Ignoring the Real World to Instead Learn to Cast Ninth Level Spells to Impress a Bunch of Wizards on an Internet Forum Whose Opinions’ Are Now Very Important to You for Some Reason

Would high-level wizards in a fantasy TTRPG setting – say tier three and tier four, in modern D&D parlance – rule kingdoms and nations, whether directly or indirectly? Would they concern themselves with affairs of state?

These and related questions came up in a recent discussion on the Alexandrian Discord. They got stuck in my brain, and a blog post is the only reliable way to pry them out.

The discussion concerned the degree to which powerful D&D characters – particularly wizards – either would or would not seek real-world status and power in a manner that would be familiar to us from historical examples in the pre-modern real world. Would developing infrastructure, taxing the populace, raising armies, and otherwise participating in statecraft matter to them? Or would such worldly concerns be irrelevant to their goals and interests? 

I am firmly in the latter camp; in my own games, a character wielding such powerful magic simply has better ways to achieve their goals. Some other high-level characters – fighters or paladins, for example – might (might…) choose this route. But not a wizard.

It was clear from the Discord discussion that worldbuilding assumptions underpinning this question varied greatly. For example, the more the material plane is the metaphysical “center of the universe,” the more plausible it is that a wizard would invest resources in controlling mundane elements of it. In a cosmology where only mortal souls on the material plane can worship gods, perhaps the conventional control exerted by temporal nations would matter to a wizard.

But in my own conception of how wizards work, they would have better ways to achieve their goals. They would isolate themselves in their wizard towers (or better yet, off-plane domiciles) and focus their work on research and exploration. They would have little time for the values and priorities of the humans of their world. And doing so would make them a target of rivals and enemies more than it would help them. 

I believe that governments in medium- and high-magic fantasy worlds would be even more susceptible to decapitation strikes than their real-world equivalents, so high-level characters would have a strong incentive to decrease their visibility, exposure, and entanglement with organizations and governing structures. Some of my earliest posts on this blog were an attempt to reason out how societies in this kind of world would differ from equivalent historical societies in the real world.

Next Week: Turning the Wizard Question Around to Better Understand Our World

You Separate in a Tavern...

“You meet in a tavern” is the “It was a dark and stormy night” of TTRPGs. Cliches have their place, and people who work hard to subvert cliches are often missing the point by prioritizing novelty over usability. So naturally I will now subvert this famous cliche.

A group of strangers, by virtue of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, are cursed. The source of the curse is incidental to this campaign premise. The important thing is that they don’t know each other before they are cursed, and perhaps don’t even get along. But the curse prevents them from leaving each others’ general vicinity for long. They are stuck together.

Shortly after coming to terms with their circumstances, the players learn (through villain monologue, friendly NPC expert, downtime spent on research, whatever) that the only way to break the curse is to find the mystical Tavern of Fond Farewells. This location is famously difficult to find, but is sought by those who need to truly let go; the grief-stricken, the lovelorn. 

How far apart can the characters get? What happens if they are forcibly separated? It could vary depending on the system and style of play. If I were to run such a game, I would investigate this question with the players at session zero.

Speaking of cliches, this is a tried and true gimmick in fiction. “People from different backgrounds are thrown together by fate; they dislike each other or come into conflict at first; but eventually come to like/respect each other despite their differences.” Genre-savvy players can steer into these vibes. Bonus points if two or more characters, at the end of the story, decide they actually want to remain friends (or perhaps more?) Audiences love that kind of twist. 

Your Days Are Numbered, and So Is Your HP

This character creation idea arrived in a dream. I wrote down the broad strokes as soon as I woke up. You know you are getting good at roleplaying games when even your subconscious gives up on normal escapist dreamfare, buckles down, and starts creating mechanics and hacks. If you’re not going to go to sleep, brain, then you might as well get some work done.

Roll stats as normal for a D&D-style game, 3d6 down the line, no dropped dice or modifiers. Keep these ability scores; they work as is typical.

Also sum up the results of all stats. This will give each character a number between 18 and 108. Each player subtracts that number from 108. The resulting number is their HP.

For example, I just rolled a character and got 4, 11, 14, 12, 14, 10, for 65. 108 minus 65 is 43 HP.

That’s a lot of HP, right? Well, there is no maximum/current distinction in this model. HP is a non-replenishing resource. So it may sound like a lot, but it has to last you your entire adventuring career.

In the grand spectrum of HP, from “literal combat wounds” on one end to “luck” or “fate” on the other, this is closer to the latter. The more heroic a character is – the higher their stats are – the more Fate expects them to burn brightly, but briefly. These adventurers are like Achilles; they are the best at what they do, but they’re not going to last that long. Fate has decreed it to be so, and Fate will have its way.

Yes, this means that a first-level character with 18 ability scores across the board would have 0 HP. They would literally die in one hit. A wretch with all 3s would have a comparatively massive 90 HP to work with. But because the math is averaging six stats together, most characters will end up a lot like my example above (the mode character in this system should be at 45, so I was just two points off).

For a more forgiving version, treat this HP more like Bastionland-style hit protection, and have damage spill into ability scores. Or allow for (very modest) increases to HP, either through leveling up, or through some intrinsic mechanic within the game (perhaps bargaining with Fate).

Broken Wheel Cosmology: If You Were Summoned Into an Alien Reality Against Your Will, You Would Probably Act Pretty Rudely Too

If you have paid any attention to the sermons in the temple, the gossip in the town square, or the warnings on the oldest books in the library at the academy, you surely know that demons are innately cruel, sadistic, soulless monsters. They have no redeeming features. They are pure evil… right?

Well... maybe. Let’s step back and interrogate what we really know about these “demons.” 

The vast majority of human interactions with demons occur on the material plane. Living humans go to the home planes of the demons only very rarely, and only a tiny percentage of those who do ever return to tell the tale. Most humans on the material plane meet demons for one of the following reasons.

• They summoned them. Thanks a lot, jerk.
• They were in the wrong place at the wrong time when someone else summoned them. Sorry bystanders.
• They are the people called in to clean up after a summoning. Hello adventurers!

So most of what we know about demons comes from these incidents. Summonings come in many forms. The evil ritual deep in the woods is a classic. But it could also be a wizardly accident. Or an ordinary, run-of-the-mill massacre, which accidentally triggering a long-forgotten prophecy. Even a muttered curse from one neighbor to another, expressed with sufficient malice, can create a crack in reality that pulls a demon through.

For a demon, being summoned is not like voluntarily traveling the planes through something nice and civilized like the Plane Shift spell. It is more like a very strong force pulling them through a too-small hole. It is painful. It is frightening. They do not come through the process whole. It fragments them.

A summoned demon is an incomplete being. Most of its essence remains in its home plane; this is why demons summoned elsewhere return home when “killed,” rather than truly dying. It’s presence on the material plane is an aspect of its persona, with full senses and awareness, but merely an ego without a superego. A demon’s demeanor reflects this partial, fragmented manifestation. The malice and penchant for cruelty are reflections of the trauma of summoning, combined with the incomplete nature of their manifestation. 

How do we telegraph this idea to players? Some ideas:

• There’s an excellent demon-summoning scene in the first book in the Laundry Files series, the Atrocity Archives. Playing with fundamental elements of sense and time helps make them alien.
• Arnold at Goblin Punch wrote an excellent treatment of demons earlier this year. Centering possession and focusing on the demon’s flaws, not just its powers, really paints a much more interesting picture.
• Previously I wrote about using the idea of someone who believes they are trapped in a simulation as a shorthand for roleplaying a demon. These two ideas can be used separately or together.