[AdmiralZhao]

Two ideas:

One would be to simply have the pantheons be teams with certain limitations. The teams would last through the entire game, and would win or lose together. As an example, the Norse team would be required to have several titans and some sort of trickster, with certain thematic paths required of each pretender (e.g. A4 for the titan who is their thunder god ). The Hindu Pantheon would have various Devas and 4-armed pretenders, the Lovecraft pantheon would consist of Dagons and other weird creatures, etc. I kind of like this, if only because it could result in a team of frost giants fighting against a team of tiny monkeys with sticks.

A second idea would be that pretenders take their place in the pantheon not by their words, but by their actions. This takes a page from several role playing games, such as _Invisible Armies_, _Artesia_, and of course _Pantheon_. The game would start normally, with people having complete freedom to design their pretender and make treaties and alliances. However, by their actions players would earn points toward certain roles in the Pantheon. For instance, if you charmed/seduced many enemy units, and summoned many Dryads, and had growth scales, then at the end of the game you would have many points towards being the God of Love. Or if you cast the Forge of the Ancients, and possessed 8 of the most powerful artifacts, and had 30+ hammers, then you would earn many points towards having Vulcan's role in the Pantheon. Similarly, other actions would earn you points towards being the God of Death, of War, of the Oceans, etc. The game would end when the head of the Pantheon is recognized by acclaim, as usual. This pretender would be in first place. At that time the surviving Pretenders would be assigned their place in the Pantheon based upon their points in the various categories. So, if at the time of acclaim one pretender had Burden of Time up, and had D8 on their pretender, and had 12 liches, they would probably have the most death points and would become the new God of Death in the Pantheon (i.e. one of the second place positions). This option would take more moderation work during setup and during the final tallying. However, I would volunteer for that role if people wanted to play such a game.