Quote:
Originally Posted by DouglasCole
My recollection is Clerics were an outgrowth both of Gygax's Christianity plus maybe the need to properly deal with undead by Arneson.
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The story I read was the cleric in the OD&D draft was one part Bishop Turpin and Charlemagne Paladin and one part Van Helsing Vampire Hunter.
The genesis of the D&D clerics stems from Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign. As I mentioned earlier the campaign had good guy PCs and bad guy PCs. One of the bad guy PCS, Sir Fang, was a PC who became a Bram Stoker style vampire. Which was one of the most powerful monster types. The good guys were having a tough time handling Sir Fang.
Mike Carr played a village priest who, among other things, produced holy water for sale. One of the few effective weapons against Sir Fang.
From there it the idea evolved by mashing together a variety of source material as outlined in section 2.7.3 of Peterson's Playing at the World and alluded to in Judges' Guild First Fantasy Campaign. Until we have the form that Gygax wrote up in the first release of D&D in 1974.