Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Barastrondo" data-source="post: 5261670" data-attributes="member: 3820">This is true, but "fantasy" does not necessarily imply "sword & sorcery." Truth be told, I think these days most people who are aware of sword & sorcery as a subgenre within fantasy are historians after a fashion. It's not something you're certain to learn about if you get into fantasy gaming via Wheel of Time books (or even Forgotten Realms fiction) or the Lord of the Rings movies. Narnia, Eragon, the new (and crappy) Clash of the Titans, and let's not forget how many fantasy-based video games are out there with Big Epic Cutscenes as a way of life...These days I'd say that the GM who decides to run a sword & sorcery game should be careful about the assumption that the audience is familiar with the tropes of the subgenre. (Unless of course you've gamed with them for years and you know their literary preferences almost as well as your own, yada yada standard disclaimer.) An entire generation has grown up familiar with fantasy but not necessarily with Weird Tales. To them, "the hero takes big risks and comes out on top" is the way much of the fantasy genre works, and the GM who wants to do something different should be willing to shoulder some of the responsibility for getting the players onto what may be unfamiliar ground.</blockquote>