Appendix N, again

[mythfish]

I, too, have never seen a D&D cleric outside of RPGs. I've certainly never seen one in any of the sources in Appendix N.

I don't rightly recall if there was any magic or not, but I swear the mace-wielding, heavy-armor wearing template for the D&D cleric was from the Song of Roland. Which is not in Appendix N, but does predate D&D.

[DCCfan]

How much will the flavor of the Appendix N books really color the game? Take the cleric for example. Its a staple of D&D, but I'll be damned if I've ever read of any character in a sword & sorcery book that sounded like one. Priests yes, but none that wore armor and used maces. And hardly any that healed anybody with magic. The priests are usually more like wizards than anything else. I'm hardly an expert on the books in the list, mainly having only read Leiber, Moorcock, Fox, Tolkien, Lovecraft, and Howard from it, so are there really clerics in any of the other books in that list or does it come mainly from Gygax's medieval and catholic readings?

Oh, and another thing that has always bugged me about the difference between D&D and s&s books- fighters are effective in the stories even without armor. Conan usually only wore armor if he was going to war. Try going without armor in D&D (any edition) as a fighter and survive. Will the new game do anything to make this possible?

Actually I'm reading the Conan series and in several stories it mentions his shirt of mail worn under his clothes saving his life. In one I even remember him lamenting over the fact that if only the rest of the men had been wearing armor more of them would be alive right now. So I think he wore it whenever possible. However much like D&D Conan was breaking out of captivity a lot and having to fight with no armor on. I think this made him an even more impressive hero than your average adventurer.

[mshensley]

Never mind. I see that my questions have pretty much been answered in this other thread-
http://www.goodman-games.com/forums/vie ... =60&t=7135

[goodmangames]

Random thought on clerics - I just finished Manly Wade Wellman's "Silver John" series. Wellman appears as an "author entry" on Appendix N, without specific works cited, but I think it's safe to assume Gygax had read at least some of the Silver John series since it was Wellman's best-known work.

The Silver John character is essentially a cleric. The series is set in modern day Appalachia so there are few medieval trappings, but Silver John uses the silver strings of his guitar to fend off witches, monsters, and demons, and in several of the later stories he uses not just his silver guitar strings but also a holy symbol (specifically, a cross). In one story he uses a large, door-sized cross to force a demon back to Hell and then seal the portal.

I have yet to find the "quintessential cleric" in any Appendix N work, in the same way that, say, John Carter is clearly the "quintessential fighting-man," but the more I read of Appendix N, the more I find bits and pieces of the cleric class appearing throughout the bibliography.

[mshensley]

Ooh... I just discovered that since several of these titles are pretty old and out of copyright, they can be found on the project gutenberg site. For example, here is The Moon Pool -

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/765/765-h/765-h.htm

[finarvyn]

For example, here is The Moon Pool -
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/765/765-h/765-h.htm

Dang. Just bought that one on e-bay. Oh, well. Now I can read most of it before it comes in the mail.

[mshensley]

Dang. Just bought that one on e-bay. Oh, well. Now I can read most of it before it comes in the mail.

Don't worry, if you're like me you probably hate to read anything that big on a computer screen too.

[mshensley]

I just found a couple of more resources for books on the list. Here's a couple of amazon lists with the books on them-

http://www.amazon.com/D-D-Inspirational ... rpli_alt_1

http://www.amazon.com/Gygax-s-AD-amp-D- ... rpli_alt_2


Me? I just checked out two of them from the library system here- The High Crusade and The Face in the Frost.