Our Adventures in Fiction series is meant to take a look at the writers and creators behind the genre(s) that helped to forge not only our favorite hobby but our lives. We invite you to explore the entirety of the series on our Adventures In Fiction home page. Hammer Horror’s Dracula – And the Creation of the Cleric Class by Bob Brinkman The year 2022 marks the 64th anniversary of the Hammer Horror film Dracula. Why is this so important? You can thank Dracula for the creation of the cleric class, and the Hammer Horror series in general for influencing several aspects of Dungeons and Dragons (and later the Dungeon Crawl Classics role-playing game). The history of Hammer films is as mysterious and convoluted as the history of gaming itself. Founded in 1935 as Hammer Productions, the original incarnation went bankrupt and was later revived in 1938, going on to become Hammer Film Productions in 1948 with the release of The Dark Road. So, depending on your reckoning, Hammer Films has just celebrated either 70 or 80 years. The other big anniversary, and one with a decidedly important impact on our hobby, is the 61st anniversary of Hammer’s Dracula (also known as Horror of Dracula), starring Sir Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. This is where the cleric comes in. Blackmoor While some of the exact details are contested, Hammer’s Dracula film played a major role in the shaping of the cleric class. Everyone agrees that Dave Fant, a player in Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor campaign, portrayed the first vampire in a D&D game. His character, Sir Fang, was so powerful and unbalancing that the idea of a vampire hunter was hatched. The basis of this vampire hunter was Peter Cushing’s character from Dracula. The powers of this character class were expanded to fill several useful niches and the vampire hunter morphed into the priest, and finally the cleric. While there is some debate over whether the first cleric was played by Mike Carr or by William Crolley, it was at this point where magic using split into two differing classes, forever altering the landscape of gaming. When directly asked about the influences for character classes and clerics, Gary Gygax is cited as mentioning Brother Odo (Odo of Bayeux), Friar Tuck, and Hammer Films, with a smattering of faith healing charlatans thrown in for theatrical measure. In this...