Best of the Web: Clerical Heresy, Sounds of D&D, Foodies, and Backpack Background

Clerical Heresy
Long ago a poster named The Grey Elf was going through the AD&D DMG and posting their thoughts on the RPG.net forum and they had an interesting thought about the Day-to-Day Acquisition of Clerical spells that got my mind thinking.

"Third through fifth level spells are granted in turn, not by the deity itself, but by powerful servitors of the god or goddess--angels, demons, yochlol, devils, archons, and other supernatural minions impart these abilities as mediators between the cleric and deity. This is of great interest, since now the cleric needs not only follow the strict tenets of the deity, but has to avoid pissing off or foiling the personal ambitions of its all-too-free-willed minion as well. Nobody ever said being a cleric should be easy.
This also opens up really interesting options for play; what if a cleric violates the tenets of his god, but the deity's angelic minion has fallen madly in love with the cleric? That minion could, feasibly, still grant powers.

This got me thinking about the reverse situation. Imagine a Cleric is a staunch defender of the tenets of their deity but some of those angelic minions go their own way, a heretical split in the religions. Where does the Cleric stand when his connection to the God doesn't appear to be acting on behalf of the deity? Are they cut off from their deity or will new minions be sent to grant them powers.

Are other clerics of the same deity cut off as well? Do they know who is cut off and/or why. So much potential in both lines of thought that its amazing this sort of thing has never been explored before (at least to my knowledge).

Sounds of D&D
Monsters and Manuals has an interesting post called Sounds of D&D. It got me thinking about the soundtracks for different campaign worlds.

• Carcosa = Slipknot?
• Forgotten Realms & Pathfinders Golarian = Enya
• Glorantha = Woody Guthrie
• Greyhawk = Excalibur soundtrack
• Harn = Robin of Sherwood soundtrack (Forever free...)
• Mysteria = Rush
• Old World of Warhammer = Gwar

Totally pointless and arbitrary but it makes me wonder if those that create campaign worlds shouldn't decide on the sort of soundtrack that matches the expected style.

Dungeon Foodies
Skerpies at Coins and Scrolls has a problem with his players eat monsters and he's created a madly brilliant set of posts detailing the flavors of various  monsters. Monster Menu-All Part 1: Eating the AD&D Monster Manual and Monster Menu-All Part 2: Veins of the Earth.

Backpack Background
Desks & Dragons has an interesting post about using a characters starting backpack as a way to create background for the character. The post is called Your backpack is your background and it is a brilliant idea I need to roll around in my head a bit. The blogger wrote it for his own game Dungeonsnack (wasn't that the last post?) and I'm not sure how it might tie into mine but I like the background story coming out of the trivial, if the players want to unspool it.