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<blockquote data-quote="Wombat" data-source="post: 1538219" data-attributes="member: 8447">I think we are dealing with multiple definitions of &quot;The Hero&quot; in this thread.For example, the Campbellian Hero (gotta love Hero With A Thousand Faces!) is a specific folkloric model, a cross-cultural digest form describing heroes from literature and religions worldwide in the most generic, yet important, terms, starting from &quot;unusual birth&quot; and/or &quot;prophecy&quot; to &quot;death&quot; (or equivalent), with or without inspired followers after the fact.&nbsp; As Campbell points out, Maui, Herakles, Moses and King Arthur do not have exactly the same story, but there are intriguingly similar patterns that bind them together and thus we can use the rubric &quot;Hero&quot; to describe them all.On the other hand we can site &quot;heroes&quot; in our own lives who went through none of these standard conventions (or possibly only through a couple of them), and yet they inspire us in some very important, very much fundamental manner.&nbsp; A person who kills many people in a war may be a hero; so too may be someone who refuses to go to war.&nbsp; As we have seen, sometimes all that is required to become a hero is the refusal to give up a bus seat, if it is the right place and time.&nbsp; These individuals do not fulfill the Hero's Journey, but they inspire others to follow a similar path of action later.So there is the Folkloric Hero and the Ordinary Hero.&nbsp; Both can inspire rpg games, most certainly.&nbsp; Matter of taste for games, of course, and while I would aspire to running a game with the full Hero's Journey, I rarely find the players that are fully willing to take that trip.&nbsp; It's a tough one and, as Campbell points out, many of the Heroes are only appreciated as such after their deaths, being shunned by their own communities during their lifetimes.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Wombat, post: 1538219, member: 8447"] I think we are dealing with multiple definitions of "The Hero" in this thread. For example, the Campbellian Hero (gotta love [I]Hero With A Thousand Faces[/I]!) is a specific folkloric model, a cross-cultural digest form describing heroes from literature and religions worldwide in the most generic, yet important, terms, starting from "unusual birth" and/or "prophecy" to "death" (or equivalent), with or without inspired followers after the fact. As Campbell points out, Maui, Herakles, Moses and King Arthur do not have exactly the same story, but there are intriguingly similar patterns that bind them together and thus we can use the rubric "Hero" to describe them all. On the other hand we can site "heroes" in our own lives who went through none of these standard conventions (or possibly only through a couple of them), and yet they inspire us in some very important, very much fundamental manner. A person who kills many people in a war may be a hero; so too may be someone who refuses to go to war. As we have seen, sometimes all that is required to become a hero is the refusal to give up a bus seat, if it is the right place and time. These individuals do not fulfill the Hero's Journey, but they inspire others to follow a similar path of action later. So there is the Folkloric Hero and the Ordinary Hero. Both can inspire rpg games, most certainly. Matter of taste for games, of course, and while I would aspire to running a game with the full Hero's Journey, I rarely find the players that are fully willing to take that trip. It's a tough one and, as Campbell points out, many of the Heroes are only appreciated as such after their deaths, being shunned by their own communities during their lifetimes. [/QUOTE]

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