TSR Level Titles

Jack Daniel said:

Yeah, that's what I have, on the AD&D sheet. Ditto for barbarians, cavaliers, thief-acrobats, and hierophant druids. Did I miss anything?

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Oh shoot, I completely missed that there were multiple sheets. D'oh!

The only ones I ever retained were the Magic-User/Wizard ones, since they can/do correspond to Spell Level increases. Looking at these, I homebrewed the titles a lot more than I remembered. I use

Wizard
1st-Level Spells: Apprentice
2nd-Level Spells: Journeyman
3rd-Level Spells: Magician
4th-Level Spells: Adept
5th-Level Spells: Master
6th-Level Spells: Wizard
7th-Level Spells: High Wizard/Archwizard/Wizard
8th-Level Spells: Mage
9th-Level Spells: Archmage

as official in-world rank/position names for wizards, especially guild wizards and wizards-for-hire.

I didn't bother with the "off" levels, and while I suppose I could have done the same for clerics, I've always divorced spell-casting prowess from official priestly titles for various reasons. Not entirely - a divine caster with only access to first level spells is not going to be the grand high ultimate head-of-church for a continent-spanning religion. But that same high priest is likely to have official subordinates who can cast higher level spells than the high priest.

You can see the moment when Gygax's thesaurus finally failed him.

"Oh, screw it. Druids just go up in 'circles.'"

I loved the level titles, and used them diagetically. They were a handy in-world way to delineate power levels. If you needed to find a Level 6 cleric to remove lycanthropy, you could simply say, "Are there any church Elders in this town?" Also, it was satisfying to change the title on my character sheet every time my character leveled up. I was sad to see them go in 2nd Edition.

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Jack Daniel said:

It always felt to me that Gygax's druid was a vague mélange of Caesar's impressions of the Gauls, 19th century pseudo-Celticism (Yeats / Oisin), ancient mystery cults, and modern esotericism / neopaganism (like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn).

The latter two elements are a perfect fit for such level titles as he gave them, and he does write somewhere that the druid class is like an imaginary extension of an ancient religion into a medieval world; in that respect, it's also a sort of imaginary (and Celtic-flavored) bridge between an Eastern Mediterranean mystery religion and a neopagan reconstruction of one.

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TSR-era Druids would have been a lot more fun if he'd read Asterix the Gaul.

Jack Daniel said:

It always felt to me that Gygax's druid was a vague mélange of Caesar's impressions of the Gauls, 19th century pseudo-Celticism (Yeats / Oisin), ancient mystery cults, and modern esotericism / neopaganism (like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn).

The latter two elements are a perfect fit for such level titles as he gave them, and he does write somewhere that the druid class is like an imaginary extension of an ancient religion into a medieval world; in that respect, it's also a sort of imaginary bridge between an Eastern Mediterranean mystery religion and a neopagan reconstruction of one.

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I agree with your take on what he was working with, though I'd quibble a bit with applying the word neopagan to it.

Gygax was definitely drawing from a lot of older encyclopedias and library reference books for his historical material; it appears to me that his take is based on classical sources (Commentarii de Bello Gallico) with bit of 19th century/early 20th century mesopagan revival /fraternal druid order stuff. Like the Ancient Order of Druids, 1781, Ancient Druid Order AKA British Circle of the Universal Bond 1909, and yeah, Golden Dawn.

From a sociology of religion standpoint I think we generally consider that the neopagan movement wasn't really kicked off until the 1940s/50s with Gerald Gardner and Wicca. Even though it drew from earlier esoteric traditions like the OTO. But the neopagan movement was always pretty counterculture, and increasingly so in the 60s and 70s, and I get the sense that it and hippies would have been anathema to Gary.

Jack Daniel said:

Lately, just for fun, I've been looking through all the LBB, 1st Ed., and BXcetera rulebooks for the sake of comparing level titles across editions. (I'm mostly leaving out 'zines and magazines due to sheer volume of material.) I think I've found all the official 1st party classes from TSR rulebooks and supplements that have level titles, but I could be wrong, and if anyone else remembers anything obscure, please do remind me of the fact.

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I remember being kind of intrigued when first read the classes titles, but never used in my campaign. Maybe I should use these as a starting point for a hierarchical order or cult

DCC has its own rendition of these too, which is fun to see.

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