Sword & Sorcery RPGs 2024

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I backed Tales of Argosa (Low Fantasy Gaming 2e), recently got a mail saying it'll be shipping soon and I'm really excited for it! there's a free public playtest which is pretty complete.

while DCC gives me the immediate rush and crazy adventures, this feels much more grounded and gritty, I like the exploits and the flexibility (and it has Foundry support which means I'm much more likely to run it).
I love the inclusion of cards and dice to give ideas and answer questions (and there are free online versions so you don't have to but them)

Isn't there also a DCC sword & sorcery setting called Hubris, which is basically a post-apocalypse Atlantean setting?

 

[coralwave]

Isn't there also a DCC sword & sorcery setting called Hubris, which is basically a post-apocalypse Atlantean setting?

I know of it but haven't read it, so little time- so many games...

but DCC will forever be my go to epic fantasy, and I associate S&S with a more gritty game.
Ironic, because I don't think many games can give a better experience of the genre staples

 

[Enaknomolos]

[Primeval Thule]...I was wondering the other day if anyone had played this. A satisfied customer, it sounds like! Any particular likes, cautions, or tips?

Unfortunately it wasn't released for S&W that I've ever seen. I'd have loved that. There are 4e, 5e, Pathfinder (1e) and 13th Age versions though.

It's the S&S setting that I've never got around to running that I most want to. The only reason I haven't is because I had a long-running homebrew S&S campaign and then we felt like doing other genres for a while. As a mark of how highly I rate it: it's literally the only product for any WotC edition of D&D that I still own in hard copy.

The big draw for me is the map and gazetteer. It's huge, has lots of varied polities with lots of interactions and loads of named NPCs, but also lots of space you can just riff on things in. For me, most setting books fall flat. They're just not gameable. For instance, the setting section of the highly acclaimed Swords of the Serpentine doesn't name a single NPC. It has adventure prompts, but they're all at a generic level - 'a noble', 'a thief' - so it barely rises above the level of lists of tropes. PT is the exact opposite of this. It's all fleshed-out individuals with plans and schemes crashing up against others. To show what I mean, I turned to a random page of the Atlas and looked at a random paragraph and got this:

Beritt the Withered isn’t well-informed just because she gets reports from her sea-captains; she’s also in possession of artifacts called the Ebon Scrolls that multiply the potency of her divination magic. Krufa Saursane knows Beritt has the Ebon Scrolls, and he’s scheming to take them from her

As a referee, that's exactly the sort of thing I need to kickstart some adventures, and thw whole atlas is like this.

It's a shame I can't give you an actual played report; but when I do run it, it will be in Barbarians of Lemuria, so I wouldn't be able to tell you about the rules side of things properly anyway

 

[Autumnal]

I’d be running it in Savage Worlds, so no fuss.

 

[rhythmsoundmotion]

What makes for a strong RPG engine for a Sword & Sorcery RPG?
• If the system has character classes, the classes need Sword & Sorcery flavor.
• Some kind of corruption system

If you're going to publish a sword & sorcery RPG, why wouldn't you make it look like a tattered old Del Rey paperback?

it would be impossible to get that stale smell though.

 

[rhythmsoundmotion]

DriveThruRPG Crypts & Things has a cool cover. I want to read it for the system as well!

 

[Ath'kethin]

I was wondering the other day if anyone had played this. A satisfied customer, it sounds like! Any particular likes, cautions, or tips?

Well, the setting book (for 5e anyway) predates any license allowing 3rd party publications using the ruleset (the book draws form the 3.x license instead). This means the book is full of awkward phrasing like using the term "tactical advantage" instead of just "advantage." It's a minor thing but quite noticeable if you're used to the way 5e stuff is generally written.

I really like the setting at large, and there's a section on the development of magic that I really enjoyed. The maps are cool and I always dig city-by-city writeups like the book has. None of it is particularly groundbreaking, but there are some cool ideas. I will say that since the world is theoretically our own Earth, there are some time-travely things I don't 100% love, but they are easily ignored.

I dig the full-scale inclusion and normalization of the Cthulhu Mythos stuff. One of my favorite things in the Player's Companion is separate iterations of the GOO warlock subclass tailored to different Great Old Ones and Elder Gods. The changes are unlikely to come into play in most campaigns (inasmuch as most change the 14th level feature) but just knowing they are there changes the way the class gets played at the table. At least in my experience.

The 5e line has a few supplements that weren't available for the other systems. IME the best of these is the Player's Companion, which has some new subclasses and such in it, but non are necessary IMO. I ran most of the adventures and they are all pretty good IMO.

 

[rhythmsoundmotion]

DriveThruRPG There is a book for Primeval Thule Savage Worlds.

 

[Enaknomolos]

DriveThruRPG Crypts & Things has a cool cover. I want to read it for the system as well!

It's my favourite OSR system for S&S, though not quite at Barbarians of Lemuria standards overall to me.

It's basically Swords&Wizardry with a bunch of mods. The S&W single save becomes your base roll to perform skills too; and this forms the basis for a lot of class abilities. Basic classes are barbarian, fighter, thief, sorcerer; and the barbarian is a proper Conan figure not a beserker. There's an ingenious luck mechanic that means your luck slowly runs out as the adventure wears on. Magic is OSR, but split into black, white or grey schools - black causes corruption, white attracts demons or undead. In addition to corruption, there's a sanity mechanic.

A lot of the modifications to S&W first appeared on the Akratic Wizardry blog, and you can see them there.

 

[Enaknomolos]

What makes for a strong RPG engine for a Sword & Sorcery RPG?
• If the system has character classes, the classes need Sword & Sorcery flavor.
• Some kind of corruption system

• The characters should be very competent - neither normal people nor superheroes.
• Combat should be fast-flowing and brutal - combat rounds should be quick and long slow battles of attrition should be very rare.
• It shouldn't be too worried about tracking every arrow and ration used. I like that sort of book-keeping in some games, but it's not what S&S stories are about.
• I'd quibble on corruption: magic has to be dangerous; but there's are a few other ways that can be mechanically implemented, including simply disallowing PC casters and making all NPC casters malignant by decree.
• Magic and magic items should usually be rare compared to D&D norms