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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SKyOdin" data-source="post: 4042618" data-attributes="member: 57939">First, I don't think this is a particular trope of mythology. In written fiction in general this is a common trope. Did Aragorn really get stronger over the course of the Lord of the Rings? Not really. He started off with all of the skills he used through the story. Ditto for Gimli and Legolas. The only ones who gained strength were the hobbits.Furthermore, there are plenty of mythic figures who grow stronger over the course of their stories. First of all, Zeus did "gain" his lightning bolts, They were forged for him by the Cyclops in preparation for his war against his father. Zeus's adventure was his battle to become King of the Gods, the rest of Greek mythology was his retirement. For another Greek example, Perseus clearly grew stronger as he confronted new opponents and acquired more magic weapons and items. In the Ramayana, Rama and his brother are trained by a wiseman from the woods, and Rama himself matures quite a bit across the story. Cuchulainn traveled across the sea to train under the warrior-woman Scathath, who taught him numerous arts. Cuchulainn was significantly stronger in the main body of the Tain than in the early parts.Gilgamesh had Enkidu. Thor traveled around with Loki and others. Rama fought alongside his brother, Hanuman the monkey, and an entire army. Son-Goku was just one of a band of four travelers. Jason lead an entire ship full of heroes. While one character often steals the show, they often have companions.In his most famous essay among literary academics, J. R. R. Tolkien brought up the point that Beowulf was first and foremost told as a form of entertainment. Back before movies and wide-spread literacy, telling stories about gods and heroes was a way of entertaining people. In that way, myths are no different from books, movies, video-games, or table-top RPGs.I think myths and legends are great sources of inspiration for D&D. If you assume that no ordinary human in a D&D campaign gets bast low heroic levels, than an Epic level D&D character is as super-human as some of the great warriors from these legends. Cuchulainn massacred an entire army single-handedly. A single level 30 Fighter could probably do the same. Since I have never though of D&D as a game built around dungeon crawling (the last campaign I was in went to level 16 with only one short dungeon in its entire 2-year run), I don't think that is a good excuse why D&D would be bad at mythic adventure.An epic tier campaign where the PCs have to fight back against an army of demons led by Orcus himself rampaging across the face of the world would be a very mythic-style campaign. 200 years later, there would be legends passed down by bards speaking of the PCs' exploits.</blockquote>

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