The "Gandalf" in your campaign

[Edgewood]

Admit it, nearly every campaign world, novel, movie, and game has their wizened old sage. LOTR has Gandalf, Star Wars has Yoda, FR has Elminster, Camelot has Merlin, Harry Potter has Albus Dumbledore. How about in your own campain? Do you have that good willed, ancient wizard/sage/seer who walks the world with the greatest of respect? The one that may come to the aide of your PCs from time to time?

In my camapign world (Morvia) we have Rozwyn the Arcane. A wise old wizard who has been "absent" for a better part of 100 years. It was believed he had passed on but has now returned. To what purpose, no one knows.

 

[the Lorax]

Oh, yeah, I have Tim. Tim takes things so slowly, that PCs have been known to leave before he is done. I have had players request Tim in games unrelated to my homebrew. Tim also has a penchant for puns and literal thinking. He has a spell called Tim's slothful missles which works like magic missles but has an infinate duration, and moves 10 feet a round.

Yeah, I like playing Tim.

 

[Gothmog]

I've used wise benefactors before in my games, but never one that is as world-reknowned or well-respected as Gandalf. The one meddling benevolent sage-like wanderer who I did have in my game was set up by some demon-worshippers to appear to be corrupt and evil, and was hunted down and executed by witch hunters. I run a darker game than most though, so a benevolent sage figure isn't really all that appropriate in such a world.

 

[Emperor Valerian]

The closest thing I've had in my campaigns to a "Gandalf" was Prince Alexander in the last campaign. He was a grandson of the reigning Emperor, and happened to like the PCs (he was lawful good... while they weren't lawful, they were decidedly good) after they helped save the provincial capital and secured some magical artifacts for him. He never "adventured" with the PCs, but when they got back to the palace, he was usually good for advice, information, and the occassional orders for an armed escort.

Sadly, he bit the dust in the second to last session in the campaign. Tends to happen sometimes when you lead an army storming city walls (while the PCs were in the sewers sneaking into the BBEG's palace).

 

[ThirdWizard]

Hmm... well... I guess the closest thing in my current campaign is Fiona, the elven mage. But, when the campaign began, she had just died and her death was being mourned by the city the PCs arrived at. She wasn't nearly as well known as Gandalf, though. She had founded the city, however, and ruled it for almost 300 years (before handing over control to local lords) so a lot of people knew about her.

 

[Celebrim]

Actually, I don't have one. I do have some mysterious Wizards, but they aren't wandering sages and they very much keep to themselves. Also, the most prominent ones I can think of occupy portions of my homebrew world that I've rarely explored. The most famous is the Archmage Akrapaxtes, the Lord of Dee, the Master of The Tower. I've never even had a campaign party which went to Dee, in part because I don't want to have to come up with a map for such a huge structure and in part because I know PC's and as soon as they see The Tower and learn to much about its mysteries, they'll throw caution to the wind and decide its there for the expressed purpose of them exploring it. That would be bad; Akrapaxtes doesn't part with his secrets easily and I'm bloody well not going to let PC's raid The Tower.

And I did have a campaign in the vicinity of the mysterious Lord of Wonderous Isle, but the campaign never made it far enough that the players got to meet him.

Basically, I just don't need Duex Ex Machina figures to come along and move the plot, because the gods of my campaign world have no problems doing the job themselves. I'm a bit different in that I've had characters come face to face with gods as early as 1st level in one campaign. Also the really powerful Archmages keep thier heads down to avoid doing anything that will get the gods upset at thier hubris. Akrapaxtes might can teleport whole invading armies away from Dee and leave them stranded in the desert, but if he went wandering around doing that stuff on a regular basis, some God would decide he's exceeded mortal authority and act to prevent another Iconoclasm. My campaign world has more in common with Greek myth than the usual consensual fantasy.

The most powerful mysterious wandering figure I've used is a Jace Merlkin the Dragon Hunter, but he's neither wizened nor a mage, but rather a legendary fighter/mercenary who serves the purpose in my world of explaining how the world can be crawling with legendary monsters and also 1st level commoners. Also, he gives the power-gamers someone to idolize, because he's the twink par excellance. I guess you could say he's my worlds Drizzt Do'Urden, only he's not a freaking Drow and the things he's conflicted over are IMO abit more interesting.

 

[Sejs]

The closest thing I've got in my current campaign is Hargrim Havlocke, a wizard (diviner, really) and associate of the Sembian lord who hired the PCs. Hargrim's around 5 levels higher than the PCs, but, well he's the information and coordination guy. He's like the project manager who does some of the legwork, fills out the forms and takes care of the mundane business back in town while the players go out and do the actual adventuring. And, when it's all said and done, even though he's rather well informed, he does not in fact know the whole picture.

 

[Turanil]

Well, I am in the process of creating a campaign setting for my next C&C campaign. I have thought that indeed I should add such a legendary figure. However, I don't want to make it the usual Merlin / Gandalf / Elminster.

So far I have been thinking of having the "Master of the Fallen Tower", a mysterious necro-summoner (so evil) that nobody knows but in rumors. "Against him" would be the guild / order / whatever of mages, that includes a handful of powerful wizards, but none the match of the "Master of the Fallen Tower". I have been also thinking to instead add a holy man or saint (divine spellcaster) rather than a wizard. Or maybe someone like an Akashic (Arcana Unearthed by Monte Cook).

In any cases, some ideas I like include:

-- As in the Lyonesse novels (Jack Vance), Murgen is the most powerful and uber mage of the world. He oversees the order of magicians which purpose is to prevent mages to do criminal things, fight among themselves, etc. Of course, Murgen spends his time countering Tamurello an evil rogue wizard sworn to his demise... Otherwise, Murgen doesn't walk among commoners, but has a double of himself (a sort of clone/son of lesser power) that wanders the world and has adventures.

-- As in a novel which title and author I forgot. The hero was Dilvish, obviously an elven fighter-mage, with a demonic horse as a steed. What I did like was that there was an order of mages (the "society" or something) that watched over magical events, and was opposing a single powerful evil sorcerer (the Master of the Ice Tower or something, the nemesis of Dilvish).

 

[the Jester]

Hmmm... I guess the closest thing imc would be Estelias, a grey elven enchantress, but she's hardly a simple do-gooder. No, she's more neutral and is much less interested in the good of the pcs than in the good of her own folk...

Hmm, and a bunch of evil high-level wizard/sorcerers... and pcs.

Nope, no real Gandalf figure for me.

 

[Gez]

Well, I have a number of powerful, excentric wizards, but few of them could really serve as Gandalfes (Gandalves? Like staves, elves, dwarves, and wolves?). In fact, the only two of them that could reasonnably fill Gandalf's niche are Caleor the Ancient, an archlich (LG), and Hollow-Wind, a ghost (N).

So, what if I look outside of old and powerful wizards? Then I could look at old and powerful psions. Meet Ottomsoh the Venerable, a Blue (you know, the psionic goblins) seer (N), leader of the homebrew's largest mercenary spy network.

All of them are wise, learned, rather benevolent, and cryptic. But they still ain't Gandalf-like. Plus, the PCs have yet to meet any one of them (though they should go heading to Ottomsoh's offices as soon as they solve their current "sidequest"). And they have more important things to do than going out of their way to help the PCs. Caleor and Hollow-Wind are working, along the other arcanists of the Prime Order, to thwart arcane menaces the world at large have no knowledge off (like Far Realmish stuff and other extraplanar menaces). Ottomsoh has a business to run.

So, benevolent, wise sages that have helped the PCs? They are not very powerful, but here they are:

• Alraone (al rah awn) is a CG half-brass dragon dragonne with 6 or 7 (don't remember precisely) Sorcerer levels. She's benevolent alright. She's taken control of a tribe of kobolds and is teaching them the CG way, as well as making them into elite soldiers to protect the northern frontier from orcish marauding.
• Saïlaswanamari (sah ee la swan amah ree) is an exalted NG gynosphinx druid 8. (She started as half-celestial to show her glorified status, but now that I have the BoED, I should maybe rework her stats with the Saint template instead.) She's willing to help the PCs on their main quest, but she's tied to her grove and can't leave her forest, so...
• Milderol, the least powerful of the "helpers," is a level 2 NG gnome sage*. He's tagging along the PCs for now, because he has his own quest who's leading him to the same place as the PCs, and they're a convenient escort.

* My specialist wizards do not get one bonus spell slots per spell level. Instead, they get special abilities related to their specialty. This allowed me to make specialist wizards that are not specialized in a school of magic, but in an aspect of wizardry, like Alchemists or Sages or Artificers. This was before UA and Eberron, by the way. Sages are specialist wizards who gain Lore (as Loremaster lore or bardic knowledge) and have Appraise, Sense Motive, and Speak Language as extra class skills.