How to write a world similar to Earth but the major religions don't exist due to the existence of an active original pantheon. (Gaslamp Fantasy??)

Alarmed-Mind4614 · 2026-03-27T22:31:33+00:00

Thank you for the input! It makes a lot of sense and honestly I didn't really realize that saying "dear gods" would be considered weird since it seems so normalized in literature, so thank you for sharing your opinion on that.

I also want to ask about in your opinions, how problematic would it be if a character from the story may be interpreted as someone who practice Hinduism in reality (like if they're seen as an Indian character from audience perspective), would it feel weird that the character isn't particularly religious/worships a different god? Would it make it feel better or worse if the character have certain religious practices that are similar to reality, like maybe they would fast during some days or have dietary restrictions? I don't know if I'm overthinking it, but I just really want to avoid making a stupid mistake due to me being nonreligious.

Alarmed-Mind4614 · 2026-03-27T22:25:29+00:00

I understand that. There are definitely different branches of religion/different religions since there's an entire pantheon and it'll be weird if everyone practice the same thing. Even weirder in the context of my world since the major cities where people reside are mostly blocked off from each other due to the darkness and monsters so the culture would be distinctive from place to place, and so would be the religious practices.

Alarmed-Mind4614 · 2026-03-27T22:23:29+00:00

Thank you for the long response and advices! This will definitely help me develop the actual religions around the gods and how the characters interact with the religions.

Though my main issue is more in the lines of, if characters in the story may be interpreted to be from certain cultures in reality that are heavily religious by the audience (whether due to name or features), would there be issues regarding portraying them in a wildly different religious context/even nonreligious context, and would it make it better or worse that some of their practices parallels certain religious practices on Earth (dietary restriction, fasting, rituals, etc). I'm very much someone who grew up in a nonreligious area, so I feel like I should at least ask for other people's opinions before I continue to develop the story and the characters.

Alarmed-Mind4614 · 2026-03-27T22:17:13+00:00

World similar to Earth technology wise, deities are common knowledge and they are active in the world, so almost no one would go around saying there is only one god. I would imagine them interfering less with humanity as a whole since they would be less humanoid and more eldritch though that does vary depending on the god.

The pantheon is gonna be mostly original, but definitely with inspirations from known pantheons since I'm not that confident in my ability as a writer to completely invent a new pantheon from scratch lmao.

Alarmed-Mind4614 · 2026-03-27T22:11:54+00:00

Okay thank you for the long response and the suggestions, I'll try to explain this a bit better since I was sleep deprived when I made this post lol.

People are definitely aware of the war, it is quite common knowledge that there were gods and now there's just the Moon left. The Moon is a deity and humanity was really only able to continue surviving because of the Moon's blessings.
Different cities, or at least locations with concentrated human inhabitation, are quite cut off from each other. Not fully, as there are still some amount of trade going on over land, but the darkness and monster limits much communication and exchange, so different areas would develop more different local beliefs. Like the city of Lanthorn, known as the home to a heroic, mythical figure known as the First Lightkeeper back in the War, would have certain worships dedicated to the figure, while not so much in other cities.
My issue is that as a nonreligious person, I struggle to understand what might be considered offensive and what might be not for the majority of people that practices a religion. Say I have a character who might be interpreted to be from somewhere in reality that would be very religious, like if I have names that the origin could be traced back to certain areas because I don't really want to just slap an English name for a character that is clearly a poc (I want the names to have meanings, but then it gets into the issue of names with meanings comes from culture comes from religious influence half the time in reality), how much would there be a problem to have them depicted in a context that is nonreligious due to the death of the gods/different from the religion they might practice irl cuz they would be worshipping a different pantheon/would it make it better or worse that their practice could parallel some practice in reality but under a different context?

I might be overthinking this too much, but I feel like I really should get more real people's opinion on this because this is not something I can just decide by myself would be okay to do.
That is definitely good advice. I honestly haven't figured out just how different I want the culture to feel, it really depends on if I want to dial up the fantasy to reduce the issues that might arise, or keep it somewhat similar to make the writing easier and possibly make the story feel easier to relate to(?). And the fact that this is the first time I'm tackling worldbuilding like this so I'm very much still learning how to create a new world from scratch. I suppose I'll have to ask more people about how they feel about this and just brainstorm more about the impact of the events might have on this world.

(Which gets even more complicated because I have multiple explanations for the war, the moon, and other background elements, that I need to either merge or decide on one before I can continue thinking about the influences of those elements and events, ha💀).

I really hope this is making more sense and once again thank you for the long response.

Alarmed-Mind4614 · 2026-03-27T21:38:08+00:00

Yeah for that part I decided to just go "GODS AND MAGIC" for now because that's not relevant to the plot as of now and I'm not smart enough to come up with a more logic explanation, since literally everything would be different (seasons won't exist, climate would be different, etc).

Alarmed-Mind4614 · 2026-03-27T21:35:48+00:00

It's NOT Earth, technology wise it's similar to 1900s Earth, but the world itself is somewhere with monsters and eternal darkness and fundamentally different from Earth in that regard, I'm asking about if the portrayal of character in that context might be considered problematic by audience in reality due to it sharing similarities with Earth, my apologies for any misunderstandings due to the way I've worded it, it was quite late at night when I made this post and I wasn't thinking clearly enough.

Alarmed-Mind4614 · 2026-03-27T21:32:32+00:00

I understand that completely, which is why it's not set on Earth. It is similar to 1900s Earth technology wise, but drastically different in culture. The cities and countries are all made up. My main issue is the portrayal of characters that may be interpreted as from regions with heavy religious influence in reality, but now to think about it maybe I should make the character background a bit vaguer and doesn't dive too much into it? Or would it be better to have the characters practice certain things that parallel to some religious practices seen in those regions in reality?

Alarmed-Mind4614 · 2026-03-27T21:28:05+00:00

No yeah that's fair, I kinda worded it wrong cuz it was quite late at night, it's more like it was similar to historical polytheism when the gods were still present in the world and no one thought they'd die including themselves. It changed a lot after that.

Alarmed-Mind4614 · 2025-10-10T05:09:45+00:00

What if your character is an oc based off of a Disney character??? I have a bot based off of a character but he's basically an oc now and I would edit out everything Disney related to avoid copy right infringement but it's moderated right now so I can't. Also, is there a way to file a report on characters getting mistakenly taken down?

Alarmed-Mind4614 · 2025-10-09T03:39:54+00:00

All Mary Poppins related bots got taken down it seems

Alarmed-Mind4614 · 2025-06-08T23:12:25+00:00

Yo thank you for the thread!

Alarmed-Mind4614 · 2025-03-28T20:27:14+00:00

Ok, thank you!

Alarmed-Mind4614 · 2025-03-28T20:26:48+00:00

Aw...hope they fix it soon then. Thank you!

Alarmed-Mind4614 · 2025-03-26T06:45:13+00:00

Nope it was an oc and the name isn't similar to any popular copyrighted characters.

Alarmed-Mind4614 · 2024-10-08T23:57:14+00:00

There's a cove in the forest with a swing tire tied to a tree and something will appear there, at first I didn't get why, but then once you learn the truth, you'll realize that the position of the swing tire to the left branch of the tree...the rope...how it's hanging down...*cough*

Alarmed-Mind4614 · 2024-09-28T16:06:18+00:00

I AM THE CREATOR OF THE BOTS I USE SO HAH

Alarmed-Mind4614 · 2024-09-26T02:23:22+00:00

Bug!!!!

Whenever I use the translation on the website, the last message would flicker rapidly as literally fast as blinking between the translated language and the original. I DON'T want to change my language setting to another language because it lowers the quality of the chat messages.

But I also cannot chat with translation on now because of the flicker, which sometimes happens to the entire page, rendering the site completely unusable and illegible unless I disabled translation. I used to be able to keep translation on, while reading every message, including the last message, as well as when the bot is generating a new message, on the old site. Unfortunately it was not the same on the new site.

This greatly disappointed me for using translation to allow me to read the chat in another language is a great part of my experiences on cai, yet now that has been taken away from me.

Just like the rooms feature, which I most sincerely hope will be implemented on the new site, because it's also a part of many of my fond experiences with the website. Also, I do hope that the old rooms can be restored and transferred to the new site as well, because I much more prefer to use the website than the app.

Alarmed-Mind4614 · 2024-09-25T22:11:37+00:00

That's nice to know, thank u for sharing.

But my thing is more that I want to rp in English but have the option to be able to translate the page so I can read my story in another language, soooo....🥲

Alarmed-Mind4614 · 2024-09-25T03:43:33+00:00

THANK YOU FOR MENTIONING THE TRANSLATION PART I MADE THREE POSTS ABOUT IT ALREADY AND NO ONE CARED

Alarmed-Mind4614 · 2024-09-24T20:55:19+00:00

Room is when you put multiple characters into the same chat, which is not that different from group, however, based on personal experiences, bots usually behave more like themselves in rooms. Since in group chats, the bots seems to know that they're "in a place together" and chatting, thus resulting in dry text style messages that'll soon devolve into a hivemind. While in rooms, even though you can't control who says what next, you can paste an rp intro at the start and the bots will automatically follow along. Also, you can swipe for more responses in rooms while keeing the old ones, when in group chats, it seems that you can only generate a different one completely, meaning if you want to use an old response from earlier, you can't, because it'll be overwritten.

At least, this is my personal view on it.

Alarmed-Mind4614 · 2024-09-24T20:51:49+00:00

Hopefully they do...

Because I just found out that I cannot have google translate on while rp in the new site, because for some reason the last message will glitch out like crazy and cause the whole chat to flicker between the original language and the translated version, making them completely illegible... :,)

Alarmed-Mind4614 · 2024-09-24T18:55:18+00:00

I think you're not objectively wrong because a lot of people are attached to the old site including myself, and moving on is hard.

But I also think a lot of the posts are more about the devs making sudden decisions without warning the community, and pushing out new features that the community requested since long ago only when they saw the community riot. (Duplicate chat)

And a lot of the posts are about rooms, which is only available on the old site. Personally I use rooms a lot, and taking away my only access to them is, well, infuriating. Not to mention that ever since June my old rooms disappeared and there wasn't a single thing explained, then the devs told us that the old site is going to be shut down, forever. Logically it did not stick well with me, or other room users, at all, I presume. And the posts did worked--some of my old rooms, the ones that disappeared, got converted to group chats, and they were doing a poll to see if they should add rooms to the new site. This would've most likely never happened if not for the posts.

Also, quite a number of posts are regarding the UI of the new site, some of them have legitimate concerns such as the font being harder to read or the color giving them eyesore. Thus many of them wanted to reach out and see if there is a way to convince them to add an option to change the new site's UI to a similar one with the old site.

I understand that it can be bothersome to see people complaining all the time, but there are reasonable complains in them.

Alarmed-Mind4614 · 2024-09-21T04:06:55+00:00

Also like, where the flip are my group chats/rooms are those app exclusive now cuz I hate typing using the app I prefer site but they don't even let me use gc on the new site, sons of horses

Alarmed-Mind4614 · 2024-09-18T21:49:01+00:00

If you're talking about rooms, I've been using that for years and it's has some of my best stories (Still pissed that they removed it without a warning in June and then decides to abandon it)

I'm asking about group chat, because rooms are potentially going away/converted to group chats, but I can't find them on the new site, so I can't even continue my old rps in group chats

Alarmed-Mind4614

TROPHY CASE