Time for an #OldSchoolDungeonsAndDragons that is truly classic! Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes (1976), by Robert Kuntz and James Ward!
This book was the fourth and final supplement to the original "0th edition" D&D rules. It starts with a pretty amusing foreword by the editor. One of the rare times I know of that an editor admits "loathing" the project they worked on!
Curiously, the latter part of the foreword shows that the book was designed to address another early problem in D&D: power "Monty Haul" gamers! Basically: "Here are the stats of literal gods. If your characters are more powerful, you're doing something wrong."
The book literally just dives right into gods. We have the Egyptian pantheon to start...
Including Ptah, who is described as the "God of Outer Space," a description I've never heard before but I dig it.
Then the book rolls right into the gods of India!
And then onto the Celtic gods...
Odin gets a LOT of detail, including his weaponry. I love the editorial decision to allow an exclamation point to highlight the *10* arrow attacks, which admittedly is quite a few!
The Finnish gods have something wild: they can move at *infinite* speed. I assume there's something in Finnish folklore that this is based on, but it's the only time I'm aware of "infinity" being an official stat.
It was a bit of fun nostalgia for me to see the minor Finnish gods, because my very first D&D cleric worshipped Loviatar (from Deities and Demigods), which was admittedly a random choice.
This book possessed something that the later Deities and Demigods would not: the gods and lore of Robert E. Howard's Hyborea, including Conan!
The Hyborean section includes lots of details on characters and magic from the Conan stories, including this character from the classic "Tower of the Elephant."
GD&H also included the Elric pantheon, with stats for Elric. Famously, these would be removed from later editions of Deities and Demigods because TSR didn't want to promote competitor Chaosium's games and stories.
After this, we have the Mexican and Central American mythos...
The book wraps up with a description of Eastern mythos, and ends just as abruptly as it began. It really is just a list of stats!
This book would be replaced with the 1e Deities and Demigods, which most people are more familiar with! But that is another story... /END
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