The Dragonlance deities, also commonly referred to as gods, are the high powers of the fictional world of Krynn, where the Dragonlance campaign setting takes place. They differ from the gods of other Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings in that the gods themselves do not have d20 mechanics. However, their aspects, the way they manifest into the world, do. The gods of Krynn are formless, and represent a particular aspect of creation. They periodically send messengers, omens, visions, and their own aspects to the world. The gods of Krynn never bring their full essence into the world.
The gods of Krynn are very active in the lives of the people of Krynn. They work to maintain the world, but all of them have different ways of going about it. For example, Takhisis, the major goddess of evil, believes in subjugating the world to bring order. Paladine, the major god of good, tries to educate the people to bring about order, and Gilean, the major god of neutrality believes that mortals have to be able to choose their own path to have order. The gods of the three alignments (Good, Evil, and Neutrality) form the Balance of Krynn. Clerics in the Dragonlance setting can serve any of the gods except Lunitari, Nuitari, and Solinari, who grant the arcane magic of wizardry rather than clerical power.
There are two eras in the Dragonlance world when the gods were not active in the world: the majority of the Age of Despair (after the Cataclysm until the War of the Lance); and the early Age of Mortals (before the War of Souls).
Chaos and the High God are the highest beings in the cosmology of Krynn. They are mysterious but widely credited with a role in the creation of the world. Chaos, originally known as Ionthas, was once the most powerful of the pantheon, second only to the High God, although the High God claimed to be further above the gods than the gods were above the mortals. Ionthas tried to corrupt and control the world; when the gods created the mortal races, Chaos created the animals and as a joke, endowed them with superior attributes than the mortals had: among them long sight, long life, exceptional hearing, powerful magic. The dragons in particular inherited almost all of these traits. Ionthas was eventually banished from Krynn by the High God, where he spent time in his own company and deluded himself into thinking that he was the true High God, that the world should be his. When the god Reorx came looking for a sliver of Chaos to put into the Gray Gem—the equivalent of the clipping of a toenail or a few strands of hair, in Reorx's words—Chaos leapt at the chance and willingly put all of himself into the gem.