Holmes wrote the DDG Cthulhu section?

[Falconer]

Hmm, check out the credits for Deities & Demi-gods.

[geoffrey]

James Ward pretty much wrote all of DDG, with the exception of the Finnish Mythos (which Rob Kuntz wrote). I'm sure that Dr. Holmes gave his assistance with the Cthulhu Mythos, though. Holmes (with additions by Kuntz) also wrote "The Lovecraftian Mythos in Dungeons & Dragons" which appeared in The Dragon #12 (Feb. 1978).

[Falconer]

Oct 23, 2011 16:46:54 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

Holmes (with additions by Kuntz) also wrote "The Lovecraftian Mythos in Dungeons & Dragons" which appeared in The Dragon #12 (Feb. 1978).

That explains it. Thanks.

[austrodavicus]

I reckon it's fair to say Holmes did write the DDG Cthulhu section. Now I haven't done a thorough comparison, but check out for yourselves the text of Holmes' article (credited to Kuntz, who in turn credits it to Holmes) in The Dragon #12 with the description of of the Cthulhu Mythos descriptions in DDG. Same text from what I can see.

And of course Holmes also wrote a rebuttal in TD #16 of a letter to the editor in TD #14 which criticised his original article.

[Zenopus]

Thanks for bringing this topic up, Falconer (*exalt*). It's something I've been meaning to post about. A few months ago I made a close comparison of the two documents and realized, as austrodavicus notes (*exalt*), that the D&DG chapter is largely derived from the Dragon magazine article cited by Geoffrey above (*exalt*).

I came to the conclusion that Holmes should have been given a co-author credit for that section of D&DG. I've been meaning to update the Holmes Bibliography to reflect this. The D&DG Cthulhu mythos is very well known, but few realize the role Holmes played in authoring it.

Part of the problem is the weird attribution of the original article. The column is credited to "Rob Kuntz", which would place him as the primary author, but the intro paragraph essentially reverses this position by stating "J. Eric Holmes (known for his work with Basic Dungeons & Dragons) with additions by my humble self bring you parts of the Cthulhu Mythos". The follow-up letter by Holmes from Dragon #16 (May 1978, pg 22), ends with an editiorial note referring to him as a co-author of the original article. Furthermore, in this letter Holmes states or implies that he wrote at least portions of the entries for Azathoth, Cthulhu, Elder Signs, the Necronomicon, the Old Ones, and Shaggoths [sic, for Shoggoths]. For example, he writes: "My description of Alhazred's fate is taken from H.P. Lovecraft's "History and Chronology of the Necronmicon"".

Now compare this section in the two publications:

"Alhazred was seized in the streets of Damascus by invisible demons and devoured horribly in front of many witnesses. Those who have studied his writings have sometimes met a fate nearly as terrible" (The Lovecraftian Mythos in D&D, Dragon #12, Feb 1978, pg 18-19)

"Alhazred was later seized in the streets of a desert city by invisible demons and devoured horribly in front of many witnesses. Those who have studied his writings have sometimes met a fate nearly as terrible" (Deities & Demigods, page 48)

As you can see, they are almost exactly the same. Every section in the D&DG chapter (barring most of the introduction) has a corresponding entry in the original article. Some are revised more than others in D&DG. Only one section in the original article ("Yig, Supreme God of Serpents") is not found in D&DG.

[Zenopus]

Here's some more information I have in the Holmes Bibliography about the development of the original article from correspondence between Holmes & Kuntz:

"A post by Frank Mentzer in forums.gencon.com, 2004 stated:

'At GenCon 1977, [Holmes] met briefly with Rob Kuntz ... to talk about ideas for a revision of the old "Gods Demigods & Heroes" D&D supplement [and] agreed to do a brief summary of the gods presented in the works of H.P. Lovecraft, for use in the upcoming book "Deities & Demigods"
We have a new entry in our database for a copy of the "Original DDG Cthulhu Manuscript" (from someone's obscure archives), including:
a. Letter from Holmes to Kuntz, 10/20/77
b. Reply from Kuntz to Holmes (undated but presumably early Nov. 1977)
c. Reply from Holmes to Kuntz, 11/22/77
d. Typed manuscript of the "Lovecraftian Mythos in D&D" with many hand-written editorial notes and changes'"

* * * * *

Also, Rob was once asked about the authorship of the article on the Pied Piper Publishing Forum and replied:
"Originally J. Eric Holmes (And I added Hastur and a few others)"
(7/16/02, "Round Table Forum", thread titled "General OAD&D Trivia". See here)

So, I think the evidence (particularly Rob's words) points to Holmes being the primary co-author of the original article, and since much of the original article remains in the D&DG chapter, in my opinion he deserved a co-author credit for that section of D&DG.

[Falconer]

Was “From the Sorceror’s Scroll” Rob Kuntz’s column at the time? That would explain the weird authorship attribution there.

Anyway, this puts yet another nail in DDG’s coffin (if its best section is available in TD as a supplement to Sup. IV). Of course, DDG still has the cool art.

[Zenopus]

I revised what I wrote above into a blog post:

Dr. Holmes and the Cthulhu Mythos in D&DG

[Zenopus]

Oct 26, 2011 17:28:33 GMT -6 Falconer said:

Was “From the Sorceror’s Scroll” Rob Kuntz’s column at the time? That would explain the weird authorship attribution there.

Good point. I took a look at The Dragon #11, and sure enough there's the first FtSS column by Rob Kuntz. So it was his column at the time; there's another in The Dragon #13 ("Tolkien in D&D").

Anyway, this puts yet another nail in DDG’s coffin (if its best section is available in TD as a supplement to Sup. IV). Of course, DDG still has the cool art.

D&DG has perhaps my favorite collection of art in a TSR rulebook. I must admit that I haven't looked at GD&H very much. It suffers from the limited, public domain (?) art. It's almost a text dump with poor breaks between sections (and no table of contents or index). Howard's Hyborean Mythos seems the most interesting since it didn't make it in to the D&DG.

[Ghul]

Just wanted to chime in to say great work gentlemen. A fascinating topic. Zen, great work on the site and blog. You present like a scholar, and I do appreciate the effort.

[grodog]

FWIW, my recollection is that Rob wrote ~25% of D&DG and Jim Ward the remaining 75%.

[austrodavicus]

Oct 29, 2011 22:03:20 GMT -6 grodog said:

FWIW, my recollection is that Rob wrote ~25% of D&DG and Jim Ward the remaining 75%.

Except for the bit that Holmes wrote.

[Falconer]

I’m pretty sure Rob has stated that his co-authorship credit for DDG was solely because the work he did for Sup. IV (where he was lead co-author). In other words, any way in which DDG differs from what came before (in Sup IV or TD), the credit is due Jim Ward.

[geoffrey]

I think it was on Rob's dragonsfoot Q&A thread that he mentioned that he did the actual writing of DDG's Finnish Mythos. I think it's interesting that the heroes in the Finnish Mythos are loaded down with magic items, but none of the other heroes in the book are.

[Zenopus]

As it turns out, a fellow Acaeum member won the typed manuscript for the Dragon article that was auctioned at Gen Con (see above), and was kind enough to let me look at it.

From this manuscript, it's clear that Holmes wrote the bulk of the article, including the main intro and entries for Azathoth, Cthulhu, Hastur, Nyarlathotep, Shub-Niggurath, The Necronomicon, The Elder Sign, Yog-Sothoth, Byakhee, The Deep Ones, The Great Race, The Old Ones (aka Primoridal Ones), The Mi-Go and The Shaggoths [sic]. Kuntz added another introductory paragraph (the one in italics) and entries for Cthuga, Ithaqua and Yig, and made a few minor edits to Holmes' entries - just a few word changes and two added sentences.

Kuntz must have been mis-remembering when he said he added Hastur. The conception of Hastur is primarily a Derleth creation as are Cthuga and Ithaqua, so perhaps he switched these in his memory.

One of the minor revisions that Kuntz made was in the entry for The Deep Ones, where he changed "Every large group will have at least one evil high priest, level 3-10" to "at least one evil clerical type, level 3-10", presumably because in OD&D the title EHP should only refer to evil clerics levels 7 and up. In the entry for the Necronomicon, he changed "chaotic" to "chaotic evil". The other word changes are just for grammar.

Kuntz added one sentence (in parenthesis) concerning a saving throw to the entry for Nyarlathotep, and one sentence to end of the entry for Byakhee concerning damage inflicted.

For the most part, Holmes' original text, including some typos, is printed verbatim in the Dragon article.

[geoffrey]

Nov 15, 2011 21:49:18 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

As it turns out, a fellow Acaeum member won the typed manuscript for the Dragon article that was auctioned at Gen Con (see above), and was kind enough to let me look at it.

From this manuscript, it's clear that Holmes wrote the bulk of the article, including the main intro and entries for Azathoth, Cthulhu, Hastur, Nyarlathotep, Shub-Niggurath, The Necronomicon, The Elder Sign, Yog-Sothoth, Byakhee, The Deep Ones, The Great Race, The Old Ones (aka Primoridal Ones), The Mi-Go and The Shaggoths [sic]. Kuntz added another introductory paragraph (the one in italics) and entries for Cthuga, Ithaqua and Yig, and made a few minor edits to Holmes' entries - just a few word changes and two added sentences.

Kuntz must have been mis-remembering when he said he added Hastur. The conception of Hastur is primarily a Derleth creation as are Cthuga and Ithaqua, so perhaps he switched these in his memory.

One of the minor revisions that Kuntz made was in the entry for The Deep Ones, where he changed "Every large group will have at least one evil high priest, level 3-10" to "at least one evil clerical type, level 3-10", presumably because in OD&D the title EHP should only refer to evil clerics levels 7 and up. In the entry for the Necronomicon, he changed "chaotic" to "chaotic evil". The other word changes are just for grammar.

Kuntz added one sentence (in parenthesis) concerning a saving throw to the entry for Nyarlathotep, and one sentence to end of the entry for Byakhee concerning damage inflicted.

For the most part, Holmes' original text, including some typos, is printed verbatim in the Dragon article.

Fascinating stuff! ;D

[Falconer]

There is a follow-up article by Holmes on page 3 of TD #16 (responding to criticism).