Doug McCrae
Legend
The classic cleric has three sources:
1) Medieval legends of blunt weapon-wielding martial clergy, such as Bishop Odo at the battle of Hastings.
2) The Hammer Horror version of Professor Van Helsing.
3) Spells derived from Bible stories, such as Raise Dead, Plague of Flies, Sticks to Snakes, and Tongues. This article argues, I think persuasively, that Gary used the Sunday School versions.
The classic paladin derives from:
1) Three Hearts and Three Lions, which is partly based on the legend of one of Charlemagne's paladins, Ogier the Dane.
2) Arthurian legend, particularly Sir Galahad.
3) The Bible (or Sunday School again) for lay on hands.
4) The D&D cleric, for turn undead and spellcasting (both present in AD&D 1e but not the original OD&D Greyhawk version).
What really stands out about these sources is the one unifying factor - Christianity. In Three Hearts and Three Lions, Law, which the hero champions, subsumes Christianity and Islam, against the pagan/communist forces of Chaos.
This is rather at odds with D&D's supposed polytheism but D&D isn't really polytheistic imo. Despite the 9-alignment system, D&D is a dualistic universe. The major conflict in default D&D is good vs evil - good gods vs evil gods, good or neutral PCs vs evil monsters. The good gods are analogous to Christianity, and the evil gods are Christianity's enemies. As with Three Hearts, the dualistic Cold War, preceded by the equally dualistic WWII, was no doubt a seedbed for the idea of D&D's world structure.
1) Medieval legends of blunt weapon-wielding martial clergy, such as Bishop Odo at the battle of Hastings.
2) The Hammer Horror version of Professor Van Helsing.
3) Spells derived from Bible stories, such as Raise Dead, Plague of Flies, Sticks to Snakes, and Tongues. This article argues, I think persuasively, that Gary used the Sunday School versions.
The classic paladin derives from:
1) Three Hearts and Three Lions, which is partly based on the legend of one of Charlemagne's paladins, Ogier the Dane.
2) Arthurian legend, particularly Sir Galahad.
3) The Bible (or Sunday School again) for lay on hands.
4) The D&D cleric, for turn undead and spellcasting (both present in AD&D 1e but not the original OD&D Greyhawk version).
What really stands out about these sources is the one unifying factor - Christianity. In Three Hearts and Three Lions, Law, which the hero champions, subsumes Christianity and Islam, against the pagan/communist forces of Chaos.
This is rather at odds with D&D's supposed polytheism but D&D isn't really polytheistic imo. Despite the 9-alignment system, D&D is a dualistic universe. The major conflict in default D&D is good vs evil - good gods vs evil gods, good or neutral PCs vs evil monsters. The good gods are analogous to Christianity, and the evil gods are Christianity's enemies. As with Three Hearts, the dualistic Cold War, preceded by the equally dualistic WWII, was no doubt a seedbed for the idea of D&D's world structure.
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