While I'm not much of a fan of the song (and I didn't care for the movie it came from), I've been hearing a few commercials lately using the Bonnie Tyler song "I Need A Hero," and it has triggered thoughts on heroes and heroism in gaming.
We have a problem with being heroic in a number of role-playing games, but most particularly in fantasy games where the ideas of advancement and betterment for characters are built around the concept of killing. In games with alignment systems, this doubles down because alignment becomes a mechanical expression of morality in those games. So, not only does this mean that killing is the method in these games for your character to become better at what they do, killing also becomes the moral choice for dealing with situations.
This is what causes the problem with being heroic, because in my mind being a hero and killing are at cross purposes with each other. I get that there are a number of different ways to define heroes, but for me that definition has been informed by my years of comic book reading. Superman. Captain America. Spider-Man. Yes, each of these characters has had stories where they have had to kill, but the focus of those stories wasn't about the killing, as much as they were about the impact that the killings had upon the characters. I am not saying that heroes are never going to kill, but they do it only as a last resort and their characters aren't defined by the action.
This is at the root of my disconnect with many fantasy role-playing games, and much fantasy fiction. I like characters who are heroes. The fantasy fiction that I interact with tends to come from comic books. Travis Morgan of Warlord. The Nightmaster. Heroes can be complicated, they can be conflicted, but they can still be basically good. For me, that can get lost in translation with games.
I define a lot of games as being heroic that others might not. I think that the underlying struggle of Call of Cthulhu and games like Trail of Cthulhu are inherently heroic. In this style of Lovecraftian gaming, the characters are engaged in a struggle that they will likely not survive, not because they want to be a part of that struggle, but because they feel that they must. I think that is the core of heroic characters: they are motivated to take action, regardless of their personal safety, because they know that the action has to be taken. I know that this is an untraditional interpretation of Lovecraftian games, but it is an interpretation that makes the games easier on those who aren't as much of a fan of horror, or horror gaming.
Games like Doctor Who: Adventures In Time And Space are at the opposite pole of the games that reward killing. Violence is deemphasized in the game by making it literally the last thing that occurs during a round. Characters are encouraged to resolve conflict through methods other than violence, much like in the television show. Doctor Who, as a television show, can be a weird example of heroism, however, because while the Doctor preaches that violence shouldn't be the answer, and he himself is mostly directly non-violent in his responses, he is also know to surround himself with Companions who can react violently on his behalf (Captain Jack Harkness, I am looking at you, along with the many UNIT soldiers who accompanied him in the old days), and sometimes with his blessing. The Doctor is, at times, moved to violence, and even to killing, but much like with the super-heroic examples that I mentioned above, the stories about him doing this are about the whys of his violent reactions and his killing, and how they impact the character. You could argue that a lot of the stories of the NuWho era are about exploring the impact that the deaths that he was responsible for during the Time War have weighed upon him, and shaped his psyche.
I think that I would have less of a problem with the systems that build advancement upon violence and killing, if there were more of an exploration of how these acts can impact the psychology of the characters, rather than just giving them an additional to hit bonus. If you've been in a fight in real life, you know that even when you win a fight your mind still works you over. Violence is not fun.
Yes, I know the counter argument: people do not want "realism" in their games, they want an escape. This can often boil down to wanting an escape from repercussions of actions, more than anything else.
So, how do you move role-playing games that rely on killing for advancement away from that? When Runequest first came out in 1978, this was one of the things that the game set out to "fix." In Runequest your character gets better by doing things, by using their skills. Yes, this includes combat skills, but you won't get more points for your survival skills because you killed some orcs at one point. When you use a skill in Runequest, you mark it, and then later make a roll to see if it is improved or not. It is a clean and elegant method that allows a character to get better at things by doing.
With games like Fate Core, or earlier examples like Green Ronin's SRD-derived True 20 system, would use a more story-driven method for advancement. The idea behind this is that, as characters move through a campaign, doing things, making rolls for things and, yes, sometimes even killing, that this is what should be the determinations for change to, and advancement of, player characters. In Fate this is called reaching milestones. The characters achieving a milestone in a campaign, which can be as straightforward as defeating an enemy, this should trigger a change in those characters. For example, if a character in a Fate game has an aspect of "Seeking Revenge Against The Sheriff," then defeating that sheriff would be an important milestone for the character in that campaign, and at the very least should trigger being able to change that aspect to something else, perhaps even something tied to the aftermath of that milestone like "I Guess I Am The Sheriff Now."
The sad truth with some fantasy role-playing games is that defeat just isn't enough. In games like the early editions of Dungeons & Dragons, you get less experience for defeating a foe than you would for killing them. That means a slower advancement for your character. In many ways, this is a punishment for taking a less violent course of action for your characters.
I have long held up the Karma system from TSR's classic Marvel Super-Heroes game is not only one of the earliest set of rules that attempted genre simulation, rather than simulation of physics, but it is the single best emulation of the pre-Watchmen, pre-Dark Knight Returns genre of super-hero comics. It punished you outright for killing. If your hero killed someone, they lost all of their Karma. It was worse if you had a super-group with pooled Karma, because you lost all of that pooled Karma as well. However, Karma also made you think about your character's short term successes versus their long term. Karma was a pool of point that were not only spent to improve your character, but you used them as a currency to improve dice rolls for task resolution.
Every time that you spent Karma to succeed at a task, that meant there would be some advancement that you could not take in the future, unless you worked your character harder to earn more Karma to make up for the expense. Add this to the fact that Karma had to be spent before you rolled your dice, and you could be making a literal crap shoot for your character.
However, this worked for Marvel Super-Heroes for a couple of reasons. First, comic book super-heroes really don't change a lot in comics. And when they do change, the changes are often rolled back the next time there is a new creative team on a book. Back in the 60s and 70s, when people other than Stan Lee began writing books at Marvel Comics he would refer to this as the "illusion of change." The idea was that you give just enough change to a character to suggest growth, but not so much change that readers can no longer recognize the core elements of a character. This is the basis of the assumption that, with comics, no matter how much things might change in the short term, sooner or later everything will go back to more or less of a reset point.
Secondly, Karma enforces heroic action. A part of heroic action, much like I mentioned above when talking about heroism in Lovecraftian games, is sacrifice. Karma is a sacrificial element of your character's heroism in the Marvel Super-Heroes game. You spend Karma before a dice roll, which means that you don't even know if you will need it or not, but the action that your character is attempting is so important that you are willing to make the sacrifice. You have to balance short term success against long term goals. You might even be able to argue that the Sanity system in Call of Cthulhu is a similar system of sacrifice to Karma. You sacrifice your character's sanity in order to attempt to drive Chthonic creatures away and "save" the world, even if it is only for the short term.
Unfortunately, the shift in sensibilities in comics that came not long after the Marvel Super-Heroes game came out made these ideas seem corny to a lot of people. Not for me, because even though I am a bigger fan of DC Comics than Marvel Comics, the heroism of the game really appealed to me (and echoes of it still do). It isn't coincidence that the games that drew me away from games like Dungeons & Dragons were Marvel Super-Heroes and Call of Cthulhu. They both had approaches that appealed to my desire for heroism, plus comics and horror fiction were (and still are) the media that I consume the most.
The nice thing about having so many different types of role-playing games available is that everyone can find the games that suit their agenda for playing games. None of these approaches are better than the others, but they can help us to find the ways to have more effective approach to what we want out of gaming. On some levels, even as a kid, I was unsatisfied with role-playing, but as more games started coming out I realized that it wasn't the activity itself that was causing the difficulty but that the approach of the game we were playing didn't suit what I wanted out of RPGs. That was easily fixed once I was able to find games that did better suit me, and I am still playing role-playing games after almost 40 years as a gamer.
Photo by Jessica Podraza on Unsplash
We have a problem with being heroic in a number of role-playing games, but most particularly in fantasy games where the ideas of advancement and betterment for characters are built around the concept of killing. In games with alignment systems, this doubles down because alignment becomes a mechanical expression of morality in those games. So, not only does this mean that killing is the method in these games for your character to become better at what they do, killing also becomes the moral choice for dealing with situations.
This is what causes the problem with being heroic, because in my mind being a hero and killing are at cross purposes with each other. I get that there are a number of different ways to define heroes, but for me that definition has been informed by my years of comic book reading. Superman. Captain America. Spider-Man. Yes, each of these characters has had stories where they have had to kill, but the focus of those stories wasn't about the killing, as much as they were about the impact that the killings had upon the characters. I am not saying that heroes are never going to kill, but they do it only as a last resort and their characters aren't defined by the action.
This is at the root of my disconnect with many fantasy role-playing games, and much fantasy fiction. I like characters who are heroes. The fantasy fiction that I interact with tends to come from comic books. Travis Morgan of Warlord. The Nightmaster. Heroes can be complicated, they can be conflicted, but they can still be basically good. For me, that can get lost in translation with games.
I define a lot of games as being heroic that others might not. I think that the underlying struggle of Call of Cthulhu and games like Trail of Cthulhu are inherently heroic. In this style of Lovecraftian gaming, the characters are engaged in a struggle that they will likely not survive, not because they want to be a part of that struggle, but because they feel that they must. I think that is the core of heroic characters: they are motivated to take action, regardless of their personal safety, because they know that the action has to be taken. I know that this is an untraditional interpretation of Lovecraftian games, but it is an interpretation that makes the games easier on those who aren't as much of a fan of horror, or horror gaming.
Games like Doctor Who: Adventures In Time And Space are at the opposite pole of the games that reward killing. Violence is deemphasized in the game by making it literally the last thing that occurs during a round. Characters are encouraged to resolve conflict through methods other than violence, much like in the television show. Doctor Who, as a television show, can be a weird example of heroism, however, because while the Doctor preaches that violence shouldn't be the answer, and he himself is mostly directly non-violent in his responses, he is also know to surround himself with Companions who can react violently on his behalf (Captain Jack Harkness, I am looking at you, along with the many UNIT soldiers who accompanied him in the old days), and sometimes with his blessing. The Doctor is, at times, moved to violence, and even to killing, but much like with the super-heroic examples that I mentioned above, the stories about him doing this are about the whys of his violent reactions and his killing, and how they impact the character. You could argue that a lot of the stories of the NuWho era are about exploring the impact that the deaths that he was responsible for during the Time War have weighed upon him, and shaped his psyche.
I think that I would have less of a problem with the systems that build advancement upon violence and killing, if there were more of an exploration of how these acts can impact the psychology of the characters, rather than just giving them an additional to hit bonus. If you've been in a fight in real life, you know that even when you win a fight your mind still works you over. Violence is not fun.
Yes, I know the counter argument: people do not want "realism" in their games, they want an escape. This can often boil down to wanting an escape from repercussions of actions, more than anything else.
So, how do you move role-playing games that rely on killing for advancement away from that? When Runequest first came out in 1978, this was one of the things that the game set out to "fix." In Runequest your character gets better by doing things, by using their skills. Yes, this includes combat skills, but you won't get more points for your survival skills because you killed some orcs at one point. When you use a skill in Runequest, you mark it, and then later make a roll to see if it is improved or not. It is a clean and elegant method that allows a character to get better at things by doing.
With games like Fate Core, or earlier examples like Green Ronin's SRD-derived True 20 system, would use a more story-driven method for advancement. The idea behind this is that, as characters move through a campaign, doing things, making rolls for things and, yes, sometimes even killing, that this is what should be the determinations for change to, and advancement of, player characters. In Fate this is called reaching milestones. The characters achieving a milestone in a campaign, which can be as straightforward as defeating an enemy, this should trigger a change in those characters. For example, if a character in a Fate game has an aspect of "Seeking Revenge Against The Sheriff," then defeating that sheriff would be an important milestone for the character in that campaign, and at the very least should trigger being able to change that aspect to something else, perhaps even something tied to the aftermath of that milestone like "I Guess I Am The Sheriff Now."
The sad truth with some fantasy role-playing games is that defeat just isn't enough. In games like the early editions of Dungeons & Dragons, you get less experience for defeating a foe than you would for killing them. That means a slower advancement for your character. In many ways, this is a punishment for taking a less violent course of action for your characters.
I have long held up the Karma system from TSR's classic Marvel Super-Heroes game is not only one of the earliest set of rules that attempted genre simulation, rather than simulation of physics, but it is the single best emulation of the pre-Watchmen, pre-Dark Knight Returns genre of super-hero comics. It punished you outright for killing. If your hero killed someone, they lost all of their Karma. It was worse if you had a super-group with pooled Karma, because you lost all of that pooled Karma as well. However, Karma also made you think about your character's short term successes versus their long term. Karma was a pool of point that were not only spent to improve your character, but you used them as a currency to improve dice rolls for task resolution.
Every time that you spent Karma to succeed at a task, that meant there would be some advancement that you could not take in the future, unless you worked your character harder to earn more Karma to make up for the expense. Add this to the fact that Karma had to be spent before you rolled your dice, and you could be making a literal crap shoot for your character.
However, this worked for Marvel Super-Heroes for a couple of reasons. First, comic book super-heroes really don't change a lot in comics. And when they do change, the changes are often rolled back the next time there is a new creative team on a book. Back in the 60s and 70s, when people other than Stan Lee began writing books at Marvel Comics he would refer to this as the "illusion of change." The idea was that you give just enough change to a character to suggest growth, but not so much change that readers can no longer recognize the core elements of a character. This is the basis of the assumption that, with comics, no matter how much things might change in the short term, sooner or later everything will go back to more or less of a reset point.
Secondly, Karma enforces heroic action. A part of heroic action, much like I mentioned above when talking about heroism in Lovecraftian games, is sacrifice. Karma is a sacrificial element of your character's heroism in the Marvel Super-Heroes game. You spend Karma before a dice roll, which means that you don't even know if you will need it or not, but the action that your character is attempting is so important that you are willing to make the sacrifice. You have to balance short term success against long term goals. You might even be able to argue that the Sanity system in Call of Cthulhu is a similar system of sacrifice to Karma. You sacrifice your character's sanity in order to attempt to drive Chthonic creatures away and "save" the world, even if it is only for the short term.
Unfortunately, the shift in sensibilities in comics that came not long after the Marvel Super-Heroes game came out made these ideas seem corny to a lot of people. Not for me, because even though I am a bigger fan of DC Comics than Marvel Comics, the heroism of the game really appealed to me (and echoes of it still do). It isn't coincidence that the games that drew me away from games like Dungeons & Dragons were Marvel Super-Heroes and Call of Cthulhu. They both had approaches that appealed to my desire for heroism, plus comics and horror fiction were (and still are) the media that I consume the most.
The nice thing about having so many different types of role-playing games available is that everyone can find the games that suit their agenda for playing games. None of these approaches are better than the others, but they can help us to find the ways to have more effective approach to what we want out of gaming. On some levels, even as a kid, I was unsatisfied with role-playing, but as more games started coming out I realized that it wasn't the activity itself that was causing the difficulty but that the approach of the game we were playing didn't suit what I wanted out of RPGs. That was easily fixed once I was able to find games that did better suit me, and I am still playing role-playing games after almost 40 years as a gamer.
