Midgard's Masked Gods

I like the concept of Midgard's gods having masked identities. The "thunder god" Thor of the Norse pantheon is probably the thunder god in many other religions. While local religions put a name and face on Thor, he could be the same god as a Sahuagin sea monster thunder god, Kashokka.

The domain is the god.

You could worship any of the gods in the back of the Tales of the Valiant Player's Guide and be fine in this world, even if the god isn't listed. Does a player fancy Ares, Odin, Hercules, or Aphrodite? Sure! Make them a smaller religion somewhere in the world, and you are fine.

People don't know this, and even say similar gods in two religions could be more like "brothers or sisters," and explain the discrepancy that way.

As a result, the gods of Midgard are unknowable and mysterious, and their faiths embody shifting channels of power. Their forms are variable and protean.

Now, could this apply to demons and devils? Is the "devil" the "domain" or sin? The Kobold Press books provide very little information on the abyssal realms, but this concept of the demon or devil behind a sin being a mystery is a Midgard-style assumption. D&D tends to be very definite and explicit about "which demon is what," and D&D also has more discreet information about demons than a book on Satanism.

At times, I feel D&D goes too far with specific, copyrighted, product identity demons and devils and realms of Hell and the Abyss. The group should decide if they want this and how it should be structured.

The stats for Orcus and the other major demons are not in the ToV or Kobold Press monster books. You can find them in third-party books. Part of the benefit of saying "demons and devils wear masks" is being able to use any demon or devil out of any third-party book, and saying that form was just an aspect of the controlling evil form. The stats, attacks, and power may vary, but the evil underneath is still the same.

This also opens the door to you coming up with your version of the infernal realms and making your "Plane of Wrath" ruled by some warlike entity. Pick one from a book, and go with it. I like this freedom rather than sticking to one book's interpretation of the evil realms. Even the planes and evil realms should be a shifting, uncertain, strange, and ever-changing place.

Orcus is the demon lord of the undead. Although there may be other forms and names, most agree that Orcus is dominant. That demon may have been different in other ages and places. The same goes for your campaign. If you want a different "Wicked Lord of Greed, " you can devise your own. Use a dragon if you want.

A lot of "learning Midgard and ToV" feels like "unlearning bad D&D habits."

There is a lot of junk published for demons and devils, and I would like a fresh take and to get rid of a lot of this stagnant "demonic IP" that we have seen time and time again. Too often, D&D puts a monster stat block on something, and it becomes dull and uninteresting. We tend to think of the demon lord as "sitting in a room somewhere" rather than the evil one being a leader of a powerful faction of wickedness, or even having sub-bosses to do their bidding.

I don't want players to say, "Oh, it is Grazzt, again."

Yes, they are iconic villains.

But the D&D pantheon overuses them to the point that they lose their impact. There are only so many times they, mind flayers, beholders, displacer beasts, and other iconic bad guys can be used. And with D&D, every monster turns into a player option someday, so it is only a matter of time before they become gentrified player choices.

Keeping gods, demons, and devils a mystery makes them special and mysterious. In a game where everything is given a monster stat block, keeping things a little vague helps your campaign have that sense of the unknown, and shall-never-be-known.