reverancepavane | third battalion combat archaeologists (Reply)

You’re no hero.

You’re a reaver, a cutpurse, a heathen-slayer, a tight-lipped warlock guarding long-dead secrets. You seek gold and glory, winning it with sword and spell, caked in the blood and filth of the weak, the dark, the demons, and the vanquished. There are treasures to be won deep underneath, and you shall have them.

This is the introduction to Goodman Games' Dungeon Crawl Classics the RPG, which is starting it's beta playtest. It's something I tend to agree with when it comes to old school RPGs. Which is not to say the player characters can't be heroes. They often ended up in situations where they became heroes. Some reluctantly. Others with great eagerness. But it required a conscious decision on the part of the player, that here, my character was going to make a stand.

The old saw about a hero being someone who was at the right place at the right time.

More modern games, which tend to focus on the narrative rather than the campaign (sandbox), tend to postulate that the character's are heroes. This is particularly true of fourth edition D&D, which now has an endgame when characters reach level 30 and can invoke their heroic destiny. But the assumption is there from the beginning that the player characters are the heroes of the story. There is no choice involved. The player-character heroes simply are. And the feels very unfulfilling to me. All the moments of greatness in my campaigns, the ones which I remember best, are when the characters made the choice to be heroes, rather than just another what-have-you. Often choosing certain death in order to save others. The highest form of sacrifice is to give of your self, with no expectation of reward.

Of course, it's just as likely in a sandbox game (or actually far more likely), that when a character reaches the decision point (if they ever do*), they don't take the heroic option, and play it safe. So their names won't resound through history. But they will be able to tell their grandchildren the stories of their adventures.

Or it may even be that they make the choice to become villains. The antagonists. Not even antiheroes. Although none of them actually thought of themselves as evil. Callous, yes. Broken, sometimes. But the true measure of a hero is often the villain, and villains often provide greater scope for character. As well as being active rather than reactive. Character flaws may open them to suasion, but in the end it's a choice that they made. Some with regret (angst, they name is Vampire 1st Ed), others with glee.**

Anyway, this is a lot of work just to say that I like the idea that players aren't heroes.

[* Of course, the player characters are supposed to be central to the campaign, which is why it is up to the gamemaster to put the characters in the situation where they will encounter these decision points. After all, if a tree falls in the forest and no player-character is under it, then it's a really pretty bad deadfall trap. Or something like that.]

[** That's the character's glee. If it's the player's glee then I'd avoid this sort of situation. Games aren't therapy. I have to admit that it's relatively easy for me to play an evil character that makes the other players uncomfortable, even when they know about it. But that's not me, but rather a role I'm playing. This is also the reason why no one in their right mind lets me play a diabolic Noble in Nobilis, because I am so very good at it. (<sigh>)]