How Many High-IQ Wizards?

[Chris Rice]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

The number, power and motives of magical people and beings has such a powerful impact on the progress of a fantasy roleplaying game that I can't imagine conforming to someone else's idea of how your setting is supposed to go. Ergo, there are as many powerful wizards in the Duchy of Dran as I need to have be in the Duchy of Dran.

Exactly right. RPGs are "story games" so we create what we need as background to play with the story. Some GMs like to have every detail mapped out for them, both in the rules and in adventures. I'd rather create my own stories along with the players.

So, as Lars says, I'll have as many high level Wizards (or anything else) as I feel I need for the story I'm setting out for the players.

[Skarg]

I try to make my games as little like "stories" as possible, which is why I like to know what's where and what's happening and why. I want a game about the situation, where we get to see what happens.

[larsdangly]

I also run a pretty strict 'sandbox' campaign, where anything you might call a story evolves spontaneously through play. But in my mind that makes it even more important that tI carefully control who and what is in that sandbox.

[Chris Rice]

I can see it now.......

Census Takers of Elyntia

The heroic tale of an intrepid band of Statisticians, travelling the land counting, Orcs, Wizards, Prootwaddles....

[Skarg]

q.v. The Scholar's Guild

The accuracy of notions about population numbers no doubt has some correspondence to what efforts anyone makes to figure out what it is.

Maybe Henry would like to do some initial math about what the population of Elyntia is based on its size and how likely potentially dangerous encounters with humanoids are? (Assuming the generic tables in ITL... though that's a whole other topic - I'd say those tables are pretty wild and someone interested in getting statistically logical results should probably make their own tables based on what they actually think is likely to be met in a location, and how often.)

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

The number, power and motives of magical people and beings has such a powerful impact on the progress of a fantasy roleplaying game that I can't imagine conforming to someone else's idea of how your setting is supposed to go. Ergo, there are as many powerful wizards in the Duchy of Dran as I need to have be in the Duchy of Dran.

Bear in mind the question was 'for publication'. A published sourcebook doesn't know how many powerful wizards a given campaign needs, so it should include a number that works well for most campaigns set in that setting.

[hcobb]

How many Dukes does Elyntia have?

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by hcobb

How many Dukes does Elyntia have?

My version has seven duchies, and earldom, and a royal province. (There can also be dukes without duchies.)

[Buzzardo]

How (if at all) do TFT IQ scores translate to real-life (RL) IQ scores? Is each TFT IQ point worth 10 RL IQ points? Is each TFT IQ point worth one standard deviation in RL IQ? Either way, this site may be of some help (though I don't know how authoritative it is).

132 IQ (13 IQ if each TFT IQ point is 10 RL IQ points or 12 IQ if each TFT IQ point is one standard deviation of RL IQ) is 1% of the population. Per the notes at the top, IQ above 20 (if 10 points per) or 16 (if standard deviation) are impossible.

Really, anything above 17 (10 points per) or 14 (standard deviation) should be so vanishingly rare as to be one per generation.

If TFT IQ doesn't correspond to RL IQ, then ... whatever you like.

[hcobb]

Originally Posted by Skarg

My version has seven duchies, and earldom, and a royal province. (There can also be dukes without duchies.)

If you take Dran as a bit of a backwater that gives you a total population of just under a million to slightly above two million. Depending how on much wizardry is put into health and sanitation services for the core cities.

Are there any humans in Dran over a hundred? How do they afford this?

ITL 16: "Note: Just because the abbreviations are the same, don’t mistake game “IQ” for the factor that is measured by a realworld IQ test. IQ 18 doesn’t mean that you have a real-world IQ of 180. It means that you have learned a lot of things and keep in practice with them."

BTW: How many GMs allow an alert Molly as a 32-attribute point starting character? (IQ 17, Staff V, Alertness, lots of roll vs IQ spells, etc.)