Player Characters - I find Survivors More Engaging Than Badasses

Superman is boring. He's too powerful, he may be a great symbol and I think it's a great concept but I just don't find superman engaging. Aside from convoluted corner cases he can accomplish almost anything sans risk.

I don't find Jedi engaging either. I'm not into superheros. My Conan is the vulnerable, human, literary one. I prefer the Ash of the first Evil Dead movie. I think Aliens kinda sucks compared to the Lovecraftian terror of Alien. I don't like it when a video or computer game is too easy, I prefer desperately conserving my ammunition while crawling behind cover a half mile away from the vastly superior enemy.

The Road Warrior. Indiana Jones. Snake Pliskin. James T. Kirk. Fors the "Star Mans Son." Hiero. Dirty Harry. Ripley. "Blondie" and "Tuco the Rat." These are the heroes I find engaging. They may have been high level characters, some even bad-asses, but they were human characters that often failed, often got hurt, and pretty much got to high level by using good tactics and consistently making the important saving throws. They were no Batman, Wolverine, Lobo, Lone Wolf or Rambo. They weren't perfect.

Perfection is boring in large doses.

I grew up on a steady diet of science fiction with plenty of adventure fiction. Most of this stuff was from the public and school libraries and generally it was old. They had a distinct smell. In many cases the artwork was almost alien in it's difference from the modern art I was used to. In most cases the protagonists of said fiction were "ordinary" people. Sure they may have been genius scientists or tough soldiers, but they were human, and they were frail in the way real people are. They could twist an ankle or break an arm. They plans could fail, catastrophically even. They often got lost deep in hostile wilderness without full kit. They got sick. They didn't want to get into a gunfight or even a two-on-one. They got beat up or overpowered and if they got shot they usually woke up in a hospital or tied to a chair in a basement.

That's what adventure meant to me as I grew up. That what I want when I play D&D.

The Class Name "Fighting-Man" and Dune...

Dungeons and Dragons originally used the term "Fighting-man" for the adventuring warrior character class. In later editions it was changed to "Fighter," presumably in order to resolve the matter of female characters who were "Fighting-Men."

I've seen a lot of scorn heaped upon the term Fighting-Man, which is usually roundly mocked and snickered at. I'm presuming those who denigrate the term are unfamiliar with the source literature...

I'm sure many of us internet-OSR types have made the same pilgrimage, but a few years ago I made a point of reading as many books from the AD&D DMG "Appendix N" as I could get my hands on. This was greatly facilitated by an excellent local bookstore, Pulp Fiction Books, which I highly recommend.

In this literature the term "fighting-man" is used almost universally to designate soldiers, warriors, mercenaries, etc. "He had the cold eyes and savage scars that marked him as an experienced fighting-man," "We have fifty fighting-men available Lord Tyrant, with ten-score arrived on the morrow!"

Frank Herbert's Dune uses the term "Fighting-Man"...

Some say the appellation Fighting-Man is clunky, and crude. I say it's a rough word for a rough job. And honestly, I've always found the name "Fighter" to be kind of stupid, and far more dumb-sounding than Fighting-Man whenever I thought about it. I preferred "Warrior."

I presume the clunky issue was the reasoning for changing "Magic-User" to "Mage" and than "Wizard." I used to be down with Mage, nowadays I'm all about calling them "Sorcerers." A much more cool name that is far more evocative of the source literature that influences my campaign.

Some, rightfully so, point out the issue of female characters. It seems obvious to me, in my old age, that using the name "Fighting-Woman," or even "Amazon," "Valkyrie," "Shield Maiden," "Sword Bride," "Knightrix" or whatever else seems appropriate and acceptable to the player and DM. This strikes me as the sort of thing that, if he was questioned about, it would get the late Mr. Gygax to tut-tut about how the rules were never meant to be followed to the letter and so forth.

So when I started my old-school AD&D campaign, Fighters became Fighting-Men and Magic-Users were relabeled Sorcerers. And I love it. However, if someone prefers to use the term Fighter instead due to concerns about gender bias and so forth, I can understand and sympathize with their position.