OGL Swords & Sorcery?

[Grimstaff]

I really hate to be the one who brings this up, though it does bear addressing. Speaking strictly in terms of actual genre tenets, both of those are High Fantasy, not Swords & Sorcery. As a genre, Swords & Sorcery is almost exclusively human-based (there few, if any, sentient non-humans and monsters), low magic (there are almost no spell-wielding protagonists), and extremely lethal to non-protagonists (unnamed bad guys die in droves). C&C really doesn't support any of that by default (i.e., it includes rule for non-humans, assumes spell-casting PCs and battling monsters to be standard fare, and has no 'mook' rules for unimportant combatants). Swords & Sorcery is not the default mode for games like D&D or C&C -- they can do it, though they aren't expressly designed for it.

Don't be put off by the title Wilderlands of *High Fantasy*, in terms of genre, its definitely what would be described of as "dark fantasy". You'll find no knights in shining armor rescuing fair maidens there. Deranged priests sacrificing slave girls to demonic spiders, yes. Thieves crawling through the debauched underbelly of dark city-states, yes. As for C&C, while you can certainly use it with "high fantasy" settings like GH, the character classes are much less magically oriented than most d20 RPGs, with classes like Bards, Assassins, Rangers, and Paladins stripped of all spell using ability, leaving magic solely in the hands of devious wizards and enigmatic priests, where it belongs. Lets face it, with no magic wielding options at all, you can hardly have Swords and *Sorcery*, hm?

 

[Melan]

Well, I certainly agree that Wilderlands of High Fantasy is not a pure sword&sorcery setting because of the numerous D&Disms. However, it is probably the most S&S-friendly d20 settings out there. Myself, I stripped out most of the elves-and-hobbits stuff, and it wasn't too much work. I didn't remove these elements altogether, just made them so uncommon that they almost never came up in actual play.

Generally, it is not impossible to bash D&D into a pretty sword&sorceryish shape as long as you aren't shooting for totally accurate genre emulation and are willing to remove or subvert some sacred cows.* On the other hand, I am not even conivinced that accurately emulating the original fiction is a desirable thing.

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* Of all the rule changes I made to make my 3.0 campaign more S&S-like but still keep it D&D, removing spells above 5th level was the most beneficial. Most of the rest was a matter of using rules differently.

 

[Desdichado]

Castles and Crusades RPG and Wilderlands of High Fantasy campaign setting, all you need for "classic"-style Sword and Sorcery RPing.

Only if by "classic" you mean "heavily influenced by the early years of D&D."

My conception of classic S&S is more Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith and Fritz Leiber. The early years of D&D have some correllations with that classic S&S vibe, but also some notable areas where they missed the boat.

I suspect that the impetus behind the question is in looking for something a bit more than merely D&D warmed over, which C&C + Wilderlands really is. Otherwise, he could simply be using D&D (possibly an older edition?) to meet his needs.

Oh... scrolling down it looks like this has been somewhat addressed... but I'm coming at it from a slightly different angle. Oh, well... I leave what I wrote as is.

Kaomera... for what it's worth, I once used the SRD and a few other bits of open content to kitbash a d20 system together that does much of what you want; it was much more S&S and Weird Tale like, much less High Fantasy. I removed all the D&D classes that had a spellcraft or supernatural abilities progression (which means that I was only left with the rogue, barbarian and fighter) and then grafted back in some classes from other sources (wildlander and defender from Midnight, Courtier from Rokugan, Swashbuckler from Arcana Unearthed, etc. To add some very S&S like spellcraft to the setting, I used the way magic works in the d20 Call of Cthulhu game, but incantations from Unearthed Arcana would do the trick very well too. I used action points because I think that's also appropriate to the genre, and because things like magic weapons and whatnot were purposefully going to be very scarce. Adding in a few other rules from Unearthed Arcana such as armor converting regular damage to subdual damage, etc. and I was good to go, and it was fairly fast and loose, rules light compared to D&D, because that's the way I prefer it.

I had a few other things added, like some 17th century flintlock firearms, for example, but I still think my experiment showed that you can use existing elements to put together exactly what you want if you're willing to spend a little bit of time collating. If you want to see what I did, I still have the links.

http://www.wideopenwest.com/~jdyal/dh/index.html

Anyway, to be honest with you, I'm not sure I'd do that now; in fact, I still keep that setting running (although currently it's idling in the garage while we play through Age of Worms) and for simplicity of documents, I'm thinking of using either Grim Tales or d20 Modern + d20 Past.

 

[Carl S]

Here is a pretty good little kit for converting D&D into a more S&S type game: www.swordandsorcery.org/toolkit.htm
I like most of what he has, my own little adjustment would be to remove the sorceror entirely and add in Incantations from UA.

 

[Stormborn]

Hobo is correct in saying that, with effort, you can take DnD and alter it to work just fine with Sword and Sorcery; but IME over time it becomes a lot of trouble and if "balance" is a concern for you you can quickly get in over your head when you remove standard spell casting from the system (which I think is one of the OPs concerns with using DnD.) Grim Tales is a much clearer and simpler way to go - and you can pull monsters from the MSRD and use their CRs just fine with it.

Oh and for someone's point earlier about how if you remove all the PC spellcasting its not Swords AND Sorcery, from what I have read of the classics of the genre (whose elements are well defined earlier in this thread I think) more often than not its actually Swords v. Sorcery thand Swords & Sorcery. Protagonists rarely have much of any supernatural aid on their side and more often than not the Sorcerers are the antagonists (or plot device patrons who tend to turn on the hero later.) At its heart SnS is about human muscle, will, and wits against supernatural forces.

 

[Desdichado]

Oh and for someone's point earlier about how if you remove all the PC spellcasting its not Swords AND Sorcery, from what I have read of the classics of the genre (whose elements are well defined earlier in this thread I think) more often than not its actually Swords v. Sorcery thand Swords & Sorcery. Protagonists rarely have much of any supernatural aid on their side and more often than not the Sorcerers are the antagonists (or plot device patrons who tend to turn on the hero later.) At its heart SnS is about human muscle, will, and wits against supernatural forces.

That's exactly why I like the Incantations or Call of Cthulhu spellcasting model. You CAN have magic, but the only people who really do regularly are insane, dangerous and of questionable morality.

Then again, there's also a difference between genre emulation through setting and genre emulation through plots. I think S&S as S vs. S is a less exciting plot for a game, and even then a pretty tired and hashed out one for stories as well. For my game, I tried to emulate more of the setting of a S&S or Weird Tale, but my plots felt much more byzantine, and honestly they came out more like occult versions of a Robert Ludlum novel or something.

Even then, you're talking most specifically about Howard. Lebier didn't have spellcasting protagonists, but Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser had spellcasting patrons. Clark Ashton Smith wrote early S&S with spellcasting protagonists on occasion. Michael Moorcock obviously did as well.

EDIT: In terms of balance, I have to admit that my kitbash system probably does not work extremely well with CR's as written. Then again, it works at least as well as d20 Modern does, and it still has CRs. As the GM, I certainly did have to take stock of the opponent's and PCs abilities instead of just having blind trust in the number that it would work as expected. Also, without turning, undead can be a real bitch. But that's OK; I think undead should be a lot scarier than they end up being in D&D.

 

[RFisher]

Grim Tales: Dang it! I actually owned this book at one time... I'm pretty certain I got rid of it in one of my purges of unused / unlikely to ever be used gaming gear. I feel like an idiot, too, because now that it's brought up I can't even remember much about it. I may have never given it a thorough reading... ("Fortunately" I've found a cheap copy on ebay...)

Never get rid of gaming material. You may be thinking it's unlikely to be used today, but tomorrow it'll be exactly what you need.

Plus, I take a really wide view of "used". I can be inspired by Fantasy Wargaming, though I doubt I'll ever actually try to play the system. I may have sworn off running modules (again), but I'll still be collecting them to borrow ideas from.

RFisher: I'm not sure exactly how to work a skill-based BAB / Saves system. I'd think you'd have to either make BAB cost more or else split it up. Splitting it up might work, but I'm not really sure I want to go that route. Otherwise, I think you'd end up with the equivalent of giving every character Good BAB. Of course that might not actually be a bad idea...

I couldn't decide whether I wanted to split BAB between melee & ranged. You could make it cost more, but I don't think you'd have to. Max-ranks based on level ensures that it can't get too out of control like it could in a more "pure" skill-based system. In a S&S campaign, I don't mind everyone maxing BAB. (Though I doubt my group would.) That may even be part of this idea's appeal when juxtaposed against standard D&D.

Having the characters have to split their BAB between attack bonus & defense bonus (rather than having a separate defense skill) can also be interesting. Without the ever increasing hp, people are probably going to be more concerned with defense than attack bonus.

 

[Mythmere1]

I agree with the gang that says D&D has to be mashed a bit to fit it into a real sword and sorcery style, although 1e and 3e both presuppose a fairly sword & sorcery world -- it's just that then the rules establish a higher fantasy ... um, interface, I guess is the best word I can come up with. Combat in D&D doesn't get lethal until it hits a certain point; great for wargaming and high fantasy, not quite the S&S feel. You can add a critical hit table to get closer, but D&D is intrinsically higher fantasy than the original pulp stories.

Since that stems from a hit-point method of damage, I'd say that anything based on the SRD (which doesn't use a different damage mechanism) is going to have the same "higher fantasy" flaw.

That's combat - the other side of the equation is magic. D&D magic is designed to be a reliable tool (for good reasons), not a crap-shoot. But in S&S, it's a crap shoot; which means that it's got to be more powerful. Powerful but unreliable magic is very hard to make work for a game, because it's balanced over several encounters but makes the outcome of an individual encounter based a lot on luck (even if there's good design in terms of making the player's skill count in how far to push the envelope). Your magic user is often going to blow away an otherwise difficult encounter, or suddenly turn into a slavering demon without warning. This is an inherent difficulty with the S&S genre, not any particular game.

From what I've seen, SW strikes a fairly good spot for magic. Again, I haven't read most of the other games that have been suggested here, so I can't make a worthwhile comparison. All I can do is point out that D&D of any edition is hardwired more or less for higher fantasy.

I've got problems with SW - it's more like 3e than I like; skills (although they're bundled in the same fashion I've heard they are in True20), feats (which reduce free-form, narrative combat) and interpersonal "charisma" die rolls. From my 1e perspective, these are handled much better in SW than in 3e, but they're still there. These objections don't make it lean toward or away from S&S - they're just things I don't like about 3e that also appear in SW. For dyed in the wool d20 likers, these are probably advantages rather than disadvantages.

EDIT: I'm no SW proselytizer - I actually play 1e and have not played SW more than a couple of test combats. It's just that for the purpose of this thread, my best answer out of games I've tried is SW, not 1e.

 

[Desdichado]

Hit points are only a problem if your assumption is that you're going to be playing into the higher levels.

I never assume that. I like to start at 3rd or so, and end before hitting 10th. Or at most, very early teens. I don't find any problem in maintaining a "lower" fantasy feel in that range.

Also, if it's that big a problem, you can adopt a Grim N Gritty Hit Points approach--start with with hp's equal to Con score + level. Maybe add a smallish multiplier based on class so combat classes get a little better advancement of hitpoints than others. I've done that before once or twice, and it works brilliantly, IMO.

 

[Stormborn]

Then again, there's also a difference between genre emulation through setting and genre emulation through plots. I think S&S as S vs. S is a less exciting plot for a game, and even then a pretty tired and hashed out one for stories as well. For my game, I tried to emulate more of the setting of a S&S or Weird Tale, but my plots felt much more byzantine, and honestly they came out more like occult versions of a Robert Ludlum novel or something.

Even then, you're talking most specifically about Howard. Lebier didn't have spellcasting protagonists, but Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser had spellcasting patrons. Clark Ashton Smith wrote early S&S with spellcasting protagonists on occasion. Michael Moorcock obviously did as well.

You are absolutely correct, and when I wrote that earlier I forgot about the Gray Mouser. I still think that minimizing the magical abilities of the PCs is more in keeping with the genere than having any kind of spellcasting class. Your Incantations or CoC system idea is very apt for that, especially the CoC system as Howard and others played off of Lovecraft and actually gave rise to a lot of what we thing of as the Mythos.