Quote from: MelanI have a different experience with S&S-themed D&D campaigns, and don't see group size as a hard limit. The key question is the willingness of the players to adopt a particular mindset and cast aside some of the strong preconceptions roleplaying games tend to instill. A lot of things which are not typical in generic fantasy. The shady protagonists/amorality thing is one, but there are others, such as assumptions about the game world, what can happen to your character in the campaign, etc. It is not even rules usually, just assumptions about using them a certain way.

I don't think that it is a hard limit, but it has been my experience that it is increasingly difficult to maintain the S&S feel with larger groups of players.  I suspect that it has something to do with the focus being on personal rather than group identification in the smaller groups.  In a smaller group it seems that it is easier to explain why people are working together for mutual benefit without the structure of the epic fantasy quest or good vs evil conflict.  Actually, that is one of the greatest strengths of the epic fantasy model as adopted by later incarnations of D&D...it has a built in logic for groups to be together in the first place and to stay together.  In S&S you have to work at it more.

One of the solutions that I have been pondering (for a few years now as it was part of the original fanzine article) is to have all the characters be part of a group that shares a common interest but with plenty of room for personal agendas to emerge.  I was thinking about setting up a campaign based on the idea that all the PCs are associated with a "thieves' guild" that controls part of a Lankhmar-esque city.

Quote from: MelanWhen I was using 3.0, it more or less worked, but I implemented a lot of house rules. Now that I am using a much lighter C&C/d20 light variant, the game goes smoother. But this may just be a personal preference, as in-print S&S systems show: Conan d20 and Iron Heroes are both heavier than base d20.

Lighter systems are really just a personal preference for S&S action.  I think that quick and dirty resolution best fits the feel of the genre, but obviously you can do much worse than using D20 Conan, which I admire quite a bit.  I don't have any experience with Iron Heroes, so I can't say.  

Right now my system of choice would be ZeFRS, but I have only gotten started with it recently so it needs some more shaking out before it is officially The One (for me at least).  As I mentioned in the article I also like Barbarians of Lemuria as well.

Quote from: MelanI have previously argued to this effect, until a friend of mine pointed out that Howard himself had written himself a sort of "world guide". Nevertheless, your point stands. Mosaic-like worldbuilding and exotic colour evoke a pretty strong S&S feel.

Good point.  That's how I think that I would handle the "thieves' guild" game.  I would start by using the very neat city geomorphs that were part of the old TSR Lankhmar RPG, each of which represent a few blocks of a generic city, and then start filling them in as the players explore the city, fight the Cult of the Spider God (there has to be one of those), fight rival guilds for control of the profits of criminal activities, commit a robbery, ect.  I think that it would lead to a setting that would grow organically and focus on very local, personal issues at first and only gradually grow to encompass struggles that involve the fate of the city itself, or larger issues.

I actually tried to run this very campaign a few years back, but it never got off the ground.  Maybe this thread is what I need to get my fire to do it back and round up some players!

Quote from: MelanThis is where my point about humanity/inhumanity comes in. Even if you are an amoral, jaded mercenary, the Cult of the Spider God is probably worse than you. On the other hand, I have had good experiences with campaigns where all players were running shady types, and it was all about the bottom line, so it is definitely possible.

Yeah, you have to work hard to outdo the Cult of the Spider God in the evil department!


TGA

GA, that Lankhmar project--that's how I did it back in the day. Deja vu all over again! Except that I, like everyone, was young and stupid, so the group had its share of Paladins, halflings, Druids and whatnot. Ahh, youth.

Quote from: RoninI really like your list of hints here.

Thanks!  I think that I would add:

5.  Make magic rare and squicky.  Players should be frightened when they cross paths with the crazy wizard who lives in the lonely tower outside of town, or when they come across an enchanted item.  There should be the understanding that it may not end well.
6.  It should be understood that the characters are adventurers for a reason, which is probably because they are too unstable to settle down and get a day job! Seriously, I think that the GM advice in the D20 Conan corebook had it right;  why would any sane person adventure for a living?!  Once they had looted the Temple of the Giant Toad God, why not retire?  Therefore, any ongoing campaign has to explain this aspect...the best explanation is usually that the characters have blown through all the money on ale and wenches and are dead broke at the beginning of every adventure!

Quote from: RoninDo you think a game with a large amount of players like the five player game you ran recently. Would get less stale or stay fresher longer (so to speak). If it was Fairly PVP heavy like in Pseudoephedrine's "Iron Heros for Bad People" game?

I think that it would take some work to keep this particular group going for long, but that is a function mostly of the fact that several players generated characters that have very strong personal goals rather than any direct PVP conflict.  Frex:

1.  An Aesir berserker who was looking for a "good death" after being left for dead in a battle in which his father and older brother were killed,
2.  An Aesir "Ice Princess" whose family was killed by a Hyperborean wizard.  She has sworn revenge
3.  A scout/bowman from Khitai who is being hunted by a wizard who killed his family
4.  A Zingaran noble who lost his lands and is trying to raise an army to retake them
5.  An Aquilonian "Amazon" who has sworn an oath to love no man that could not best her in combat

Part of the reason that there was such a wide diversity of personal agendas was because the game was a playtest session for ZeFRS and I figured a variety of character types would be good.  We just assumed that everyone was in the same mercenary unit and went from there.  

I suspect that these five characters would be manageable for long-term play, especially if we had done a little bit of work during character building to make sure that there were enough connection between them to justify their adventuring together.

Quote from: RoninHave you checked out "Broadsword"? I do believe the Evil DM had a hand in writing this. I have not had a chance to check it out. But the other products I have gotten from Deep7 have been good. The game uses the 1PG system. So it is definitely rules light.

I have heard of Broadsword but haven't seen it.  It sounds like it would be a good choice for S&S action.


TGA

Quote from: Pierce InverarityGA, that Lankhmar project--that's how I did it back in the day. Deja vu all over again! Except that I, like everyone, was young and stupid, so the group had its share of Paladins, halflings, Druids and whatnot. Ahh, youth.

Cool!  

Alas, I was young and stupid as a youth, too...I would have done the same damn thing! :haw:


TGA

Quote from: The Good AssyrianWell, I have had S&S on the brain lately.  

Also worth checking out is The Eldritch Dark, a site with a whole lot of Clark Ashton Smith's short stories:

http://www.eldritchdark.com

Excellent discussion, both here and the one over at Dragonsfoot.

One aspect of the roots of S&S in D&D that hasn't really been commented on yet is the wide divergence in style and tone between the writings of the major authors mentioned above.  

While both Howard and Leiber can easily be placed within the sword and sorcery subgenre, their works are, quite often, radically different.  In part, Leiber seems to have conceived Fafhrd and Grey Mouser as the antithesis of Conan, as he suggests in the foward to Swords of Lankhmar:


"One of the original motives for conceiving Fafhrd and the Mouser was to have  a couple of fantasy heroes closer to true human stature than supermen like Conan and Tarzan and many another.  In a way they're a mixture of Cabell and Eddison, if we must look for literary ancestors.  Fafhrd and the Mouser have a touch of Jurgen's cynicism and anti-romanticism, but they go on boldy having adventures -- one more roll of the dice with destiny and death.  While the characters they most parallel in The Worm Ouroboros are Corund and Gro, yet I don't think they're touched with evil as those two, rather they're rogues in a decandent world where you have to be a rogue to survive..."


The last half of that last sentence is, perhaps, one of the best descriptions for the motivation and core being of your standard D&D character, but I digress...

That divergence between Leiber's and Howard's characters is part of what made D&D so vibrant.  That the game sought, perhaps not even intentionally, to accomodate both sorts of characters meant that the players weren't restricted to one approach, but could take either or even a third or fourth way outside of these two.

Factor in the influence of Vance's Dying Earth stories -- themselves somewhat related to swords & sorcery but quite divergent, what with the influences from Cabell (again!), Clark Ashton Smith and Ernest Bramah -- the often under-appreciated influence of Lovecraft, and the assortment of other sources, and you get a game that's almost entirely unlike anything that would be produced today.  In fact, I can only think of one recent game that takes a somewhat similar hodge-podge approach to incorporating its influences.


As an aside, I've never quite been able to play Clark Ashton Smith's place in all of this.  I don't know that he's quite a part of S&S as much as being an influence on S&S writers, both of his time, and later folks like Michael Shea.  I suppose that I could perhaps see the Satampra Zeiros stories as being within the context of S&S, and maybe one or two of the Zothique tales.  But otherwise, the style and intent of his stories seem to be something entirely different from S&S.  

Which isn't to say that he isn't someone to check out.  His work is absolutely fantastic, in both terms of its quality and its content, and would certainly be appropriately inspiration in a S&S game for background and color.

I'd classify Smith and even Lovecraft (for Unknown Kadath, which should be on the shelf of every S&S... no, fantasy enthusiast) as writers of weird fantasy. Good point on the variety of S&S fiction: I would throw Abraham Merritt into the mix, who wrote lost world tales - Dwellers in the Mirage being the best of them (it even has a malevolent octopoid deity named "Khalk'ru"), and even some stuff not always classified as fantasy: Leigh Brackett is considered a sword&planet or science fiction author, but her tales are very inspiring for a S&S game.

I have little experience with the pastiche (e.g. Otis Adalbert Kline and Moorcock's early Mars novels), but Paizo Publishing is expected to release some of these books starting this autumn, so it looks like I will have an opportunity to pick them up. (Granted, I would never buy the Jirel book with that cover, but then I can be a terrible snob sometimes :v:).

I believe that Gygax has cited Merritt's work as one of the key sources of inspiration for D&D.  Just a second, isn't there an appendix in the original Dungeon Master's Guide as to suggested reading?

Yeah, there is:


"The most immediate influences upon AD&D were probably de Camp & Pratt, REH, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, HPL, and A. Merritt..."


Your mentioning of Leigh Brackett is a good one, as both her and Burroughs show up on Gygax's "Inspirational Reading" list.  So does Lin Carter's "World's End" series, which is this weirdo pastiche of Burrough, Brackett, Baum and Vance all at once.  Perhaps not the best written things ever, but there's sort of a delirious fun quality to the books.

Two disconnected observations:

1. No one's mentioned Brian MacNaughton yet (Throne of Bones), which IIRC Cali recommended at some point, and it was a very great recommendation. Howardian Lovecraft rather than Lovecraftian Howard.

2. Re. playstyles, a propos Vance: One more reason why trying to get S&S right isn't necessarily revisionist is the fact that it was only with the Dying Earth RPG that somebody finally got Vance right* (or Dying Earth, anyway), decades after EGG lifted the spell slot but little else from it. In short, the proper de-differentiation of styles is far from over.

*unless that Lyonesse RPG (in French, from Switzerland) is spectacular, which according to the estimable GBSteve it is.

What Dying Earth are you talking about? D&D is probably close enough to the original novel, less so for the first Cugel one. The last two were published after D&D. Turjan is rather close to S&S, it only gets weird after that...

I'm an S&S type guy myself, but what I don't agree with is putting it under a glass bowl, which in practice means hewing too close to Howard and refusing to deviate. It should be a living thing, and open to development and personal touches. Which is actually what happened early on in rpgs, with D&D, Stormbringer and others taking a lot of S&S tropes without feeling the need to "stay true to the genre".

So my home-brew setting designed for BRP has zero Tolkien and a lot of standard S&S elements, but I never say "this is a sword and sorcery world". I do make sure I mention to new players that there are no paladins, no elves or dwarves, and no good vs evil...although there are a lot of creepy cults.

Quote from: SosthenesWhat Dying Earth are you talking about?

Clearly, Cugel and Rhialto.

The Turjan material is weird in its own right, but that weirdness (ditto Lyonesse's) is much harder to verbalize.

Quote from: A Memorex for the KrakensOne aspect of the roots of S&S in D&D that hasn't really been commented on yet is the wide divergence in style and tone between the writings of the major authors mentioned above.  

While both Howard and Leiber can easily be placed within the sword and sorcery subgenre, their works are, quite often, radically different...

I agree, which is why I would contend that it would be best not to try to emulate any particular author's version of S&S too much, but rather shoot for the general feel of the genre.  Obviously, if you are playing D20 Conan,  Lankhmar, or any game that is set in a particular S&S setting you are trying to get a certain feel of the original source, but I think it may be wise not to lose sight of the fact that unless you find the right players who are equally absorbed in that particular setting it may be better to fudge a bit to make the game fun for everyone involved.

For instance, in the recent ZeFRS session I ran only two of the five players had ever read a Robert E. Howard story, so I started by saying "Who here has seen the first Conan movie?".  Five hands went up.  "This is going to be kinda like that."  I figure that unless the players have a broader familiarity with S&S literature it is best to assume that the first Conan movie is a pretty good indicator of what they expect to get.  And frankly, that is not a half bad expectation, even though it isn't particularly faithful to the original source.

I think that is why I am interested in doing my own S&S setting.  It can take a lot of inspiration from Lankhmar, but I can throw in other elements without a Leiber fan getting upset.  It also gives the players some room to shape the setting themselves a bit.

Quote from: A Memorex for the KrakensAs an aside, I've never quite been able to play Clark Ashton Smith's place in all of this.  I don't know that he's quite a part of S&S as much as being an influence on S&S writers, both of his time, and later folks like Michael Shea.  I suppose that I could perhaps see the Satampra Zeiros stories as being within the context of S&S, and maybe one or two of the Zothique tales.  But otherwise, the style and intent of his stories seem to be something entirely different from S&S.

I am a huge CAS fan myself (thanks for the link btw, Paka), and I would be hard pressed to categorize his works as well.  Weird fiction is the closest I could come, but as you said, some of the Zothique tales (I am thinking of "The Charnel God") come close to what I would call S&S.  God, all of his work can be used to inspire S&S settings, though.


TGA

Quote from: MelanI'd classify Smith and even Lovecraft (for Unknown Kadath, which should be on the shelf of every S&S... no, fantasy enthusiast) as writers of weird fantasy. Good point on the variety of S&S fiction: I would throw Abraham Merritt into the mix, who wrote lost world tales - Dwellers in the Mirage being the best of them (it even has a malevolent octopoid deity named "Khalk'ru"), and even some stuff not always classified as fantasy: Leigh Brackett is considered a sword&planet or science fiction author, but her tales are very inspiring for a S&S game.

Melan:  Thanks for the reading suggestions.  I will try to find these books and give them a read.  As for the Paizo cover for the Moore paperback, it is pretty cheesy, isn't it?  I suppose that it is one of the hazards that has to be endured by the S&S reader.  I was lucky enough to come across a hardback collection of the Jirel stories some years ago.  The cover art was better...


TGA

Not to derail this too much, but is there any kind of bestiary out there yet for ZeFRS?  I've a hankerin' to sword and sorcerize (in grand, old, mighty-thews fashion) the Forgotten Realms setting and I would like an idea on how to go about setting up the bad guys/monsters.