I love advancement.  I love having my character get better at stuff as time goes on, get new stuff he can do, and generally feel like I've worked my way from being competent, to a real badass.

I don't like starting out incompetent however, which is why I never start at lvl1 in D&D and why I don't like older editions of D&D.  I want to start out at least knowing what the fuck I'm doing, whereas the base assumption across all editions of D&D seems to be that players should start out as fuckass little chumps who are terrified of housecats.

RPGs aren't TV shows or movies. I am not interested in recreating TV shows or movies in my game sessions. Whether Luke Skywalker advances in skill and power or not during the course of the Star Wars films seems totally irrelevant to the question of whether or not Sir Wayland Theodore Dessinger - my current 3rd level Executioner -  should advance in skill and power in our campaign.

Edit:

Related: Characters in D&D do not necessarily follow the "Hero's Journey". That is a pattern one may use in a game, not an inevitable course games with advancement follow.

Also, David Brin's reading of the Iliad... isn't one. The Iliad as a work is tremendously sad about the lost lives of everyone who dies in it. Everyone is named, everyone has a backstory, even those "spear-carriers" whose faces are smashed in with rocks. Putting it in a class with the faceless and joyful massacres of modern stories is a real disservice to it.

Quote from: TimAlso the African myth "Epic of Sonjara"

Yes, and various others. Aladdin, for example.

RPGPundit

Quote from: David RWhere the fuck did you get this....

Regards,
David R

You said that long-term Hero's Journey campaigns are impossible.  They're not. I'm running several of them right now.

My LSH campaign, being run with Star Wars D20 rules, began with the heros in question being young teenagers in 2974 who are brand new superheroes learning the ropes (ie. Lv.1 characters) and will likely end around 2995 with the characters being the defining legends of their age; We've played weekly sessions for closing on 2 years now, which is relatively long term, and we're up to 2982 on the timeline, so I can imagine that we'll continue playing this campaign for at least another two years or more; 4-5 years is a pretty long-term game.  They were lv.1 when they began, and will be level 20 or so when they're done.

In my Qin Three Kingdoms campaign, which has been going for about as long, my PCs started as relatively insignificant young people: a village healer, a young renegade from the Yellow Turbans, a novice confucian scholar, etc.  Over the course of the years they have risen up to be major players in the war (one of them is a warlord, another is the concubine to Liu Bei, etc etc.), becoming legends. And that's not even using D20!

But anyways, there's no reason you can't play a long-term campaign where you start at level 1 and end up at epic level.  I ran an RC D&D campaign all the way from lv. 1 to Immortal level.

RPGPundit

Quote from: flyingmiceIf you know my games, you know my preference.

Quick overview of 'advancement' in clash's games:

• Skills are gained over time, they aren't bought with XP.
• Stats decrease over time, unless you spend your time keeping your stats up and ignoring getting skills.
• HPs are derived from stats, and thus generally decrease over time.
• If there is anything like XP at all, it's tied to political/military/organizational authority, not personal power or ability.

That, I think, covers it.

-clash

Just out of curiosity, have you ever played Pendragon?

RPGPundit

Quote from: droogOf course those examples are about birthright. That's our heritage of myth. That's why I say it may be a modern thing.

It's not bourgeois, it's aristocratic. There are no proletarians or bourgeois in Beowulf. Paul Bunyan, on the other hand, is a big old landowner and capitalist boss.

As for King Arthur — again, the eminence of birthright. Not a humble beginning, just a hidden one.

However, reviewing Campbell's notions, I do not think that humble beginnings are in fact necessary to the Hero's Journey.

Not only are they not, it is usually a feature of the Hero's Journey that the Hero is secretly of "royal blood" (ie. the son of a king or a god etc) even though either he doesn't know it or no one else does.

Another really good example of this is the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Liu Bei, Zhang Fei and Guan Yu are three young nobodies with no influence who take an oath in a peach garden to save the Han empire. They start from nothing, build up a great power, lose it, regain it, lose it again, defeat the "Darth Vader" of the story (Cao Cao) at the Battle of Red Cliffs with the help of the wise sage (Zhuge Liang) that they had to go out and seek, then found their own kingdom. Along the way, Liu Bei's imperial heritage as a Prince of Han is confirmed, giving him the birthright that justifies his founding a new Kingdom.

RPGPundit

Quote from: HinterWeltOh, no problem. Wasn't meant as snarky, just saying "I did not know that was a reserved phrase, here is what I meant".

I find "Hero's Journey" just a little positive for what I am trying to express here.

I think of it as the "larval stage" approach to character development. As in, a beginning character is a larva of what he or she will eventually be: weaker and less developed, but containing the same essential blueprint.

I think it's fine for D&D but like others I regret seeing it rather carelessly taken as a default for all RPGs.

Quote from: RPGPunditYou said that long-term Hero's Journey campaigns are impossible.  They're not. I'm running several of them right now.

I said no such thing.

Hero's Journey are by default long term campaigns. I've yet to hear about  one shots or short term campaigns which incorporate the themes of HJ. Long term campaigns on the other hand do not always have to incorporate any of the themes of Hero's Joruney or have it's roots in some sort of "monomyth". I think this is an important distinction to make.

Regards,
David R

I like some parts to improve with time, and others not to. I like the new perks and feats and features. I sort of like an upward creep in my odds when I roll. Progressing towards invulnerability? That's just a pain in the ass.

Even in the powergamiest games, I'd rather be able to pwn and risk being pwnt than waste my time figuring how long it takes to kill some faceless mook. Because if the outcome of a fight is always the same, the rules only determine how long it takes to kill a guy, and how many guys you can kill before you have to take a nap. It's inane at any power level.

Should a higher level character have increased odds of survival? Yes, but there are other ways of doing it. There are active defense mechanics I like, to give one example.

Quote from: RPGPunditJust out of curiosity, have you ever played Pendragon?

RPGPundit

Yes - I played it in the long ago Dreamtime, and I bought WW's new edition and love it.

-clash

Quote from: David RI said no such thing.

Hero's Journey are by default long term campaigns. I've yet to hear about  one shots or short term campaigns which incorporate the themes of HJ. Long term campaigns on the other hand do not always have to incorporate any of the themes of Hero's Joruney or have it's roots in some sort of "monomyth". I think this is an important distinction to make.

Regards,
David R

Then your post must have been severely garbled, David:

Quote from: David RAre long term campaigns and the Hero's Journey mutually exclusive ? Because IME they are. And by this I mean I have always associated certain themes with the Hero's Journey that are none existent in the long term campaigns I have run.

I understood this to mean exactly what Pundit thought.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmiceThen your post must have been severely garbled, David:

Duly noted.

For pointing this out, we must fight to the death. My honour demands it.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David RDuly noted.

For pointing this out, we must fight to the death. My honour demands it.

Regards,
David R

Knives at 9500 miles? :O

-clash

1: I enjoy gaining power as I adventure so long as it introduces new options, and isn't a repackaging of the kobold as a goblin as a giant.

3: Starting weak makes the setting have a lot of impact, I think.  In the system I'm currently working on, characters start out well above 90%+ of the population, and the only physical-physical challenges are those against other characters of the same.  I think I'd have some trouble playing a game where the powers remain constant for a super long time.