TSR The Making and Breaking of Deities & Demigods

[Jay Verkuilen]

Im not sure what needs to be sourced. This is common knowledge. <...>

Uh... sure. Common knowledge to whom, exactly?

 

[M.T. Black]

Thanks, Jim! I love that book, and it has one of the best covers TSR ever did. We really enjoyed the heroes section, and it was fun to compare our characters to King Aruthur etc.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

A little additional perspective on Jim's comments: TSR legal may have blamed Chaosium for removing the Cthulhu and Eternal Champion material from Deities & Demigods, but Chaosium offered to let TSR continue using the material, with the sole condition being the new printings acknowledge Chaosium as granting permission for that use. Chaosium asked for no money. They just wanted their existing formal contracts with both Arkham House and Michael Moorcock acknowledged. In other words, Chaosium offered to play nice.

I'm sure they realized they'd sell a whole lot of their own books based on the advertisement in Deities & Demigods.

TSR shot itself in the foot like that a lot over the years, particularly over legal issues, no matter who was running the company. I say this as someone who worked with TSR legal both as a TSR book department editor and as someone caught up in legal issues with the company after I resigned. There was never a minor problem TSR could not make into a major one, once they got legal involved.

Back in the day they were known as They Sue Regularly for a reason!

 

[dave2008]

Im not sure what needs to be sourced. This is common knowledge.

Dellingr is dawn.

Sunlight is the alfar and by extension Freyr in the sense of good sunshower weather for fertile crops.

Sunlight (corona, rays, beams, gleams) is distinct from the sun disk, who is Sól.

Regarding Baldr. For example, Simek discusses the obscure (and perhaps complex) etymology, and concludes his name means ‘shining day’, which most archeologists accept. The Saxon cognate of Baldr is Baldag, where ‘dag’ means ‘day’.

Norse texts describe Baldr shining all light. His home is a place called ‘broad radiance’.

Note daylight is luminous in beauty, but daylight is also the ‘wisest’ being, luminous and perceptive of mind.

You described Baldr as: "Baldr is daylight. Literal daylight." That description doesn't mesh with his death. If Baldr is literal daylight, why are we not in eternal darkness? The most likely answer: no one thought of Baldr as literal daylight. What is your source for detailing how the norse believe Baldr to be literal daylight? He wasn't asking for the source or meaning of his name, he is asking for your source in understanding the nature of the norse spirits which some call gods and you do not.

 

[cbwjm]

My whole entry into D&D back in the early 80's was primarily inspired by my love of mythology, so this book was always my favorite. I remember having debates in high school about how some listing, or even some minor detail inside a listing, should have been done in our vast scholarly opinions. LOL.

(I miss my high school years when I knew everything with such certainty)

Now I want to get my copy out and flip through it when I get home.

That's pretty much how I ended up getting into DnD.

 

[Eis]

I mean, they didn't set out to provide a scholarly treatise of religions... it's a D&D take on them.... for gaming purposes

much like marvel comics or movies or Neil Gaiman books aren't accurate representations of Norse mythos etc.

 

[Maxperson]

I wonder if GRR Martin might have found inspirations from Elric and Melnibone and wrote them into the Targaryens and Valyria? My brothers certainly enjoyed their Dragon Knights of Melnibone campaign.

I was just looking at my Elric books and thinking that I need to re-read them.

 

[Maxperson]

To avoid falsehoods is a reasonable standard.

For example, the Norse mythos.

Deities & Demigods makes many false statements.

"Balder (God of Beauty)"
• Baldr is a vættr, an animistic nature being, not a polytheistic god.
• Baldr has nothing to do with being worshiped, nor being worshiped for his ‘beauty’.
• Baldr is daylight. Literal daylight. The same daylight streams thru our windows.
• Daylight is beautiful.
• Daylight reveals truth.
• Daylight brings new life.
• Daylight brings new hope − especially in northerly dark winters.

"Valkyries. These warrior maidens ride pegasi."
• Since when has any Norse text ever mentioned the word ‘pesasi’? Certainly not in relation to the valkyrjur.

"Thor. Chaotic Good."
• Þórr literally is social order. If anything he is Lawful Neutral.
• Norwegian Norse view him as rescuing humans, so at least here, Lawful Good (with hints of Paladin smiting) seems fair.

"Odin. Neutral Good."
• Óðinn is a Danish thing, Freyr is a Swedish thing, and Þórr is a Norwegian thing.
• In the Norwegian version of Óðinn, he is treacherous, probably Evil.
• Óðinn is literally cosmic order, astronomical cycles, seasonal cycles, etcetera.
• Probably Lawful Neutral, but again too treacherous. Neutral at best, probably Neutral Evil.

"Norns. three."
• There are many nornir.
• The three jǫtnar nornir are more about the fate of the cosmos, like when Ragnarǫk happens.
• But when it comes to the lives of human individuals, the alfar nornir are way more important.
• The jǫtnar Nornir are called Neutral, and probably fair enough, cruel inscrutable fate
• but a Norse tradition views these Nornir dooming the æsir in Ragnarǫk in order to protect humanity from them

Frey (sunshine and the elves)
• ok but peripheral
• Freyr is specifically the natural phenomenon of sex
• In addition to sexuality, Freyr connotes wealth (fertility) and peace (good relationships)

And so on. I can continue at length about the many falsifications in the Deities & Demigods.

It isnt just that the Deities & Demigods is wrong, it is the book is wrong about some of the most central concepts that matter to these cultures. It is misappropriation.

I am just giving examples pertaining to Norse spiritual heritages.

At the same time, I am familiar with many religions because of my anthropology, and because of friends who adhere to those religions.

The Deities & Demigods is false about other peoples sacred beliefs.

I have to say, so what. It's not attempting to represent a culture. It's not attempting to represent accuracy. It's not even attempting to represent any religion. It's just attempting to add some fun to the game. Think of it like a movie that is "Based on a true story." Everyone knows that the movie going to be very loosely based on that story, at best.

 

[maceochaid]

Im not sure what needs to be sourced. This is common knowledge.

Dellingr is dawn.

Sunlight is the alfar and by extension Freyr in the sense of good sunshower weather for fertile crops.

Sunlight (corona, rays, beams, gleams) is distinct from the sun disk, who is Sól.

Regarding Baldr. For example, Simek discusses the obscure (and perhaps complex) etymology, and concludes his name means ‘shining day’, which most archeologists accept. The Saxon cognate of Baldr is Baldag, where ‘dag’ means ‘day’.

Norse texts describe Baldr shining all light. His home is a place called ‘broad radiance’.

Note daylight is luminous in beauty, but daylight is also the ‘wisest’ being, luminous and perceptive of mind.

So like Simek is a source you could quote, and you did. So thank you.

But your premise that some Norse entities in the myths were primarily animistic versus theistic is what I'm interested in. There are a couple reasons I'm not convinced of your thesis that Norse mythic entities were not viewed as deities. We have very few sources, mostly Post Christian Icelandic that are highly euhemerized. While I agree completely that we must be careful about over generalizing German, Saxon, Norse, and Icelandic sources, the paucity of sources means anything we can determine cannot be anything but generalizations from these few strands. There is a clear connection between German and Norse deities, so while nothing is for certain looking cross German and Norse mythology we do get some clues.

1. Many Gods match Indo-European God name cognates. Thor and Tiw for instance. In each of the Indo-European cultures these names are connected to Gods, not animistic forces. Each culture seems to have stories, they are anthropomorphic, and have interactions with each other.
2. In the writings of Tacitus the Germans seem to be worshipping divinities that are identifiable to the Romans as Gods like their own. Donar is Zeus, Woden is Mercury, the match seems odd to us, but there is no evidence they had a completely shocking encounter with people who worshipped something different than what the Romans worshipped.
3. In the Eddas they also seem to follow the Ur-Indo European myth of a battle between the fertility gods and the mage/priest/chieftain gods. This myth suggests they have a society which seems uncharacteristic of an animistic system. Freyr seems very central to this myth.
4. The Eddas have several cosmic forces that are not described as people, the sun and moon, Yggsdrasil, etc. Baldr does not seem to be of the same kind of thng as this.
5. The Eddas consistently portray the Aesir and Vanir as anthropomorphic, having both familial and social relationships, having dwellings, owning particular items, etc. Baldr has a mother and a father. Freyr has a sister and a wife. Freyr owns magic items that give him power.
6. This depiction is supported by the few Icelandic Sagas that feature gods where there is the very standard God-Hero relationship where Gods appear to heroes, to give gifts, utter prophecy, and intercede on behalf of mortals. In all these cases they are represented normally indistinguishable from humans.
7. The second Mereseberg charms also show the Gods Odin and Baldr as very human, owning a horse, etc. They do not seem to be sunlight, but people who own horses and who have supernatural powers, again very theistic appearing.
8. The categories of beings are fuzzy, but in the Eddas there are distinct groups of entities Jotuns are seen as different as Aesir, while nature spirits in the form of Trolls, Elves, and Dwarfs is somewhat malleable, but again separate from each other. All groups are presented as generally humanoid creatures, that dwell in or are associated with rocks, rivers, trees, etc. but are generally not described as being those things.

So far you have only provided etymologies of names as the only proof that Norse people thought of the characters Baldr and Freyr as animistic forces rather than Gods. The fact that the names Baldr and Freyr meant things like sunlight, does not mean they were seen as solely natural phenomena and not gods. My name has a greek root, meaning defender of men, that does not make me a policeman. In addition the Eddas, Sagas, and traces in other texts don't seem to in anyway resemble animistic forces, but a very standard Indo-European family of Anthrpromorphic deities.

We cannot say much of anything for sure about the German/Scandinavian/Saxon religion. However in the debate about whether the names in the mythological sources represent theistic or animistic beliefs, it seems like the more cautious scholar would err on the side of theist rather than animist belief. What sources do we have for this animistic Baldr? There is no source that I know of that gives a discussion of how pre-Christian Scandinavians thought about or understood the entities named in these mythologies. So that is why I'm wondering, where are you getting these ideas from?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

"Valkyries. These warrior maidens ride pegasi."

It's in the MCU so it must be true.