Blobamous Prime Loves You!

In a given fantasy setting if gods exist and care enough to grant clerical spells or otherwise interact with the inhabitants of the world then the nature of the gods define the setting.

From Middle-Earth to Toril, to Nehwon and Westeros the real story of a fantasy world is the tale of the gods and their machinations. The fiction (or in my case the game) may only tangentially involve deities but that tangent is critical to understanding what is really going on. This understanding is the foundation on which an author or DM must build their setting. From the very face of the planet's geographical features to the motivation of its monsters every aspect of a fantasy setting in which gods are real and have influence is logically tied back to the settings pantheon.

My home setting, The Planet Abbith has no gods. It is influenced by the mythos of Lovecraft so no one (including me) will never know what is really going on. The entities of the Lovecraft Mythos do not grant clerical spells, but clerics gain spells anyway from simply believing (ususally in a religion that is some misguided understanding of a mythos entity). On Abbith, Clerical magic is not supernatural, it is just a realization of the potential of reality manipulated through the interface of a cleric's consciousness, a consciousness that is built around the idea that say Blobamous Prime is an actual god granting spells and not as in reality the monstrous toad that he is. The whole thing is a bit of fictional sleight of hand so we could play with clerics in a setting without gods that care enough about clerics to grant them powers.

Now that I am looking at running some classic modules, starting with B4 The Lost City I find that I can either continue to use Abbith or play in a new sandbox. New sandboxes are always nice, I mean look no rotten chunks of shoggoth in the corner and no one has even peed in it! So what setting to use? I’ve little interest in most of the “established” TSR settings. Too much bloated splatbook and terrible paperbacks mucking up the mental space. Players will have bits of lore about the seventh war of Selunes Dragon riding Tiefling Lancers and Hextor’s Underdark Beholder’s of Doom tucked away and this along with my obsessive nature will create expectations and well , work. And goddammit, with the exception of monster manuals and spell list,  I don’t wanna read anymore D&D fiction, probably ever.

Really the only bit of setting you need for a D&D game is a list of gods for your clerics to chose from. If gods are real, they are going to define the setting. Everything else will follow logically from this. Understand the deities and you understand the world.

Fortunately, I have a book of gods and it is written like my favorite kind of D&D fiction, a monster manual.

This book is a random setting generator.

Before rolling 3d6 in order for the first character, the DM will roll on the following table to determine what god's influence your world.

Roll	Mythos
1	American Indian Mythos
2	Arthurian Heroes (Abrahamic Mythos)
3	Babylonian Mythos
4	Celtic Mythos
5	Central American Mythos
6	Chinese Mythos
7	Cthulhu Mythos
8	Egyptian Mythos
9	Finnish Mythos
10	Greek Mythos
11	Indian Mythos
12	Japanese Mythos
13	Melnibonean Mythos
14	Nehwon Mythos
15	Nonhuman Deities
16	Norse Mythos
17	Sumerian Mythos

If you can’t roll a d17, then add:

Roll	Mythos
18	Roll Twice
19	Roll Twice and add Nonhuman Deities
20	No Gods

Alternatively, the DM could select 5 of the 17 Mythos to discard and roll 1d12.

Once you have determined a mythos then plunder it’s history, myths, stereotypes, and entries in the Deities and Demigods book to build your setting. Remember though, all you need to start is:

“First, he must have a ground level map of his dungeons, a map of the terrain immediately surrounding this, and finally a map of the town or village closest to the dungeons (where adventurers will be most likely to base themselves.”

Gary Gygax The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures -1974

We will roll in a pre-session so I have a day or two to mentally prepare the setting (I will be using modules after all most the setting will be implied at the very least).

I’m kinda pumped, and secretly hope we roll Indian or Finnish