D&D 5E Can 5e Be Mythic?

[doctorbadwolf]

I’ve been reading up on Heroes of Tara supplement that seeks to make a 5e game that is mythic in the vein of Irish mythology and folk lore, and I wonder just how mythical you can make a 5e game without a ton of new rules.

Has anyone here run a 5e game that hewed closer to folklore and mythology than D&D normally does?

 

[Steampunkette]

5e can be Mythic.

Just lower the HP and attack values of most NPCs in the adventure, describe players performing crazy acts when they cast common enough spells or hit NPCs with weapons. And if you wanna go really crazy with it: Let a Nat 20 work on Skill and Ability Checks so someone -can- kick the castle wall down.

But.

Make sure your evil baddies have similar benefits and describe their abilities as hilariously over the top, even moreso, than the players' abilities. Take the narrative scale up a few notches and you can make Mythic with only a handful of changes.

 

[BookTenTiger]

I think it's an easy feat to make 5e mythic, it's all about the stories you are telling. To me, the idea of mythic is tied up in pourquoi stories, or stories of how something came to be. Mythic adventures should involve the nature of things, the creation of things, or the battle against inevitable forces like time and death.

I once ran an adventure in which the characters had to rescue a child who was the manifestation of the sun, and bring him to the top of a mountain before dawn so he could reach back into the sky.

 

[Bolares]

I’ve been reading up on Heroes of Tara supplement that seeks to make a 5e game that is mythic in the vein of Irish mythology and folk lore, and I wonder just how mythical you can make a 5e game without a ton of new rules.

Has anyone here run a 5e game that hewed closer to folklore and mythology than D&D normally does?

I think Theros did Mith quite well. To be fair, most of the lore was brought in by MTG, ut the book translate that mythic world to an RPG pretty well IMO

 

[Yaarel]

I’ve been reading up on Heroes of Tara supplement that seeks to make a 5e game that is mythic in the vein of Irish mythology and folk lore, and I wonder just how mythical you can make a 5e game without a ton of new rules.

Has anyone here run a 5e game that hewed closer to folklore and mythology than D&D normally does?

The concepts of animism and nature beings are important to my setting.

Often this is surprisingly easy to do.

For example, say, the nature being is the mind of an actual mountain in a specific location. That mountainous mind can project outward and manifest a body of flesh-and-blood. This manifestation is effectively a normal D&D character. The character will have characteristics that allude to the mountainous origin, perhaps tall, broad, and patient.

Gamewise the only difference is, if the character dies the mind returns to the mountain, rather than to an other plane.

Any magical implications of being the mountain − maybe Clairvoyance relating to any activity on or near the mountain − can wait until higher level. In the meantime, the mountain is busy figuring out how to be a human.

In other words, being a nature being is more like a Background, than a race.

This approach using a normal D&D character, also makes sense for reallife animistic tropes where a human and a nature being can have children together. The manifestation is a virtual human.

The D&D character is effectively an avatar of the mountain.

 

[bedir than]

Part of the way to get more of a mythic/folklore feel is to reduce the amount of the magic in the world, but not for your players and NPCs. Just this lore tweak changes how the game feels.

 

[BookTenTiger]

The D&D character is effectively an avatar of the mountain.

I agree with this idea. In a lot of mythology (especially Greek and Roman), the heroes are never just plucky farmers or urchins, they always have some relation to a god or the greater forces of the universe.

Background would be a really fun way to bring this into the game. All the characters could have the bloodlines of gods, literally be forces of nature, or animal spirits in mortal form.

 

[Yaarel]

I agree with this idea. In a lot of mythology (especially Greek and Roman), the heroes are never just plucky farmers or urchins, they always have some relation to a god or the greater forces of the universe.

Background would be a really fun way to bring this into the game. All the characters could have the bloodlines of gods, literally be forces of nature, or animal spirits in mortal form.

Yeah. It depends on the worldview of the culture. The same approach that works for animism in D&D, where the avatar of a natural feature is virtually a normal human, can alternatively work for polytheism.

For the trope where an immortal, such as a deity or angel, chooses to become a mortal, the incarnation can similarly be a normal human character. The character might only have a vague memory of originally being an immortal. This memory and the accompanying power of the immortal becomes clearer gradually as the character advances in level.

Ultimately, if the character dies, the concept of the cultural worldview determines where the mind goes. A nature being returns to the natural feature within the Material Plane. An immortal returns to the Outer Plane. And so on.

Also to be the child of a nature being, under the influence of some mindful destiny, is more like a Background.



For animal beings, the culture of my setting mainly understands, it is a human who visualizes oneself to become a beast. The line between human and other animals is blurry, tho I cant think of an example where an animal became a human. But other cultures emphasize each beast as an autonomous nature being, who can independently manifest a human form. Perhaps the members of a kind of animal collectively can manifest a presence that can become a human.

So many mythic concepts are surprisingly playable characters.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

I’ve been reading up on Heroes of Tara supplement that seeks to make a 5e game that is mythic in the vein of Irish mythology and folk lore, and I wonder just how mythical you can make a 5e game without a ton of new rules.

Has anyone here run a 5e game that hewed closer to folklore and mythology than D&D normally does?

Can you define what you mean by hewing more closet to folklore and mythology? That seems to be a very vague statement to build a discussion around

 

[Yaarel]

Regarding a Celtic worldview, my impression is, it is very dreamlike.

It is like there is a normal waking reality, and then there is a sacred dream that conflates and represents the reality via interacting symbols. For example, the military banners of two armies might appear in a dream as two serpents fighting each other. The victory of one serpent is the victory of a reallife army. Helping one serpent win, alters reallife consequences.

If I would do a Celtic setting, I would oscillate between waking life and dreamscape. The dream is a microcosm of the reality. The dreamscape would itself be an adventure. When the player characters wake from the dream, I would have the characters discover the consequences that reverberated from the outcome of that dream.

Maybe the dream takes places in the Feywild? Sometimes the player characters know they are dreaming, sometimes the physically enter the dream (effectively becoming fey spirits), sometimes they are unsure whether the adventure is spirit or physical.