New Random Deity Generator Tool: When you need religion… fast!

Sometimes when you’re working on a setting, you don’t want to create a whole pantheon from the ground up, or a complex and details religion starting from the very origins of the world. Sometimes you just want something basic with a few interesting details to be fleshed out later.

So if you need a deity fast, where do you begin?

Right here! This tool should be a fun and quick way to spit out whole pantheons in less time than it takes to bring forth a universe from the void. Keeping in mind, the focus here is on a Pantheon of Fantasy deities, not necessarily a single monotheistic creator.

There’ll be several phases. In each phases you can roll randomly, or you can pick and choose. Do not feel any more beholden to the dice than you want to be!

The process will be broken down into the following pieces: Domain, Temperament, Form, and Followers.

DOMAIN

This is as good a starting point as any. What is your deity a deity OF? The following list is a basis of many common divine domains. Each one can have different flavors that may be reflected more or less as you further develop the deity.

TEMPERAMENT

Now that you know what your deity is the deity OF, you want to look at their general demeanor. Use the list of words below, roll a few sets and see what sounds good.

FORM

Deities can look like almost anything. I’ll try to cover a wide range of possible categories, but as with everything else, don’t feel you must be limited to MY creativity. Starting with your deities apparent gender:

1. Neutral: Deity is not presented with a gender of any kind.
2. Ambiguous: Deity has features of both genders.
3. Masculine: Deity is definitively male.
4. Feminine: Deity is definitively female.
5. Bigender: Deity may be presented as either male or female.
6. Pangender: Deity is assumed to have all possible genders and variations of gender.

To use this list: Roll a six-sided-die for the broad category, and then a four-sided-die for the more specific appearance. You can roll this one multiple times and even stack results to get some really wild forms.

1. Human Form: 1: Perfect Beauty, 2: Elder 3: Child, 4: Regular human with Otherworldly Armor/Crown/Robes
2. Almost Human Form: 1 :Colored/metallic Skin, 2: Different Size, 3: Extra Limbs/Features, 4: Exaggerated shape/muscles
3. Zoomorphic Form: 1: Animal Head, 2: Animal Features (Eyes/Wings/Tail/Horns), 3: Alternate Animal or Hybrid Form, 4: Animal Companion
4. Classical Form: 1: Demonic, 2: Angelic, 3: Always resembles loved one, 4:
5. Incomprehensible Form: 1: Mass of eyes and wings, 2: Mass of eyes and tentacles, 3: Eyeball destroying light, 4: Sanity Destroying Darkness
6. Construct Form: 1: Elemental body (cloud//fire/earth/water), 2: Clockwork Body, 3: Body of Light/Darkness/Starfield, 4: Full hollow armor suit.

FOLLOWERS

Now you have a deity, but their influence on the world can be heavily dependent on their following. This roll determines how big of a religion they are, and how much political influence their followers exert, as well as their relationship to other gods and place in a pantheon.

You’ll roll a ten-sided-die for this one.

1. Forgotten Remnant: Worshippers are mostly extinct or few-and-far-between. The deity’s power is likely very diminished, but they are kept alive by a few loyal families who’ve passed knowledge down.
2. Local Deity: This deity is worshipped commonly only in a small community or maybe a few isolated pockets. They have influence and belief in those places, but are probably looked down upon by others, and their existence doubted by most.
3. Obscure: None would deny that this is a true deity. They are, known about, recognized, but you could never call them popular compared to other deities in the pantheon, or other belief systems. Those without specific knowledge might have a hard time remembering their name. They probably have a single temple somewhere, and rarely get invited to parties.
4. Banned: Enough people worship this deity, that a more powerful political group wants to see worship for this deity stopped. Maybe this deity’s domains are incompatible with their philosophies, maybe culturally they simply want to suppress the pride of this deity’s adherent culture.
5. Lesser Pantheon: This deity is accepted by most and is circumstantially worshipped by a fair sized chunk of the population. They probably have their own temples, though they aren’t as easy to find as the most popular deities, they are still far from unheard of. They might have a small but important role in the pantheon, such as messenger, or smith.
6. Pantheon Champion: This deity is one of the key deities of the pantheon, such that they may be considered the patron deity of a large population center, as well as generally having some worshippers throughout the culture.
7. Universally Accepted: This deity’s existence is more than simply undeniable, it is assumed as a given by the culture at large and temples for their worship are common. Their domain is important to peoples general lives.
8. State Religion: Faith in this deity is so prevalent that their adherents actually control the rulership and suppress worship of other deities. They have their own army, and are likely to tie faith into their culture at nearly every level.
9. Divine Monarch: The chief deity of the pantheon, even other gods and many cultural legends revolve around this deity and their actions. This deity may even get mentioned first in prayers to other deities.
10. The Nemesis: This deity is both universally accepted, and nearly universally reviled as the enemy of the commonly worshipped gods and their people. Unlike a merely banned religion, worshippers of this deity are considered not merely criminal, but outright evil. The vast majority lives in fear of this deity, but never doubts their existence.

NAMING THE DEITY

This can be the hardest part: so here is my recommendation for a swift way to name a fantasy deity if you are having trouble. First let me roll one up real quick:

Domain: Roads/Travel/Speed (Rolled Magic/Power, took Speed from that)
Temperament: Assertive/Aggressive
Form: Exaggerated Long Legs, Head of a Horse
Following: Local Deity

Step 1: Pull some words from the description, or words that could apply. Five is probably enough.

Journey, Adventure, Running, Gallop, Travel

Step 2: Run any of these words through a thesaurus and look for slightly more obscure or cool sounding variations.

Journey/Adventure: Expedition, Jaunt, Trek, Crossing
Gallop: Stride, Canter, Course
Travel: Roam, Wander, Traverse, Ramble, Wend, Rove

Step 3: Finally, you can now MUTATE it by trying one or more of any of the following techniques:

• Replacing vowel or consonant sounds with other vowel or consonant sounds.
  • Trok, Jaund, Vend, Tref, Strade, Roal, Hend
• Removing consonants or vowels or whole syllables.
  • Ramle, Travere, Roa, Ventre, Journ
• Tacking on or replacing bits with syllables from the names of other deities.
  • Gallodon, Trekus, Cantidei, Rovah, Strideus, Traverune
• Mashing prompt-words together and then removing parts.
  • Wendrove/Endroff, Jauntrek/Jauntre, Cantercourse/Cantacoro
• Or you could just use one of the words you already have, if it is recognizable, but not used in common language, it can be reframed to be iconic to that deity. You might spell it in a unique way if the word is on the more common side. Be sure not to make it confusing to your audience and characters. Unless that’s what you’re going for.
  • Trek, Wend, Stride/Stryde, Jaunt/Djant

And between all those strategies, it should be pretty simple to come up with a solid selection of unique and different sounding names that may or may not resemble the prompt-words, as you desire. If it doesn’t, you might think up even more prompt words to thesaurize and mutate.

For the record, if I ever need to call upon him, I will name my ridiculous long-legged jock-bro in a horse mask: Jaunter, the God of speedy and safe travel upon long roads. May we all travel safe in is stride.

CONCLUSION

I hope you find this tool helpful for your own worlds! If you want to check out some more info on a similar theme: check out this post from October 2020, which is all about giving your fantasy gods and religions the feel of an authentic ancient religion (as opposed to a fantasy world religion):

Keep in Mind: When Creating Ancient Religions for your New World

Thanks for reading, comments and feedback are always welcome,and I’ll see you next time!

—Charles