What Makes a Hero?
- Thread starter Death_Jester
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WayneLigon
Adventurer
I think the Cambellian use of the word 'Hero' has a broader and more scholarly meaning than we usually attach to that word. 'Protagonist' would be a better term, really.
The hero does what he does for a variety of reasons but what he does must involve risk to himself, or his position, or to others he feels close to. Still very, very possible to do in D&D or in any RPG. To willingly choose to place oneself in a position where personal loss is likely, in order to better the position of others/society as a whole: that makes a hero.
The hero does what he does for a variety of reasons but what he does must involve risk to himself, or his position, or to others he feels close to. Still very, very possible to do in D&D or in any RPG. To willingly choose to place oneself in a position where personal loss is likely, in order to better the position of others/society as a whole: that makes a hero.
Ralts Bloodthorne
First Post
What makes a hero?
Interesting question. One I asked My Father several times as I was growing up. He always answered the same way...
"A hero is someone who did something that was necessary, that nobody else wanted to do, even if he did not have to do it."
Personally, the media has cheapened the use of the word "Hero" by over-using it and applying it to media darlings.
To quote Chris Rock: "Hillary Clinton's a hero? She's not a hero! AQUAMAN'S a hero!"
But, anyway, I've seen acts that were heroic, and many of them were never recognised by anyone who had been there.
In game turns, a Paladin is one of the most heroic classes out there. He beleives in something greater than himself, and is willing to die for that belief, for that cause, and those ideals.
One thing, regarding heroism, is to remember point of view. To Americans, Benidict Arnold was a traitor for giving up the fort to the British. To the British, he was a hero who knew his duty, while the rest of the American heroes were nothing but traitors. So someone who is a bad guy to the PC's, might be a hero to everyone else...
Interesting question. One I asked My Father several times as I was growing up. He always answered the same way...
"A hero is someone who did something that was necessary, that nobody else wanted to do, even if he did not have to do it."
Personally, the media has cheapened the use of the word "Hero" by over-using it and applying it to media darlings.
To quote Chris Rock: "Hillary Clinton's a hero? She's not a hero! AQUAMAN'S a hero!"
But, anyway, I've seen acts that were heroic, and many of them were never recognised by anyone who had been there.
In game turns, a Paladin is one of the most heroic classes out there. He beleives in something greater than himself, and is willing to die for that belief, for that cause, and those ideals.
One thing, regarding heroism, is to remember point of view. To Americans, Benidict Arnold was a traitor for giving up the fort to the British. To the British, he was a hero who knew his duty, while the rest of the American heroes were nothing but traitors. So someone who is a bad guy to the PC's, might be a hero to everyone else...
Death_Jester
Explorer
Warlord Ralts said:
Lets not get into the whole moral relativism. It works as a "real world" philosophical construct but in dungeons and dragons it is not that helpful. If you can justify and explain away every action with some justification then the idea of heroic and villainous become blurred and useless.
Not only that it is not what I need from this conversation. No offence but I get this enough with my players.
Ralts Bloodthorne
First Post
Death_Jester said:
I was pointing out that perhaps it would be interesting to have a villian who is far and away villanous to the party, and thier society, but a hero among his own people. That makes it so that the party has to infiltrate a land full of people that idolize the very villian that people are out to kill.
Just because he is a hero to his people, does not mean that what he did was not villanous to the players.
What I was hitting on, basically, was: A hero also depends on whose perception and where they were, as well as the actions that they took.
SOrry to hit a sore nerve, and you don't feel it was helpful, but hey, just trying to help.
/me backs carefully away, toward the door.
Death_Jester
Explorer
Warlord Ralts said:
Ummm . . . sorry about the over reaction to that statement, but my players, well one in particular, is always "justifying" his actions as being heroic. It just annoys me that he never gets the point of being a hero is more then just whacking evil people and taking their "phat lewt".
Being a hero to me at least is not "the ends justify the means" kind of situation. If you go there with it then anything is permissible and you lose the "flavor" of the heroic with a group of vigilantes doing anything they want and calling it heroic. This is not a proclamation but just my personal opinion here.
It was not my intention to come off like an azzhat with a short fuse.
I would probably use the situation you described but the villain would be evil and his/her culture would be evil as well. Dungeons and Dragons is good about giving culture wide alignments to places and people to make it easy to know how they relate to each other and outsiders.
Peace
using the methods of evil to defeat evil
A hero is someone who uses the methods of evil to defeat evil. If you think about the typical D20 good-aligned hero, they steal, inflict death and suffering and break just about every moral code you can think of - in the name of making the world a better place.
In this sense, however, evil is whatever the hero sees as evil; a alignment-evil hero can still be a hero - by using the methods of their enemy to engineer their defeat.
So heroism is really a sort of metaphysical theft and transcendance: stealing the sword of your enemies - and thus becoming greater than your fellows - in order to triumph. Very primal, very meaningful.
Reason
A hero is someone who uses the methods of evil to defeat evil. If you think about the typical D20 good-aligned hero, they steal, inflict death and suffering and break just about every moral code you can think of - in the name of making the world a better place.
In this sense, however, evil is whatever the hero sees as evil; a alignment-evil hero can still be a hero - by using the methods of their enemy to engineer their defeat.
So heroism is really a sort of metaphysical theft and transcendance: stealing the sword of your enemies - and thus becoming greater than your fellows - in order to triumph. Very primal, very meaningful.
Reason
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