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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 8082207" data-attributes="member: 21169">I’ve never read Gary Gygax’s Gord the Rogue series, which is set in Greyhawk. However, going by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gord_the_Rogue" target="_blank">plot summaries on wikipedia</a> it looks like the first novel, Saga of Old City, resembles Fritz Leiber’s stories about Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser while the final novel, Dance of Demons, is extremely similar to Michael Moorcock’s Stormbringer, an Elric novel.Saga of Old City... starts in Gord's childhood, and ends with his triumphant return to Greyhawk City as a young man and master thief. He learns his trade in the "beggars' guild", and gets involved in the gang war touched off by the beggars encroaching on the official thieves' guild's territory. He travels and has a variety of swashbuckling adventures, ranging from participating in a war to liberating a young noblewoman held hostage... Dance of Demons is the finale, in which Gord and Gellor enter the Abyss on a mission from the world's most powerful forces of Balance, to retrieve the remaining Theorparts. The goal is nothing less than to free Tharizdun, the long-imprisoned god of ultimate evil and entropy, and to finally destroy him. The novel ends with the complete destruction of Oerth, and the unveiling of a new and better world.The first novel is episodic, the scope is personal, and it deals with larcenous enterprises. It is sword and sorcery. The final novel is an epic quest with the fate of the world at stake. It’s closer to being high fantasy.Michael Moorcock’s Elric novels are normally considered to be sword and sorcery. Most of the early stories published in the 1960s are episodic and of personal scope, though Elric is not motivated by a desire for material wealth. However Stormbringer is an epic that describes a Ragnarok-like conflict between Law and Chaos. The entire world is destroyed at the end.The transition from sword and sorcery to high fantasy that occurs between Saga of Old City and Dance of Demons mirrors the transformation in understanding and escalation of stakes described in this passage in the 1e DMG (pg 112):[T]here must be some purpose to it all. There must be some backdrop against which adventures are carried out, and no matter how tenuous the strands, some web which connects the evil and good, the opposing powers, the rival states and various peoples. This need not be evident at first, but as play continues, hints should be given to players, and their characters should become involved in the interaction and struggle between these vaster entities. Thus, characters begin as less than pawns, but as they progress in expertise, each eventually realizes that he or she is a meaningful, if lowly, piece in the cosmic game being conducted. When this occurs, players then have a dual purpose to their play, for not only will their player characters and henchmen gain levels of experience, but their actions have meaning above and beyond that of personal aggrandizement.This would be a bit like Conan, if he lived in Middle-earth*, discovering that all the demons and wizards he defeated were the servants of Sauron and resolving to oppose the dark lord.*I think Conan could exist in Middle-earth, but Sauron couldn’t exist in the Hyborian Age, because Sauron’s existence depends on the Valar and Ilúvatar.</blockquote>

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