The term “hero” has a very different meaning on Athas

Setting
#1

“The term “hero” has a very different meaning on Athas.” This appears on page 11 of the new Dark Sun Core Rules 3.5e. This really reminded me of the 2010 TV series from China called Three Kingdoms. It’s an exciting dramatization of the three kingdoms period of China.

In Three Kingdoms, there are various "heroes’. One could easily say that they can be good, neutral or evil. In Chinese, they are all called 英雄 (hero) with no differentiation for villains. I think in Dark Sun, it may be exactly the same. What makes you a hero is your great deeds, not your motivations. All of the heroes in the tv series often say that they want to perform great deeds (大事). It’s what separates them from the average person.

I can thoroughly recommend this series. I think it’s around 90 hours in total. My passive Mandarin listening skills increased massively after watching it all.

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#2

Yes very much hero in that sense. We also see it used that way in many or perhaps most ancient sagas, for example the Trojan Wars both Achilles and Hector were heroes. In many ways it is more analogous to “champion” than the more beneficent justicar image of the hero today

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