SimperingToad wrote in Old Candidates: Silliest Auction Prices of the Year:Okay, I don't know if I've ever typed this before, but WTF?!!
James M. Ward20 February at 05:39 · Edited · Deities & DemigodsLet me set the record straight on this again. I wrote the book Deities & Demigods with some slight help from others. In doing this work I included myths from H.P. Lovecraft's works and Elric of M. Moorcock works. Gary Gygax gave me M. Moorcock's address and I wrote him for permission and got it because I said it would renew peoples interests in his books. I wrote to Arkham House which was in my state of Wisconsin and also got the rights to Lovecraft's material. Going forward both groups sold their rights to Chaosium in California. Lawyers from Chaosium then sent a cease and desist letter to TSR. TSR had the permissions I gave them, but they had no money for lawyers at that time. So Brian Blume decided to take out those two sections. I went crazy. I had done my homework, I had gotten ironclad permission, and TSR wasn't going to fight it. I offered to replace the two sections with new ones and was told no. There was no copyright infringement. That was 30+ years ago. Every five years or so some idiot brings up the fact that TSR was in infringement on this book. Let me tell the people of the world who bring this up that they don't have their facts straight and it irritates the hell out of me.
ctimmins wrote in Deities and Demigods: The fact that all my regular gaming friends also had one was only somewhat disappointing.
This includes the Cthulhu Mythos by H. P. Lovecraft, the Melnibone Mythos by Michael Moorcock, and the Newhon Mythos by Fritz Leiber which were used in the first printing without permission from the copyright owners. Only the first two printings contain this material. The second printing gives credit to Chaosium for permitting use of Cthulhu & Melnibone. The Lovecraft & Moorcock materials were removed from later editions,
