In Search Of Mike Carr

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Mike Carr played the first cleric in the history of fantasy tabletop
role playing games. Like, the very first. Ever. In the decades since,
the character class has earned a spot at the core of the hobby, so when
Carr casually mentioned in an email that he played the first one in a
now-legendary campaign, it seemed like a follow-up question was
necessary. But for Carr, it's just another interesting footnote in a
life in gaming.

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In a previous article, I focused on the creation of the Cavern of
Quasqueton, a dungeon designed by Carr for the iconic and influential
B1 In Search of the Unknown module for Dungeons and Dragons, first
published in 1979. Mr. Carr generously provided me with answers to
additional questions on his career in gaming, and his responses provide
a fascinating tour through some of the most important years in the
hobby's development.

Carr grew up in Saint Paul, Minnesota, a region with an innovative
tabletop scene during the 1960s and 1970s. "I really came of age in the
right place at the right time, just as the Twin Cities were emerging
and thriving as a hotbed of gaming activity, which included Dave
Arneson's legendary Napoleonic campaign, Dave Wesely's Braunstein games
and, of course, the genesis of Blackmoor and early Dungeons & Dragons,"
Carr wrote to me in an email.

Carr played in Arneson's Blackmoor campaign, a stepping stone on the
path that eventually led to the development of Dungeons & Dragons. It
was during that campaign that Arneson asked Carr to play the original
cleric. Carr said he doesn't remember many specifics about the
character beyond a disastrous encounter with a balrog.

"When the Blackmoor campaign was getting underway, Dave Arneson
assigned me the role of village cleric, so I can proudly claim to be
first one of that character class, which is a pretty cool distinction,"
Carr said. "I had a small church but not much else – my cleric wielded
a mace, since he was unable to use any edged weapons. As a low-level
adventurer, my fighting ability was unremarkable, but I did have the
ability to heal wounds on a limited scale, which proved to be somewhat
useful to our party."

Carr later moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he worked for the Ground
Round restaurant chain in 1974 and 1975. But an invitation from Gary
Gygax to work for TSR drew Carr back into the gaming the world,
although he had took a pay cut to do it. Carr earned $205 a week at the
Ground Round, and Gygax offered him $110 a week along with some stock
in the company.

Carr moved to Lake Geneva in March 1976 and has lived in Wisconsin ever
since. During his tenure at TSR, he wrote In Search of the Unknown and
edited many more D&D products. Carr would go on to edit a number of
books and adventures for TSR, including the core rule books for the
first edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and seminal adventures
like The Village of Hommlet, The Keep On The Borderlands and Against
the Giants. He also collaborated on adventure modules for Top Secret,
an espionage role-playing game published by TSR.

But, perhaps surprisingly, B1 stands alone as the only Dungeons &
Dragons adventure that Carr wrote for TSR, despite its status as a
landmark of the genre. Carr explained that, despite his long history in
gaming, he wasn't an avid D&D player at the time. That made him a
suitable writer for an introductory module designed to inspire
beginning DMs, but less so for more advanced adventures, he said.
Imagine designing only one adventure for Dungeons & Dragons, and it
becoming one of the seminal adventures in the history of fantasy role-
playing games.

contributed by Fred Love

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