Blackmoor Cleric 'blog post

[Jacobite]

...One thing that you do not bring up is the idea of being brought back to life. Dave Arneson mentions on multiple instances characters that have been killed, but who were returned to the living. I can't find any example saying that it was the Cleric who brought the character back to life, but it would make sense...

Obviously, DA1 was published years after the FFC took place, but it explicitly describes the Bishop resurrecting the owner of the Come Back Inn in Part II.

[aldarron]

Did Dave's Blackmoor campaign have a cleric prior to when they started playing D&D?

Im a little fuzzy on what classes were around pre-D&D. I was told that the original Dungeon! was a snapshot of Dave's campaign in Oct 72, before Dave and David M. met Gygax in November 72. In Dungeon!, I believe there was an elf, hero, superhero, and wizard-- although maybe those were the common classes and only once in a while a cleric was played (for example by the occasional appearance of Mike Carr). Anyone know if the Blackmoor cleric preceded D&D?

Well, yes, of course Clerics predate D&D, although in Blackmoor they were simply called Priests. (Sorry I missed this post last time).

So Dungeon is its own thing, not a sanpshot of Blackmoor, except to say that Megarry modeled Dungeon on his experience as a regular player in Blackmoor, so there are a number of parallels, but little exact correlation.

It is important to understand that there was, and there was not, classes in Blackmoor. Classes as tightly defined in D&D did not exist, but players did play types (like fighters, wizards, merchants, and priests) who did each have some distinguishing features/restrictions.

The earliest date I'm aware of for the Cleric class is a reference in Arneson's Corner of the Table newsletter to the effect that in the fall of 1972 Mike Carr was a level 3 priest. At this point the priest is already associated with fighting vampires by supplying holy water to the elves and with spell casting, as he is trying to convert "magicians" to the "true religion".

As a side note, Blackmoor continues to blur the lines between wizards and priests in Temple of the Frog, where there are M-U priests, and in the 1976 blackmoor dungeon where there is a scroll with both Cleric and M-U spells.

[Malchor]

Casting résurrection on this thread.

There is a new YouTube video of an interview with Mike Carr at GenCon. While Carr says he does not recall much about his cleric, he does say the rules about blunt weapons was there from the start.

So, on the one had we have Mike Mornard recalling something about Gary and the Archbishop Turpin. Which is odd since in the Song of Roland, Turpin is the Archbishop of Rheims and is a warrior-priest, wielding a sword. It seems to be assumed that Monard or Gary meant Bishop Odo of Bayeux, who supposedly used a mace because he did not want to shed blood, though, that could pertain to the Bishop of Beauvais as well. William of Breton describes the actions of Philippe de Dreux, Bishop of Beauvais, in 1214:

"Indeed, the Bishop of Beauvais… became unhappy, and since by chance he happened to have a mace in his hand, hiding his identity of bishop, he hits the Englishman on the top of the head, shatters his helmet, and throws him to the ground forcing him to leave on it the imprint of his whole body. And, since the author of such a noble deed could not remain unnoticed, and since a bishop should not be known to have carried arms, he tries to hide as much as possible and gives orders to John… to put the warrior in chains and to receive the prize for the deed. Then the bishop, throwing down several more men with his mace, again renounces his titles of honor and his victories in favor of other knights so as not to be accused of having done work unlawful for a priest, as a priest is never allowed to be present at such encounters since he must not desecrate either his hands or his eyes with blood. It is not forbidden, however, to defend oneself and one’s people provided that this defense does not exceed legitimate limits.

Who knows, maybe Gary was talking about Archbishop Turpin and using that justify sword wielding clerics. Or perhaps to make the mace the weapon of choice or to simply explain something already in Blackmoor.

Either way, one did not need to know about Odo or Philippe de Dreux to come the conclusion that clergy should not use swords,  prohibition existed as part of church canon law—an occasionally contested and ignored canon law, but not an obscure one. Point is, as a scholar of history, this was something Arneson would have likely been exposed to.