The Village of Hommlet is Too Much: Minimalist Location Sketches for Sandbox Prep

Something I often struggle with when creating a sandbox is the level of detail to give to each location, and at what point in the process to do so. My sandboxes tend to be big - probably too big. The 100-hex sandbox was my attempt at codifying a procedure for creating a play area that felt big enough to contain the bare essentials that I would want for a campaign without going overboard. 

However, my sandboxes tend to be more than ten times larger than that (37 hexes x 37 hexes, or 1,369 hexes, is my usual, although I'm not stocking every single hex). I feel that a large sandbox is necessary to ensure that the play area contains a diverse array of regions to explore (farmland, wild plains, deep forest, highlands with snowcapped mountain peaks, stretches of desert, dense swamps, and shallow coastal waters as well as deep oceans), settlements of various sizes including multiple cities with distinct cultures and politics, strongholds that are either totally deserted or home to monsters, or ruled by bandits and brigands or character-types of different kinds, ruins of various location types, danger levels, and degrees of size/complexity, and monster lairs containing common to very rare monsters and everything in between.

Whether this is a good thing or the "correct" approach is hard to say. On the one hand, it's time-intensive and quite overwhelming to create a large sandbox. On the other hand, the larger the sandbox, the more play it can sustain - that includes not just long campaigns, but multiple campaigns in one region that changes over time, factoring in settlements and strongholds that have risen and fallen, ruins that have been reclaimed, and monster lairs that have cleared by past player characters.

When creating a sandbox of any size, it's easy to get bogged down in the details. I want to have a big picture of the world when play begins, but I only need a small detailed area to actually play the first several sessions:

• The starting settlement and its important locations (generally speaking, its "districts", if any) and NPCs (usually the highest-level ones so I know what services are available and who rules the place, and the lowest-level ones so I know what henchmen might be available to recruit)
• At least one fully-prepped dungeon or dungeon level (either a big tentpole dungeon near the starting town or a few smaller dungeons nearby - with smaller dungeons I'll usually prep enough so that each player can potentially start with a different "hook" and discuss which to pursue first, although this is probably overkill) 
• The nearest active strongholds so that the players have factions outside of the city to interact with (if there's a castle nearby, it's important to know if the ruler is benevolent and just or a psychopathic warlord)
• Any monster lairs in the immediate area which might populate local encounter tables or cause problems for the region (it's good to know whether the monster lair a day's travel from the starting settlement is home to a pack of wolves or an ancient red dragon)

For the rest of the play area, I need much less detail. I don't need to know every location and NPC in every city and town and what treasure is hidden in everyone's house. I don't need to know how many men-at-arms and henchmen are in each stronghold, what magic items all the character-types have, and how each of them feels about the Caves of Chaos. I don't need to know how many levels and rooms are in a dungeon, what's inside each room, and how the Air cultists feel about the Fire cultists. I don't need to know how many coat racks and benches are in the fire giants' barracks.

Instead, I find that most other locations require just a minimalist "sketch" in my key. These can be further developed over time once the player characters intend to travel to these locations, or I can systematically develop them in my free time while the players explore the locations I detailed prior to the start of the campaign. When I'm sufficiently motivated, I can usually stay a few steps ahead of the party.

Here is a breakdown of each type of location (settlement, stronghold, ruin, and monster lair) and what details I include in the brief "sketch" that goes into my initial key:

The Village of Hommlet is too much detail for your sandbox!

Settlement

• Type: Dwelling, thorp, hamlet, village, town, or city (often I just do village, town, city, and city-state). The settlement type is a useful shorthand which determines its population and, in turn, what services are usually available. This will also determine the value of goods the player characters can unload at once.
• Population: This determines what sort of militia the settlement has (if any - I usually rule that one tenth of the population can be called on to defend the settlement if needed), whether the settlement is home to character-types and how many (I usually rule that 1-in-100 citizens is a character-type), and whether lodging is available (I usually rule that there's an inn for every 2,000 citizens).
• Character-types: I won't flesh all of these out, but I like to know general numbers. A hamlet of 300 people has three character-types, so I like to know who they are. A city of 30,000 has 300 character-types, which I'm not going to detail. A hamlet might have a high-level cleric capable of casting raise dead, so it's important to know who exactly the character-types are. In a large enough settlement, I can assume that some NPC is capable of doing so, and it doesn't matter as much at the outset who exactly that is. What I do want to know is who are the most powerful character-types. This is probably only those character-types who are likely to have a stronghold, temple, thieves' guild, wizard's tower, or whatever in the settlement. In a big enough settlement, I only care about the warlords, archmages, archpriests, and the like - those figures which command factions and influence local politics.
• Ruler: Since the structure of D&D society is a levelocracy, this is usually the highest-level character (I will pick a random one if there are multiple character-types at the highest level, with the understanding that they are all likely competing with one another for power). If there are no character-types, I'll just determine an alignment for the settlement and say the ruler is an ordinary patriarch/matriarch/elder/reeve/etc. I'll determine the ruler's alignment, class, and level (if applicable) to get a general idea for what the settlement's "vibe" is.
• Reaction: I use the general alignment of the settlement or its primary ruler to make a reaction roll which determines how the ruler and their faction feels about the player characters upon first encountering them. In a small enough settlement, this might determine the disposition of the settlement's denizens as a whole.

The Keep on the Borderlands is too much detail for your sandbox!

Stronghold

• Type: Small (tower), medium (keep), or large (castle). Sometimes I add very large (fortress complex/palace). This isn't really that important. I might use it to determine the number of men-at-arms later. It's mostly just so I can plop an appropriate icon down on the map and so I know what kind of map to use once I need it.
• Ruler: I want the players to know if the tower is ruled by a fighter, a wizard, a cleric, or whatever. I usually roll on the AD&D DMG's Castle Sub-table II.B to determine this. This isn't a city, where the players can assume that they can find high-level characters of all types. If the players decide to visit a stronghold, they're likely looking for something from its ruler, so it's important to have a vague idea as to who that is.
• Reaction: Like settlements above, I want to know how the ruler and their retainers react to the player characters upon first meeting them, whether the players seek them out or not. Will they demand tribute/tithe? A joust? Will the player characters be feasted or thrown in the dungeons?

The Temple of Elemental Evil is too much detail for your sandbox!

Ruin

• Type: Using AD&D's stocking method, this could be a stronghold (tower, keep, or castle), village, city, shrine, or tomb. I may also use the 5e table, in which case the ruin could be a death trap, lair, maze, mine, planar gate, stronghold, temple or shrine, tomb, or treasure vault. I generally like the 5e table more, but the exclusion of ruined cities is a real dealbreaker. I should probably just make a combined table that includes all of the above!
• Builder: For strongholds, I determine the builder as with strongholds, above. In a human-centric setting, I usually assume villages and cities were human cities, but I might also roll on 5e's table which includes beholders, dwarves, elves, giants, hobgoblins, kuo-toa, liches, mind flayers, and yuan-ti as creators. Shrines are built by clerics, of course.
• Ruination: What caused the site to become ruined? 5e's table is good for this also. It could have been abandoned due to plague, conquered by invaders, destroyed by raiders, destroyed from within by internal conflict, destroyed by natural or magical disaster, cursed by the gods, or overrun with extraplanar creatures, for example.
• Current Occupants: I will usually just intuit this from the preceding information - plague-infested vermin and undead with blighted plants, bandits, squatters, elementals, living spells, cultists, planar creatures, undead, whatever. When in doubt I pick at least two different factions with lairs inside the ruin and three lair-less wandering monsters types that can be encountered inside. The Dungeon Checklist is a good tool to use here (i.e., I'm sure to include at least one monster that can be fought, one that can't/shouldn't be fought, and one that the player characters can talk to).

The Hall of the Fire Giant King is too much detail for your sandbox!

Monster Lair

• Type: What monster lives here? Humanoids? Beasts? Giants? Dragons? I will hone in on a specific type (for example, goblins rather than orcs), but I won't necessarily figure out how many there are.
• Leader: If the monsters are intelligent (and often even if they aren't, since players can still talk to beasts and plants if they want), I'll try to figure out who their "leader-types" are. The bandits always have a high-level fighter leading them, but do they also have a wizard or cleric? I consider that important information for my sketch.
• Reaction: I want to know how the monsters in general react to the player characters. When I eventually get down to the details, I might find that the fire giant hell hound master reacts differently than the cook, but I want to know what the occupants' general disposition is and what orders the leader might issue upon becoming aware of the player characters' intrusion.

Of course, there is always the option to take the Village of Hommlet, the Keep on the Borderlands, the Temple of Elemental Evil, and the Hall of the Fire Giant King and simply plop them down in your sandbox as fully ready-to-play adventure sites, but I have found that this is a suitable middle ground when stocking a large play area with many original locations at once. As a DM, I still experience the thrill of discovery and can get a general idea as to how locations interact with one another and what the player characters might do there, but I avoid the pitfalls of prepping too much material that might never see the light of play. I hope this is helpful for any aspiring world builders!

Discovering NPC personality traits, bonds, ideals, flaws, and secrets (TBIFS) in D&D 5e

Here's one that came to me when I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep. 

I've written before about my social interaction rules for 5e. My rules are an adaptation of Courtney Campbell's/Hack & Slash Publishing's On the Non-player Character. Basically, I wanted to create a synthesis of old school D&D's reaction roll-based social interaction mechanics and modern D&D's social skills. 

I somehow managed to create something complex enough to (probably) not be appealing to either old school or modern D&D players, but I like it a lot. It's entirely DM-facing, so I don't have to worry about players shouting "I take the Converse action!" Instead, players describe what their characters do, and I have a big list of "actions" that give me guidelines for adjudicating a very wide variety of approaches to social interaction. I've playtested it, and it works for me.

On the NPC also includes a system for tracking an NPC's bond level. Player characters can form bonds with recurring NPCs. The bond level is a measure of the strength of that bond. An NPC's bond level represents how familiar and friendly they are with the party - how likely they are to grant or refuse a favor, for example. The players can increase their bond level with an NPC by spending downtime with them, converting them to their player character's religion, giving them gifts, romancing them, or just hanging out.

I'm just saying, go read that original post if you haven't, for context.

Now I'm going to talk about NPC personality traits, bonds, ideals, flaws, and secrets (TBIFS). TBIFS were, along with backgrounds as a whole, one of 5e's more ingenious additions to D&D - little short-hands for how a character acts, who or what they're connected to, what they value, how they're deficient, and what they're hiding:

In the 2014 PHB, every player character background came with a handful of tables to randomly determine the character's TBIFS. I recommend using them as a starting point and then customizing them for the specific character. I would use them even in an old school game.

Of course, like many of 5e's better contributions to the game, TBIFS are a thing of the past in the 2024 version of the rules, replaced with one-word descriptors based on ability scores and alignment. Sigh.

But I still use TBIFS in my D&D games (5e or otherwise), and now I always will. I also use them for NPCs (including any intelligent monsters the player characters might talk to).

And so I thought, suddenly, in the middle of a sleepless night, that I should add a downtime activity that allows player characters to learn an NPC's TBIFS!

First, I made a slight change to the rules for calling on an NPC bond:

When a PC attempts to elicit a major favor from an NPC with which they have a bond, the PC makes a Charisma (Intimidation or Persuasion) check against the NPC’s social DC or a Strength (Intimidation) check against the NPC’s morale. The PC’s check has advantage if their request/threat resonates with the NPC’s ideals, bonds, flaws, or secrets.

This could probably be more broadly applied to social interaction in general, but I figure that in most social interaction scenarios, the players are unlikely to know any of this information about the NPC.

Next, I wrote up the rules for the new downtime activity:

Familiarize

The player character spends a week of downtime with the NPC in order to learn more about them. The player decides whether they would like to try to learn one of an NPC’s personality traits, ideals, bonds, flaws, or secrets. 

Personality traits are learned at a rate of one trait per week of downtime spent with the NPC (no check required).

Ideals, bonds, flaws, and secrets are learned by making either a Wisdom (Insight) check (if the player wishes for their character to intuit the information) or a Charisma (Deception or Persuasion) check (if the player wishes for their character to trick the NPC into revealing/convince the NPC to reveal the information).

All checks are made against the NPC’s social DC. If the NPC is proficient in Deception, add their Deception bonus to the DC against Wisdom (Insight) checks. If the NPC is proficient in Insight, add their Insight bonus to the DC against Charisma (Deception) checks.

Successful Insight checks discover the information automatically and without the NPC necessarily knowing that the information has been discovered. Successful Deception or Persuasion checks result in a bond roll, which is modified by the bond level and degree of success or failure of the Charisma check:

Degree of Success/Failure Reaction Modifier
5-9                 +/-1
10-14         +/-2
15-19         +/-3
20                 +/-4

If the modified bond roll is greater than the current bond level, then the player character learns the desired information, and the bond improves by one.

If a Deception check fails, the bond level decreases by 1d4+1 levels, to a minimum of 2.

It's a work in progress (especially the name), but I had to get it out. I'm excited to test it out!

Dead Gods Waiting to be Reborn: Ruined Shrines and the Syncretist Cleric in AD&D

The AD&D wilderness inhabitation tables have infected my mind. They have wormed their way in, forcing me to make sandboxes I may never use. Now that they've burrowed deep beneath the surface, living (rent free!) in my brain, so too have I begun to dig beneath the surface. I'm increasingly interested in analyzing and rationalizing the implications of these tables, picking apart the little oddities that likely exist only because Gary Gygax simply wasn't thinking that much about it.

But I am thinking a lot about it. And what if Gygax was, too? What if every idiosyncrasy in Appendix B actually has some implicit logic to it that the Dungeon Master is meant to intuit? Surely this was the intention of Gygax, who famously never over-explained anything in lengthy prose in any of his writings.

(At this point, this might as well be an AD&D Appendix B blog. If this sort of thing is not interesting to you, I promise to write about other stuff eventually.)

All this is to say that I've been thinking about ruins. Specifically, ruined shrines. Allow me to share, once again, that table which has been the source of so much of my consternation as of late:

2-in-100 (or 1-in-50) hexes contain a ruin (not including deserted castles, which I interpret as ruins). That's a ruin every 50 miles if you're using the suggested scale of 1-mile hexes (as I've explained before, I use a 6-mile hex because I like things to be more spread out - it makes getting around more challenging by slowing the pace of travel between locations, makes the movement rate math a little easier, and gives the locations more room to breathe). Of those 1-in-50 ruins, 25% are shrines - that's one ruined shrine per 200 hexes.

What's stranger still is that while there are ruined villages and cities as well as non-ruined villages and cities, there are no non-ruined shrines (nor are there non-ruined tombs or ruined dwellings, thorps, hamlets, or towns, but those are topics for another time). So, what happened? Why is every shrine a ruin?

The short answer is that every shrine is not a ruin - there are probably intact shrines in many settlements and within clerics' strongholds - but that every shrine found in the wilderness is ruined. For whatever reason, every religious group that sets out to establish a place of worship beyond the realm of "civilization" or outside the protection of castle walls is doomed to destruction. An AD&D sandbox is littered with monuments to dead gods.

Who is building these shrines? Clerics, probably. From the PHB:

This section goes on to clarify that clerics can begin constructing a proper religious stronghold at 9th-level, which must be dedicated to the cleric's deity (or deities! put a pin in that for later), at which point they can clear the surrounding territory and begin collecting revenue from trade, taxation, and tithes:

Therefore, the purpose of the "place of worship" (which includes a shrine) is for slightly lower-level clerics to begin attracting followers and men-at-arms in preparation for eventually building a stronghold.

That's not the only reason to construct a shrine. From the DMG:

Here, we see that a shrine is necessary for a cleric to research and create new spells. This doesn't quite square with my understanding of clerics. Is it within a cleric's power to create new spells? Is it not the deity who should be "creating" spells and bestowing them upon their faithful vessels? I'll come back to this.

There is one more mention of shrines in the DMG outside of the Appendices, in the section on turning undead, which may not be particularly relevant to this post but is worth mentioning as it pertains to the inherent power of the shrine - and why a(n Evil) cleric might want to construct one:

(Note that the excerpt from the PHB describes a place of worship not less than 2,000 square feet in floor space, which includes a shrine, whereas this excerpt from the PHB describes a shrine as being an area roughly 10" by 10", which is 100' by 100' in a dungeon and 300' by 300' outdoors.)

In summary, shrines are sources of power for clerics which are located within somewhat lesser versions of the strongholds they will eventually build. A shrine allows the cleric to research and "create" new spells, and bolsters the undead minions of Evil clerics against other clerics' attempts to turn them. A shrine is presumably built out into a place of worship to then attract followers, then eventually developed into a stronghold to control the surrounding lands and collect revenue. 

I think it is likely that the ruined "shrines" of AD&D's wilderness were in fact originally constructed as that middle classification - places of worship which once attracted followers and which house the shrine necessary for the research and "creation" of spells. Ruined castles are already accounted for in the inhabitation table and castle sub-tables, so we can rule that out as a possibility. I also imagine that "ruins" are intended to represent proper dungeons, which are otherwise unaccounted for in the inhabitation table. I do not feel that the 10" by 10" shrine described above fits that particular gameplay need, so I am ruling out that possibility as well.

Presupposing that the ruined "shrines" on the inhabitation table were in actuality once these places of worship lends them additional significance. The place of worship, after all, contains not just a shrine but also perhaps an altar and a chapel.

From the DMG's section on the manufacture of scrolls:

And the section on fabrication of other magic items:

Both the creation of scrolls and magic items is limited by the level of the character to varying degrees which I won't get into here. The point is that an 8th-level cleric would be capable of creating scrolls and magic items of some level of power, and that this is another reason why these ruined "shrines"/places of worship might exist.

5th-level clerics can also create holy water, which requires the use of a specially created basin:

We might presume that such a basin would also be housed in a place of worship, and thus, most likely would be present in our ruined "shrines".

Now that I've justified the existence of these ruins in the setting, let's talk implications.

Much like the deserted castles generated by the inhabitation table (both those totally deserted and those now home to monsters), these ruins present an opportunity for player character clerics. They are dungeons, yes, filled with monsters, tricks, traps, puzzles, and treasure like any other, but they aren't just another dungeon to be crawled and plundered.

If they can be secured against their dangers, these ruins can also be claimed and restored, likely for a fraction of the price of constructing them from scratch. They contain shrines, altars, basins, and maybe other features which are now dormant but which have the potential to be greatly useful to the cleric PC.

Only, these places of worship are (probably) not dedicated to the cleric's deity. You could have a monotheistic setting, sure, and even if you don't, likely some fraction of these ruins will be associated with the cleric's deity, but many more will not. The original inhabitants and their deity may have been Lawful, Chaotic, Good, or Evil, and that will inform the ruin's features and its utility to the cleric. A ruin once dedicated to the cleric's deity may need to be reclaimed. That of a rival deity may need to be consecrated (with some effort, as any undead present will be resistant to turning) or defiled (being Evil is fun too).

More interesting are those in the middle. The cleric could reclaim an allied deity's place of worship on behalf of the still-active church (a nice faction for your sandbox) and build bridges between faiths. The ruin could also be unfathomably ancient - that of a dead god waiting to be reawakened through piety. 

My last post described a cleric with a prayer book akin to the spellbook of a magic-user, a syncretist who incorporates the beliefs and rituals of adjacent faiths into their own practice, allowing them to engage in a precarious balancing act in which they are granted powers by multiple deities at once - but must simultaneously serve and please all of their patrons in order to continue to use and accumulate their divine magic.

The ruined places of worship in AD&D provide the cleric with another avenue by which to obtain such magic. I return once again to the power of shrines, and that bit about a shrine being needed to "create" new cleric spells. Within this framework, the shrine is necessary not to create but to discover new spells. The shrine is imbued with the deity's dormant power, and the library (assuming this is required of clerics and not just magic-users) are the dusty religious tomes, crumbling scrolls, and cracked tablets found within the ruin. 

The cleric can acquire new spells by forging relationships with living religions, learning their practices, and serving their cause, but they can also do so by restoring these sites of ancient worship, bringing dead gods back into the world. I think that's pretty neat!

Was this Gygax's intention? Probably not. He probably wasn't thinking that much about it. But, just because he wasn't, doesn't mean I can't! The AD&D DMG is loaded with detail. In the details there are plenty of answers for curious or confused DMs, but there are also questions. The tables in the appendices imply a setting, but not a clearly defined one. There is a lot of fun to be had in interpreting the vagaries into something more cohesive!

Clerics Need Spellbooks Too

This post is part of the papal conclave Blog Bandwagon/Blogclave. As the world turns its gaze towards the Vatican, the blogosphere turns its attention to the cleric. Subscribe to Prismatic Weekly for a roundup of all this post's siblings once the conclave has chosen a new pope!

Here's an interesting tidbit from original Dungeons & Dragons' Book I: Men and Magic:

It's accepted as a fundamental D&D-ism that magic-users/wizards have spellbooks, yet for some reason the need for clerics to keep spellbooks did not become ingrained in future editions in the same way. 

As early as AD&D 1st edition, clerics "have their spells bestowed upon them by their respective deities". Gygax elaborates that cleric spells are granted either by the cleric's "education, training, and experience" (1st and 2nd level spells), followed by intermediaries of their chosen deity (3rd through 5th level spells), then by the deity itself (6th and 7th level spells). 

Although clerics cast their spells the same way as magic-users and require the same amount of time to memorize them, the way in which they acquire new spells and what they must do to memorize them is very different. While magic-users must scribe their spells in a book and study the book to memorize them, clerics simply gain access to all spells of the next level when they gain a level, and memorizing them requires only time spent in prayer - no book necessary.

This is unfortunate. I quite like the idea of the adventurer cleric with a book of prayers bestowed upon them by their church. Such a book would contain the initiate spells typically learned during the cleric's background education. In keeping with AD&D, let's say that these are the 1st and 2nd level spells. This is convenient in that it maps neatly onto D&D 5e's "Tier 1", which covers character levels 1st through 4th and spell levels 1st and 2nd.

To acquire additional spells from their deity, the prayer book-wielding cleric must not only continue to serve the deity's cause, make contact with various divine intermediaries and, eventually, the god itself, but they must also write the prayers associated with these spells into their prayer book.

(As an aside, this same principle can also be applied to the paladin, who in many versions of D&D casts spells the same as the cleric. The druid - and by association the ranger, who is to the druid as the paladin is to the cleric - could also keep a more "nature-y" book of sorts. After all, the druid is often treated as something like a subclass of cleric. 

On the other hand, druids were not in OD&D, and so I can easily argue that the excerpt at the beginning of this post does not apply to them. Druids have also acquired their own unique identity over the years, so my inclination is for them to have an entirely different method of learning and/or preparing spells.)

Of course, I don't like how every cleric of every deity is able to cast more or less the exact same spells, so the prayer book of a cleric who worships but one deity would be somewhat limited, and the prayer books of any two clerics of differing faiths would be quite different from one another. 

However, much like the enterprising magic-user or wizard must delve into abandoned wizards' towers and lost libraries for new magic, this would incentivize the cleric to go forth and acquire additional prayers from other gods. After all, there is not usually one "true" god in a D&D setting - there are multiple, some in alignment with one another and others at odds. So long as the Lawful Good cleric remains in their principle deity's good graces and does not seek out the prayers of rival Chaotic and Evil deities, there isn't much reason why the prayers of multiple gods can't coexist in the same book.

This encourages the cleric to adventure in a slightly different way. No longer is the cleric the crusader or templar, spreading their deity's gospel, proselytizing to those who will listen and smiting those who won't. Instead, the cleric becomes a syncretist or polytheist, accumulating the diverse magics of a wide array of faiths and lesser and greater divine beings. 

The cleric must rely on their social acumen. Much like the magic-user must on occasion convince a learned wizard to tutor them in some new spell, the cleric must ingratiate themselves with people of different faiths so that they may become an initiate and incorporate their prayers into the cleric's personal belief system.

Unlike magic-users, whose spell repertoire is limited by their Intelligence and what magic they can find (and perhaps by their specialization), the cleric is limited by their piety - new spells are learned from a given deity by continuing to serve that deity's cause. It may be a simple matter of studying the proper rituals (their words, signs, and sacred components) to learn 1st- and 2nd-level spells, but more powerful magic requires direct intervention by the deity and its intermediaries, which is only earned by the accrual of favor (that is, the cleric's level of piety with each deity would need to be tracked - like experience points, for example - to determine when they can begin to cast the higher-level spells bestowed by the deity - even if the cleric "knows" the rituals and has them written in their prayer book).

If the cleric fails to continue to satisfy the deity, those same spells can be taken away. Many masters means many obligations - the more deities the cleric courts, the more patrons they acquire and must satisfy, or else lose their powers. Each new deity that is petitioned makes the balancing act more precarious (this is also why you should let warlocks, in more recent editions of D&D, petition as many patrons as they can - but that is a topic for another time).

I'm sure there are some who will feel that this somehow "nerfs" the cleric. The cleric is meant to get automatic access to all their spells, and now I'm suggesting instead that they jump through a bunch of hoops to get them? I'm long past the point of caring about those sorts of things. 

On the other hand, this would give the cleric a great deal of flexibility on par with that of the wizard, if the player is enterprising enough to take advantage of the opportunity. It makes the cleric more dynamic, grounded in the fiction of the game world, and allows individual clerics to distinguish themselves from one another. That's worth it in my eyes.

Thoughts and prayers?