100 reasons to quit your job and start adventuring

 A while ago, one of my players was having a hard time coming up with a reason as to why someone of the occupation they rolled up would become an adventurer. I don't think its 100% necessary to come up with an in-depth backstory (although I often do) but I told them there are hundreds of reasons why someone could pursue the life of an adventurer. Here are just 100 of them off the top of my head:

I was a (roll occupation table) but then… (d100 roll twice or until it makes sense)

1. I got my heart broken, out traveling, seeing new things and getting new skills to find myself again. (If the person who broke your heart is still alive 50/50 chance they became an adventurer for the exact same reason.)

2. I joined the Corpse Collectors Guild, a little extra money and a decently good cause.

3. I went into a coma, by the time I woke up the world had moved on without me.

4. I discovered a talent for (class)

5. I wanted to go back to my family roots as a (class)

6. I Became a wanted man under the laws of my home country

7. I had a profound religious/spiritual experience

8. I was rescued by a adventurer caravan

9. I just kind of wandered off

10. I was kidnapped by a adventurer caravan

11. I got into a crazy amount of debt.

12. I was consumed by wanderlust

13. I decided to commit passive suicide by adventuring.

14. I was ostracized by my community.

15. I needed to make an exorbitant amount of money for a personal project.

16. I needed to make an exorbitant amount of money for a sick loved one.

17. I met my mentor.

18. I fell in love.

19. I lost it all in the divorce.

20. I got super lost.

21. I became bound into the service of some kind of higher power

22. I died and was resurrected

23. I got banished to another dimension for a while.

24. I got way too drunk

25. I needed to dodge the draft

26. I wanted to follow my childhood dream

27. I craved violence.

28. I was sent out as a right of passage, never came back

29. I was banished from my home.

30. Someone important to me died

31. I had a strange experience with a magical creature

32. I received a strange omen

33. I got bit by a vampire (no powers, just sun allergy and blood diet)

34. I was terribly cursed

35. I was subject to a miracle!

36. I took a psychedelic drug

37. I went stark raving mad!

38. I got bit by a werewolf

39. I got involved in a shady business venture

40. I got a brain injury which changed my personality

41. I spent some time in the can.

42. I got addicted to a drug that someone else in the caravan is addicted to or grows/makes.

43. My Family got turned into monsters.

44. I developed a fascination with ancient cultures and history.

45. I found out I speak a strange language

46. I received a strange package

47. I encountered a life-changing piece of art.

48. I woke up in a wizards lab, turns out I was a clone, my memories never having truly belonged to me…

49. I got conscripted into an elite training program.

50. I got replaced with a doppelganger, no one believed me.

51. I faked my own death

52. I woke up in a dungeon

53. I was physically enhanced

54. I developed an all consuming obsession`

55. I spent some time working for a military organization

56. I encountered a strange artifact

57. I was mentioned in a prophecy.

58. I wanted to look for a good place for my family to settle down, and make some money while I'm at it.

59. I pissed off a wizard

60. I pissed off a noble

61. I found a manual

62. I made a bet

63. I made a deal with someone powerful

64. I got Freaky Friday’d

65. I Found out I have a terminal illness.

66. I found out the world was going to end

67. I got enslaved, sold and escaped

68. I got sent to the future

69. I got sent to the past

70. I got consumed by a great ambition.

71. I made a friend

72. I had a kid with someone else in the caravan

73. I found out someone else in the caravan is my long-lost parent

74. I made a vow

75. I committed a wrong that I need to make right

76.  I lived with a group of animals

77. I started to remember pieces of a past life

78. I started work as a hireling

79. I got a taste of incredible power and then lost it

80. I got teleported far away from home

81. I found a dungeon near home

82. I discovered a terrible truth

83. I got hope-pilled

84. I found out I have strange ancestry

85. I started pretending to be someone else

86. I got some good advice

87. I got some bad advice

88. I just needed an excuse to get out of the house.

89. I became inspired to write a book

90. I met someone who changed my life

91. My rival started adventuring

92. I witnessed something horrible

93. I witnessed something beautiful

94. I developed a desire to work with more exotic materials

95. I was the victim of a crime

96. I was captured and experimented on

97. I started adventuring on the behalf of someone who could not

98. I ate a magical creature

99. An animal stood up on its hind legs and spoke to me

100. Nothing, I was always both my occupation and an adventurer.

Alternatively, this could all be one character's very complicated personal history.

Religious Wizards

WARNING! THIS ONE KIND OF BECAME AN UNFOCUSED RANT, BUT I'M PUBLISHING IT ANYWAY!

It seems like all wizards nowadays are massive fucking nerds.

The modern wizard, at least a common representation of the wizard archetype in tabletop roleplaying games, is largely based on themes on an academic scholarship. The casting of magic spells, the primary ability of the wizard, seems to be cast through personal knowledge alone. 

                                                                    Solomon, biblical wizard

spellbooks, grimoires, and magic scrolls (often used as necessary equipment for wizards) exist and have existed throughout time and cultures. The idea of going to magic school, a very popular staple of the fantasy TTRPG wizard, is also not completely unsubstantiated. The formal training of the Onmyōji from feudal Japan comes to mind, though I doubt that this is where this idea was popularized in the case of the modern conception of the wizard. The kind of scientific bent that wizards take is not completely unheard of, I can imagine a lot of this comes from ideas surrounding alchemy (many of which are true). 

 The Alchemist by Joseph Wright

There is only one part of this that bothers me: the subtle yet seemingly almost omnipresent concept of secular magic.

    This just doesn't add up, youre saying the dudes who spend their lives learning to control supernatural forces aren't spiritual in nature? we watch them divine the future, raise the dead, turn people into frogs or something and say "Oh uhh yeah man we should treat that narratively like a scientist a college student or some shit"? Ive got three culprits for this shit: ancient alchemists, the nerds who create and play these games and fucking Harry Potter but whatever its fine...

No its not fine, i fucking loathe you, fuck you, fuck you , fuck youI hate you i hate you ihate yoy i hate you.

      there's nothing wrong with your Harry Potter twink mage but lets explore at least one way to spice up magic and those who practice magic based off of some mythological, historical and contemporary magical practitioners. 

Make space for the other 

   you see these kinds of diagrams all the time amongst real-world occultists, this one is Hermetic I think

okok this one is more of advice surrounding wordbuilding religion but I think it really applies here. 

    So when I first started playing tabletop roleplaying games, I remember my friend telling me that the fantasy world (in this case the default setting of pf1e: Golarion) is different in terms of religiosity from the real world because everyone knows that the gods exist (and which ones exist) because clerics can follow a god and do magic as a result if they are a good boy/girl. This made sense to me at the time. 

    Since then, I have become someone who is more concerned with religion and spirituality, both personally and academically. (religious studies is currently my minor in my undergraduate studies). It seems strange to me now that people in our world hold their individual spiritual beliefs because they just kind of guess or assume that it's out there without any kind of direct experience with divinity. People experience things that are miraculous all the time, either through internal experience or through external situations that create or affirm beliefs in what we might consider the supernatural. Of course, I do not think that all of these cases are necessarily magic or god(s), or spirits, or whatever the believer might ascribe to the situation but nonetheless, these are real experiences of the supernatural and divine (our baseline for magic), the same way people experience them on Golarion. A lot of these experiences nonetheless conflict, two people can experience the same thing and take completely different things from it, some people have never had an experience with the supernatural or divine (at least in their eyes). I think a lot of the boringness comes from clerics having the magic of the ONE TRUE RELIGION and wizards just kind of have to not step on their toes as the Religious Magic Guys. In truth, magic is not separate from spiritual tradition but an aspect of it, an aspect that almost all religious and spiritual traditions have had in one way or another, even if it is forbidden. I say you should probably just turn your clerics into wizards.

       Zhang Guolao, one of the eight immortals in Daoism

                                        A little piece of the Shams al-Ma'arif, a controversial grimoire in Islam

                                  

                              

      Santeria, a religion that has played a big part in my life, has a robust magico-religious belief system and associated practices

                                               

    So maybe we can leave a little more slack with our explanations of magic, the origin of the world, gods, and the cosmological structures of the world. Maybe you, as the GM, have a 100% complete explanation of all of these things, but the people of your world and your players probably don't! maybe all of the wizards in your world don't all agree on "The Weave" or some shit like that but have the room to disagree with each other. One wizard could believe each of their spells to be individual entities that they have to supplicate or appease, one wizard thinks of their magic more as finding glitches in reality that they hack into existence, another could believe that God gives them their magic, another that it comes from within maybe one wizard thinks his spells are the product of demons or psychic aliens possessing his body. 

 Harut and Marut, these two dudes, either angels or kings in the Quran Surah, stuck in a well, teaching magic

Maybe they're all right, maybe they are all wrong, maybe they are all just a little right or maybe some guy hit it right on the head. Hell, some of the people that I've encountered that remind me of real-life wizards seem like they might be schizophrenic or on drugs or something, the same can certainly be true in your fantasy setting. 

                                        Aleister Crowley, famous occultist, piece of shit and founder of Thelma

People, including those who engage with the study of magic believe different things, let them show their party a weird cosmogram full of symbolic language they made, let them have magical goals that go beyond personal or political power (maybe like a gnostic or hermetic kind of transcendence). Ill probably write mores stuff on this later but I think I got everything I needed out of my system. ill post some links to some cool GLOG wizard templates and alternate classes below. 

Monastic Wizards by Arnold K

The Sage by Sam

Oh and here a little YouTube video I found that helped put some of my frustrations into words.