So here's something I absolutely despise in fiction. Wizard police forces. The idea of there being an organized group of reality warpers that for some reason feel the need to play cop for others of their own kind. Especially when they're a minority population, just doesn't ring true to me. It also contradicts the whole idea of forbidden power and focusing on increasing your own. While the magic cops are distracted with "policing" the "rogue" wizard is studying the book of interdimensional ass rape. Giving them more than a minor advantage over the cops.
Probably the worst examples of this are found in "Dresden Files," and Ars Magic. Two settings where the wizard populations amount to less than 3,000 people, yet they still manage to have a police force for their respective communities (spread across a continent, world).
Yeah, it's pretty dumb. I'd say it's far better for there to be non-wizard police forces over wizards.
Eli Cox
I mean, it makes sense to me?
If you have a group of people that powerful, nobody else could police them. As part of any degree of organisation and cooperation between them, there would naturally emerge those whose job it was to ensure members of the community weren't breaking the established rules, or that those who did so were punished, especially if they're so powerful those outside them couldn't really police them effectively. That doesn't mean they'd be doing so all the time, and it can easily be viewed as just another method of gathering power- Social influence and respect is always valuable.
Zachary Bailey
That's a better idea, but any kind of specific force dedicated to combating a loosely organized cabal of monstrous super beings should be pretty damn scary themselves. Or else you wouldn't have any explanation for why they're still around and not burning cinders.
Levi Roberts
I could see peace treaties, but think about it. How do you have any dedicated force of these guys banning together to take an individual out. Especially when "your partners" might be stabbing you in the back in the process. It's just way too individualistic of a situation to justify it.
Tyler Cooper
...Because people are capable of cooperation in the name of enlightened self-interest?
One member of a powerful community going rogue is bad for everybody. Even if they don't come after you, it fucks with your reputation and if you're the only people who can deal with them, if you don't the blame will get pinned on you. Unless you have no concern about ever interacting with other intelligent beings who might be at risk, policing your own makes perfect sense as a basic survival strategy.
Isaiah Rodriguez
Yeah, except imagine everybody being "rogue" and your community being little more than glorified pen palls across an incredible distance. That's the situation most settings have the wizard council or police force set in, and that's the one I find the dumbest. Other scenarios are a different matter entirely.
Elijah Martinez
The kind of stuff they police tends to be really bad shit that would fuck everyone over.
Benjamin Sanders
Except for entities that powerful, travel and communication usually aren't a big deal, and being connected to a global community only makes managing that sort of fallout more meaningful and necessary.
It also doesn't really matter how internally cohesive they are, this is about external pressure. They will be seen as a community, and the actions of one will reflect on all of them. It doesn't matter how powerful you are, if you're even vaguely human then complete isolation will fuck you up, and being utterly ostracised as being one of those wizard bastards who did nothing when that one asshole decided to kill an entire country to power his spell is not going to be a situation they want to allow happen. It only becomes more important in a Dresden Files situation where there's a larger supernatural law at play about keeping its existence under wraps, if Wizards don't police their own then other forces will step in to take authority over them, which they very much don't want.
The downsides of not doing so are far, far greater than the costs of doing it.
Benjamin Barnes
>Probably the worst examples of this are found in "Dresden Files," and Ars Magic. Two settings where the wizard populations amount to less than 3,000 people, yet they still manage to have a police force for their respective communities (spread across a continent, world). There are FAR more than 3000 people on earth with magical abilities in Dresden. The White Council is the ~3000 is the absolute upper echelon of human mages, and it takes a lot less than a Council-level talent to seriously hurt people if that power is used for evil, even unintentionally. And that's ignoring all the non-human stuff the Wardens deal with. If anything, their unbelievably understaffed for what they're responsible for and supposedly able to pull off
Luis Myers
You're taking your own ideas about what Wizards are, applying them over existing settings, and complaining that things don't match up.
Camden Lopez
If the Dresden Files didn't have their "Wardens" the wizards would be running the show. All the vampires except the elders would be exterminated and the boundaries between the Never Never and the mortal world would be like Trump's wall. Nothing getting in without their say so, but no, they allow a group of retards to hobble them for "reasons." A group of independently powerful super beings would never establish a council like that in the first place. It's just a sophomoric thought process applying a standard societal custom to a situation that would never develop it. Or, shitty writing.
Alexander Young
pic is greatest xcrawl propaganda I have ever seen.
Lucas Sullivan
...What on earth are you talking about?
Joseph White
Yeah, but wothout the council and the wardens you got idiots like the black council that want to get outsiders into the world and kill reality, dicks like kemler that want to become death gods though mas ritualistic sacrifice and tear a hole in reality, Formorians that gonna nose rape their way through the world, and other crazy rogue warlocks that do crazy shit because they got the power. At which point the mortals would get involved, and then it’s a doomsday scenario all over the place 24/7 365.
The council may be full of jackasses, but they do kinda occasionally do their job in a moral and effective reason. Your dream of an ancap magic world falls apart because people generally like their reality to keep on chugging
Benjamin Stewart
Magic is too fragile to leave in the hands of the unworthy. There will always be those who seek to deny access to such reckless, hubristic fools.
Jack Sullivan
The FBI's pretty damned scary if you're a domestic terrorist or /pol/itically inclined. That's a good thing, mind.
Matthew White
It's about as nonsensical as fabulously wealthy individuals/corporations 'policing' other fabulously wealthy individuals/corporations and stopping them from doing bad things or controlling everything or pushing their weight around or being dicks or perverting legal systems or laughing at restrictions or enjoying all their money in various fucked up ways.
The idea that doing this would prevent said fabulously wealthy individuals/corporations or any fabulously wealthy individuals/corporations from having enormous impacts on their communities or even the world at large is nonsensical.
Logan Martinez
Except that's just ordinary humans organizing themselves. The concept of "wizards" has no real world equivalency. No individual wizard is an organization, although they might posses their own personal armies...
Nathan Nguyen
You know what else is scary? A man that can raise a stick and kill you with no observable phenomenon from a continent away. Or kill an entire army of henchmen by waving his stick. The FBI doesn't really have shit on that.
Kevin Cruz
>that's just ordinary humans organizing themselves Now imagine reality warpers doing it too. Even if it's just the 'wizard cops' that have done so(and they would need to to even entertain the idea of police others), you've now got organised reality-warpers, and the absurd thought that this would somehow balance out the rest and reduce their effect on EVERYTHING to negligible will always, always, always, always baffle me.
Bentley Sullivan
>Now imagine reality warpers doing it too Except those aren't ordinary humans.
Jack Rodriguez
>wizard concentrates on a distant foe >can feel the wind blowing across his skin >knows exactly how far away this man is >can see his expression change as he converses with a compatriot >wizard slowly waggles a finger, never losing focus >dudeman's head explodes >wizard is 2 and a half kilometers away >he thinks this isnt real life. Kek.
Aiden Allen
Wizards aren't that strong.
Wizards aren't that rare.
The average angry mob can storm a wizards hut, and a single highly trained knight can take on any wizard 1 on 1
Try again.
Adam Hughes
This is very strange bait.
Sebastian Reed
>Yeah, except imagine everybody being "rogue" and your community being little more than glorified pen palls across an incredible distance. So pretty much the opposite of the situation in Dresden Files where wizards by and large have close bonds with their apprentices and masters, band together for protection so they're not wiped out by the other supernatural "nations" and even have an organized government?
Hudson King
>hes_right_you_know.jpg If the many kooks I've known are any indication, assembling a body of wizards under a uniform code would be exactly like herding cats with various shades of mental damage (and their little charismatic cults, too).
Eli Wilson
I don't know about Ars Magic, but Dresden Files is a really bad example of the point you're trying to make here. Their police force (Wardens) is trained for protection detail, detective work, and combat. They are expected to fight all manner of supernatural beings, and if that includes a rogue wizard who gives no fucks about anyone else and is willing to do whatever fucked up thing it takes in order to gain near omnipotent power, then they handle it.
I get what you're saying but, like vampires, wizards in a setting come in a lot of different flavors. What kind of government/organization you have depends entirely on the flavor in the particular setting you're dealing with at the time. But every organization needs its' HR people, there's no way around that.
Austin Lewis
>While the magic cops are distracted with "policing" the "rogue" wizard is studying the book of interdimensional ass rape. Giving them more than a minor advantage over the cops.
Mind you, said policing tends to involve facing down with said rogue wizards so they've likely got the experience advantage in many cases. Being an organisation also comes with infrastructure support, as there is a lot more required for power than just study. You need resources, trained teachers, materials to work with. There is plenty of reasons the cops could have an advantage. Much like how a SWAT member is generally better trained than the innawoods guy who shoots targets all the time.
Jeremiah Young
How on Earth could that be construed as bait?
Asher Miller
some folk are control freaks. Some just keep it in the bedroom, some take it work, some become cops, others politicians.
Eli James
How is it any different from reality? We already have order controlled by a minority group of people with the most power. It's already well established that whoever has the biggest stick wins (might makes right and all that), so it makes complete sense that magic-users would police the world.
Jace Carter
>Probably the worst examples of this are found in "Dresden Files" Did you read anything about that at all except a short wikipedia summary?
Because Dresden Files Wizard cops work because they a) already have a headstart on any upstart wannabe dark magicians b) as an organisation have the support of allies a rogue wizard will not have c) can fall back on an entire logistical system already in place from their non-combat support d) have a very clear agenda any reasonable person (or wizard) will agree with, so they have the support of 99% of any magical population
It seems to me you just have a fetish for hermit spellslinger. Not every setting is DnD, so get your head out your ass.
John Morris
>If the many kooks I've known are any indication, assembling a body of wizards under a uniform code would be exactly like herding cats with various shades of mental damage (and their little charismatic cults, too). Just because your social circle consists of deranged lunatics doesn't mean society or humanity at large acts like that. In fact, wizards are often portrayed as pretty intelligent and something akin to a highly skilled scientist or something, and those people form pretty close knit groups.
There is also some form of "consensus" like thing that seems to be involved where mortals don't notice supernatural as long as it doesn't try to act on large scale. Break it and things can get really ugly for all supernatural beings.
Hell, Church will probably drop any limitations it works under and you'll get things like Order of Iscariot from Hellsing or people turning to older rituals that work regardless of if you are wizard or not. I wouldn't rule out genocide of many supernatural beings and many others getting into "battery" arrangements where they would be used as sources of power to hunt others and experimented on.
Luke Walker
>There is also some form of "consensus" like thing that seems to be involved where mortals don't notice supernatural as long as it doesn't try to act on large scale More like mortals DO notice supernatural all the time, but they either pretend it didn't happen, come up with non-supernatural explanations for it, or at least keep their mouths shut lest they get labelled as crazies.
Justin Barnes
Its simple, really. Most settings have a concept of something akin to 'Black Magic', magical practices that are forbidden.
If some fuckhead is dabbling in demon magic, I don't care that he sold his soul for power. His soul, his business. What I CARE about is that he is opening up our world to demonic invasion either by carelessness or by design. Thats a problem best nipped in the bud, before it becomes everybody's problem.
So yes, I'm going to go around my list of magical friends and say "Hey, you want to spend the next five years casting out demonic possessions and fighting off battlefiends? No? Then there is a guys ass we need to go kick."
And thats how you end up with wizard peacekeeping. Wizards probably dont police each other often, but they certainly act in their own interest when it comes to preventing other wizards from shitting on their lawn.
Logan Russell
Reading through the thread, it becomes increasingly obvious that OP's "problem" is he has a single, specific idea of how a wizard is allowed to behave and think and simply cannot comprehend any setting where that personal assumption is not universally true.
This is akin to a dude sperging that there are settings where orcs use weapons made out of things other than bone, because he decided that orcs are barbarians and shouldnt have metallurgy, and thus every setting that doesnt do that EXACT THING is WRONG.
Samuel James
And pride is the knife idiots fall upon by choice.
David Wood
He shows up periodically and does this shit for other genres and ideas too. He cannot cope with anything that doesn't fit his preconceived notions and anyone disagreeing with him is an idiot who doesn't understand how reality works, regardless of how unreal his expectations are.
Aiden Thompson
Sure
Noah Powell
I disagree, it completly depends on the danger of rogue wizards. In my setting being a mage with no training equals doom to you and everyone around you so it's not just other wizards who police, it's the normal humans too.
It's that same for a game like divinity and dragon age, the police are made up by mostly none mage groups Because the danger of mages is that great.
Jeremiah Davis
Wizard police forces make perfect sense when you realize that muggles in the setting wield astronomically more power than the wizards do. Wizards police themselves because it's better than some out of control retarded wizard (which I'm sure OP would be should he manage to preserve his virginity another 12 more years) ruins it for everyone and setting off another inquisition.
Ethan Nguyen
I think there even was a centralised police until the 1667 or so.
Isaac Cruz
This was mostly how Dresden Files dealt with Kemmler. They left him to fester too long, and by the time they realised and had to put him down it took almost every single big gun they had to get him dead and make him stay that way. So they’re reasonably more on point with policing now as a result, because fucking NOBODY wants to deal with that again.
Thomas Sullivan
You people have no imagination
Elijah Brown
One of the only good things to come of of The Sword of Truth was the dark evil empire whatever's mage guards. They are the steel against steel, the dark overlord is the magic against magic. Basically, wizards have to sleep sometime, so the mage guard protects him from physical attack. But the mage guard is vulnerable to magical attack, so they have the wizard.
Joshua Taylor
>Two settings where the wizard populations amount to less than 3,000 people There are a lot more than 3,000 wizards in Dresden Files, it's just that only a minority of them are hot shit, which is why Harry says he's in the top 24 of North America. Specifically I think the line was "There are only a couple dozen wizards of my caliber on the continent," or something to that effect. Plus, the Wardens are specially trained, and go after all kinds of supernatural threats, not just rogue wizards. Literally, when they made Harry a Warden they told him his job would pretty much be the same shit he already did, going around and kicking the shit out of upstart monsters and dark wizards. Wizards in the Dresden Files also live a long ass time, and have honed their magic for centuries. This was literally a plot point in the series, that when the Wardens suffered heavy losses in the vampire war, they lost elite wizards and couldn't train new ones fast enough, because it took the Wardens so long to get up to the level they were.
I mean, I do love me the idea of righteous "suffer not a witch to live" human hunters who hunt down evil wizards, but come on guy.
Juan Kelly
You say close-knit group, I say cult, tomato tomahto. No doubt some are better organized than others.
Oliver Myers
If you're chained in a cage, waiting for the ministrations of a sadistic dark wizard, what would you prefer knowing:
That everyone who might know where you are, and what's about to happen to you, are minding their own business, because noone wants to be next/cares?
Or that an entire social establishment, made up of trained and dedicated wizards, are doing everything they can to free you, return you home safely, ensure the dark wizard doesn't hurt anyone again, and proactively investigate to see if there are others out there?
Just because your country has shitty police doesn't mean that they're a fundamentally bad thing.
Logan Sullivan
Aes Sedai's oaths are a much more practical solution for establishing trust and behavior. Makes for a largely self policing magic population, too. Barring shaitanic intervention, of course.
Asher Bell
Wizard police are never just the law enforcement part of magic society; they are also the whole judicial system and often the executive side as well Think ATF with even less oversite and more power No one votes to see what is illegal or whats allowed, they just decide Auto casting wands are illegal; wands must be over 6" inches, a wand over 14" is a staff, you must be older that 21 to own a wand, but not a staff,
