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So I was in the used book store and saw a copy of Deities and Demigods from 1st edition AD&D (circa 1980). I wasn't even going to look at it since I already have a copy of the rerelease Legends and Lore. But...

Legends speak of the 1st printing of that book, the printing that included Cthulhu and Elrick, characters that TSR did not have the rights to.

They were quickly removed and I've never even seen a copy with them. I've heard of 1st printings going for $100s of dollars and this one was only $20. So surely it couldn't be...



It was.

Look for a retro review soon in case anyone wants to run Cthulhu in a 1st edition AD&D game.

:jaw drops, drool drips:

I will need those stats. Not because I would ever play AD&D again. Rather, because I want to be part of this awesome moment in your life.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Actually, K_K, I do have an actual question. Have you ever played Chaosium's games? I played CoC and didn't care for it too well. Never tried Elric! (or read any of the fiction for that matter).

You've NEVER read The Eternal Champion series?

FOR SHAME!

You say "The Eternal Champion series" as if there were only one of them

There are literally hundreds of them. Moorecock was very good at churning them out

I look forward to your review.

I just can bring myself to get them for a simple, shallow reason. The covers are so ugly. The money simply refuses to leave the wallet.

I managed to get about 12 of the books for £11 at a charity shop a couple of years ago. Most of the rest I have managed to pick up for £1-£3 in charity shops too. They are not that expensive.

Though I don't really agree with you on the covers. They are just a sign of the times they were written in

I mean the currently published ones here in the US. They look like they're marketed to 12 year old goth girls.

Ah, I've not seen any of the new publications.

They even look better here than IRL.

Oh dear god...

Those covers are terrible indeed, awful stuff.

Contents are good though.

back at the OT : I've got that version as well knocking round somewhere, crappy "drawings" and all. I look forward to your dissection.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:So I was in the used book store and saw a copy of Deities and Demigods from 1st edition AD&D (circa 1980). I wasn't even going to look at it since I already have a copy of the rerelease Legends and Lore. But...

Legends speak of the 1st printing of that book, the printing that included Cthulhu and Elrick, characters that TSR did not have the rights to.

They were quickly removed and I've never even seen a copy with them. I've heard of 1st printings going for $100s of dollars and this one was only $20. So surely it couldn't be...



It was.

Look for a retro review soon in case anyone wants to run Cthulhu in a 1st edition AD&D game.

You need to include that book among your copies of the Koran, the Battle, and the Talmud
at work. Just slip it in there. Or give it as a gift to some foreign country as proof of American
religious tolerance.

Manchu wrote:I mean the currently published ones here in the US. They look like they're marketed to 12 year old goth girls.

Probably are. What else is new these days?

Me not buying fantasy novels.

Oh, no wonder. They're covers done by Brom.

Manchu wrote:
Actually, K_K, I do have an actual question. Have you ever played Chaosium's games? I played CoC and didn't care for it too well. Never tried Elric! (or read any of the fiction for that matter).

We tried one of the earlier versions of Elric in college (Stormbringer IIRC). Like a lot of the late 80s early 90s games it was an attempt at realistic combat and injuries. So after one game our party of blind maimed insane adventurers decided to go play Rifts. I never saw the point of realistic combat, I mean why am I playing an RPG if not to go do the stupid things I would never do in real life.

Heard great things about Cthulhu never played it.

Manchu wrote:

They even look better here than IRL.

Ick. The ones I had used these covers





Don't know who did them though. But soon you will feast your eyes on early 80s Elric!

malfred wrote:
You need to include that book among your copies of the Koran, the Battle, and the Talmud
at work. Just slip it in there. Or give it as a gift to some foreign country as proof of American
religious tolerance.

It's kind of odd they include Shinto and Hindu gods who, unlike Zeus et al, have active faiths built around them. Hey 700 million Hindu guys guess what? My party can totally kick Ganesh's butt! I guess after my 36th level fighter Broot kills him y'all will have to worship Broot instead huh!

Yeah, this will end well...

Re: Elric art, I wish the Elf Quest couple had been able to go through with their movie. Additionally, I wonder how it ever came to pass that Elves were depicted as feminine. I don't think you could pull this out of Tolkien.

K_K, we need to get a RPG group together. You're only like two hours away.

Also, love the "Grey Space Marines" sig, especially "and question the lifestyle choices of the Green Space Marines."

whoas....

I remember that book.

Nice find. I remember friends having that book, and then when I got mine a few months later, I couldn't understand why the Cthulhu stuff wasn't in there.

Of course, it wasn't long before I graduated to Call of Cthulhu anyway, and then out of RPGs altogether.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:

Heard great things about Cthulhu never played it.
...

Don't bother, I played it back in college and it was along the same lines as Twighlight 2000 and other "realistic" game, meaning you had to make a new character every time you played because you were either killed or went insane.

I remember rifts, now that was a fun game.



OT (regarding religious tolerance)
Someone was placing religious pamphlets in the break room at work so I finally had enough and printed out a few Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster pamphlets and placed them next to the christian ones. Over the next several days, people were talking about the pamphlets and giggling but the Christian ones were never taken.

I had a similar experience to Agnosto with CoC. In the end, I just abandoned the rules altogether in favor of complete cooperative story telling with a few coin tosses/die rolls to add a sense of fate.

Yes all the old farts (see Frazz's comment) like me, remember a "guy" who had the book. The guy, I remember, who had it cherished it as though it were a new born babe.

GG

I had one and sold it for $100 11 years ago, figured I'd never use it...

Seems strange to think of it selling for so much. I saw one not long ago on ebay with a "buy it now" price of $26. It's a nice curiosity but I actually would not even pay that for it.

I think it totally depends on how nostalgic the book was for you. To Manchu, obviously not much, but maybe "that guy" who had it in 1980 might think it's worth that much, because of how much he loved the book back then.

GG

There is a significant collector’s market for old D&D stuff. As usual with any such collector’s market, exact quality/degree of preservation is a major factor for collectors, while it’s not particularly important for casual fans. A lot of those old TSR hardcovers had excellent printing and binding (not so much for later ones, though, like the infamously bad job done on Unearthed Arcana), and have survived in excellent condition.

The best collector’s site I know of is The Acaeum, which lists the original (with Cthulu) version of D&DG estimated at $10 - $52 depending on quality.

http://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/rulebooks.html

Clearly, a thing is worth what someone would pay for it. I won't say no one should pay $100 or even $26 for this, just that I would not. Then again, whatever fond memories I have of AD&D (second--too young for first) are dispelled when I flip through the books I still have.

CoC was a *great* game, IMO. But it was very hard on players who came in with a D&D mentality.

So no, you don't lower someone into the hole. Yes, you drop dynamite into it and call it a day. No, you don't mix it up with cultists armed with tommy guns. Yes, you run like crazy. No, you don't allocate all your points into combat skills, because they won't really matter. Yes, you do boost Spot Hidden and Library skills, because finding clues and understanding a threat will often give you a better way of dealing with it.

With a good and experienced Keeper -- and players that adapted well -- it was a more realistic and problem-solving-oriented game in which success was something to really be celebrated. Just my $0.02.

I had a copy of that book as well as 2 copies of the original Fiend Folio. I tried to sell them both in the early '90s because I had heard rumors of both going for nearly $100/each. Somehow they never left the auction table at GenCon 16 and I saw neither book nor any money that day.

C'est la vie. I don't know why people would want such things now. They're going to be in rough shape and the stats are going to be totally useless. They truly are a product of their time.

Bad news, K_K.
That book isn't so rare, anymore.

Pre-ebay, you could get it for $50 or so. When feebay was new and young (and more "ebay" than "feebay"), the prices raised a lot. People who could not FIND them suddenly had them at their fingertips, and they paid handsomely for them. That raised their "value" substantially, until people started realizing how common they really were, and prices dropped dramatically.
Now, you can get them constantly for $20 to $25 tops. If you look around, you can beat those prices easily.

"Ebay. Killing the value of collectibles since 1996!"

Additionally, back in 96 and for a while after, the book was still usable with AD&D. Now, it's reference material at best for those who want to game with it. Third edition D&D lowered the value of everything TSR/WotC put out before it, too.


Eric