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Deities & Demigods is a tome of pagan gods and creatures from myth and fiction for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. The book is a reference for statistics and characteristics of deities and legendary figures from ancient real-world religions and cultures to popular fictional characters. The God worshipped by many modern religions was left untreated. Deities & Demigods was originally printed by TSR, but is now printed by Wizards of the Coast who now owns the D&D brand. It has been through several printings; the current printing bears little resemblance to the earliest printings.
As well as being a good reference for D&D, the book gives a good overview of gods and legendary figures from myth, religion and fiction.
The original edition of the book contained seventeen pantheons, including:
- Greek Mythos
- Norse Mythos
- Egyptian Mythos
- American Indian Mythos
- Hindu gods
- Cthulhu Mythos
- Melnibonéan Mythos
The Cthulhu ideas were included in the public domain, so TSR assumed they could legally use it without any special permission. However, Arkham House, who had the copyright on most Cthulu books had already licensed the Cthulu property to Chaosium to create a Cthulu-based RPG. Chaosium became upset that TSR was apparently violating their license. The first printing was halted and the two companies agreed on a compromise: TSR could use the Cthulhu material, but needed to include a special "thank you" note to Chaosium for both the Cthulu mythos and Melnibonéan information (since Chaosium also licensed the Melnibonéan copyright). TSR added the special thank you note and the printing continued.
When the time came for a third printing of the book, TSR felt their material should not contain such an overt reference to one of their competitors in the "Special Thank You" note. So they removed the Cthulhu and Melnibonéan pantheons, thus negating the need for the "Thank you" note. For this reason, the first and second editions were (and are, among collectors) in greater demand than later printings.
Except for some color shifiting of the cover artwork and different TSR logos on the cover, subsequent printings through the fifth remained largely unchanged.
For the sixth printing in 1985, the name was changed to Legends & Lore to avoid potential conflicts with fundamentalist Christian groups. Despite the name change and new cover artwork (by Jeff Easley), the interior material was nearly identical to the fifth printing.
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 inline with other modern D&D manuals. The interior material bears little resemblence to the previous printings of the book (first through sixth).
The artwork for the first several printings of this "cyclopedia" are considered much better compared to other D&D volumes of the time. Talented artists such as Jeff Dee and Erol Otus contributed heavily to this volume, each artist usually providing all the artwork for an entire pantheon. Though the artwork was done in black and white, it was a significant improvement over the artwork in the other D&D volumes (also black and white). Erol Otus also produced the striking cover artwork.
The current printings of the book contain contributions of numerous artists and are more inline with Wizards of the Coast treatment of Dungeons & Dragons. The current illustrations are in full color.Artwork
