What kind of stories do we actually tell in a Sword & Sorcery campaign?
I think genres exist in part to make it easier for publishers to market their books. I can find Stephen King's Dark Tower series in the horror section of most bookstores but isn't it a fantasy? If The Tommy Knockers or The Running Man had been written by someone other than King/Bachman the odds are good you'd find them in the science fiction section today. I don't mean to suggest that genre classifications are useless. And there's always going to be some edge cases that are difficult to classify. But we should take them with a grain of salt at times.Poking around a little, and while looking for newly published S&S stuff, I saw that Amazon classifies both the Game of Thrones and Wheel of Time books as S&S?
While this is true, the challenge for the GM is how to make that eventually be in next week when the players return to play. Sword & Sorcery is generally not concerned with longer ongoing stories and happy to skip straight ahead to the moment that something interesting happens. Ideally, you get into the action within 5 minutes of play. But with the PCs being the masters of their own fates, and proactive initative by the players being desired, I think this is a point where the media of roleplaying and writing lead to different demands. The circumstances under which the PCs end up in an adventure can be skipped in a story, but are important parts of play.For me part of it is about telling the story of characters making their way through a dangerous world. Even if they're not particularly goal oriented themselves, the nature of the environment means that 'adventure' will eventually come their way.
For my hypothetical Conan campaign, I told the players not too get to attached to their wealth or items. In one session a PC might be the general of a large army in Corinthia and in the next might be near penniless on the back of a dying horse (with no name) trekking across the desert in Shem.While this is true, the challenge for the GM is how to make that eventually be in next week when the players return to play. Sword & Sorcery is generally not concerned with longer ongoing stories and happy to skip straight ahead to the moment that something interesting happens.
But I think the PCs handling their money and other resources might actually be useful to make part of the game. A story writer can just say the the hero lost and wasted anything and accepts a job because he needs money. But I think this might take too much agency from the players. It they are broke and have to make money quickly, it should be the consequence of something the players did, not something that is arbitrarily forced upon them.
When Conan had the coin he lived high on the hog. When he was destitute he didn't complain, he just rolled up his sleeves and got to work.Though instead of tracking the buying of a roasted chicken or mugnof beer, I would very much recommend just doing a weekly or monthly upkeep, based on the standard of living of the PCs. I think finding that they can't afford the luxuries they enjoyed after their last three hauls for much longer might be a big motivator. Not every PCs has to be like Conan and be happy with a bed of moss and a cloak for a blanket.
I don't want to track time too closely because that sounds boring.(Tracking time is important to determine how fast money runs out.)
Though of course, all of this goes very much against the conventional wisdom for Sword & Sorcery campaigns, so I am really curious about any strong counter-arguments anyone might have.
If you look around the internet, you can find a number of discussions that popped up over the years on what you need for a Sword & Sorcery campaign, and it's generally always the same list of established conventions, that oddly enough doesn't actually match with many of the classic stories that are considered foundational to the style. "Humans only, no spellcasters, no alignment, but the PCs should also all be pretty evil". Whatever floats your boat, I guess.
But let us say you have established your setting and think it feels sufficiently swordly and sorcerous. And you have your dusty starting town on the edge of the monster infested wilderness and your party of baass PCs. What happens now?
What kind of stories do we actually tell in a Sword & Sorcery campaign? We have a couple of classic elements that feel very much at home in the Sword & Sorcery style. Evil wizards, brutal warlords, ruined cities, piles of gold and jewels, demons, undead, giant spiders, giant snakes, giant apes, and frogs. But none of this is exactly unusual in any other styles of fantasy either. (Except the frogs.)
Sword & Sorcery has three main characteristic traits, which are protagonist who exist outside the normal structure of society and its rules, act on their own initiative and their own personal reasons, and who deal with any obstacles by taking decisive action. It's not the only definition of Sword & Sorcery, but I think few people would deny these traits to be typical elements of the style.
From what, we can postulate three things to keep in mind when running adventures that aim to evoke a feeling of Sword & Sorcery: 1) The PCs should not be bound to do anything by duty or obligation, 2) the PCs need to have their own stakes in whatever is going on, and 3) the GM should keep pressure on the players to do something and not give them any more than only a reasonable amount of time to discuss their next steps.
The first two are where I see some challenges pop up. When the PCs should have their own stakes in what is going on, but they also should be free agents and wildcards, how do you set up the hook to get them involved in the first place?
My advice, based a little bit on personal experience, would be to drop the GM creates an adventure and instead to focus on the PCs have their own stakes in whatever is going on. I would look for a system that gives the PCs fairly clear needs (eg a wealth/resources rating that is under constant pressure) and gives the players fairly straightforward ways to get involved and make things happen.While I really do appreciate everyone's participation in this topic, I hope that we can keep the discussion on how to create and run fantasy RPG adventures that evoke the feel of Sword & Sorcery.
My own view, and experience, is that the things you are proposing here - spending time at the table on the circumstances leading to adventure, on keeping track of the passage of time, and on keeping detailed track of money - are apt to produce play that does not feel very S&S-ish.Sword & Sorcery is generally not concerned with longer ongoing stories and happy to skip straight ahead to the moment that something interesting happens. Ideally, you get into the action within 5 minutes of play. But with the PCs being the masters of their own fates, and proactive initative by the players being desired, I think this is a point where the media of roleplaying and writing lead to different demands. The circumstances under which the PCs end up in an adventure can be skipped in a story, but are important parts of play.
Similarly, someting I have planned for my next campaign, is to strictly track the time of the campaign and the money of the PCs. These are things that are irrelevant in stories and are therefore ignored, and those Sword & Sorcery games that have something to say about this usually go "eh, say some time has passed and everyone is broke at the start of a new adventure". But I think the PCs handling their money and other resources might actually be useful to make part of the game. A story writer can just say the the hero lost and wasted anything and accepts a job because he needs money. But I think this might take too much agency from the players. It they are broke and have to make money quickly, it should be the consequence of something the players did, not something that is arbitrarily forced upon them. Because then they can also play their characters in a way that makes them plan ahead for when their money runs out and go searching for well paying work themselves before they get broke. This avoids the situation where players have to take the one job the GM offers them now because at this point they have no more option to keep looking.