Robin D. Laws - Your Character’s Iconic Ethos
[Recent Entries][Archive][Friends][User Info]
|
09:20 am
[Link] |
Your Character’s Iconic Ethos
Hit the tag for previous discussion of iconic heroes...
An iconic hero re-imposes order on the world by reasserting his essential selfhood. The nature of his radical individuality can be summed up with a statement of his iconic ethos. It is the ethos that grants higher meaning to the hero’s actions, and a clue to his creator’s intentions. An iconic hero’s ethos motivates and empowers him.
Sherlock Holmes solves mysteries using rigorous deductive logic.
Conan uses his barbaric superiority to overturn the false order of corrupt civilization.
Carnacki the Ghost Finder conquers fear with scientific methodology and technology.
Dr. Gregory House caustically tramples social decencies to solve medical mysteries, temporarily assuaging his self-loathing.
Batman brings justice to cowardly and superstitious wrongdoers, doing for others what he could not do for his murdered parents.
James Bond dispatches the enemies of Britain with cold suavity and violence.
Tarzan upholds the noble values of the jungle against the predatory outsiders who would despoil it.
Aldo Raines brutalizes the brutalizers, marking them to strike terror into their compatriots, and to prevent those he spares from escaping their crimes.
Philip Marlowe goes down mean streets, without himself becoming mean.
An iconic ethos implies both action and motivation, and is thus an ideal tool for defining player characters in roleplaying games. What does your character do, and why does he do it?
The ethos further refers to something we, the audience want to see happen. Thus it ensures sympathy for what is often eccentric, anti-social or cruel behavior. The iconic hero is free of society’s constraints, yet acts to restore order. This order may be different from our own, as it is for Conan and Tarzan, but is privileged within the moral framework provided by the author. In real life, you might be a PR rep for a firm engaged in clear-cutting old growth forest, but if you disconnect your own values from the ethical universe portrayed by Edgar Rice Burroughs, you can still enjoy rooting for Tarzan. Where the iconic hero trope is used in an ironic or revisionist fashion, we might be made to feel conflicted about the outcome, as with Raines.
Roleplaying PCs need not be iconic. They can be dramatic characters, who are changed by their experience of the world and undergo a transformative arc. Often they’re neither, and amble around without achieving memorable definition.
Who are you playing now? If you were to conceive of him or her as iconic, what would your hero’s ethos be?
Tags: gaming hut, iconic heroes, narrative structure
|
|
| |
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/35194975/1935043) | | From: | ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) pond823 |
|---|
| Date: | September 28th, 2009 02:45 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
Gingel slips a blade between the ribs of those who he deems would deny him the right to live, before they know he existed at all.
Thanks for this. I once had a character who, I now see, I conceived of as an iconic hero, and for whom I had an arc plotted out, that would chart his decay into a dramatic (tragic) hero-villain. Of course, I didn't think of it in these terms at the time, and so I had a hard time communicating the whole idea to my DM.
In any event, it didn't work out just as I'd planned, as these things probably shouldn't. But you've made me think about it again.
I had a PC who was most definitely Dramatic. Humakti, due to a relationship with her parents and her father in particular that was... let's just say "traumatic". Then I too over as the GM of that campaign. Her dramatic arc was brought to a firm conclusion (her killing/forgiving her father was the climax), and she was then converted into a Iconic source of info for the PCs - she's now head of Intel for the Humakti warband they're all a part of.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/91847393/1168884) | | From: | bcwalker |
|---|
| Date: | September 28th, 2009 06:51 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
I am very glad that you made this post, Robin, and I appreciate the clarity of expression that you put to the matter. As I go ahead on my own work, I'll keep it in mind.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/55914266/2482486) | | From: | wordwill |
|---|
| Date: | September 28th, 2009 08:23 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
As a player I am playing, as I usually play, what I thought was a dramatic character heading out on the first steps of an arc. Instead, I am probably better off recognizing that I am stuck in my state and should decide that the order my character wants to impose on the world involves a bunch of dead evil cultists.
Lacklow stabs the eyes of tyrants and oppressors, helping raise the spirit of the common folk.
El-Haumarzeid, deprived of a quietly glorious and meaningful life in the cosmically-ordered society of ma'at, must begrudgingly ally with infidel and monster-people to beat back the dark things befouling his fallen civilization and restore divine rule in the mortal realm.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/68880757/1525279) | | From: | candika |
|---|
| Date: | September 28th, 2009 11:14 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
All male examples?
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/26608213/6275201) | | From: | kylaw |
|---|
| Date: | September 28th, 2009 11:40 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
Ooh, let me try!
Jirel of Joiry triumphs by blade and will over those who would enslave her, even when this defies her heart.
Dr. Dana Scully investigates the paranormal, logic and faith sustaining her against its horrors and temptations.
Lt. Ellen Ripley uses all the resources of her frail humanity to defend same against the alien.
Dr. Susan Calvin adopts the rationality of machines to overcome problems caused by human nature.
Lythande fights against the injustices of the world, condemned by the price of her powers to never know its joys.
Most of them are older characters and predate the era of female adventure protagonists.
You're welcome to chime in with newer examples.
The last two times I played as apposed to GM'd, I had an iconic, then a dramatic character.
I am thinking on my Unfettered Space game and what I have there. I would have to say 4 of the 5 players have set up characters to be dramatic, and expect to be changed by what happens. The last I think is currently just muddling through, but I suspect will also go dramatic.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/31456289/2302548) | | From: | chryx |
|---|
| Date: | September 29th, 2009 01:35 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
My default assumption is that my characters are picaresque characters. In other words, they're slightly comic personalities (ok, let's be honest here, outright buffoons) who are out there to experience the world for its own sake.
Shoryu is most certainly not an iconic character.
The exercise, however, was to conceive of them as such. Shoryu, for example, could be a servant of the Trickster god, subverting the blah de farghle de fooferaw.
Shoryu is a gut-driven barbarian who, because of his upbringing, tries to justify his decisions as perfectly rational actions.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/2440939/643624) | | From: | bunj |
|---|
| Date: | September 29th, 2009 02:48 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
Dr. Gregory House caustically tramples social decencies to solve medical mysteries, temporarily assuaging his self-loathing.
I was thinking of this while watching the show last night. I think the main problem with the show is that they are trying to make an iconic character dramatic. For several seasons now they have been trying to put House on some journey of self-discovery, and it doesn't make much sense and ends up annoying me. He shouldn't go on journeys, he should remain irascible. If they want a dramatic arc, they should pick one of the other characters.
You've cleverly anticipated an upcoming post.
I'm glad they're taking House on this arc. I imagine he'll go through a change that lets him be identically irascible for different reasons — an arc that circles all the way back to the beginning, except without the Vicodin, maybe.
I'd be interested in using this distinction as a way of defining the kind of game I'm running. Communicating expectations to the players is one of the most important aspects of preparing for a game.
I'm also curious as to how it breaks down according to the game you're running.
Exalted deals in iconic heroes. The motivations system helps with that, by demanding that every character be working towards a truly epic goal.
D&D 4E is definitely geared more towards iconic heroes. 3.5 strongly leans that way.
Unknown Armies can go either way. Low level games are often dramatic. High level, heavily iconic, as the heroes quite literally impose their worldview onto the world. Kult tends more towards dramatic heroes, who spiral into madness and, only after they have been irrevocably changed, begin to reshape the world according to the strange new self that they have become. The difference here is that Unknown Armies is about obsession, whereas Kult is about imprisonment. UA heroes are defined by what drives them. Kult heroes are defined by their history and circumstances.
Shadowrun is another game that can really go both ways. You either go the Snow Crash route of iconic heroes who use the essentially broken nature of the world to slip through the cracks and carve out their own spaces, or you go the Neuromancer route of people trying to keep from getting crushed under the heels of the corporations, who do terrible things just to survive in a terrible world, dramatic heroes who are often dragged deeper into the darkness over the course of the story, and must either sink or swim.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/3274204/808939) | | From: | womzilla |
|---|
| Date: | September 30th, 2009 11:41 am (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
Have you read Garth Ennis's long, dark run on the Punisher? Not the comedic romps, but the sixty-issue run that concluded last year? The iconic protagonist as monster, a brutal beast who preys on the damned.
I haven't checked that out, but the Punisher is definitely an iconic anti-hero.
A tool, yes, but at least to my thinking not an ideal tool. Your previous post on that topic (the one with the Inglorious Basterds example) kind of hit the nail on the head of what bothers me about some players who go for the “Iconic Role”. They can’t compromise, they can’t be changed by the events of the game, and in part that means they can’t negotiate with the GM or more often with the other players.
I think it is great to have a role model for your character, but at the same time sticking to that path– or deciding ahead of time that your character can only change in X way, can limit the game, stomp on other people’s fun and make it harder for the GM to write to you. There's a weird tension between player vision/desires and their ability to interact with the world around them in a non-destructive way.
My recently-retired character is perhaps a strange case. She was definitely a dramatic character (started out working for The Empire, very ruthless and by-the book even after her defection) but even as she developed (came to understand that the ends don't always justify the means, developed more empathy, became less uptight and more adaptable) she retained certain core traits (professionalism under fire, never-say-die perseverance, readiness to bring overwhelming force to bear when required), eventually forging herself into an iconic hero. Summing her up with a one-line statement of ethos is proving difficult, though...hmmm. How about: "Talia Renn uses her training, determination, firepower, and hard-won wisdom to try and make up for her past mistakes." |
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/openid-profile.gif){kind=small}