Tag Archives: H. P. Lovecraft

D&D’s Biggest Controversies Ranked—6. The Melnibonéan and Cthulhu Mythoi Disappear From Deities & Demigods

In 1980, TSR published Deities & Demigods complete with sections describing the Melnibonéan mythos of Elric and H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. Meanwhile, another game publisher, Chaosium, prepared to release the licensed games Stormbringer and Call of Cthulhu based on the same stories. They sent cease-and-desist letters to TSR.

The legal demand put TSR in a bind. TSR had gained letters granting permission to include the sections from Lovecraft publisher Arkham House and from Elric author Michael Moorcock. Armed with these letters, TSR could have fought. “The company wasn’t rich at that point,” explained TSR executive James Ward. Brian Blume, TSR’s head of operations, “didn’t want to go to California, get a California lawyer, and spend time and money winning the case.” TSR could have stopped selling Deities & Demigods, but it sold great. Pulling the book meant pulping copies on hand, reprinting, and paying new costs. Reprinting the book with fewer pages would take time. During the lapse, some customers would lose interest and TSR would lose sales.

So TSR worked a deal with Chaosium. In exchange for keeping the Elric and Cthulhu content in Deities & Demigods, TSR allowed Chaosium to make their Thieves’ World supplement compatible with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

Despite trading for permission to keep the mythoi, TSR removed them from new printings of the book. Brian Blume likely feared the content would lead gamers to a competitor’s games. And besides, the change led to a shorter, more profitable book.

For the full story, see The True Story of the Cthulhu and Elric Sections Removed from Deities & Demigods.

Next: Number 5.

The True Story of the Cthulhu and Elric Sections Removed from Deities & Demigods

Just a couple of years after its release, the original Deities & Demigods from 1980 became legend. The first copies included sections featuring the Melnibonéan mythos from the Elric stories by Michael Moorcock and the Cthulhu mythos from the tales of H.P. Lovecraft. Every Dungeons & Dragons fan knew the legend: TSR printed the sections without permission, got sued, and now the book was censored. The tale boasted a delicious mix of scandal, arrogance, and justice, and for those of us who owned one of those banned copies, a priceless collectable certain to fund our retirements. Too bad none of the legend was true.

Today, the book’s co-author, James M. Ward still works to spread the facts. “I absolutely hate it when ignorant people say TSR and I acted in copyright infringement.”

But how did the the Elric and Cthulhu content reach the book, and why did it disappear?

Deities & Demigods describes gods, mostly drawn from cultures around the world.

When James Ward started the book, he proposed a list of the pantheons he wanted to include. In addition to drawing from folklore, the list included gods created in fiction by three authors: Lovecraft, Moorcock, and Fritz Leiber. Each deeply influenced D&D co-creator Gary Gygax and the game. But to use the authors’ work, TSR needed permission.

Leiber had created the Nehwon mythos for his tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. After Leiber attended Gen Con X in 1977 as guest of honor, he had stayed a Gary’s house for a week. Gary called the author a friend. Surely, gaining Leiber’s authorization proved easy.

The chance of gaining authorization to use the work of Lovecraft and Moorcock seemed smaller.

Lovecraft’s key work suffers from a muddled copyright status. Up until 2019, any stories he published before 1923 qualified as public domain, but his most important stories, including “Call of Cthulhu” and “At the Mountains of Madness” reached print later. After the author’s death, two of Lovecraft’s protégés founded Arkham House Publishers to print collections of his work. Today, Arkham House claims Lovecraft’s copyrights. But did Lovecraft’s heirs ever actually transfer the rights to the publisher? Also, prior to 1978, copyright holders needed to renew copyrights to maintain ownership. Failure to renew landed the movie It’s a Wonderful Life in the public domain. Did a once, nearly-forgotten writer of pulp fiction get more mindful handling? Did anyone with legal standing ever file renewals? Decades have buried the answers. This year, Lovecraft’s remaining copyrights begin to expire, year by year, until the last expire in 2032. Until then, his tales may or may not be in public domain.

Nonetheless, Jim Ward wrote Arkham House asking to include Lovecraft’s material. He received a letter back granting permission. At about the same time, the game company Chaosium struck a similar deal. In design notes in Different Worlds magazine, editor Lynn Willis wrote, “I negotiated rights for the Cthulhu mythos from Arkham House.” Call of Cthulhu would not reach print until the summer of 1981, but work on the game started much earlier. “After many months delay, the manuscript of the game was unsatisfactory, and had to be turned down. It was originally was to be a 1980 release; now we were hoping for 1981.” In 1980, Sandy Petersen took over the project and delivered a classic role-playing game.

More than likely, someone at Arkham failed to realize how granting a permission to describe Lovecraft’s mythos in a game-related reference book conflicted with a license to publish a game. How could a game be a book? Granting permission to TSR probably just seemed like a good way to introduce Lovecraft to a wider audience.

In the popular conception of the time, games sold from toy stores for children. Gaming remained a tiny hobby that few even knew existed. No one outside the hobby considered existential horror tales from the 1920s a suitable topic for a game. Requests to use Cthulhu for a game of all things probably puzzled the administrative staff at Arkham. As this story keeps showing, few outside of gaming saw game rights to fiction as anything of value.

Jim Ward wrote Michael Moorcock requesting authorization to describe the mythos from the Elric stories. The author granted permission. In a 2009 interview, he explains his thinking. “It was in the spirit of the 60s/70s when it seemed to many of us that we were sharing in a common culture and the products of that culture.”

But Moorcock proved overly generous. Years earlier, Chaosium had bought the board-game rights to the Elric books. That license led to the Elric game in 1977. After the success of RuneQuest, Chaosium decided to adapt their roleplaying game rules to Moorcock’s fiction, so they returned to Moorcock’s agent and gained an RPG license.

Chaosium insider and RuneQuest designer Steve Perrin explains the source of the trouble. “Chaosium arranged for the Elric license through Moorcock’s agent. Jim went directly to Moorcock, who did not consult with his agent. He just sent back a note saying ‘Go for it.’ So the only person Chaosium could sue would be Moorcock, which is not a good practice between a licensor and licensee.”

Arioch from the 1st printing of Deities & Demigods

Moorcock never expected his tales of a doomed sorcerer and a soul-stealing sword to become valuable for gaming. “I hadn’t anticipated that some people would start turning all this stuff into commercial businesses and so it was a bit of a surprise when D&D and Chaosium, for instance, started fighting over who ‘owned’ the rights to the Elric ‘cosmology.’”

In 1980, Deities & Demigods reached gamers, complete with sections describing the Melnibonéan mythos and the Cthulhu mythos. Meanwhile, Chaosium prepared to publish their Stormbringer and Call of Cthulhu role-playing games in 1981. They sent cease-and-desist letters to TSR. “I don’t blame them a bit,” Ward writes. However, Chaosium knew nothing about the two letters authorizing TSR to use the content.

The legal demand put TSR in a bind. Armed with their letters of permission, TSR could have fought. “The company wasn’t rich at that point,” Ward explains. Brian Blume, TSR’s head of operations, “didn’t want to go to California, get a California lawyer, and spend time and money winning the case.” TSR could have stopped selling Deities & Demigods, but it sold great. Pulling the book meant pulping copies on hand, reprinting, and paying new costs. Reprinting the book with fewer pages would take time. During the lapse, some customers would lose interest and TSR would lose sales.

So TSR sought an accommodation with Chaosium. Fortunately, both companies had something to give.

In addition to the licensed role-playing games Chaosium scheduled for 1981, the company planned Thieves’ World, a roleplaying supplement based on Robert Asprin’s shared-world series of books. In order to give the supplement maximum appeal, it would include game stats for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Adventures in Fantasy, Chivalry & Sorcery, DragonQuest, The Fantasy Trip, RuneQuest, Tunnels & Trolls, and even Traveller. But TSR zealously defended the trademarks to AD&D and D&D. If the supplement touted compatibility and named the games on the cover, Chaosium needed permission. In Designers & Dragons, game historian Shannon Appelcline writes, “Chaosium got the rights to use the TSR trademarks in Thieves’ World and in exchange TSR was allowed to continue using the [Melnibonéan and Cthulhu mythos in Deities & Demigods].” As part of the deal, TSR added a notice into the book’s second printing. “Special Thanks are also given to Chaosium, Inc. for permission to use the material found in the Cthulhu Mythos and the Melnibonéan Mythos.”

If TSR had kept the notice and the original content, the story would have ended quietly, with no bogus legends of plagiarism and banning. But for 1980’s third printing, TSR had time to drop the Lovecraft and Moorcock sections and reconfigure the book with fewer pages.

Why did Brian Blume choose to withdraw the content despite trading for permission to keep it? Appelcline cites a desire to soothe the same fears of Satanism that would lead TSR to retitle the book Legends & Lore in 1985. Presumably, existential horror and evil gods might worry parents, and that worried TSR. Other sources say Blume didn’t want a TSR book to fuel interest in Elric or Cthulhu because that would drive players to a competitor’s games.

As for a copy of Deities & Demigods funding a retirement, more copies of the first two printings exist than the legend suggests. According to the D&D collector’s site The Acaeum as many as 15,000 copies reached buyers. In auction, the book fetches more than other D&D hardcovers, but prices have fallen.

In an odd postscript, Fritz Leiber, the third author featured in Deities & Demigods, would land TSR and Chaosium in a second dispute over conflicting licenses. In 1983, Chaosium planned a follow up to Thieves’ World featuring Leiber’s city of Lankhmar. They already had a license agreement when TSR announced that they had a license from Leiber too. “It turned out that Leiber had indeed licensed both companies,” Appelcline writes. “Chaosium pointed out that their license was earlier, but TSR replied that if that was the case, they would sue Leiber.” Gary Gygax may have counted the author as a friend, but Brian Blume ran TSR. To protect Leiber from a suit, Chaosium dropped their claim. In an email, Chaosium founder Greg Stafford explained the decision. “Fritz was one of my literary heroes in those days, and also a terminal alcoholic, and I just imagined the havoc that would ensue for him, so I just dropped it.” In 1985, TSR published Lankhmar: City of Adventure.

Why the Temple of the Frog, Dungeons & Dragons’ first printed dungeon, seemed unplayable

In the winter of 1977, the Dungeons & Dragons basic set introduced me to the game. Hooked, I sought everything I could find for the game. The new Monster Manual delivered a treasury of creatures—with pictures! The white box gave spells to 6th level, and then Supplement I Greyhawk raised spells to 9th level.

But Supplement II Blackmoor disappointed me. My dungeon had no room for aquatic monsters. Monks broke my notion of fantasy. Assassins invited trouble. A strange dungeon obsessed with frogs stole half the pages. Anthropomorphic frogs belonged in children’s books; not in this daring new game.

I resolved to overcome my bias against monstrous frogs. As far as I knew, no other dungeons were in print, and Temple of the Frog came from the creators of the game. Surely the temple showcased the best of my new passion, and I decided to run it for my friends.

Temple of the Frog begins with pages of backstory. Eager for a peek at an dungeon from D&D’s creators, I skipped past the dense history to the underground’s room key.

So my trouble started on that first level, where the party could easily stumble into an encounter with 200 soldiers, part of an army housed in connected barracks. On the next level, the breeding pool contains over a 1000 killer frogs. Few of these rooms include interesting content, just hordes of soldiers, frogs, and coinage. Even if my players could handle the threats, I saw no way to make it fun.

I kept setting the temple aside and then returning to it, hoping to unlock whatever secrets enabled D&D’s designers to play this adventure. I never cracked it. I did not realize you couldn’t play the temple as a D&D adventure, because it still fit the style of Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor campaign and the Chainmail mass-combat rules that spawned it. Even some of its terminology reached back to Chainmail, with creatures who “take 3 hits” rather than “have 3 hit points,” and trolls who “fight as” ogres.

The temple vexed me, but I had skipped the introduction, so I never even saw the strangest parts. The high priest, Stephen the Rock comes from a sci-fi version of our world. His +3 flying battle armor and +3 shield combine to grant 18(00) strength, 18 dexterity, invisibility, and protection from any magical, mental, or energy attacks. His +3 sword shoots lightning. He enjoys instant communication with 179 ring-bearing henchmen. Blackmoor’s version of Kang the Conqueror has a medical kit that heals any damage short of an anatomical jigsaw puzzle and a communication module that teleports to anywhere on the planet or to an orbital scout ship.

Blofeldpleasance67The high priest is a super villain. The Temple of the Frog exists as a lair fit for plotting world conquest. Like any villain’s lair, this one comes with a messy way of disposing of Mr. Bond and the henchmen who fail to kill him. Rather than piranha, alligators, or laser sharks, the temple’s trap door leads to killer frogs. Add a monorail and Blofeld could move in.

Between his wish-fulfilling gear and ordinary name, Stephen the Rock shows his origin as a villainous Mary Sue.

Dave Arneson’s campaign started as miniature battles with the players taking all the sides, hero and villain. In 1973, he collaborated with Stephen Rocheford to create a nefarious persona for the game. Pronounced Rockford, Stephen’s last name gained him the nicknames Rocky and the Rock, which led to a name for his baddie. Stephen recalls, “Dave approached me to invent an evil character that would be different from the norm in this world. Ergo, I thought and settled on a character that was not of this world of Blackmoor. My inspiration eventually was from an old episode of the original Star Trek television series. In it, Captain Kirk found a planet of Nazi’s and found the earthling, an historian, who founded it in the hope eliminating it’s excesses and organizing this society for the betterment of all in the name of efficiency. I told Dave Arneson and he was delighted.

My character was a soldier (I was an Army Officer) who crash landed in Blackmoor with several others from a spaceship. He found a village organized around a group of monks. They and the villagers thought the stranger was a very powerful wizard; in fact he was a man who used a phaser and so overawed the indigenous people that he was proclaimed the High Priest of the Monks of the Swamp.

Dave Arneson’s friend from the era, Jeff Berry, thinks H. P. Lovecraft inspired the frog theme. “You just had to have frogmen and other servants of the Old Ones infesting the [swamp],” he writes. “It gave the players something to do when they weren’t exploring the dungeons.” Dave’s exact inspiration may be the frog-like deity Tsathoggua, as described by Clark Ashton Smith in his story “The Seven Geases.” Plus, legend says that Dave used a ceramic frog from his mother’s garden as a game prop.

As Stephen’s account continues, he seems like someone playing a character in a one-on-one role-playing session. “I set about to organize a theocracy based on the worship of frogs, which were in great supply in the swamp. These frogs were bred and genetically improved over time until some special breeds grew to enormous size. A temple was erected and an Order of Monks reorganized around this hall of worship.” Stephen’s Roman Catholic upbringing led to the temple’s Catholic flavor, complete with a pipe organ and papal robes.

Eventually, rumors of a secret society in the swamp led the heroes of Blackmoor to investigate, but they came unprepared for a confrontation with the “weird guy in the robes who shot an immensely powerful lightning bolt.” They woke later in the swamp with gaps in their memory.

Blackmoor’s heroes probably never returned to the temple, but if they had, the rules would have changed—literally—to Chainmail and its mass-combat scale. D&D historian Jon Peterson explains, “How could a party of adventurers be expected to assault a temple with twenty men at its gate tower, thirty at its main gate, ten men per corner tower and a thousand guards in reserve in case of trouble? Or to deal with the first level of the dungeon, where a given barracks room might contain hundreds of men? The answer of course is to bring an army, and stage a wargame rather than a dungeon crawl.

To unlock Temple of the Frog, players needed to treat it as a James-Bond villain’s lair to be infiltrated. And after their spying ran its course, they would need follow Bond’s playbook and call in the commandos, ninjas, or their men at arms. Players needed Chainmail for that endgame.

No wonder this adventure vexed a generation of players.

Next: How did an adventure that did not work as a dungeon crawl—or even work with D&D’s rules—become the first D&D adventure in print?