Towards Mythic Storytelling and Mythic Role-play

[Bill_White]

What's the difference between "mythic" and "mythological"?  Here's the distinction that I would offer.  It draws upon the already-raised distinction between myth-as-logic and myth-as-structure in a story.

I would use one of the terms ("mythic" or "mythological") to refer to the stylistic features associated with the causal logic common in myths, fairy tales, and legends:  fabulous things happen because of their symbolic resonance with what has gone before, or what is to come.  The snake crawls on the ground because it tempted the woman and was cursed; the spider spins because it was once a seamstress who excited the envy of a goddess; that mountain was once a giant who fell asleep after long labor.  "Causation" in myth is less cause-and-effect than it is the deed-and-just-desserts.  Things happen as a way of holding creatures responsible for their actions.

I would use the other term to refer to the narrative structures and plot elements common to myths:  the Campbellian hero who is dispatched on a quest or who leaves the Fields We Know to avenge some villainy, the magical helpers, instruments, and other allies who appear to help the hero overcome the tests and challenges he faces (and as rewards for overcoming them), and so on and so forth.  A Russian folklorist named Vladimir Propp identified a few dozen typical motifs of this sort.  A professor of cultural studies named A.A. Berger argues that all genre fiction displays these narrative structures as well, with variations in the surface detail.

I think M.J. Young would label the first property "mythological" and the second "mythic"--my preference would be to reverse the labels, but in any event the distinction is the same.

I'm grappling with some of the same issues in a game I'm working on called Rune Saga.  In my case, I'm interested in focusing attention on the "mythic" (as M.J. would have it).  But the notion of layering meanings somehow within the mechanical elements of the game is I think common both approaches.  Here's how I talk about the "Rune Deck" in my game:

Code Select Expand

The Rune Deck comprises 32 cards, divided into four suits of eight cards.  Each suit is marked by one of the four signs (sothas, taenas, luemas, or maegas) and contains one card of each of the eight sigils (ael, bes, cadh, din, eth, fel, ghot, and hin).

The four signs each have a number of meanings.  At the literal level, the word sothas means swords (soth is singular), taenas means coins, luemas means stars, and maegas means staves (i.e., staffs).  At a more metaphorical level, sothas implies bravery (i.e., physical courage or ability), taenas suggests cleverness (i.e., social and language skills), luemas connotes virtue (i.e., moral rectitude, ethical propriety, and religious piety), and maegas means wisdom (i.e., intellectual or cognitive ability and breadth and depth of obtained knowledge).  Additionally, each sign implies the particular field or domain of activity in which its attribute is pre-eminent, i.e., (a) battle, strife, or physical conflict for sothas, (b) negotiation, communication, or social interaction for taenas; (c) moral decision-making and commitment to principle for luemas; and (d) cognition and intellectual inquiry, formal study or training, or logical reasoning for maegas.

Each of the eight sigils also has an associated meaning.  At the literal level, ael means child, bes means lady (or woman), cadh means man, din means tree, eth means mount, fel means moon, ghot means sun, and hin means world.  At a more metaphoric level, (1) ael (child) refers to (a) a novice or newcomer or (b) one who is subordinate to or guided by somone or something else, (2) bes (woman) refers to any stereotypically feminine property or principle, e.g., motherhood; (3) cadh (man) means a stereotypically masculine characteristic or pursuit, e.g., aggressiveness or aggression; (4) din (tree) makes reference to some more-or-less stable system of connections and relations:  some sort of pattern or web; (5) eth (mount) describes any more-or-less compact edifice, body, structure, or aggregation of material; (6) fel (moon) means either (a) a lack, absence, or void or (b) self-serving or self-aggrandizing behavior; (7) ghot (sun) indicates a positive goal, aspiration, or ideal; and (8) hin (world) describes any varied expanse or encompassing terrain.  In terms of the types of "characters" in the game, (1) ael refers to heroes, (2) bes refers to innocents, (3) cadh refers to elder, and (4) din refers to groups.  Additionally, (5) eth refers to obstacles, (6) fel refers to spirits, (7) ghot refers to artifacts, and (8) hin refers to locations.

The 32 different combinations of sign and sigil — i.e., runes — thus each have a variety of potential interpretations depending upon whether the surface or metaphorical level of meanings is attended to.  The rune "ael sothas" is thus read as the Child of Swords, and may be taken to mean many things, including a soldier's child, a raw recruit, an inxperienced swordsman, an athlete, an injury (the product or "child" of a physical encounter, i.e.), and so forth, depending upon the context in which the rune appears and the interpretation offered by the narrator.

[M. J. Young]

Personally, M.J, I always hate it when people make semantic distinctions like that in discussion and don't explain what they mean.  It may make all the sense in the world in your head, but that statement doesn't mean anything to me.  How are you dividing the mere "mythic" from the "mythological" here?  Those words are almost synonymous to me.

I echo these comments -- I do not see the distinction at all, as the words are utterly synonymous to me. Could you expand upon what concretely seperates these two terms for you?

Bill White makes some excellent points worth examination, but I don't know that this is precisely what I was after.

I think that Star Wars is mythic, because it has fantastic elements that resemble mythologies and presents a sweeping story on a world stage. I don't think it's mythological. That is, it is like mythology but it is not mythology. Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, is mythological, to my mind, because it goes beyond this to engage mortal man with supernatural beings in a struggle that is itself supernatural, having to do with gods or demons or others who are not, strictly speaking, part of the mortal world.

Star Wars lacks this supernatural element, I think. Yes, the force seems paranormal or supernormal, but even in the original three films it always felt like it was a natural physical force within the universe that some people could tap, and the more the stories grew the more that seemed to be the case. In the first of the Star Wars novels, the author created an animal that used the force to hunt and another animal that created a null space in the force to be undetectable--the force was reduced to just another factor in the environment. In the prequels, we're suddenly given a completely natural/pseudo-scientific explanation for the ability of some people to use the force. It is fantasy, and it tells a story on mythic scale, but it avoids the supernatural elements that push it to actually being mythological.

Now, that may be a distinction I can't defend, but that is how I've seen the terms used. I have often heard people say that stories are mythic when they achieve world-shaking levels, but they don't call them mythological unless they have this connection between the natural and the supernatural.

I would also say that stories can be mythological without being mythic, by this understanding. Probably a lot of the episodes of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys would fall into this category, as they frequently involved the gods, but frankly weren't terribly important events in the history of the world.

--M. J. Young

[clehrich]

M.J.,

I've been waiting to jump in here, but now that you've defined terms, my only question is this:  do you lean on some source, or is this simply your way of looking at the terms?  That is, are you drawing on scholarship on myth, mythology, etc., or are you working more or less by your "feel" for what mythology is about?  I'm just wondering why you've brought this in.

Chris Lehrich

[M. J. Young]

By the way, welcome back, Chris. It's good to see you again.

Why did I bring up some difference between mythic and mythological?

Hrm...yes, but the original "Star Wars" is mythological in its scope, and it doesn't use this sort of symbolic language-as-reality (or rather, in the context of a movie, actual mythic actions). So, what's the bridge between these? How is Star Wars mythological? Why do we think it is?

It seems to me that Star Wars is mythic, in that it deals with great themes and universe-shattering issues and with fantastic events, including a struggle between good and evil, but that it is not mythological, and I, at least, don't think it is.

A lot of what Daniel was suggesting was getting closer to mythological, in some ways more so than to mythic (the trail of blood, for example, really gets close to some sort of supernatural entity involvement, but it is not mythic, particularly "in scope"). I was thinking that a confusion between mythological content and mythic scope would probably derail the thread.

As to my source, Chris, I'm near fifty, haven't been a student for a quarter century nor a professor for a score of years, and often I have no idea where I got some of the things I've picked up. Years ago I read an authoritative statement that "O.K." should always be spelled exactly that way (it was an etymological argument), but a couple years back I had an argument with an editor who insisted that it should be "OK" in his e-zine, and cited some recent handbook on style. On this particular point, I already stated that I probably can't defend it--my efforts to find a source swiftly uncovered nothing--but although the words seem to be very similar in definition, they have not in my experience been interchangeable.

Of course, words change over time, usually losing distinction, so it may be usage that has fallen by the wayside.

--M. J. Young

[clehrich]

M.J.,

Thanks for the re-welcome.  Glad somebody noticed I was gone, much less back!

As to myth, I'm actually not trying to demand some authority or whatever.  I drafted literally five versions of why, and none of them worked, and so I sent out the post without and hoped it wouldn't come up.  Wouldn't you know it, that was the first thing.  It's just that if you had someone, sort of like Ron leans on Egri and so forth, it would greatly simplify getting at what you had in mind.  Anyway, that's not where you're at, so OK.  Or O.K.  Or okay.  etc.

First of all, just to get this out of the way, my own definitions and what I see as currently "doing" in the disciplines that are big on myth these days would basically throw out just about all of this discussion anyway (and chuck babies, bathwater, and boopkus).  I don't want to get into it, and I promise that most of you don't either (M.J., you might, actually, but it would belong in PM).

The reason I asked was that I genuinely do not understand, even after your definitions of terms, why this distinction challenges or alters interpretation of the concern at hand.  It seems to me that the essential topic here is something about how one goes about creating a myth/ic/ological "feel", and that the main examples have come from things like fairy tales and magic realism.  So I think that your insertion of a distinction between mythic and mythological intends to drive a wedge into this, to make some sort of division, either for analytical or synthetic purposes.  Presumably, you think that creating one of these things is quite different from creating the other, and based on different principles, unless I am just lost.  But at base, I do not understand (1) what the division is, or (2) why its insertion clarifies matters.

Speaking of clarifying matters, does this do so at all?

Chris Lehrich

[Daniel Solis]

Speaking of clarifying matters, does this do so at all?

This is an intriguing discussion, but perhaps one better left to a seperate thread or PMs. Let's assume from this point forward that we're attempting to capture the feel of the more general, non-exclusive definition of mythic/mythological, and that some, like myself, will be using both terms interchangeabely. Let's move on from there, shall we?

In the "Bounded" thread spun off from this one, I had suggested a technique from improv comedy wherein characters can only speak lines of dialogue that the audience members have dropped into a hat. The RPG adaptation I had made to this technique was to have players write plot elements on the slips of paper and take turns integrating them into the story. As the story moves along, the players get a better sense of the direction of the story, get further ideas, and may drop their newly inspired plot elements into the hat with all the rest. In retrospect, this seems like a very customized version of Story Cards.

In any case, could this be used in a more mythic context? Instead of plot elements or lines of dialogue, the papers could have "fabulous things" written on them. When a task resolution roll determines that something fabulous happens, but that the player cannot choose, he must draw a slip of paper from the hat and incorporate it into the world/story. While it deprotagonizes the player a little bit, it also conveys the sudden, surprising nature of the fabulous in mythical stories. Also, because the fabulous things in the hat are written by the players themselves, it is less likely that whatever is drawn would be completely incongruous with the tone of the story thus far.

[Mernya]

My primary mythic readings have been Campbell (overdone), the Norse Eddas, Tolkien, and legends of the Pacific Northwest. I've also read some of the suggested books in the GWB at one time or another. And of course, mythologies themselves (although the tellings we receive now are hardly the -mythic- stories they might have been when they were alive).

I know the thread got a little messy with the whole mythic and mythological differences. I'm going to define them for me so you know whether my ideas are pertinent at all.

myth is, outside of Campbellian influence, pretty much just a fantasy story. The myth of the giant catfish in the pond is hardly as inspiring as, say Beowulf, but it is still a myth.

mythic becomes something special because it is profound. That depth is to me, and what I have gotten from your posts - to many of you as well, the true characteristic of mythic.

mythology is a group of myths (a study of myths) that contributes to a greater story, often in the guise of a history.

(so, from my definitions, I see the original Star Wars movies as a myth - even Campbellian but not a mythology. The books have made it that. I honestly don't think it is profound ergo mythic, in fact, I think it has lost some of its depth with the newer movies.)

So, with gobi's question at the beginning of this thread, I am focusing on storytelling the profound.

First, Educate Yourself. We are all (we like to think) fairly intelligent and well read people, but do yourself a favor and get into a culture outside of the classics. Look into Legends of the Pacific Northwest Native Americans, or Australian Aboriginal stories, or the Norse Eddas.  One plus to the Pacific Northwest stories is that the writing style, even translated, is not overtly corrected to be modern. You get a different perception and scope on it versus another retelling of reading about Thor cracking someone's skull with Mjolnir. Might be beneficial for telling stories in an oral way.

Second, for something to be profound, it needs to be deep. Build the Onion of your cosmos so that you can peel layers away. I've found that you need to have something behind the scenes for nothing other than internal consistancy, but when glimpses of this Truth can peek out, the mythic shows too. Gandalf dying and returning is fantastic. Knowing what he is and why he came back is profound. You need this Cosmology to base cosmic implications on.

Make extensive use of figures of speech and make them literal. Here are some and their uses:
Metaphor, has been mentioned many times. One thing I want to note is that the story itself should be a metaphor, that gives it depth that we need to be profound. Remember, a metaphor is a direct replacement, not a comparison.

"My heart broke when she left me" is a metaphor

A synedoche is a term for interchanging a part with the whole:
"They clashed steel(sword)", "He's a hired hand(sailor)", "I tried to outrun the law(police car)"

A metonymy is a noun to noun substitution
"Washington(the government) stated that WMD in Iraq..."
"25 souls were lost in an accident..."

We all know what a Paradox is, play it up.
"The silence was deafening."

hyperbole is an exageration that is way out of line... heh.. it can be comical or disastrous.
"I overslept by a million years!" or "This book weighs a ton!"

In addition to making your speech profound, also consider using other forms of speech to provide emphasis or meaning changes where appropriate. See: http://www.nipissingu.ca/faculty/williams/figofspe.htm

In many mythic traditions, the entirety of the story is a metaphor or figure of speech, which leads us to....

Make use of Lessons. A Metaphorical Lesson is a Fable. There is a reason these stories resonate with us. Tolkien staunchly refused that Lord of the Rings was not an Allegory, but it was a fable and there was a lot of meaning in it. There are lessons in it. Tolkien was a deeply moved man with a great sense of loss (childhood, friends, war) and joy (his wife). He was a very Christian man (which is ironic considering how religion has been opposed in fundamental aspects to RPGs which derive so much from him) who believed in the premise of Providence. Tolkien believed in God's Plan and his book shows that. Even if you've only seen the movie, the speech by Gandalf in Moria about Frodo getting the Ring and Gollum still having a part to play is an example of this. Everyone has a purpose, and that is the metaphor of his story. Use Archetypes and Allegories to convey the Metaphors, if you need a little help.

   It doesn't need to be overt or for the players to go "Hmm! That's what that was!" but it will assist in you understanding what you want to come from the story on another level. "Slow and Steady wins the Race" for the Tortoise in the Hare can become a template for an antagonist to rush to an end. Once the players learn the lesson, they may be better prepared to deal with a Strategist who is meticulous on the planning stage.

Make your NPCs work for you. Make them easy to associate. Make them have a duty. If you are doing a Slow & Steady type campaign, have an individual associated with haste that screws up, that represents part of the lesson. Have someone representing deliberation or care who benefits from their archetype.

On a final note, magic and mythic tend to rely on correspondences (which I tied to one of my Roots of the World in my Nobilis Game). One of my roots of the world is Dimension, and I defined each of the roots in terms of spiritual/mythic/prosaic. Let me cut to that for a moment...

"Mythically, Dimension's attributes reflect the spiritual. Comparative relationships become a quantification of an attribute, leading to awareness of distance, volumes, time and other formula of measurements. Relationship itself becomes threads of correspondence and coincidence. Mythically, Correspondence is the spiritual relationship between two concepts that are generally directly unrelated on the Prosaic side (because it unites the spiritual, which is truer). When this Correspondence ties 'unrelated' events together, we perceive coincidence."

So, what I want to get at is that one way you can make things more magical and mythic is to tie things together via correspondences. For example, in the Hebrew alphabet, the letters are more than just a language. Flowers have meanings in Nobilis that are more than just their botanical name. A gemstone might have a color that means X while the composition means a certain month, time of day, constellation, etc   Bridge things and their meanings and you will get mythic correspondences.

[Harlequin]

A note on that last: As I understand it, Chinese myth in particular is a treasure-house of such correspondences.  The Dragon of the North whose body is iron, whose house is the Yangtse, whose element is Air, mood is phlegmatic and whose jewel is amethyst, is wholly invented on my part but fits the typical form of such myth-structures exactly.  So if you want to replicate that culture, this is probably the key construction.

In North American myth, you'd focus on different elements, such as personality and past acts of the mythological characters, and magical power ('medicine') invested in objects.  The stress moves to a different aspect of myth-structure.

I suspect the tricky one is actually the ill-defined "European myth" form which includes everything from the Odyssey to Peer Gynt, and I would offer as insight that most of the really good "mythic roleplay" setups I have seen took a more narrow cultural focus than this.  There may be some common feel there which is independent of culture, but I think the distinctions between Japanese myth and Mayan legend are in many ways stronger than the commonalities, apart from general concerns of (a) language structure and heavy use of symbolism, and (b) story structure, the explanatory myth or the cautionary tale and so on.  

So if we want to proceed past "use and somehow promote/enforce story structures reminiscent of myth" and "increase your use of symbolic language and somehow promote/enfore players and GM doing the same," then I think more narrow study runs up against cultural lines pretty fast.  So let us perhaps add "research the culture and myth-cycles you specifically wish to emulate" to that advice, and focus on the "somehows" in the above:  how does one promote (a) story-structure and (b) appropriate language, not in the rulebook proper but in the playgroups and their actual play?

Some of the answers there (have them use appropriate metaphorical names instead of more modern adjectives for statistics, cf. Lord of the Five Rings) are obvious; some are presumably not.  The draw-slips method for promoting story-structure I personally have a problem with, because I don't see that bringing about the explanatory myth, nor the cautionary, nor the coming-of-age story, directly; the scale feels wrong.  [One could, however, perhaps run an interesting Gamist myth game where these are the hidden objectives of the players... make it into one of the above without ruining anyone else's form.  Tricky to write, though.]

- Eric

[Daniel Solis]

Some of the answers there (have them use appropriate metaphorical names instead of more modern adjectives for statistics, cf. Lord of the Five Rings) are obvious; some are presumably not.  The draw-slips method for promoting story-structure I personally have a problem with, because I don't see that bringing about the explanatory myth, nor the cautionary, nor the coming-of-age story, directly; the scale feels wrong.

That was just a suggestion to get us back on topic, to be honest. :) It would be best for, obviously, the completely-out-of-nowhere weird things that happen in magical realism sometimes. The correspondence would come from playern interpretation.

However, I'm liking where this other idea so headed. Speaking for Gears & Spears (soon to be retitled), I could see the Chinese mythic correspondence structure actually being implemented in a mechanic for creating magical fetishes. The funky thing about fetishes is that they're more like jewelry than the traditional wands and rods from D&D's treasury of magic items. In G&S, fetishes house the "spirits" of nature and call upon their power in exchange for security from the harsh spirit world. For a fetish to be a proper container for a spirit, it must have attached to it numerous little trinkets and augmentations that make it compatible with the intended entity. The aforementioned gemstones, elements and so forth would be a great method to work out a simple fetish creation mechanic. Great idea!