D&D: Adventurers, Not Heroes

[ptolemy18]

Yeah, I went through that phase too.

You mean the "actually being creative and trying to create interesting characters, as opposed to just generic heroes" phase? Yes! May everyone enter that phase and stay in it forever.

Oh, and BTW, I like your Brittania/D&D conversion pages.

 

[hong]

You mean the "actually being creative and trying to create interesting characters, as opposed to just generic heroes" phase?

No, I mean the "mistaking quirkiness for depth" phase.

 

[Melan]

Me too.

Designing a game to cater everyone's preferred style of play can't be easy. I know that a lot of players like to cut straight to dragon-riding, universe-saving, high-fantasy heroics, but I prefer the Indiana Jones power-level campaign, in which the PCs are just talented mortals with a bit of luck.

That's what experience levels are for. 1st level PCs are fragile and disposable - beginners. They get tougher by level 3 (where I usually start my campaigns), and even better around 5th to 6th level. This is a workable scale, and there is no need to beef up 1st level characters... just provide some advice in the DMG to start them at higher levels if you want a different sort of campaign.

(Obviously, I don't like the "all levels should feel the same" idea)

 

[Skyman]

The lead designer, Mike Mearls, worked on the distinctly heroic "Star Wars" and "Iron Heroes" and suddenly the word "hero" is on everybody's lips.

Let me just note that I don't think Iron Heroes is any more 'heroic' in the sense you're using than DnD. In fact I think it's less so. No alignment, magic that's dark and dangerous, etc. It can certainly run high fantasy, but I played in a long IH campaign where we basically worked for the highest bidder and had both relatively moral people struggling to get by and amoral mercenaries. When Mearls talks about 'heroic' in IH, I truly think he just means the ability to perform impressive stunts and fight big monsters, not having to save the world from ultimate evil, and I assume it's the same in 4e. IH is rather flexible, with options in the DM's guide for using cash to buy property or get yourself out of jail after crimes, etc. If 4e is anything like it, I think it'll live up to your hopes.

Also, Mearls didn't work on Star Wars, though I expect he and the other designers have taken some mechanical cues from it.

 

[hong]

In this context, "badasses" would be a better word than "heroes", methinks. The Iron Badassization of D&D has a certain ring to it as well.

 

[Treebore]

I'm concerned that 4E is going to do a bad job of showing what a hero really is. Someone who starts at the bottom and scrapes their way to the top. If you always skip the beginning how are you ever going to understand what it takes to be a real hero? Let alone a success?

Just like so much of everything else in this modern world, a "hero" is just going to be handed to someone without them ever learning how the hero "got there" in the first place.

I hope people understand the significance of what I am saying.

 

[Fobok]

I'm concerned that 4E is going to do a bad job of showing what a hero really is. Someone who starts at the bottom and scrapes their way to the top. If you always skip the beginning how are you ever going to understand what it takes to be a real hero? Let alone a success?

The rules don't have any effect over this, though. This is all a matter of story. If you want the players to feel like they're rising up, have them face a bunch of rats before you have them face the bandits before you have them face the goblins... and that's all within level 1's ability range. It's up to the DM to craft adventures like this.

And, I'd like to add, facing 20 goblins pretty much *is* the bottom when you have facing evil gods at the top. (Since epic levels are included now.)

 

[Sun Knight]

What I don't get is why every single PC has to be a "badass." Some of us don't want to play "badasses." We just want to play adventurers.

 

[DarkKestral]

What I don't get is why every single PC has to be a "badass." Some of us don't want to play "badasses." We just want to play adventurers.

Because most players who want to play D&D want to play badasses. So it's much easier to make the baseline set to "Badass" and make things scale up in badassery from there than setting it to "pitiful weakling" and making players feel that they are in fact badasses.

Adventurers, insofar as most sword n' sorcery goes, tend to be badasses. So if you want to emulate sword n' sorcery fantasy stories and have adventurers adventuring, setting the powerlevel to "Badass" makes perfect sense.

(Mods: Sorry for the blatant use of a 3 letter expletive so many times...)

 

[Sun Knight]

Point, but I rather earn my "badassery" than just have it given to me.

Hmmm... Maybe we should say Badbutt or Badbuttery. No, that just sounds wrong.