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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arilyn" data-source="post: 7274462" data-attributes="member: 6816042">Yes, but at no point were swords and sorcery heroes ever like beginning DnD characters. Conan started out very powerful and got better, but the difference was not like the difference in levels with DnD characters. On the flip side, Conan never got as tough as the highest level characters either.And all that careful dungeon crawling? The maps, the long lists of equipment?, the players spending an hour figuring out the best way to get through a trap laden room? Not swords and sorcery. Another missing trope is the fluctuating fortune of the characters. Rich warlord in this story, destitute slave in the next. It's not a slow accumulation of wealth, which the characters eventually can use to build strongholds and hire followers. It's up and down. That Dragon hoarde you just won? Not going to last... About what was being published in the 70s? Tournament dungeons. Weren't meant to be part of your main campaign. Besides, it was still a lot of dungeon crawling, where characters weren't worth the paper they were written on. Not Swords and Sorcery. Not Tolkien. More like a puzzle. Now, I'm sure players tried to make it Swords and Sorcery or Tolkien, but game wasn't emulating either one very well at all. Course, Gygax originally didn't want role playing in his game anyway. I'm not sure, but I think the term, role playing, might have been originally coined by the California group. Anyone know?Anyway, it's not like Tolkien either. The heroes did not explore Moria, looking for loot, they just wanted to get through it as quickly as possible. There's long political conversations, and Gandalf has a lot of power he is not supposed to wield.DnD is DnD. And, especially in the old days, I didn't feel like I was in any of those Appendix N stories.</blockquote>

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