Friday Forum Philosophy - Week 7

[Kindling]

See, I'm not looking as Adventuring being, as you put it, "an awe-inspiring profession" at all... because I don't like to look at it as a profession at all! Think of, say, the characters in the original Star Wars trilogy. Undoubtedly, they have adventures, as they are part of an adventure story. But are they adventurers? Is that how they would be viewed? No. They're a farmboy, some smugglers, some droids, and a princess. They then HAVE adventures. That's the point I was originally trying to make. I want characters to have adventures, rather than to be adventurers... or maybe they could eventually become adventurers if those adventures became frequent enough, but it wouldn't be like... well they'd be the exception, simply by having those adventures, so really that's the same thing you're talking about, the characters being famous on the merits of their actions rather than because, hey, if people see a guy in platemail with a magic sword, he must be a Great Adventurer, right?

EDIT: This is another reason why I like Iron Heroes - the assumption with that is that anyone with levels in a PC class has a distinct combat advantage over anyone with NPC class levels, so that even at low-level, your characters are able to stand out through their actions in the world. For example even a level one party could be reasonably expected to win a fight if outnumbered two-to-one by a bunch of "normal" warriors, something that is really quite an impressive feat, and would evoke a certain degree of awe or fear from anyone who heard about it.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

The most developed PC I played was probably Evan Zephyr. I introduced him halfway through one campaign when the party needed a different makeup. Another player and I had been playing siblings, so when his character left to make a character, mine did too.

I started out with a fairly detailed background, which the GM, to his credit made great use of. Despite having originally been designed as a lighthearted treasure hunter who the party hired as a guide and translator, he somehow got cast as party leader. Because of the way the GM used the background, he became a much more serious, introspective character.

I played him again in a new campaign (different GM), where he had to save the world again, as the leader of a new party.

We had actually discussed a third campaign, using epic rules, but it never manifested. Which is okay, since while I wanted to play the character again, epic 3.X didn't impress me.