I have not read Digger. I will look it up.
The Dungeons and Dragons campaign worlds often feature pantheons of gods which all are on a level field, though they compete and at times some raise in power of prominence above others. It is often the idea that the gods are alive, and demand worship. They may or may not walk the material world, maybe they live in some sort of other plane. They may or may not want more worshuppers which gives them more power to compete with the other gods.
Gods sometimes rise and fall in power. Take this example of Cronos and Zeus:
Cronos became father of the gods by murdering his own father, Uranus. The dying Uranus gave Cronos the prophesy, “You murder me now and steal my throne—but one of your own sons will dethrone you, for crime begets crime.” Cronos managed to get by this prophesy for a short while because he would swallow all his children when they were born. His wife, Rhea, however, foiled his plan by giving birth to a son, Zeus. She hid Zeus with a shepherd family, until one day when Rhea brought him back to the court of gods as the new cupbearer. Cronos, of couse, did not recognize him.
Rhea and Zeus, plotting against Cronos, concocted a drink for him, one day. When he drank it, he threw up all of his children that he had swallowed—still alive because gods cannot be digested. The children and Zeus fought against Cronos, and made him and his army flee. Zeus became king of the gods, fulfilling the prophesy made to Cronos.
The end goal here is to figure out how to write a computer program that can arrange a pantheon and create some mythological parables from its algorithms. The pantheons and stories can be like real mythologies of Earth, or like the types of mythologies we sometimes see in fantasy novels and worlds.
I do like the idea of the culture defines the mythology and format of the pantheon. This would work most of the time, but what about diverse cultures that all worship the same set of gods, though each culture prefers their patron god, another paradigm we often see in fantasy game settings.
For example, in Forgotten realms, the halflings or Hin have a few gods unto themselves. I think are Arvoreen, Gond, and maybe one more. I'm no expert. These Hin gods exist within a greater pantheon of gods of all the races and cultures of the entire game world. Its even safe to say there are other gods, maybe lesser ones, that are not known. Somehow all these god interact, its as if they all exist on some other plane.
These are all variables, I think the variables would be not hard to implement in a computer program. I think the big question here is if we can generate some meaningful, though SIMPLE, stories from them.
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Topic: Procedural Mythology Generator (Read 3591 times)