Dance of the Butterfly

I owned one of the original editions of Deities & Demigods. For those not in the know, this is a companion book for the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. It basically provides detailed information on various entities from mythology and more creative fiction, allowing them to be used in the game.

Within the 144 page hardcover book are some great illustrations and interesting information.  I never used any of it in the game, but as a budding aficionado of mythology, fantasy, and speculative fiction, I just enjoyed reading through the entries.  There was information on mythology you’d expect like Greek and Egyptian, along with some you might not expect like American Indian and Central American. And tucked inside all of these appeared listings on the Cthulhu and Melnibonéan Mythos.

It turns out that TSR’s (the publisher) understanding of the copyright on these two intellectual properties may have been a bit off, and the inclusion of their information brought about legal action or the threat thereof. It was all worked out, of course, but subsequent editions saw the removal of those listings, thus making the first edition a more valuable collector’s item.

Of course, back then, I had no idea. I just thought it was a neat book. I also thought skateboarding was neat, so a few years later, when I was saving up for all the parts to build my own board, I decided to offload a bunch of “stuff” in a garage sale. Yes, this book was sold at that sale for some god awfully low price.

It still pains me to this day to have lost that book. I could probably find a used version, and from what I can tell, it is not prohibitively expensive, but I still wish I had my original one.

Lesson learned.