The "Gandalf" in your campaign

[Evilhalfling]

Last Campaign -
Ian McDougal III - the players mentor, and sage to the ruling Baron. He would send them on quests, fix town problems and provide info. Of course later he upsurped the Barony, was was driven out by the forces of the king and eventually volentarily became a Kaorti and tried to bring the Far Realm to the Prime. PCs killed him in the final game.

Current game - Only Dragons stride the world with impunity.
For dark mysterious figures - Kel'Leth, A veiled caster of some power who helped drive off a dragon.
for protectors and guides - Lox De' Fallow a High Priest of the god of Children and Education.
He is to old to stride the world anymore and is always surrounded by kids. But in his younger days.....

For Deus ex Machina -
Legends of a talking fish that grants miracles. Hasn't been used yet, and any trouble will have to be near water.

 

[Slife]

Not really a Gandalf per se, but I do have a high level agorophobic gnome wizard. He'll handle any magic-related business, and hass a good excuse not to go around fighing evil with the party.

 

[barsoomcore]

On Barsoom, anyone with that much power is pretty much guaranteed to be interested in nothing but acquiring more power and destroying anyone who looks to be becoming a threat.

Nice people don't become powerful. It's true on Earth, it's true on Barsoom.

People go after power because they weren't loved as children. All uber-powerful figures on Barsoom are just angry little three-year-olds who want revenge on the world.

What's amusing is that as the PCs rise in power, they're reverting to angry little three-year-olds who want revenge on the world.

Human nature. So endlessly predictable.

 

[barsoomcore]

Bitter? Cynical? Me? Heavens forfend.

 

[Aristotle]

Mine was not a magic user exactly (it's hard to explain without getting long winded, assume he had levels in a class with a very limited spell progression), and he is quite dead.

He was a historian/anthropologist of sorts. Keeping in mind that civilization is rather new to the world, science and philosophy are relatively new concepts to most people. The character in question was a member of a diplomatic group that would make contact with distant civilizations and establish commerce, treaties, and such in the name of the empire. His job, specifically, was to study the customs, languages, sciences, and habitats of these other civilizations and to report them to the empire. Many of his journals have since been published and made available in the Great Library in Kesh. Some are still missing, and are worth quite a bit to collectors and the empire alike.

My players have no contact with him, since he is dead. There is a chance they might meet up with his students and former travelling companions now and again, or maybe run across one of his lost journals. He is rarely a plot device so much as an excuse for me to give the players a little game world knowledge from time to time.

 

[jmucchiello]

In my old 2e campaign I had a Nostradamus-style seer who wrote his 150 predictions 1,000 years earlier. The party met him when they were 3rd level and he gave them a book of his predictions, numbering up to 190. People really wanted that book. Anyway, he was an elf and a druid/heirophant so being 1,000 years old was no big deal but they did not realize they had met him until a few levels later when they discovered that the book they possessed had 40 more predictions than the famed seer was thought to have written.

Not exactly in Gandalf's mode, more of a Merlin I guess. He never once saved the party. He just suggested that they solve the riddle of his poetry in order to save the world. Once they were n the trail of the world ending cult, he never made another appearance.

 

[Evilhalfling]

People go after power because they weren't loved as children. All uber-powerful figures on Barsoom are just angry little three-year-olds who want revenge on the world.
What's amusing is that as the PCs rise in power, they're reverting to angry little three-year-olds who want revenge on the world.
Human nature. So endlessly predictable.

tangent warning -
In the Similarion I was always disapointed with Morgoth, the 'god' of evil who behaved as I saw it as an angry 2 yr old. knocking down the pretty sun and chanting Nah Nah Nah while the other gods sang.
I had more respect for Saulron and Saruman who seemed far more evil( manipulating, deceiving etc)

this is a good argument for the first evil.

 

[The_Gneech]

Well, in my Star Wars game it's Luke Skywalker, reasonably enough.

My current D&D campaign doesn't have a figure like this exactly, but a few NPCs may start filling the role before too long. One is an aranea sorcerer whose humanoid form is a halfling; he's reclusive and generally uninterested in the world at large, however, and as such is only a mentor to the wizard PC. The other is a youngish brass dragon who is the headmaster at a wizardry school the characters have recently started protecting ... he's powerful and wise, yes, but he's not so beyond the PCs that you find yourself wondering why he doesn't take on all the baddies himself just to get it over with.

-The Gneech

 

[Zappo]

I've got an archmage in my Warcraft campaign which gives out quests and generally makes the PCs do stuff which he could do himself in a matter of hours.

In the Planescape campaign, no such thing. In fact, barring powers and quasi-powers, the PC wizard is the most powerful wizard the party has dealt with in a very long time, and the person with the greatest overall knowledge of the planes. There are plenty of more powerful or wiser characters, but they aren't here, they don't know you, and they don't have job offers.

 

[rogueattorney]

Personally, the Merlin/Gandalf character is one of my biggest pet-peeves in fantasy, gaming related or otherwise. It often seems like he's there just because he's expected to be there. Blah! I go out of my way to make sure I don't have one of those in my games.

R.A.