Is 'Good vs Evil' fantasy better for long-term campaigns than more 'amoral' Swords & Sorcery?

[pemerton]

My experience is similar to [MENTION=23240]steenan[/MENTION], [MENTION=6683099]dd.stevenson[/MENTION], [MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION] and others - a long running campaign needs a conflict that the players are engaged in (via their PCs), and that means that the conflict has to be something that speaks to the players. I find this is easiest if it's a conflict that they have helped to build, either through PC backstory or in the course of play: I tend to find that my campaigns take a little while to warm up, as I start with small conflicts that are immediately salient to the PCs, and then - as the backstory becomes richer and the players' interests better defined - these can be linked into the broader themes and concerns that become the focus of the mature campaign.

For me it is not as simple as good-vs-evil - often my players (and their PCs) aren't all that sympathetic to the official good goods or rulers, and have their own views on how the world should be arranged - but the campaign has more energy when the concerns of the PCs go beyond their own narrow self-interest.

Ratskinner is also right about the MEGO problem - one of my long-runnning campaigns came to an end because of this, as it got to the point where even I (as GM) couldn't remember or make sense of the main antagonists motivations, and hence the PCs' reasons for opposing him.

 

[S'mon]

I definitely don't think that long-term games require Good-aligned PCs, and I agree that swords & sorcery genre is very often 'grey on black', with amoral protagonists vs extremely evil antagonists.

I think the issue I'm grappling with is the trouble I've had trying to run substantial long-term campaigns in swords & sorcery settings like Hyborea, the Wilderlands or the Young Kingdoms, and why that might be so. Often these settings lack an overarching conflict, but that's clearly not the case in Elric's Young Kingdoms with its Law vs Chaos.
I have a feeling it may be something to do with the NPCs and PC/NPC relations. In Good vs Evil fantasy (eg Star Wars) most NPCs are good guys, bad guys, or a small number of amoral rogues. I find it easy to create sympathetic and engaging 'good' NPCs who the players enjoy engaging with, want to help, etc. In swords & sorcery genre most NPCs are basically selfish, out for themselves, with a smaller number of truly evil antagonists. I guess I find this sort of setting harder to run on a long-term basis, and harder to give the players reason to engage with it. If most people are pretty scummy, why bother helping them? I guess it works if you think of it more as a self-consciously 'criminals' campaign like Grand Theft Auto, and I think such crime fiction was a big influence on RE Howard's Conan especially. But again I'm not sure this is something I or most players are looking for on a long term basis. I enjoy 'serial' swords & sorcery fiction (I'm currently reading the pseudonymous Richard Kirk's 'Raven' series, which is badly written but great fun) and I'd like to be able to do something more like that in a future D&D campaign. I think I don't quite have the hang of how to do that yet, though. I ran a 20-session Wilderlands 4e campaign that was fairly satisfying (as a tragic drama), but it had a clear hero-dies terminus, with no real means or desire to continue beyond that.

 

[S'mon]

S'mon, I think you're right, but I think the reason has less to do with morality and more to do with overall plot structure.

Good vs. Evil lends itself very well to stories where the players have a long term goal to achieve, like "gather all the mcguffins" or "defeat the dark lord", in order to "save the world". These kinds of plots are fun, give the players easy to grasp motivations, and provide a coherent framework for a compelling long term story.

By contrast sword & sorcery adventures tend to be better for episodic adventure tales, (there's a reason that most iconic S&S major stories are short stories) because the characters rarely have long term goals. There is no overarching villain; instead there are plenty of opponents, usually dispatched with gusto. If an opponent survives a couple of encounters, he might become a nemesis, but generally he's weaker than the hero...a contrast from Good vs. Evil, where the Dark Lord is usually the most powerful guy around.

Sword & Sorcery character motivations are usually more abstract. Why does Conan continue to adventure? Because he's restless and doesn't fit in anywhere. Elric? Bipolar disorder, and need for stimulation (and a soul sucking sword that needs feeding) Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser? usually boredom or poverty and a hard aversion to "honest work".

So if your idea is to run a long running, year long campaign with a compelling overall story, where each character is working toward a collective overall goal, then Good vs. Evil is just easier.

I definitely think there's something in this, and Kinak's comment about 'meaty' conflicts, bild91 on strong default motivations, etc. An overarching conflict provides a default motivation that does not require self-motivating PCs. There's much less risk of "What's my motivation in this scene?"

 

[S'mon]

I wonder to what extent the G v E simply makes it easier for the players to have common motives. RPG's are a group endeavour, where a lot of S&S features one character, so his goals are always at the forefront. If the PC's have common goals (like one side of the G v E conflict), then to some extent, everyone's goals are always at the forefront. If we have different goals, even non-conflicting ones, then my goals aren't at the forefront a lot of the time.

Yeah, I've noticed that both my recent Swords & Sorcery-style campaigns have been dominated by the goals and character of a particular PC - Varak of Altanis' struggle with Neo-Nerath in 'Southlands', a Wilderlands campaign, and Sir Garrick Kallent's social climbing & politicking in my 'Yggsburgh' campaign. Whereas in my 'High Fantasy' FR 'Loudwater' campaign, although one PC, the Ranger Lirael Widdershins, often feels like the heart of the group, the game is never dominated by her personal concerns; instead it is the broader factional and Good vs Evil conflicts that dominate, giving a more equable feel.

 

[S'mon]

My experience is similar to [MENTION=23240]steenan[/MENTION], [MENTION=6683099]dd.stevenson[/MENTION], [MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION] and others - a long running campaign needs a conflict that the players are engaged in (via their PCs), and that means that the conflict has to be something that speaks to the players. I find this is easiest if it's a conflict that they have helped to build, either through PC backstory or in the course of play: I tend to find that my campaigns take a little while to warm up, as I start with small conflicts that are immediately salient to the PCs, and then - as the backstory becomes richer and the players' interests better defined - these can be linked into the broader themes and concerns that become the focus of the mature campaign.

I agree strongly - this describes my current Loudwater campaign exactly, and my Yggsburgh campaign to a large extent. For long term play, for me it always seems best to start "small" and "open" - starter town and adjacent newbie dungeon is the classic approach. This might seem to contradict the need for "overarching conflict", but I think it's a different issue, about player freedom to set the campaign direction. The overarching conflict is best not pre-plotted, but something that is both revealed by, and grows out of, play.

 

[NewJeffCT]

I think it really depends on the group for success of a long-term campaign. A group that is less experienced and/or new to gaming with each other might be better served by playing a more straightforward good vs evil campaign. However, a group that has been together for a while and/or is full of experienced gamers might do well in either setting - good vs evil or grey vs black.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Amorality can lead to detachment. When part of the "mood" of the game is that most PC's are self-interested and ruthless, it can be hard to motivate these people to do much after they've achieved some modicum of success and power. You know, what's in it for them? What challenges them? What threatens them? Conflict can fizzle because once you have your little slice of empire, what is there for a grizzled warrior to do but brood on his throne of skulls?

The Dark Sun game I'm playing in keeps the stakes high pretty well by having us constantly hunted by the most powerful forces in the campaign (the sorcerer-kings). The campaign STARTED that way, and irking the powerful has been a common motif. So much so that even now, at early Paragon tier, there's a few city-states where the party fears to tread. We're in a deep shadow, so the more amoral and self-interested characters have a vested interest in doing something active, and a clear long-term goal. Without that, we may have had a much earlier campaign retirement.

 

[Storminator]

I'll echo others that say you need a strong hook and GvE provides that pretty cheap. My current campaign has "you're all goblinoids" as it's hook, and it's holding the group together very well, even 3 years on.

Is there any reason you couldn't make more likeable NPCs in your sword and sorcery game?

PS

 

[S'mon]

Is there any reason you couldn't make more likeable NPCs in your sword and sorcery game?

That's a good question - IME most S&S fiction has a pretty modernist-nihilist take on things, and part of that is the protagonist's lack of connection with other characters except possibly a 'buddy' (Fafhrd/Mouser, Raven/Spellbinder, Elric/Moonglum). But I'm wondering if I could run a game in an S&S type milieu while still using NPCs who are basically attractive/good from the POV of 21st century moral values, the way I do in my Forgotten Realms game or (sort-of) in my 17th/18th-century-styled Yggsburgh game.

Can S&S work with conventional, Christian-influenced Western morality? Where it's not ok to split some guy's skull just because you want his stuff? I suspect that a broad-based S&S world like the Wilderlands might well be useable that way, but it would feel a bit odd doing that in eg Conan's Hyborea unless both the PCs and all the NPCs were part of the same close-knit ethny, eg the same Cimmerian clan. It could easily come across like a Disneyfied version of Conan.

 

[Salamandyr]

I think you could. I don't know S'mon if it's "nihilist" but a fair amount of it is Nietzschean. But most S&S characters do tend toward more modern takes on morality.

At least to me, it seems of Sword & Sorcery and epic fantasy (good vs. evil) is less about morality, and more about focus. Sword & Sorcery is more focussed on individuals, and specifically individual will to power, whereas epic fantasy is about conflict larger than individuals.

To give a for instance, Both the Chronicles of the Black Company and the Song of Ice and Fire are epic fantasy rather than sword & sorcery, even though very few characters truly qualify as "good" in the way that Frodo and Gandalf do. Whereas Glen Cook's Garrett novels, and Patrick Rothfuss' Kvothe series are sword & sorcery, even though they involve characters that are basically good, decent people.