Gentlemen Wizards
Earlier today, Havoc and I briefly spoke about gentlemen wizards.
I've been running RPGs for many years at this point, but have only really been playing in them for maybe 1 year. In all this time I have only been Fighter, Fighter-types in classless games, and Marines in Mothership. I like Fighters, and have happened to roll stats that point in that direction more often than not.
Another character type I've always wanted to play as is a sort of gentleman wizard type. However, no game I've played in has modelled this in a way I find sufficient. Let's take a look at some of the preconditions for a gentleman wizard.
Player Skill:
First and foremost, the ability to embody this character is most important. What this means to me is to employ the opposite of my typical play style:
- Prioritize investigation and sound decision making over decisiveness of action (These can be weighed against one another; bad decisions can succeed if made quickly and with force, but are more likely to have unintended consequences)
- Privilege establishing reciprocal relationships, and avoid violence
- Always carry the right tools for the job (This feeds into the first element)
Now here there are some clashes with typical OSR dungeon play. Reciprocal relationships are more valuable in open environments, such as a hexcrawl, than in closed environments. This also requires refs and/or modules that provide enough detail to scaffold those relationships. Additionally, the closed space of the dungeon is often nearly impossible to investigate without simply going balls deep. Basically: the dungeon game privileges the brash Fighter-type on a structural level. The gentleman wizard has a better chance in a hexcrawl or, otherwise, a longer term campaign with more prominent social elements.
Mechanical Elements:
Generally speaking, though I have no problem with classes as a convention, I am more and more convinced of the merits of classless play. The difficulty of that is that interesting character decisions need to exist in the game material itself, rather than in the rules text. That takes well made RPG content, which is hard to come by. That being said: I will propose how I would like to play a gentleman wizard.
Armour & Inventory: the game must privilege characters with no armour in some way. There are numerous systems which do this, though the most typical B/X-style D&D does not count among them. Benefits to inventory space and stealth are perhaps the two easiest elements to put in place. Inventory is essential to the gentleman wizard: he must carry the weaknesses of various monsters, a skeleton key, dictionary with ancient texts, sleeping drugs to evade enemies, and any other clever gadget or gizmo the player can think of. Stealth can be handled between the ref and player: consistently remind your ref of your unarmored status where you think that should factor into resolution. Presto!
Languages: the gentleman wizard must be highly educated and, especially in a pseudo fantasy world, languages ought to be the most important expression of that education. Where many, many systems and modules fail is in languages. Either everyone speaks "Common" or languages are distributed in a bizarre, purely racial fashion. Languages are, of course, more likely to matter in longer term campaigns with more developed worlds. Where possible, the gentleman wizard should expand their linguistic skills to communicate across cultural bounds, read various texts and signs, and interpret runes left behind by ancient cultures. If the game material is well put together, this may well be the most important element. If you are adventuring alongside barely literate Fighter-types, then this should feel important.
Spells: magic kind of sucks. There's lots of ways to handle this, but I am leaning further and further toward embracing the language element of spells. Here, again, education and access to wealth (starting wealth and then, later, forged through patronage networks and other connections) are major facets of their access to magic. I will not give a full treatment here, but I think the typical B/X or OD&D style magic system doesn't really capture the flavour of tapping into the arcane.
Where possible, the gentleman wizard maintains mastery over the arcane. They should take dark arts very seriously, and never abuse magic to the point of corruption. This is in contrast to other Wizard-type characters, some of whom would leap blindly into the abyss for the sake of power.
Having a pistol: a gentleman wizard must have a pistol and be pretty good with it. There is no substitute. The mechanical corollary to this is that the system ought not to sink the combat skill of a Wizard-type too hard. This is where a classless system is good; if characters are defined primarily by equipment and in-world acquisition of abilities, then its easy for the fighter-type to remain distinct from the gentleman wizard character on those grounds. In class based systems more generally, the extreme weakness of Wizards makes me uninterested in playing as them.
And so, these are my scattered and varied thoughts on the subject. Please ruminate on them and, if you dare, record your own thoughts on the subject.