(TFT) Wizard Politics and gate geopolitics

[Pasha and or Rick Smith <pnrsmith@istar.ca>]

Hi all,
	My comments below...

>Either way, magic is power.  Immense, incredible power.  
>So why don't the wizards run things?  Much fantasy 
>literature takes the tack that they don't because they're
>all reclusive lunatics, but TFT doesn't go that way.  
>Magic is supposedly just another honorable craft.  However,
>a cobbler can't destroy a city with a couple days work or
>let you travel ten thousand miles with a single step.  
>The idea that the government wouldn't either: 
>  a) regulate magic closer than we regulate atomic weaponry 
>  b) itself be composed of wizards
>  c) both a and b
>is really not too likely, IMO.  "C" seems to be the most likely 
>outcome.  
>
>The gates are the key.  Take them out of the equation and the 
>wizards aren't really all that powerful.  Years of work to 
>make a magic sword.  Ho hum, yeah whatever.  Magic swords 
>don't make nations great.  The gates are the key.

	I agree about the gates.  In my campaign I've
made a few short ranged gate spells saving the full 
powered gate for a much higher IQ.


	If the wizards are organized into a monolithic
"wizards guild" as TFT suggests, I think they WOULD
run the world.  That is why in my campaign the wizards
are divided up into a half dozen major schools and 
several dozen minor ones that compete and fight. This
goes along way to give the non-magical lords a fighting
chance of keeping power.

	Wizards are smart, would they not perceive what
is going on and organize into one guild?

	Tho that could happen, I don't think it is inevitable.
I've found few wizards take Charisma, New Followers and
Diplomacy (while most mundane politicos take all of them).
This suggests to me that wizards will have less social oil to
help them get along.  Throw in the lust for power and I 
suspect that the political fighting for control of any large
wizard's guild would be long and vicious. 

	In my campaign, the loser of wizard politicking 
are not always killed but are usually tossed out of the
school.  Their close followers usually follow them.  They
are unlikely to be trusted by an another competing 
school so they form a new school (or a new branch of 
their old school).


	Thus if one school is too uppity, the mundane
lord has competitors to go to.  Smart lords encourage
2 or more competing schools and do what they can to
keep them about equal in power and at each other 
throats.  Smart schools try to keep the shouting down
to a simmer, and divide up a region into spheres of
influence (not too difficult because their usually is
only one school in a small city).

	Rick

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