I have been doing a lot of thinking about the adventuring profession. The things that the typical adventuring party does are straight out of myths, legends and fairy tales. This sets the standard.

What I found weird about the settings I surveyed is that often that standard is considered common or gritty. These worlds do not resemble the Tolkien or pulp fiction that inspired them except in the window dressing. These worlds have adventurers' guilds consisting of many thousands of members and monsters coming out of the woodwork to keep them employed. Traditionally mythical monsters like dragons and demons and whatever are commonplace rather than apocalyptic occurrences, little different from mundane animals and bandits aside from some arbitrary game rule about "magic" versus "non-magic".

When the party is performing the equivalent of the Twelve Labors of Hercules every adventure or two, it trivializes Hercules' accomplishment. Because of this trivialization and loss of perspective, additional progression like "epic", "mythic" or "legendary" (all meaningless terms by now) is often added on to that, which is made out to sound unique but is invariably more of the same or the math breaks down. For example, Pathfinder introduces the "mythic cockatrice" and the 5e MM introduces "legendary dragons", never mind that pretty much everything in the bestiary is straight out of real world myth and legend.

I find the whole situation rather ridiculous. Does anyone have any suggestions for settings that are closer to the original inspirations and don't trivialize the party's accomplishments?

Honestly, make your own.

The situation you describe is inevitable when you try to turn adventures into a money making business.

Years ago I was talking to Forrest Brown of FASA.  I was asking why the USS Enterprise, NCC-1701 (no bloody A, B, C, or D) was, rather than "one of the most powerful ships in space" to quote Gene Roddenberry, was a third-rate also-ran in the FASA rules.

Forrest's answer was clear:  "We're selling to wargamers.  Guns sell.  Big guns sell more."

Thus it is with commercial settings and adventure modules.

How I handle it in my world is that many, many people have the POTENTIAL to go up levels.  Many never even try; many that try, either give up after a time or two, get 1000 GP and buy an inn and retire at 2nd level, or die horribly.  In Dave Arneson's BLACKMOOR, there was no such thing as "Raise Dead;" dead was dead.  An amazing number of player characters retired after a few successful adventures.  This mean that the Judge's Guild penchant for such thinks as the innkeeper is a 3rd level fighter with a +1 axe was based on actual play.

Rather like Discworld's "Hugglestons" boarding school, adventuring will turn boys into men, but there is a certain amount of wastage involved in the process.

D&D isn't a hero's journey.  Its a weastern.

Scale it back. Every published game setting I've seen has, over time, been susceptible to inflation. As a GM I scale it back to the power level that I enjoy running. As a player I gravitate to GMs who don't go all Monty Haul but who facilitate either a gradual growth in power within reasonable setting limits or even have effectively no growth. Zero to hero to demigod to godkiller is a play style choice. It's not an inevitable outcome.

Quote from: Headless;998816D&D isn't a hero's journey.  Its a weastern.

Is that something that occurs in the westerly part of the East?

Well yes there too.  Out past the great wall.

Quote from: Headless;998839Well yes there too.  Out past the great wall.

They build the best walls. Make China Great Again.

And make the Mongols pay for it.

The problem is those "original inspirations" are stories. RPGs aren't stories.

You bring up an excellent point about Mythic versus everyday. I think that the solution (which Tolkien used as well as the original Star Wars and others) is that Mythic is mostly ruins now and sometimes you can find remains of it, but it's mostly gone. A new generation of potential-Mythic is rising and that would be the PCs. This doesn't diminish the accomplishments of the characters, as SOMEONE has to go save the kingdom. It doesn't diminish the old Mythic because their day is long gone.

It's a tough balance, as you want the characters to be both heroic and amazed at the same time.

This is only a problem if you make it one in your world. Either model can be fun. The PCs can be the only gang of heroes like them, or you can have a world where they compete with other rival bands of heroes. Both are potentially fun. And DCC really encourages you to use unique monsters. Nobody is making you put 30 umber hulks in your campaign setting. If you want to have the umber hulk be a unique monster, then do that.

If you don't want a world with lots of redundant monsters and NPC adventurers running around everywhere, then don't have redundant monsters and NPC adventurers everywhere.

And remember that a world is a very big place. A single band of adventurers can only be in one place at one time, so yes, there is indeed room for many bands.

There was an Earthdawn article in Shadis that I've always liked.  "Our city is overrun with cutthroats and knaves and the worst of these we call "heroes."

That's really how I see it.  Adventurers might see themselves as noble heroes fighting evil.  Everyone else sees them as dangerous bands of thugs out for their own gain through murder and robbery.  Even the bands of knights errant aren't really well loved or respected as much as feared.

Quote from: David Johansen;999280There was an Earthdawn article in Shadis that I've always liked.  "Our city is overrun with cutthroats and knaves and the worst of these we call "heroes."

That's really how I see it.  Adventurers might see themselves as noble heroes fighting evil.  Everyone else sees them as dangerous bands of thugs out for their own gain through murder and robbery.  Even the bands of knights errant aren't really well loved or respected as much as feared.

You mean someone sees that differently?!?

I thought that was the premise for the thread.  That the PCs are some kind of special heroes and the other adventurers out there are also special heroes.  So I thought the concept that they're all just bandits and cutthroats with delusions of grandeur was worth mentioning.