Heroes Are Misfits; Heroes of Science Fiction & Fantasy
Before anything else, because I always forget to do this otherwise, here's a link to my book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1954094493 - I'm sorry about sharing that, but we do sadly live in a capitalist-centric society, and that means I have to spend money for the essentials of life, which means I need to somehow make money for said essentials.
That bit of unpleasantness out of the way, I've spent a lot of time and brainpan space over the years thinking about what makes heroes. This started out as part of playing tabletop roleplaying games, like Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, GURPS, the various World of Darkness games (mostly Werewolf: the Apocalypse: those who know about that game will understand why), and similar strangenesses.
Eventually, though, I ended up stranded here at school, working out my PhD., and haven't had nearly as much time as I've wanted for playing games. I did, however, make time for writing a book, The Man from Rock Bottom, which is all about a quirky little guy who would really prefer to just do his job as a galactic zookeeper - the keeper of the last animal sanctuary on Earth, actually - but who keeps ending up having to deal with the unnatural sort of creature: monsters. And sometimes those monsters are also people.
Like it or not, he keeps ending up as a hero. One of the many heroes of science fiction and fantasy which, strangely enough, seem to inspire us to greater acts of personal heroism than most of the real-life heroes we learn about in history. Hopefully not more than the personal heroes in our own lives, though.
This has led me through a variety of mental gymnastics to attempt to understand what that word means, "hero," and its contextual implications.
Since I start from a roleplaying background first and foremost - I regard these games to be a continuation of the ancient traditions of storytelling, performed collaboratively, and using more standardized rules so as to keep things fair and enjoyable for everyone - I will frequently shift into "roleplaying speak," with words like PCs (for the characters controlled by the other players at the table) and NPCs (for the characters controlled by the main storyteller, or gamemaster). If this causes any confusion as I tap along, I apologize, but hope that there won't be too much loss of coherence as I continue my work into understanding the concepts behind what causes us to try so desperately, each of us in our own little way, in our own little worlds, to try and be the heroes of our own stories.
Me, I think I've more-or-less made my peace with being a questgiver.
So here's some initial thoughts I've had on the subject, starting off with the obvious question: why are all the adventurers and heroes that people play or write about so darn weird?
One matter to consider about adventurers, in just about any setting: they're outsiders. Typically, in order for a player's character to enter their present field - an adventurer, a hero, a protagonist - something has to have gone *wrong* on a fundamental level. This is usually something that is wrong with the character or their life situation. Occasionally, especially in many post-apocalyptic settings, this is because something has gone wrong with the world around them, and they're just adapting in the best way they can under the circumstances.
Either way, adventurers are something apart from the rest of reality, from the rest of the world. They're a breed apart, and the only people they dare to trust is the other members of their party, because they're just as broken, just as set apart from the rest of the world. Actually, this is very true-to-life, because very frequently those suffering from the PTSD following a traumatic event find that they just can't settle down, they can't go home. So they wander, and since they have to eat, they eventually learn to turn the skills and abilities they gained from their trauma into something marketable.
So this should be an essential, expected element of every character backstory: how did they break from the normal world to enter their present lifestyle?
Adventurer Appearances:
In a "true" fantasy world, where magic is plentiful, science is weird, and there's a full kitchen sink of ideas to play with, there should be minimal constraints on what various characters, PCs and NPCs alike, might look like.
Occasionally, in such a setting, it likely wouldn't hurt to have "scene pans," to show off just how varied a given street scene or collection of bar denizens are - and how everybody accepts the heterogeniety as normal!
Getting an eye or a limb or other body part warped, or the color of one's skin changed, is usually a sign of a magical mishap of some sort, or perhaps a price paid as part of terms of service. So a goat hoof, a reptilian claw, golden metallic skin, a gemstone eye, or something similarly exotic are unusual, but among a certain class almost expected. That "certain class," of course, being the kind of people that compose the population of adventurers, or the people with whom they're most likely to interact.
Replacement parts are as likely in fantasy worlds as in cyberpunk, and for the same reasons: amputations are a common hazard of the occupation, and upgrades at the expense of limited flesh-and-blood limbs can enhance performance, meaning the difference between life and death, profit and penury. These replacements can be smoothly cybernetic, clockwork, steamwork, living grafts, grown from plants, biological constructs, or just about anything that comes to mind: magic makes all that and more possible! Feel free to let the imagination run rampant.
As for species, there's an immense difference between statistics and appearance. Someone might be statted as a "human," but that could mean pretty close to literally anything within an astounding range of possibilities. A fantasy version of a scene like Star Wars' Mos Eisley Cantina could be composed mostly of "humans" by statistics, as a stark example.
The problem in such a setting is that adventurers will have a harder time sticking out of the crowd by mere race. Depending on where they go, they might have a hard time sticking out at all. Instead, they'll have to stick out visually by the marks of their profession - scars and equipage - as well as their atypicality for their particular species, and the general air of experience and danger that comes from those who regularly put their lives on the line.
Heroes of Destiny:
For heroes of destiny, they always seem to find their way into their path.
Sometimes they find a magic item that confirms the role.
Other times, events just conspire against them.
These events might be good or bad, but they always project the hero along the destined route, and they get steadily less pleasant the more the hero resists.
Wrapup
Those are just my initial thoughts, thrown out for the fun of it. Also to give an idea of what sort of stuff you can expect on this blog. I'm not planning to be terribly formal here, and as soon as I figure out how to allow commentary, I welcome it: I'm a continual work in progress, and whenever I say or write anything, it's typically to evoke a thought-response from others so that I can temper and adjust my own thoughts accordingly.
Most of the art you'll see is produced by Astanael, by the way - Pierre Joubert to those who know him - who did the cover and interior art for my book The Man from Rock Bottom. He's an awesome guy: I think you should check out his art page, linked below the rough draft he did for the titular character of the book, above.
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