Truly Divine: How DMs Can Make Gods and Patrons Feel Real at the Table

One of the most interesting elements in fantasy games is a player’s relationship to the powerful and the divine. How do you act or operate when your power comes from a god or a supernatural patron? What are the costs and rewards of serving them?

It’s why warlocks, clerics, and paladins in D&D often bring such interesting storytelling potential. Unfortunately, most fantasy pantheons are built on a very European worldview and often don’t have good resources for making them feel like active parts of the world.

That’s what Colby Whittaker hopes to help explore in the Game Master's Handbook of Patrons, Pacts & Pantheons, a new supplement from the Game Master’s Series designed to flesh out the divine in new ways.

Whittaker is a unique choice for this work due to his work as a senior pastor and as a D&D author.

TTRPG Insider spoke with Whittaker about bringing his history as a minister to the table, expanding gods in D&D, and more.

The interview was edited lightly for breadth and clarity.

Where did this book come from? What inspired the idea of creating a book focused on the gods and patrons?

So I think a lot of this book came directly from two of my experiences with TTRPGs. In general, I got tired of seeing what felt like the only two modes of religion in TTRPGs: a weird fire-and-brimstone caricature of Catholicism (as villains) and a sort of Disney’s Hercules polytheism that was colorful, simple, and always a little too neat and polished. I wanted to equip folks to engage with a wider vision of what a religious framework in a game could be, both for the setting and for individual characters.

On a personal level, I had a GM I love and always enjoy playing with, who I saw visibly short-circuit every time I rolled up a Warlock or Cleric. The existing materials weren’t giving him the guidance or mechanics to make those a part of his world, and it made it really hard for him to engage with those PCs. I wanted to make something for him and GMs like him, and also fulfill the core role of the GMB series: meeting GM needs with useful, flexible, plug-and-play resources.

As someone with a background in ministry, how did you think about fleshing out a wide pantheon of deities and making each interesting and useful for the average player?

So, in some ways, this is definitely a book that felt inevitable for me to write. My academic background is in religion, philosophy, and history, and my day-to-day is literally working with folks to clarify their expressions of faith based on historical texts and theology, then apply it to their actions, ethics, and worldview. This question of “how do religious people actually live their lives?” is one I wrestle with all the time.

While the patrons and divinities of the book are presented together, they’re definitely not of a singular pantheon (though some could be combined that way). Instead, they’re all meant to be little glimpses of a different approach to fantasy tropes or the divine. For example, “The Heaven Rending Bladegod” isn’t a god in a classic polytheistic sense but instead is meant for a setting where godhood is just another step along an attunement to the ways and purposes of existence itself (what I summarize as a “Cosmic Law” setting in my overviews). “The Venerable Assembly” reflects on ancestral worship and on a more impersonal, systematic view of the heavens that you might find in some visions of reincarnation.

One goal throughout was also to start the process of busting some of our fantasy TTRPG readers out of that odd, vaguely Euro-centric caricature of religion that is so common. I hope folks read this book and are inspired to go on and learn more about other religious and folkloric cultural settings, as well as the very cool TTRPGs they have inspired. The appendix at the back of the book is meant to point folks to great works like Undying Corruption, which engages with Korean religion and folklore, or Coyote and Crow, which integrates Indigenous American religion and spirituality into its futurist setting.

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Making the Gods Real At Your Table

What sorts of tools were you hoping to provide to help flesh out deities and patrons? As someone who loves fantasy, they're often an integral part, albeit sitting in the background with little to contribute. 

That is something that has bothered me a bit more with every edition. I want folks to be able to envision a fantasy world with a diverse array of religions and worldviews, earnestly followed by characters in ways that shape and give meaning to their lives. But we have to offer guidance and create support for these elements in the game.

Everything in the book circles back to “how does it play at the table?” So even as I cover things like types of religious settings, categories of religious NPCs, oaths, pacts and bargains, all of the theory goes back to what it actually looks like at your table. How does a monotheistic world play differently than a world with cosmic laws? How do you actually engage with a devil’s contract in a way that isn’t overwhelming? Why would a farmer or fighter have a religion if they can’t cast divine spells? Always back to the practical impact on your game.

But the real backbone of the book is the Favor and Gifts system. Favor is just a simple measure of a patron or divinity’s interest and approval. Gifts are tailored abilities that PCs receive at certain amounts of favor, appropriate for that type of entity or divine domain. Each category and domain has 4 gifts (loosely aligned to tiers of play) for PCs to receive at higher and higher levels of favor, with an additional unique gift replacing one of the generic gifts for each entity. Each category and domain also has a list of desires, precepts, and expectations to show how favor is lost or gained. The recommendation is for GMs and players to determine favor gained or lost once at the end of each session.

These are also supplemented with a ton of random tables to help shape religions, divinities, and patrons into unique forms for each table, a catalog of boons and curses beyond the favor system, and 6 new factions that all engage with patrons or the divine in intriguing ways (with stat blocks, special traits, and lore to make them instantly usable at the table).

 Is this book designed to offer lists of new deities inspired by modern settings, or is it aiming to help expand and flesh out established pantheons (such as those named in Forgotten Realms)?

Hopefully some of each. One of my favorite parts of working on the book was writing the almost 50 new divinities and supernatural patrons. These are plug-and-play gods, archfey, devils, and even stranger things, ready for a player to take up or a GM to drop into the world. But, combined with the guidance, tables, and other resources in the book, I hope those divinities and patrons help shake up even how folks think about and implement the classic pantheons and settings of D&D.

By organizing the Favor and Gifts system around domains and patron categories, it should make it much easier to look at someone like Ilmater, Pelor, Vecna or Tiamat and see how they would work within the system. Combined with the guidance and boons and banes, GMs will have easy-to-manage but impactful tools for fleshing out existing entities as well.

Is this resource aimed at DMs wanting to strengthen the role of deities, or is it aimed at players to help form how they think about incorporating the divine into both their RP and backstories?

Hopefully both! This kind of worldbuilding is always a handshake between players and GMs. There needs to be interest and engagement from both sides. So I hope it inspires players to want to engage more with supernatural patrons and divinities (which are already commonplace in most games) and it also excites and equips GMs to provide those mechanics and worldbuilding elements.

You can get a copy of the Game Master's Handbook of Patrons, Pacts & Pantheons here.

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