Quote from: Ian AbsentiaIs there anything wrong with that, though?  

No. But let's not pretend that the Hero's Journey as depicted in Star Wars, or in many RPGs, is a universally appealing story which has been central to Western culture for centuries. It's not. It's popular because it suits modern American attitudes towards authority and the popular notion that anyone who speaks eloquently is sinister and anyone who speaks like a farmer is honest and good.

Two cliches I loathe in modern fantasy (and RPGs):

• The PCs have a destiny.


• The common folk are good and they behave like American frontier settlers, and the aristos are decadent or sinister.

So to bring it back to gaming; I like power advancement in my RPGs because it's fun gamewise, not because it models the tired and insipid cliche of the meek rising to become heroes.

Quote from: HaffrungNo. But let's not pretend that the Hero's Journey as depicted in Star Wars, or in many RPGs, is a universally appealing story which has been central to Western culture for centuries. It's not. It's popular because it suits modern American attitudes towards authority and the popular notion that anyone who speaks eloquently is sinister and anyone who speaks like a farmer is honest and good.

Two cliches I loathe in modern fantasy (and RPGs):

• The PCs have a destiny.


• The common folk are good and they behave like American frontier settlers, and the aristos are decadent or sinister.

So to bring it back to gaming; I like power advancement in my RPGs because it's fun gamewise, not because it models the tired and insipid cliche of the meek rising to become heroes.

As a matter of fact, it is pretty fucking central, and doesn't seem to be what you think it is.  In the typical Hero's Journey, noble blood is a prerequisite for the Hero. He's not a "humble country boy", and in fact usually doesn't start becoming a great hero until he realizes he's more than just a prole and has the "Blood of Kings".

The Hero's Journey is inherently anti-populist.  Often, the crisis that precipitates the Hero's Journey is caused by low-born men having taken over the society that should be run by the True King. You see it again and again.

RPGPundit

Quote from: HaffrungNo. But let's not pretend that the Hero's Journey as depicted in Star Wars, or in many RPGs, is a universally appealing story which has been central to Western culture for centuries. It's not. It's popular because it suits modern American attitudes towards authority and the popular notion that anyone who speaks eloquently is sinister and anyone who speaks like a farmer is honest and good.

Much as you may wish to pin this on the 20th century American, I think the leg you're standing on is rather wobbly.  The common, populist hero pre-dates the colonisation of the Americas by quite a bit.

!i!

Quote from: PseudoephedrineAlso, 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.

Eh, I think that may be too modern a slant.  I see that more as the work being of its time, to us naming someone tells us who they are, to the listeners to the Iliad it's the knowledge of their forebears that tells us who they are.

So, when Homer spends a while telling us that Epimarchus (to make up a name) was the son of so and so, grandson of so and so, whose mother was related to such and such, it's literally telling us who Epimarchus is.  The fact he dies a moment later is neither here nor there in that sense.  We also should remember that just because he only appears briefly here, doesn't mean he didn't have lengthier appearances in other tales now lost to us which could have been part of a contemporaneous oral tradition.

That and it emphasises the tragedy, all that history so suddenly cut short, and so brutally (the spear crashed through the back of his helm, slicing his neck and severing his tongue from behind, his teeth closing on the bronze spearhead, he fell into the darkness and shall not return to his parents' home by the sea, as I remember roughly one death goes), I don't think it's about pity for the fallen so much as the tragedy of what is lost (a lineage, not merely a person) and also rooting that person in terms of how a contemporary listener would have identified them (x, son of y, grandson of z).

That said, the Iliad has a passion and grandeur that some Rambo-esque crap with merely a high body count couldn't even touch.

Quote from: BalbinusThat said, the Iliad has a passion and grandeur that some Rambo-esque crap with merely a high body count couldn't even touch.

Sgot ramboesque crapwith a huge body count too.

And they kill things and take their stuff, dragging off bodies to loot them.

Quote from: Erik BoielleSgot ramboesque crapwith a huge body count too.

And they kill things and take their stuff, dragging off bodies to loot them.

I wouldn't call it Ramboesque, but there is a high bodycount.

And they certainly do loot corpses, it's the classic rejoinder to those who argue that it's not being true to the source material to have PCs looting the fallen.

Balb> Bear in mind though, that it's rarely just a patronymic that the minor characters are given though. Brief accounts of their lives, distinguishing features, or the lives of their ancestors and heirs are part of their death-couplets, which elevates them above a mere ancestral catalogue. While they aren't fleshed out individuals, we are made to feel their loss as an irreplaceable or unique loss, and this is reinforced by often having brothers, relatives and close friends die in pairs so that the loss is total, without even a similar person to step in and take their place. The opening lines of the poem reinforce the theme of the horror of their deaths with its drawn out description of the bodies of the Greeks as carrion.

I think it's this sort of thing that differentiates it strongly from the Rambo-like slaughters of modern stories.

Fair point Pseudo, I think there is also an identificatory element and I said myself part of the tragedy is the ending not merely of a life but of a lineage.

It's a truly epic work, full of grandeur and tragedy, I don't think it has anything in common at all with stuff like Rambo, any more than say Holbein's Ambassadors does.  They're all within the realm of art, but then so are many things.

But anyway, I think we broadly agree, if you read the Iliad (and has Erik read it I wonder?) and what you take away is the body count and epic violence you've really missed a hell of a lot that's there.

I'm told a lot of the stylistic things in it are the result of it being a thing to be performed, so all the name dropping may just be a convenient way to pad out the material with formulaic stuff that a well practiced teller can invent on the fly ('right - I gotta spin this out for another hour - time to list some family trees').

Quotewhat you take away is the body count and epic violence you've really missed a hell of a lot that's there.

But it HAS the body count. So getting rid of it will not lead to a land of milk and honey where everyone remembers the names of the NPCs. More, I feel it show how to appeal to a mass audience without being as dumb as a bag of hammers. And it implies that people love this shit. Even oral storytellers from thousands of years ago knew that people wanted to hear about the beatdowns.