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The present review is part of a series of reviews of fantasy games. By fantasy I mean pre-modern fantasy involving low levels of technology (up to the equivalent of 15th century Europe), magic and fantastic creatures. By the end of the review you can find links to the games that were covered in the series until today.
This is a capsule review. It’s based on the concept that a gamebook can be usefully reviewed without playtesting. As it has been said, “The book is the book and the game is the game. The book helps create the game, but it can only help. You can review it as a book, you can review how much it helps, but reviewing an individual session can (at its worst) be as useless as reviewing an individual snowflake.” (Greg Stolze) Given this, instead of playtesting I do what I call benchtesting by which I mean that I pass the rules through a certain number of game situations to figure out how they play.
STYLE
Sorcerer & Sword is a soft cover, 112 pages, black & white book in a format that’s midway paperback and A4. The single column text is written in a sans-serif font of good size. Boxes with the text in negative contain quotations from genre fiction. The margins are well sized. Most art is by Les Evans and it’s of good quality in terms of execution but not that creative in terms of concept. On the other hand, there are some pieces by Raven that are sub-par in execution but conceptually good. There are three ugly but serviceable computer-generated maps. The book has some typos but nothing worth noting. Style-wise, my main issue with the book relates to the tone used through out that often doesn’t create the right atmosphere (to use a concept present in the book) and distracts from it, just consider expressions such as “we know Conan’s a bad-ass” (p. 24), “sword-wielding butt-kickers” (40), “althought boy do they cheat” (p. 51) or “kind of “look ‘em in the eye, they’re really just big sissies” attitude”.
On the overall the book’s style is neither good nor bad. I’ve seen worst tomes but also much better ones. I’ll give it a 3.
CONTENT I – CONTEXTUALIZING SORCERER & SWORD’S TAKE ON SWORD & SORCERY
What do you get from Sorcerer & Sword’s 112 pages? Seven white pages; six pages with publicity; seven empty half-pages opening the chapters (summing up to three-and-a-half additional empty pages); the two pages of the inner cover sheet; three pages of table of contents; a two-pages index; two pages for acknowledgments and for a preface that says nothing about the subject of the book. When we add all of this the space reserved for useful content has been reduced to 86.5 pages. Deduce from it seventeen pages of content that has nothing specifically about the subject of the book (most of chapter seven and the appendix)… and you get 69.5 pages on sword and sorcery, that’s 62% of the book, less than two thirds. Even if one includes under “content” the table of contents, the index, the inner cover, the seven empty half-pages at the head of the chapters and two empty pages at the end of the chapters, all we get are 82 useful pages, 73% of the book. This means that depending on the way one counts there’s between 27% and 38% wasted space, space you pay for when you buy the book and space you are entitled to expect to be about its subject, specially in a book as short as the present. So, when considering Sorcerer & Sword keep in mind that you’re handled at least twenty seven per cent of zero content.
I mentioned an appendix and chapter Seven, aren’t these filled with content? The first is composed of “The Role-Playing Indie Manifesto”. The small problem with this manifesto is that it has nothing specific about sword & sorcery under Sorcerer. It may or may not be great stuff but I will not comment on it because I’m reviewing a book on sword & sorcery, not about ejaculations on what roleplaying is or is not. All I have to say is that this manifesto should not be in this book because it is not part of the content of the book. At most the book should have a paragraph with a reference stating that it was produced according to the terms of the manifesto and explaining where the later can be obtained, say through an internet link. I would prefer to have less six pages of manifesto and more six pages on roleplaying sword & sorcery with Sorcerer. What about chapter Seven, “The Anatomy of Authored Role-Playing”, 20 pages of it? It starts with five pages on “Authorship” that are just some more “hairy-ass role-playing theory” (p. 77), as focused on roleplaying sword & sorcery with Sorcerer as the Indie Manifesto. At least there are some examples that attempt to bridge the theory into the theme of the book. I may have to spend some time with this fluff, though, because it somehow shapes Ron’s approach to the genre. Next it includes a sub-section on “Overall preparation”, again very generic and lacking examples related to sword & sorcery. Finally, we have nine pages on “Scenario Preparation and Play”, still too generic and slimly related to the subject of the book. In any case, this chapter should not be here, it should be in a separate publication because it is generic stuff, not something that is specifically about, you know, roleplaying sword & sorcery with Sorcerer. The book should have references to this stuff since it colours Ron’s approach to the genre, but that’s all. Most of these 20 pages are wasted space that should filled with more content on the issue at hand.
I tend to consider art as part of content since it helps a lot in setting the tone and in describing characters, creatures, places, etc. Les Evans art is quite good. It’s mostly of the Conannesque variety, though, and lacks conceptual creativity, as I said before. Raven’s art is more inspiring content-wise but of poor execution. In both cases the art has no organic relationship to the text, so it is of low interest as an input to roleplaying.
Time to go to those seventy pages of actual written content.
Defining sword & sorcery. What is sword & sorcery according to the author? He deals with this issue in the small Chapter One: Fantastic Adventure. Ron starts with a mention to heroic fantasy and moves on to what sword & sorcery is… not – even before trying to define what it is, an odd choice but then, he actually does not define it since what he describes applies to a lot of adventure fiction that cannot be considered sword and sorcery, thus we are mostly left in the dark. We can always deduct that concept from his take on the literature, though and the content of the next chapters.
The Literature is presented in the second chapter. Ron sets the standard high: “This chapter is kind of a critical essay with a bibliography embedded in it.” Wow. He breaks the history of sword & sorcery into three stages: First, the origins with authors such as Howard, Leiber, etc., a golden era of the genre in Ron’s perspective; second, the 60s and 70s, marked by fans writers that reduced the genre into some “pastiche conventions”, but also the time of some new and creative authors such as Moorcock, yet the standardization of sword & sorcery would lead it to an “horrible death” by the end of the 70s; third the undead stage from the 70s onwards (Ron doesn’t call it “undead”, that’s my term, but what should I call it when he mentions the continuation of the genre after its death?). This historical overview has some funny things: It excludes from the genre writings that arguably can be included in it (why not Solomon Kane or Hawkmoon?); the most extensive list of writers of sword & sorcery is from… after the death of the genre (15 writers since the 70s compared to 6 for its golden age); above all, the weird idea that bad sword & sorcery is not sword & sorcery (sorry but this is plainly wrong: The bad works are as part of the genre as the good and excellent ones). By the end of all of this, what do we get to make heads and tails of sword & sorcery, and thus justify the “critical essay” qualifier? Almost nothing other than an opinionated list of writers and books. What Ron does not tell us is how to distinguish sword & sorcery from other types of fantasy; how to separate it from other types of pulp fiction (since sword & sorcery is a subgenre of the larger field of pulp); how to set it apart from pre-modern historical fiction; where’s the dividing line from real world myths and legends. And what about sword & sorcery in media other than short stories and novels? Where’s a comprehensive list of the treatment of the genre in movies, comics, graphic novels, tv serials, art books? Where are the internet resources on sword & sorcery? No, chapter two is not “a kind of critical essay” by any stretch of mind (compare this chapter, for instance, with Joseph A. McCullough V’s The Demarcation of Sword and Sorcery). Finally, Ron Edwards also forgets to mention the fact that sword & sorcery has been subject to extensive treatment in roleplaying games, but this will require some comment somewhere down bellow.
Sword & Sorcery roleplaying. Yes, yes, roleplaying. The book under consideration has two perspectives on roleplaying, the one it proposes – as we will see in due time – and “what you find in the majority of so-called ‘fantasy role-playing games’”. And what is this? Killing monsters, power mongering, getting more stuff, a technology called magic (p. 12). It’s also about “how the GM is the story-teller person and the player acts out the part of the character” (pp. 12-13). Since Sorcerer & Sword’s avowedly considers that “the GM exists to facilitate the player as primary author … inspiring and facilitating, not dictating” (p. 13), we are sure to conclude that “so-called ‘fantasy role-playing games’” position the GM as the author dictating what happens to the characters. Furthermore, Ron sees pre-Sorcerer & Sword fantasy roleplaying as a “detailed dungeon with outsides” (p. 14), yet in order to create said “dungeon with outsides” the “fan and gaming dogma” requires “elaborate pre-story world building” (p. 25), if you are to believe Mr. Edwards. Take notice: Sorcerer & Sword does not look for “realism, as found in many role-playing designs” because it “plays very, very little role in sword-and-sorcery” (p. 31). Neither will you find in Sorcerer & Sword “the bugaboo of fantasy role-playing games: weapon and armor types” (p. 70).
I could go on. Do you see yourself in this portrait of fantasy roleplaying games, or do you consider it to be just a caricature of the worst forms of hack-and-slash? I personally don’t think that Ron does justice to the hobby. This is not the type of roleplaying that I’ve seen being played and discussed, and for which I’ve been buying game materials in the last two-and-a-half decades. But Ron goes even further: He ends his take on sword & sorcery roleplaying by claiming that “it has never managed to enter the culture of role-playing, except in hideously shallow and debased forms” (p. 96)! This is a very tall claim to put forward. The absence of references to sword & sorcery games in Sorcerer & Sword leads me to think that Ron was very poorly informed at the time he wrote the book. Consider, for instance, Stormbringer/Elric!, the number one sword & sorcery game of the 80s and 90s. Even outside of this genre, even if we consider generic fantasy, things didn’t and don’t conform to the portrait painted above. Ron’s depiction almost sounds like a caricature drawn in order to give more value to his own book.
Come as it may, the claim that sword & sorcery’s treatment in rpgs was “hideously shallow and debased” previous to the book being reviewed sets a standard on which to measure the achievements of Sorcerer & Sword. It is to be combined with another claim, the one that “the expanded sorcery rules in Chapter Five and further rules notions and details in Chapter Six should provide all the scope you need for the most astonishing magic and toughest fighters to be found in all of role-playing games” (p. 46). These are very high standards on which to judge the achievements of this book. There’s a third one, though.
I mentioned that Ron puts out of the sword & sorcery fold the “pale trash today called heroic fantasy, especially the ‘barbarian jock’ stuff”. He goes further on and claims that it “is nowhere to be found here”. Before proceeding it could be helpful to understand better what makes ‘barbarian jock’ such a trash. For that purpose we cannot rely on Ron since he hardly explains how we can distinguish ‘jock’ from ‘non-jock’ or, more importantly, what’s the creative difference from writing good fiction to writing ‘jock’ fiction. Luckily Ursula Le Guin can give us a hint: “Commodified fantasy takes no risks: it invents nothing, but imitates and trivialises. It proceeds by depriving the old stories of their intellectual and ethical complexity, turning their action to violence, their actors to dolls, and their truth-telling to sentimental platitude. Heroes brandish their swords, lasers, wands, as mechanically as combine harvesters, reaping profits. Profoundly disturbing moral choices are sanitized, made cute, made safe. The passionately conceived ideas of the great story-tellers are copied, stereotyped, reduced to toys, molded in bright-colored plastic, advertised, sold, broken, junked, replaceable, interchangeable.” (Tales From Earthsea, p. XIV). The point is thus the next: Can we use Sorcerer & Sword to produce creative fantasy, or is it a guideline for commodified fantasy? The best way to gauge this is by looking at the examples spread in the book. So, our third standard to gauge the usefulness of Sorcerer & Sword will be to look at Ron’s creations and check if they tend towards the excellence or towards the ‘jock’ status.
It is thus time to see if the book lives to its own standards.
CONTENT II – SETTING THE GAME
The meat of the matter starts to take shape in chapter three, the setting and Ron delivers once more some very heavy-handed ideas that can be summed up in a couple of sentences: “The idea is to start with a very sketchy setting, high on potential and atmosphere but low on any details … The setting is a garment for the heroes to wear, and it will only acquire character, detail, and a heart of its own through the hero’s use of it – that is, through play” (p. 13). The core instrument to work this out is the setting map, just be careful to ensure that “if there’s a map, it’s practically blank”. According to Ron this works this way because that’s the way things work in sword & sorcery fiction. Still according to him, this is the opposite of what we find in other forms of fantasy fiction and specially in fantasy roleplaying where, we have seen, “elaborate pre-story world building” is the norm.
Nonsense. Take, for instance, what Ursula Le Guin has to say on how she wrote Earthsea (one of my favourite fantasy series, by the way): "Seven or eight years after Tehanu was published, I was asked to write a story set in Earthsea. A mere glimpse at the place told me that things had been happening there while I wasn't looking. / I also wanted information on various things that had happened back then, before Ged and Tenar were born." (Tales From Earthsea, p. XII). "So that my mind could move about among the years and centuries without getting things all out of order, and to keep contradictions and discrepancies to a minimum while I was writing these stories, I became (somewhat) more systematic and methodical, and put my knowledge of the peoples and their history together into 'A Description of Earthsea'. Its function is like that of the first big map I drew of all the Archipelago and the Reaches, when I began to work on A Wizard of Earthsea over thirty years ago: I needed to know where things are, and how to get from here to there - in time as well as in space." (Tales From Earthsea, p. XIII).
What Ron proposes is not specific to sword & sorcery, neither in fantasy, nor outside of it. The world development process he describes is possibly the norm in most fiction writing. It is there in most pulp fantasy (consider how Tarzan’s Africa was detailed novel after novel) if not in most fantasy. There are two processes at work here: World creation and fiction publication. Some writers can work on their fictional worlds for years before publishing a line about them; other authors are forced to publish as fast as possible. Usually the first don’t live on writing – think Tolkien, for instance. Pulp writers like Howard or Leiber lived on their pens so they had to publish as fast as possible, and they usually did so in serial publications. In their case world creation went hand-in-hand with fiction publication. (Note: Not that long ago I had an extensive conversation with “manydepresso” Eric on this subject in an Open thread that you can find at http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=395917.) Something similar happens in roleplaying. We often find setting books containing the well developed result of years of world creation through playing. We are spared the whole creative process, but it does not mean that it was independent from playing. The bottom line is simple: There’s no clear cut and exclusive correlation between the create as you publish approach and sword & sorcery fiction writing, and there is no parallel exclusive correlation between the create as you play approach and sword & sorcery roleplaying. It’s a matter of time and personal taste. Some people prefer to work on the game world upfront, other people prefer to develop it as they play. One way or the other, what works for them is what they should do. Ron’s lawyering is just an empty stricture. At the most we can say that since long-term roleplaying works in an incremental way, since it is serialised by nature, it may be easier and more advisable to develop the game world incrementally.
Connected with this is another misperception on the part of Ron Edwards, one about the process of fiction writing and the materials used by writers in the process. We find a mention to it when he says that “nearly all the authors listed in Chapter 2 were very careful to divorce their work from any kind of historical fiction” (p. 27). What! Even a myopic person can read the links between most sword & sorcery fiction and real world history from a 10m distance and without glasses. (Want an example? Look at Hyborea: It’s a clear centrifugation and percolation of data collected from non-fiction writing about the real world’s past and present. Howard didn’t even care to write off the names.)
At this stage it’s important to remark that Ron Edwards fails to mention the core idea behind sword & sorcery: The confrontation that sets barbarism vs. civilization, unconstrained but ethical freedom vs. corrupting social constrains. If there’s a theme that defines the genre, this is it, and it is plainly a theme taken from last century real world. Still, this idea is not specific to sword & sorcery, it is shared with many other types of pulp literature (we find it in Tarzan, in westerns, in Sword & Planet, etc.). What is specific to sword & sorcery is to set this theme in fictional, pre-modern mythic ages. Yes, Ron mentions some of the consequences of this concept (fallen civilizations, disregard to law and to “being socially constructive”, superficial racism, lack of belief systems set in stone), but he doesn’t present it directly and clearly under an unifying, coherent perspective. The only instance where the book points to the modernity of sword & sorcery is on religion and yes, in that sense “1930s pulp fantasy is aggressively modern literature” (p. 50), but it is also “aggressively modern literature” in many other senses that the author fails to grasp. (Classic sword & sorcery looks at this issue from the perspective of the 20s, an age after an extreme carnage preparing itself to an even more extreme carnage, both perpetrated by the most civilized and advanced cultures and societies. Later sword & sorcery fiction found inspiration in different real world contemporary themes, but themes that were no less about the fight between the individual and society, and about the doom of civilization. Think Moorkock and his Elric, a metaphor of the White Man devoid of his burden after the fall of the (British) colonial world, or his Hawkmoon, directly inspired by the 60s.)
Of critical importance to the genre and to roleplaying it, the modernity of sword & sorcery extends to the profile of its heroes, villains and creatures. Characters such as Conan, the Grey Mouser, Fafhrd are all based on the popular trope of the independent adventurer from the period between the two World Wars. They echo real people such as Lindberg, Saint Exupery, Hilary, Lawrence of Arabia and many more. Thirty years afterwards we get Elric, the colonial master in a post-colonial world. The human villains they face are no less modern. They have their correspondents in the followers of huge social movements like parties, churches, and companies, all servants to what is presented as modern and civilised serfdom. The demons and creatures of sword & sorcery represent the devils of technology and technical systems, arcane and incomprehensible to the common man.
I could go on. The point is that sword & sorcery does not start with a blank page, it steams from a deep awareness of the issues of today, the today of the sword & sorcery writer, and a comprehension of the past rooted in whatever historiography a writer happens to read.
I mentioned examples and how these could help us in measuring the usability of this book. Ron comes up with three settings (no less) in order to exemplify how one can create his own sword & sorcery game. Ron’s recipe for world creation is simple: Pick a set of fiction works you like and fancy, mix-and-mash it, and voila, there’s your game world. Keep in mind that it should be “high on potential and atmosphere but low on any details”, though. (How it can be high on potential and atmosphere if it is low on details defies all logic but we find no explanation to this exercise in contradiction. Of course, this counterbalances Ron’s perception that fantasy roleplaying is low on potential and atmosphere while being high on details, another paradox of his making.) Xar, Ron’s first setting, is Hyborea by any other name with an Arabian colour. Next we have The Black Forest, a Warhammer-like world with a twist towards traditional children stories. Finally we have the Clicking Sands, a post-apocalyptic devastated far future like so many others. “Commodified fantasy takes no risks: it invents nothing, but imitates and trivialises.” That’s the spirit. Truth be told that we cannot go too far with more-or-less four paragraphs by setting. “Low on details” easily leads to “hideously shallow and debased”.
What do we get as tools for sword & sorcery setting creation, then? Irrelevant and secondary concerns about maps and levels of detail, on one hand. And a lack of a deep understanding of the genre and how it leads to word and character creation, on the other. In the end nothing sums better the shortcomings of Sorcerer & Sword than a sentence: “Cyrion, Rajan, and Fafhrd aren’t real names. But they sound as if they could be …” Right.
PLAYING SWORD & SORCERY WITH SORCERER
Sorcerer & Sword is also about the implementation of sword & sorcery under the Sorcerer rpg. Let’s see how it works by starting with character creation, but for that we need to recall how a character is defined in Sorcerer (for a closer look, check Sorcerer’s RPGnet reviews): Sorcerer characters are defined by three core stats, Stamina, Will and Lore. Each score has a numerical rating and one or more qualitative descriptions chosen from a list of alternatives. Note that Lore only applies to sorcerers, non-sorcerers don’t have the Lore score. A fourth score, Humanity, is equal to either Stamina or Will. A fifth score, Cover (his role in the mundane world), is also equal to either Stamina or Will. Furthermore the character has a Price (the downside to being a sorcerer) that may penalize dice rolls, a Telltale (something that reveals that he is a sorcerer to those that know) and a Kicker (something in his life that makes things happen when he enters play). Oh, and a sorcerer has one or more bound demons since that’s what makes him a sorcerer.
In order to adjust Sorcerer to the sword and sorcery genre, Sorcerer & Sword takes the next steps: It provides specific qualitative descriptions to the three core stats (they are supposed to have been taken from the literature but there are no specific pointers to that purpose); Humanity gets some very brief explanation on how it works within the genre and some minor rules changes; instead of a Cover characters have a Past, not that it makes much difference in game terms but the qualification makes more sense; Price is still there but with new alternatives that work well within the genre but could be properly justified with references to fiction; Kickers are there but they are less broad and more adventure specific; there’s no mention to Telltales, but they figure in the description of example characters. Sorcerer & Sword adds another descriptor, Destiny, but it provides no guidelines on how to play it so it’s more fluff than anything else (at least it has clear references to the literature). So far so good. It seems at first sight that Sorcerer & Sword has the stuff to model a sword & sorcery character, but does it really? The best way for us to know would be for the book to provide the stats and game-terms description for characters taken from the fiction. Hellas, there is none.
I saved the juicy bit to the end. It goes like this, “In game terms, Conan is a sorcerer!” (p. 41). When I read this I just stared, motionless. Next I closed and rubbed my eyes. Next I re-read the sentence. Hellas, it was not a mistake because the idea is repeated in p. 45. This is just plain nonsense. It completely betrays the genre in general, and Conan stories in particular. I know that Sorcerer & Sword is an extension to Sorcerer, the game where you play sorcerers, but this is not an excuse to completely subvert the genre that the book is supposed to model. If there’s something we may be sure about the genre is that the heroes are not part of what they fight. Conan, Fafhrd, the Grey Mouser are no sorcerers. If a game book says they are, the game book completely misses the point about the genre.
Yet, no matter how ludicrous it may be, the conclusion that all characters in Sorcerer & Sword are sorcerers it’s just a figment of imagination not necessarily supported by the game materials provided in the book. Remember how I mentioned that what makes a sorcerer in Sorcerer is the fact that the character has a bound demon? Since in Sorcerer terms no bound demon, no sorcerer, and since Sorcerer & Sword doesn’t force every character to have a bound demon, characters in Sorcerer & Sword are not sorcerers by design, point. Yes, all the example characters in the book are sorcerers (more on this later), but there’s nothing forcing the players to follow that path. After all, had the author really attempted to provide game descriptions of fiction characters like Conan or the Leiber duo, certainly these would not be modelled as sorcerers with bound demons. But then, this creates several serious problems.
The first and more pressing concerns the set of character descriptors taken from Sorcerer. If a character is not a sorcerer he will not have the Lore score, a Price, a Telltale and bound demon(s). This takes out a good chunk of character creation and the ability to tap the system to model a complex and interesting character.
Second, there actually are sword & sorcery characters that are sorcerers. How do you recreate Elric in Sorcerer & Sword, for instance? Elric, may be learned in sorcery, he may use sorcery, he may deal with demons like Stormbringuer, but he is no sorcerer. Not at heart. The truth is that the game provides no guidelines on how to design characters that use sorcery but are not sorcerers. I suppose the idea is for the player to follow the rules from the core Sorcerer book, but these were designed for a very different setting, one where the characters are really sorcerers, point. Things are different in sword & sorcery. In order to model someone like Elric we need to consider the mindset of sorcerers, the way they deal with the world that surrounds them, how they get involved with sorcery, their function in the setting. The book has here and there some allusions and half-backed references to these issues, but that’s all, they are not addressed head-on. Yet, they are critical in any game that attempts to model the genre.
The third problem relates to the balance between PCs and NPCs. In Sorcerer characters are sorcerers with their demons. As I just mentioned, in Sorcerer & Sword they may or may not be sorcerers and, most often than not, they will not be if one is to be faithful to the genre – and even when the characters are sorcerers they are at odds with that situation. Now, this is not a minor issue. In the Sorcerer rpg a sorcerer’s exceptional power comes from the demons he has bound. His stats may be high by human standards, but they fall within the boundaries of the possible. What allows a sorcerer to impact the world around him in terms that are way behind the limits of what’s possible for a human person is the intervention of the demons he controls (or believes to control). Take out the demon, and you are left with another common man or woman, no matter how above average he or she may be. Now, this may or may not be a problem depending on how we perceive the characters in the sword & sorcery genre, but it is something that needs to be addressed: Sorcerer relies on demons to ensure that characters are super-human; sword & sorcery characters are super-human, but they are such for reasons that are not linked to the intervention of demons (with exceptions, of course); how does the game ensure this? There’s no answer to this question since it is not even formulated. For instance, how do you ensure that Conan can beat hordes of enemy soldiers with only his bare muscles and his regular sword? Don’t ask me since I cannot answer it, at least not by the book.
The game claims to be centred on characters, so we have three example characters, one for each setting. Xar’s character is inspired by Cyrion (more imitation and trivialisation) and goes down to basically a cool, angst-devoid, agile sword-fighter. The Black Forest’s character can be summed up as a girl’s version of Elric. The Clicking Sand’s character can be described as a mutant post-ap cowboy that is often involved in “scenes with naked, savage mutants attacking en masse” where he is “depicted as hacking them apart as some of the horde gnaws on his legs”, in other words, more trivial imitation. Some things to say about these characters: When I read their descriptions there was nothing specific that screams “sword & sorcery” about them. Second, since there are no details on the settings, we cannot gauge how they relate to it. (Are they representative of the characters in their settings? Are they outstanding/marginal/odd/whatever? There’s no way to know.) Third, all of them are sorcerers in Sorcerer terms, in other words, all of them have bound demons. As was pointed out, this is not a feature of the genre. Here Ron is forcing the genre to conform to his game.
There’s more to a game than character creation. How does the game play? The book provides guidelines and rules to model genre-specific demons, including a new mechanic for demonic pacts and half-a-page on demon swords, once more without any clear references to specific works of fiction. A new dimension to sorcery, necromancy, presented in dry, mechanical terms without properly developed examples or references to the fiction that inspires it. There are cameos on fantasy artefacts, fake magic and hypnotism. There are some guidelines on how to use Sorcerer mechanics, stuff more geared towards the rollplayer than towards the roleplayer, if I’m allowed to resort to a well known misrepresentation of our hobby. There’s a cameo on sword & sorcery creatures and another on poison and drugs. Did I say that most of this stuff is poorly exemplified and lacks references to the original sources? All of this includes some interesting ideas and here-and-there we can find proposals that are actually neat but most of it just doesn’t fly high above ground.
Finally, there’s Humanity. To put it simply, Humanity is to Sorcerer what Sanity is to Call of Cthullu, a score that measures psychological balance (including in the expression “psychological” anything you can conceive, from sentiments to values to outright mental health). Just like with CoC’s San, when Humanity reaches 0 the character becomes a Non Player Character handed over by the player to the Game Master. In Sorcerer & Sword Humanity is presented as a relational score, representing the way the character deals with other people. As with most things about this book, I have two problems with Humanity:
First, the world itself. I don’t recall finding it in the genre. I’m saying this because for me language matters. When designing game materials for a particular genre or setting one should be consistent with it to the point of respecting its language. Words have a context, and the expression “humanity” does not find a place in sorcery & sword, not in express terms, at least.
Second, Humanity changes are deeply tied to sorcery as an active field of activity that allows the character to deal with demons. Since most characters in the genre are not sorcerers, their Humanity will not be subject to variations since there are no rules for humanity gain or loss based on mundane situations. It may still be important for NPCs, though, since that’s where we will find characters dealing with the supernatural and suffering paying the price. I have nothing against this but it should be explicit.
Mastering the game. Finally, the game includes what other games would consider to be suggestions for the GM but are proposed here as suggestions towards the group of players since the players are the main authors, remember? Basically, it starts with some discussion of multiple protagonists, the type of issues that the social nature of roleplaying always puts into question. Next it moves to the issues faced by long term playing in terms of linearity and metaplots. Ron Edwards claims to come with a better solution by… ditching temporal consistency, reason: Serialised fiction often jumps forward and backward in time. Yes, often writers go back and forth as they present new stories. This is fine and good with serial fiction, specially of the short story variety, it certainly works in episodic fiction. On the other hand, I don’t think it works in fiction that has a core plot, no matter how many subplots happen along the way, at least I have never seen a satisfying fictional work where we keep jumping in time while the main plot unfolds (flashbacks may be ok, but flashbacks are not linear jumps, they are just a way to refer to the past in order to provide data that is relevant to the now of the fictional work). Anyway, since time jumps work in serialised fiction, Ron claims that they are the way to go in roleplaying in order to handle the issues of linearity and metaplots. I fail to see how or why. I only see an added problem, one that makes things even more confusing. This is not to say that time jumps cannot be satisfying in roleplaying, it’s just that if they are satisfying, it’s in their own terms, it is not because they solve some lateral problem within the flow of the game emanating from linearity or metaplots. Anyway, Ron’s predicament is just a statement of faith since he provides no substantial proof that things work the way he says. In any case, if you swear by Ron Edwards, you will have a blast whatever he says; if you don’t, you may be prone to some difficult gaming if you attempt to follow his guidelines on these issues.
At last we have a set of do-it-yourself proposals for sword & sorcery roleplaying. Most of it is made of grandiloquent statements poorly served by concrete guidelines or suggestions on how to play it. When creating the situation, “be spectacular and atmospheric, and really build that world. Extravagance is good, extremity is good, and subtlety is good although it’s really hard” (p. 89) – but how do you do this? There’s no answer in the book. When designing the people keep in mind that “Sorcerer-pulp villains generate awe, mystery, and fear” (p. 90), but look elsewhere to know how to generate those feelings through roleplaying since Sorcerer doesn’t even ask. Involving the Characters has more to do with Ron’s fight against his windmills of fantasy roleplaying (in this case the enduring issue of how to bring the individual stories of the characters into a coherent shared story) than with sword & sorcery. Ditto for equipping the characters. We get more superficial sermonizing on bangs (plot hooks or game scenes for you and me), and finally a repetition of the same ideas about authorship prompted by the devils of railroading. All of this is shallow, all of this is sanctimonious, all of this is written with big words, many adjectives, and plenty of distortions about the hobby. It reads more like a sales pitch or a missionary speech than like truly workable material to be used in actual roleplaying.
BENCHTESTING
No matter what I may think, I need to put the contents of the gamebook to test, maybe this will show that I’m completely wrong on my reading. For that purpose I’ll try to create some characters and a game situation. Let me make two “PCs” one loosely based on Conan and Fafhrd and the second on Elric and the Grey Mouser (I have no problems in being ‘jock’). I’ll also create a set of antagonists: A group of 5 thugs and a Big, Airy, Semi-intelligent, Ape-like humanoid. There’s also the merchant that commissions the heroes to fight the villains:
I want a big guy, strong, great warrior with lots of sex appeal, let’s call him Bamro. He was born in a fighting band and all he did until today was to fight a lot and think as little as possible. Needless to say, Bamro’s Scores are by order of decreasing magnitude: Stamina 6, Will 3 and Lore 1. Lore 1? No, it can’t be. According to the Sorcerer rulebook Lore is reserved to sorcerers, since Bamro is not a sorcerer he has no Lore. What can I do? The fastest answer is to just divide my 10 points by the two remaining scores, but I prefer to house rule: I turn Past into an independent score that replaces Lore for non-sorcerer characters. Bamro’s Past is 1. His Humanity is the higher of either Stamina or Will, thus it is 6. Since he has 5+ in Stamina he can have two descriptions and I choose ‘Trained Soldier’ and ‘Big and vigorous’. For Will I choose the description ‘Zest for life’. For his Past I choose ‘Social rank, Barbaric warrior’ and that’s its description. Since Bamro is no stinking sorcerer he has no Price, Telltale or bound demons. His Kicker? He was hired by the Great Merchant of Fakesetting to recover a gem that was stolen from him by the Thugs of the Caverns Thatdontexist (I told you I have to problems in being ‘jock’, didn’t I?).
Second, we have Flynroll, a slim and fast but rather frail assassin. Flynroll’s scores are Stamina 2 with ‘Arcane Regimen (Stamina)’; Will 5 with descriptions taken from plain Sorcerer since nothing appeals to me in the Sorcerer & Sword book, ‘High Self-esteem’ and ‘Manipulative’; Past 3 (instead of Lore) ‘Outlaw – assassin’; and Humanity 5. His Kicker? He was hired by the Great Merchant of Fakesetting to recover a gem that was stolen from him by the Thugs of the Caverns Thatdontexist.
Our five thugs are an undistinguished bunch of hard and merciless cutthroats. They are the Thugs of the Caverns Thatdontexist and recently they have stolen a gem from the Great Merchant of Fakesetting. Their scores are Stamina 4, Will 4, Past 2 and Humanity 4. They share the same descriptions: They are all Trained Soldiers, Angry and Outlaws (Bandits). They don’t need a kicker.
The Big, Airy, Semi-intelligent, Ape-like humanoid, is just that, no demon here. Following the rules for creatures I’ll give it 8 for Stamina, 3 for Will and 8 for Nature. Did I say that its name is Basialh? The thugs had driven him away from the Caverns Thatdontexist and he just returned to reclaim his residence.
The Great Merchant of Fakesetting is a physically weak, voluble and luxurious knave, too coward to do take action by himself, but also too rich to buy most anyone he wants. For instance, he hired the Thugs of the Caverns Thatdontexist to steal for him the Gem of the temple of the God Thatneveranswers, but he was betrayed by them. Now he needs someone to recover the gem from the thugs and that’s his kicker. The Great Merchant has Stamina 2 (no description fits the bill, so I’ll just say that he is Fat and Middle-aged), Will 4 (no description fits the bill, so I’ll just say that he is Selfish and Greedy) and Past 4 (Social Rank, Civilized Merchant).
Conclusions from my character creation experiment? It’s fast and simple, two things I value a lot. But… it was hardly inspired by Sorcerer & Sword. The book does not provide enough food for thought for me to come out with the concepts presented before. Yes, I was able to attach game stats and descriptors to my characters but if I didn’t have a grasp of the type of characters I wanted to design I would be hard pressed to find stuff in the book to help me in that first and critical step. And when we move to system matters things get worst: The game introduces a descriptor, Destiny, that’s extremely under developed and has no guidelines on how to play it. The stats descriptions are of variable interest and re-usability. They also seem to be lists collected piecemeal from different sources that, by not being referenced, are reduced to the most shallowest expression. And there’s that small issue of turning all characters into sorcerers. Since I tried to stay faithful to the genre I had to drop a good deal of character creation in the process (no Lore, no, Price, no Telltale, no demons) and had to house rule a third score from Past. As the book says, “spend the time and emotional effort to begin the hero-telling for a character who stands just as tall as the literary examples” (I wouldn’t ask for that much), just don’t expect to be able to achieve this by reading Sorcerer & Sword because it doesn’t provide the required stuff.
But now it’s time to put those characters into action. Following the book’s advice I go all “story now” and start with a “bang” in “media res”. Basically, the Great Merchant of Fakesetting takes Bamro and Flynroll to the Caverns Thatdontexist to confront the thugs. The thugs are less than willing to submit to the merchant’s claim to the gem, and a battle follows, the merchant carefully avoiding being part of it. Just when the fight is about to start the Big, Airy, Semi-intelligent, Ape-like humanoid appears and jumps on Flynroll, leaving Bamro alone facing the five thugs. In other words, I’m left with two common tropes of sword & sorcery combat: A hero fighting a horde of enemies, and a hero fighting a huge beast. Let’s see how it goes:
The GM rules that the thugs know that the merchant is coming with two strongmen. They are not very impressed, so they just wait for them. The leader and two men are sitting at a table, wile the other two are close by. Bambro is close to the Merchant and to the table, while Flynroll is on hold some paces to the back. When the conversation with the merchant turns sour, the leader just shouts, “kill the punks and hold the Merchant!”
Bamro vs. the five thugs. Bamro was waiting for something to happen. He gives a big and vigorous kick at the table, trying to throw down two men sitting across it, and takes out his sharp sword at the same time. The GM wants the player to be more specific: What does he want, to hurt the thugs or to put them out of action for some time? The player wants time more than damage.
GM – “Ok, if successful Bamro hits the two thugs behind the table and they fall down; we will see in due time how long it takes them to recover. The third thug sitting to the side of the table is not hit, though. He jumps and draws his sword. The thug standing to the right draws his sword this round and closes on you to attack next round. The thug standing to the left side jumps on the merchant.” Bamro attempt to hit the two thugs behind the table is treated as a combat action opposing his Stamina 6 against the characters’ Stamina 4. Since Bamro readied himself for this action (he was thinking about it in advance), he gets one die bonus. On the other hand, since the two thugs are raising and drawing their swords they suffer a penalty of less one die each.
The player proposes that Bamro shouts wildly at the two thugs sitting across the table, trying to intimidate them. He looks at this as a Will confrontation where if Bamro wins he can port the victories to the kick on the table. The GM points that a Zest for Life is hardly the most intimidating display of Will, specially against people that are Angry in these circumstances. He still accepts the usage of the two scores, but applies a penalty of 1 die to Bamro’s Will.
Bamro’s player rolls two dice against 4 dice each for the two thugs. The GM decides to have a single roll for Bamro being used against two characters since it models well the situation. Bamro rolls 10 and 9! (Real rolls on my part in all situations.) The first thug’s rolls are 7 – 5 – 5 – 2, and for the second thug they are 10 – 9 – 3 – 3. This means that Bambro’s Stamina roll will have a bonus of 2 dice against the first thug.
And it’s time for that Stamina roll. If we consider all the modifiers, Bamro rolls 9 dice against the first thug and 7 against the second. The GM decides that there’s a single roll of 7 dice to be used against the two thugs, and two additional dice that only apply to the first one. The defending thugs roll 3 dice each. Bamro rolls 10 – 10 – 7 – 7 – 3 – 3 – 2; plus 5 and 2 that only apply to the thirst thug. The first thug rolls 9 – 3 – 3, while the second rolls 5 – 4 – 3. Thus Bamro has two victories against the first thug and 4 victories against the second.
What do those victories mean? They could be treated as Fist/Bludgeon damage. Instead, the GM decides that they mean the thugs fall down and take the number of victories in rounds to recover and be able to attack Bamro (thug 1 will re-enter the fight on round 4 and thug 2 will only be able to resume action on round 6). And they will be subject to 1 lasting penalty until the end of the fight.
Bamro’s initiative and wits served him well, he is down from five to three potential enemies for some rounds. In round two the third thug is up and with sword in hand but he is also distracted by Bamro’s action in the first round and he thug 4 moves into the space between himself and our hero, so he is not able to attack this round. The fifth thug changes his mind and decides to attack Bamro instead of trying to hold the merchant, but this will only materialize in the third round. Thus, Bamro is only attacked by the forth thug that jumps on him by putting into action his Trained Soldier skills supported by his Angry Will. So we have once more a clash of Wills leading to a clash of Stamina, this time of sword against sword. T4 Will rolls 9 – 8 – 8 – 4; Bamro rolls 6 – 4 – 2; three bonus dice for the thug. The Stamina rolls are 9 – 8 – 2 – 2 – 2 – 1 – 1 for T4; for Bamro 8 – 7 – 5 – 5 – 1 – 1. The thug scores a victory over Bamro. That means a -1 die permanent penalty and a temporary penalty of -1 die in the next round.
Round three sees Bamro being attacked by thug 4 from the right and thug 5 from the left. Thug 3 circles around thug 4 in order to attack from the middle of his companions, and thug 1 is getting up. Bamro feels the heat, so he decides on a desperate move: He jumps over the fallen table to evade the attack by 4 and 5, and tries to hit thug 1 in the process. Player and GM agree that his evasive move includes three aspects: Jumping over the table, a non-combat action; evading thugs 4 and 5, a combat defensive move; hitting thug 1 which is treated less as an attack then as an athletic exercise that may have damaging results to the thug. The GM rules that jumping over the table is rather trivial, so it is opposed by half Bamro’s dice, round down. Thug 1 may avoid being hit with a Stamina roll. Since Bamro’s action comes out of his Zest for Life, he can roll his will against a difficulty equal to it in order to try to get some bonus dice. The Will roll comes out as 8 – 1 – 1 and is opposed by 6 – 3 – 1, thus Bamro gets a bonus die to his jump. Bamro rolls Stamina 6 +1 from Will, –1 temporary from the previous round, –1 permanent from the previous round: He rolls five dice and gets 10 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1. Jumping over the table’s difficulty gets 8 – 2, so Bamro does it without any bells or whistles. Thug 1 rolls his Stamina 4-1 (due to the permanent penalty from round 1), 8 – 7 – 2. The GM decides that Bamro hits him and the thug looses another round before being able to enter combat. Thugs 4 and 5 lash their swords at our hero and roll T4 7 – 6 – 3 – 3; T5 10 – 9 – 8 – 5. T4’s attack hits the air, but T5’s 10 cancels Bamro’s 10, so we move to the next best result. For Bamro that’s a 4, outdone by the other three dice in the thug’s roll. That’s another -1 permanent and -3 for next round.
Round 4, Things look bleak to Bamro since his action suffers a penalty of 5 dice (-2 permanent and -3 temporary), and this time the GM allows no more Zest for Life rolls to boost Stamina. On the plus side, thugs 1 and 2 are still out of action, and thugs 3, 4 and 5 have to jump over or move around the table to reach him. Bamro decides the best option is to surprise the thugs in true Barbarian Warrior fashion, so he… turns around, jumps over the table, rushes among them slashing at the one in the middle, thug 3! That move surprises them a lot so they suffer -2 penalty to their dice pool.
I’ll stop here. It is obvious that no matter how many tricks Bamro plays on his adversaries, he is in a very bad position. It’s pretty visible that he may be able to put down one or two thugs but the moment they are able to club against him, he will be finished.
Flynroll vs. Basialh. I will not recreate this fight. Let me just say that Flynroll would try to impress Basialh, taking advantage of his Manipulative Will. If that failed, he would be minced in no time (no matter how quick thinking Flynroll may be, at 2 Stamina vs. 7 Stamina he is poorly equipped to deal with the situation; did I mention that Outlaw-Assassin is not that helpful in a face-to-face fight?)
I didn’t apply combat rules by the book. In fact, I improvised and “house ruled” a lot while not considering things that are in the books. This is in the nature of the game, though. I liked the flexibility and the ability to express my own take on sword & sorcery combat. This is both a plus and a down, though. If I was able to do this it’s because I read some genre fiction. Yet, most of the things I did are not supported by the book and I think this should not be so. The book should explain how to handle the most common tropes of sword & sorcery combat under the Sorcerer rules. For instance, how to put a hero face-to-face with a horde of adversaries, a very common situation in the genre fiction? There are no guidelines. To put it simply, the game is not prepared to handle non-sorcerer heroes, and it does not provide a power scale providing different score totals for major characters and lesser characters. Now, hese problems can be circumvented with a little thought. For instance, I may consider that most tugs are less able than PC and NPC major heroes and villains, and give them 7 stat points instead of 10; I may consider that the common man has even less and give him 5; I may adjudicate 10 stat points to starting heroes and 12 or 15 to mature specimen; and so on. Certainly, I can do all of this but I should not be required to do it, it should be there, in the game book.
CONCLUSION
It’s worth recalling the standards of evaluation set by Sorcerer & Sword itself: Is Sorcerer & Sword more or less “hideously shallow and debased” than previous treatments of the genre in other rpgs? Does it “provide all the scope you need for the most astonishing magic and toughest fighters to be found in all of role-playing games”? Can we use Sorcerer & Sword to produce creative fantasy, or is it a guideline for commodified fantasy, specially when we consider its own achievements measured by the examples it has to present to us?
Let’s start with “hideously shallow and debased”. When we consider what the game book provides as tools for actual roleplaying the sword & sorcery genre I have to conclude that its grandiloquence is not matched by its content. I was only able to find shallow, superficial, normative, insufficient guidelines on how to play, and plenty of tutoring on things that are marginal to the genre or to roleplaying dynamics. To put it bluntly, the book is a draft, if not a sketch, it needs a lot more content to be of consequence… or maybe not when we consider how much it fails to understand the genre and how poorly it implements it. Despite its sanctimonious tone, Sorcerer & Sword is too often wrong and has too many things that shouldn’t be there while missing too many other things that should be in it. The few gamebooks on sword & sorcery that I know of do a much better job than this book. By its own measure Sorcerer & Sword is a failure.
On commondified fantasy – “barbarian jock”, if you want – and measuring up to the best in the literature. Let me say it clearly, most of us don’t have the creativity of a Howard, a Leiber, a Moorcock, a Le Guin, a Tolkien or other great fantasy writers. Most of us can’t move past trivial imitations of the best works we read. Most of us are barely able to produce commodified fantasy. But most of us are humble enough to recognize our own limitations and to accept that our creations are not up to the mark of the great story-tellers. The most we can do is to try to get the best books to imitate and trivialise – and to enjoy in private our limited ability to create. The problem with Ron’s proposals is not that they trivialise and imitate, it’s that he claims to move way above that level, while extending a depreciative look to the rest of the hobby. But when we read Sorcerer & Sword it is apparent that most of us can come out with settings similar to Xar, the Black Forest or the Clicking Sands, most of us can produce characters similar to Razir Al-Anba, Alisette or Kaben12, without needing Ron’s guidelines for that purpose.
To sum it all in a sentence: “Cyrion, Rajan, and Fafhrd aren’t real names. But they sound as if they could be”? Indeed. And Sword & Sorcery is not a real sorcery & sword roleplaying resource but, hellas, it doesn’t even sound as it could be. I give it a 2 for content due to the list of books and potential of the rules system to truly deliver what it failed to achieve.
PREVIOUS REVIEWS IN THE SERIES
FS#00 Hero Wars (technically not part of the series, I’ve included it because the game falls into the scope of games I’m reviewing)
FS#01 RuneQuest 2
FS#02 RuneQuest 3
FS#03 Basic D&D
FS#04 D&D 3rd Edition
FS#05 Prince Valiant
FS#06 Exalted
FS#07 Rêve de Dragon
FS#08 Spiritual Warfare, the Role Playing Game
FS#09 Mazes & Minotaurs
FS#10 Mongoose RuneQuest
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