"in 1st Edition...every DM...assumed that Corellon Larethian put out Gruumsh's eye"?

[Glyfair]

It was the Forgotten Realms which took the handful of Elven deities and expanded it into a large pantheon, introducing a couple dozen gods and demigods, so I understand why you might think that these two deities are "Forgotten Realms" deities.

In fact, that handful of deities was introduced in the aforementioned Roger Moore series of articles in Dragon magazine. Before that it was pretty much just one that was "shared" (by virtue of appearing in Deities & Demigods).

If anything, I find that Forgotten Realms is the "mishmash" setting which takes everything and dumps it into one huge pile without even making an attempt to make the pieces join together in any rational way.

Indeed, if you at the history of the Forgotten Realms in The Dragon you'll see that. One of the first articles Ed had published was "how to create your campaign pantheon" article. He specifically takes gods from various sources to make a pantheon for his world, which we would later see as the Realms.

What bugs me is the assumption that "just about *every* campaign every DM ran assumed that Corellon Larethian put out Gruumsh's eye, that the drow fought the other elves and were driven underground, that Acererak the lich created a Tomb of Horrors somewhere on the planet, or that the Rod of Seven Parts was lying around someplace waiting to be found."

Now, when I played 1E, back in the day, it wasn't regularly, so I didn't have any set campaign world... but when I hooked up with my current DM a few years later and got into 2E, he used a homebrew world that he and his friends had been playing in since '77 or so. No Corellon; we had Gruumsh, but he had both eyes; no Tomb of Horrors (that I know of), and definitely no Rod of Seven Parts. Or any of the other artifacts from the book, for that matter - they made their own. We do have drow, and they did have a war with the elves and were driven underground, but they're albino, not black (yeah, I know, big whoop).

I think you are making the common internet error of assuming that "most" means "every." He didn't say "every" he said "just about every." In other words it was very common. It doesn't mean that there weren't exceptions.

In my experience the elven pantheon of Greyhawk introduced by Roger Moore was assumed by most DMs who didn't spend a lot of time creating their own unique setting (i.e. took almost nothing from other published settings).

 

[T. Foster]

I never used Corellon or Gruumsh in my 1E games.

 

[Delta]

This story is solidly embedded in 1e lore. It originally comes from Dragon magazine's "Point of View" articles, on the demihumans, and was later "officialized" around about UA.

For the record.

No, this is incorrect to the extent that I can confirm it.

I have both the UA and Dragon Archive in digital form, and I've done a complete text search for this snippet (thinking it was there), and absolutely nothing came up.

At this point I would definitely need an exact quote, page number citation, because I really believe that's mistaken.


(It doesn't really even make sense because in 1E Gruumsh was cyclopic, with one single eye in the middle of his head. Roger Moore's orc myth says that Corellon tried to shoot out his one sole eye and missed... and the reason that's funny is because the Corellon writeup says he automatically hits anything he shoots at.)

 

[Geoffrey]

Look in Dragon #62 (June 1982) on page 28 of Roger Moore's article, "The Gods of the Orcs". Here is a quote from the third column:

"Shamans tell of the battle between Corellon Larethian (the chief elven god, whom the shamans call The Big Fairy) and Gruumsh, in which Corellon tried to shoot out Gruumsh's eye (sacrilege!) with his bow, but failed of course."

It would be closer to the truth to say "in 1st Edition...every DM...assumed that Corellon Larethian TRIED AND FAILED TO put out Gruumsh's eye

 

[amethal]

What bugs me is the assumption that "just about *every* campaign every DM ran assumed that Corellon Larethian put out Gruumsh's eye, that the drow fought the other elves and were driven underground, that Acererak the lich created a Tomb of Horrors somewhere on the planet, or that the Rod of Seven Parts was lying around someplace waiting to be found."

My first edition games never used to worry about any of that kind of thing. It was all about having fun.

I guess that means I was never part of TSR's target audience, so I shouldn't worry that I'm not part of WotC's

 

[amethal]

Look in Dragon #62 (June 1982) on page 28 of Roger Moore's article, "The Gods of the Orcs". Here is a quote from the third column:

"Shamans tell of the battle between Corellon Larethian (the chief elven god, whom the shamans call The Big Fairy) and Gruumsh, in which Corellon tried to shoot out Gruumsh's eye (sacrilege!) with his bow, but failed of course."

So where does it say that he did shoot out Gruumsh's eye?

 

[Geoffrey]

Nowhere. And that makes the quote in the OP all the funnier!

 

[Mark Hope]

Yeah, in 1e Gruumsh had one cyclopean eye and there is the reference that Corellon unsuccesfully tried to shoot it out. My copy of Monster Mythology (loved that book, btw!) is in a box, so I can't check it, but it seems quite possible that the story was retconned or retold so that Gruumsh once had two eyes and lost one to The Big Fairy. It would be good if someone could check that book for a reference. So the original quote is indeed mistaken in that it attributes the story to the 1e era, but not mistaken in that it was a widespread tale used in many campaigns.

The story didn't come into my 1e games very much but I do recall that it featured in my own 2e games. However, this was only at the end of the campaign when the world was going to hell and the gods were openly fighting: Corellon put out Gruumsh' other eye, heh. 3e was already released by then, however, so I'm not sure how useful this perspective is...

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I hear you. Slavicek stated in another article that the "cyclops" hadn't been done in third edition (link) . (Apparently he missed the fact that the cyclops was actually done *twice* in 3E - once in Deities & Demigods and once in Shining South.)

But, WotC is looking ahead, not backwards. Will it matter? Only if those who want them to be more respectful of the past traditions vote with their wallets. If enough people don't give a hoot about the traditions and buy 4E, well, who are we traditionalists to argue with success?

Exactly. What business did Gandalf and his cronies have trying to undermine the most successful bureaucrat, politician, and general Middle-Earth had ever known? He was a winner, pure and simple, but they did everything they could to forestall change from their traditional ways. In the end, the only thing keeping those two hobbits going to Mt. Doom was pure spite.

 

[Anti-Sean]

From the front page...

"This has always been true to some degree; even back in 1st Edition, just about *every* campaign every DM ran assumed that Corellon Larethian put out Gruumsh's eye..."

Eh? What?
As a 1st Ed player, that would have been news to me...

As a 1st Ed player, weapon speeds and variable weapon bonuses vs. different types of armor would have been news to me, since we didn't use those rules. We also played in a homebrew settiing with its own pantheon, so Gruumsh's backstory, as applicable to our game, would have been news to me as well.

When I played 1st edition nearly twenty years ago, I may have remembered Gruumsh as having only one eye (although I have to admit that I payed a bit more attention to Loviatar and Bast's entries in D&DG than to Gruumsh's). Thanks to the mists of time, reading updated rulesets that changed the mythology, and running/playing in settings that don't use the default pantheons, I misremembered Gruumsh as well, and I doubt I'm the only one to have done so.

I just realized what it is. That statement is a window into how these designers think.
It sounds like they think 1st Ed. is classical history or something, like using a telegraph to send messages. They feel comfortable making these wildly inaccurate generalizations offhand, because 1st Ed. players, like dinosaurs and trilobites, don't exist anymore.


Wow. That statement and what it implies, more than all the weirdness of 4E from designer weblogs, tells me what WotC really thinks of me as a customer.

Emphasis mine.

That statement, as fully quoted in your post, includes the qualifier 'just about'; it also specifically applies to the campaigns those DMs ran, not the beliefs of the DMs themselves. It is far less of a generalization than you make it out to be. That statement, as reflected in the title of this thread where you edited out said qualifiers, might be the 'window' or implication' you claim it to be; that statement as fully quoted, however, is not.