More Details

So how do you make a heroic anti-hero?

Its a bit of a challenge, but I think that I want our hero....who needs a name but I'll do that tomorrow, is ambitious but not very ambitious.

I want the starting society to be a blend of free style frontiermen, whilst having a hierchical static social structure. On the surface that seems really hard to do, but the way I figure I balance things is saying that the threshhold for 'getting off the farm' is high but not impossibly high (like 'the truman show') and if you truly truly want to do it, you can, but most people don't bother.

Then our protagonist leaves for the big city but ends up working in a tavern as a waiter rather than trying to do anything else like become the greatest wizard in the land. Thus, the foreshadowing of heroic potential is there, but by himself, he never did anything with it.