Deities & Demigods

For the article on gods see Deity

Deities & Demigods, alternately known as Legends & Lore, is a reference book for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game (D&D). The book provides descriptions and game statistics of gods and legendary creatures from various sources in mythology and fiction. The book allows dungeon masters to incorporate aspects of religions and myth into their D&D campaigns.

Deities & Demigods was originally published in 1980 by TSR, Inc. and is now published by Wizards of the Coast, who acquired the D&D brand with their purchase of TSR in 1998. The book has been through numerous printings in multiple editions; the current edition bears little resemblance to the earliest printings.

The various editions of the sourcebook are frequently inconsistent with the myths and legends from which they draw inspiration and should not be considered a general reference work. The entities and beings described within are in many cases altered from their historically accurate roots to better serve the needs of the D&D game.

Pantheons

The original edition of the book contained 17 pantheons of gods:

• American Indian Mythos
• Arthurian Heroes
• Babylonian Mythos
• Celtic Mythos
• Mesoamerican Mythos (i.e. Aztec and Maya)
• Chinese Mythos
• Cthulhu Mythos (from H. P. Lovecraft and related fiction)
• Egyptian Mythos
• Melnibonéan Mythos (from Michael Moorcock's Elric novels)
• Finnish Mythos
• Greek Mythos and Heroes
• Indian Mythos
• Japanese Mythos
• Nehwon Mythos (from Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar novels)
• Nonhuman's Deities (original TSR creations)
• Norse Mythos
• Sumerian Mythos

The current edition contains only four pantheons:

• A condensed Greyhawk pantheon meant for insertion into any game world ("Core D&D Pantheon")
• Greek Mythos and Heroes ("Olympian Pantheon"), among them: Zeus, Aphrodite, Apollo, Hades, Nike, Pan, Poseidon and Tyche
• Egyptian Mythos ("Pharaonic Pantheon"), among them: Re-Horakthy (Amun-Ra), Anubis, Apep, Bast, Hathor, Isis, Set and Ptah
• Norse Mythos ("Asgardian Pantheon"), among them: Odin, Balder (Baldr), Frey, Freya, Frig (Frigga), Odur, Sif, Skade, Thor, Thrym and Uller

The current edition of Deities & Demigods discusses in detail how one would go about the creation of their own pantheon, as well as individual gods, for use in Dungeons & Dragons.

Printings

TSR published the first version of Deities & Demigods in 1980 for the first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules. This edition, by James M. Ward and Robert J. Kuntz, served to update the material they had earlier included in 1976's Supplement IV: Gods, Demi-gods & Heroes for the original D&D ruleset.

For the first 1980 printing, TSR obtained permission from Michael Moorcock for inclusion of Melnibonean material (from his Elric series of books). The Cthulhu Mythos was believed to be in the public domain, so TSR assumed they could legally use it without any special permission. However, Arkham House, who held the copyright on most Cthulhu books had already licensed the Cthulhu property to the game company Chaosium. Furthermore, Chaosium had also licensed the Melnibonéan copyright from Moorcock. When Chaosium threatened legal action, the first printing was halted and the two companies agreed on a compromise: TSR could continue to use the material but must provide a credit to Chaosium to do so. TSR added the credit for the second printing of the book.

For the third printing, however, TSR felt its material should not contain such an overt reference to one of its competitors and removed the Cthulhu and Melnibonéan pantheons altogether, thus negating the need for the credit. For this reason, the first and second printings have generally been in greater demand by D&D fans and collectors. Ironically, the credit to Chaosium and some references to the deleted pantheons were still included in some of the subsequent printings.

For the sixth printing in 1985, the name was changed to Legends & Lore to avoid potential conflicts with fundamentalist Christian groups such as Patricia Pulling's BADD. Despite the name change and new cover artwork (by Jeff Easley), the interior material was nearly identical to the fifth printing.

When the second edition of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game was released, a new Legends & Lore was written for it. This edition had pared-down content in comparison to the original; the sections on Babylonian, Finnish, Sumerian and non-humanoid deities were wholly excised. However, a separate sourcebook, Monster Mythology, later covered the non-human deities in much greater detail than any previous source, introducing several new deities in the process. Furthermore the late 2e Planescape book, 'On Hallowed Ground', gave a virtually comprehensive look at the various pantheons present in the D&D shared universe up to that point, and a level of detail not since exceeded.

For the current editions of the book, the name has been changed back to Deities & Demigods and the cover artwork has been changed again to bring it more in line with other modern D&D manuals. The interior material bears little resemblance to the previous printings of the book (first through sixth). Additionally, this current edition presents only a few historical pantheons and in something of a vacuum, without any reference to or inclusion of their development in previous D&D sources, choosing instead to detail them as one-off campaign options.

Another large difference between the old Legends & Lore and Deities and Demigods, is that the new edition book is presented with actual stats of deities, which were included in the original Deities & Demigods manual as well. This has created debate on Wizards own forum (FEB 07) as many fans perceive deities to be beyond stats, while others believe they should have stats as well. Those who prefer the deities to be beyond stats, tend to use the stats presented in the book as Avatar stats instead of actual deity stats.

Artwork

The artwork for the first several printings of this "cyclopedia" was created by artists Jeff Dee, Erol Otus, Eymoth, Darlene Pekul, Paul Jaquays, Jim Roslof, David S. LaForce, David C. Sutherland III, Jeff Lanners, and David A. Trampier. Each artist usually providing all the artwork for an entire pantheon. Erol Otus produced the cover artwork.

The current printings of the book contain illustrations from numerous artists and are more in line with the Wizards of the Coast modern treatment of Dungeons & Dragons. The current illustrations are in full color, as compared to the black and white art of the original.

Legal history

Deities & Demigods was one of many items named in a 1992 lawsuit between TSR and Game Designers' Workshop regarding the Dangerous Journeys role-playing game and various rulebooks/sourcebooks designed for that game. One section of this lawsuit argued that "The Plane of Shadow in MYTHUS (pages 190 and 402) and MYTHUS MAGICK (pages 21-22, ...) is derived from the Plane of Shadow in the AD&D DEITIES & DEMIGODS book (Appendix 1, page 129); ...

References

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External links

• Deities & Demigods (first edition) from the TSR Archive
• Deities & Demigods (first edition) from the Pen & Paper RPG Database
• Legends & Lore (first edition) from the TSR Archive
• Legends & Lore (second edition) from the TSR Archive
• Legends & Lore (second edition) from the Pen & Paper RPG Database
• Deities & Demigods (third edition) from the TSR Archive
• Deities & Demigods / Legends & Lore from the Acaeum.com