Jose Mourinho
STR-7
DEX -16
CON – 8
INT-16
WIS -9
CHR -6
Alignment – Lawful Evil
Class – Illusionist
Race – Gnome
Spells: Read magic, Confusion, Chaos, Magic Mouth, Hypnotic Pattern, Wall of Fog, Suggestion.
Quote: “I prefer not to speak”
Special skills: Potion crafting, especially handy at crafting the Potion of Human Control. Effects of this potion wear off after two years.
Arsene Wenger
STR-7
DEX -11
CON – 16
INT-18
WIS -16
CHR -17
Alignment – Chaotic Good
Class – Magic User
Race – Half-Elf
Spells: charm person, comprehend languages, protection from evil, fool’s gold, forget, slow, suggestion, polymorph other, remove curse.
Quote: “I didn’t see it”
Legend tells us of a wizard named Arsene Wenger, who had a magic hat, and was best known as an adventurer who used magic to help other players. For years he used spells like remove curse and polymorph other to free players from their former selves and craft them into great warriors. Sadly, Wenger picked up a cursed item in 2013, a robe of fumbling. The robe looked like an ordinary coat but contained two curses: one which prevented the user from realizing the item was cursed and the other which prevented the user from doing up the zip. It wasn’t the kind of cursed item that killed the user outright, instead, the robe of fumbling kept him alive and very much distracted by constantly fighting with the zipper. We don’t know where Arsene Wenger is now but rumor has it that he left a very powerful artifact in his tower at Highbury, a golden chalice of Invincibility. One sip from that cup will cure you of all non-cursed ailments.
Patrick Vieira
STR-16
DEX -18
CON -16
INT-15
WIS -15
CHR -10
Alignment – Chaotic Good
Class – Ranger
Race – Human
Spells: Entangle, Speak with Animals (useful for talking to Roy Keane), Push
Special abilities: Surprise, tracking, Druid and Magic user spells
Lord Vieira does not like to be called Lord, though in his heyday he did have the retinue of men that typically follow a 10th level Ranger Lord. When he was still adventuring, he and his band of 12 men adventured from coast to coast across England and even famously defeated the evil at Old Trafford and White Hart Lane. He is retired from adventuring now and living the life of an elderly fighter, training other fighters and living the good life.
These are so time consuming! I only got two done this morning in a little over 90 minutes because basically I had to go back and re-read the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide. I do vaguely remember where everything is in those tomes and I think if I had the physical books here with me, this would have gone much faster. But alas, I was using pdfs.
A note on sources, we only use Advanced Dungeons and Dragons in this house. There is no need for the 4e, 5e or whatever other stuff those people at WotC came up with to sell more books. You just need AD&D. The rules worked, they were fun, and you know what? We often just used them as a framework anyway. You’ll note that I made Jose Mourinho a gnome and yet he’s able to cast spells well beyond the racial limits on his class (which was one of the first things we all threw out from the old rule books). If I can’t make Jose Mourinho a 10th level gnome illusionist, then I don’t want to play that game. Dungeons and Dragons is about role playing, not reading books, and not sticking to rules nonsensically.
Anyway, you should make up your own! what would a modern player like Kylian Mbappe be? How about Giroud? A big dumb fighter maybe? Surely Neymar is a thief. Not in the super evil thief way, but more like a trickster. And what about Messi? Is he player character or a demi-god? You could do so much more with this. I say “you” because I’m out of time today. Maybe I’ll do some more tomorrow. Maybe not. Who knows!
Being a fan of SFF and a writer, I really love this post. Wish I knew about the intricacies of D&D to take up your suggestion and try my hand at it.
Btw, wouldn’t Arsène Wenger be more of a lawful good Elf? Wise, incredibly charismatic but slow to change. A hero of yesteryear, perhaps like Elrond, now surpassed by Aragon (Pep?)
He certainly could be!
Arsene Wenger is a lawful good cleric, Wisdom = 18. We’re talking about the consummate by-the-rules type of person, look at the trouble he got at Monaco for pointing out the corruption at other Ligue Un teams. For me Bergkamp was more the Magic-User (and btw, there’s 3 new classes magic users now).
Messi definitely seems like the archetypical player character in a one-person RPG computer game, since those characters always end up learning incredible skills nobody else has and becoming the center of the world.
Mourinho is not just a gnome, he’s a svirfneblin from the UnderDark.
John Terry is definitely a half-orc.
Arshavin was a Halfling thief. This could go on forever.
I never really got the overwhelming criticism Wenger seemed to get for the ‘I didn’t see it’ comments.
99% of the time, pretty much every manager says the exact same thing when asked about a dodgy or dangerous play from one of their players.
And from memory, Wenger is one of the few managers honest enough to at some point basically say ‘look, in these situations, especially just after a game, I’m not going to stand in front of the cameras and throw my players under use bus.’
I like these stats though. Great stuff.
I very much enjoyed this.
Thanks, T-dizzle…
Piers Morgan is a gelatinous cube.
HA!
How about a mind flayer? Lawful evil, uses mind control over his thrall, hits people with a psionic blast, thinks himself the most advanced of all species, and devours brains.
Also, I’m fairly certain that Piers Morgan was spawned from a tadpole.
If this makes sense to you, you know how old you are, lol.
I only did AD&D 3rd edition so for me…..
Wenger – Mage
Viera – Fighter
7am – Bard
Mourinho – Defiler
Metersaker – Paladin
Sol – Dwarf Fighter (just a really, really, big Dwarf)
Messi is playing the demi-gods continuation of old Red Box D&D (Immortals, I think?)
Pep is a Magic User, he studies the game constantly, seeking out the incantations of of managers before him, and adding them to his spell book, failing when he fails to bend reality to his will.
Giroud, as a modern player uses a more modern interpretation of character class – he’s a 4E fighter. Effective at killing monsters, but far more effective at defending from the front, tanking up and blunting the monster’s ability to progress their play, while linking well with the real damage dealing strikers – the rangers and rogues
Y’all are nerds! (He says sobbing at feeling left out)
😂😂😂
I went straight from D&D (basic) to AD&D Dragonlance, so never played the straight AD&D version. I was a magic user throughout my role-playing career (I mean, who didn’t love Raistlin?), and my DM made me memorize the spells! (He made up a bunch of nonsense words.) If I didn’t get the words right, the spell wouldn’t work. I can still remember some of them.
I remember being pretty embarrassed to be playing this stuff growing up (and my parents were a bit Satanic panic). But nowadays it seems to be fairly normalized, thanks largely to the widespread popularity of online gaming.
Anyway, thoroughly enjoyed this post. Cheers, Tim.
Ironic about the Satanic part since Dragonlance is AD&D Narnia.
Huh? THis makes no sense. I’ve never had the impression that the Dragonlance series was a Christian allegory…? Quite the opposite.
Really? I always felt a Christian light touch on it.
Same thing with the Darksword series.
As a church goer, I used to get beef about the AD&D thingy, lol
I think I only read the first six books in the series which mostly focused on Raistlin and Caramon. Raistlin I guess could be a sort of allegory for.. I don’t know, Captain Ahab? Are the dragons the god? It’s interesting, in theory, how would you make this all fit?
hey, arsenal are coming back to the states on the icc tour. i’m guessing kronke has something to do with this. regardless, i’ll be at the roma game in charlotte, suckas!
…or the real madrid game in d.c.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2019/mar/27/najah-yusuf-prison-f1-bahrain-grand-prix?utm_term=RWRpdG9yaWFsX1RoZUZpdmVyLTE5MDMyNw%3D%3D&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=TheFiver&CMP=fiver_email
Footballers as AD&D characters? Your creativity shines, Tim. Took me right back to my University days. And while not a D&D character as such, surely Mourinho is the perfect Wormtongue…