Well from what I know at the time of Deities & Demigods being written, Gary was in Hollywood trying to get a Dungeons & Dragons movie made (or something of that nature)...the failed development of which eventually morphed into the Krull movie.
Cartoon, Movie, TV show. Anything he could get.
Though according to the FBI he spent most of that time snorting cocaine while hooking up with sex workers who he also explicitly vilified in his work... But. Y'know. YMMV. That was also 1980-85, not 1975/76 when the book was being written, formatted, printed, and eventually published.
Anyway. The fact that he wrote the foreword means he was more involved in the process than standing around, looking pretty, and snorting blow. It means he was:
1) Aware of the work.
2) Read the work.
3) Wrote for the work.
You could certainly argue he didn't do that for all the work (not everything had a Foreword by Gary Gygax, after all), but he was clearly at least tangentially involved with this one.
So Gary didn't have any input into that book and in fact reportedly (by Jim Ward) didn't like the book because it didn't include Quasi and Hero-deity transitional ranks.
I see this as pure supposition. Dude owned the company and wrote the foreword. Plus he was GARY GYGAX. Though the fact that Jim Ward said he wanted more to the book than it had is also a little telling about how "Uninvolved" he was.
Yes because if the world at large doesn't have a problem with 1000+ books on
mythology including the Hindu gods and the Native American gods, so why do you?
Again, this is an ad hominem side-step which ignores the thrust of the actual argument while focusing on semantics.
Prior to your post most people (AFAIR) in this thread (those in favour of ANY stats for deities that is) seem okay with stats for Monotheistic Gods. So any argument of "if Vishnu can have stats why can't Yahweh" is superfluous - they both can.
Hey, cool beans! OTHER people can have their own positions and arguments separate from my own. WILD.
Anyway, yeah. Both Adonai and Vishnu can both have stats. The point is that they both didn't. Because of the cultural biases of the writers and the time which is kinda the entire -thrust- of my argument.
So what exactly are you getting at...that 44 years ago creators made a smart business decision not to include stats for GOD?
Uh... Yeah, basically?
That there's a cultural cognitive bias behind the decision not to include the Tetragrammaton in the book (or in other books) of religious figures because of the expectations that you even carry to this day. That he would be an "Overdeity" and thus undefeatable, for example, since no one could ever be strong enough to fight him.
Which is kind of a nice parallel that I don't think you've actually recognized, either...
...which was in 1980 the main religion of the country where 90% of their market was located - so clearly it was a wise business decision NOT to include stats for "GOD".
Was it -actually- a business decision, though?
Did Rob Kuntz and Jim Ward sit down, stat out Adonai, and then go "This might cause social backlash against WotC. We'd better not." or make it all the way up to Gygax who saw Jesus as a demigod and went "No. We can't do that. We'll get in trouble!"
Or was it just not a thing because of a cultural bias to view other people's religions as "Myth" and one's own religion as "Truth"?
Was it biased - almost certainly, why anger 90% of your market.
Hey, I mean, why would it anger the community to have Adonai statted out? According to your Logical Position he would OBVIOUSLY be an overdeity whose stats are so powerful no one could ever hope to defeat him.
So why would anyone be angry at having their God presented as the omnipotent and omnipresent undefeatable "Real God" of D&D?
Heck. That might've undermined some of the Satanic Panic if they could say "Oh, yeah. There's demons in the game. But God is there to give you the power to fight them. See?" and then open the page to Jesus's blessed statblock.
Was it mechanically redundant (as I pointed out similar to stats for AO ) - almost certainly.
Were they seeking to offend anyone by having stats for Hindu gods or whatever - no more so than any Mythology book published before or after.
Again, this is a Strawman. I'm not saying they intended anything. I'm saying their persistent cultural bias resulted in them excluding the Tetragrammaton from their book on Gods.
Given what we know about 'the angry mothers from heck' history of TSR in the 80's do you think having stats for "GOD" in Deities & Demigods would have been a wise business decision when 90% of your market is located in the United States where the main religion is Christianity. Have a guess.
I mean, as noted, being able to say "God is a part of this world and is the most powerful entity in existence and directly gives power to his followers to fight against demons and monsters" -probably- wouldn't have hurt their business outright.
If anything, it might've resulted in more fundamentalist christians playing the game to be "True Believers" in God and recreating Bible Stories as campaign.
Not that they don't do that, today.
D&D is for Ages 11 & UP (or thereabouts), I don't think its appropriate for consumption by younger audiences (without parental consent) as very young kids are easily impressionable and that could lead to them doing something silly.
Okay... but what does this have to do with the price of tea in China?
Then why bother to ask when it's utterly irrelevant? Or did you feel it was some kind of "Gotchya" question?
We can only speculate as to the thrust of your posts.
No, not really. I've made it incredibly clear from start to finish. Somehow you just haven't gotten the point, yet because you're digging around in the weeds on side-topics and tilting windmills and straw men that have nothing to do with what I've actually stated.
Thousands of Books of Mythology exist.
Creators take characters from Mythology books for D&D.
Yup. This is a thing. Etymology would say Christian Religion is -also- Mythology, but it wasn't included because of.... c'mon. You can say it...
Ideological cultural bias, yup.
44 years later suddenly we must feel ashamed (on behalf of someone else - likely an imaginary person), despite thousands of mythology books still existing and animated and live action series and movies about those gods being made all the time.
Yeah, this is not a thing I'm arguing. Never has been.
Original D&D Creators blamed for being biased - even though everyone has some degree of bias.
See, here I think is the core of the problem. You're seeing "Blame" I'm saying "This is a thing that occurred and a likely explanation of why."
You're looking to deflect "Blame" or other negative statements, where I'm just pointing out historically accurate information referencing what people do and don't consider acceptable for D&D books and why.
...something about letting those without sin cast the first stone seems apropos here...
"No one is allowed to criticize or discuss a topic unless they're ideologically pure" probably isn't a good rule-base for a forum which discusses topics...
WILD how that works. Also probably shouldn't quote the Bible.
You're welcome!
It didn't need to.
1. It used Mythological figures.
AHHHH... So Capital G god -isn't- Mythological. He's REAL. And thus doesn't fit into the book? That's where we're going with this?
2. Mechanically stats for Overgods were fundamentally useless without full rules for Player Divine Ascension.
Okay... so... why make him an Overgod instead of just a Greater Deity? Why make Greater and Lesser Deities instead of just "Gods"? Why not make him an Overgod and just have him be something PC's can't fight but Greater Deities can instead team up on?
And follow up: Why not make rules for character apotheosis to include whatever BS reason you 'Can't fight an Overgod'?
3. It would have been a stupid business decision to include stats for "GOD" and potentially piss off the families of a large part of your market at a time when D&D was already under fire for its depictions of Devils such as Asmodeus.
Uh huh. Surely could've been a bad decision. I'm positing that it was never even -considered- as a possibility.
Especially since, later, during the height of the Satanic Panic, they added Satan's stats through Dragon Magazine. Showing that they were aware of it, and actively including Satan in the book. Which kind of feels like shooting yourself in the foot if you're trying to -avoid- controversy about having Demons and Devils in your game, already.
Hmm. Seems like that might not be why they made this choice...
Everything is biased to some degree, the creators of the original book went out of their way to show all all Pantheons of these mythological figures from ALL cultures were EQUAL.
EXCEPT for one group of Mythological Figures.
Which you continue to say would not have been equal for some reason...
Logically a Monotheistic deity commanding the same presence as an entire Pantheon of gods would be more powerful than any individual within the Polytheistic Pantheon.
Oh, that's your reason, there. Also irrelevant.
I've written a campaign setting where powerful Water Elementals are "Gods" that players can kill in the world. In the same way that Conan the Destroyer slew Dagoth. Remember him?
The idea of creating "Greater" deities itself is a political choice which placed the pantheons -in- Gods, Demigods, and Heroes on unequal footing.
The only reason to make Adonai into an overdeity is because you choose to as a writer and designer. Any other explanation is Watsonian tosh.
Epic Boons do not give the type of power required to rival gods, let alone those above Challenge Rating 30. They do not even give the power of an extra level. I just finished a campaign where my character had worked their way up from 5th level to 20th level with 8 epic boons - I know what I am talking about.
Maybe your gods are just designed badly? There's no reason a level 20 character with no epic boons shouldn't be able to fight and kill a god except that the writers don't want them to.
Again, there is no logic. There is only the decision making of the writing staff.
Its the same reason why all the Pantheon Heads in the original book were given 400 Hit Points - to give them Parity.
Cool beans. Could they all have been given 12 hit points, instead, and had parity? Nice. Again, this is not a "Logic" issue. This is the writers deciding to give them however many hit points.
And has no bearing on making the Tetragrammaton into an overdeity with 1000hp or 12hp or a billion hp.
It's all ideological.
Thus GOD would not be competing with Zeus but with the entire Pantheon of Greek Gods. Thus he would be more powerful. Its not Gods balanced against Gods its Religions balanced against each other.
All Ideological.
The book does not show all gods as equals but IT DOES show ALL RELIGIONS are (culturally) EQUAL.
Except one. Which is left out due to a cultural bias that has been on display this entire time.
I mean arguably (like the Marvel comics) you could just have added the Canaanite Pantheon of Gods - I think one 3rd Party product for AD&D did that (have it on my bookshelf somewhere).
Y'know that's a good point. It didn't include the Canaanite deities or the Babylonian ones, either. Nor did it include Zoroastrianism.
But since it was the 1970s, those things were all kind of tied up in hard academia and still being heavily researched and studied rather than being something easily distributed to the public (and thus writers like Kuntz). So I'm gonna chalk that up to just not knowing enough about it to really get into it to any serious degree.
FWIW Gary did have a character called the Archdeva in his Gord the Rogue series of novels who was in charge of the Angels (Solars, Planetars and Devas) and seemed to be the counterpart to Nerull. The Archdeva might have been Pelor by another name though.
Neat!
It does follow a logical structure, but you are not interested in the intricacies and logic of the tiers of divinity across the editions, nor the balancing of the Pantheons.
It follows an ideological structure, not a logical one. If it were a logical one pretty much all the gods would have a strength of "Nil" since they don't interact with the world or the people in it except when they decide to and have precisely the amount of strength required by the legend they're taking part in.
But because the writers are taking mythological religious figures that categorically do not exist and pretending they do for a game they put them into categories and give them values that ultimately only reflect their personal idea of what that god "Should" be.
I outlined the reasons.
1. They used figures from mythology books.
2. Irrelevant mechanically to have Overgods without Player Divine Ascension.
3. Stupid business decision.
See above response.
More likely because of sound business reasons and not wanting to stir up more controversy among 90% of your audience's families.
Worth noting that Satanic Panic started in 1980 and basically resulted in MASSIVE SALES of D&D and D&D Related Materials for nearly 20 years, making it the main name in every household in the US as relates to TTRPGs.
So if it would've triggered Satanic Panic 4 years earlier it might've been a good business decision.
That said, why would it piss them off, again, to have their God reflected in a game world as, apparently, the single most powerful being in the game?
If the answer is "Because he could be killed by player characters." then you're back to dealing with the people who are saying it's a bad thing to have modern religious figures in D&D games for reasons of cultural appropriation.
Which is not my argument and not my kettle of fish.
