Less Is More: Both Big Numbers and Gods are Evil

[nathanlink169]

Hi all,

Obviously, that sort of blanket statement is never going to be 100% true. This bit of writing is an attempt to spread a bit of a design philosophy I've taken to over the years. By no means am I someone who created these ideas, just wanting to spread them.

Big Numbers: Evil
I want to start off with a hypothetical RPG Maker Game. In this game, at level 1, the player has 600 health and deals 270-330 damage, on average. Right at the beginning of this game, the player is trained to know that big numbers are the norm in this game. Level 25 rolls around, and the player has 3000 health and deals 1000-1100 damage every attack, on average.

At this point in the game, how do you impress this player? How do you instill fear in them? When a boss comes around and deals a 1400 damage attack, it'll definitely get the attention of the player. But at a certain point, the numbers just get too big for the mind to truly comprehend them (keep in mind, these won't be round numbers. "That attack did 1434 damage out of my 3287 health... how much is that?")

Now, I want to propose that same RPG Maker Game, but with some stat changes. At level 1, the player has 10 health. They deal 2-4 damage with each hit. That sounds a little pathetic, right? But at this stage in the game, what are they really fighting? Rats, little runt goblins, and maybe a schoolyard bully. Does it really make sense to have these enemies have 500 hp at the beginning of the game?


How did you get so swole?

How does this numbers change really affect the players mind? You're not changing the balance of the game at all (reducing the players stats and the enemies stats by the same threshold), but does it make the second example feel more boring? Less powerful? Not at all: the players feel power based on how the world reacts to them. If the player deals 500 damage to an enemy and takes 35 turns to kill it, they feel weak. If the player deals 4 damage to an enemy and takes 2 turns to kill it, they feel more powerful.

That's all fairly basic stuff. Now comes in the changes-in-numbers. Unfortunately, humans are very bad at truly understanding numbers at a very very small scale (think the size of atoms, or the amount of adventurers left after that swole rat gets its mitts on them) and numbers at a very very large scale (think the size of planets, or the height of skyscrapers). We've all heard fun little facts that make these sizes, distances, and numbers all feel wacky and fun: "a speck of dust is closer to the size of a planet than the size of an atom", "if every person on earth held hands around the equator, they would wrap around the earth 7 and a half times (and many of them would drown)". But what does that mean? At a certain point, 7,594,000,000 people and 40,075,000 kilometers just becoming meaningless numbers in our heads.


I know it has a label right there but I don't know what this means.

So, as numbers get further away from the ones we deal with on a regular basis (usually anything between 1-50), it gets harder and harder for the brain to comprehend the significance of them. Because of this, it's easier to impress a player in a low-number game than a high number game: it's easier for the player to comprehend what these numbers mean. It also means that the player can comprehend their own upgrades better. If their healing ability goes from a 13-15 to a 14-17, that can be a big change, and something the player can FEEL. Because there's less variety in the numbers, it feels good to get a bigger one because it's not something you see often. When the numbers can be 300-360, the odds of you seeing a number you haven't seen in a long time is quite high, so new numbers don't feel as special, even if they are bigger. You see new numbers all the time.

Gods: Evil
(in video games, not trying to make political commentary)

We've all played a game where we killed a god of some form. Final Fantasy VI, Asura's Wrath, Shadow of the Colossus, etc. - they may not necessarily be a god by traditional definition, but the definition I'm going for in this post is "anything that is inconceivably more powerful than anyone of your race who is normal". This can be a dragon, this can be vampires, or this could be really swole rats.

These things have their place in games, absolutely. I would be stupid to suggest otherwise. I'm trying to say there's an alternative, and I want to use superhero movies to make that point. The Avengers made a stupid amount of money. Like, a billion gajillion dollars. So many dollars my mind can't properly comprehend because the numbers are too big.


I was right.

This has Gods. This has suits of armour that just appear because nanobots I guess. This has a dude

Spoiler: doing a spoiler

snapping his fingers and killing half of all living things in the universe.

This is exciting. This is high stakes. This is drama filled. And obviously, it's done very well.

Batman: The Dark Knight also did very well. Not quite as well as Avengers (maybe I shouldn't have chosen literally the highest grossing movie of all time as my example), but it also did very well. This is a story about one dude protecting a city. There's still drama, and things that aren't possible in real life, but it is significantly more down-to-earth than Avengers. Go even further down: I'm pretty sure there's a Spider Man movie about him protecting a couple city blocks that did pretty well, too.

What I'm trying to say with this, is that the same happens in video games. Much like with the numbers, the stakes can be brought down too. By doing so, you may be reducing some of the drama and tension by making the conflict worth less, bu you're also raising that drama and tension in a bit of a different way, by making the conflict more personal. Who here has ever stopped a god in real life? Who here has ever been scorned by someone at work, or at school, and wanted to get revenge on them? A more personal story may be more relatable to those who fall in the latter than the former.

Conclusion:
Are Big Numbers bad? Are Gods bad? No, not inherently. But, by making games with lower numbers and less intense stakes, you may be able to craft a more personal story, rather than just one that relies on being epic. These smaller stakes also are not better. They are just different, and it may be something that benefits your game.

 

[Frostorm]

I definitely agree with this philosophy regarding large numbers. In my game, you start with 69HP/42MP (totally a coincidence, I didn't actually intend for this lol). Anyways, by max lv (50), you're at 636HP/403MP (w/o any gear or stat allocation). My goal with this was to make reaching 1k HP feel like an incredible feat since you'd basically have to go for a tanking build to reach 1,000HP. Most characters will never see 4 digit HP/MP.

For stats, you start with a pathetic 1 to all stats, gaining +1 to all stats every level (you also get points to spend on stat allocation). So by lv 50, you'll have 50 to all stats, not counting any customization. Like the HP example, I wanted to make hitting 3 digits in a stat feel epic. This time, however, you'll most likely be able to reach 100+ in around 3 stats, gear included. Or you could spend all your points into a single stat, potentially hitting 200, and be at pitiful sub-100 at everything else. Damage and healing are designed in a similar fashion. Doing 4 digit amounts of damage is only possible when the stars aligned, i.e. when you have various buffs and the enemy has certain debuffs applied at the same time while using one of your strongest moves. Typical spells and attacks would still only do 200~250 damage at lv50.

My numbers are probably still larger than what OP was recommending since I know some of the projects by other forum members use single-digit HP/MP when starting out. And while you start by dealing single digit damage in my game, you'll basically be in 2 digit territory by lv 5~8.

 

[Dororo]

We are in the RPG Maker forum. So I'll talk of JRPG alone.

You don't start a JRPG by aiming to the stars. Your first quest is to reach the top of the happy hill, where you fight a jelly with your wooden sword.
After 75 hours of gameplay, you probably face that God.
And that's obvious, how you can drag the combat and grow engines for 75 hours?!
The inverse is true the same, you can't drag the same level of stakes for long.
They want revenge from Gonzo the school bully. Ok, how much this personal quest against Gonzo can last? 30 minutes? And then?

So, in the end, epicness is both a consequence and a need in RPG context, but mostly the metanarrative define what's epic by the time and efforts spent to complete the narrative arc. Avengers is the climax of 13 franchises, each one rising the stakes on their own, starting smalll and growing up. It HAD to be epic, you watched 90 hours of adventures to come with that...
Batman started being a normal kid and in the end save the nation (well, those movies collimate with Superman ones, more epic, not speaking that you got Justice League that's even more epic...).
So, epicness can't be avoided or incited, as it's stated by the same scale of the game. Small games can't be epic, large RPG games surely become (some pretend to become epic all of a sudden like Undertale, and well, can generate a "meme" effect anyway).

As for high numbers, it's a japanese trend for web apps. As your game last 5 minutes, you can't tell differences, but big numbers look better. Anyway, the same structure changed a lot from our dearest D&D times and they aim more for direct elimination - spending 4 rounds to defeat an opponents is quite uncanny, so it's more like jankenpo in the end - the move kill you, almost kill you, do nothing but charge the absolute kill move next round.
You don't care about the numbers anymore, computing is not necessary and you have interface ergonomy to tell what's going on. I mean, in Octopath Travelers you aim to stun the monsters, you care quite for nothing to the atcual delivered damage... I think numbers are there just for tradition.
So, I quite understand the meaning of such high scores.

 

[Frostorm]

We are in the RPG Maker forum. So I'll talk of JRPG alone.

Just FYI, RPG means RPG, not just JRPG, which should be obvious due to the lack of the letter "J". I'm not so sure this high number thing is totally a Japanese trend. I mean look at the Paper Mario series, which uses small numbers like OP described. Last I checked, Mario is a Nintendo character so definitely of Japanese origin (even if he's Italian lol). Another popular Japanese example using small numbers is Fire Emblem, and especially true for the mobile iteration, Fire Emblem Heroes. I honestly don't feel big numbers automatically look better, in fact, I'd say smaller numbers offer more clarity and less clutter on the screen. In my game, I reserve 4 digits for only the most epic and rarest of situations.

 

[Vergel_Nikolai]

What OP here said.

People use big numbers and epic story lines and quest to simply bait people in a power fantasy of sorts. Not like there's something wrong with this (although if you make an RPG solely for power fantasy then what are you doing?) but like not everyone can comprehend something big and grand. Growth is important, yes,high stakes are very noteworthy, yes, but there's always space for smaller scale yet still interesting stories and game mechanics.

I for one am not the most philosophical of people, nor do I play a lot of the modern JRPGs. All of these god-killing final confrontation just seems... sudden. Ask me this: why the heck does the player wanna kill God or Death or some giant space alien? Why didn't someone else like the military or some other good guy faction stop them? Why do these groups fail to fight this giant threat while you and 3 other people can? Why does it have to be you? I know it has something to do with power fantasy or chosen destiny or literally the R part of RPG. But it's too... overused. not like I'm against these kinds of stakes. in fact my series of RPG and fantasy fiction all build up to a huge world and potentially a high stakes epic final confrontation but why must every RPG be about some angsty teenager with spiky hair carrying a sword ten times his size go after and kill Death after spending the first 20 minutes of the game looking for a dog? It's a weird turn of events and it doesn't make sense. My other deal is what's with everyone's beef against huge omnipotent threats? Why do they have to be the final boss? Can we just fight some emperor with a magic orb or a mob boss that controls the city. Why does it have to be gods?

Sometimes it is a neat breath of fresh air if I encounter a game with small yet meaningful stakes. It could be like a search for a lost parent in a world of mystical wonder, or a revenge plot against someone who killed your father but the twist is that the killer is your father, it could even be just you doing quest to run a village (could be big quests but it doesn't have to be grand). I don't care if it's combat is minimal, I don't even care if it doesn't have combat! Like the old saying goes: less is more. It's better if players engage in games and stories that have fewer numbers, simpler words, but meaningful messages. Again, I am not against the typical JRPG formula. It's just that the world needs something to divert from the usual angst that nearly every JRPG seem to share and just enjoy a story they will have and easy time enjoying and understanding. Like with OP's samples: I prefer to watch a crime fighting vigilante over a city than a guy and his squad fight aliens (and both The Dark Knight and The Avengers are good movies).

 

[Trihan]

I completely agree with you here. Look at how the Mario & Luigi series handles HP/damage: you start with like 10HP, with attacks dealing 1-2 damage. This is also offset by the fact that many enemies telegraph their attacks and you can completely avoid most damage and some can be countered as well via judicious button presses, so battles are fast-paced, always active, and tend to take less time than you'd consider "average" (because counter damage is contributing to the enemy's demise on their turn as well as the actions you take on yours).

 

[Kuro DCupu]

Using a big number is related tightly to game balance and complexity. Big numbers are used when your game has a large database and more parameters involved in the formula as well as considering the length of your game for the graph you wanted to draw.

These are some factors involved to find the optimal number:

Growth Rate
Suppose:
LV1 = 1 ATK, 5 HP; LV2 = 2 ATK, 10 HP; LV3 = 3 ATK, 15 HP;
That means first level up and you are already 2 times more powerful. The second level up you are 1.5 times more powerful and so on. The growth rate is considered insane at first but consistently decaying the more you leveled up. If you draw the graph, it's only making noticeable changes at the first stage. This only works for a short game with a max level of 3 at best.
But it's different when:
LV1 = 3 ATK, 15 HP; LV2 = 4 ATK, 20 HP; LV3 = 5 ATK, 25 HP;
The growth rate is more forgiving just by changing the initial value even though it's still. The max level would be 5 at best.

Mechanic and Formula
Small digit numbers are preferred when the parameter involved is only a few, like only ATK and HP. For example, when you already involve other parameters like DEF, depend on how you apply it to the formula, it will change how you use your number. DEF has a redundant function with HP unless your game has a mechanic that ignores DEF. If there's not, better stay ATK and HP only. The simplest appliance of such a parameter is by using a flat calculation. The more complicated the mechanic, the safer to use a bigger number.

RNG
Of course, your game will involve RNG. Randomness will create marginal graphs. Consider how you're gonna applying this only after the growth rate and mechanic are settled.

----

Another reason for using big numbers is to affect user experience. RPG is supposed to feel immersive. If your LV1 character started with big numbers already, that's just the way the game is telling you that "you are already strong, but lol, let me tell you that you are just the weakest of the strong~".
Kinda have the same psychological reason of why gacha game rarity usually started with the term:
Normal < Rare < Super Rare < Super Super Rare
Not literally:
Trash < Bad < Normal < Rare
It's to make you feel good and powerful.
Same reason why enemy / boss stats are mostly invested on HP.

----

About why God mostly is shown as evil, it's simply just for the reason so your hero can fight against the most powerful entity in the existence. The reason why Dragonball Super is dragged to a multiverse battle level. Yes, only for the "epicness" purposes. That's why "Gods are evil" so that it's morally justified when you beat em down.

 

[Frostorm]

If you've noticed in Dragonball Super, most of the "antagonists", which are all God-level characters, are often not evil. This is unlike DBZ where most, if not all, the antagonists were CLEARLY evil. Beerus is portrayed as a nonchalant God that happens to be a foodie. Even Freeza is kind of "part of the gang" now lol. I actually like the way they've done this. Their power levels are now so high, only God-like entities can sense their Ki...

 

[TheoAllen]

A big number is usually for power fantasy and a sense of progression. it has merit when there's so much customization you could do in the game which leads to "what kind of combination that leads into big numbers".

When you start the game, you deal damage with three-digit damage.
It feels normal. Until later, you found a better weapon, better armor, better augment. You combined them all with theory crafting you have. Now you deal 4 digit damage and on a very few occasions, you deal 5 digit damage. Now you feel "Holy cow! I'm dealing 5 digit damage (despite it rarely procs), feel my wrath HAHAHAHA!"

Now you wreak havoc with that damage number and proceed to the harder stage. You managed to clear the stage and it feels good. However, that won't last long, you feel bored with that number. And somehow, you feel weak because you don't have enough damage for the next stage. You feel pathetic, so you grind or do some research once more.

Later in time, you progressed so far that you could deal 5 digits damage occasionally, and maybe even touch 6 digit damage if you managed to exploit the enemy weakness. You have the right to brag and it is satisfying. You conquered the Extremely Hard difficulty stage. At this point, you have already sunk like 50 hours into the game or something because of the desire to see bigger numbers.

If you notice it, I solely talk about damage numbers, not HP.
Why? You don't need to scale the HP so that it needs to have many digits like bosses.

Actor attack --> to the enemy (You may scale this into astronomical digit for progression)
Enemy attack --> to the actor (Don't scale this)

It is fine to keep the actor HP at 3 digits or 4 digits while your damage is astronomical. The obvious reason is it is easier to tell that you're in danger, that 500 damage is A LOT while you only have 700 HP. This remains relevant for the entire game.

Challenges:
Having big numbers lock you from clearing the stage since maybe you need 5x or 10x more firepower to be able to defeat the enemy faster. This however will make grinding mandatory, which is fine, if that is the goal of the game. But if you don't want to make the game being grindy, consider to use a small number.

Also having a big number and small number for HP may get tricky when you want to add reflect damage gimmick from boss since now you have to balance the damage reflected.

 

[Sword_of_Dusk]

I'm fine with either. My own game uses smaller numbers because it takes after Dragon Quest for combat balance.

 

[trouble time]

I am normally a propoent for larger numbers, but my last bit of game design has been working on tabletop games, where, since the calculations are manual, you have to take a lot more care. I have also recently been reading sword and sorcery and pulp novels and short stories like Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and Solomon Kane which have smaller stakes. I have come to thirst for this.

 

[Wavelength]

Moved to Game Dev General Discussion, since this is all conceptual and doesn't discuss a Mechanic per se.

I definitely agree that telling a personal story with smaller but more immediate stakes can be very compelling (and it also lets the dev scale down the scope of the playable game world to match, if they want to do so, without making the adventure feel dinky).

With that being said, I'm not sure whether I agree that big numbers for things like HP, Stats, and Damage change the personal vs. epic feel of the game. I agree that it probably helps the player comprehend things better when the numbers are kept small, but I think a story could still feel equally personal when a relatable person is dealing 573 damage to a villain that has 4250 HP.

 

[Kupotepo]

@nathanlink169, the title is great hook for the people here. I do not think the big numbers are evil.

Unfortunately, humans are very bad at truly understanding numbers at a very very small scale (think the size of atoms, or the amount of adventurers left after that swole rat gets its mitts on them) and numbers at a very very large scale (think the size of planets, or the height of skyscrapers).

That is true if you talk about the atomic particles. However, my thinking of "a small number" is like 0 and 1

How does this numbers change really affect the players mind? You're not changing the balance of the game at all (reducing the players stats and the enemies stats by the same threshold), but does it make the second example feel more boring?

Ok, I am starting to understand now. You refer to shifting the baseline.

If the player deals 500 damage to an enemy and takes 35 turns to kill it, they feel weak. If the player deals 4 damage to an enemy and takes 2 turns to kill it,

I agree with your thinking about the balance combat stats.

By doing so, you may be reducing some of the drama and tension by making the conflict worth less, bu you're also raising that drama and tension in a bit of a different way, by making the conflict more personal.

The taxing accounting system, I suggest. because it is relatable. People do not like to do math while playing games actually lol. I agree with you on the overall thinking of yours.

What I'm trying to say with this, is that the same happens in video games. Much like with the numbers, the stakes can be brought down too.

I agree with you about not overloaded information with players. Multiple Characters can be confusing to players, I agree.

These smaller stakes also are not better. They are just different, and it may be something that benefits your game.

I agree with your conclusion. Your thought and my thought are similar, but you are more articulate and concise than me for sure. Nice to meet you.
If you are interested,

Moral Compass of RPG Characters

Update Questions: How do you create a relative moral system or personal philosophy of each character in your writing or your game system? What I saw the morality system is either based on the political alignment of each character, psychology mindset or whatever deity the character worship like...

forums.rpgmakerweb.com

 

[Frostorm]

This might be just me but I'm actually not a big fan of single-digit numbers for the majority of the game (i.e. Paper Mario or Mario & Luigi). That's not to say I'm a fan of huge 5+ digit numbers either. I simply prefer the middle ground of 2 digits while you're a noob and slowly growing into 3 digits around mid-game and then to 4 digits when you're min-maxed. I think 4 digits is still small enough for most people to comprehend/calculate. Though for my project, I reserve 4 digits for end game crits or synergistic circumstances.

The reason I'm not a fan of single digits mostly comes down to its lack of fine-tuning. If a unit has 5 HP, then a buff that increases it by 10% would do nothing. It isn't until you get to 2 digits where the numbers can be tuned to a finer degree.

 

[FirestormNeos]

The project I'm working on doesn't have the player character saving the world or even saving the island they've found themselves on.

The first half of the game is the player character navigating a war while looking for "#TheStandardRPGMacGuffins," but the purpose of collecting them is for the sake of personal growth; the people who are helping the player character are already winning the war; the player character is merely helping out by picking off middle management within the villainous organization.

Meanwhile, the second half of the game is "The characters that MC were trying to win the approval of by going on this journey of personal growth turned out to be horrible people all along? Time to go Hamlet on them in a (playable) roaring rampage of revenge!" At this point, the war on the island has pretty much been won, so now it's just a matter of completing the main character's story.

As for the whole numbers thing, the aim of my project is to make the combat feel "fluid" and "not very numbery." The only definitive stats the player sees are health and tp. The player's attack has a 20% variance as the ONLY presence of RNG in the game's mechanics (making it unreliable for the player to estimate their attack stat, and enemies have health bars but not health numbers. This effectively means that I don't have to bother with inflating the numbers to make the player shut off the math-solving part of the brain (because that's not the kind of thinking I want players to need to do to properly navigate my game's difficulty).

 

[JosephSeraph]

@Kuro DCupu 's comment is great. Definitely the reason to go with big numbers is gameplay; there are so many things which require big numbers to work, nuances that didn't exist at the time of the original Dragon Quest (and are completely ignored in favor of other mechanics in a game like the Mario RPGs)

It really is a matter of complexity as in a simple game, +3% Damage does absolutely nothing to your endgame 20 damage. But a 3% damage reduction can do wonders in certain deeper gameplay contexts and can really turn the tables to the player's side.

A lot of games do stuff that's really fun with low numbers and I love the aesthetic. But, most of the time, I find that more serious devs use big numbers primarily because the gameplay calls for it, rather than for an aesthetic purpose. Final Fantasy 7 Remake probably wouldn't work with less than 1100 minimum HP for the party members, even if Barret's gunshots deal 1 or 2 damage a lot of the time, because it really needs all that room for expression

Had Valkyrie Profile 2's numbers been lower, the meaning in its complex and highly rewarding equipment system would've dissipated in a sea of "+2% MAG?! Doesn't increase my output at all!"

 

[RachelTheSeeker]

My preference for numbers is somewhere between big and small, leaning toward the latter. I can appreciate Paper Mario using very small numbers for its game mechanics, or even Disco Elysium doing the same. My preferred power level in media is superhuman, but not supernatural to godly levels. There's a reason I like the "Epic 6" house ruleset for D&D 3rd edition, which gives a hard cap of 6th level out of 20 -- your heroes are already well beyond the capabilities of 0-level normies by then, and there's still plenty to threaten them.

In this, I'd say Dragon Quest numbers work for my projects. Not as powerful as some Final Fantasy stuff, but not as scrawny as Paper Mario. The OCs I'm tossing y'all are above the power level of even a mundane mercenary troupe, but couldn't take on an army.

With that said, has anyone mentioned Disgaea yet? The game is very over-the-top, self-aware and irreverent with its narrative, but I liked its use of big numbers in Disgaea 2's third chapter...

Spoiler: Spoilers

...when Etna wrecks your shiitake as the boss of that chapter. By then, you're lucky to be level 15 without grinding. She's level 1,000. Adell, Rozalin and company get curbstomped. Adell has a slight crisis of faith, and Rozalin is incredulous that he keeps fighting despite the sheer difference in power levels.

Something like that is a great use of ludicrously high numbers, especially as the game's levels cap out at 9999. Also helps that the game has New Game+ and postgame challenges!

 

[Doobles]

I actually have no issue with large numbers in games - I think it is no more than a design choice than a philosophy. I usually am pretty quick to pick out numbers within the context of how a game is set up so this one is lost on me. Of course, like anything, there is a limit to it, but I've yet to play a game where it was to the point I found it "evil" or irritating. If a game is balanced well with the numbers it gives you, I won't complain.

Gods being evil is a very interesting discussion on the other hand. Gods have been around forever and are universally understood to be in all cultures in some way, shape, or form, especially where many games take a more medieval fantasy context. Before more modern science, people had religion and faith. It is kind of a no brainer to include them in games like this as it is relatable to being a simple part of the human condition.

Moving past that, I'll talk more to the point about killing gods in RPGs... I think is a little ridiculous, and I agree with everything you say. A lot of the time you start out as barely anything and then it just becomes "herp derp let's kill da holy/unholy bois to save teh werld" after simply beating a ton of people and monsters to death. If literally any human or group of humans was able to train enough in the rules of a universe like that, anyone could claim to be a god or have the power to kill one, so the term becomes moot, doesn't it? Why aren't they just sending armies or having people train to take down these divine threats in the same way your character does, except with far more purpose than simply being some form of "chosen one"?

I think your argument with gods can go into an even broader discussion about grounding the world you are creating, and the characters in it, in reality. Reality is relatable. In reality some schmuck nobody after a week of murdering things wouldn't be able to go toe to toe with a god or divine being.

The root of big numbers and god killing is so grounded in the heritage of JRPGs that I guess it is just something most don't question anymore and just do.

 

[RachelTheSeeker]

In all fairness about gods: not everyone sees otherworldly entities are wholly good or evil. Plenty of modern pagans believe that gods can be fallible like mortals, change their MOs over time, and even have less-rigid "alignments" toward ethics and morals.

As a polytheist pagan who favors the ancient Egyptians' gods and religious tenets, I can attest to this. My "patron deity" by D&D standards is Sekhmet: she's had a malevolent role in her first mythical outing, but is worshiped as a goddess of medicine and protection as well as war. I'm not a soldier or a doctor, but I'd want to honor her when I finally pick up martial arts. I also associate "healing" with mental and emotional recovery, in my case.

I also like Thoth / Djehuty, who is thought to have handed written language to the Egyptians, and is associated with wisdom, magic and even sciences. However, Thoth also plays a role in the judgment of the dead (including Egyptian damnation), and bad things happen to mortals who steal his mythical book of magic.

Lastly, Set is depicted as almost universally evil. He's most well-known for his antagonistic roles against Osiris and Horus. Even so, he's no embodiment of cosmic chaos, such as the fiendish Apep. Along his better roles in Egyptian myth, he even acted as a lone spearman to slay Apep each evening, being immune to the hellsnek's hypnotic gaze. He'd do so during Ra's journey across the sky (how the Egyptians explained the cycle of day and night), when Ra passed through the underworld on a barge during mortal nighttime. Among pagans, he's seen as a necessary evil if invoked, for times when anarchy and self-reliance can serve a righteous end.

That's not even covering a boatload of beings that are in-between mortals and gods in power, all given free will. What the Greeks knew as daimons (where we get the term "demon" from), Arabic people knew as djinn, and Gaelic folk knew as fey, and the Japanese knew as yokai. Just like mortals, these entities weren't held as strictly good or evil as a whole, and many individuals were capable of acting on their own accord for weal or woe.

 

[The Stranger]

That's not even covering a boatload of beings that are in-between mortals and gods in power, all given free will. What the Greeks knew as daimons (where we get the term "demon" from), Arabic people knew as djinn, and Gaelic folk knew as fey, and the Japanese knew as yokai. Just like mortals, these entities weren't held as strictly good or evil as a whole, and many individuals were capable of acting on their own accord for weal or woe.

Jinn may have actually have been ancient, pre-Islamic gods at one point according to some sources. They may have also have just been malevolent wilderness spirits (this type has more stories associated with it) that took the form of animals. No one really knows for sure anymore.

Fey is also a weird one, in that people often think it's always connected to the Irish Sidhe, which were actual gods at one point, but the word can mean just about anything that's supernatural or touched by the otherworld. It's similar to the word weird, from the old English wyrd, which also used to be associated with magic and destiny.

I like talking about gods and spirits because, even though I don't believe in them myself, they help paint a picture of how our many cultures and societies have evolved throughout the ages. It's nice meeting others who are also interested in these topics.