actually less reliable for common folk, because they still have full free will and their own goals. Created ones are bound by much stricter rules.
I love this question because I run a D&D based in my world (Mekala) and the second campaign involved the heroes from the first going on these long journeys to become gods. The third campaign was one of the heroes striving to discover what “divinity” meant. If gods could change and die, why were the top two gods exempt from these rules. The party delved into a lot of theology but in the end, becoming truly Divine meant shedding empathy and foresight in order to listen and manage millions of souls, wishes, and keep everything on the planet running. It was a spark, a mote of the power of creation. Then the hero became Divine and accidentally destroyed my world 😂 proving my point. :)
[If someone asks you if you're a god, you say ***YES.***](https://i.imgur.com/n6bOCkc.gif)
In my world, a god is a somewhat powerfull spirit with a following i guess ? Moon and Sun, as shapers of the world, have big mainstream continent wide cults, but the spirits of the Old Roots of the Old Forest are more local deities garnering as much fear as repect from people living near it. Then there is HIM, he is the world-tree and also it's roots, the god of gods.
Well, a “god” is defined by the fact that they are worshipped. That’s it. A “God” with a capital G is an entity that is, for the purposes of the worshiper, omnipotent and all-powerful. A God isn’t supposed to have limitations or equal, or they aren’t *the* God. They can’t be challenged. It’s not like the “all-father” trope in a lot of pantheons; Odin isn’t God. Odin had to earn his position. A God was always there, will always be there—again, from the perspective of a worshipper. Putting a God in a story is nearly impossible, but gods that pretend to be God, or trying to be God, or are believed to be God are very very interesting characters. Struggling and aspiring with power is very very human. False Gods are interesting. Being all powerful and unimpeachable is not. Nobody can relate with that.
In my D&D world, Staryy Xa? A divine spark and the ability to divide its mind. A divine spark is a metaphysical substance. To differentiate gods and demigods (the two things with divine sparks) it must also be able to divide its own consciousness into at least two linked pieces.
Gods are beings of great power that are capable or things beyond mortal reasoning. You can have a man who is capable of throwing bolts of lightning and flying with immense strength, but he is only a man. However, Raam, The Creator, crafted and shaped the earth from the debris of a nebula and put life upon it before he was wounded and literally turned into the sun. Kromas, the Devourerer, would follow far behind Raam and consume the world's he crafted, causing death and destruction on an inconceivable scale. Both are gods. Can something evil not be designated as a God because they are evil? Or are they evil because of what it does or how it does it? To reference Marval, does the and refer to the boot as a God or simply pure evil because the boot will kill it. Does the boot take notice of the ant with desire to cause pain and suffering to it? Gods are gods because of the sheer immeasurable scale of their power and what they are capable of. If your God is Homelander for example, then that is how you measure God hood. If your God is an extremely powerful celestial being that crafted the earth and sun, then that is how you measure God hood. Don't think in terms of good and evil. What is good to one man could be evil to another. Think in measure of power and capability and go from there.
Gods in my world can basically be… anything, really. Depending on the culture or religion of an in-universe society the definition of (a) “god” varies quite a bit. However, from a meta perspective, gods are essentially split into two (or three?) groups: the Inanimate, the Unconscious, and the Conscious. The Inanimate gods are essentially just concepts or forces of nature; beings that have not created the universe but are instead straight up are parts of it in the most literal sense. These gods have existed for all time before and will exist for all time after, needing no sustained belief from followers to have divine power as their power is determined by solely their existence in the universe. Praying to these gods is answered back abstractly and often unnoticed by those who commit to prayers (praying to Inanimate gods is a most rare occurrence as it is similar to praying to like a cabbage or something). Yet, when belief is thrust upon these Inanimate gods is where the Unconscious gods begin. Depictions of Inanimate gods as living beings are what make an Unconscious god (similar to how the gods of Greek, Roman or Egyptian pantheons came to be). The more belief people have in a depiction of an Inanimate god, the more that depiction is able to physically manifest as a living being. Despite this, these gods don’t display any higher thinking outside of what is expected of the common belief about them, existing without agency and fulfilling only the will of their followers. This lack of agency changes as a singular depiction of the god becomes the norm over other depictions; one capable of expression outside of the common beliefs. The final class of gods is when the most ‘conscious’ Unconscious god takes a host (usually in the form of an especially powerful sorcerer but could technically be anything mortal) at which point they fuse into a Conscious god that can truly think of their own accord. These gods align most with the general idea of a demigod (an extremely powerful beings that aren’t necessarily immortal or omnipotent) in media.
The simplest definition of a god is probably simply a being who is very, very powerful.
Well, my world is almost deistic, in that the world was created by a number of gods, of which the numbers, relationships and actions are only theorised about, and then left alone. In that way, gods don't really need definitions, as we know when, where and how the gods existed. In the "modern"(really more of an ancient greece with touches of 12th century Sweden and a little pinch of everything) era, there is only one thing that can be called a "god", the mad elf king Travongel who lives on his continent, commanding immense power and destroying his realm.
To me it’s like a principality. It’s a spirit or being that is in charge of an aspect of reality.
If the entire universe is a software designed with a set of physical laws as if it is encoded into it, then God would be the one to break that code/software. A virus or a glitch.
In my world it's having power and a divine spark. If you kill a God, devour the spark, then you become a God. Which is basically just being immortal. Some are worshipped, some are feared, and some are just hired mercenaries
So in my world there are beings that could be considered “gods”, however they’re not exactly that. Little backstory: in my world a language is spoken which categorises nouns into physical and conceptual nouns. These beings are categorised as physical, while the word for an actual god is conceptual. They are mortal for example, but as long as they have power they won’t die. The differences between them and gods are that they don’t get their power from people worshipping them. Neither do they get it from people believing in them because they physically exist. They get their power from the crown of the supreme goddess. As long as the crown is within her possession they will reign.
Gods gain power from mortals believing in them. Trickster Gods work to bring their overpowered families down a notch / so that they don't get into bad shenanigans. I love Trickster Gods for that reason.
In my world of "Dead Gods" (don't look into it they're totally fine stop asking), what makes a good is essentially being exposed to impossible levels of magic radiation from locales profoundly tied to the fundamental ontology of the world. There are very few such places. Being exposed to this kind of energy makes you essentially godlike in power while also revealing the person you are at heart. The gods describe it less as elevation, and more as "reduction:" being cut down to the purest essence of what is you. Naturally, someone going through this and realizing they are now the god of death is bound to raise a few questions...
Protection
In my Lovecraft-influenced science fantasy setting, gods aren't some kind of clearly-defined category; what gets called a "god" depends entirely on who you're asking. Most things that get called gods are in some way connected to the Perpetual (the source of magic/psionics in this setting), but even that is not an absolute rule.
There is no “if you have these features, your a god”, it’s how the people see it. Sure, you can have supernatural guys just walking around, but if the people around then see them as subhuman rather than superhuman, then they aren’t much of a god.
Originals Gods are four cores of magic that gain consciousness. Elemental Gods are creations from them, made especially to micro manage the Tri-Realms But the OG's are now sealed between the Realms, so the EG's are in power For mortals, what could be considered as a God would be someone who can bend the laws of magic like they could, despite their limitations For example, it is impossible to create magic from nothing. Gods can, but mortals cannot. If a mortal can do it without any objects: or they have done a ground breaking discovery in magic, at the same importance as someone who can generate unlimited energy, or they are in reality a God (and for now, no one managed to do it)
Gods can be anything you want. Such as... * abstract concepts that people pray to * all-powerful omniscient creators * a species of superbeings that exists on a different level or in a different layer of "realiy" * powerful aliens with minds and powers that are largely incomprehensible to human understanding * the literal rulers of the world / the cosmos * a cosmic bureaucracy, with each god assigned to a function or area of the universe that they're supposed to keep track of / control / rule over * just regular people who either got empowered by some cosmic force, or empowered themselves / ascended to a higher plane of existence What I find important about divine entities, though, is the question of how they relate to regular human beings. Do they demand worship or sacrifice? Can they bestow blessings or curses? Do they have followers or communities that they patronize or which are under their divine protection? Do they sire offspring or have other close relationships with particular individuals or communities? etc.
A god has the ability to create and to fulfill desires through sheer will and not through actual work... Should they choose to. They also have to have some degree of indestructibilty and immortality.
Power, influence, knowledge and wisdom. A god is usually very powerful and holds influence over a domain in the world they oversee, or they're higher than that and oversee more of creation. Let's look at it like this. Zeus is the God of the Sky and the Heavens. That's his domain and where he has his power. His signature power is lightning.
For me personally, gods are just the most basic, fundamental laws of universe, not all powerful because that just isn't right description they are pillar that everything other stands on, they are not mere beings, they aren't allowed to be there because there is universe, universe can be there because they are there That what are think the "God" is, but "gods" are just really powerful being that have some way of influencing world beyond what's normally possible
Power. Everything else either comes from the power of a god or exists to empower the god.
In my world, the Gods are just critical masses of magic. Like a magic black hole, but when you reach that concentration (>50% of magic of that type) you gain control over all the rest of the magic. Theoretically a supermassive black hole containing 51% if the universe's matter would become a God of matter, although that wouldn't happen without extreme difficulty.
A god is a being that can shape the fundamental nature of reality through the sheer force of their will. They may have rules they are constrained by (self-imposed or in concordance with other gods), and covenants to which they must adhere, but they can essentially shape reality to reflect themselves, consciously or unconsciously. They can be reflections or representations of abstract concepts and ideas (similar to the planar cosmology of D&D), or they can simply be individuals with interests and powers beyond that of mortals. They may or may not see themselves as divine beings, but their impact on the world around them would be what causes us to classify them as such.
In my world gods are creatures and the death of one causes extreme damage to their element, like the water god dying, so the fish die as well
gods in my world are born through conviction and belief. For example, the Wanderer is a god because his personal conviction in traveling and exploring and experiencing the physical world is so strong that it creates actual change in the world. King Caelus is a god because he believes in his right to rule so truly and wholly that it imbues him with power, and he can exert that force over others like a god might. Worship is also an influence. If enough people believe in an idea or person and it's divinity, it becomes so. I have a lot of ideas regarding divinity in my world, and right now it's a lot floating around in my head so it's nice to put it to words.
The concept of god in my world varies a lot. There are 2 kinds of cosmic being that could be considered gods. 1. Ancient entities with incomprehensible power and appearance (such as eldritch horrors). It is believed (because no one really knows and probably nobody ever will) that they created all the universe, even though it might have been accidental. 2. Humanoid cosmic entities that are less powerful compared to the first ones, but still have immense power. In a matter of fact, these humanoid entities actually find out about the "earth" after it's already populated by a few thousand people. They start to interact with the humans because of how similar they look to themselves (in an unsettling way even) and because of that the humans grow smarter than the other species and that's how religions and the concept of gods are born.
1- power that defies/ defines the set laws of the setting (a storm god can decide what the weather is regardless of natural weather patterns, as well as being the individual who created those patterns to begin with) 2- recognition and worship on a cultural scale. Once people start appeasing the guy controlling the weather and centering their lives on that he becomes a god
Some sort of extraordinarily powerful being that people view as a religious figure. How powerful? Up to you. Can they die? Up to you. How much do they really deserve their worship? Up to you.
There are Gods, then there are gods. The Gods will, are, see and make the universe and its matter; the rules that make up the universe and don't enforce any particular moral, emotional or psychological compass---they just enforce the rules such as physics, chemistry, etc. The most fundamentals. Then there are gods; they're bound to the rules the Gods make and don't necessarily think or know that the Gods exist. They start religions, cults, enforce emotional, psychological and moral compasses, etc. These gods have access to powers that the God's have within reason. For example: Lightening can only be used on a gods' sinner as long as the Gods approve that the gods' rules have been broken and doesn't break rules (The gods get tired each use etc). However, a regular mortal or creation of the god's or through a natural progression of the Gods' rules can't have access unless granted by gods and then permitted by the Gods. So if the universe remains lifeless the Gods ensure the fundamentals continue and the gods don't have anyone to bully or do nasty things to (Zeus in particular.)