RPG Errata: Iron Valley, and Heroes

Iron Valley, by M. Kirin, is a solo RPG powered by Ironsworn and based on Stardew Valley. You play a recent transplant to Iron Valley, a quiet little community where an old family farm sits waiting for you to build it back up to its proud industrial roots. Or, maybe you’ll make friends and get married, or spend your time exploring and charting the spooky forest, or any number of other adventures that await your attention.

Iron Valley is one of any number of RPGs that have come out in recent years that are, for lack of a better word, cozy. The goal of the game isn’t to ammass loot or slay dragons, it’s not to save the galaxy or avert planetary destruction, it’s to spend time with community, find new friends and nurture the world. That’s not to say you couldn’t be a monster-slaying defender of the town — you can do anything in an RPG — but the focus of the game isn’t violence, it’s humility.

Most RPGs have similar underlying assumptions. As I’ve said before, we tell the stories we’re told, and RPGs succumb to the same rule. RPGs are usually about action heroes, warriors, space-ship captains, mercenaries, expert-treasure-hunters, and the like. The underlying assumption of most RPGs is that this story, whatever it ultimately becomes, is about someone significant. Stories are about protagonists, and that simple rule is often twisted to mean stories are about heroes.

The thing is, most people don’t want to be heroes.

I mean, honestly, can you imagine? Living every day on edge, not knowing where your next meal is coming from, spending what little you can spare on bandages and ale, all for the sake of putting your life on the line to fight monsters that are stronger than you? It’s like joining the military without the promise of college tuition or the VA to sweeten the deal.

If being an independently contracted paleontologist/mercenary doesn’t appeal to you here in the real world, rest assured it doesn’t appeal to many. It takes the romantic abstractions of healing potions, treasure rooms, and the Monarch’s favor to even make it worthy of game-status. It’s why so many job-games are pale shadows of the actual job. Everyone can enjoy feeling like a guitar hero, few want to do all the less-pleasant work it takes to live it.

It’s tourism. An escape. A fantasy that most RPGs are willing to indulge. Gaining all the glory and fortune without risking your life.

Genre painting is artwork that depicts commonfolk engaged in common behavior. It stands in sharp contrast to noble portraiture and historical paintings, both of which seek to highlight — if not romanticize — events or people of purported significance.

Genre paintings are about people like you or me. It’s a painting of a cook cleaning a pot, or a group of friends walking down the street. As a style, genre painting says that the average, the common, and the expected are every bit as worthy of attention and representation in art as a King or the Passion. Heroes, monarchs, saviors, “great men of history…” there is not a single one who is more deserving of memory than any other person.

“Oh really? Did that group of friends save the town from raiders, today?” Well, sometimes they do, but whether the town is saved by a band of heroes or a well-regulated militia, the town wasn’t built by the heroes, was it? Towns, communities, societies at large are built by the common folk, the little people, the day-to-day interactions of a thousand individuals who are never given responsibility for the whole. They are expected to go about their lives, minding their own business, and helping out those in need with whatever they have at hand.

Heroism is a thorny subject, one that could take hundreds of thousands of words to even discuss, never mind find an answer. There is perhaps something to the structure of an RPG campaign that sees humble adventurers become more and more powerful until they become reagents and viceroys of their own provinces. To be a hero is to be able in ways that others are not, to shape the world in accordance to your own will. A just and righteous will, perhaps, but your will all the same. Is ruling others such a noble goal?

“What, you think heroes should ask if the town wants to be saved from a raiding party? You think they need to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps?” No, of course not. That idea is abhorrent to me, but so too is the idea that just because someone can wield a sword better than a fishing-line, that they are somehow more deserving of deference.

In Iron Valley, you can be a lover, a farmer, an explorer, at best a hero to a small town. You can help inspire and improve the lives of others in a way that not every RPG is able or willing to show.

But is it a lie?

One of the biggest problems with telling a story about an “average person” is offset by the fact that “average people” generally don’t get stories told about them. By virtue of having their story told, you are implicitly saying that the main character is not average. They are special in some way that deserves a story. Sure, the universality of their tale may be highlighted, or the themes of community and commonality might be emphasized, but in the end you still have a “main” character surrounded by “other” characters.

This is one of the more interesting aspects of average-person tales for me. There is a struggle between the ancient Grecian concept of Rising Action to Climax and the everyday struggles of our lives. There can be as much drama in the baking of a cake as there is in the slaying of a dragon, but how many cakes are made every day versus how many dragons?

In fact, if you look closely at a lot of hero-stories, they generally place the hero among peers. Mildred Hubble is surrounded by fellow witch-students, Luke Skywalker has exceptional friends and companions, and it’s hard for superheroes to get their own stories these days without some kind of crossover or team introduction.

And not to leave it unsaid, PCs are always in a party.

I’ve said before that I believe there is only one kind of story: Someone does Something Important. There are lots of ways this can manifest, but the most common is by equating the important act with an important person. The “someone” is a Hero who does what no one else can do. The important thing is also singular and unique. There are no stories about someone being a common participant in a larger community, because being one of the “common folk” isn’t important in stories. It’s vital in our daily lives, and — let’s not beat around the bush — you and I are both as common folk as it can get. No one is going to write stories about us, nor should they. We’re no more “deserving” of fame or fortune than anyone else, especially the fortunate and famous.

And hoo-boy, could I go off on a rant about the word deserving.

But this is as good a place to pause as any. I don’t have the answers, but even if there is a hypocrisy in celebrating and elevating the humble activities of the non-heroes of the world, it’s worth looking at these games and stories partly because of this hypocrisy. Maybe the entire concept of narrative structure is biased towards heroism and the exceptional, but if it isn’t, it’s stories like these that will help chart the way forward.