A few years ago a well known writer in the old school D&D renaissance blogsphere, James M of
Grognardia, came up with the idea for a book compiling minor deities and trivial divinities. The kind of killable "gods"/daemons often seen in old school pulp fantasy stories or movies, and as exemplified in the classic D&D supplement from Judges' Guild,
Unknown Gods.
http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2010/11/open-call-petty-gods.html
Open Call: Petty Gods
Inspired by this post over at Planet Algol (and with Blair's permission to pursue this), I've decided, likely foolishly, to put together a book with the help of anyone who's willing to donate their time, energy, and creativity to it. The working title is Petty Gods and it's intended as an homage to Judges Guild's awesome Unknown Gods, which presented 83 minor gods -- complete with stats -- for use in your D&D adventures and campaigns.
And when I say "minor gods," I mean it: we're talking deities like the goddess of dancing girls, the god of summer storms, and the goddess of deep water fish, among others. That's the vibe I'm aiming for with this project too. If anything, I'd prefer that the divinities in Petty Gods be even more minor, esoteric, and obscure than those in Unknown Gods -- the kinds of beings worshiped only by a handful of devoted (and probably crazed) followers and whose power is limited enough that they could conceivably be offed by a party of appropriately bloody-minded PCs. In short, this is a "Monster Manual" for swords-and-sorcery in the manner of Elric.
The idea was that the book would be a free PDF, or available by print on demand from Lulu at cost, as just a community effort to make something cool, rather than a profit-minded project. Anyway, it got off to a pretty good start, with lots of folks offering up entries and a number of artists submitting some pretty sweet art. But James never wound up finishing the book; between paying gigs and his own Kickstarter, he was overcommitted with his time, and never finished the editing, layout, and actual production.
Fast forward to Spring of 2013, and another blogger decided to take over and get this sucker cranked out. The editing is a little rough, but a lot of the entries are pretty fun and the art's pretty cool. You can download it for free at Gorgonmilk:
http://gorgonmilk.blogspot.com/2013/04/original-petty-gods-free-pdf.html
Also, Greg at Gorgonmilk is doing a new book, and soliciting more public entries, as well as obtaining contributions from famous authors. Believe it or not, guys like Michael Moorcock and Gene Wolfe have agreed to contribute! So if you're interested, check out the developments!