In hoping to make a better D&D experience with my people, I've been looking at some 1st and 2nd edition material to weave back into 5th edition.
One thing that rings loud in my mind is the description of the cleric. It is described as a crusading knight, quite explicitly. It is more directly described was what is understood as a paladin than the paladin is. And that leaves the paladin basically another flavor of ranger. But meanwhile the cleric is the teutonic knight, in those very words. And they are expected to build a stronghold and attract a small army more loyal than that of the fighter.
My very first D&D experience with a group was being introduced to a roomful of people, some of whom were smoking (thus making it miserable to breathe), and being given someone else's character sheet. Turns out I was subbing for whoever normally played the paladin character. Since I was extremely new to the game (all I knew was from reading books), I basically just rolled the dice when told to and tried not to get the character killed. I don't remember what the campaign was about. I just remember that two of the people in that group later turned up in the SCA branch I joined, along with the mother of one of them.
Most of my knowledge of the paladin character comes from the Dragonlance setting. Sturm Brightblade is the very epitome of a paladin - a fighter, but one with a religion to uphold, a very strict way of life called the Code and the Measure, and his dearest wish is to become a full-fledged Knight of Solamnia and go to war in the name of the god Paladine.
The Knights of Solamnia are about honor, oaths, being pious, the kind of knightly quests you'd expect of the Knights of the Round Table (in our Arthurian mythos) except substitute the Krynnish concepts, as our Arthurian myths don't include elves, hobgoblins, and the dragons of Krynn are really not possible for just one person to kill.
The Knights of Solamnia have their headquarters in the city of Palanthas, which also is the site of one of the Towers of High Sorcery. The KoS don't trust any kind of magic at all, even that of the White Robes (mages of Good alignment). They are not clerics, and do not use magic. They may talk about honor and prayer, etc. but they're one bigoted bunch - automatically against elves, don't tend to get along well with anyone but each other, and some are constantly lecturing other humans about being pious (sounds like a cross between Arthurian knights and modern-day doorknockers, except they don't push pamphlets).
Anyway, chastity is also expected of a KoS unless/until they marry (from the uptight demeanor of Sturm in the first couple of Dragonlance novels, the readers are led to believe that he's never broken any of the rules or customs of the Solamnic Knights, but later on in the "next generation" anthology and
Dragons of Summer Flame we find out... oops. Goody-two-boots Sturm had a secret he was keeping, and we're introduced to his son.
Normally I'm not into the pious knight character. I didn't like Sturm, but damn if I wasn't bawling when he was killed. On the other hand, I did like his son, Steel Brightblade - the epitome of an honorable knight, but serving in the army that his father would have been horrified if he'd lived to know about it. They would have been on opposite sides if they'd ever met in battle.
I'm curious to know: How many here incorporate music into their campaigns? One of the bonuses of the Dragonlance setting is the music and poetry. Some of the Dragonlance modules included sheet music for some of the songs in the novels, and there's a Solamnic hymn called
Est Sularis (
My Honor) that starts out "Est sularis oth mithas..." ("My honor is my life"...).
I learned to play it on the organ, and it's the sort of music that wouldn't be out of place in a church (not the lyrics, of course, as they honor a different deity). I remember finally understanding a bit more of what the Knights of Solamnia are supposed to be about (unfortunately some of the characters don't live up to that, as any organization can be corrupted). The song is really nice, though. I don't know if the composer had the organ in mind when it was written, but it works really well.
Speaking of fires, we had one here a couple of days ago. One of the places downtown where some homeless people were living (transitioning from the street to actually having their own place off the street) burned down. Not sure about the cause yet - faulty wiring, someone careless about smoking... anyway, everyone got out okay. It was a bad enough fire, though, that a unit from Sylvan Lake showed up to help.