I'm currently brainstorming for a writing project, and I need to know what was the first set of gods for the original Dungeons & Dragons. I tried to research it on Wikipedia, but the information was kind of muddled. Note that I'm not interested in what were the most iconic, or popular, etc., but which were published first chronologically. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks.
The original D&D had no set deities. The release of the Gods, Demi-Gods, & Heroes supplement was the first time any deities were stated or explained. And almost all of them were either real world pantheons or well-known pantheons from works of fiction.
There were no actual gods listed in the original 1974 release of Dungeons & Dragons. The cleric really hadn't developed beyond the "vampire hunting clergy" ala Hammer films concept.
The first gods I remember seeing were in the original Deities & Demigods for 1st edition AD&D, published in 1980. No original deities, just various pantheons from mythology, plus the Cthulhu mythos, Melnibonian, and Lankhmar gods in the original printing.
The first original gods I ever played with came from the Greyhawk campaign setting. The first gods for that campaign setting are mentioned here..
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There were no actual gods listed in the original 1974 release of Dungeons & Dragons. The cleric really hadn't developed beyond the "vampire hunting clergy" ala Hammer films concept.
The first gods I remember seeing were in the original Deities & Demigods for 1st edition AD&D, published in 1980. No original deities, just various pantheons from mythology, plus the Cthulhu mythos, Melnibonian, and Lankhmar gods in the original printing.
The first original gods I ever played with came from the Greyhawk campaign setting. The first gods for that campaign setting are mentioned here..
au contraire
Here's the book- Gods, Demi-Gods, and Heroes
I think if my memory is right it had...Norse, Egyptian, Finnish, Greek, Hyborian, I think the Japanese? too pantheons and heroes. I know there was one or two others, but my memory is fogy on those.
and here's the link to this wiki-
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There were no actual gods listed in the original 1974 release of Dungeons & Dragons. The cleric really hadn't developed beyond the "vampire hunting clergy" ala Hammer films concept.
The first gods I remember seeing were in the original Deities & Demigods for 1st edition AD&D, published in 1980. No original deities, just various pantheons from mythology, plus the Cthulhu mythos, Melnibonian, and Lankhmar gods in the original printing.
The first original gods I ever played with came from the Greyhawk campaign setting. The first gods for that campaign setting are mentioned here..
au contraire
Here's the book- Gods, Demi-Gods, and Heroes
I think if my memory is right it had...Norse, Egyptian, Finnish, Greek, Hyborian, I think the Japanese? too pantheons and heroes. I know there was one or two others, but my memory is fogy on those.
and here's the link to this wiki-
You actually didn't contradict me. What I wrote was "The first gods I remember seeing were...." That there was a publication released prior to that with some of the same pantheons doesn't change the fact that Deities & Demigods was the first book of gods I saw.
But which were published first chronologically.
It's already been mentioned that most of the original D&D Gods supplements stuck to traditional real-world pantheons or published pantheons from pulp stories. The first, original world deities in D&D was Gygax's Greyhawk, and he first put them formally out as part of a 5-part article in Dragon in 1982. The rough order (by appearance in the magazine - I'd have to check the original issues to be sure) was something like:
St. Cuthbert; Pholtus; Heironeous; Hextor; Iuz; Celestian; Pholtus; Fharlanghn; Ehlonna; Trithereon; Istus; Obad-hai; Boccob; Zagyg; Olidammara; Erythnul; Incabulos; Nerull; Ralishaz; Wastri. All of them were intended to be humanoncentric; no real demi-human gods.Aside from Deities & Demi-gods, it could be mentioned that in 1980, module C1, D&D also had created some Aztec derivative gods that weren't part of a formal game world (but hinted to also be part of Greyhawk): Mictlantecuhtli, Tezcatlipoca, and Quetzalcoatl.
I've often wondered which religion St. Cuthbert was a saint of?
I assume you are asking which real world religion, which Hama already pointed out. As far as the D&D version - Gygax created him in a very tongue-in-cheek way for his first campaign and then formalized his details in Dragon Magazine for the first time.
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I'd assume the first original gods for D&D (as opposed to write ups of mythological or literary pantheons) were for one of the published settings. Probably Greyhawk, since that was the first, I believe.
It looks like there weren't any gods in the first Greyhawk set, but some were published in Dragon a few years later and the second Greyhawk set included a pantheon.
Forgotten Realms came later. Along with many other settings. I don't know of anything earlier.
The first two supplements to 0e, despite the names (Greyhawk and Blckmoor), really had virtually no campaign setting material in them. They were almost purely rule supplements.
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There were no actual gods listed in the original 1974 release of Dungeons & Dragons. The cleric really hadn't developed beyond the "vampire hunting clergy" ala Hammer films concept.
The first gods I remember seeing were in the original Deities & Demigods for 1st edition AD&D, published in 1980. No original deities, just various pantheons from mythology, plus the Cthulhu mythos, Melnibonian, and Lankhmar gods in the original printing.
The first original gods I ever played with came from the Greyhawk campaign setting. The first gods for that campaign setting are mentioned here..
au contraire
Here's the book- Gods, Demi-Gods, and Heroes
I think if my memory is right it had...Norse, Egyptian, Finnish, Greek, Hyborian, I think the Japanese? too pantheons and heroes. I know there was one or two others, but my memory is fogy on those.
and here's the link to this wiki-
But that was released in 1976; there were, as noted by Shadowborn, "no actual gods listed in the original 1974 release of Dungeons & Dragons." IIRC, though, the OD&D equipment list included crosses, not generic holy symbols.
Hey, thanks for the info guys. That's exactly what I was looking for!
It's already been mentioned that most of the original D&D Gods supplements stuck to traditional real-world pantheons or published pantheons from pulp stories. The first, original world deities in D&D was Gygax's Greyhawk, and he first put them formally out as part of a 5-part article in Dragon in 1982. The rough order (by appearance in the magazine - I'd have to check the original issues to be sure) was something like:
St. Cuthbert; Pholtus; Heironeous; Hextor; Iuz; Celestian; Pholtus; Fharlanghn; Ehlonna; Trithereon; Istus; Obad-hai; Boccob; Zagyg; Olidammara; Erythnul; Incabulos; Nerull; Ralishaz; Wastri. All of them were intended to be humanoncentric; no real demi-human gods.
As for the demi-humans:
The main demi-human gods (Corellon, Moradin, Garl Glimmergold, Yondalla, and Gruumsh for the orcs) were in Deities & Demigods; I have no idea if they'd previously been published elsewhere).
At about the same time as Gygax's articles in Dragon on the Greyhawk gods (1982), Roger E. Moore wrote a series of articles for Dragon on the demi-human pantheons*. The gods described in those articles (such as Hanali and Solonor for the elves, Clanggeddin and Berronar for the dwarves, etc.) were later used as the bases for the demi-human pantheons for the Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms settings.
* - the very first issue of Dragon which I ever bought was the April 1982 issue (#60, one of the infamous "April Fools" issues). It contained the elven pantheon article by Moore.
Also, note that it wasn't until 3E (2000) that there was such a thing as a default / core D&D pantheon. Before then, any "human" deities were either taken from a real-world mythos or fictional setting (as seen in Deities & Demigods), or were closely tied to one of TSR's campaign settings.
Hey, thanks for the info guys. That's exactly what I was looking for!
Hope it helps. You ask around, and you can see enough grognards (young and old) will eventually answer in a variety of ways. ;-)
I loved the various non-human gods, especially the elven pantheon.
And even then, that had as much to with there being a default/core setting as with being a default pantheon. Pantheons were still tied to campaign settings and vice versa.
True enough. It was a situation of 1E and 2E being "setting-neutral" in the core books, and that included not having any deities listed in the PHB or DMG.
I still find it amusing that Greyhawk was the "default" setting for 3.x, given that WotC itself almost completely ignored the setting.
I always found that rather disappointing. There was a lot of potential and a ton of resources from past editions for them to work with.
I didn't really start "get" Greyhawk when it first released - more like bits and piece from the modules and Dragon Magazine. Still - those early articles about the Oeridian pantheon made me curious (what the heck was the difference between being Suel; Baklunnish; Flan, etc. I wondered). It was probably becuase Greenwood wrote even more interesting stories about Elminster and FR lore in the magazine that I was even more curious about Faerun.
FR was probably the first D&D game world that I really enjoyed and delved into as a result. I really didn't appreciate the Greyhawk gameworld until later when WOTC put out the Living Greyhawk Gazeteer and a couple of "new" modules. They may not have supported it well, but that was great book to gather up 30 years of gaming info - stuff I knew and didn't all combined. I found it especially useful to clarify the muddled, commercial mess that was the Greyhak Wars (and also the hard to find Iuz the Evil book).
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You actually didn't contradict me. What I wrote was "The first gods I remember seeing were...." That there was a publication released prior to that with some of the same pantheons doesn't change the fact that Deities & Demigods was the first book of gods I saw.
true. afterwards I reread it and said doh! sorry about that.
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I loved the various non-human gods, especially the elven pantheon.
Ditto. The elven gods and the gnomish gods particularly appealed to me, but Dumathoin (sp?) and Arvoreen from the dwarvish and Halfling pantheons were also very cool. When the articles moved on to orcs, hobgoblins, gnolls and kobolds, they remained really good. (Still looking for a place to use a shoosuva or a rapper!)
Many of the later additions to the 'demihuman deities' (Sehanine, Sharindlar, pretty much the entire Drow sub-pantheon) in books like Dwarves Deep and that book that introduced concepts like 'Mellifleur, god of liches' and whatnot, didn't appeal to me nearly as much as Roger Moore's originals.
I *generally* don't like the idea of different races having different gods, since I think it waters down the concept of 'gods' in general if there are six different 'gods of magic' for different races (or different cultures of the same race), some of which barely have a noticeable footprint on the setting anyway. The Dragonlance notion that everybody worshipped the same dozen or so gods, under different names, was cool, and I liked seeing that sort of thing show up in other settings or sub-settings, like Al-Qadim and the Scarred Lands.
But Roger Moore's write-ups were cool, and I bow to rule of cool.
Thanks (and to Alex as well), but really I was just kidding around.
Sorry - my joke-a-meter was broke that day. ;-)