White Smoke Rises from the Blogosphere

In which I synthesize the whopping 44 blog posts that are either about clerics or cleric-adjacent, all posted within a few days of each other

While elderly men were cooped up in some Roman tenement, the bloggers were putting in the work. Who exactly is “God”, and why do they keep giving bloggers their toughest battles? These questions, and more, were answered after I called for an “emergency bandwagon” in reaction to the Pope’s death. My challenge was thus:

“write something in anyway related to clerics (perhaps particularly their hierarchy and rituals?) and post it between when the conclave begins on May 7 and when the smoke emanates from the chimney indicating that a new Pope has been selected.”

By my latest count, 44 blog posts were nailed to the church door—only 55 short of the amount of posts necessary to cause a religious schism. Even though I actually already blogged about how gameable a conclave could be a couple of months ago, even I threw my mitre into the ring with a new post on popes. The participation was in fact double the previous non-emergency bandwagon on the elements. Maybe if another high profile public figure dies (in Minecraft [the movie]), we can have another EMERGENCY blogging bandwagon. Or maybe everyone just had a lot to say about clerics and finally someone gave them permission to speak their truth.

I have read and digested all of the applicable posts and have made a feeble attempt to slot them into rough categories where they seem to be speaking to, or perhaps past, each other. I urge you to read them all and to comment below which your favorite is. Perhaps we will claim that poster as the new Blog Pope. If no 2/3 majority is achieved, however, the title of Blog Pope will remain with Skerples.

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THOU SHALT MAKE CLERICS INTERESTING

Prismatic Wasteland: Divine Magic Works in Mysterious Ways (a priest’s prayers should work differently from a sorcerer’s spells)

Slow Loris Press: Priests Of Want (reinterpreting clerics as an Asia-centric misreading of Christian missionaries, complete with a 1d100 advancement table)

The Rogue's Wallet: Clerics in Begone, FOE! (give them a resource that can be spent on doing various clerical stuff)

Fallen Constellation: Rites of Castage (Making clerical spellcasting more dangerous)

The Socratic Dungeon: Faith (faith and miracles, as opposed to mere magic)

Wandering Diejack: Justifying Failed Careers in Electric Bastionland (presenting the HR clergy for your next Electric Bastionland campaign)

THOU SHALT FIND CLERICS INTERESTING ENOUGH ALREADY

Blog of Forlorn Encystment: Clerics Need Spellbooks Too (putting a spellbook in the nightstand drawer of your hotel room [or: perhaps just interpreting some OD&D])

From the Sorcerer’s Skull: Weird Revisited: Further Ideas on Clerics (offers various possible explanations of D&Dish clerics based on real world analogs)

VDonnut Valley: Clerics from the Archives - Blogclave (reviewing three former posts on the topic of clerics)

THOU SHALT ABANDON CLERICS ENTIRELY ACTUALLY

The Dododecahedron: Classless Clerics (you don’t need a class to be a cleric but you do need to curry favor with the god(s))

LootLootLore: Splitting the cleric into the Holy Trinity (killing the cleric and giving away all their stuff to the other core classes)

This Vorpal Coil: The Secular Cleric (cleric as therapist)

Alex Schroeder: I am not interested in clerics (playing a cleric? I’ll show you something interesting. The two types of classes are fighter and wizard)

THOU SHALT CRAWL DUNGEONS

Wayspell: Cardinal Goons (tunnel goons hack where you play as one of ten provided clerics, with stats of pious, devotion, and sin)

Patchwork Paladin: Trade and Be Blessed (a subterranean temple to the Coinmaiden with a table of adventure hooks)

Tabletop Curiosity Cabinet: Oaths and other divine favours (reaction rolls for swearing to god and a tree-based dungeon god)

LootLootLore: Dungeon Pope and Other Jobs (religious goals for dungeon crawling)

THOU SHALT PERFORM HOLY RITUALS

I Cast Light!: BRING OUT YOUR DEAD: Ossuaries & Reliquaries for Your Clerics (building ossuaries and reliquaries and their benefits)

Ramming the Dungeon: Common Rituals for the Common Cleric (they heal, they exorcise, they baptize, they wed, they mourn, they preach, they forgive)

Creative Wronging: The Blogclave: A Cleric Without Religion (clerics should be more like social workers)

Beneath the moon of ancient Balansiya: A procedure for divine intervention - Conclave Edition (time to bond with your god)

A Swamp in Space: The Gift of Revelation (staring straight into heaven and not blinking)

THOU SHALT CREATE GOD IN THY OWN IMAGE

Gem Room Games Blog: The Divine Faction (what are gods but intelligence agents with their competing networks of influence? The CIA works in mysterious ways)

Fluorite Guillotine: begun, the blogclave has (you play as god, the cleric is your pawn)

Kate Plays: The Cargo Cult Pantheon (Forgotten AI gods and their tech support clerics)

Bommyknocker Press: Clerical Error - 9 Gods to Sin Against (plenty of theisms to be poly- for)

Semitext Games: Devotion to the Daemon (what if we worship demons instead?)

Seedling Games: On Religion (Belated Conclave Blog Edition) (gods for Cairnish settings)

THOU SHALT BUILD THY WORLD

Rise Up Comus: Embedding Lore in your Classes (getting around the lore problem by making classes more world-specific—sort of a follow up to this post)

Magnolia Keep: The Implied Apocalypse of the Cleric (okay, Josh, but what if the default cleric already says a lot about the world of D&D?)

Behind the Helm: D4 Cardinals Coming to the Conclave (Blogclave Bandwagon) (4 cardinals from a new city-setting, Theocastrum)

Among Cats and Books: Kill Clerics, Become Warlocks (using clerics as an onramp for worldbuilding)

Seed of Worlds: Insectfolk elementalism (Conclave Bandwagon) (who did the insectfolk worship, in the ages before even the illithids, much less you or I)

Garamondia: Difference and Repetition and Magic (first there was chaos, then god, then law)

THOU SHALT MAKE FANTASY RELIGION MORE INTERESTING

Mindstorm: Biblically Inaccurate Religions (a framework for creating your own religion [in your made-up world, not how to start a cult])

Widdershins Wanderings: Rethinking Religion in RPG Settings (what if polytheism made sense)

Conghal: Everyone is a Religion (forget race-as-class, now its religion-as-race)

Personable Thoughts: A Link in the Great Chain: Clerics in the Religious Hierarchy (making religious hierarchies gameable)

Big Bite Games: Emergency Bandwagon: Smoke, Saints, and Sigils (on religious hierarchies and rituals and incorporating those into adventure)

Binary Star Games: Religion is too good for Clerics (the cleric is holding back the fantasy religions in your games)

Lich Factory: Faith Without Faces: Divine Power Without Divine Persons (forget gods, we worship Stoic conceptions of cosmic forces now)

THOU SHALT BE A LITTLE SILLY

Explorers Design: What's Under the Pope's Hat? (its like one of those “I loot the body” tables, except the body is the pope’s)

The Play Reports: The Blogging Cleric (a cleric class based on the lowly blogger)

Web of the Gigantic Spider: Games That Are About Choosing the Pope (To Me) (three-way factorial analysis about which games are most about choosing the pope [includes a fun graphic])

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Even our (my) friends at the Between Two Cairns participated, releasing a “audio blog” that some call a podcast, reviewing the adventure Kidnap the Archpriest. Admit it, Brad, you love blogs! Look at you, participating in an emergency blog bandwagon. Bloggin’ Brad, they call him.

A funny commonality that you’ll see as you read through all of these posts (which you will, as it’s going to be on the final exam), is that so many start right out of the gate by saying “I don’t even like clerics!” My post included. But then they go on to write paragraph after paragraph on clerics? Doth thou protest too much? Clearly there is something fascinating, or maybe frustrating, enough that so many people had a rant in the chamber, ready to be fired.

Character Background: Antipope

Speaking of popes, I had forgotten until all this went down that I actually had a pope-related background in an earlier version of my Prismatic Wasteland’s rules for character creation. While my patrons are already privy to that (and much more stuff that lacks the polish for publication), I’ll at least share that background with you so you can use it for your next cleric character’s background:

Antipope

During the last conclave, the current pope was elected nearly unanimously, except for one vote where a cardinal misspelt the pope’s name and wrote yours. You weren’t clergy, but the stubborn cardinal refuses to admit their mistake. Their diocese now recognizes your divine authority.

Adjust Stats: +2 Wisdom, +1 Constitution

Start with: Pitch Black Mitre, Faux Leather (1 Slot), Mace (1 Slot), Heavy Crossbow (2 Slots), Anti-Popemobile (Vehicle, Armored Monowheel), Used Holy Book (1 Slot)

Starting Ability: EX CATHEDRA. When you sit in a chair and make a pronouncement, you may spend 1d6 Wisdom to cause all who hear it to believe you are telling the truth. In addition, when you find a Chem, it can be a holy wafer instead of your result.

Do you feel left out because you foolishly forgot to post about popes or even more foolishly don’t (yet) have a blog? Good news! You have over a month until the next, non-emergency blogging bandwagon on July 16. The prompt is “holes”. Dig it? The best time to start a TTRPG blog (besides 2008) is always NOW.