Thursday, December 8, 2011

Joseph Campbell's Heroic Journey, Supernatural Characters in the World of Darkness, and Gangrel

There's been some discussion recently in OWBN's gangrel out of character mailing list about Gangrel. People have been suggesting that vampires (and other supernatural creatures more generally in the World of Darkness) can be Heros in the sense of Joseph Campbell's monomyth, or superheros, while others have suggested that Vampires are essentially motivated by selfishness. Personally I think either view is reductionist, and I wrote the following:

Actually, Campbell's heroic monomyth isn't that great a fit. 

Character types of the world of darkness are based on trespassing against a society's taboos, about ceasing to be human. Vampires, Changelings, Werewolves and Mages, all represent an alteration from man to another type of being brought upon by some sort of trespass... with the possible exception of mages, who are a sort of reification of ritual as a means of transcending humanity, but at the same time plays with the separation of the "awakened" from ordinary man. None of them returns to humanity, they are all fundamentally inhuman at some level, set apart in fundamental ways. Even mages are in effect the shamans of their culture, transcending the physical with the metaphysical in ways that "sleepers" cannot.

The mono myth isn't even all that widely accepted among students of mythology, at least as I understand it. It's kind of a crib. Sure the Hero has a thousand faces, but Campbell goes on to write the Masks of god, which talks about the cultural differences in myth and their importance.

Anyway, getting back to vampire, it's perhaps better to see Vampires as representing essentially cautionary tales. Myths about the inhuman are still, at there essence, myths about humanity, the limits of what it is to be human and the allure of leaving humanity behind contrasted with the loss that represents... hence the focus on Humanity in vampire.

That tension, among Clan Gangrel, is about becoming bestial and wild vs. staying human. Gangrel grow more powerful by departing from their humanity, by becoming part of the wilderness. Essentially, Gangrel become red in tooth and claw, the ultimate bestial predator, at the cost of giving up most human concerns. The essential ultimate gangrel lives in the wild, survives easily, is a monsterous predator and a loner, lacking concerns for politics or human morals and even human speech, a master of their environment, but lacking self control and operating largely on instinct..

It's also not really a player character, since living alone in the wild as a beast isn't really great for a protagonist.

Gangrel PCs instead have to have that tension... they live uneasily on the line between beast and human, seeking a unification that may well be impossible. A Gangrel story is about changing, or resisting the change, of becoming more bestial and animalistic. It works slightly better in Tabletop, where Frenzy is an advantage (making you largely immune to social and mental powers) then in live action, where it's mostly a disadvantage. It's also hard for Storytellers to frame stuff... really dramatic moments should have you choose between fufilling your goals by acting like an animal, or remaining essentially human and failing. It's about sacrificing ones humanity for one's goals or one's goals for one's humanity.

Anyway, that's not to say that Gangrel can't be heroic. But in a sense, if your playing your Gangrel as the good guys, facing only easy black and white moral choices, running around in beast form without it making you more into a beast fundamentally, you are not taking full advantage of the real drama of being Gangrel... that tension, that struggle. In a sense, that struggle, winning it, or even losing and becoming more beast like, is also part of myth.

Remember, when you "Win" on a path or humanity check, you feel either guilty (for conscience) or gain a sense of shame over your own failure (for conviction). When you lose, you feel righteous and justified.

If I had to draw a larger lesson from this... I'd say that things that make one more powerful should also bring one closer to one's animal nature, and one's Beast. Maybe some combo disciplines would benefit from having neg trait requirements... you have to be bestial or repugnant or feral enough for them. Maybe getting mentors for paths like path of the beast, especially instinct paths, should be harder for those that resist frenzying, or seek to mitigate their animalistic nature with Mask of 1k, or use tools in beast form. Not that these should necessarily be binding packet rules, but they might make good suggested rules for STs, and guidelines for PCs to gain coord approval.

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