Howdy! Imagine a game-world of classical Sword & Sorcery, some sort of "hodgepodge" genre-world, much like what Forgotten Realms is for tolkienesque/high fantasy, but instead in the typical pulpy vein of Conan, Thongor, Fafhrd, et al. Which elements would you like to see? What do you think is essential for a world like that? And what should be avoided at any rate? Eagerly awaiting your comments!
Tolkeinesque high fantasy is in part British writers looking back nostalgically to their romanticized distant past, the days of chivilry and knights in shining armor, throwing in fantastic elements like dragons and faerie.
Sword and Sorcery is America's answer to that, but we haven't been around that long so our romanticized past is a hundred some odd years ago with cowboys and gunslingers in the wild west. That doesn't feel very fantasy, so the cowboy hats and six shooters were traded in for chainmail bikinis, fur loinclothes, and big ass swords, but the terrain looks the same.
High Fantasy evokes lush northern European forests. Sword and Sorcery evokes a dry arid environment like the American Southwest. The social classes refects America's distrust of the big guys as well; kings are corrupt, priests are materialistic and evil, the hero is a loner bucking the system. Even the monsters are going to be things like dinosaurs and apes, because we never had stories about dragons and elves in this country. We have lake serpents, and sasquatch, and lots of dinosaur fossils.
Of course, America is the Big Guy in Power, has been for some time, but that's a whole different topic that this country has been in denial about for the past fifty years or so.
So take any classic western, from the Duke to the Man With No Name. Turn the technology back about three thousand years (with whatever anachronisms you need to keep it fun). Turn the Native Americans into "barbarian hordes". Add a bunch of giant snakes and ape people and crazy quasi-lovecraftian cults. Turn the cowardly sheriff into a cowardly lord. Make the rival gunslinger a rival warrior. Add some busty scantily clad woman with sword skillz are magikal powerz. Maybe even add some pirates because America had those too.
There's a reason all those D&D games you remember from childhood ended up in taverns with the heroes grabbing after bar wenches. Because Westerns always end up in the saloon with the heroes going after bar girls.
Have fun, pardner.
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That's interesting! Never thought of it that way. However, I was rather trying to get some kind of brainstorming effect going (should have been more precise, I guess), you know, some cool sounding names, evocative locations, something in the vein of "The Red Swamp of Xarsh, where the last of the Serpent People hide" or something like that. Any ideas?
Tolkeinesque high fantasy is in part British writers looking back nostalgically to their romanticized distant past, the days of chivilry and knights in shining armor, throwing in fantastic elements like dragons and faerie.
Its an interesting theory, but I <i>really</i> don't think British writers are predisposed to write Tolkeinic "High Fantasy" or that Americans are to write stuff that's recognisably "Swords and Sorcery". I mean, you can't generalise to British writers just from Tolkein and ignore all the other British fantasy authors who do stuff that isn't slightly Tolekinic, just as you can't generalise to American writers from Howard and Fritz Leiber.
So take any classic western, from the Duke to the Man With No Name. Turn the technology back about three thousand years (with whatever anachronisms you need to keep it fun). Turn the Native Americans into "barbarian hordes". Add a bunch of giant snakes and ape people and crazy quasi-lovecraftian cults. Turn the cowardly sheriff into a cowardly lord. Make the rival gunslinger a rival warrior. Add some busty scantily clad woman with sword skillz are magikal powerz. Maybe even add some pirates because America had those too.
There's a reason all those D&D games you remember from childhood ended up in taverns with the heroes grabbing after bar wenches. Because Westerns always end up in the saloon with the heroes going after bar girls.
Have fun, pardner.
A Fantasy Western...nice!
I especially like the motif of the hero or heroes going from town to town (or city to city, or even kingdom to kingdom) and dealing with whatever problems are plaguing its people, and then, win or lose, "riding off into the sunset" for another town, city or kingdom to try one's luck. Just look at Conan -- his wanderings take him to a different city, region, kingdom, or similar place per general story.
Combine this picaresque style of worldbuilding with your classic pulp treasure-seeking and trap-avoiding (which could well be a parallel to the Gold Rush), and mix in a bit of supernatural horror, and you have a pretty good handle on the general feel of sword and sorcery.
__________________ "The Earth is the greatest repository of Bad Luck in the Universe. Even if you've been around for billions of years, this little planet will screw you up like nothing you've encountered before. Your aeons-old law enforcement organization will fold. Your loyal scouts will suddenly start deserting you like there's no tomorrow. If you eat planets, you will not be able to digest this one. The queen of your vast empire will fall for a guy from this world."
- Mark Mohrfield, from this thread on Comic Book Universes, summing up Earth's role in sci-fi rather well.
I even ran fantasy once as a disguised western. Worked great. Cattle country. Fights over watering rights, a silver rush and Texas Rangers disguised as the Queen's Rangers keeping the peace throught the sparse land. Players thought 3 musketeers... which was fine, but I knew I was basing them on Texas Rangers. 3 of them could clean up a town, or bring a renegade gang to justice.
That campaign is still going a decade later, although it has morphed into a more Reneissance/Colonialism type game. But the age of Colonialism covers the push West too.
Although much S&S comes from pulps... so the dark, deep jungles serve as a backdrob often too.
And REH was a Texan. So there is even more strength to your theory.
But elements:
Monsters are hungry. They just want to eat you. Sometimes tragic, but they are not to be negotiated with. The big dragon is not some high intelligent, talking, machivellian plotting mastermind. He just wants to eat the sacrifice.
Magic is generally bad and has dear costs. Rare is the "good" wizard.
Loyalty to friends surplants all other loyalties... to gods, to countries, to organizations.
Heroes are expected to rush in without thinking, or despite thinking. HOw many times does Conan save the girl, only to have her be some catspaw? Does he let the next girl get eaten by the man-tiger-beat thing? NO! by crom, he jumps right back into the fray.
Players need to know that it is genre to be captured. To lose equipment. To expect to rush in where angels fear to tread. But here is the GM's end of the social contract, That, you as the GM, will give them a chance to escape, to get another sword, and allow them clever opportunities to solve the problem.... if there is a ghost that no sword will touch, then the magic urn of flames seems to call to them to be used.
Conan d20 from Mongoose has some good mechanics for granting Players Fortune or Luck pts (can't remember what they are called), when the GM bones them on purpose. The "you wake up in a cell." or 'your horse died, and you are stumbling across the desert with no water"...the GM gives a Karma pt that gives bonuses or re-rolls later in the game.... allowing for you to maybe say;' Hey, the guard is drinking to much and not paying attention to his dagger on his belt."... a very S&S moment.
That is probably the shortest and most practical advice I have ever seen about creating Sword and Sorcery campaigns. Regardless of whether it covers every British or American author or not.
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