The DMG, Section by Section, Part 4: Character Age, Aging, Disease, and Death

Character Age

As part of character generation, a character's age is rolled for. Age ranges are determined by class and race. Age ranges vary from 13+1d4 for a Half-Orc Fighter to 500+10d10 for an Elven Cleric. Fighters have the lowest age ranges, followed by thieves, magic-users and finally clerics. For humans, sub-classes (druid, paladin, ranger, illusionist, assassin and monk, which doesn't seem to be a sub-class, but is maybe only available to humans in AD&D?) get their own ranges, but demi-human sub-classes get their ranges from their base class, it seems (based on no sub-classes being on the demi-human Age table). This is pretty straightforward, but gets interesting when compared with the age categories in the next section. It's also something I like and will probably add to my games in the future.

Aging

In AD&D, there are five age categories: Young Adult, Mature, Middle-Aged, Old and Venerable. Lifespans range from a maximum of 99 years for a Half-Orc to a maximum of 2419 years for a Gray Elf. (For those following along, these numbers are derived from calculating maximum age in the Death section later on; in this section, the Venerable brackets end for a Half-Orc at 80 and for a Gray Elf at 2000.)

These brackets are important because ability scores are modified based on which bracket a character is currently in. For example, a Young Adult character loses one point of Wisdom but gains one point of Constitution. As characters age, they lose Constitution, Strength and Dexterity while gaining Wisdom and Intelligence; Charisma is the only ability untouched by aging, which makes sense when remembering the Old School dogma that Charisma is more about leadership ability than about physical beauty (and assuming an pre-Modern culture in which age is respected instead of derided and mocked).

What I find really interesting is that, combined with the Character Age tables, this means that characters of different races but the same class will begin their careers in different age brackets. I first noticed this for Clerics, where a Human may begin their career while a Young Adult or Mature, Half-Orcs and Half-Elves begin while Mature (perhaps because of their Human blood?), Gnomes and Elves start their careers as Middle Aged and Dwarves may only begin their careers as clerics once they've reached the Old bracket! I link the Cleric class with Dwarves in my mind, so this surprises me, but that flouting of expectations is something I love about Old School games. I'm also interested in the consequences to play of starting a character out that is Old; will this change player behavior, and, if so, how?

Finally, the Aging section has a short table for the number of years a character ages when engaging in certain magics, ranging from aging one year for casting Limited Wish, imbibing a Speed potion or being the subject of a Haste spell to a whopping five years for casting a Gate spell. I'm curious as to the implications of this; if I was running a Human Magic-User, I would certainly hesitate to have him engage in these kinds of magic, but I'm just not sure I'd care if I ran an Elf Magic-User. Perhaps those are exactly the in-game play style ramifications that are intended. I'm on the fence about penalizing these kinds of magic by including magical aging as a consequence for using them; I'm alternately afraid that it won't matter at all to the players if I include it and afraid that it will discourage using these magics so badly that they will avoid them all-together.

Interestingly, casting one of the spells that includes magical aging as a consequence from a scroll, ring or other device does not cause magical aging; rather, placing a spell on the scroll (or device, presumably) in the first place causes magical aging. I can imagine plots revolving around getting another Magic-User to place one of these spells onto a scroll or into an item so my character (or, as the DM, an NPC) doesn't have to age to use one of these spells.

Disease

Diseases (and parasites - there are tables for parasites that parallel the disease tables) are described in the abstract; using these tables, a character does not contract TB or the measles or bubonic plague; instead, one might contract [roll, roll, roll] a mild, acute respiratory disease lasting 1-3 weeks unless treated or [roll, roll, roll] a chronic, severe gastro-intestinal disease which permanently robs a character of a point of Strength and Constitution each time it strikes. The one thing missing from the tables, in my opinion, is how much time elapses between attacks in the case of chronic diseases (d6 or d12 months sounds reasonable to me).

I really like the abstract nature of these disease tables; they add a flavor of uncertainty to the player's experience when their character gets sick. Instead of saying, "your character is down with the measles," this approach has me say, "your character is really sick and has a horrible rash; you're not sure what it is." If they consult a physician, I can roll on the excellent and complementary disease tables in Matt Finch's Tome of Adventure Design, which include Medieval-sounding diagnoses ("Irrationality of the Liver" or "Stiffness of the Kidneys") and Medieval treatments (bleeding, leeches, poultices, baths, drinking noxious liquids, scourging and prayer, and so on). The only thing I need to determine for myself is whether the suggested cure will actually work (I'm waffling between a 50% chance and a 75% chance).

Gygax suggests checking each month if each character has contracted a disease, each week if conditions are "favorable." This sounds cruel until you realize that the base chance of contracting a disease is 2%. There are modifiers which can boost the chances of contraction, but even if the character is Venerable (+5%), currently diseased or infected with parasites (+1%) and exposed to a carrier of communicable diseases (10%) in a crowded (+1%), filthy (+1%) city in the middle of a hot and moist (+2%) marsh, swamp or jungle (+2%), the chances of contracting a disease are, at the very most, 24%. Of course, in conditions like that, Gygax suggests rolling weekly instead of monthly…

Death

Gygax begins his discussion of death by asserting that death in combat is, "no great matter in most cases," because of the myriad magical ways to bring a character back to life. The number of times Gygax has mentioned Wishes so far (we're only on page 15!) has got me wondering if there should be a lot more Wishes available in my games, and why they just don't seem to be super-common in today's roleplaying, even among the OSR. Reflections on that point are especially welcome in the comments. Other bloggers in the OSR (who, like me, tend to play D&D instead of AD&D) have already voiced their opposition to a "revolving door" approach to death and coming back to life, so I won't go into that beyond saying that, yeah, I don't enjoy playing so that the death of a character is, "no great matter," unless by that you mean that it's easy and quick to roll up a new character.

Gygax goes on to point out that death due to old age or (later on in this section) disease poses a greater problem; characters who die of old age and are brought back to life will soon die again, and those who died of disease and are brought back to life will still carry the effects of the disease, like ability score loss, and are 90% likely to still have the disease.

Gygax also provides tables for determining the maximum age for a character; that is, at what age the character will die of old age. The youngest that a character might die of old age is 62, for a Half-Orc, while, as previously mentioned, the longest that a Gray Elf may live is 2419 years.

The DMG, Section by Section, Part 3: Creating the Player Character

Generation of Ability Scores

Gygax famously argues that 3d6-in-order is a bad way to generate AD&D characters, saying that truly average ("marginal" is the term he uses) characters will tend to have shorter life expectancies and that players won't want to play the classes and races that are the best fits for their rolls. Instead, he outlines four methods for producing ability scores above what would be average if 3d6-in-order was used.

Non-Player Characters

Gygax writes that high-level NPCs should have their ability scores determined by DM fiat, which makes a lot of sense to me. Average Joe NPCs get 3d6-in-order, except that rolls of 1 are changed to 3 and rolls of 6 changed to 4 in order to keep them very average. Special characters, like henchmen (I'm not sure what else, as Gygax doesn't say) get 3d6-in-order, except for any abilities that are germane to their occupation, where a PC method can be used or add 1 to each die that comes up less than 6. This all seems reasonable to me, considering the assumptions about AD&D in the PC generation advice.

The Effect of Wishes on Character Ability Scores

Apparently it was common for players to use wishes to raise their characters' ability scores in Gygax's experience, and wishes were much more readily had than I've ever seen as well. Gygax suggests allowing one wish spell to raise a score by one until the score reaches 16, at which point a wish will raise a score by .1. Personally, I can't imagine being a player with nothing better to spend ten wishes on than raising one of my ability scores from 16 to 17, but apparently that happened. I find it interesting that Gygax pushes the idea that PCs must have above-average scores just a few paragraphs earlier, but here treats the idea of "many characters… eventually running around with several 18s (or even higher!)" as something to guard against.

Characteristics for Player Characters

One hundred pages into the DMG, there are tables for the traits of NPCs. Mostly, these are personality traits, like alignment, intro/extraversion, attitudes towards money, honesty, etc., though physical traits like age, height and weight are also included. Gygax warns against rolling on these tables for PCs for anything other than height and weight, insisting that the players must be allowed to decide on the personalities and choices of their characters. He does allow for players to request rolls on these tables if the DM thinks that the player can roleplay a randomly generated characteristic well enough.

Player Character Non-Professional Skills

As an option, Gygax includes a D% table of secondary skills that PCs may be familiar with, such as farming, mining, masonry and sailing. He leaves the adjudication of these skills to the common sense of the DM, without any mechanical way to determine what a secondary skill allows a PC to do. This is a prime example of where Gygax's earlier admonitions against unauthorized products clashes with my experience. Dragon Tree Press' Monstrous Civilizations of Delos includes a much more extensive set of tables for determining secondary skills and apprenticeship/educational background, with concrete mechanical benefits for each entry, and both my players and myself have really enjoyed using it.

Starting Level of Experience for Player Characters

This section is mostly concerned with how to treat new players. Gygax argues that players who are new to roleplaying should ideally be segregated from experienced roleplayers and allowed to learn the game for themselves instead of being taught by other players. I think this is usually impractical, but a good idea when possible. Gygax is hesitant to allow players to start with characters above Level 1, arguing that they will enjoy their levels more if they've earned them, but makes exceptions for players entering an existing campaign where the other players' characters are leveled and for new players who don't see level-gain as a worthy goal; the idea is that once they've experienced a high-level character, they will want to level their characters up to such a high level.

The DMG, Section by Section, Part 2: The Game

Approaches to Playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

Gygax declares that there are basically two schools when it comes to roleplaying games: realism-simulation and gaming. I had never realized that GNS theory had roots at least as far back as 1979, although by the "gaming" school Gygax seems to be meaning something closer to, but not synonymous with, GNS theory's Narrativist rather than GNS' Gamist. Gygax states that AD&D is firmly in the gaming school and that those looking for simulationism or realism won't find what they are looking for in AD&D. He describes AD&D as best for, "fun, excitement, and captivating fantasy," and for those, "who desire to create and populate imaginary worlds with larger-than-life heroes and villains, who seek relaxation with a fascinating game, and who generally believe games should be fun, not work, will hopefully find this system to their taste."

Dice

Gygax gives the fullest discussion of dice I think I've ever seen in a "core" book, jumping into probability curves within the first paragraph! He goes on to discuss conventional abbreviations for dice (xdy+z), how different dice can be combined in a roll (for example, you can simulate a d40 by rolling a d4 and a d10, which, in 1979, would itself have probably been a d20 with each number repeated), and other, non-platonic dice. He mentions the d10, d6s with no 1s or 6s but two 3s and 4s, and a die he uses for reaction rolls that has card suites on each face. Rolling dice, then, seems to be one of the areas where experimentation and homebrewing are encouraged for AD&D; at the end of the section, Gygax admonishes the reader that, "the dice are your tools. Learn to use them properly, and they will serve you well."

Use of Miniature Figures with the Game

Gygax encourages the use of minis with AD&D, stating that they are helpful in establishing marching order (so not every step of exploration was apparently played out with miniatures) and especially helpful in explaining tactical situations to players (so many, if not all, fights seem to be played out with minis). Gygax suggests that players furnish minis for their own characters, henchmen and hirelings while contributing to a fund for buying monster minis. Gygax cautions that all minis should be bought at the same scale and points out that mini bases are twice as big as the scale of the minis themselves, an important point in playing out tactical situations.

Aids to Playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

Here, Gygax spends about half a column explaining what possible aids can be bought for use with AD&D; he mentions character sheets, DM screens, modules, miniatures and magazines. He also strongly, strongly stresses that only officially approved aids should be used or purchased. Besides TSR, the only companies he mentions as approved are Judges Guild for paper products, Grenadier for minis and Games Workshop's White Dwarf for magazines. This amounts to both informing the reader what kind of things are available and advertising for TSR and official licensees. As someone whose game has benefitted immensely from Arduin and DragonTree books, as well as more recent stuff that certainly isn't official D&D (that is, just about everything published by the OSR), suffice it to say that I strongly disagree with Gygax as far as what I'll allow in my games.

The DMG, Section by Section, Part 1: Foreword, Preface and Introduction

I picked up my copy of the Type I Dungeon Masters Guide reprint today at my FLGS. I'm pretty excited. So excited, in fact, that I'm taking it upon myself to start a new series, going through the 1e DMG section by section. I've seen this done with the LBBs and the Arduin Grimoire, but never the DMG (possibly because it's so much bigger?). I've also read multiple blog posts that mention constantly discovering new things in the 1e DMG, and I want to try my hand at discovering some too.

Also, does anyone else's reprinted DMG smell like formaldehyde? Is that just because of the shrink-wrapping, or something about the pages? It's really not the "new book smell" I'm used to.

Foreword

Written by Mike Carr, the TSR Games and Rules Editer, this is about a half-page long. After playing around with whether DMing is more art or science, Carr points out that it is both immensely rewarding and a lot of work. He then goes on to say that the DMG (along with the PHB and Monster Manual) are all you need to play AD&D, plus your imagination. He gets really close to Swords & Wizardry's motto of "Imagine the hell out of it." Finally, he plugs the DMG by saying that there are few DMs who can't improve their game and that the DMG is full of stuff that can help them DM better. From what I've read about the DMG three decades later, I'm anticipating that this is not an empty boast.

Preface

Written, like the rest of the DMG, by Gygax, this is two pages long. Both at the beginning and the end of his preface, he makes the strong point that the DMG should only be read by Dungeon Masters and even suggests in-game penalties for players who demonstrate knowledge only in the DMG (they should be treated as if they had consulted expensive sages who prefer to barter their services for magic items). The bulk of the essay is taken up with Gygax trying to walk a tightrope between the "imagine the hell out of it" attitude and attempting to force some sort of adherence to the DMG as written, leaning, in my opinion, strongly towards the latter attitude.

Gygax argues that the DMG should be closely followed for two main reasons. The first is that Gygax envisions all AD&D games in a "universe" with parallel campaigns in which players can move from campaign to campaign, presumably taking their characters with them. It's this desire that makes me think Gygax would be happy to see FLAILSNAILS doing so well. The second reason is that Gygax fears that not adhering to many of the rules (presumably concerning the economy, monster placement and treasure placement) would either create a too-easy or too-hard campaign, ultimately leading to an abortive, short-lived campaign.

Since this series is discussing the contents of the DMG, since I'm completely unqualified to speculate about Gygax's motives and because I find that kind of thing distasteful, I'm not going to go into possible other reasons why Gygax would push strict adherence to AD&D as-written. That will set a precedent for the rest of this series. That said, I can't say that I particularly care for the lack of choice Gygax asks his readers to hold to; the OSR and FLAILSNAILS seems to me to prove that it isn't strictly necessary, although, yeah, guidelines for treasure and monster placement are undeniably nice.

At the end of his preface, Gygax goes on to thank those who have contributed to the DMG in various ways. The fact that he doesn't mention most of the artists makes me think that their art that is included in the reprint came from later editions.

Introduction

The introduction begins by laying out the format of the DMG: first comes elaboration upon material in the PHB, information that players shouldn't know, then comes material for DMs creating and running campaigns. Gygax says that he needed to omit a lot and that the priorities for inclusion were, first, what was necessary, second, what was very helpful, third, what was interesting.

Gygax also leans back the other way on his tightrope, arguing for making the game your own within the confines of AD&D. As an example, he says that wandering monsters can be omitted if they will get in the way of your players getting to where the real adventure is. "The game," that is, having fun, dictates what rules and systems are used; Gygax almost sounds like he's arguing for games without a lot of paperwork!

My final observation is that Gygax seems to push a view of the DM-player relationship that is overly antagonistic to my ears. The assumption Gygax seems to hold is that players will do their best to get whatever they can (in the Preface, Gygax states that players will constantly push for a too-easy campaign, and that this needs to constantly be guarded against), without regard to good faith. Now, I've met players and DMs who have this attitude (one player once boasted to me that they could break my campaign - for example, if they were riding in an airship, they would jump off and watch me flail for a way to save them, not realizing that, as a card-carrying member of the "yeah, your characters are totally going to die in my campaign every once in a while" club I would do no such thing - this really confused him); they seem to see this antagonism as the object of the game itself. That's fine if they like it: I'm not going to attack them centering their game on antagonism any more than I'll attack New School gamers for centering their games around character generation. The thing is that not all players today are like that (mine certainly haven't been) and I prefer (to borrow Gygax's phrasing) to play the game instead of engaging in contests of wit and will that break immersion and suspension of disbelief.

Learning New Games

I know some bloggers have written that they blog more when they aren't playing; for me, it seems to be the exact opposite. I haven't been gaming much and neither have I been blogging all that much. What gaming writing I have been doing has been mostly working on a Gamer ADD project that isn't ready for the blogosphere yet.

I've decided to put that aside for the moment and try to return to actually gaming. Primarily, that means finally getting that Pendragon game going with my gaming group, but I may also try Google+ ConstantCon gaming. It would be really fun to be a player again.

When I referee, one of the attitudes I have is that I don't require system mastery of my players (this seems to work better with Old School games, so far as I can tell). This, plus the fact that I tend to heavily house-rule, means that I tend to write up booklets for my players that distill the information they need to know. (Unfortunately, enough of those booklets is copyrighted - and not just OGL either - that I don't think I can share them online.)

I've found myself doing the same thing with Pendragon, except that grasping the way the system works has replaced house-ruling as my second motive. Today I went through the character generation section with an index card and wrote out an outline of character generation while I was waiting for a friend to finish physical therapy. When I got home, I typed it into the computer and now I just need to copy the tables and lists over to have a finished character generation booklet for my players. I feel much more comfortable with character generation and the character sheet (well, at least the front of it) than I used to, even though I've read through it multiple times before.

When you begin to play with a new game system, what strategies do you use to learn it? Do you read it through multiple times? Give it one long, thorough read? Only look at what seems most important for now and figure you'll learn the rest when it's actually needed? Re-state it for yourself to make sure you grasp it, like I do? What other strategies do you have for learning a new game?

Playing Around with Non-Standard Races

So, I was thinking and I'm curious if my taste lines up with anyone else among my readers. Here's a list of some alternate/non-standard races I'd personally be interested in playing in a vanilla/standard D&D campaign. I'm curious whether you'd personally want to play any of them, and what other races I haven't listed you'd be interested in playing.

Races I know I'd be interested in playing:

• Centaurs (provided that there wouldn't be issues of fitting into dungeons, at least most of the time)
• Insect-Men/Phraints/Formians (provided they had feelings)
• Some type of bird-man
• Young, low-level but intelligent dragons (I would especially enjoy taking a dragon from first level all the way through an end-game)
• Mushroom Men/Shrooms/Myconids
• Leprechauns or some other probably non-flying fey of that size

 Races I might be interested in if the concept was fleshed out some more:

• Lizard-Men/Saurigs/Thracians
• Ent/Dryad
• Giant (probably in a wilderness phase of a campaign)

Do any of these strike you as something you'd like to play? What else would you like to play?

Another interesting question: a good while back, Noisms posted this article about how non-human races should have something about their psychology or culture different from human psychologies and cultures. In the article, Noisms links to a list of elements of psychology and culture that are universal to humans and suggests that a few of these should be changed for non-human races. I think this is a handy way to let players know a way to play their non-human PCs; it takes the responsibility for policing it away from the referee and players tend to take kernels of ideas like this and run with them in fun and unexpected ways.

Which of these human universals would you take away from some of these races to make them more interesting?

Mike Mearls Interview at Kobold Quarterly

Over at Kobold Quarterly, there's an interview with Mike Mearls. He specifically addresses some of the questions I've seen floating around the OSR blogs and it's just generally an interesting interview.

My First Reaction to D&D Next

I've had very, very little time looking at the D&D Next public playtest materials I downloaded yesterday. What with all the downloading problems WotC had most of the day, helping my sister move out of her dorm and my dad borrowing my computer to burn DVDs of his fishing trip, I didn't even get to download it until late last night, and then I spent today helping my sister and her friends move out of their dorms some more.

Not that I'm complaining – really. Contrary to what I've heard other truck-owners say, one of my favorite things about owning a truck is being able to help other people move stuff; probably something about feeling needed.

Anyway, this isn't a truck blog; it's an RPG blog.

I've had a chance to very, very briefly scan the materials and see that stat blocks are longer than most non-Advanced forms of D&D, but not by much. I haven't taken the time to suss out what they all mean and how that will impact anything, but I'm a fan of short stat blocks any day, so that's nice.

That's all overshadowed, however, by this simple fact: Yesterday WotC allowed me to download Module B2 – The Caves of Chaos. For free.

Wow.

See, you need to remember that I'm a grognardling. I've been looking forward to BUYING the DMG next month. I still haven't ever handled any core books from before Type III D&D, let alone the kind of D&D I like to play, that the retroclones introduced me to. I've read over and over the nostalgic reminiscing of my fellow OSR bloggers who cut their teeth on B2, and resigned myself to probably never getting my hands on it; really, if I was going to buy TSR-era D&D stuff, I'd probably buy rules sets before modules, so I chalked it up as something I'd probably never encounter, let alone get to run.

 (By the way, WotC, I still would very much appreciate you making the PDFs of OD&D and other older versions available again, preferably for free; we in the OSR haven't given up on that.)

So, yeah. As soon as I can wrangle a group together, I'll be running the Caves of Chaos. It's very exciting, and even a little shocking, that I'll be now sharing in something at least very close to the experiences I've only read about until now.

For this little gesture, WotC, thank you. May we continue to show good faith to each other.

Thoughts on Unconventional Races

Blog posts about using unconventional races have been circulating the OSR, so here's my two cents.

1) I've been kicking around an idea for a new setting in my head for a while, and considering using unconventional races for it. The way I've decided to try to get player buy-in to the unconventional classes is to restrict players to just playing humans at first, then, as they encounter new races, they have the option of creating PCs of the races they've encountered. (I should be clear that restricting beginning races to just humans is primarily for other reasons, but this is a nice supporting perk.) What do you think: if players first encounter new playable races in the course of play rather than during character generation will they be more likely to buy in to them?

2) Have there been any successful races that really caught on in other games? Phraints keep coming up over and over again in my Arduin books, but does anyone know whether they caught on in actual Arduin gaming, or, even more importantly, whether they ever were even moderately popular in non-Arduin games? I know next to nothing about Glorantha, but I've heard about anthropomorphic ducks; were these played a lot in Glorantha? Did they ever catch on outside Glorantha? Do any Tunnels & Trolls players know how popular leprechauns and fairies are among T&T players? I know that a lot of Science Fiction games have alien races; do those ever catch on that much?

If any of these games/settings created races that became even moderately popular, it's probably worth looking at them to see if we can figure out what they did right.

3) The argument's been made that the reason Dwarves, Elves and (perhaps to a lesser degree) Hobbits have such staying power is that they are part of our cultural awareness; that they're deep-seated and archetypal. Is that because they connect with something inherent within us or because they figure prominently in both folklore and the fiction that dominates gaming (Tolkien, Dragonlance, Sword of Shannara, etc.)?

If it's because Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits connect to something like Jungian archetypes for us, it seems that many unconventional races might not get player buy-in because they aren't similarly based around archetypes that resonate with us. New races should be based on other archetypes in order to get buy-in.

If it's because we're just so familiar with Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits from our reading habits, it seems to me that many unconventional races might not get player buy-in because they aren't similarly taken from the stories we're familiar with. Perhaps instead of crazy new races, we should try out races like giants or leprechauns.

I think that this last idea of players wanting to play races they're familiar with is probably at least part of the reality. I've had player requests to play a brownie, a Narnia-style dryad and a unicorn. It's probably worth mentioning that all those requests came from women or girls that were already, to one degree or another, well-versed in fantasy as a genre - probably more versed than me, actually. They liked what they read or were familiar with and wanted to bring that into their gaming. I actually did that – bring something I liked from my own reading into the way I gamed – in the first campaign I played in: I created a (probably under-powered) marshwiggle race for 3.5. It's also probably worth mentioning that one of the main theses of the OSR is that a lot of early gaming was, along with creating new worlds, about creating a way to bring in and play with (if not play out or recreate) things that early gamers liked in their reading.

It's this anecdotal evidence that players like to play what they are familiar with from outside gaming that makes me think that the better way to introduce new, invented races that players aren't familiar with is to have players encounter them first during play. Get players familiar enough with them that they begin to want to play them… and then let them.

20 Questions, Part 8: A Better Wizard

I found my last entry in this series, which answered the question "Who is the most powerful wizard in the land?", to be pretty lackluster, and, judging by the whopping zero comments on that post, my readers seem to agree. Forgive me, gentle readers, and let me take a second crack at this.

Where does this wizard live? (d8)

1. A tower out in the middle of nowhere.
2. A tower in a major city.
3. A cave out in the middle of nowhere.
4. On the grounds of a magical school (depending on how common magic is in your setting, this could be anything from just 3d4 apprentices to a huge magical university).
5. In a shack out in a swamp.
6. In the depths of the underworld (possibly in a mega-dungeon), where the wizard can study in peace and collect rare components.
7. With 1: Elves, 2: Dwarves, 3: a benevolent mentor Dragon, 4: the mushroom men.
8. Nowhere. The wizard is constantly on the move, like Gandalf.

What is this wizard's specialty? (d20)

1. Movement Magic
2. Fire and Light Magic
3. Animation and Disanimation Magic
4. Time and Gate Magic
5. Necromancy
6. Sleep and Charm Magic
7. Cold and Poison Magic
8. Fear and Confusion Magic
9. Elemental Magic
10. Polymorphing Magic
11. Liquid Magic
12. Teleportation, Phasing and Dimension-shifting Magic
13. Dragon Magic
14. Runes
15. Sorcerous Rituals
16. Alchemy
17. Illusions
18. Meta-magic (messing with spell slots, strengthening spells, etc.)
19. Creating scrolls, wands and rods
20. Memorizing spells for good, so they don't need to me re-memorized, or some other alternate form of magic (if you don't like this, take wands and rods from #19 and put them here)

What is this wizard's attitude towards adventurers in general? (d12)

1. Nostalgic: "Let me tell you about when I…"
2. Grumpy: "Get off my lawn!"
3. Suspicious: "Who sent you? What do you really want?"
4. Frustratingly Hospitable: "Have another seed cake? Really, we should finish tea before we get down to business. Do you have a place to stay for the night? I insist you stay the night here."
5. Eager to sell special (magical?) items (found and/or created)
6. Eager to buy or order special items (rare components, lost magic items, magic items in the possession of others, etc.)
7. Annoyed but resigned to periodic visits by adventuring parties
8. Feigned hospitality, but, unless something changes the wizard's mind, will try to send the party to its doom so they won't come back and annoy the wizard.
9. Eager for news of the outside world.
10. Eager to give advice (roll 1d6 each visit: odd, very good advice; even, very poor advice)
11. Eager to join the party and prove that he is not too old for excitement and adventure. Will be senile and get the party into trouble most of the time, but will come through for the party if they face certain doom. If the wizard hasn't already left the party for plot reasons by the time he saves the party for the third time, the wizard figures he's proven he "still has it" and returns to his abode.
12. Eager to send the party off on quests that serve the wizard's own ends; doesn't particularly care about why the party showed up and what they want. Will always try to turn conversations back to the quest the wizard has in mind. Will probably refuse to help until one such quest is fulfilled by the party, but even after that is fulfilled the party will need to be very insistent in order for the wizard not to just send them out on another quest.

Whom does this wizard dislike/distrust? Whom does this wizard have a soft spot for? (For each question, roll 1d6 on each table and combine the results. For example, an old chaotic magic-user, a red-headed elf fighter.)

1. Old (older than expected adventuring age, or whatever you want it to mean)
2. Young (younger than expected adventuring age, or whatever you want it to mean)
3. Dwarf
4. Elf
5. Rich and connected
6. Poor and ostracized

1. Male
2. Female
3. Lawful
4. Chaotic
5. Red-headed
6. Fair-haired

1. Fighters
2. Clerics
3. Thieves
4. Magic-Users
5. Nobles (NPCs and 7th level or higher PCs)
6. Peasants (NPCs and 3rd level or lower PCs)

What precautions does the wizard take with those the wizard doesn't trust? (d4)

1. Magically keeps them from entering the wizard's abode (no save under level 10)
2. Magically keeps them silent when in the wizard's presence (no save under level 10)
3. Requires that they surrender all weapons before entering (and doesn't make this mistake)
4. Nothing immediately, but at the slightest infraction the wizard will administer punishment

What seemingly innocent word/action will enrage this wizard (perhaps after a single warning)? (d12)

1. Mentioning Age
2. Mentioning Royalty
3. Mentioning Religious Hierarchy
4. Mentioning Magical Hierarchy
5. Asking about the Wizard's past
6. Interacting with animals in the Wizard's presence
7. Mentioning Illusionists
8. Unsheathing a weapon
9. A Man speaking in the presence of a Woman (if the wizard is a man, how does he communicate if the party includes a woman? some kind of magic mouth? magical writing? telepathy?)
10. Mentioning another wizard
11. Haggling
12. Not haggling

What will this wizard do to those he is angry with? (Unless otherwise stated, the punishment is for the individual only; not for the individual's companions.) (d8)

1. Imprison (1d4)
1. In a cell in a megadungeon somewhere, possibly quite far away
2. By turning the victim into stone for display
3. In the wizard's personal pocket dimension
4. In a prison run by the character's enemies, possibly quite far away
2. Polymorph (no save if below 10th level, otherwise save at -5). Wizard takes no interest in keeping the result of the polymorph spell (except for result 14) and will happily explain the nature of the result if only the wizard is asked (the wizard must be pressed further in order to reveal certain crucial details for result 17). (d20)
1. Troll (25% to retain memories and faculties)
2. Owlbear (10% to retain memories and faculties, still will rage as barbarian/berserker)
3. Rust Monster (35% to retain memories and faculties, but even so, retains ravening appetite)
4. Giant Toad (50% to retain memories and faculties)
5. Kobold (75% to retain memories; thinks like a kobold, whatever that means to the player)
6. Roc egg, about to hatch (20% to retain memories and faculties)
7. Mule (100% to retain memories and faculties; 5% to be able to talk)
8. Griffin egg, about to hatch (20% to retain memories and faculties)
9. Hippogriff egg, about to hatch (20% to retain memories and faculties)
10. Unicorn egg, about to hatch (5% to retain memories and faculties)
11. 3d12 silver coins
12. Sword (75% sentient, 50% magical)
13. Beautiful Necklace (worth 2d4 x 1000 gold coins - does the party sell it?)
14. Large Wide-Brimmed Pointy Hat (wizard puts the hat on and intends to keep it)
15. Five glass orbs containing Green Slime, perfectly sized for throwing
16. A small cask containing 10 doses of extra-effective healing potion
17. A Wand of Sleep/Magic Missile/Cloudkill/Fireball (The wand has as many charges as the character has hit points when fully healed; each charge can be used for any of the four spells, but each charge expended subtracts one hit point from the number of hit points the character will have when/if the character is returned to normal and fully healed. This mechanic should NOT be explained to the players unless they press the wizard for a detailed explanation, although any character able to use the wand who picks it up will immediately know how to use the wand to cast the four spells. If all charges are expended then the wand crumples to dust and the character is lost forever.)
18. Buck's Hat of Misery
19. A hangman's noose. Any character hung with it will die instantly, but the character that was turned into the noose will return to normal, fully healed, plus a shift in alignment towards lawful/good if the hung character died voluntarily but a shift in alignment towards chaotic/evil if the hung character died involuntarily.
20. A fist-sized, smooth, black stone orb. If placed on the high altar of the goblin god, the character will return to normal, except without any possessions, the fee charged by the goblin god.
3. Expel from the wizard's abode (possibly by teleportation, possibly violently, out a window, etc.)
4. Blind
5. Gift with a cursed item
6. Send them (and their companions) to Carcosa! (Or some other nasty plane/planet more hopeless than their own.)
7. Geas (related to what the wizard wants/needs; see below)
8. Nothing… but he'll make all the poor guy's friends suffer! Roll on this chart for each companion.

What does this wizard want/need? (d12)

1. To be freed; some magical mistake is confining the wizard
2. To be freed; some magical act of the wizard's enemies is confining the wizard
3. To be freed; the wizard is imprisoned in some mundane way that gets around the wizard's magic
4. A spouse
5. A child (1d4: 1: daughter, 2: son, 3-4: doesn't matter); adoption is acceptable. An adopted party member will get both perks and drawbacks; a party member should only be adopted if it is the players' idea, not proposed by the wizard or an NPC.
6. Reconciliation with a family member
7. Proper recognition from the magical establishment
8. A job as advisor to the monarch
9. Revenge
10. A delicacy from the wizard's far-away home-town
11. The cure to a magical disease the wizard has contracted (spell-slot leeches, slowly turning ethereal, etc.)
12. A magical discovery related to the wizard's specialty

Why did this wizard put in the long hours needed to become the most powerful in the land? (Note that the wizard may or may not have already achieved this goal by the time the PCs show up. If so, what, if anything, motivates the wizard now?) (d10)

1. Revenge
2. The sheer joy and love of magic
3. As a way to gain recognition and respect
4. Careerism– a way to gain power and wealth
5. As an escape from a life of poverty
6. As a way to forget the pain of life
7. Driven to solve some personal problem with magical research
8. Driven to solve some societal/economic/environmental problem with magical research
9. As a way to express loyalty to and serve some cause, nation or person
10. As a way to defeat some particular threat (a dark lord, a cult, anticipated invasion, famine, plague, etc.)