This is a spinoff from the Mysterious Magic thread.

Harlequin wrote: They're powerful, but I'm unsure about the heavy emphasis on emotion. To me, that's really not a strong identifier of the mythic, the fabulous, or especially of magic realism - the latter in fact seems to be driven by a certain laissez-faire attitude, in fact, the opposite of linking everything to emotion.

I actually was thinking about this exact same problem recently, for a germinating game concept called "Humble Mythologies." I wanted everything in the game to act in mythic ways, but also be very humble and normal-seeming. For instance, the rain might start falling in response to a certain character's emotional state, or another character might be able to always use pay phones without having any change. Simple, modern magics that wouldn't change the fact that the characters were, more or less, ordinary people. It would be a game about minor miracles and the lesser beauties and profanities of the world.

So I've been thinking a lot about what makes things mythic. One of the first things that came to mind is a trick that I've noticed Shreyas using in a lot of the flavor-text of Torchbearer: take one thing and describe it as if it were something else. The first time I noticed this was in the following passage:

Shreyas Sampat wrote: We were late, but we couldn’t run to the morning sanctum. We would be heard, and that is not done. Father walked across the lily petals. No one ever heard him. My brother and I had to wade in the waters. The waves followed us up the stairs tamely, as we climbed to the chamber overlooking the river.

Damn, I think you nailed something really nice there. If it's really just a matter of describing things in the form of literal metaphors, then I guess there ought to be mechanics that encourage players to not only describe things in such a way but to actually think in such a way. That's hard. Well, for me anyway, so there probably ought to be plenty of examples to go along with such a brain-tripping system.

Examples do a lot of work for you. Use them to every advantage.

Neel posted something interesting in the other thread, regarding "establishing a symbolic language"; I thought this was such a blatantly powerful tool that I used explicitly in Torchbearer. The idea behind it was that, once you were entrenched in your symbolic language, you could say things like, "You encounter a woman in a garden; the butterflies will not go near her", and this conveys, "You encounter a woman in a garden; her beauty is proof against the vagaries of experience and age (depending on what concept you tie the butterfly symbol to)". The players are encouraged to narrate fabulous things, because the fabulous is inherently more meaningful than the prosaic, but only in very specific, narrow ways.

Hm. Upon taking a shower and thinking on this more thoroughly, I think what's useful about my system is that the symbolic language is a means, not an end. Making it a tool rather than an accomplishment takes the pressure off Wushu embellishments; it could work here as well.

"The butterflies will not go near her."

Damn fricken' straight, Shreyas. That's a great example. Depending on the context of your symbolic language, "Father walks across the lily petals" could do something very similar, telling you a great deal about the character of "father" without having to use many words. It really is the case that everything is potentially a way of conveying Color in a mythic playing style, and almost needs to be.

What many people miss, I think, is something that Shreyas is hinting at: things need not be incredible effective to be mythic. This is the mistake of thinking all mythic stuff needs to be like Classical Greek or Wuxia heroics. In the context of the game, snuffing out the sun might just be something that people do, just like they would walk down the street. After all, father's ability to walk on lotus petals (as they are floating on the water's surface, presumably) doesn't render him especially effective. It's just another way of getting to the sanctum. It just looks damn cool.

As another example, consider the Matrix, which has killer mythic undertones. If everyone can bend the laws of reality, it doesn't end up meaning much in the game world, just to the audience (who can't bend those laws). In this way, the second two movies ended up being kind of, well, normal. Once Neo and Smith were both flying around and doing wonky stuff, it stopped mattering, because it became normal behavior. They began saving all their budget for effects that were supposed to blow your mind (and often didn't), instead of stuff that just looked really cool (the first movie was basically driven by a strong sense of "coolness").

In many ways, this is why Exalted really doesn't do much for me, in play. I love the setting and I love the concepts and mythology. But the Charm system, which provides the bulk of the coolness factor, mostly revolves around doing really flashy and effective stuff (in combat, in achieving your aims, in sneaking around, etc.). It provides virtually no support for doing mythic stuff just for sheer coolness (having thunder punctuate your threats or flowers blossom in your footsteps), which, to me, is the most exquisite part of the flavor-text.

This is just a comment based on the gobi/Harlequin interaction on the previous thread. Gobi suggested GG Marquez (not to be confused with Gigi Allen) as an example of what happens depending on feeling, which is a characteristic of the mythic. Then Harlequin disputed that. Superficially I tend to agree, based on my memories of LitToC and OHYoS many years ago, that there's something vaguely laissez-faire-y or 'it just happens'-y about the odd occurences in Garcia Marquez' novels.

However, lots of people think that the magical realist's use of these odd happenings does have a kind of mythic resonance, and read them through Borges' essay "Narrative Art and Magic", which explicitly connects feeling and wish-fulfillment and desire shaping reality to the magical in literature (and then dismisses the psychological novel as the harbinger of a 'false' causality into fiction, in a cute but not strictly necessary move). So I wonder: are we missing the emotional underpinnings of the strange happenings in Garcia Marquez, or are the literary critics wrong to see Marquez-style magical realism as a continuation of the kind of fantasizing we got in William Morris or Poe?

I'd suggest that answers to that question get related back to the RPG issues, but I thought it was worth bringing up even though it's semi-tangential. Since Jonathan Walton's post especially seemed to be leaning towards a magical/mythic world wherein the manifestations of that magic, at least, are quite consonant in scope and feel with the kind of thing we get in magic realism.

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?

Nonetheless, the above discussion is an incredible movement towards understanding the creation of mythological gameplay.

Raven--there may be a confusion between mythic and mythological; I'm not sure, but I think the answer to your Star Wars question lies there: Star Wars is mythic, but not mythological.

Somehow, this thread has me thinking of Harry Potter books. Although there are a lot of magics in it that are rather typical of such ideas, it is also dotted with little things that are fascinating: a mirror that shows you your desires; an unlighter that snuffs out street lights; a bowl in which you can put your memories when your mind gets boggled. There are a lot of these little things that are interesting.

--M. J. Young

Mythic storytelling depends on multiple elements, including mythic story structure (displayed in Star Wars) and mythological symbolic language (as seem in The Blue Jackal, The Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga, The Arabian Nights, et al.)

I think we've done a fairly good job discussing symbolic language (though some tool would be nice); how can we accomplish mythological story structure? How important is it? (It seems that we keep coming around to the topic of enforcing story structure in roleplaying.)

Heroquest got me wondering about the "variations on stories" pattern, as well... what could we do with that?

Shreyas Sampat wrote: how can we accomplish mythological story structure? How important is it? (It seems that we keep coming around to the topic of enforcing story structure in roleplaying.)

Shreyas Sampat wrote: I think we've done a fairly good job discussing symbolic language (though some tool would be nice)

M. J. Young wrote: Star Wars is mythic, but not mythological.

Chris Lehrich wrote: One way is to have, either pre-determined or constructed over the course of a campaign, a number of general story-types or -themes. By means of some mechanic or other, such as writing these on cards and playing them, you have players opt to impose a structure temporarily or permanently on a story.

Shreyas Sampat wrote: It seems that we keep coming around to the topic of enforcing story structure in roleplaying.

That last, Johnathan, brings to mind a link I ran across a while ago - the Amor Fati site describing their Fateplay system, which I'm looking to partially emulate in my own game right now. Which centers on the idea that, if it's central to the engine (in their game it is the engine), players don't actually object to taking on "necessities" provided they're left with enough general scope outside of those, and in their interpretation/implementation.

However, I also think that we may be headed into a blind alley associating "trying for the mythic feel" with "need to achieve a given story structure." I think I disagree, overall, with this; that if the elements are appropriate, the mythic quality emerges regardless of structure. Or if there are structural constraints, they're no more difficult to achieve than other structural constraints - such as Story Now - that we're used to trying for.

Motifs and symbology certainly go a long way toward this feel. Including structural elements the same way as you include these, such as in the Once Upon a Time mod (where "people fall in love" is as common as "a beggar"), but with no special stress, seems IMO to put the right level of emphasis on them... and a good degree of player discretion.

Some use of predestination is probably not only a good element, but also a good tool for achieving some structure. I mind me of a Continuum game (which hit exactly the "not fully comfortable with the mindset" note mentioned earlier), where a PC was standing guard in a hotel lobby, keeping watch for the bad guys and, in particular, one woman who'd been described to him but he had never met. Then her voice, from behind his chair, hisses to him, "I thought we agreed you would stay out of this operation." In context, it's obvious that she has mistaken him for his future self. By the peculiar logic of the game, if true, her words entail a form of predestination... because by knowing that he will someday betray his friends, he knows that this cannot be bucked, and has to just start mentally preparing himself for that day. Wonderful stuff. (He did a fabulous job of BSing her, too, rather than dispel the mistake. Had the room in stitches.)

I wanted themes of betrayal, and that game - by having a predestination engine that works - gave them to me in one short sentence, spoken by a woman whose future self they had already killed.

Lacking time travel, one could nonetheless take a serious leaf from that book - or, rather, from the practical experience of running it - for any game wanting to play with fates as a structural tool. Elements of successful design there I'd pick out: (A) Ultimately, you must fulfill the destined act. (B) However, you have full discretion on when you do so. (C) Failing to do so before your death is, nonetheless, a serious problem (in this case inflicting large amounts of "Frag" aka paradox on everybody who both knows that you're dead and that you didn't accomplish X). (D) Some things become clear to the players before the characters, due to watching cross-table. I'd play this up more, in a fate-heavy mythic game.

In fact, riffing on point D, one thought (probably too art-house to be playable, but interesting as a talking point): A story modeled on The Princess Bride, The Neverending Story, and like tales...

Play proceeds in two phases.

Play in phase B will look pretty normal, with a GM and several players, playing protagonists in the narrative.

Play in phase A, however, is taken to be the "framing device" as used in those stories. The kid hearing a story from grandpa, or the boy reading a book, or what have you. The way I'd set this up would be for the GM to play the boy, and the others (collaboratively, or by turns) acting as the "grandpa" who already knows what is to come. "She does not get eaten by eels at this time." In this way, the players get to enforce limited amounts of predestination upon themselves, it's not coming from the GM at all. The GM, as the child, prompts (by asking questions of grandpa!) which elements are of interest, what he's "worried about" and which therefore needs some predestination applied.

We might have a brief Phase A period at the start of each session, or it might be a resource thing (spend a Plot Die to break to the framing device). Either way would be fine by me.

I suspect that any predestination scheme, done well (see A through D above), would produce some strong mythic quality simply by including that element, never mind its involvement as a tool toward guiding overall story structure.

Si?

- Eric

Harlequin wrote: Si?

Jonathan Walton wrote: 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.

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]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.[/code]

Reverend 'greyorm' Ravenscrye Daegmorgan wrote:

Jonathan Walton wrote: 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?

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

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

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

Because Raven wrote: 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?

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

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

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.

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

Harlequin wrote: 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.