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is a member of the Istari, himself a Maiar. The Maiar’s task was to redress the imbalance created by the Dark Lord Sauron. The Istari were cloaked in the forms of old men and limited in their powers as a result (Day 2001:253). Wizards were not something humanity could become—wizardry was a power tied exclusively to the divine. Tolkien referenced this in one of his letters: “The use of ‘magic’ in this story is that it is not to be come by ‘lore’ or spells; but is an inherent power not possessed by Men as such” (Tracy 1998). Tolkien divided magic into magia, which uses power to quickly achieve its ends, and goeteia, used to create illusions and enchantments (Ozment 2007:185).

Still, there are special cases of magic used by others, particularly Aragorn, that Tolkien admits could be regarded as magical. This divergence is what allows The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game to create a “Magician Order” that encompasses the powers attributed to other races as magic—elven songs and dwarven runes (Long 2002:88). Only when they achieve higher levels of power can they become wizards, who are tutored by the original five Istari.

Middle-earth Role Playing quantifies the use of magic through the divine guidance of the creator, Eru, who emphasizes the balance of all things. Using magic in a way that is not sanctioned is a means of offending Eru’s grace and thereby falling into corruption (Coleman 1993:7). The computer role-playing game JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Vol. I reinforced this same restriction by inflicting damage to the caster’s life points when casting a spell (Barton 2008:204). These conventions stand in contrast to the typical wizard of later roleplaying games who wantonly blasts enemies with fireballs (Ozment 2007:186).

Where did the archetypical fantasy wizard come from? The Dungeons & Dragons wizard is actually inspired by the wizards of Jack Vance’s Dying Earth series. Gygax explained the four cardinal types of magic in literature: those systems which require long conjuration with much paraphernalia as visualized by Shakespeare in Macbeth and Robert E. Howard in Conan, those which require short spoken spells (as in Jack Vance’s Dying Earth series), ultra-powerful magic typical of de Camp and Pratt in the Harold Shea stories, and “generally weak and relatively ineffectual magic (as found in J.R.R. Tolkien’s work).” Taking into account the need for speed and balance, Gygax chose the most expedient form of spell casting, Vancian magic (1976:3).

To Gygax’s way of thinking, the concept of a spell itself being magical, a written form carrying energy, seemed a perfect way to balance the wizard against other types of characters in the game. “The memorization of the spell required time and concentration so as to impart not merely the written content but also its magical energies,” said Gygax in an article for ProFantasy (2001). “When subsequently cast—by speaking or some other means—the words or gestures, or whatever triggered the magical force of the spell, leave a blank place in the brain where the previously memorized spell had been held.”

In Chainmail, the wizard could become invisible, see in darkness, and improve morale. He was capable of firing two kinds of projectiles; a fireball that exploded in a radius like a catapult or a lightning bolt that blasted in a straight line like a field gun (Gygax 1978:30). As portrayed later in Dungeons & Dragons, the wizard offered the “indirect, possibly intellectual approach— a sort of mixture of artillery and superscience” (Gygax 1987:29).

In earlier versions of Dungeons & Dragons, the wizard was referred to by the unwieldy term “magic-user.” This phrase was eventually replaced with the title “mage” in the second edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. The third edition restored the archetypical wizard title. The notion of power from a hereditary source rather than a learned one is evident in the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons with the sorcerer class, which has more flexibility in choosing which spells to cast in exchange for fewer spells overall (Aeon