⚔️ What I'm looking for when it comes to Swords & Sorcery
I've long been enamoured of the Swords & Sorcery genre ever since seeing the Conan films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger when I was younger and various other fantasy films such as Red Sonia, Krull, Beastmaster, etc and I've occasionally thought about running an RPG in the genre, however, most of the RPGs I would have expected to be emininently suitable for it just haven't clicking with me.
So why am I thinking about it again now ❓
Currently I'm running a Vampire the Masquerade 5th Edition campaign, which is about as far from Swords & Sorcery as you can get, however, this campaign was designed as a finite "palette-cleanser" to give us a break from fantasy after a long-running Old-school Essentials campaign; my plan has always been to return to fantasy after the Vampire game has run it's course (probably after a year or two). However, fantasy has a lot of sub-genres and--although I want to use some variant of D&D--there is also a lot of choice where that is concerned.
I want to return to the same campaign world as we had for our Smoke & Snow OSE game but on a different continent, one where the tone of the fantasy is a little different, where mighty warriors clash with evil sorcerors against the backdrop of faded mystical empires and the dark mysticism of serpent-folk.
What makes a good Sword & Sorcery game? 🎲
As an attempt to narrow down my options I decided to list out here some of what I'm looking for in a Swords & Sorcery game and then--in future posts--I'm going to have a look at some of the fantasy games that I possess and see how they measure up to this (non-exhaustive) list I'm creating.
Hopefully the act of doing this and examining the game systems will get me to think more about what I want from a S&S system and will enable me to make a more informed choice when that time comes around.
The list 🗡️
Below is the list of things I think of when I ponder the sub-genre of Swords & Sorcery:
- Magic is rare, dangerous and possibly confined to evil NPCs.
- The gods are distant and do not regularly interfere in mortal lives.
- Ancient creatures of cosmic horror lurk just outside the bounds of perception.
- Whilst much ancient history is forgotten, decaying remnants of a cruel serpentine race that once ruled the land persist to the present day.
- Heroes are a little more self-serving, tending to be mighty warriors, faithful priests or sly rogues.
- Wild and savage societies struggle against the decadence and corruption of civilisation.
- The system must be able to support/encourage wild, swashbuckling action.
Going forward ⏩
Over the next few weeks and months I plan to go through the various fantasy RPGs that I have on my shelves and compare them to the list above to see if there are any that jump out at me as strong contenders for the future Swords & Sorcery game. The list above may flex and change as I think of new ideas and disgard old ones.
Getting in touch ✉️
If you have any ideas for fantasy games that have simple rulesets but that you think might be a good fit for a Swords & Sorcery game (or perhaps you have additional suggestions for my list) then please drop me an email at rddrpgpodcast@gmail.com and let me know, you might get a mention in a future post.