Castle of the Mad Archmage Session 2 Part I: Thar be orcs!

Inspired by Carjacked Seraphim's (excellent blog name, by the way) recent foray into  Joseph Bloch's Castle of the Mad Archmage (CotMA), I've decided to kickstart my own narrative of said dungeon. 
It's hard to believe that I haven't gotten around to writing up the 2nd session but here it is mid-July, summer is almost here (in Seattle anyway), and I'm reporting on events that happened in January. Actually, knowing me, that isn't hard to believe at all.

For those who haven't read the earlier posts on this matter, my friend Bob and I are sort of tag-team DM-ing this thing, so, in many regards, we're playing D&D as a board game, and we often end up both simultaneously DM-ing and running the party.  One of the odd results of this clusterf**k approach to dungeoneering is that, as often as not, we are working together against our own characters trying to figure out how the dungeon would react to this invasion by an adventuring party.  But, since we haven't read ahead in the dungeon, we don't really know what's around the corner which makes such conspiring somewhat ineffectual.

Anyway, our 2nd session occurred about a week after the first session, which is to say, nearly 6 months ago.  This time I came prepared; in addition to the S&W core rules PDF, I’m packin' the S&W Monster Compendium, AD&D Monster Manual (piñata dragon version) and the C&C Monsters & Treasures tome, and I’ve also downloaded the OSRIC and Labyrinth Lords rules.  We’re still out of luck if we run into more olive slime or anything from the F[r]iend Folio, but we’ve definitely got a lot more ground covered this time out.

Unfortunately, you'll have to bear with my memory a bit as, sadly, my notes from this session are less than helpful; they read thusly:

“CotMA Session 2:  ”

One thing that I do recall is that this is the session when the now infamous slope discussion arose, but since that’s been covered at length elsewhere, I’ll move on.  Before embarking on session 2, we added two more humble adventurers to our number: Barkurp the Wise (a fighter with a 17 wisdom, though he’s only got a 6 intelligence),* and a magic user named Cleavebourne, who, thanks to his 13 strength, supplants Borrance, the other magic user, as the strongest member of the party. 

*We used the fatalist approach to character generation: the character's name, race, and class are determined before we roll 3d6, keeping the results in the order rolled, for the 6 abilities.  As a result, in addition to the aforementioned hellaciously wize fighting man, we have a dwarf with an 8 constitution but an 18 charisma, and 3 spell casters (an Elf and 2 MUs) whose intelligence range from as low as 10 all the way up to a high of 11. But, OD&D/S&W being what it is, these stats have almost no significant consequence on game play. 

This time out, the courageous party selected a different entrance from the 3 options available to intrepid CotMA delvers.  They stumbled down the stairs into a room occupied by a giant tick and... I have absolutely no recollection of this encounter.  I do remember that they opened another closet full of (2) skeletons, though these were much less impressed by our cleric’s pious stance than in the previous effort.  In fact, they showed some serious undead combat competence by hacking the crap out of our front line: Sigurd was once again knocked to 0 Hp--man, he's a lightweight--and Polvo the dwarf was gimping around with only 2 HP before the magic users finally stepped in and knocked the grins off those skeletal mugs.  After so many years of AD&D in my system, it’s hard to grasp the combat effectiveness of low level OD&D magic users.  At 1st level they use the same attack charts as fighters and get 1d6 HP—only slightly less well endowed than a fighter’s d6+1.  Add to that the lack of combat bonuses for strength in OD&D and the only real advantage 1st level fighters have in combat is 1 additional hit point and their unrestricted choice of armor.

Anyway, a little while later our brave party was listening at a door when they heard orcs--a bunch of ‘em.  We devised a plan wherein we would bust in and cast a sleep spell on these bozos before they could beat the crap out of us.  With a little luck of the dice, we achieved surprise and put all the snouty suckers to sleep before they could even let out a peep.  We dragged one of 'em out in the hall and cast Charm Person on him while the rest of the orcs were knifed in their sleep.  The Charm seemed to work because he was rather endeared to Cleaveborn, the new magic user, or was it Goldraviel the elf?*  Anyway, he informed us that the other door in the room lead to 2 more rooms inhabited by 6 more of his clan, a clan which also occupied several more rooms on a lower level of the dungeon.   We fed him some BS story about how we had saved him from his colleagues who were traitors and had been about to kill him and steal the clan’s treasure blah blah blah; he agreed to help us deal with the other guys.

*Another consequence of our peculiar gaming method is that the characters are not really achieving a great deal of individuation; they really function as a communal entity most of the time. 

Back in the orc room, we tipped over a large table and some cots near the wall opposite the unopened door to provide shelter for our archers Glebberd the halfthing, Polvo the dwarf, and Goeatyourveal the elf.  Sadly, our best archer, Sigurd the near-dead ranger, was resting in an empty room down the hall. The rest of the party hid in the alcove in which the entry door was set, while the charmed Orc lay down amidst the corpses on the floor and sprung the trap by calling for help.  A moment later the door flew open and 3 orcs burst into the room.  If they were shocked to see the decimated ranks of their colleagues, they had no time to show it; a flurry of arrows pelted into them—the dice were on our side!—and 1 orc lay dead and the other two were injured before they even knew what hit them.  The survivors turned to run and were cut down by another volley just as 3 more orcs entered the room, one of whom was unfortunate enough to catch an errant missile in the chest.   He survived but with the rest of the Adventurers now surging out from the vestibule, capitulation was the only answer.  He threw down his arms and fell to his knees even as his two unscathed colleagues turned and fled back to the room they had just left, slamming the door and locking it.  Thanks for nothin’, chumps!

What followed was a drawn out stalemate between our party and the 2 orcs behind the door; one of whom, it turns out, was the leader of the group.  Eventually, with the help of our charmed orc and some begrudging assistance from the captured dude, we brokered a peace.  We would agree to help them fight some posse of hobgoblins that they are constantly sparring with and they would provide us with some CotMA intell.  As a token of respect, we agreed to pay them a weregild of 12 hobber heads to offset the 8 orcs we killed; we argued them down from 4 for 1 to a mere 1-1/2 : 1.  Silly orcs.  Still, half of our party was opposed to dealing with the orcs at all and is awaiting the first opportunity to commit an act of treachery against them, a feeling that is no doubt shared by the orcs--except the charmed guy, whom we are now calling "Quisling."

As this is already overly long, and this seems as good a stopping place as any, I'll call it quits here for now.  Look for Part 2 of Session 2 which, at this rate, should be out in time for the Christmas shopping season! 

Seasons Greetings, everybody.

Random thoughts: Rollin' up characters

Does anyone else do this: you see three 6-siders sitting somewhere and, in an idle moment, pick them up and roll them.  If the result is high enough (for me, the threshold seems to be 16), you think "Hey, this could be the makings of a good character!" and roll the dice 5 more times, perhaps even writing down the results on the back of an envelope or an old receipt.  I confess that I do this all the time;* after all, a good dice roll should not go to waste.  That said, I can't imagine a circumstance wherein I would actually use these archived dice rolls for a character.  I mean, I'm not about to sit down at a gaming table and reach into a hat stuffed with these odd scraps of paper and use the selected set of dice rolls for my new character; I'm gonna' roll the dice all over again!

* I have a set of 3 dice sitting by my computer with which my wife and I sometimes play an impromptu yahtzee-like game.

One of the outcomes of this habit is that my preferred D&D ability rolling method has changed from the old AD&D standby Best-3-of-4 to this technique: I roll 3 dice, if one (or more) turns up a "1", I re-roll it/them one time. If I get another 1 on the re-roll, I'm stuck with it.  I like it because now 1s become a symbol of new hope, of a second chance.  In fact, I was inspired to write this post when, moments ago, I rolled a 5 and two 1s, re-rolled the ones and--Bingo!--scored a pair of 6s.  From a 7 to a 17 just like that!  Whereas with the best of 4 method, I could have hoped for a 12 at best.  Of course, with this method, you roll three 2s and you're stuck with a 6, whereas in the best of 4 method you have a 4 in 6 chance of upgrading at least a little bit. I don't know if a method like this has ever been endorsed by any version of The Game, but I find the added dice rolling to be very satisfying without introducing a munchkinriffic element.*

* For a really good munchkin system, Unearthed Arcana, I believe, introduced a method where you rolled your six abilities using an ascending number of dice for each roll starting at 3 dice and working up to 8 dice, taking the best 3 of each set. We called it the Steroid method back in the day.

The other thing I've started doing is adding up the total net bonuses of the "characters" I've made in this way.  First you need a universal bonus set up to use.  For a while I was switching between several universal bonus systems: the Old School +1 for abilities 15 or higher, and a standardized system based on AD&D.   But I've settled on what I call the "Post Modern" system; you're probably familiar with it: 9-12 = 0, 13-15 = +1, 16-17 = +2, 18 = +3 with symmetrical penalties at the lower end of the spectrum.  Castles & Crusades and, I think, Labyrinth Lord, use an identical arrangement.  I add up the total bonus/penalty to get a nice, neat assessment of how good the "character" is, attribute-wise.  What's been shocking to me is when I roll up a character that, in my AD&D trained eyes, looks like a total Fudd but ends up being a pretty decent dude in the final analysis.  For instance, I rolled up one character with a 15, four 13s and a 12.  Using the old AD&D bonuses, you'd immediately slap that 15 on your Dex or Con and take the AC bonus or an extra hit point, and then you'd have 5 meaningless scores to spread across the rest of your humdrum character.  Using the Post Modern bonus system, this seeming Fudd scores a +5 total bonus, which I can say with confidence, after assessing at least a hundred "characters" in this fashion, is pretty excellent.

As an aside, the dice in the illustration* above are ephed up: or at least the one in the middle is.  Everyone knows that the numbers on opposing faces of a 6-sider always add up to 7, and yet there you see the 3 and 4 sitting right next to each other.  Amateurs.

*Thanks, by the way, to the Folks at the National Parks Service for providing this image in an item about the historic game "Farkle"  which was apparently a popular dice game in the colonial era.  I'm more familiar with it as a drinking game played by snooty grad students.

Brand X Roleplaying: Preferred Over the Leading Brand?

From Wikipedia on the origins of TSR: 

"worried that other companies would be able to publish similar projects first, [Gygax and Kaye] convinced acquaintance Brian Blume to join TSR in 1974 as an equal one-third partner" 

If it is indeed true--not just Wiki-true--that Gygax was worried about competitors beating him to the punch, does anyone know who these competitors might have been?  To the best of my admittedly lacking knowledge of this part of history, Tunnels and Trolls was the next game out of the blocks but not only did it come out a year later, but it was clearly a response to D&D.  I'd be very interested to know who these feared competitors were and how their Brand X game would have differed from the game we've all grown to love to argue about.  Anyone got anything?

THAC0?

Recently I came across some new schoolers at Penny Arcade comparing old school D&D to the version they play; they called it 4E or Double D or something.  Hey, I'm just an unfrozen caveman, I don't understand these ascending armor classes or... well, that's pretty much all that I know about ND&D,* so I'll stop there.  Seriously, it does not ruffle my feathers at all that there's a new version out there that's completely different from and incompatible with the game I played before the ice age claimed me back in the late 80s.  Heck, I wanted to change that game too, can't blame TSR et. al. for doing the same thing and making money off of it.  If the kids are havin' fun, then Game On!

*ND&D=New D&D, commonly denoted by a numerical "e rating," the higher the e-rating, the newer the D&D.

But there is one piece of information that I'd like to impart to the younger generations, and it's this: THAC0 and descending Armor Class are NOT synonymous.

Despite what this guy seems to think, if you mention THAC0 to stick-in-the-mud old schoolers like me who never graduated from the Gygax-authored tomes, there is no reason to expect them to know what you're talking about.  Though the term Thac0 might have existed back in the day, it was not at all relevant to the game as it was played on the streets.  The term came about, according to some research I poached from Philotomy (sadly, that blog is no longer with us), because of a curious column of data in the monster listings (Appendix E) of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide that was labeled "To Hit AC 0."  However, there is no explanation of the significance of this this item and one is left to wonder why it was included with the other, more pertinent stats listed.  Indeed, there's no reason I can see why they chose to spend 19 pages rehashing info that was already available in the Monster Manual when the only real value this table offers is looking up the XP value of that Shedu your players just blasted into a heap of fur and feathers (1,950 + 14/hp).  No, when we old schoolers wanted to crush our foes we didn't call out our thac0s like a battle cry and have at it with our 20-siders; we turned to the combat tables on page 74-75 or eyeballed the DM's Screens that grew like stands of alder trees on gaming tables throughout the land.  Then we walked 14 miles to school through a blizzard, uphill each way.



Seeing as Unearthed Arcana (1985) was the last new TSR-published D&D product I bought--though I played on for a couple more years in isolation from the machinations of Lake Geneva--I'm not entirely sure when thac0 grew to predominance.  In fact, I wasn't aware that it had gained any traction until I read the Penny Arcade post referenced above.  I'm guessing that it became prevalent in the 2nd Edition of The Game as a means to replace the combat tables as the go-to source for 20-sided slaughter in AD&D, a move in which I can definitely see some value.  And presumably some game mechanics were changed somehow (I'm looking at you, repeating 20s) to make it more usable as a system.  I'm not here to preach about the superiority of any one combat system over another--though, as much as I like the descending AC aesthetic, the ascending AC system sure makes life easier--but kids, get your facts straight.

Epilogue:
So, yeah, I lived most of my life without giving Thac0 any thought whatsoever until these meddling kids started confusing descending AC values with this eldritch acronym.  But now that my dander is up, why did they make it Thac0 and not Thac10?  AC 10 is the Absolute of descending ACs; like 0 degrees Kelvin, you could only go up from there.  And since no one needed a 20 to hit AC 10, you didn't need to worry where you stood on the ledge of repeating 20s.  It does rhyme with the name of a major college sports conference of the western U.S., but that will likely be changing soon anyway.  [Let's just say that Wazzoo won't be sandwiched between 2 filler helmets down at the bottom for much longer.  Though the Cougs are certainly likely to stay at the bottom.]

Some have argued about the zero providing balance whereas using 10 as the base seems arbitrary and provides opportunity for unlimited growth and, therefore, AC inflation.  I can sort of see what they're getting at; but unless you're in a game where there is a likelihood of finding suits of +12 plate mail or +24 rings of protection, there are probably de facto limits to AC inflation already in place. 

Go Beavers!

  

Referees vs. Dungeon Masters: Wherein the Caveman gets bent out of shape over a trifle

As anyone who read my recent posts knows, I'm on a semantic binge lately.  Following in that vein, I've become curious as to why some folks in the OSR prefer the term "referee" over "Dungeon Master," "Game Master," or some other "master"-ful title.  The word referee is, in my mind, not adequate to describe the role of what the DM does.  A referee, as anyone who has ever spent their lunch period playing intramural flag football or competed in a spelling bee knows is the disinterested (hopefully) 3rd party who makes sure the rules are adhered to by all sides of the contest.

In roleplaying games, the term would be accurate in games where 2 teams of players work against each other, such as, I believe, was common practice in the wargames from which D&D sprang.  But the Dungeon Master in D&D et al. is so much more than just a referee, for the DM not only administers the rules of the game, but he/she also coaches the opposing team, designs the playing field, and decides when the rules need to be bent, broken, or entirely fabricated to meet the needs of the gaming session. I have yet to encounter a real world event where the referee enjoys this much responsibility.

So why are old schoolers eschewing the term DM (or similar) for the less holistic "referee"?  History usually offers an explanation to these sorts of things, and this case will be no exception.  A quick search of the original 1974 rulebooks (thank Blipdoolpoolp for searchable PDFs!) shows me that "referee" was indeed the preferred term for the person who runs the game.  In fact, the term "Dungeonmaster"--yes, it was originally all one word--makes its first official rules appearance in EGG's introduction to the Blackmoor supplement published in 1975; though "referee" is still used exclusively in the body of this book.  The Eldritch Wizardry supplement introduces the two word variant "Dungeon Master," as well as the acronym "DM," though the one word option and "referee" are still used interchangeably throughout the text.

I don't have a PDF of the Holmes book, but a cursory survey of the text reveals that  "Dungeon Master" and "D.M." are predominant.  And right there on the back cover of the Monster Manual, published in 1977, "[the Monster Manual] is an invaluable aid to players and dungeon masters alike!" (emphasis mine).  I don't believe that it was solely an attempt to jazz-up the terminology that drove the founding fathers to invent a new term for the role, though this probably weighed in the decision.  I believe that they came to realize that refereeing, ie. rules administration, was only one facet of the job and a grander term was needed to fully encompass everything expected of the DM nee referee.  And, outside of S&M clubs, I can think of few places where the term "master" is more apt than in gaming.

Back to the present: Swords & Wizardry, retracing, as it does, the footprints of the original D&D rules, uses the term "referee."  I will respect their attempts at historic reconstruction, even if I choose not to use the term when playing the game.  OSRIC uses the generic GameMaster or GM; bland, yes, but entirely acceptable.  Labyrinth Lords has crafted a new term: Labyrinth Lord!  It's a bit cumbersome and the acronym form would need immediately to be followed by "Cool J," which is actually pretty excellent.  Imagine this conversation:

Alex:  Game night's coming up, anyone got a dungeon to run?
Barb:  Not me, but Carl just bought FU2: Administration Building of Shame.
Alex:  Hey Carl, you wanna "Cool J" that new module you bought?

As a bonus, if the folks over at Labyrinth Lords get LL Cool J as their official spokesperson, it might encourage gamers to lay off the Doritos and maybe do a few hundred sit ups every now and then.

But I suspect that anyone playing any of these retro clones already has a preferred job title and will keep using it no matter which game they're playing.  I for one have always used the term "DM" whether I'm playing D&D, DragonQuest, or non-fantasy rpgs such as Gangbusters or Star Frontiers.  It's just the name for the job, in my mind, and there's no sense trying to change it at this juncture.  And for that reason, I obviously have to respect anyone who started playing the game with the original 1974 rules for sticking to their guns.  But all you Holmesian+ players who, after decades of playing D&D, started using "referee" only when 3.5 or 4e drove you into the comforting arms of OD&D, well, you sort of sound like that guy in high school who got really into the Sex Pistols or The Clash and affected a phony British accent.  Maybe for you it evokes some purity by returning to the roots of the game or maybe its generic-ness appeals to you.  To me it smacks of disingenuous erudition; but that, I suppose, is my problem.  Now I have to get off this difference engine and get some stuff done around the house.

PS.  If you take any one thing away from this here blog--and I realize that this is asking a lot--please let it be the "Cool J" thing.  Forget everything else I said.

Quit euhemerizing and get back to work.

euhemerism: the doctrine that polytheistic mythology arose from the deification of dead heroes; the system of mythological interpretation which regards myths as based on real people and events. 

euhemerize: to believe in or practice euhemerism

Just came across this word in the ol' dictionary; a huge plus of hard copy dictionaries over the online variety is the serendipitous vocab exercise one experiences by leafing through the pages.  Anyway, I wanted to write it down in hopes of retaining the meaning in me noggin.  Feel free to sprinkle it in your own conversation to spice things up a bit at the water cooler.

Wisdom for the wise: defining the ambiguous attribute

"Wisdom: the faculty of making the best use of knowledge, experience, understanding, etc.; good judgment; sagacity."--Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, 2nd Edition

In preparation for a future post on character generation systems from various vintage RPGs, I’ve been pondering ability/attribute scores a lot lately.  Virtually every game I’ve reviewed (~12 of ‘em, all published before 1985) have some sort of corollary to the abilities as first presented in D&D.  Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution, although often under different names, are pretty much universal, and many others have a rating for a character’s smarts and personality, covering the same ground as Intelligence and Charisma.  But Wisdom is an outlier; a term used by very few—if any—other games of the era, or any era since, I suspect.  Even TSR’s own Gamma World—the game that most closely mimics the D&D ability format—keeps all five of the other abilities intact but wisdom is replaced with a new, more concrete sounding name: Mental Strength.

While other games often do include abilities such as intuition, perception, and willpower—much more specific and tangible terms to describe potential game mechanics—they leave good judgment and sagacity out of the picture; these must, I believe, remain the purview of the player, not the character.  So why Wisdom?  What's its significance not just to clerics, but to game mechanics in general?  Which is to say, even if you can justify its usefulness to clerics, why should it be anything but a dump stat for the non-clerically inclined?  I intend to look into the history of the wisdom ability and what it's become.   

Going back to the earliest source, here’s what Gygax had to say about Wisdom in D&D Volume I: Men & Magic:

Wisdom is the prime requisite for Clerics… Wisdom rating will act much as does that for intelligence.

There you have it; no attempt to define the word or justify its singular importance to clerics other than to state that it is so.  Admittedly, he made little effort to define the other abilities either, presumably relying on his audience to be smart enough to figure out what "strength" means.  But unlike the other abilities, one gets the impression that this is exactly what Wisdom meant to the founding fathers: each class needed its own prime ability and wisdom was chosen, for lack of a better term, as the name of that ability for clerics.

Back in 1980-81, Holmes's blue book was my intro to D&D and it is, I think, telling that Eric Holmes, tasked with making the original D&D rules more palatable—or at least edible—to a younger crowd, expanded somewhat on the definitions of the other five abilities but did not lay a finger on wisdom:

Wisdom is the prime requisite for clerics.

This is exactly what wisdom meant to me throughout my playing days.  I never made any attempt to apply any other significance to the term; certainly not from the real world definition.  Not even after reading Gygax’s expanded definition in the AD&D Player’s Handbook: 

Wisdom is a composite term for the character’s enlightenment, judgement, wile, will power, and (to a certain extent) intuitiveness.

This definition is, in my opinion, too broad and vague to provide any traction for in-game functionality, although it does add willpower into the mix, which provides some potential relevance.  But he's also thrown in a character’s "wile" which would seemingly make wisdom much more important to con men than to clerics.  

The definition of wisdom, no doubt, has been amended further in the post-Gygaxian editions of D&D, but I am not aware of those definitions, so please pardon me for not discussing them here.   But within the old school community, new game re-designers keep pumping out their own versions of TSR’s old properties—God bless them, everyone.  Below is a sampling of wisdom definitions from the OSR movement:

From OSRIC:

A character’s wisdom score (“Wis”) indicates how “in tune” the character is with his or her surroundings. This translates not only to general awareness, but also to mystical attunement and the ability to understand peoples’ motives. It is, in many ways, a measure of the “sixth sense.” Wisdom is the most important attribute for clerics and druids.


Labyrinth Lords has this to say:

Wisdom (WIS) describes a character’s willpower, common sense, perception, and intuition. While Intelligence represents one’s ability to analyze information, Wisdom represents being in tune with and aware of one’s surroundings. Wisdom is the most important ability for clerics.


And Swords & Wizardry:

Wisdom determines a character’s insight, perception, and good judgment. Wisdom is the Prime Attribute for Clerics.

Perception, be it mystical or mundane, seems to be the common thread here, and I definitely think there's room for a perception ability in Old School style game rules.  I don't think wisdom is the right name for that ability nor do I understand why it would be particularly pertinent to succeeding at clerical actions.  OSRIC's 6th sense definition, I think, comes closest to an answer to the cleric problem, but only if some sort of 6th sense rules are included for non-clerics.

There is another option I’ve just become aware of: James Raggi’s forthcoming Lamentations of the Flame Princess provides the following definition:

Wisdom is the measure of a character’s connection to the greater universe, and the strength of the character’s spirit. Wisdom does not affect the character’s ability to make good decisions or judge situations or characters; it is the player’s own judgment which must be used in these situations. 

He takes a similar tone regarding Intelligence and Charisma, laying down a strong separation of church and state between character supplied abilities and player supplied abilities.  I heartily endorse such an approach.  Still, I'd like to see how this definition applies to game action in a way that would make wisdom anything but a dump stat for non-clerics.


And from the not quite OSR movement, Castles and Crusades has this to say:

Wisdom reflects depth of personal experience, the ability to make well-considered decisions or judgments, [fair enough] and represents a spiritual connection to a deity. [huh?]

This non-sequitur brings to mind The Simpsons episode where the U.S. Senate is debating a bill to save Springfield from an impending meteor strike and someone at the last second adds a rider that will allow taxpayer funding of pornographic art.  Needless to say, Springfield gets no federal aid to avert the cataclysm and the folks at Troll Lord Games, with this total cop-out of a definition, get no credit for clarifying the murky matter that is Wisdom.   On top of that, the way the ability is used in C&C makes sense only if characters start out with fairly low wisdom, making gains as they acquire experience.  
 
So, what do I propose as a solution?  Well, the definition I've been mulling over in my head lately has wisdom leaning back toward willpower, or, As I think of it, Strength of will.  While I don’t think Oxford or Webster will support me on this distinction, to me willpower is that which makes you refuse the easy, more tempting option—finishing a marathon, say, requires a lot of willpower.  Strength of Will is more like committing yourself to a cause based not on mere stubbornness, ignorance of other options, or a “refuse to lose” mentality, but because you’ve considered the cause and the tenets upon which it is based very carefully and believe it to be worth the trouble to align yourself with it.  A cause, in game terms could be a religion or the beliefs of a specific deity, but also a code of honor, one’s alignment, or even belief in the actions/words of a particular individual.  Which isn’t to say that a high wisdomed character will blindly follow such a leader to the Kool Aid pitcher; should this leader-type betray the tenets upon which the faith was based, the highly wisdomed will most likely choose this time to opt out.

All told, this, too, is a pretty froofy definition and I’ve belabored it long enough.  So what is one to do?  Most likely, one would go on not giving a crap about such a silly semantic distinction and continue with the tried and true "Wisdom = the prime attribute of clerics," and I certainly have no beef with that approach.  But it has struck me as peculiar that, in a community prone to debating things like this, I have seen no debate on the matter of defining Wisdom.  Or maybe I'm just missing something.