Sword and Sorcery has been done to death.

[tetsujin28]

To me the key S&S authors are Howard and Leiber.

Not taking anything away from Fritz (my roomie was a good friend of his), but there are a lot of S&S authors who come before Leiber.

 

[sword-dancer]

I would count Moorcrock, CA Smith, Saunders to name a few into the mix.

 

[Rackhir]

Has anyone mentioneed that characters over third level are munchkin, as is characters having enough food to eat?

Oopps. Sorry this post should have gone into the running gags thread.

 

[vic20]

Wilderlands is pretty S&S, the Conan RPG is hardcore S&S, otherwise what?

I'll be starting a Wilderlands campaign soon, using the Codes of Honor from Conan, and the Iron Heroes alternate player's handbook. It's shaping up to be about as S&S as it gets.

 

[Gentlegamer]

You keep on using that phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means.

INCONCEIVABLE!

 

[Gentlegamer]

I've always been partial to the moniker "Planetary Romance". A genre which also includes the likes of Flash Gordon, Buck Rodgers, etc.

Aside: keep in mind when these sorts of stories were written. John Carter hit the scene at a time when physicists were just comming to grips with radiation. So inventing "rays" that powered the characters anti-grav tech was prety good. No, I'm not saying that he was writting hard sci-fi. I'm saying that he paid lip service to the science of his time while writting in plot devices that were essentially magical. Much the same way that Star Trek writters do today (quick, its the third act! Re-align the deflector array to "plot resolutioun" ).

Back to topic. In its more highly developed form Planetary Romance gives way to Space Opera (Star Wars). The defining trait here being that nearly all that lip service to science disapears in favor of an intentional mimicry of mythic cycles (here comes the messiah folks, and he's carrying a laser-sword).

An excellent, brief description of the matter!

Planetary Romance sounds like a suitable description. I've always put such things in the broader category of Adventure Fiction, or the Well Wrought Tale.

 

[Von Ether]

As Master Conversion document on the Alderac board compiles the psionic rules from Shadow Force Archer, you might want to look over Spycraft 2.0.

It's got a nifty "genere" system to tweak the game to be as gritty or cinematic as you like.

 

[Templetroll]

I've considered trying to run a campaign based on Darkover, using the Psionic rules. I think it would fit well there. I do not like psionics in my regular D&D campaigns, however. This is mostly due to bad experiences with a player who constantly cheated to roll up psionic characters using a 3d6 in order rollup system. I just prefer to keep psionic chocolate out of my fantasy peanute butter.

 

[The Shaman]

INCONCEIVABLE!

I do not mean to pry, but you don't, by any chance, happen to have six fingers on your right hand?

 

[helium3]

The discussion about what is and is not sword and sorcery is quite interesting as I didn't realize there was an actual difference between S&S and HF. However, I think we're missing the original poster's point. What he seems to be REALLY saying is that he's tired of running games that are basically rehashes of what he considers "standard" dungeons and dragons.

I sympathize with him, as I have been there before. It often seems to boil down to either a player's unwillingness to learn something new (be it a new system or a new way that the various NPC's relate to one another) or a total lack of imagination. Sometimes it also can be boiled down to poor prep work on the part of the DM, in that the DM should be able to describe an alternative campaign world in enough detail to convince potential players that it's consistent.