One of the great metaphors in fantasy gaming is the path.
Every character is on one, whether they know it or not. Sometimes it’s clear from the start: a paladin on the road to righteousness, a rogue fleeing their past, a wizard chasing forgotten lore. Other times, the path isn’t chosen, it’s revealed, one strange step at a time.
For players, the path is often literal. You travel from town to dungeon, from forest to ruin, from the known to the unknown. There are forks in the road, trails in the wilderness, portals that beckon, and thresholds you can’t uncross. It’s all part of the adventure.
But behind that? There’s always something deeper.
The Path is also about identity.
The journey a character takes from what they were to what they might become. And for the best characters and the best players, it’s not a straight line.
In the real world, we often imagine that our paths are chosen. Career paths. Life paths. But more often than not, they’re shaped by the things we stumble into, the things we say “yes” to, and the things we survive. The same is true in fantasy.
Witches and warlocks, the characters I write about the most often, don’t always choose their path. Sometimes they hear the call in dreams. Sometimes they’re marked by birth. Sometimes they’re just the only ones brave (or foolish) enough to follow a trail that ends in blood and moonlight. But once they’re on it, there’s no going back. The world has changed them. Or maybe the change was already there, and the path is just catching up.
In game terms, the path can be mechanical: levels, powers, subclasses, destinies. But in story terms? It’s mythic.
- The path of atonement.
- The path of vengeance.
- The path of knowledge, or power, or healing, or truth.
- The path that says this is who I am now.
Sometimes you wander off it. Sometimes you make a new one. Sometimes you find out it was never yours to begin with.
But one thing’s always true: Once the path calls you, you walk it.
Even if you don’t know where it leads.
Questions
When. Enthusiastic. Lesson.
Oh, I have a good lesson I learned and I learned it with enthusiasm.
I have played exactly 1 ninja my entire gaming life. His name was (horrible I know) Oko-nishi. My lame attempts at a Japanese-sounding name. In my defense at what I knew was bad I made him a half-orc. It must have been around this time I made him using the AD&D 1st Ed Oriental Adventure rules.
My then DM, Grenda, and I had worked up a D&D combat simulator (we called it BARD), and we plugged him in with 9 other characters. He was attacked by a Black Dragon (or Red, I can't recall) and killed. The dragon kept attacking him and only him. We had not worked out all the errors. In the end, he had been reduced to something like -70 hp. My DM offered to let him be ok or keep him dead.
We enjoyed watching it so much and getting the mental image of this stupid dragon jumping up and down on my dead ninja that I felt it was a waste to say it never happened.
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