Why is high fantasy so popular and sword and sorcery not so popular?

Wow, seems like a good way to trigger Veeky Forums.

The books are better.
They are entertaining nonetheless.

>all the Conan flicks are trashy schlock.
>trashy schlock
Here's your ((You)).

By people who are into that sort of thing. Critical response is about 40%.

>all the Conan flicks are trashy schlock.
I disagree.
I watched Schwarzenegger's Conan recently for the first time and I was pleasantly surprised. I expected schlocky 80's flick, but it actually had great dialogue, strong underlying narratives and thematic consistency, not to mention good atmosphere and amazing Prokofiev-esque score.

I don't understand why Amazon isn't making a Conan TV show, it has what they want, sex and violence, and it would actually be amazing to get a good Conan show, instead they are going to ruin Lord of the Rings with shitty fanfic, I don't get it.

Because they're a bunch of dumb faggots that whine about it being a white supremacist movie telling the tale of a stronk aryan that fights a multicultural religious group lead by a black man.

Conan would be sexists and misogynist by today's standards. You can't manage to make a good Conan series without being shit on by media.

I remember watching the 2011 movie and couldn't even believe these films were supposedly about the same thematic character. It baffles me how a movie that fucking violent so totally lacks balls, especially when compared to the Arnold movie.

Gone are the days where a movie ends with the hero hacking the villain's head off and hurling it down some stairs. I miss the 80s.

>I miss the 80s.
user, Conan was disapproved of for being too violent when it was released. Get some glasses that aren't pink.

So was The Thing.

Movies like that were at least getting made.

So was Scarface. Actually, everyone shit on that movie when it came out.

Then what about stuff like Hellraiser or Robocop?
youtube.com/watch?v=pWD23_pyOGU

Movies like that are still getting made, user.

The funny thing is there are way more strong women characters in Conan the in LotR

Don't forget The Blob, with people horribly, slowly dissolving while screaming in pain the whole way.

Most people got shit taste.

What is the actual difference between high fantasy and Sword & Sorcery?

For me it always seemed like S&S is all about that minimally clothed barbarian aesthetic (which makes for great art but is otherwise not my taste for settings) where as high fantasy could be literally almost anything else, hence is more popular.

The 1982 Conan movie also had much more interesting themes, characters, aesthetics and it has one of the best movie soundtracks ever.

The 2011 one doesn't deliver on that, it has a pretty shitty forgettable villain and it also does the dumb saving the world shit too.

The 1982 movie is actually pretty unconventional as a movie and thus it has a voice of its own that makes I still stand out to this day. It doesn't matter if the 2011 movie feels like it's closer to the source material if it doesn't have any interesting personality of it's own.

Gardner Dozois, the semi-famous editor of scifi and fantasy anthologies, believes that there in fact is no appreciable difference between them. S&S tends to be more in line with the 'pulp' traditions that predate Lord of the Rings though.

Yeah, I mostly think of it as different eras of fantasy. I also think that fantasy is pretty shitty as a genre name because some people use that as a justification that their story doesn't have to make sense.

>S&S is all about that minimally clothed barbarian aesthetic
That is the current pop culture understanding of it, but it actually has very little to do with the stories which are classified as S&S and comes more from Frazetta's pin up style art.

The main differences between the genres would rather probably be that S&S is pulpier and more episodic in its nature, with morally ambigious protagonists, and much more focus on action.

it isn't a cult classic for being good, it is a cult classic for being a campy, shitty movie
like Red Sonja

...

I can post silly pictures, too

I am going to take the bait.

Can you elaborate on why you think it is a campy, shitty movie?

'Fantasy' just literally means stories that could not take place on our Earth as we know it

Shit stories exist in all genres

it is a dull, over-the-top hack and slash action film with very little redeeming qualities other than its own ridiculousness. It is only enjoyable when viewed through a screen of irony.

Is it possible that you are trying to do a higher reading of it, which is never intended?

PRETTY MUCH THIS . ALso powerful male heroes and damsels in distress are problematic in the current year, same with swarthy bad guys.

LotR is much more recent than Conan. High fantasy is also much closer to epic mythology than S&S is.

Sword & Sorcery is about heroes who are fundamentally weaker than the world around them yet they get by utilizing their wits more than brute force. S&S also tends to be much more violent and grounded in its conventions, so combat generally ends with a casualty on either side.

High Fantasy is about heroes who are comparable to the world around them, so most of the time it's all about who has the bigger gun and whose able to pull the trigger first. Also, HF tends to be a bit more cinematic and over-the-top in its conventions, so combat is less of a fight for survival and more of a spectacle where we can see characters display their abilities against one another to see who ends up cracking first.

So the reason why HF is more popular than S&S is because HF is generally more focused on entertainment, which makes it easier to draw in an audience who come to watch larger than life figures fight against other larger than life figures to see who comes out on top.

>comparing based LotR to modern shitty "high fantasy" in vibe of D&D or Warcraft
By modern standards LotR is low fantasy
The most accurate Middle-Earth TTRPG doesn't even allow players to be casters, and characters are also grounded in "mundane" aspects. There are but handful of races instead of gazzilion different critters, there aren't firebal hurling mages at every step, magic is subtle and mysterious. LotR popularity has nothing to do with popularity of what nowadays is called "high fantasy", because those are wildly different things.

This is controversial opinion, but I personally consider LotR (LotR in particular, not all Tolkien's writings) to be dark fantasy:
>forces of evil are overwhelming
>there is tangible shadow over the world
>terror, despair and suffering are major themes, even if they are focused on internal, spiritual suffering rather han graphic physical violence
>Death is common, and while also not really graphic, it is always described as a tragedy, no matter how glorious
>Bleak aesthetics conveyed through descriptions (in book) and
>Tragic heroes, and despite usual claims that LotR is black and white, there is lot of grayness between (actually present) absolutes of white and black. Of which there is lot more of the latter
>Very bittersweet ending

So what TTRPGs are good for Sword and Sorcery games?

Barbarians of Lemuria.

Because S&S is usually associated with Male Human Fighter Only roleplaying games - Historical Fantasy with a few bits of weirdness as background setting - whilst High Fantasy allows for far more exotic settings, powerful PCs and the ability to play something that isn't Male Human Warrior #285.

>there will never be an episode 2

HF = Full-tilt power fantasy fulfillment.
S&S comes in a few flavors, but very few of them have to do with pretending to be the coolest superhero this side of the elvish kingdoms, or whatever. If you're into "RIP AND TEAR!" or 'BEHOLD, THE WIZARD!" then it can meet those wishes, but otherwise it's much grittier and dark; sometimes even depressing. It's a dog eat dog existence where fight-or-flight really only has one valid option.

Aside from that, it's archaic/ancient ascetics, often fully barbaric in appearance, don't appeal to as broad an audience as your standard plate armor/rainbow-robes/giant castles aesthetics.

You sound like a boring pedant.

>It is only enjoyable when viewed through a screen of irony.
Just like your life?

>Being THIS MUCH of a faggot
Wow...

High fantasy is a misnomer for D&D and the genre it inspired. The similarities between D&D and LOTR are superficial.

Pug is a D&D character, Frodo is not. I call the genre high magic instead.

As for why It's popular, ultimate agency. Some people like scurrying beneath giants, some prefer becoming giants.

>S&S stories were about being enterprising and hard-working; HF stories are out-and-out power-trips.
Conan of Cimmeria goes on and on about how civilized people's muscles are just rotten cord next to his barbarian ones, no matter how hard those civilized people actually train. He powers through the magic of several centuries-old archwizards straight from Hell itself on willpower, puts down eldritch abominations with an axe and treats it like a nuisance, and defeats dozens of opponents at once on multiple occasions. Oh, and he also ends up becoming the king of a nation who's previous king he strangled on the throne by his lonesome and being awesome at it despite having no experience commanding anything but the military. But sure, no special snowflakes here.

And besides, a story about enterprising and hard-working people would follow their fascinating daily lives of hard work at their enterprises or dirt farms. It might make for a good book, but S&S it ain't.

I like Conan because he feels like an actual mythological character.

So Elric falls into S&S right?

Elric is intentionally post modern, though.

Maybe Talislanta? I'm still reading the core books but damn it sounds fun so far

>while high fantasy allows much more freedom, and therefore is easier to execute and run.
High fantasy is much harder to run, in my experience, as it's easy for magic to get out of control or to invalidate the parameters of your adventure. You want to run a "lost in the desert" adventure where the party has to struggle to locate water, brave the elements and navigate their way to safety? That's ruined if they can use sorcery to create water, magically resist the elements, and/or teleport to safety.

The thing that high fantasy has going for it is that it's wide open in terms of what you can do, and players find this appealing. You can also more easily have an extreme power curve, where PCs get ridiculously powerful, which people like, because being powerful is awesome. The consequences/drawbacks of these are at least a little more subtle, and a little less up front, so the advantages tend to win the day.

The original Conan movie is fantastic, and far better than any of the LotR movies. Really the only big weakness I can see is Arnold, himself.

>By modern standards LotR is low fantasy
It's written as if it's low fantasy, but there are moments of high power as plot devices, at least. Gandalf flees from orcs, but then plunges off the bridge and battles the balrog for days, etc. But more than this, I think that people take LotR and run with it. It's kind of how Bilbo informs the idea of halflings as master thieves looking for adventure, when he was reluctantly dragged into the adventure and, while he did okay for himself otherwise, truly shined thanks to an inviso-ring he found. Like a tall tale, things only grow bigger over time.

Honestly, Conan is my least favorite part of the Conan stories.

>The original Conan movie is fantastic, and far better than any of the LotR movies. Really the only big weakness I can see is Arnold, himself

Who would have been better?

I'm inclined to agree with your assessment of LotR. It's way darker than people think, and is exceptionally grounded.

Shit, even The One Ring RPG system has the equivalent of a sanity meter, and it's perfectly in line with the setting.

>Who would have been better?
Somebody with some acting talent. Somebody who came across as more agile and not just a musclebound bodybuilder. Somebody who could better convey Conan's keeness of mind. Really, Arnold's Conan is a pretty different person from Howard's Conan. Don't get me wrong, Arnold wasn't terrible, and the casting could definitely have been worse, but he did not meet the otherwise high standards of the movie.

>musclebound
>keen of mind
That feel when no 80s Dolph Lundgren Conan.

Sword and Sorcery has a stigma to it for some reason.

So were a ton of films that came out in the 1980s. The difference is they were still being made.

That's not nearly the same.

This. Conan himself is just a vehicle for all of the world and mythos to interact with.

Wut. The most popular RPG of all time is a Sword and Sorcery RPG. D&D you fucknut.

Actually it's got an extraordinary amount of depth and auteur driven sophistication in it for what is commonly thought of as a schlocky 80s action flick.

barbariankeep.com/ctbds.html

yeah, the point of the conan stories is that barbarism is superior to civilisation, and civilisation makes men weak.

barbarism doesn't give conan supernatural abilities, just better speed, strength, fighting skills, etc. he still has to work hard and strain himself, he isn't able to kill a great beast through saying a few words and summoning a fireball, he needs to fight and endure pain to kill it.

>D&D
>Sword & Sorcery

uh sorry to break it to you kid but i think you might be retarded

But D&D stopped being S&S since Gygax was thrown away from TSR. It was S&S at the beginning, but without the involvement of Gygax, it became a high fantasy mess.

I believe the genre D&D belongs to is "Nonsense".

I can see that. I mostly like him as a thematically figure and he is very entertaining with all his bravado.

I can't think of any women characters in LotR other than Galadriel, Arwen and Éowyn.

I heard/read the term "pulp fantasy" being thrown around in relation to elric

Wut? Care to elaborate on that? or are you talking about moorcock basically inventing most of the anti - hero tropes by deconstructing a lot of "hero clichés"?

How much grey is there really? Smeagol? Denethor?

Most of the characters are squarely on one side or the other, and one side is pretty squarely evil and intent on ending the world and the age. The kings of men defend first, seek to protect their people first, and the Elves and Dwarves do too. Sure, I suppose if you're a real moralist you could argue that Aragorn using the enslaved souls of the dead was kind of grey... but he did the objectively moral thing and freed them afterwards when he totally did not need to.

So where's the grey? Am I missing something?

Moorcock was quite deliberately being a contrarian with Elric. He didn't expect Elric to become as popular as he ended up being, so the character mostly was intended as an experiment.

Boromir could be a big one. Greedy for the ring and fighting is friends thanks to a combination of outside influence and genuinely wanting to free Gondor from the threat of Sauron.

>Make Opposite Conan: High Magic edition
>Still the same Sword and Sorcery setting, basically
>Literally two entire power tiers over Conan
>Still end up being the scrubiest scrub, due being a extremely civilized bastard
>Literally running high on the fumes of his great magic civilization, and nothing more
>Literally make all the wrong decisions
>Never truly git gud
>Never surpass his problems or fix them
>Literally end up as a "I told you so, Bro" -T. Conan, example
It was amazing

That's not really 'grey' though.

He was pure white, then had a moment of weakness, went black, and immediately charged to his death in an act of repentance. A fall from grace, an oscillation between two extremes, isn't really grey to my eyes. (Of course, its sort of a matter of interpretation.)

Besides, didn't the Ring make him do that? Doesn't the ring do that to literally anyone, and its kind of implied that men specifically are extra vulnerable to it?

He never actually did anything wrong under the ring's influence. He just went "GIMME THE RING YOU MIDGET" then freaked out when he realized he was getting ring'd.

Boromir, as others have mentioned, Saruman. Sauron too is a bit grey when you take the whole legendarium into account. Pretty much all the elves, especially Galadriel.

It's not just the ring's magic that does it, it's the promise of power inherent to it. The ring makes you more of what you already are, and Boromir was an ambitious captain of men who'd do *anything* to save Gondor. The darkness in men's hearts will always be there, no matter if the ring is around or not. You would do good deeds with the rings, wouldn't you, but ultimately that power will twist your intentions; Gandalf says as much. Denethor's a better example either way as he did not have a temporary bout of madness like Boromir; Denethor just absolutely lost it, and not because he was magically dominated by Sauron whose Will he resisted.

One of the most classic examples of how LotR is *not* as black and white as you'd think is the sequence in Ithilien during which the rangers ambush a Mûmakil patrol and one of the Haradrim's shot by a gondor arrow and falls down next to Sam. Sam then contemplates the life of the Haradrim before him, wonder if he missed his home and if he actually wanted to go to war or was forced to do it. Grima's another character driven to evil deeds by his own weakness, though it tortures him.

I think it has to do with high fantasy RPGs not requiring as much thought from their players.

Players of high-fantasy get to faceroll 99% of the setting while zoned-out on phone games and shouting memes, instead of having to think or interact intelligently with the game world.

This sounds more like a system-specific rather than genre-specific thing. Shitty S&S and shitty fantasy will both be powertrips.

NAYRT, you are right that it *is* not Swords and Sorcery, but it *was* from 1974 to 1984.

>Aragorn using the enslaved souls of the dead was kind of grey

They weren't slaves, they were bound because they worshiped Sauron and failed to serve Isildur the War of the Last Alliance. In the war of the ring, Aragorn gave them a chance to redeem themselves and fulfill their oaths.

Oh and also the whole 'saving the world' thing. The corsairs would have been really bad news if the dead hadn't beaten them.

>The kings of men defend first, seek to protect their people first
There were nine who tried this and fell to become servants of Sauron. Similarly, the army of the dead refused their call to battle, the hill-men/dunlendings ransacked Rohan's countryside, while the Easterlings and Haradrim served alongside Sauron's army.

>Saruman
>grey
In what world? He collaborates with the objectively evil Sauron and causes tens of thousands of deaths. His uruk-hai plunder and murder. What exactly does he do in the story that’s morally grey?

Saruman didn't start out as evil, but a force of good, and even then he did believe that Gandalf and Saruman ruling Middle-Earth would be best for everyone.

He fell prey to his own ambitions and even then he was granted a chance at redemption which he willingly rejected, because he believed them to be the fools that would cause the world's end.

I sort of see your point, but neither Grima Wormtongue or the Haradrim are morally grey. Both are rather equivocally evil, and intend to do massive harm.

Its not really a morally grey action to kill that Haradrim either. Yes, Tolkien takes time to lament the loss of a life, but that's still not immoral or anywhere other than 'pure good' to defend your homeland against invaders. The Gondorian who fired that arrow was not morally grey at all.

And I guess I had a different interpretation of the Ring. If it just made you more of what you already where, why did it make Gollum almost unrecognizable? Isildur is definitively a good guy until he gets his hands on the Ring. You can't argue he was evil the whole time either. To my understand, the Ring causes the conflict and corrupts by its own will, which it has.

Because people want to have a meaningful life and that their deeds matter, most S&S games are dirty farmer shank town in where your character is going to die, nobody is going to remember him and all his life will amount to nothing. Some people are into BSDM and like that, others don't.

What's "high fantasy"? What's "sword and sorcery"? Once you define these I might form an opinion on the matter

That’s not grey at all. That’s white who became black. To be morally grey you have to be both white and black at the same time.

in the books at least, saruman does try to justify his decisions. whether he really believes it, or is just trying to manipulate gandalf, is another matter.

>As the Power grows, its proved friends will also grow; and the Wise, such as you and I, may with patience come at last to direct its courses, to control it. We can bide our time, we can keep our thoughts in our hearts, deploring maybe evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order; all the things that we have so far striven in vain to accomplish, hindered rather than helped by our weak or idle friends. There need not be, there would not be, any real change in our designs, only in our means.’

i agree that LotR is pretty black & white, generally speaking, though in my opinion that's part of the appeal.

I miss black and white stories and games, god damn the moral relativism and the grey seems to cover absolutely everything nowadays. I most games I played in the recent memory of D&D and Pathfinder Smite Evil is useless, 99% will end with you thinking "did I do right? was I in the right? did I save the good guys?", is fucking garbage

The Haradrim aren't inherently evil; they're evil by virtue of serving Sauron who either subjugated them through military means or decieved them. And that scene was definitely about the idea that war is awful and pits otherwise decent men against eachother, often against their will.

As for Gollum; he became a freakish creature because the ring's magic extended his life. Stretched it like too little butter on too much bread (a great food analogy courtesy of Bilbo). If he'd possessed the ring long enough, chances are he'd have become a wraith himself. What I mean when I said "It makes you more of what you already are", I spoke of intentions and ambitions, not the physical aspect of it. That's why Sam's temptation is a great, world-spanning garden, and why Gandalf said he would have used it to do great deeds but ultimately succumbed to tyranny in the name of good (if you can call it good at that point).

Then what is grey? Denethor being a harsh steward who in spite of Aragorn's greatness and lineage would refuse him the throne? Is it not the Dunlendings burning and pillaging the Westfold, but only as vengeance for the treatment they recieved at the hands of the Eorlingas of old who allegedly hunted them for sport and drove them into the hills? Is it not grey for men of Harad to march to war against Gondor in the name of glory, because they believe Gondor to have done them ill?

Honestly, I don't know what you guys are after when you talk about "grey morality".

>The Haradrim aren't inherently evil
>"Hey guys, so our friends the orcs say they're going to behead the prisioners, women and children of course, and send their heads flying through the walls, sounds fun, I'm going to join the party later"

>Conan would be sexists and misogynist by today's standards.
You can't be taken seriously when you post this in a timeline where Game of Sexytimes and Also Rape is the highest-rated show on TV.

Grey is Thorin