Who's your Gandalf now, baby?

[genshou]

The master of a wizards' school is kinda sorta my campaign's Gandalf (although given his profession, I guess he's more like my campaign's Dumbledore). He's also a shapeshifted dragon.

And like both of those guys, he's recently died. The PCs don't know that yet tho.

-The Gneech

Hmm, or he could be an "el-remmen".

 

[JohnSnow]

Mostly, I steer clear of the Gandalf archetype. However, I have used characters that fill similar roles from a plot point. But most of them operate from some other agenda. For example, I'd say that Elrond, Galadriel, and Strider are all more common character types in my campaigns...

I think a sage advisor is a needed role in a campaign. However, most of the time, unlike Gandalf, they don't "go along" on the missions. Nor are they frequently tasked with preserving the world or any other such nonsense. Usually, they're more patrons or employers. They're there primarily as a resource, or a source of missions, but they're not "guardian angel" types.

Two exceptions:

In one of my very early D&D campaigns, Bahamut (the platinum dragon) took an interest in the PCs because of their "great potential." He had a tendency to show up and steer them on missions - acting very like Fizzban in Dragonlance. Of course, this was BEFORE that came out, so I guess I was just creative enough to come up with it on my own. The PCs eventually found out they had basically become champions of the king of good dragons. Who had an agenda for fixing the world.

I also used Odin in that role a couple times in another campaign - taking basically the same approach as Norse myth, where he often would show up as an old beggar with a floppy hat, an eyepatch, and a staff.

My last DM tried to set up a particular wizard as our own Gandalf. We didn't take well to him after he dosed us with a truth potion so he could get "straight answers." That basically made us all VERY paranoid. So he introduced another wizard when we relocated who we liked a WHOLE lot more. He didn't drug us...

Of course, none of us were paranoid enough that we caught on to the "Evil Priestess posing as helpful" in the sequel campaign. Even the fact that it was set in The Keep on the Borderlands didn't tip us off...

Of course, I think we were distracted by the fact that she was hot...

I prefer slightly untrustworthy advisor types. I wrote a short story about a master thief who these days makes regular appearances in my campaigns. He's semi-retired...but he's done some amazing things in his life. Basically, it's like having a character who's a cross between Strider and the Grey Mouser as a patron...

Useful, but not exactly "DM ex machina..."

 

[genshou]

Agreed. They shouldn't just show up randomly.

Randomly is fine. Maybe the Gandalf-like figure of the setting likes to travel, and runs into the PCs in unexpected places as a result? It's when he always shows up at just the right "convenient" moments (giving the PCs a clue right after they find the puzzle, saving the PCs from a tough fight, that sort of thing) that it's a problem.

Oh, and in Oriental Adventures, I had a flying, talking carp in a well of a haunted castle. He was pretty much like the "Dungeon Master" character from the cartoons, giving lots of advice when asked. He was very well liked.

Now that is cool. A talking, flying carp?

 

[lukelightning]

A talking, flying carp?

Who wouldn't want a flying carp pet?

 

[Abe.ebA]

I can only think of one off the top of my head and it wasn't exactly the DM's idea:

Back in 2e we had a cast of characters for whom we took turns DMing. Whoever currently was DMing had their character stay behind and run the bar we co-owned. At one point we played a variant of the adventure, the name of which currently escapes me, with the spaceship that crash-lands off in the mountains. In our case the ship was terrorizing one of the party's homeland and we had to rush off and save them. During the course of the adventure one of our wizards (we had 3) who had a thing for blowing stuff up found the engine room of the space craft. He had contingiencies to keep himself alive and rarely stopped to think about the rest of the party's survival so, sensing that this big glowing, humming thing was important to the structural integrity of the flying metal castle, he shoved a staff of power into it and broke it half. Imagine his surprise when nothing happened (the DM ruling that the engine was capable of absorbing that much energy). So the wizard starts chucking magic items into it, figuring it will overload eventually. Instead, several dozen items later, the engine just vanishes.

A few months later, the engine re-appears in the basement of our bar. The tremendous amount of magical energy concentrated in it brought the thing to life and made it approximately as powerful as your average newly-ascended immortal. The engine didn't want much out of existence, just to sit in the basement and peacefully contemplate the ultimate meaning of reality and occasionally eat a dwarf or gnome. It was grateful to us for bringing it to life, so protected the bar and occasionally thew us a bone in the form of early warnings that some evil wizard was up to no good or keeping Elminster and Khelbin off our backs (our moral code wasn't exactly Lawful Good). All of which developed gradually over the course of several DMs. The original DM just had the thing show up in the basement and eat dwarves.

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

At least two exist in my campaign:

One impossibly powerful archmage who dealt with the PCs at low levels (this is my first campaign and my first NPC), but who is the mostly aloof mentor of one high-level PC now.

The other is a former PC of mine who disappeared for a while and returned with a different name and appearance and whole suite of new abilities. Due to bad multiclassing on my part, this one makes a terrific "Don't mess with me because 'anything you can do, I can do better." type bully/mentor to low-level PCs, but mostly avoids higher level PCs who think he's more powerful than he really is.

 

[haakon1]

I prefer slightly untrustworthy advisor types. I wrote a short story about a master thief who these days makes regular appearances in my campaigns. He's semi-retired...but he's done some amazing things in his life. Basically, it's like having a character who's a cross between Strider and the Grey Mouser as a patron...

Ah, like Rick's mentor Icepick in Magnum, PI, a retired mafioso who still had connections and had leads on nearly everything involving Hawaii's criminal underbelly.

 

[haakon1]

Randomly is fine. Maybe the Gandalf-like figure of the setting likes to travel, and runs into the PCs in unexpected places as a result? It's when he always shows up at just the right "convenient" moments (giving the PCs a clue right after they find the puzzle, saving the PCs from a tough fight, that sort of thing) that it's a problem.

Yes, you're right. My use of the word "random" was sloppy. A bit random, I might say.

Now that is cool. A talking, flying carp?

Yup. I think I got the idea from an Oriental Adventures module, but elaborated on it. It was probably the most memorable and beloved part of that campaign.

Not the weirdest though -- that'd either be the winging it answer to what reincarnation was like, through about a half dozen reincarnations of one recently deceased player character in about 20 minutes of gametime.

Or the weird adventure I wrote where they went through to Indiana Jones' world, and had to fight Nazi agents to recover an ancient Egyptian magic item shaped like a cow statue that the Vikings had brought to Wisconsin in prehistoric times. In Wisconsin, no one notices a cow statue is an Egyptian artifact, or that it's guarded by a 1000 year old secret society of Viking descendents. Really, why would they?

 

[mearls]

I want to hear who your Gandalf is, and if you don't have one, do you have any other variant of the "DM Avatar" who serves to point the PCs toward the plot?

I like to use what I think of as the "anti-Gandalf". If Gandalf was an icon of hope, benevolence, and justice, the anti-Gandalf is an avatar of woe, misfortune, and disaster. When he shows up, the players wince while their characters reach for their weapons.

The anti-Gandalf does stuff like offer magical weapons for sale at dirt cheap prices. But what he doesn't mention is that he enchants the weapons so that he can spy on the PCs and sell info about them to the highest bidder. Also, he does that to the PCs' hated enemies and sells the characters the info he has.

The anti-Gandalf is the shady member of the city council who, upon hearing that the PCs have uncovered a drow plot to destroy the city, immediately heads to the Underdark to cut a deal with them. Then, when the PCs have some success, he continually supports and undercuts both sides in a desperate hope that he'll be on the good side of whoever wins on the day they happen to win.

The anti-Gandalf is usually slightly bumbling, kind of comedic, and always a pain in the rear. In one adventure, the PCs have to save him. In the next, they're chasing him down to kill him.

 

[genshou]

Or the weird adventure I wrote where they went through to Indiana Jones' world, and had to fight Nazi agents to recover an ancient Egyptian magic item shaped like a cow statue that the Vikings had brought to Wisconsin in prehistoric times. In Wisconsin, no one notices a cow statue is an Egyptian artifact, or that it's guarded by a 1000 year old secret society of Viking descendents. Really, why would they?

Awesome.