Basic Trope: The hero wanders through Adventure Towns, without a steady income or place of residence but living comfortably.
- Straight: The hero wanders from place to place, not looking for anything in particular except an interesting next chapter of the story.
- Exaggerated:
- A kingdom recruits an army of wandering heroes.
- The hero wanders galaxy to galaxy.
- The hero journeys from reality to reality.
- Downplayed: The hero wanders around between several cities, revisiting them every few years.
- Justified:
- A god appeared to the hero in a dream and told him to walk the earth, promising that he'd never want for support.
- The hero is in a Stern Chase, and daren't let the authorities catch him.
- The hero (or Anti-Hero) is a Death Seeker or Blood Knight who travels to find his Worthy Opponent.
- No Sense of Direction.
- Inverted: The hero brags that he's never been twenty miles from his birthplace.
- Subverted: The hero wanders aimlessly... on his superiors' orders.
- Double Subverted: The hero wanders "aimlessly" from mission to mission, making a point of never taking two missions in the same place.
- Parodied: There hero wanders not for fame or adventure, but rather because he got sidetracked on the way to the grocer's. Why hasn't he returned home? He still needs to pick up some milk.
- Zig Zagged: The hero is an out-of-work, drunken Knight Errant who sobers up to kill a dragon whenever he runs out of money.
- Averted:
- The hero heads out to accomplish various goals, then returns home.
- Wanderers are not present.
- Enforced: "So, Bob wants a story about Aztecs, Ted wants something in the Middle Ages, Jane wants a Western, and Marketing insists that we're writing sci-fi. Well..."
- Lampshaded: "You were in Tucson last month, weren't you?"
- Invoked: An aspiring warlord with designs on a county presents himself as a wandering hero who heard they were having a problem.
- Exploited: A villain waits until after the hero has visited a place to terrorize it, knowing they'll be unlikely to return.
- Defied: The hero has every intention of going back home (or finding a new one) when this cruel war is over.
- Discussed: Alice and Bob discuss the merits of a quasi-nomadic versus a settled way of life.
- Conversed: "They must spend a lot on set design, what with going to new towns every episode."
- Deconstructed:
- The hero is a bum. Life's hard, and it's not so much out of wanderlust as of hardship and annoyance. He'd really like to settle down.
- The hero wanders because he is tempted by the excitement of adventure. After wandering for three weeks, he suffers from loneliness due to the absence of a social support network. Oh, and he gets stranded too, with no one to help him. Deprived of emotional / mental health support, he regrets his choice.
- Reconstructed:
- The hero supports himself by selling his skills locally, or slaying dragons for their hoards, or independent savings/filthy richness.
- The hero isn't a perpetual wanderer; he/she does have a home and a job, but travels around in their spare time, to temporarily sate their wanderlust. If other people can somehow benefit from that, that's definitely a bonus in the hero's book.
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