Is it just me or do most heroic role playing games, do the first half of the heroic journey pretty well, but not the last half? What I'm talking about is sometimes refered to as the Return Home. Are there any games that emphasize coming home changed, as much as the becoming changed? Maybe Hero's Banner(which I haven't read or played)?
Even in modern media — I'm thinking film and television, mostly — the return home bit is either very short or completely absent. More than once, I've seen it happen during the credits, or as a thirty-second spot at the end of the credits. I suspect it's doubly absent in RPGs because, once you've confronted the Big Bad and done all the dice-rolling, coming home seems anticlimactic.
Also consider: the "Return Home" is part of the "Hero's Journey," a schema which is... dubious in its claims of universality. Personally, I find it kind of boring and anticlimactic; on the other hand, I prefer stories that happen in place, rather than gallivanting all over.
I am not sure what you call heroic role playing games are, but in my experience not many rpg-play try to do an heroic journey. I have incidentally had such returns in long, as in endless until it dies, campaigns, but such returns where generally followed by other departures. (Note : departures and returns can be done without geographically moving much.)
One might argue that D&D did a bit of "return" back in the day, with the eventual promotion to leadership (or feared denizen) of high level characters--recall how the fighter gained followers and the thief climbed the Thieves Guild ladder? That's a bit of "return,' in that you head out as a pimply-faced snotling and "return" to lead your people.
Aside from that, I'd say it has to be a part of the game's premise or setup. Look at BW Beliefs--one could embed such a return into a Belief, easily... but then one might be a bit hamstrung on the Artha front (i.e. only good for an eventual Persona or Deed, not routine Fate points, unless your GM/group felt you could incrementally build on the return).
Josh is right on...actually this is one thing (American and Mexican) soap operas do pretty well. When they wrap up a storyline they will often have a couple of "domestic bliss" or "romantic happiness" scenes before introducing the next crazy problem. It's not a heroes journey, of course, but it has the same sort of rising/falling/ending action.
I think it's misleading to characterize the return home as "the last half" of the hero's journey. In dramatic structure, the climax (struggling over the ring at the edge of mount doom) releases the major tension that keeps the audience reading or watching, so it's generally held as close to the end as possible. In LotR the climax happens about halfway through book three and the return home happens in the last 10% or 15% of the total trilogy length--which is exceptionally long compared to most other fiction.
I suppose the length of your "return home" period of play will depend on the creative agenda of the group. If it's Story Now, it'll be just enough to demonstrate character change and consequences, a denoument. Step On Up would also provide only enough time for the players to enjoy their victory before moving on to the next challenge. Right to Dream is the place where a long "return home" would seem most appropriate, as climaxes and victories aren't the main purpose of play there.
This is a good topic! Given the importance of the Return Home in Lord of the Rings, you'd think the return would figure more prominently in heroic adventure games. I think David's right: AD&D, at least, had the return home as an implied part of play.
Richard Bartle has a great chapter in his book Designing Virtual Worlds where he talks about the heroe's journey (he coded the first MUD). His argument is that to have the return home you need closure, which for him means character death. He explicity calls out World of Warcraft because it has an interest in facilitating the leg of the heroe's journey, then purposely thwarting it's conclusion, because when the journey concludes, WOW potentially loses the subscriber. As far as Bartle is concerned (and I agree with him) this isn't just thwarting the character's journey, it's thwarting the player's journey.
I think that Shadow of Yesterday provides completion mechanic through transcendence. In a Wicked Age facilitates a complete journey by placing the character at different points on their personal story arc in different instances of play.
I'm under the impression that LotR is an exception, and very much not the norm. I'm personally very fond of the trip home of the fellowship, the farewells, the realization of how much the world, and the protagonists have changed, and so on.
But it's a rarity. Think back to when RotK came out in theatres: many critiques I read underlined the "long, drawn out ending", the fact that the movie had "many consecutive endings, like the director could not make his mind on one", the fact that the ending was too long (and it's much shorter than the book's), and so on.
So yeah, it could be an interesting aspect to explore, but it's not common enough even in literature, I think, to have tickled the mind of some designer yet :)
I don't think Storming the Wizards Tower, at least as of yet(Fighting Monsters), has much to do with the Return Home A Changed Person thing. It'd be neat if it did though! I agree that Basic D&D has certain aspects of creating a new home around your character, but very little. TSOY has Transcendence, which triggers an end game, which could take place at home. What I mean is a part of the game that deals with the Hero's Return. Haven't you guys read the Odyssey?
I'm glad you brought up the Odyssey. The entire story questions whether or not Odysseus will reclaim his family and kingdom. His returning home isn't a loose end that needs tying up. It's the climax. Puppetland is a game with a similar sort of quality, I think, or any game where the point is to reclaim what-used-to-be.
Also, isn't there a whole host of games where children stay in a fantasy world only so long as they are young enough or believe strongly enough? I've never played any of them, but I'll bet at least one has something to say about what the child learned and how they apply it when they return to the real world.
I think the "Return Home" holds a lot of promise in story gaming. It seems to me like it would feel like playing a session of Agon and then tacking on a game like A Flower for Mara at the end. I mean that in a really good way. :) The purpose of the story would change from "survival" or "excellence", to "integration" and "acceptance".
This thread made me aware of the Swedish game Nostalgi ("Nostalgia"), wherein retired adventurers brag about their past glories. Now, this isn't strictly about the coming-home part of the adventure, but I see it related in that the game takes place in the long present of "being home", and viewing and recollecting adventuring from that standpoint.
I have had long discussions about how much the "Return Home" falling off Western stories has to do with what William Catton called "the Age of Exuberance" after Columbus, and the widespread cultural emphasis, in Europe but especially in the U.S., to find hope on the frontier. Our stories go where our fascination goes; the lack of the "Return Home" in our stories reflecting a historical phase of development we find ourselves in, with no home to return to. We have a hard time telling that part of the story because we haven't gotten there yet ourselves.
That line of speculation has made me very interested in precisely that question, because I also have a big, burning interest in bioregionalism, and our general sense of place, so I want to know how to find better stories about the "Return Home." I couldn't get into the session of Ganakagok I wanted to play at Dreamation, but it turned out to happen right next to Judd's Agon game that I did get into, so I got to see the very end of it, and at least in that session, they came to a pretty beautiful, tragic end that had everything to do with returning home--or finding a whole new home, perhaps.
Speaking of the Odyssey, especially seeing it with the Illiad, you do have half the story dedicated to going out to fetch the boon (with Achilles and the Trojan War), and half to the return (Odysseus coming home). While superficially two different stories about two comrades, you really have the full heroic journey of the Hellenes as a group, with Achilles and Odysseus taking the leading roles (I wonder to what extent you could argue that Achilles & Odysseus represent a dualistic Hellenic sense of self? Anyway...) When you throw in stories like the Oresteia, you have a whole cycle of stories all dealing with the Return Home part of the grand Trojan cycle.
Of course, the "Return Home" needn't seem any more literal than the "Call to Adventure." Like Willem suggested, "A Flower for Mara" really deals with the Return Home, too.
Lopping off that end makes the hero's journey fairly self-serving, I think; you seek the boon for your own personal advancement or enlightenment. And I think that may have something to do with why we in the West so often leave that part under-developed, because we prize individualism so much. The return ties you back into the community; you come back initiated to enrich the community with what you fetched. In the parallel between Campbell's journey and van Gennep's stages of initiation, losing the return means remaining liminal. I can't help but suspect that we've lopped off that last part because we feel so liminal ourselves, and if we had a really good answer, it would mean a lot to who we see in ourselves.
I realize that doesn't help much to provide examples of games that handle the return well, but I've had questions like that on my mind for far too long not to throw them into the pot and see if they lead to anything good.
I like this topic. I tried to figure out a how to design that into a game. I was always wondering what happened if the hero's went to far on the path and could no longer return home. I cobbled some stuff together using Swords and Wizardry as the base but it's no where near playtest.
I think BW has this built in as your BIT's change in play.