Comments on: Wizards? In my mediaeval society?

By: Dan Howard

Dan Howard — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 22:34:32 +0000

You might look at how wizards are analogous to modern day lawyers. Lots of lawyers go to the big city to get great salaries but even small rural towns have one or two lawyers hanging around. Even if those small town lawyers suck, they still make a living, albeit a modest one.

Similarly, small town wizards can survive because living in a small town can be dirt cheap. A small town wizard with a garden can feed himself. With a few chickens and a kindly neighbor, he can even have a good variety of food.

And, who says that he’s alone? A medieval father supports his family, even helping out extended family. He might help support orphaned relatives, his crippled brother and even the crazy magician son who never can hold down a job. Living off a small inheritance that grows ever smaller might be a choice for small small town wizards, rather than getting paid for his craft.

Also, medieval societies had reasonably well developed commercial systems; they had progressed far beyond the hunter/gatherers of primitive times and even beyond simple bartering. If a medieval PC has goods or services (such as magic) that have value, people will want those and will seek them out. Even unskilled laborers, scamsters and an old woman who can only knit sweaters wouldn’t starve in medieval times, if they made the effort and if larger economic issues such as war or plague were not affecting the area.

By: Tsuyoshikentsu

Tsuyoshikentsu — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 06:51:08 +0000

First, a brief note: a tax on spell components is kind of implausable. Most components are rather mundane items; imagine, for instance, a tax on dead spiders! (Although a tax on, oh, bat guano I can imagine. Especially, in fact, on bat guano.)

The truth of your article is self-evident, and it doesn’t just apply to arcanists. Heck, the shamanistic wise woman who gives out healing poultices existed for hundreds of years in medieval society; why not have her actually be a druid casting cures? There’s also the fact that the game in general makes a lot more sense if you use Wizards the way you’ve described. Why isn’t filth rampant, as in the middle ages? Duh, they invented a cleaning spell.

All in all, an excellent read, and very true!

By: Rick the wonder algae

Rick the wonder algae — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 14:28:48 +0000

I think, also, that you have to look at the standard of living that small town mages are born into and have come to expect and what their purchasing power will get them in barter and how the two relate. I don’t have my player’s handbook right here in front of me, but I think the prinicples are pretty sound.
Let’s say that our town wizard casts mend on the miller’s broken millstone to repair it for him rather than him going to the trouble of having a new one shipped in, his grain slowly rotting while it takes weeks to arrive. In return, he might promise to provide the wizard with 10gp worth of flour. Obviously he can’t provide all this at once. Not only would it take a prodigious amount, but he’d be short on his delivies that week (he’s already been down for a day thanks to the broken stone, after all). So instead, he offers to pay the wizard a pound or two of flour every week for the next X weeks.
Well that’s just great isn’t it? What’s the wizard going to do with two pounds of flour every week? He can’t use that. So, he makes an arrangement with the baker. He’ll have the miller send the baker those two pounds of flour each week and in return he gets a fresh loaf of bread every week.
Eventually, everyone in town is going to need his help for something or another. Pretty soon he’s got milk and cheese coming in from the dairy farmer, meat coming in from the butcher, the carpenter is working on an addition for his house, and that pretty young daughter of the beet farmer down the road (our wizard either doesn’t like beets or is a lech that likes watching pretty young girls) comes over a couple times a week to clean his house.
I would assume that some communities simply assume that this is the way things will work, because they have in the past, and don’t really keep track of who owes whom what. Everyone simply brings a bit of everything they produce to the wizard and when he needs something, he simply asks the appropriate tradesman, and it’s given to him. In return, he provides spells whenever asked. Sure, it’s possible that an inequity might occur (probably on the part of the wizard) but the setup is easy and it works.
In very short time through either barter or promises of barter, our wizard has if not the best, one of the best lifestyles in town without doing much more than memorizing and casting a spell or two once a week. True, he might not be making the money he could be if he moved to the big city and charged book rates, but as far as he’s ever known, he’s living like a king and doing very little in the way of work.

By: Rob Conley

Rob Conley — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 13:54:28 +0000

You certainly bring up some valid ideas but I don’t think you are considering the full picture. For me the advent of the game Ars-Magica got me seriously thinking about the Wizard’s role in my world’s society.

The point of listing all this is to make a PLAUSIBLE society that enhances the game by having a internal logic that allows for possibilities. I have found by putting the time into this the player enjoy the game more because they can figure things out and make conclusions that allow them to advance their character’s goals.

The solution need to consider the following points:

1) Wizards have personal power of their own exceeding say a knight with a sword. Their spells work over a longer range and are adaptable to a wide variety of situations.

2) Wizards rely on knowledge and study to extend their abilities. I.e. transcribe spells into a spellbook, spell research, etc. This is a limit on a wizard.

3) Medievel societies are money poor (except for the few cities) and wealth is based on land.

4) Clerics are a magical power unto themselves, are not limited by spellbooks, are as versitile, but are constrained by having to be servants of a higher power.

5) Sorcerers are a magical power as wells, are not limited by spellbooks, highly charismatic, but not as versitile.

6) Clerics and Sorcerers require a lot less resources than either a knight or a wizard. On the other hand only way a person can be a cleric is to follow a higher power and you have to be born a sorcerer.

So this led me to the following thoughts

A peason isn’t going to just drop a plow, pick up a book, and start casting spells. No more than they could just drop a plow and pick up a sword. This suggests that the resource requirement to support wizards are somewhat similar to a knight or at least a knight without a horse. So this means in a medievel society wizards are going to be an elite class.

A wizard’s spells gives them the means to exert control like a sword allow a knight to exert direct control. This means unlike our history’s church they can attempt to use force which makes them a rival to knights.

This power makes them a rival to each other as well so like knights they need a social structure of some type mediate disputes.

Their reliance on spellbooks make that a point of a control as a wizard can be stripped of power by being denied their spell book. As a knight can be stripped of weapons and armor.

The spellbooks can be more valuable by the amount and type of spells contained in it.

Their need for study time is also a point of vulneribility as they need the resources of their lands or income to have the time to study like a knight needs the land or income to have the time to train.

The possibilities

First it seems the first thing that needs to be decided is not stuff about wizards but about the priests and sorcerers.

If there are a lot of sorcerers running around then it is likely that that world’s society will be about sorcerors and their politics. There is little you can do to stop one from increasing power other than killing them. And if there is a lot of them at some point in history they would have banded together to stop any sorcerer hunts and siezed control.

However if there isn’t a lot of them then they would be likely to be hunted down as they are a wild card compared to clerics, wizards, and knights. Except for a few exceptional individuals (think a sorcerer version of Alexander the Great).

For clerics there are several ways I can see this going

1) They are persecuted by, in league or controlled by the sorceror kings. In any case the sorcerer are the top dog. In this scenario the higher powers don’t intervene much in the world except through the granting of clerical spells.

2) Clerics are rival powers to the sorcerers and in continual conflict. Sorcerers are too numerous and too charismatic to totally stamp out so there is a continual tensions between the clerics following higher powers and the godless sorcerors.(Note the clerics may have a few faithful socerors of their own).

3) Clerics are top dog and sorcerors are too few to challenge them and are hunted. The wizards and knights are servants of the various churches. Basically most lands would under some type of theocracy.

4) Clerics are part of a society resting on a triple foundation of clerics, knights, and wizards with sorcerers too few to challenge them. This would get you a more straight forward medievel society.

5) Clerics and knights are equal powers in a society that actively hunt all other magic users including both wizards and sorcerors.

6) Clerics and Wizards are equal powers in a society that is controlled by the use of magic. (The Magecracy scenario)

Finally as for the wizards themselves you will have to decide

1) How the powerful wizards interact among themselves
2) How the powerful wizards interact with less powered wizards)
3) Who teaches the use of spellbooks
4) Who controls the physical spellbooks (for example in a theocracy, wizards have to goto a special chamber where the spellbooks are kept by the clerical guard)
5) How do the wizards support themselves
6) What their relationship with clerics, sorcerors, and knights

Hope this helps

P.S. I use knights instead of fighter because I am talking about fighters that have political and social power.