Somewhere I read that it often comes  down in part to the scope of the story. High Fantasy tends to be epic in scope, whereas S&S  I guess usually isnt. I'm not an expert so why knows how true that is.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;872906Somewhere I read that it often comes  down in part to the scope of the story. High Fantasy tends to be epic in scope, whereas S&S  I guess usually isnt. I'm not an expert so why knows how true that is.

So I was looking for 'Best S&S' recently, and came across this blurb from the Best Fantasy Books website, and I find myself agreeing with most of it:

Quote from: BestFantasyBooks.comWhat Exactly IS Sword and Sorcery?

Unlike epic fantasy, sword and sorcery does not concern itself with world-endangering events; the stakes, rather, are far more personal. The danger to the hero is usually immediate rather than long term. Sword & Sorcery has a strong preference for fast-paced action tales rather than sweeping story arcs. That means there is (usually) no band of heroes facing off against dark lords that seek to destroy the world, but rather a lone hero on a personal quest of some sort.

Sword and Sorcery often has a much darker feel than some of the other subgenre fantasies; brutality is common and morality is not clearly defined. Ancient myths and legends are often incorporated into the story.

The hero of the story is often brooding and morose, sometimes fatalistic and always troubled in some way. The hero may be the shunned outcast, the perpetual loner, the misunderstood wretch who is pitied. The hero tends to be larger than life, a force of nature who can, at times, defeat more powerful opponents (gods, witches, demons, etc). The hero is not always an unfeeling brute, but might in fact be highly intelligent, though with barbaric traits or uncomfortable habits. In Sword and Sorcery, the end always justifies the means -- even if the means means sacrificing all morality.

Seems pretty spot on, now that I think about it.  Especially the part I've underlined.

(It stills removes the Corum Hawkmoon stories from the list in my opinion.  And that's all it is, MY opinion.)

Quote from: Phillip;872883In the old D&D with which I'm acquainted, a swordsman can do anything except what's peculiar to the sorcerer.  The latter can be limited to NPC status if one wishes.

Dood, if you can make it work, than in all sincerity, that is awesome, and I honestly hope your crew has decades of fun.  And as trite as it's sound, my problem is me.  It's how I learned to run D&D, and for me (once again, let me point out that my days began with AD&D 2e) the magic and niche assumptions are very hard to overcome.  I AM trying, mind you.  Cuz. I like to think I am improving.

Am I?  I don't know, but I want to think I am, at least a little.

Quote from: Phillip;872889Maybe one touchstone for the attitude is that "high fantasy" evokes more the ethos and flavor of the medieval romance, whereas "sword & sorcery" harks back more to Nordic Sagas and Classical Greek heroic cycles, and so on. Where there is a grand finale, it may well be tragic (which is not to be expected in works in the Lord of the Rings vein); but the "S&S" genre is mainly associated with endless serials rather than well-rounded (if multi-volume) novels.

Norse & Greek hero-sagas both have a sense of tragic fate, whereas Swords & Sorcery is modernist and often picaresque. Hero-sagas usually end with the death of the hero, which is rare in S&S. The big exception I can think of is The Odyssey - technically Fated, but it comes across as episodic, almost picaresque, and the hero doesn't die at the end. Ulysses definitely feels the most Modern of the Greek heroes, to me.

I guess the similarity is that pagan hero-sagas and S&S are set in non-Christian universes; High Fantasy has a Christian (or quasi-Christian) ethos of divine providence about it. Which is why Elric is not part of the genre.

Hawkmoon isn't S&S, it's obviously a swords-and-planet. The planet itself might be Earth, but the genre trappings of mad science are definitely different.

Quote from: Phillip;872889Maybe one touchstone for the attitude is that "high fantasy" evokes more the ethos and flavor of the medieval romance, whereas "sword & sorcery" harks back more to Nordic Sagas and Classical Greek heroic cycles, and so on. Where there is a grand finale, it may well be tragic (which is not to be expected in works in the Lord of the Rings vein); but the "S&S" genre is mainly associated with endless serials rather than well-rounded (if multi-volume) novels.

Quote from: S'mon;872958Norse & Greek hero-sagas both have a sense of tragic fate, whereas Swords & Sorcery is modernist and often picaresque. Hero-sagas usually end with the death of the hero, which is rare in S&S. The big exception I can think of is The Odyssey - technically Fated, but it comes across as episodic, almost picaresque, and the hero doesn't die at the end. Ulysses definitely feels the most Modern of the Greek heroes, to me.

I guess the similarity is that pagan hero-sagas and S&S are set in non-Christian universes; High Fantasy has a Christian (or quasi-Christian) ethos of divine providence about it. Which is why Elric is not part of the genre.

I think both of these are well-said, though I'd point out that both high fantasy and S&S can have a sad-but-uplifting end to the story. One difference is that in high fantasy, that's due to the world being changed, mostly for the good, while in S&S those changes are rare and relatively less often happen to benefit the common man...
You can add a high fantasy story at the end of the age of knights when a new Age of Reason is approaching, and machines are making life easier for people, and harder for knights.
You would write a similar story in the S&S genre at the beginning of the Industrial revolution, when the same machines require coal to work, so the men, who lost their country life to them, are now being chased underground to dig coal and serve the machine, with all the health issues such work would bring them...
Even if in both stories the role of the protagonist is to help usher the new order, they'd have quite different tone to them, and I'd say, a different genre.

Hawkmoon & Science - Science makes a frequent appearance in S&S; many Conan 'sorcerors' are actually scientists using technology, and you see super-science often, eg in Thongor of Lemuria, which is otherwise a Conan pastiche. I I guess you'd call Thongor Sword & Planet too, though *sigh*

Quote from: AsenRG;872959I think both of these are well-said, though I'd point out that both high fantasy and S&S can have a sad-but-uplifting end to the story. One difference is that in high fantasy, that's due to the world being changed, mostly for the good, while in S&S those changes are rare and relatively less often happen to benefit the common man...
You can add a high fantasy story at the end of the age of knights when a new Age of Reason is approaching, and machines are making life easier for people, and harder for knights.
You would write a similar story in the S&S genre at the beginning of the Industrial revolution, when the same machines require coal to work, so the men, who lost their country life to them, are now being chased underground to dig coal and serve the machine, with all the health issues such work would bring them...
Even if in both stories the role of the protagonist is to help usher the new order, they'd have quite different tone to them, and I'd say, a different genre.

I don't see this - Tolkien's high fantasy is traditionalist, with the rural idyll of the Shire and Saruman/Sauron's infernal industrial machines. The sense of loss and decline is common in high fantasy. In S&S the past is typically the domain of demons and evil elder races (& gods), albeit the future may be worse too... it tends strongly to a 'live for the moment' vibe. The relative optimism of the Eternal Champion series, where humans can gain freedom by defeating the gods, if anything feels like an un-S&S trope.  Your description of "the end of the age of knights when a new Age of Reason is approaching, and machines are making life easier for people, and harder for knights" - the elegiac passing of the age of chivalry, because of Progress, is something I associate with the Western genre and its immediate predecessors in 19th century fiction (Walter Scott, notably). It's still a common romantic trope in fiction - the Last Samurai for instance - but the Whig View of History is almost diametrically opposed to "Civilisation is Unnatural - Barbarism will Always Triumph".

Quote from: RPGPundit;871984Which OSR rule-set does sword & sorcery the best, in your opinion?

Might depend on what you mean by "OSR."  If that means old school D&D type games, then my first choices would be:

Original D&D, house-ruled to taste
AD&D (1e) with the variant Lankhmar supplement rules
Crypts & Things
Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea

Those aren't in any particular order; I'd pick one based on the exact campaign I wanted to run.

If you mean any older rule-set or newer rule-set with an "older" design approach, then my picks would also include:

Runequest
Stormbringer/Hawkmoon

I guess I didn't pick one rule-set as being "the best" -- again, it depends on exactly what I'm aiming for.  Those are the set of choices I'd immediately think about using, though.

Some interesting thoughts on the genre here. One of the best Swords & Sorcery supplements of recent years is Pete Nash's Monster Island for RuneQuest 6.I ran a great mini campaign in the setting last year, and I must say it just drips S&S atmosphere.

In it, he runs down his take on the genre in a brief section that I find pretty much on the money. The elements he includes are the following: (condensed)

Living for the day protagonists are not great heroes and rarely save the world. In it for the loot, vengeance, romance, often base or egocentric. Pragmatic rather than epic quests.
No black and white morality flawed characters, antithesis of selfless heroic types.
Healing is hard very rare magical healing. Fights are deadly and may also often result in capture rather than killing.
Corrupting power of magic dark, perverted arts requiring sacrifice of time and sometimes innocent victims by specialist sorcerers, priests, and shamans. Some claim the genre lacks "flashy" magic, but in fact it crops up relatively often in the literature. It's just time consuming and a risk to the soul of the sorcerer.
Horror of the unknown places, creatures, and cultures encountered tend to be mysterious, disconcerting and horrifying. Creatures often include giant, savage forms of common animals and weird Chimaerae, and tribes and cultures are often horrific because of their inhumane practices, often involving dark gods.
Anthropocentric and xenophobic protagonists are invariably human, as are most of their foes. Often a clash of cultures is represented, between civilised, decadent types, and barbarian savages, or between west and east, or between various races (I expanded upon this point a little myself; I'm rereading the Conan stories at the moment, and race is a huge part of them ... It sometimes makes for uncomfortable reading to see how monstered the racial Other is in these tales, but it's a very present element. As for the gender politics ...)

I like Pete's list anyway. Also worth a mention is Ron Edwards's Sorcerer and Sword, which is a brilliant primer on S&S, including great lists of relevant reading, some of it quite little-known.

Quote from: S'mon;872965I don't see this - Tolkien's high fantasy is traditionalist, with the rural idyll of the Shire and Saruman/Sauron's infernal industrial machines. The sense of loss and decline is common in high fantasy. In S&S the past is typically the domain of demons and evil elder races (& gods), albeit the future may be worse too... it tends strongly to a 'live for the moment' vibe. The relative optimism of the Eternal Champion series, where humans can gain freedom by defeating the gods, if anything feels like an un-S&S trope.  Your description of "the end of the age of knights when a new Age of Reason is approaching, and machines are making life easier for people, and harder for knights" - the elegiac passing of the age of chivalry, because of Progress, is something I associate with the Western genre and its immediate predecessors in 19th century fiction (Walter Scott, notably). It's still a common romantic trope in fiction - the Last Samurai for instance - but the Whig View of History is almost diametrically opposed to "Civilisation is Unnatural - Barbarism will Always Triumph".

Well, how is that not a sense of loss and decline:)? Maybe you associate it with Western, and it could be there, but the end of the LotR book says it's just as common in high fantasy;).

(I must clarify that I'm talking about a romanticised knight, above).

I'm getting the feeling we'd all have an easier time defining "what is porn?" than figuring out "what is S&S"!

Quote from: AsenRG;872983Well, how is that not a sense of loss and decline:)? Maybe you associate it with Western, and it could be there, but the end of the LotR book says it's just as common in high fantasy;).

(I must clarify that I'm talking about a romanticised knight, above).

But you were associating loss/progress trope with S&S!

Quote from: S'mon;873046But you were associating loss/progress trope with S&S!

Ahem, no, that was meant to illustrate the fact that loss works differently in high fantasy and in S&S. Loss/progress is the example I was giving for High Fantasy:).
Compare "Beyond the Black River", where almost everybody died heroically, and the archer says "civilisation is unnatural, barbarism shall prevail", realising that his world is temporary, or the end of "Queen of the Black Coast".

Quote from: AsenRG;873101Ahem, no, that was meant to illustrate the fact that loss works differently in high fantasy and in S&S. Loss/progress is the example I was giving for High Fantasy:).
Compare "Beyond the Black River", where almost everybody died heroically, and the archer says "civilisation is unnatural, barbarism shall prevail", realising that his world is temporary, or the end of "Queen of the Black Coast".

Sorry, my bad - yes you had the elegiac loss/progress trope fitting High Fantasy, and a steampunk 'beginning of the Industrial revolution, when the same machines require coal to work, so the men, who lost their country life to them, are now being chased underground to dig coal and serve the machine, with all the health issues such work would bring them...' for S&S.

I guess I'd see both tropes as fitting better into the romantic high fantasy style, and Tolkien does do both; the 'Age of Men' replacing the Time of the Elves is elegiac loss/progress; the machines of Saruman & Sauron and despoiling of the Shire is straightforward 'industry bad'. I recall Moorcock really hated this about Tolkien.

S&S is generally very anti-romantic - I think a lot of the criticism the original Conan the Barbarian movie attracted from S&S purists was for its romanticist elements.  Personally I like the movie rather better than I like the Conan stories, precisely for this.