A couple years ago when I converted my bootleg "AD&D Companion" compilation into the legitimate/OGL-licensed Heroic Legendarium, one section I was sorry to have to remove was the summary of the World of Greyhawk deities and the characteristics of their clerics, collecting the information that was previously spread across the World of Greyhawk boxed set and various issues of Dragon magazine into one convenient reference.
Now, in preparation for next weekend's public playtest session, I decided to revisit that document. But instead of just copying the old text I decided it would be fun to expand it to include both those deities listed but not detailed in the boxed set as well as assorted god-like monsters.
In creating the list I edited out a few deities* who seemed redundant or uninteresting (to me), and in a few cases repurposed some of their cleric characteristics into other deities with similar portfolios. Likewise, some deities were given cleric characteristics suggested by Roger Moore in Dragon #85 for use with clerics of the pantheons from Deities & Demigods. The rest I created myself, attempting to remain as consistent as possible with both the style and power-level of the published examples. It's likely someone else has already done and shared this same work at some point over the last 40 years, but I couldn't find anything online (at least not within my preferred 1st edition AD&D paradigm).
Symbols for the deities not detailed by Gygax or Lakofka mostly come from this wiki page (which I presume is based on content from post-Gygax TSR and WotC products with which I am not otherwise familiar), but I have unapologetically changed them wherever I didn't like what was provided there (and careful readers will also note other minor editorial emendations - deities with modified alignments or portfolios). Similarly, portfolios for the arch-devils and demon princes were mostly gleaned from a variety of online encyclopedias of folklore and witchcraft, in researching which I was surprised and amused to discover that almost all of the demon and devil names provided by Gygax in the Monster Manual II are authentic from medieval texts. In order to fit my list onto a single page I wasn't able to include all of the demon lords here, but I did keep a list of the portfolios of most of the remaining ones.
Anyway, as usual, once I've done the work I figured there's no reason not to share it more widely here. All of the deity names and previously-published descriptions are, of course, copyright Wizards of the Coast, LLC but are being used in a non-commercial manner, just like the wiki site linked above.
*Beltar, Bralm, Delleb, Fortubo, Jascar, Lendor, Lydia, Phyton, Rudd, Velnius, and Xerbo. 8 of these 11 were detailed by Len Lakofka in Dragon magazine (issues #86-92, June-December 1984), for those who are interested
Very nice, Trent! I'll download and take a look in detail soon (and point folks to your work in my next Greyhawk news thread, too!).
ReplyDeleteAllan.
Trent, thanks as always for putting things like this together and sharing them! No Elder Elemental God? Or Dorgha Torgu from OJ #12? Also wondering about Lendor.
ReplyDeleteLendor got folded into Cyndor, because their portfolios overlapped (time) and I always thought "god of tedium" was kind of lame. Honestly forgot about Dorgha Torgu - will have to look him up again and possibly add him. Elder Elemental God was intentionally left off because he's a secret ;)
DeleteHa! Well-played! I was looking for Lendor out of curiosity as to how you handled the Lendor/Cyndor pair - I always thought singling Cyndor out as the only "Greater/Lesser god" just drew even more attention to the fact his portfolio so blatantly overlapped Lendor's. But yes, if you're going to drop someone, "tedium" is just asking for it. Another possible add would be the named daemons as peers to the arch-devils and demon princes. (Didn't mean to comment anonymously last time.)
DeleteI left the oinodaemons off mostly because I didn't have room (I really wanted to keep the list on a single page as a player handout) but also because we know from Gary's post-TSR Gord novels that the chief oinodaemon "Infestix" is really an aspect of Nerull (or vice versa)
Delete[And after re-reading about Dorgha Torgu I think I'll keep him off the list as well, since in his current fallen state he's not really capable of receiving worship, and the primary purpose of this list is for players to use to choose patron deities for the cleric characters]