Pantheons - an experiment in metagaming.

[Squirrelloid]

Re: F6D6 gods of love...

Pyronecrophilia!

But seriously, 'love' covers a sufficiently diverse set of behaviors and preferences that just about anything could be justified.

Consider the D+D FR interpretation of Loviatar (since the original Finnish doesn't have much material) - I can totally see the Lady of Pain being the 'goddess of love' in her pantheon.

[Festin]

What if the Pantheon games have a "Hall of Honor" of their own, which will be score based? For example, head of the winning pantheon gets 5 points, second deity gets 3, etc.

[Gregstrom]

That'd work for me. But... it'd require a lot of popular take-up for a hall of fame to be viable. Are people that interested in the concept?

A possible fringe benefit of pantheon games - less late-game mm. The winning player may not have to manage so many provinces, I think.

[Elegy]

What about a game where each player is doled out a theme/element, and set up ground rules to make it so that only certain combinations win.

Say, you can have multiple gods of be a victory condition. Alternately, another winning condition could be to compose a team of one of every elemental or sorcery magic. Or "good" and "evil" -- relatively speaking, AWNS vs FEDB, FE as evil given that both have a fallen elemental royalty, BE self explanatory .

I'd imagine identities would need to be disclosed at the start of game as there's already plenty of options for treachery in the combinations of teams involved. Second guessing a pretender's theme is going to be a pain in the butt. Given that rainbow pretenders are often a lot more fun IMHO, perhaps substitute magic with some other categorization, whether historical, geographical, or thematic.

Such a game would give some pretty interesting diplo options while keeping neat team game dynamics.

[Gregstrom]

That'd be an interesting game, but I wasn't planning to constrain player choices in that way. I'd consider specifying it as an RP game, as that might pull some of the same effects out of the woodwork.