A Time for Heroes

Twenty years ago when I first started playing D&D the people I played with all wanted to play anti-heroes, and mysterious, self-indulgent loners that barely connected with anyone else. The truth, of course, is that you can't play a team game where everyone is a loner so no one really played that way - but they wanted to. God, did they ever want to. 

In a lot of ways this predilection towards the anti-hero and the loner was a reflection of the wider zeitgeist  of the time. Heroes had become boring and lame. They were things that only naive children really believed in and the world was all a bunch of shades of gray. Good and evil were subjective view points dependent on the perspective of the people involved. 

Let's be honest, it was an excuse for the players to justify their shitty behavior in the game without real consequences. By consistently claiming that an action was "in character" or that their character believed that they were acting in a 'good' manner they could often excuse terrible things. It's the same reason why people can look at an obviously evil character like Homelander and argue that he's actually a good guy. 

 

Homelander from The Boys

That sort of mentality is exhausting and over the last decade I've spent a lot of time pushing players who still cling to that style of play away from my table. I want to see my players be the heroes of the game and to see them rise above the worlds we play in to make the world a better place. 

I think that may be why I have begun to play with an eye towards my players being the heroes of the setting rather than having them be just adventurers that are exploring the world.  Both styles of play are a lot of fun, but right now the world is a bit of a scary place. We have the rise of authoritarianism throughout the globe, wars are sparking off, and civil unrest is found all over the world. It's a good time to find heroes we can believe in - even if they're just in our silly role-playing games.