Sorry, (yes as a matter of fact most of my posts DO start with that word) I mean I know I'm not really a member of the community here but I've read some stuff while I haven't been able to play games that is just.........hard to believe.
For example someone was asking (here of all places) about copyright law because they wanted to do a fan made story about a dark god and wanted to be clear about the law. So they came here. To ask gamers. Questions about Law. Like ya' do.....
See what I mean? It just seems stupid! It's like asking a Scientist something about fashion or a model something about Mathematics.......why go to the trouble? Just create your very own dark god! No sweat!
Ah but things are easier said than done so to show how easy it is allow me to demonstrate just how simple and quick dark god creation can be!
Step one: You've got to have a good name. For my example I picked Aykt' Stionh since it's always good to have a superfluous "y", an apostrophe somewhere (doesn't really matter where) and at least one silent "h" too, and if you can work in a couple of other letters that don't really make sense? Bonus!
Step two: You need a Mythos. Yeah, I know a lot of people say this comes first but a lot of people are thinking in terms of a dark god. I'm thinking in terms of something far more sinsister and cunning......a marketable product! Simple fact: No one will care what your dark god stands fo-er....I mean opposes unless they have a hot name. Once they do though they need a Mythos. Now I suppose you could imagine an entire culture, hell, even world but why do all that work? Me? I cheat. I just invert another belief system. For Aykt' Stionh I'll pick Taoism. So Aykt' Stionh will be the ancient dark god of anti-taoism. Easy enough. Aykt' Stiohn's Mythology will be all about DOING and DEFINING. With lots of planned, dated holy days (see naming method above as these holy days will need names too. Just drop the part about using a superfluous "y". Save that just for gods.) that demand strict observance and classifications for everything! Of course, many will be intentionally inaccurate but that's the point, the followers will devoutly carry forth the innacurate classifactions believing that something is what their god says it is because of.....um, reasons. (It's also always good to use things from current mythologies. Folks like it when your topical.) Once Aykt' Stionh has enough cultists people will believe the liars over the truth seekers simply because there are more of them. What's darker than changing the truth via the crazy cultists opinions in spite of the "facts?" Woahyeah this sings!
Last step: Origin and backstory. This is the last but arguably most important step. (Well actually I would be the one arguing because, duh, NAME??!!) Origin should be easy enough once you have a mythos. One good idea is to tie it directly to the belief system that you inverted to get your mythos. So for Aykt' Stionh he began life as a humble merchant from a different dimension who's favorite activity was meditiation. There was nothing uh, Aykt' enjoyed more than just clearing his mind during his midday break at the base of a cliff beneath the shade of a gently swaying Ayett. (Somtimes you just have to make stuff up but it totally works!) Once, while enjoying his meditation and contemplating nothingness the lazy artist who lived at the top of the cliff accidently knocked his latest untouched "work" over the side and hearing it land on the unsuspecting Aykt' fled fearing he had killed the poor merchant. The stone block slammed onto Aykt''s head with the force of a speeding killdjou! (See? It totally works!) He was flattened and knocked cold. When he awoke he was nowhere near the villiage he had known all his life, in fact he had no rememberance of that villiage or anything and worse yet he could not move, he could, in fact, do nothing. (This can also lead into your new god's weakness. Due to his origin Aykt' and his cultists are extremely weak to very large stone blocks. Thankfully for them it is difficult to make an effective weapon out of very large stone blocks.) The powerlessness and lack of definition drove the poor merchant Aykt' slowly mad so when a dark presense offered him power and freedom in return for "sowing the seeds of chaos" Aykt' eagerly accepted just so he could find out what those words meant! Ever since Aykt' has been travelling to other worlds defining and re-defining everything and anything (whether or not this is intentional or just Aykt's madness can only be found in the ancient tome "Sthufhighottadou.") and possesing followers and non-followers alike to experience everything they can and the more irrelevant the better! Just as long as Aykt thinks he can define it and remember it. Aykt' Stionh's cultists never sleep they just keep doing.....Just as long as what they do doesn't make sense or accomplish anything and gets in the way of things that do. The culmination of Aykt' Stionh's evil is when he and his cultists have re-defined everything including experiences and the people of the victim plane forget what things really were or how they actually worked because the truth of his power is that the longer Aykt' Stionh is on a plane the more it's residents start losing their memories too, preparing them for the cultists and the "Grasp of Aykt' Stionh" where the world falls to chaos at the unremembering, polluted hands of it's own hopelessly corrupted inhabitants! (it's always good to throw in a little irony, faux intellectuals LUV that crap!) Oh yeah, now we're ready for the fork!
Seriously though the best advice for god creation is to just believe in yourself, do your best and have fun with it! Oh sure, your friends will probably say "You can't create your own god!" or "If it's that easy then why isn't everyone doing it, huh?" but that's been said to a LOT of people and it sure didn't stop THEM from making gods detrimental to us all so why not you too!! (see ya' just turn it around on em'!)
So ya' see it's easy! Well easier than asking a blind man who's new to town how to get to the nearest bathroom anywho....
Seriously? Legal advice from a gaming forum? Really? Who does this?
