Okay, so I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but I always hear crap about TROS combat being 'gritty' as opposed to 'heroic.' What I reckon this means is that in TROS death is a constant and brutal possibility, where in a 'heroic' game the characters are godlike in comparison to their enemies, and can get wailed upon with little-to-no risk of actually dying.

Honestly now, what's heroic about doing something with no risk or sacrifice? Is Donald Trump more a hero if he buys ice cream for 10 homeless people than if one of those homeless guys gets a job to help feed his less fortunate buddies?

But what about 'heroic' literature? Beowulf, the Illiad, etc.? These are stories about demi-gods and the children of such, except Beowulf. Beowulf, though, is gritty as hell, and ends with the death of the main character. Admittedly, he does some pretty out-there stuff (like holding his breath for impossible lengths of time). So where are we getting our definition of "Heroic?" Is it from the old tales like Beowulf and the Oddyssey? It certainly isn't from the stories of "real" heroes...

Jake

I think they are referring to most fantasy novels(and movies) when they think of heroic. People who can hack through hundreds of foes with only non specific wounds at the end of it. The epitome of these would be the good drow that everyone wants to be in Dungeons and Dragons: Drizzt Do'Urden. He's even been in a book called "The Thousand Orcs" where they hint that he's attacking them all at the same time.

From what I've seen, some people like the idea of being in danger without the bad possibilities that it entails.

-Jason

I think maybe there are two topics at hand here....

"Heroic" deeds....things done in times of need or danger that are done despite great risk to self.

and

"Heroic" actions.....things that make ordinary folk stare in awe as they are performed by heroes.

It's the feel of having characters that can perform those awe inspiring actions that I think most people who want "Heroic" are after.

Just a thought...

Before I read TROS and ARMA stuff, I thought I knew what swordplay was all about. Now I know the lack of my own knowledge. All I saw was movies and, well, D&D.

I thinks most gamers are like that. We've learned a warped definition of 'heroic'. We think we know what it is: hundreds of hp and the +62 vorpal blade, and no chance of death. Yup, that's a serious perversion of 'heroic'. But I think that's where lots of people come from.

Anyone reading Sig's Riddle of Harn? The thief-kid yelling "GARGUN!" to absolute strangers. Heroic. He's got a serious chance of dying. In D&D, the same character could have yelled, but it wouldn't be so heroic, I think. PCs tended to have large amounts of hp in the bank. Not so much on the line. Gritty is having it all on the line.

This is a good topic to get into. I think that a perverted idea of what heroic means in regards to roleplaying has definitely spread. I think that the true problem is in the context. With regards to the dictionary's definition of heroism we see that TRoS would more closely fit the bill. However if we look at this concept from the ideals of what a hero should be able to do and say for our friends who are not quite so into risk and threat of death and against all odds risking their lives for what they believe in... They may percieve heroics as result oriented.

Jake Norwood wrote: So where are we getting our definition of "Heroic?"

I do want one little caveat: DnD doesn't preclude heroism.

To toot my own horn, I've lost a character or two being heroic in DnD. My paladin, on the verge of death (3hp) had the option of staying back behind our main tanks and sniping with a bow. But did she? She did, until one of the tanks had overextended a bit farther than he should have, and was dropped in the midst of enemies. Kendhasha (my pally) dashes forward and pulls him back a bit (until she ran out of movement) then made an effort to heave him another square back while she stayed put. She was dropped in the next exchange, and unfortunately, the whole party was pulling back; the person she rescued was dragged back out of the conflict, but she was left behind.

She stabilized, was held prisoner, then eventually was killed and eaten by gnolls. Not the most heroic and glorious of deaths, but her fall was the ultimate sacrifice.

DnD is capable of heroism.. But my character's actions would be seen as stupid by most players of DnD, rather than heroic. In TRoS, my character's actions would have earned me SAs, and would probably have been successful because of those SAs. TRoS mechanics encourage this sort of heroism, and that makes it more viable to those who recognize it as such.

I agree, DnD does not preclude heroism.
There was one death of a character that I played(filled in for the player who was DMing this adventure).. anyways the dwarf ahead of him tripped a trap.. if the dwarf raised his foot, he would be dead. So my character(stupid as he was, which was my first true case of roleplaying), disregarded concern for his own safety.. fastened on a ring of speed or other some such magical trinket to make him go fast.. rushed up to the dwarf, starting running back to the party when the floor starting falling out from under him. Realizing that one or both would perish, he threw the dwarf and fell to his own death. The dwarf lived on.

So yes, DnD can have heroism in it.. but it usually is the player who makes the decision on if he wants to be heroic...not the system.
TROS, in its application of reality and one-hit-kills.. forces the issue of heroism upon the characters. 'Should I be heroic and fight this time, or run and live on to fight another day?' Also, since death is more likely.. you'd have many more chances to rush in to save a companion risking your own skin, than say DnD and a character with 160hp.

-Ingenious
'The Curse of the Modem'.... lives. Despite my freshly installed modem....
Grrrrrrrr. Crap-ass $10/mon ISP...

Well, lets look at superman. He's a (super) hero. Yet he's pretty freakin' invulnerable. Many other super heroes are pretty damn tough/strong zappers too.

I would confidently assert this has influenced what is generally refered to as heroic, in our hobby.

Heroic = spandex
Heroic <> living hard and still doing the good deed

Personally, I think many people in this thread are spot on. Heroism is, in my opinion, doing the right thing (or at least the selfless thing) even when doing so may cost someone dearly. The journalist that publishes a story of corruption that his company tried to suppress is more heroic than, say, a policeman doing a routine arrest of a drunken brawler. I'm not saying the latter isn't heroic to a degree, far from it, but on the other hand, it's also his job, what's expected of him. The journalist, on the other hand, goes out of his way to do something that wasn't necessary for him, knowing that it might get him fired. (Perhaps the example was bad; it was certainly debatable, but it's also the best example I could come up on such a short notice.)

The manner of heroism that TRoS encourages is perhaps the main reason I found it to be so close in style to the books of David Gemmell. (An earlier thread of mine was about this.) His books, like TRoS, is gritty, and violent, and full of ugly, quick deaths and people cynical out of necessity. Yet some people still dare to do the right thing even though they themselves recognise and admit that it's almost suicide, that they have very slim chances of not only living through it, but even of success! Still, they do it, and indeed, sometimes the very main character dies trying. And this is in my opinion so much more heroic as I think heroism is inversely proportional to the ability of the person to succeed in his/her attempt and escape intact.

The people I know who are into DnD figures that a "hero" is someone who is better than the average. He will get through impossible odds even for him. He will get through, barely, but the common man wouldn't have stand any chance.

It's a genre. It's not a misconception of "heroism" IMO.

Bastoche wrote: The people I know who are into DnD figures that a "hero" is someone who is better than the average. He will get through impossible odds even for him.

He will get through, barely, but the common man wouldn't have stand any chance.

It's a genre. It's not a misconception of "heroism" IMO

Personally, I think that it is very possible to have "heroic" characters in a TROS game. I have seen characters that are definitely heroic, in strength and in the way they are. We have had characters that will die doing something selfless to save another's life, and characters that are just incredibly good at fighting, and don't die.
There are even characters that I've seen, which don't fit under either of the two categories, yet are still heroic. I look at the characters in the Dragonlance series (a personal favorite). Take Tanis, for instance. He is a good fighter, sure, but he isn't that great. He wasn't an expert swordsman, and he never did anything extremely selfless. (in fact, he did a lot more things that were selfish) He ended up getting stabbed in the back i the middle of a battle. it came unexpected and unheroic. Yet, he was still a hero. Another character, Flint, had a heart attack, and he was still a hero. Caramon fell down the stairs. none of those deaths were heroic at all, but the people were still heroic.
I suppose the whole idea of a "hero" is very broad, but I guess you could have gotten that from the rest of the posts on this thread, so I may have just wasted time

Jake Norwood wrote: Okay, so I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but I always hear crap about TROS combat being 'gritty' as opposed to 'heroic.' What I reckon this means is that in TROS death is a constant and brutal possibility, where in a 'heroic' game the characters are godlike in comparison to their enemies, and can get wailed upon with little-to-no risk of actually dying.

Jake Norwood wrote: So where are we getting our definition of "Heroic?"

Bastoche wrote: The people I know who are into DnD figures that a "hero" is someone who is better than the average. He will get through impossible odds even for him. He will get through, barely, but the common man wouldn't have stand any chance.

It's a genre. It's not a misconception of "heroism" IMO.

Hi,

Jake Norwood wrote: Okay, so I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but I always hear crap about TROS combat being 'gritty' as opposed to 'heroic.' What I reckon this means is that in TROS death is a constant and brutal possibility, where in a 'heroic' game the characters are godlike in comparison to their enemies, and can get wailed upon with little-to-no risk of actually dying.

This question of what is heroism is really a two parter, IMHO. On the one hand, what does that term really mean, and on the other hand, what do gamers mean when they use the term, and what is behind their way of thinking about it.

To keep it clear, I'm going to answer this in two posts, one for each concept.

First, The idea that heroism means 'feeling fear and doing what you know is right anyway' is a kind of watered down, modern, civilized, Christian version of the concept, applicable to firemen, soldiers, cops who are just doing their albiet very difficult and often harrowing jobs. I say this as a former soldier and a fromer EMT myself. I risked my life and have even saved a couple lives, but I don't consider that heroism. Nor do I believe that for example, parents are necessarily heroes. We can all of us be bad or very very good and inspired and endure great thigns, but that don't make us heroes. Contrary to the modern Christian version of it, Heroism really doesn't have anything to do with morality either.

Heroism in the "good old days", (generally, before the late medieval period, by which time most truly heroic legends had been laid down) meant rising above the strictures and fears of the average man, even, say, the average Viking or Celtic warrior, and doing great things, being "great" all the time.

All of us, even in ancient tribal socities of Homeric Greece or Migration era Germany or La Tene era Celtic Europe, have to make compromises in our lives to live. We have to obey the rules of society, we may even knuckle under to injustice, to personal fears, we simply have to face the fact that caution and compromise is a neccesary part of life.

What the hero does, what Gilgamesh and Odysseus and Cu Cullihain and Beowulf do, is to remind us what potential we have in us if we could only throw off the pettiness of day to day life, and "rise above" as black flag used to say, and really live up to our full potential. And that doesn't just
mean courage, but also strength, and cunning, and wisdom, and sheer elan. They remind us how far we can really take ourselves, and generally, they reminded a particular group of people who shared a given mythology, how great they could be.

That to me, is what heroism really is. That is the quality, the heroic quality
that all these folks really have in common.

JR

The fact that most gamers use the term heroism to just mean invincible characters like comic book heroes, is just another way the sick and weak side of the RPG culture has distorted yet another beautiful thing, such as true heroism.

This is going to probably really irritate people, but I think it has to be said.

The reaction by that reviewer toward TROS, and his and others invocation of 'heroic' systems, is complete rubbish on a number of different levels. From a 'gamist' perspective, if I understand the term correctly, the guy is way off base because, as many have pointed out, the system has sufficient mechanics to allow for more or less invulnerable characters, by using the SAs.

From the point of view of a general outlook on games, what kind of baby do you have to be to feel all weepy abut the destruction of an imaginary character? People play hundreds of RPG's of all different types, but they can't entertain the idea of playing a character who might die even once because they are too squeamish? Come on! These are literally people who can't even PRETEND to be heroes.

This ties into a deeper issue, and that is the general high level of acceptance for, the in fact fetish for, mediocrity and mental mush in the RPG community. There is a mindset I have encountered many times, which militantly embraces the familiar, stale, mastubatory world of bad rpg-dom, and is violently hostile toward any improvement of or tinkering with the medium.

Needless to say, this is not a big problem with most people posting to the Forge, where the experimental side of the genre is more prevalent than most places, but I'm certain you all know what I'm talking about because I think it's a large chunk, if not a majority mentality within the larger RPG community.

There are several distinct characteristics evident:

1) An unwillingness to experiment or modify rules, and a fetishization of canonical interpretation of THE OFFICIAL RULES. Any number of simple house modifcations could have been made to every thing that reviewer, for example, said about TROS. Did he have some valid complaints? sure, but why not just make a couple of minor changes, make armor more efficient or magic skill a little more expensive to acquire, or raise damage resistance a point or two. Easy to get the game exactly how you want it. But these people want their hand held. This is a very common mentality with hard core D&D fans.

2) Demands to play cheezy wish-fullfillment characters. I knew of one guy who was a big RPG enthusiast, but refused to play any RPG unless he could be the same magical-Silver-Dragon-disguised-as-a-human every single time he played. No matter what game. Since I've gotten back into RPG's I've found this attitude alarmingly prevalent.

3) Unwillingness to try new things. This is a big reason why D&D & whitewolf are still the most popular game systems and why the excellent independent RPG's such as those found here in the forge have such a relatively tiny share of the market. They are hostile toward any incursion into the familiar if smelly turf of "their world", just they way they resent it when their mom comes in and cleans up their messy room. They like the dirty socks on the floor. And thats one of the reasons they hate and fear the very concept of Realism, for example.

4) want their hands held all the time. Again, another factor in the negative review of TROS. These are the GM's who have to have pre-written adventure modules to play, the chracters who WANT to be railroaded into a plot line

5) Rationalize medioctrity. I once met an MIT student, who was brilliant, and he used to rationalize how all these star trek episodes were actually realistic. He had brilliant explanations for why all the cheezy special effects and plot ideas (like every Alien was a human with different ears or differnt skin color) They will move a mountain rather than step over a sacred molehille.

I could go on and on. But I think this creepy mentality, that many people cling to because it's "their thing". This is a big part of why the market isn't bigger, not just game mechanics, although it also influences game mechanics.

anyway, I'm starting to foam at the mouth, so I'll quit for now...

JR

Right F***ING on Bob!
My first understanding of true heroism came from reading books on WW2, Pearl Harbor.. etc. The story of the one black man standing on the deck of a ship, under fire, shooting a machine gun at every damned plane that flew by.. knowing that he was going to die and yet he stayed there and fought.. to me that is heroism in its purest form.

And to respond to your very negative(but fully deserved) opinion of D&D and its fanatics. I have only been in the world of table-top RPG's for probably less than a year.. I started out with DND 1st edition..and liked it. But there were too many 'lead by the nose' campaigns, dungeon crawls..etc. Just explore every room, hallway, etc.. kill the bad guys and save the good ones. Plot had little to do with it, but there was a plot of some sort at least. Looking back on the whole thing, I find it comical. Absolutely comical it was to play that system.. However, there was alot of investment in a character...because of the system and the possibility of one having massive hit points increased the longevity to a point where you could play the same character for YEARS. But what was the point of it all? There was nothing spectacular about it, nothing to set one character apart from the next IMO..except going off the rulebook in how it says the characters should be different.

One of the things that initially drew me to TROS was the complete and total customization of characters, they had personalities.. flaws, certain things they excel at. And this was for every single player to be able to have. Not to mention the unprecendented combat system.

But back to the heroism topic.. after my brief tangent.
Heroism does have many forms and perspectives, yadda yadda. We all know that. To one culture, heroism might be strapping a bomb to your chest and exploding it in the middle of a crowd...(bad example I know).
To others it might be a selfless act. It might be taking on a big corperation such as Enron, or a police officer pointing out the level of corruption at his precinct.. Or it might be having to choose between saving your own life, or someone else's.. or 3 other lives, etc. That specific part of Forrest Gump for example..though he did not die.. (through the Grace of God, and more-over the script-writers..)

So we've trampled over the topic of heroism with about 300 M1A1 tanks by now.. so let's rather talk about what is NOT heroic..
What I find to not be heroic, in terms of RPG's.. is DND. If I had a character with 160hp, you're damn right I'd be able to go toe-to-toe with a dragon by myself.. Doing something that you are supposed to be capable of through the downfall(in this case) of a system's game-mechanics..is not heroic. If a mage can flame-broil an entire army of goblins, orcs, etc.. by himself with a few spells..that is not heroic. He's supposed to be capable of that. Was that person ever in danger? Did he even have to break a sweat? Nope. Let's talk about HP and its craptastic influence on games that I wouldn't pay a dime to play anymore. A character can have hundreds of hit points right? So if I had hundreds of hits points and went solo against a dragon, you would think that was heroic right? Wrong. That dragon only has a fraction of the hit points I would have.. Granted he might hit a little bit harder.. maybe a breath weapon.. but if my saving throws were low enough.. I'd be safe.
Now then, if the dragon had the same number of HP as me.. or more than me.. *MAYBE* it would be SLIGHTLY heroic. But then I'd have to be drunk to a noncoherent state in order to beleive that load of shit.

-Ingenious

So far a lot of people have been talking about heroism. Let's through another spanner in the works from Jake's first post: "gritty."

A lot of people use this in the context of "realism", meaning that the system allows the play to conform to real life activities. But there is another usage of the word- "dirty". In the spirit of the thread, consider whether "heroism" and "gritty" go together. Can someone still be a hero and shine? Yes. but there is another aspect, wherein heroic deeds can in the end be pointless. The hero sacrifices his life to save the sacred artifact, only for the party to return to find the city already destroyed. Or to find that the local sorceror came in and solved the problem. In some ways, making altruistic actions less rewarding overall is what this version of "gritty" means. At the same time, by combining this sort of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" idea in your regular game can lead to especially poignant situations.

For me, part of the attraction of TRoS is that it has enormous scope for this. Entering into any fight is heroic in some way (though I have had stupid players...), but the outcome of the fight may not lead to any greater reward but survival...

James

Hi Bob,

If heroism doesn't have to do with conquering your fears and beating the odds, but rather with rising above and showing the illusory nature of complacency and the rules of society to achieve greatness, then why does it follow that D&D's invincible super-heroism is somehow not true heroism? D&D has characters who are greater than great, completely out of proportion with the average person and having a grotesquely charicatured realization of the human potential. If anything, this seems to be a hyper-example of your heroism rather than a counter-example.

It may not be the style I like, but I find those two points of yours hard to reconcile. If people have fun playing that way, I don't see what's so bad about it except for when it conflicts with what someone else in the group wants (and that is not an objective reflection on either style of gaming). TROS might have more of a live deeply and suck the marrow out of life/live fast die young ethos to it, but that might not be why some people play. It's just a game after all, not a revolutionary social movement...

To me, heroism entails taking risks and making sacrifices. If a game provides those opportunities and rewards their pursuit, I would find it to support heroic play.

There is an understanding local to gamer culture that heroic = advantage by kewl. And if Aragorn did get taken out by the 19th of 56 orcs, it would have made for a shorter story, so there's a counter value somewhere on this end.

I think it's that engaging games have manageable challenges.

When I was learning to play chess, I got into a pickup game with a stranger at a bar who had spent the last few years playing in prison. From the opening to the middle game, everything was very gioco piano, and then he fed on my material like a swarm of female mosquitos. After he won, he said, "Y'know, you know how to play. The way you responded showed that you knew what I was up to. But you never, you know, went for it."

Heroes go for it.

kenjib wrote: Hi Bob,

If heroism doesn't have to do with conquering your fears and beating the odds, but rather with rising above and showing the illusory nature of complacency and the rules of society to achieve greatness, then why does it follow that D&D's invincible super-heroism is somehow not true heroism?

It may not be the style I like, but I find those two points of yours hard to reconcile. If people have fun playing that way, I don't see what's so bad about it except for when it conflicts with what someone else in the group wants (and that is not an objective reflection on either style of gaming). TROS might have more of a live deeply and suck the marrow out of life/live fast die young ethos to it, but that might not be why some people play.

It's just a game after all, not a revolutionary social movement...

Drifter Bob wrote:
If you can't tell the difference between the mediocre pablum of the typical D&D game, or for that matter the comic books and TV show cliche's which inspire them, and say, the epic of Gilgamesh or Beowulf, then you will never understand heroism. I admit it can be a bit difficult to define the difference in a mathematical way, but I think it is obvious to most people.

There are also a few things you can point out. There is no false humility, there is no sappy P.C. moralism, there is no routine stale beating up on boringly predictable opponents, no equivalent of hacking through armies of orcs. Heroes face challenges which though grown beyond all experience, were fundamentally real to the audiences of the original fables. They may be capricious and wierd, but they are never mundane.

Drifter Bob wrote:
Well, by one way of looking at it, nothing is bad about it any more than nothing is bad about millions of Americans eating fast food, reading the national enquirer, and watching championship wrestling all day on TV. If thats how they want to spend their time, then fine. On the other hand, if the Big Mac fan wants to write a review of Gallatoires restaurant, and tell everybody that the food sucks because nothing is deep fired, then I have every right to point out the bankruptcy of his eating habits. If the Enquirer fan writes a scathing critique of The Dying Earth based on the fact that it doesn't have any pictures and the words are too long, I have every right to point out that what he reads is, from my perspective, pablum. If the Championship wrestling fan complains bitterly about Yojibmbo because he can barely read and hates subtitles, I can point out how stupid he is. Etc.

I don't know where you get the revolution part. Like I said, if people want to spend their lives in tepid mediocrity, that is their business, but I'm not under any restriction that says I can't call a spade a spade.

JR

Arguing about taste wheter for food or role playing games is a lost argument. You can't argue about tastes. It's about tastes and opinion. One who believes his tastes to be supperior than someone else's is both a snob and wrong.

Ask the man on the street -- is a fireman a hero? a soldier?

These men are not superhuman. They do not cleave through armies of orcs. They sacrifice themselves for their neighbors and their countrymen. This makes them heroes, not an overwhelming number of hitpoints.

Roleplayers and comic-book enthusiasts are a rare and odd breed. If you want to establish a baseline for what our society calls "heroism" ask someone else.

That's a good point Bob Richter. Do you think the man on the street would deny that Superman is also a hero?

And what teels you that this soldier or firefighter, although human, is not above average?

The notion of what a "hero" is is not glued in concreet. It's subjective. And in the context of role-playing games, it's a matter of opinions. You like heros that are nobodies on sheet and makes great actions. Fine. Some like heroes that are "better than the norm" on sheet and others like their heroes to be super-human. It doesn't make these characters any less heroic because you say so.

Hello,

Jake, I lay the historical responsibility for the gamer-versions of "heroic" (which I agree are nonsensical) with the Hero System, published in the late 1980s. This, and its associated game Champions 4th edition, represent a rather serious shift from the versions of Champions published up until then, including a pretty elaborate categorization of superhero comics which used the words "heroic" in the now-common gamer sense.

Best,
Ron

i wouldn't refer to a fireman or a soldier as a hero unless by their actions they did something we come to refer to as heroic. Having been in the military there is absolutely nothing heroic to it but i have known guys who are exceptions to this and have done some very 'heroic' things, primarily puting their own safety and lives aside to help out and save others.

kenjib wrote: That's a good point Bob Richter. Do you think the man on the street would deny that Superman is also a hero?

kenjib wrote:

I see where you are coming from better now. Thanks for clarifying.

why do definitions of heroism that are 1000 and 4000 years old respectively pre-empt the modern interpretation? Comic book superheroism is now the order of the day, and quite valid. Having a much larger circulation, I'd wager that it's a much more prominent definition of

How does playing D&D casually equate with spending one's life in tepid mediocrity?

I'll also call a spade a spade and say that this is just a game. It's not a lifestyle. A person's choice of game does not send them into a precipice of squalid grey spiritual-middle-management land. It's just a game.

Even so, why is it beneficial for heroism to be somehow divorced from pop culture/the unwashed masses, where the vibrant center of life and culture actually is, and shuttled off into an obscure, cobweb infested corner of literary scholasticism?

I believe that heroes are as people define them. Like pornography - people know it when they see it. If I find that my view of heroism is superior to but at odds with millions of Americans, is this saying more about me or about millions of Americans? I'd actually say both at the same time.

As far as your food analogy goes, I subscribe to Cook's
(snip)
and baking. I also like eating at nice restaurants here in Seattle. On the other hand I think that, to be honest, McDonalds food tastes pretty good.

I know to avoid it thanks to Fast Food Nation as well as general

pricing issue). If someone doesn't like Gallatoires, I too think it's good to know what their tastes are (McDonalds, for example) to establish context,

....but I'm not going to deride their opinion and call them epicureally bankrupt.
(snip)
I do find that when trying to discuss things analogies generally tend to make things less clear than more clear and spin discussions off onto strange tangents like this one, if you see what I'm driving at.

If I had to define heroism, it would be a bit simpler. It's someone who does grand things and that you agree with. Someone who does grand things that you don't agree with is an anti-hero or a villain. False humility and P.C. moralism do not disqualify someone from heroism, as long as their deeds still match up. I think that hacking through an army of enemies, wading in their gore in the lust of battle, does potentially sound pretty heroic though, and D&D is a good game for enabling that kind of scenario. TROS less so.

Edge wrote: i wouldn't refer to a fireman or a soldier as a hero unless by their actions they did something we come to refer to as heroic. Having been in the military there is absolutely nothing heroic to it but i have known guys who are exceptions to this and have done some very 'heroic' things, primarily puting their own safety and lives aside to help out and save others.

For anything else relating to heroism.. look at the life of Audie Murphy.

-Ingenious

Drifter Bob wrote:
My point is in both comics and in Dungeons and Dragons people are accepting a watered down, mass market product which is engineered to sell copies, to fulfill a spiritual need they have for great legends, much as they may watch stale episodes of Gilligans Island for a cheap, stale laugh when a real conversation with a funny person isn't avaialble as an alternative.

How does playing D&D casually equate with spending one's life in tepid mediocrity?

I don't believe it does. D&D can be done well, or it can be done in a mastubatory, stale mediocre manner. My point is that it is usually done the latter way.

(huge snip of off topic things)

In spite of my comment above, I will grant you this, different groups of people will define their own heroes. I just think under the current social dynamic, people aren't really able to do that. So they are embracing stale imitations like flotation buys in a cultural shipwreck.
jR

Thanks for your well argued response Drifter Bob. I think we both have some good points and I've enjoyed the discussion. :)

kenjib wrote: Thanks for your well argued response Drifter Bob. I think we both have some good points and I've enjoyed the discussion. :)