This is currently my favorite Role Aids sourcebook: Wizards (1983). Look at that cover! It’s recycled—Tim White originally painted it as the cover of John Brunner’s novel Out of My Mind, but it is so good as the cover of an RPG book about wizards. This book also debuts the Role Aids trade dress that persists for the majority of the line’s lifespan.

The structure here is similar to Dark Folk. We get eight profiles on prominent wizards from folklore (Gilgamesh, Circe, Merlin and Morgan le Fay) and fantasy fiction (Shadowjack, S. Carolinus, Aahz and Skeeve and Lythande, and, in an echo of Chaosium’s Thieves’ World, all written by their respective creators). Those profiles are each followed by an adventure introducing and involving their subjects (the exception being Carolinus, who is accompanied by a bestiary; further, Merlin and Morgan appear in the same adventure, naturally at odds with each other). The adventures are of dubious use for ongoing campaigns, but I think they are all pretty solid one-shots, especially for players already familiar with the characters.

I think the inclusion of Gilgamesh is particularly noteworthy, partly because the culture that produced Gilgamesh is so historically remote from us, partly because Gilgamesh also cuts against most of our current cultural preconceptions about what a wizard is (honestly, with the exception of Merlin, I think all the profiles in the book do this to a degree). I find that super refreshing.

Having Shadowjack in the mix is neat too, since Gary Gygax included the Zelazny novel in Appendix N. It’s cool to see him appear in D&D terms, even if he isn’t in an official D&D product.