Petty Gods

If you haven't heard yet, go here and download the free pdf.  I've mentioned before that Unknown Gods, the old school product this was riffing on, was a supplement I'd completely missed growing up.  And my view of gods as a young gamer was shaped primarily by actual mythologies and the Dieties & Demigods concept of competing pantheons. 

But the swords and sorcery type game I want to run these days really works better peppered with this idea of small and forgotten gods, like those of the perpetually realigning gods in Lankhmar, which I encountered later on and love.

While some of the gods included are pretty much just jokes and would probably not be of use in the tone of campaign I run, there are still tons of possibilities in Petty Gods even for folks like me.

Aside from adventure hooks that utilize individual godlets, two campaign backgrounds immediately spring to mind:

Street of Forgotten Gods
Set up a central city with a god of forgotten gods, or a god of collecting what's lost.  Then have their priests (or hell, their speaking two-headed goat avatar) offer players opportunities to travel all over a sand box to investigate leads and rumors of things being worshiped by isolated minorities.  The goal could be to discover the nature and proper methods of worship or to even bring back artifacts.  It would function like a Library of del la Torre. 

Hit List for the Golden Cult
Because many of these are set up as entities that can be encountered physically, fought, and killed, I suppose, conversely, you might have a central religion interested in completely obliterating all remnants of such gods. 

Anyway, thanks to all involved I've already gotten a lot of ideas just skimming through it this morning.  Also, keep an eye on Gorgonmilk's blog because a new and expanded edition is in the works.