Like, would Hephaestus be the god of magnetos, distributors and capacitor discharge ignition systems? Or does that count as lightning and thus be Zeus’ problem? Is Oden the god of whiskey because it necessarily must be made in oak barrels, or being booze would that fall under Dionysus? Is Mercury the god of SMS?
What you’re thinking about is one of the main plot points of the book fiction book “American Gods”. The premise being that gods cease to exist without followers. So the old gods need to attach themselves to new things/subjects to scoop up those worshipers and continue to exist.
An example Vulcan became the god of firearms and began manufacturing ammunition where each bullet fired was a “prayer” to him, empowering him.
came to mention american gods. love how the god of trees to paper to money.
I don’t think the designers of the game intended for it to be played this way.
Jeff the god of biscuits.
Jethro, god of processed corn snacks.
You know, I played around with this in my world building for my combined ttrpg/writing universe.
Some of the old gods fought for control over modern concepts like that.
Hermes ended up the god of messages in pretty much all forms, including SMS when that happened in the real world.
Elegua, aka Papa Legba ended up snagging control over the internet, though he eventually traded that power off because he found it boring.
Hephaestus did indeed end up as master of pretty much all manufacturing technology, particularly metallurgy, plastics, and eventually robotics. One of those low key gods that none of my players ever saw the real reach they had, and I haven’t worked out into any writing yet.
Zeus got killed, and Thor wasn’t interested, but also wasn’t willing to let any of the other thunder/lightning gods control electricity. So it ended up being a semi-sentient force of its own. Again, it never got developed, but I had the idea of it becoming a god along with a few other things like it. American Gods ended up covering the territory better than I would have, so it’s one of those things in the back of my head.
I would end up figuring out an in universe deity of things as I ran across a reason to think about it at all. Some things, I deemed to big for gods to control directly, or in total. Like gravity. No one deity could own that power because none of them was willing to allow any others to be able to rule it. Gaea, as goddess of the Earth could manipulate gravity up to a point, but not so much as to be able to disrupt the solar system. Same with Ra and the sun (where he also had access to a limited range of nuclear forces). The in universe explanation was that those particular kinds of forces were just too able to undo everything, even when darkness itself was a goddess, and chaos had a church. So, the gods just made sure nobody took over some things at all.
But, I probably would have taken something like distilling and folded it into one of the various gods that deal with alcohol in other forms. Like Ogun (also spelled Ogoun), who was specifically a deity of rum and rum making along with his better known aspect as a deity of smiths (though the term deity or god gets iffy with some of the African entities). Ogun is one of the few spirits, gods, or similar that specifically was linked to a distilled spirit of any kind, so that’s where I would slap all of it. With him also being a metal worker, it makes even more sense because distillation without metal is a shit ton harder.
I dunno, that’s probably past the point of being boring lol.
IT makes me wonder…
First of all one has to remember that the ancient Greeks weren’t as united as we think of them now; I’ve heard it described as “a collection of city-states that mostly spoke the same language and worshipped some of the same gods.” But even within that, or swapping ancient Greece for ancient Rome…how much innovation really took place during those eras? How many old men died in the same world they were born in having seen nothing of note change about society?
Meanwhile, just look at the United States Navy. In 200 years we went from building ships like the USS Constitution to the USS Monitor to the USS Nimitz. There were Americans who read about the invention of the airplane in the newspapers who also watched Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon live on television. Those events were only 65.5 years apart.
How would a polytheistic religion full of “gods of something” cope with or support that level of progress? I associate the industrial revolution almost exclusively with North America and Western Europe who were and are related flavors of monotheistic.
Dionysus was the god of wine-making not booze, so even if you mix pantheons, if anyone in the Greek Pantheon would have a conflict with anything related with cereals it would be Demeter, but her responsibility ended at harvest so it’s fine. Zeus uses thunderbolts as weapons but they are made by Hephaestos, so electronics would be on the latter’s sphere.
Doing a quick Google search, apparently Silenus was the god of beer and drinking so he’d probably get custody of whiskey and other spirits unless specifically delegated to another god like wine.
And who’d be the god of corporate hostile takeovers? :o
Plouton was the god of wealth iirc so maybe him?
I mean isn’t that literally what Zeus did to the Titans? Older gods of a different mountain being usurped by new hip gods
as always Elpis is still absent
Sure, why not!
