Do you use the Hero's Journey (Campbell)

[Wulf Ratbane]

Wulf: My problem is that everybody should get a chance to be the hero.

There's a difference between being a hero, and being THE HERO.

You're essentially saying that no one would want to play Han Solo over Luke Skywalker...? Or Ben Kenobi? Or Princess Leia?

You can't enjoy a Star Wars game unless everybody gets to play a character just like Luke, right?

EDIT: I wonder if maybe that's because you personally identify most strongly with The Hero. But I know a lot of people who identify much, much more strongly with the Trickster, for example, or the Old Man. I feel confident you can imagine such folks from your own circle of gamers.

 

[Evilhalfling]

At the moment my game has three players (2 others are planning a wedding and show up infrequently, they should be back mid summer)
I was thinking of leaving doubt as to who is the Hero - and include the possiblity that it is a cohort/NPC I am adding to pad out the party. One player falls naturally into trickester role (in all his characters) and is currently playing the thief

Otherwise perhaps a rotating HERO title -
Group dyanmics would seem the best guide to hero status, I am tempted to give the role to the newer players, allowing them the spotlight at first then maybe addtional cycles concentraitng on the older gamers. The oldest player is the defacto party leader, and able to shine even in stories not focused on him. Either of my missing players could also serve as the HERO, and that gives me four cycles - which interspaced with non hero journey stories makes a campaign.

 

[F5]

I tried this once. It was back in 2e, when the complete henchmen's handbook came out (or whatever it was called...the book that had class progression for regular people). It was an aside from the regular game we were playing at the time. I started the group off as normal townsfolk; a baker, a stablehand, an hetbalist, a blacksmith, and an innkeeper. There was a plot thread that the DM left dangling, and didn't really know how to resolve, so I thought it would be fun for a bunch of NPC-types to have to clean up the mess. So I build an advanture around the Hero's Journey framework. It started off great, but gradually fell apart. The only one who really enjoyed the game was the guy who figured out what I was doing (he had read Campbell). Interestingly enough, it was the "crossing the threshold" point that started losing people...no one was willing to cross over! "How am I supposed to deal with this? I'm just an innkeeper!" If the character sheet had said "bard" instead, it would have been a different story.

Part of that is game rule related, I think in hindsight. An "inkeeper" just doesn't have the tools that a regular PC class has. My intention was to let the pcs start taking normal class levels that fit with their character...blacksmith=fighter, stablehand=ranger, herbalist=priest, etc. But interest had waned at that point, so I just wrapped everything up.

 

[Desdichado]

Personally, I'm not as impressed with Campbell as all that. Part of the reason his workplan fits so many stories is that it's so generic.

I'm sure I do a lot of Campbellian stuff in my games and fiction both, but I don't do it consciously. I'd be concerned with trying too hard not to fit his patterns, but when his patterns are so broad, I'm not sure that's necessarily a good thing.

 

[JimAde]

There's a difference between being a hero, and being THE HERO.

You're essentially saying that no one would want to play Han Solo over Luke Skywalker...? Or Ben Kenobi? Or Princess Leia?

No, what I'm saying is that if you build the campaign around the idea of the hero journey, the character who is on that journey will inevitably wind up with the most "screen time." Making sure all my players get their spotlight time is something I have trouble with already. Building the campaign specifically around one of the characters just makes it worse (for me).

As EvilHalfling suggested, this might work best if the "hero" was played by a new/shy player who doesn't normally get that central role.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

No. I got burnt out on Campbellian style stories a while back. I also don't think it works too well in D&D unless you play it more Storytelling style, which the people I play with don't tend to be looking for in the game.

 

[Insight]

The problem with trying to make a game fit the Campbell model is that it's really not intended to be used outside literature/mythology. As has been discussed many times, games are not literature and vise versa. Literature is by definition created by one (or in some cases two or more) writer, with a definite beginning, middle, and end in mind. Games must have in their design room for the players to make decisions and change the outcome of the adventure.

You could, of course, go extremely generic and design parts of your adventure using Campbell, and leave the results up to the players' actions. This would be using Campbell in the setup/design phase of the adventure, which is pretty much the only non-railroading way to use Campbell in a game.

 

[John Morrow]

I've read his book on the subject and the main use I get out of it is the term "the call to adventure". I usually ask my players to create characters that are willing to anser "the call to adventure" because writing adventures for heroes that are too reluctant is just too much work. I don't want to have to wrestle with the characters to get them involved in interesting things.

 

[Odhanan]

I kindly disagree with some of the posters above. I think that there isn't such a thing as a hard "campbell model" that has to be applied this way and not that way, much like I think there isn't a clear cut frontier between mythology and other matters of our lives.

The hero's journey as described by Campbell is an attempt to explain what most heroes (and thus every single human being) go through in an archetypal manner. Thus, many examples can fit this explaination. For instance, D&D heroes going down into "the dungeon" are leaving mundane life to go through different trials (encounters), end up confronted to the climax of their quest to take back whatever things they found (gold, knowledge etc) back to the world above. D&D in that regard fits the hero's journey.

Most of the RPGs fit this concept of journey through their very nature, particularly narrative. Roleplaying often takes the form of various types of conversations and obstacles involving PCs and DMs. These are steps that go from the hook to the climax of the adventure. Therefore, RPGs are "heroic", as per Campbell's definition, by their very nature.

The Hero With A Thousand Faces illustrates what I am talking about. Luke Skywalker goes through a hero's journey, by Campbell's own words. So do most characters of fantasy roleplaying games, weither we're talking about D&D, Vampire, Star Wars, Warhammer or Conan. Doesn't matter. What matters is the evolution an RPG character goes through, from an initial "normal" life to an awakening to something challenging the character's ideas, and the realization of what his/her life/adventure teaches him/her in the end.

And it doesn't have to be expressed in a pure "roleplaying", as per "storyteller roleplaying" way. Gold for instance represents a mythological purity, particularly the purity of the soul, much like virgins. This is why the Knight, for instance, kills the Dragon (desires and passions unbound, raging within one's mind) to rescue the Virgin and/or take its treasure (find the peace of mind, the awakening of the soul).

outside literature/mythology. As has been discussed many times, games are not literature and vise versa. Literature is by definition created by one (or in some cases two or more) writer, with a definite beginning, middle, and end in mind. Games must have in their design room for the players to make decisions and change the outcome of the adventure.

Mythology is not literature. Mythologies are formed with stories told again and again through generations, impregnated with what cultures and human beings keeping these stories alive hold for true about human nature. Ultimately, just like RPGs on a microscopic scale, mythology is not the fruit of a single individual's imagination and aspirations, but the combination of many voices through the ages.

 

[LostSoul]

I use it, and I find it works very well for both adventures and campaign arcs (although I tend not to do too much planning with campaign arcs).

I have a list of things that provides some kind of structure to the adventure... it's pretty basic, just saying things like "villian shows up" and "someone warns the hero not to go here". It helps, though, when I go over the adventure and use it as kind of a checklist. I may have forgotten to provide enough foreshadowing, or didn't introduce a character early enough, or whatever.

I think that template that one of those old pulp-dectective writers used would work well.