Enclave's creator here -- thank you SO much for the very generous and in-depth promo spot! Honestly could not have come on a better video. I *loved* your analysis of this topic. And funnily enough, I've introduced sages/wisemen/etc as NPCs/plot points on a fair few of my own Enclave missions. I personally like to gate sage access behind social interaction. Paying for those services definitely can make sense in many settings (medieval kings hired soothsayers to give them advice all the time), but I found that my players always got more excited by such characters and valued the advice gained from them more when they had to earn it in some way. It also has the benefit of feeling very cinematic: for example, a duel with an old master where you prove your worthiness as a pupil and are taught a secret technique, or a moral debate with an aloof spirit where they are convinced to take your side and provide supernatural counsel. Of course, how *exactly* this is implemented depends enormously on the situation, but I think that this "social sage" approach can be a great way to introduce some more player agency into third party info gathering!
Combining "the players as a sage" and "generalist sage pointing the way to a specialist" is a good compromise. The ranger might be able to recognize a cursed woodland, and he might not know how to break the curse. He probably knows an arch druid or somebody that would know how, though."
Gandalf's trip to Minas Tirith to read the story of Isildur and the Ring is my go-to. It can be a sort of scattered fetch quest if done by the PCs, getting a map here, a letter there, a decorated vase another place, which together make sense of some initial clue. Nevertheless, now I want to put a sage in my campaign...and he'll have a bush growing outside his door.
I like sages that the players would have to seek out. My go to thoughts would be the Emerald Seer from Krull and the Giant Owl in the desert library from Avatar the Last Airbender. I do think it would make sense for nobility, warlords, etc to have access to their own sages and wisemen but I doubt the PCs would be able to get access to these NPCs especially early on. Plus, having the sages be isolated in far away lands allows for the journey to be a fun adventure rather than have them talk to a lord and ask if they can talk to his sage. I just feel like the type of sage that hangs out in a castle is very different from the hermit kind.
For sure! You could have a Sage who feels burdened by their information and now just seeks life away from everything because of the XYZ incident or because they witnessed an event and they saw what it did to the ABC countryside.
I have a sage I needed to detail in an upcoming publication and I had been meaning to revisit this video. The algorithms blessed me with it just popping up, so I rewatched it sooner rather than later. Really useful inspiration here, Daniel!
Terrific, as usual. We played mainly 1st and 2nd edition back in the day--the players made use of retainers, hirelings, and henchmen. At mid levels, they traveled the countryside with an entire camp of noncombatant (except for guards) minions and a baggage train. And, yep, there were sages in half a dozen cities who they relied upon to learn the secrets of powerful artifacts and the lore enshrouding legendary hoards...
A great way to have a session be about something other than mere treasure or combat as its finale, here it is finding a sage to get you to the next piece of the adventure path.
This is my favourite video in a while. I love the sage. In my world, every settlement had a "sage" of some proficiency. Maybe just a wise old lady in a village of 20 people, to highly educated college of sages in a major center. If someone doesn't have an answer, they can point the party toward someone in the next town. And so on. Top level sages aren't just around the corner, but there is always someone the party can go to. Even a "low level" sage may have the answer to a specific question if it is regionally relevant or in line with the sage's background.
Oh my goodness! Now I feel stupid. Looking back over the years, I can't say how many times PCs would rather do their own research than part with a copper to hire a sage. I could have just used the rules ... for a sage. I did have them make arduous journeys to centers of knowledge and deal with stuffy curators to find stuff out, but it would have made things simpler and reduced the improv panic if I had guidelines ... that were there all along. Thanks again!
There’s also spell research rules as well that might be helpful. I’m kind curious right now if there’s any overlap. If you want to force the issue on sages,(not sure if you’d want to force players anywhere)I’d have them be lead to the private library of a lord with a sage employed. The books aren’t lent out but the sage is happy to find the answer if funded appropriately. Some times the players just don’t know because they won’t spend a copper.
Thanks! Been looking for some info like this. And I agree, having the PCs do the research versus hiring a Sage to assist them is not "Heroic" enough. Plus it also uses up some of the gold they have.
Hi Daniel, many do not know, there are over 1000 D&D publications archived across the vast internet. How to use this information is so very important. I am glad you address it. I hope to earn your subscription in return. Cheers.
We didn't need the services of a Sage very often but when we did we really needed it! We once had to go to an enemy and make amends in order to get the services of his Sage. That was a bit of an adventure in itself. And could we really trust what his Sage was telling us was true??? Besides the Sage one could always attempt to get the services of a Seer. And one thing that happened to us was having to get certain "things" that the Seer needed to perform their vision. It wasn't too difficult but trying to find certain things could very well be difficult.
Sage convention - best place to find sages and then you go around rolling random sages and you keep asking questions until you find somebody. Great idea for an adventure - you protect a Sage going to the convention and then a sage gets murdered and then there’s a sage murder mystery.
funny, i just had this come up in my b/x game two weeks ago - i used the ad&d system to generate the sage, and decided to place the sage in the wilderness rather than in the city. the result showed that the sage's major field was "humanoids & giantkind", so i placed a hill-giants' lair nearby. my fear was that giving the players access to a sage would disincentivise the players from actually investigating the world on their own, and result in a lot of "show, don't tell" or lore-dumping. so i came up with two solutions: the first solution was to have the sage be a sort of biased partisan of a particular school of thought. why does this sage live in the wilderness, and not serve a local noble? well, she was disbarred from the Academy for her heterodox theories about giant sociology, and her reputation was ruined. so maybe when a question is asked, and the sage fails the roll, the sage will still answer - but her answer will be in some way unreliable/biased. or upon visiting other sages in the capital city, the party might receive contradictory information, and have to figure out for themselves the real truth of the matter. the second solution was to have players conduct field-work for the sage as "payment" of some kind, rather than just place a gold cost on it. so in the case of my recent adventure, the party sought help deciphering some ancient inscriptions from a surly, reclusive sage near the mountains. the sage, as payment, gave the party a strange contraption called an "optigraph" (a camera) and asked them to find out the details of the hill-giants' secret birth-ritual, hopefully obtaining photographic documentation of the mysterious ceremony. naturally, the players immediately started trying to figure out how to fake the photographs... gotta love it. my real point is that including a sage provided an unexpected opportunity to do quite a lot of world-building that I otherwise probably wouldn't have bothered with - and not by just having the sage be a sort of search engine NPC that lore-dumps on the players.
Great video, as usual. I loved the call outs to the AD&D DMG! I still use it in both my 1st Ed game and my 5e game. In the latter, Ive had players complain that research takes so long (they wanted to learn more of the history of a certain geographic feature with an eye towards the potential Temple within). I guess it is not too surprising since they have never known a world without Google; never known the fun of speaking to a real, live Reference Librarian! The idea of sages wanting a TASK or OBJECT as payment is excellent. Maybe they want books or scrolls on some other area they are interested in. I need to incorporate that more. Thank you again Daniel!
For sure - the Keeper Guide or Player book for CoC? I have both but as I’m mostly a player I hardly pick them up - perhaps a thorough read through is in order!
@@BanditsKeep The combined book, 5th Edition I believe. It also contains rules for 1890s, 1920s, & 1990s in regards to equipment and scientific & forensic methods.
@@BanditsKeep think about it. grave clerics protecting the remains of sacred heroes. gaurding the corrupt corpses of evil beings. and keeping the knowledge of the dead to maintain history and rituals.
@@andrewbriggs2692 That is what priests of Morr do in Warhammer Fantasy. They work as graveyard keepers who chase off tomb-robbers and corpse-thieves. Temple warriors of Morr are a small number of armed dudes who stand around graveyards. An even smaller group goes around to take the fight proactively to powerful undead like wandering Van Helsing dudes. Your starter character could be a corpse-thief too, your career was to sneak into graveyards and nick their stuff and sometimes whole corpses to sell off without question. Maybe to medical students, maybe to weirdo cannibals or cultists, no questions asked as long as they pay up.
I think on just about any D&D topic, you will find that the DMG has a better answer then the older basic/ whitebox game. My recommendation is to anyone DMing a D&D game of just about any edition is to get a copy of the DMG. Any one new to the game, buy a basic version or retroclone ( not sure what one, but most any one would work ), get started playing, then as soon as possible, get the 1st ed DMG, Players Handbood, and the Monster Manual 1. You will find that the blend of Basic and AD&D will be the best! THEN MODIFY IT TO YOUR NEEDS! Then as means permit, take smatterings of stuff from 2nd edition if needed, but always keep the mindset to limit what you give the players, and make things cost, so that they are always just a little bit short of having everything they need payable!
I started playing AD&D and crossed into 2E, I always blended the books and took what I thought the better out of both when running a campaign. I haven't played for years but me and a mate are looking to start again and as its what we're used to (with some tweaks from the past and some new ideas) we'll be going with the same. You go with what works don't you ?
@@deeps2761 Yes, Use what works for you. I like lots of the Ideas that 2nd edition presented, but but not necessarily as implemented, ie in all the expansion books. Like every group we house ruled when needed, and let the DM be the DM. The problem with many of the later editions ( 3rd and beyond) is they took away the DM's ability to be the DM. Basic, 1st ed Ad&d. and 2nd edition are almost essentially the same game. As a DM, controling power creep is one of the things that makes me dislike many of the later editions, It just makes it harder to be a DM. By the time you get to 5th edition, its the Players telling the Dungeon Master what to do.
@@nobody342 I stopped playing at 2E but agree that the expansion books didn't really add anything. The kits were unnecessary and they could be role played largely. It was the same with UA to an extent although I did love playing my barbarian for a while. I'm looking forward to seeing how we do it differently in our 50's instead of teens and 20's.
@@deeps2761 Here is the difference for my, I have 2) 3d printers, a FDM and a resin, and now I 3d print my dungeons and I have 3d printed and painted Miniatures for most everything!, Im a little behind on the painting part though!
Just found your channel and had to subscribe. Definitely inspired me to run some OSE after binging your videos. I was just trying to find out how to fix the thief 😅. What drawing tablet do you use?
Instead of a flat dice roll, it seems like the research times would be great paired up with the clocks mechanic from Blades in the Dark, with some pre-set criteria that will advance or hinder the clock (some known and some unknown to the players). Some things could be: after 2-3 days, the clock advances one segment toward completion (so the players will get what they want eventually if they just wait around for it), spending more than x amount of gold in a day advances the clock a day (as the researcher will then have access to some of the best materials/sources; but capped because he still has to put in a bit of legwork once obtaining those materials), bringing back a sample of the corruption will advance the clock a couple segments. This would give the players a bit of agency in how active or passive a role they want to take in gathering the information process. Do they want to set it and forget it? That's an option, but it'll cost them some time. Perhaps they can do some side questing or downtime activities while they wait. On the other hand, if the players feel the urge, they can push the investigation along with either resources or doing part of the sage's work themselves.
All those exacting fields in a point of light mean there’s many fields that no one is researching. Which is what you would expect. Things are too difficult for someone to dedicate their life to the study of fungi. I think they also help flavor the random sage. Different things would be in their rooms and spaces. A smart player might look else where if they see lots of elf artifacts but not the subject they want. Gygax did say the sage would never admit to not knowing. I going off of memory but can look it up if needed. Basically they take your money as a research endowment. Get travel expenses paid kit out their library but don’t know what they’re doing and just report the answer wasn’t findable with funds received but if given more time and money he’s sure to find the answer. It’s up to the players to stop paying him because a sage always wants funding and he could eventually find the answer. One thing I remember you didn’t touch on is the sage gaining new minors and upgrading minors into majors. Since the players are funding research over time the sage specializes in what the players want. But they really want to study is fungus so they charge more so they can fund that research or have you travel to a dangerous place collect a rare fungus.
I also kinda don’t like the random roll. I think you should mostly use context to determine the sage. Randomness should be done sparingly. The sage is next to a ruin? That’s because his major is the ancient civilization it’s from and is interested in artifacts from it. A random roll for a minor field might be in order if you can’t think of one that fits. Maybe the lord’s domain borders elves. The sage might have a major relating to elven lore and takes trips to do further research often. I think random would only be helpful when nothing particularly sticks out to help flavor the npc.
One more comment to add. Maybe you flavor the sage to match the Lord’s interests. Think what would be useful to them and what kind of research they would most likely fund. I would say commonly the primary industry of the land. Next would be cultural knowledge of a neighboring country for political reasons. Lords in different environments and different social status would hire different sages and might help flavor them. I think it’s generally how sages should work with players. They pay the sage to research things they want to know and the sage becomes an expert in the player centric fields if they weren’t already.
My go-to talking animal sages are owls. Not sure what's so sagacious about owls, but it's a centuries old meme. When the party are mice or shrunken to the size of mice in order to approach the owl sage, the encounter is extra risky and I think that's pretty neat.
@@RoninCatholic In Mausritter where you are little adventurer mice, owls and cats and other large animals often have insights and strange powers you don't have. Of course they also most likely see you as a snack. But you can talk with them and often strike some deal. They aren't compelled to eat you in particular if they think they can have some use for you. We had a quest from an owl to retrieve a "sun eye" held underground in a lizard colony it could not reach.
@@SusCalvin Sage owls for mouse characters immediately made me think of the Great Owl in NIMH. That to me is a great example of the sage being directly dangerous to the party but not necessarily hostile. And for me personally, a big part of the point of roleplaying a mouse character is the wide array of things that prey on you, most of which are also smarter than you are by default.
In Drakar och Demoner/Dragonbane you can play a sage. You are still an adventurer, just like how a PC merchant is awandering Vasco da Gama/Marco Polo type, so are you a wandering field researcher. Like a savant travelling with caravans and ships to see far-off places and learn stuff. Like merchants, they are also used to travel and rough living. Like in other BRP games where everything is a percentage skill, knowledge in a field is also a percentage skill. Your PC sage or some NPC sage rolls against that percentage chance in a field to know a certain detail. Call of Cthulhu was a game that pretty early on introduced the concept of player investigaton. Older CoC adventures assume that your band of investigators, retired old PCs or NPC contacts presented in the adventure or developed through roleplaying are going to personally look up many details. Adventure length is written to reflect this slow pace. You're assumed to spend several days or a couple weeks receiving telegrams, mail, rooting through city hall, translating texts etc. In older Delta Green adventures investigations run for at least a week or more. Suddenly breaking out the old clip collection or mailing collegues over a couple days is normal. One suggested use for retired investigators is to keep tapping their skills, even if injury or slipping Sanity has made them unplayable in the field for years to come. One quirk in Call of Cthulhu is that you might not roll for basic use of skills. 30% in a skill means you can perform basic tasks of that field, like routine maintenance, booking an arrest using Law or reading simple texts using a Language. 60% means you can perform tasks at a professional level, like a doctor diagnosing a common disease, preparing a complete but normal case as an attourney using Law or identifying a common plant using Biology. Rolls are made when time pressure, weirdness or things out of the ordinary happen. A lawyer trying to build a fraudulent case would roll Law, a chemist trying to identify flakes of a mythos creature's shell or a sailor trying to navigate a ship in a storm would always roll. The intention is not to constantly demand rolls for the pettiest of things.
@@BanditsKeep Any time the history of something in D&D is mentioned, I try to look up what games would have been stting next to the D&D box at the shelf. From GDW who took only a few small influences to Tunnels & Trolls that was often a parallell production.
Great video. AD&D 1e DMG is my favorite book for any system. I'm a fan of the quest to find a sage, gather esoteric information. I also like to use the supplement of Sages and Specialists from AD&D 2e for some great ideas for different useful NPCs. Since the group I currently run is primarily 3 players, there is often a use for niche NPCs.
1e obviously is meant to be used with the World of Greyhawk 0 time/solo play is what a large portion of the DMG is meant for, ie world building So this world is both sparse in its geography and rich at its population centers when it comes to the needs of the player With open ended storylines it is virtually a giant sandbox with near endless possibilities If you haven’t, one should study the geography closely It’s quite fascinating
Re: having PCs do their own research. I wouldn't have any problem with allowing this in my games, but where are they doing the research? Large, openly available libraries are not something that are going to be common in many campaign settings. A higher level Wizard with a large library and established proficiency in sifting information? Have at it. A rawly intelligent but unschooled in the methods and matters of research person with no access to a place to conduct said research? Not happening. It seems that in most fantasy worlds even clearing the "materials exist, PC has access; must be able to locate which ones matter and what they mean" bar (i.e.: Gandalf researching the One Ring while Frodo is doing his own thing in the first part of Fellowship) is going to be the hardest. PC ability to actually sift and conduct research from that point I would not personally take for granted either; a vast trove of information in itself is not useful if the person digging through it doesn't have the ability to skim and parse effectively. It must be said, on the side, that either locating an important book / scroll / whatever for research or getting to a noted expert who knows should both provide the DM with about equal levels of potential adventure hooks. So from a gameplay perspective, you could go either way. I just wouldn't want to give the PCs an easy mode "you can do this yourself pretty quickly" mode unless there was a very specific reason why that would be good for the campaign.
All that, and ancient libraries aren't likely to be organized by information type and to have maybe possibly be _formerly_ arranged chronologically, but shuffled around as people find books or scrolls anywhere and put them anywhere else. A great wizard's personal library might have an exact organization structure to it that fits him, specifically, and nobody else.
In general, I see mages to be knowledge experts in the field of magic. I would require a library like you said for most self research and obtain the correct book might be just as costly or more than a sage. Clerics would have knowledge of religious matters. And fighters would know about war tactics and also geography and particularly political make up of the region. I see fighters as veterans and assume they know details of at least one conflict based on first hand experience. Fighters would also know a bit about heraldry. I think class might play a roll. But you’ve likely have seen banners during battle.
In Mutant, there was a rules mechanic a little like finding a sage, but you had to locate libraries. It was largely private collections or closed collections held by institutions and factions. It took a fee per day and the right connections to get access. The collections could have diverse and weird specialisatons, they were often private collections and shops following the whims of the owner. Mutant was a BRP game so all skills including knowledge skills was a percentage. When you used a library, it would give a sort of equipment bonus to the researcher. Like +10 general bonus in natural sciences, +20 specialty in household machinery and a +5 in soccer just because. If you would gain access to the file system of Sherlock Holmes, it would count as a criminology library in Mutant with a specialisation on crimes in the greater London area. There was an aging NPC detective with just such a file collection built over decades.
Honestly, it’s worth railroading your group into this kind of quest in the first five or six levels (like a video game would) to seek a particular sage and particular money to pay them for some useful information moving forward. I like the idea that there are few literate people and they shouldn’t need to waste time with study etc. it’s boring and should be discouraged.
A better frame is all the knowledge of the subject the players are interested in is held by a certain sage who has spent their life time collecting rare artifacts and books. I would only require one specific sage for exacting information though. I would also just continue on with the knowledge. That might have issues though but they might eventually learn the power of sages. I also think being careful how you answer questions helps. Basically never answer questions outside an npc. “Where can I find a +2 sword with a fire attribute?” It’s good to know the party’s goals. First ask to the dm gets a few suggestions of where they can ask. Like around town or in the tavern or at the church. Color the answer based on class. Second ask gives more directions to the answer. General to specific based on where they asked with plenty of “I don’t know” depending on what they want. Eventually they’ll be pointed to a sage who asks for money for the answer and players pay or don’t.
Sages-- we call them professors on Earth-- are expensive because we require staff, library, and laboratory facilities. Yes, I love science and would gladly research it and teach it for free, but I literally can't. Even those sages that could engage in gainful work (e.g. attorneys) would need to spend time and attention to do so, reducing the efficacy of their research. This is why academia relies on tuition and patronage to survive; even now we beg piteously for grants and must effectively indenture our able students. In fact, managing these costs and generating some degree of financial and political insulation for the research process is a primary reason for the founding of a university, around which an entire sociopolitical ecosystem then develops. So yes, adventurers, I might need you to retrieve some books or papers; to communicate with some distant or politically inaccessible colleague; or even to accompany me somewhere. Certainly, in those cases, I'm glad to barter with knowledge; but most times I really do need the actual money. I can't buy equipment or books or feed my staff with love or flaming swords.
A lot of the early 18th century scentists were independently wealthy enthusiasts, the people with landed wealth and leisure time to pursue projects like the classical arts or experiments with optics. Or people employed by such people as status symbols or to do something valuable to them. But the resources coming from the people in power will try to direct these pursuits to what those people in power want. Compiling historical chronicles, the medical arts, law/theology, metallurgy, how to use plants and minerals, history of things important to the upper class, calenders etc. On the Moon, we decided that wealthy aristocratic dilettantes and cults are the ones who have the (pooled) time and resources to do this stuff. Some of these people have really high status, like the people charged with keeping the manna-nutrient machines functioning. If those things ever stop, the city starves. Aristocrats can research anything detail they fancy just because they enjoy it. One dude we met liked to observe and make theories about Earth, unaided by a telescope. Others were esoteric sects that practiced nudism and yoga and had a more mystical approach to their field.
@@SusCalvin Ha! That's awesome! Love the possibilities of worlds developing life aware of each other but unable to reach each other! I'll have to explore that with a one-shot and then maybe add it to my 3LBB world. And I agree completely... I don't think my discipline could have survived the exclusion of wealthy Frenchmen alone! But that's just a case of the patron and the sage being the same person-- it's still patronage. The work is not funding itself. The analogous structure of today is the university endowment-- at least some work gets done without the NSF! Another thing to consider is that the political winds can change and, in doing so, cause irreparable harm. The world suffered immense losses when petty human nonsense caught up with e.g. Lavoisier, Mosely, and Galois.
@@misterschifano My friends had always wanted to make a sword and planet campaign setting in the style of Barsoom and others, and they picked the Moon. It's got the last city-states of a dying civilization on top of the ruins of already gone ones. I think they're making an english translation for Drivethru right now. You're assumed to be explorers from Earth hexcrawling. We are early modern period danish navy goons. I would probably add a VOC office. Mutant was originally inspired by Gamma World but got more and more focus on the rebirth of civilization where edwardian nation-states have grown out of some settled areas. No one had anything like a modern university but the world wasn't lacking institutions. States, interest groups, industrial interests and others all have a need for skilled people. You could work for a chamber of commerce, the government etc. One place had a fraternity of scientists who allied with the government of a city-state and overnight became one of its power blocks.
Typically I will look at an image I like but isn’t quite what I want and describe it with my change to the bot - it take a few tries but I’ve been happy with the results.
@@BanditsKeep I need your collection of "not good enough images" if this is what they result in. The styling always reminds me of the hey day of quality illustration like Franzetta & others.
