Deities & Demigods is the second work published by TSR covering deities of different mythologies for the D&D game. The first work was Gods, Demigods and Heroes, which was the fourth supplement to the original D&D game. In the earlier work, Tim Kask, then rules editor at TSR, wrote, “This is our last attempt to delineate the absurdity of 40+ level characters. When Odin, the All-Father has only(?) 300 hit points, who can take a 44th level Lord seriously?”

Unfortunately, Gods, Demigods and Heroes was taken by those players of 40+ level characters and used as a new source of monsters – now they could fight the gods with official stats! This led to the following passage in Deities & Demigods:

“DDG (for short) may resemble MONSTER MANUAL, and in fact does include some monsters. However, the purpose of this book is not to provide adversaries for players’ characters.”

Guess how that worked?

Ultimately, Deities & Demigods suffers from a fundamental flaw in its construction: it introduces the gods to AD&D by providing combat statistics for them and providing very little to promote actually using them as something other than monsters in the game. Consider the description of Mictlantechuhtli, one of the Central American gods in the game:

The god usually appears in lich form, and no undead is able to resist his commands. At any given time, he can instantly summon 20-200 skeletons, 10-100 ghouls, 6-36 wights, and 2-5 spectres. He can be summoned only after at least 50 live human sacrifices have been given the god in worship. The god demands these lives during the dark of the moon and requires them from the ranks of his worshippers.

In battle, touching his body with anything causes the toucher to make a saving throw versus death. The god will usually attack with spells when personally in attle, but if enemies dare touch him, he will draw out a red jade rod that acts as a hammer of thunderbolts as per the DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE.

That’s it. Those paragraphs look very much like description of how to use the god as a monster in the game, and it completely undercuts the philosophy promoted in the forewords of both GDH and DDG. It’s a staggering display of self-delusion on the part of the writers and editors of this work that the gods could be treated as anything other than monsters, when this is the material provided for their use.

The introduction to the work gives some advice on running deities in the AD&D game, but, for the most part, it’s particularly unfocused and unhelpful. Suggestions on the requirements a god places on their clerics are good, but the restriction that demi-gods could only grant up to 5th level spells, lesser gods only to 6th level spells and only greater gods could grant all cleric spells would prove extremely problematic.

Deities & Demigods is also a work that gave TSR problems on the intellectual property front, as its use of both the Cthulhu and Melnibonean mythologies rather annoyed Chaosium, who had licensed those materials. The rights to the Cthulhu books are actually rather confused, which explains why TSR thought they could use them, but in the case of Michael Moorcock’s Melnibonean mythology, Moorcock gave the rights to both TSR and Chaosium, and then Chaosium complained about TSR’s license. The decision was made to allow TSR to use the material with a “thank you” note to Chaosium in later printings. However, shortly thereafter, Brian Blume of TSR decided that he didn’t want to be promoting another RPG company, and the Cthulhu and Melnibonean mythologies were removed. (see here)

This actually gives several distinct versions of Deities & Demigods. You have

• Original version: Cthulhu and Melnibonean mythologies included
• Second version: Cthulhu and Melnibonean mythologies included along with “thank you”
• Third version: No Cthulhu or Melnibonean mythologies, but “thank you” retained
• Fourth version: No Cthulhu or Melnibonean mythologies, and no “thank you”
• Fifth version: As fourth version, but renamed Legends and Lore

One other mythology was omitted from the work when compared to Gods, Demigods and Heroes, that of the Hyborean (Conan) mythology. This was due to the work being done on the Conan role-playing game, which would, of course, present the mythology itself. As it turned out, that project got delayed until 1985, some five years after the release of Deities & Demigods. (see here)

The list of mythologies presented in the original version is as follows:

• American Indian
• Arthurian
• Babylonian
• Celtic
• Central American
• Chinese
• Cthulhu
• Egyptian
• Finnish
• Greek
• Indian
• Japanese
• Melnibonean
• Nehwon
• Nonhumans
• Norse
• Sumerian

Of particular note to the history of D&D is the inclusion of the section on non-human deities. Lolth had previously been introduced in Vault of the Drow and Queen of the Demonweb Pits and her entry in the latter work is reprinted here. However, deities for the other beings here were new, and in particular the gods of the demi-human races would be used as the standard from now on: this is where Corellon Larethian was first presented. Only the chief god of each race was presented – further expansion would have to wait until Unearthed Arcana, although the names of other gods were given.

The appendices to the book include a table setting forth important world-building details for each deity in the book: raiment of clerics, the holy days of the deity, sacrifices that must be made and where the deity should be worshipped. It’s probably fair to say that more useful information is given here for the world-building DM than in the rest of the book.

Deities & Demigods is at its strongest when it is actually providing monsters from the mythologies for the characters to face, which is especially true of the Cthulhu, Nehwon and Melnibonean mythologies. Creatures such as the Cyclops are added to the AD&D monster list through their presentation in this book. My major criticism with their presentation is that they tend towards the extremely strong. The “lesser” cyclops of the isle Odysseus stopped on has 13 Hit Dice, stronger than most giants! Regardless, it’s nice to see them included. Each mythology is also introduced with some ground rules to differentiate it from the other pantheons; these are of varying usefulness and applicability to the game.

I have a problem with the presentation of the heroes of the book, as they are created to be “source-accurate”, but in so doing they break all kinds of AD&D rules. Thus, Fafhrd, a human barbarian, is a 15th level ranger, a 13th level thief and a 5th level bard – a combination of classes impossible for a regular AD&D character to attain. Likewise, the Mouser is a 11th level fighter, 15th level thief and 3rd level magic-user. While this presentation works for gods, it’s less successful for heroes, who you expect to be on the same level as the actual heroes of the game: the player characters.

This then is Deities & Demigods, a work that really should be so much more than it is. For a book that says it isn’t a monster manual, it gives over most of its text to descriptions of gods-as-monsters, and it rightfully gets the scorn placed on it thereby. There are good parts of the book, and I love the artwork, but this was not the definitive work on using the deities in D&D. As a lot of the source material that D&D was based on had the gods interacting with the world, this was a real missed opportunity. That it was the second time TSR had fumbled the subject just made it more frustrating; this is a truly flawed product.