Rethinking Monster Mythology

I remember when TSR's Monster Mythology for AD&D 2nd Edition came out. I was excited. I felt that the support for religion in AD&D was pretty bad. Sure, I could create my own deities, and I did, but I was reaching a point in my life where I'd rather run things than create things. At the time, I was working full time and going to school full time. It was a lot. So I was always happy for more material for my table that would let me just play rather than create. I bought it as soon as I could, got it home, and read it.

I was so disappointed.

It's not terrible. It is a solidy useful bit of lore. But to my eyes, it was just so damned by the numbers. Religion, if you've never noticed, is incredibly weird, and the TSR pantheons weren't. Gods in Pantheons belonged in neat little categories. They had a particular sphere of influence, and that was the sum total of their existence. This is eminently gameable of course. Gods belong to a pantheon, and they have particular powers they can grant to their clerics based on their spheres of influence. Great, but boring. Like many things in D&D, it's all about taxonomy. Obligatory link to Zedeck Siew's "D&D's obsession with Taxonomy".

I'm not the only one who's noticed this of course. There's a great little podcast called Monster Man. In it, James Holloway reads through bestiaries from various versions of AD&D with commentary. For his Patreon supporters, he has another podcast called "Patreon Deities" where he reads through the Deities and Demigods book from AD&D first edition. He adds valuable commentary about using the pantheons in Deities & Demigods. He's pointed out several times in the show that the deities contained within are pretty sanitized versions of the real-world deities they are based on. I'm trying hard not to put words in James's mouoth here, but I get the impression that like me, he often finds these representations of deities a bit boring.

So I'm going to give it a rethink, starting with monster mythology. I'll be working up some religions from the ground up. Because I prefer playing in the OSR these days, the mythology and deities I create are going to be as generic as possible for the greatest possible use at the table. Use them how you like. I'm going to start with Lizardfolk.