What are the essential elements of a Swords and Sorcery world, Veeky Forums?

Sword & Sorcery is “high fantasy.” It’s a gritty branch off of heroic fantasy with a muddied morality.

You need great heroes standing above men, and who are a force of good or maybe progress in the world by standing against a greater force of evil.

If anything, it's low fantasy

It is not low fantasy at all. Even in the sense you mean, which isn’t actually low fantasy you are just ignorant.

In the Conan series most of the magic is actualy implied to be trickery or illusions.
Like in The Scarlet Citadel where a wizard poison Conan with his ring and he thinks it was magic

Sword and Sorcery is usually more primitive, but more importantly less organized and familiar. High Fantasy usually has kings leading kingdoms and the heroes care about this. Sword and Sorcery often has wizard-kings leading city states and the heroes have pissed him off.

This kind of carries through to... most things, really. In High Fantasy, nonhuman races are often a thing and they mingle with humans. In Sword and Sorcery, nonhuman races are often a thing, but they're typically terrifying goons in some vile sorceror's employ. For that matter, human ethnicities suffer a similar fate: High Fantasy Northmen are usually the party's tank and the fruit vendor in Maincity, Sword and Sorcery Northmen are usually feared and reviled berserker savages in the employ of Atrocitia. And sometimes also the party's tank, but nobody in this party is pretending to be respectable.

Magic, same. High Fantasy: Fairly well understood, routinely studied by formal organizations and respectable individuals, often fairly mundane effects (fireball). Sword and Sorcery: Weird, poorly understood, practiced only by villains and that crazy old man who's helping you out, frequently unpleasant costs or side effects, usually mythical and often questionable applications (turn into a snake, cause searing pain, sacrifice the king's daughter to 'rule forever' as your shadowy patron promised you).

Even the characters usually follow this pattern. High Fantasy heroes often have troubled pasts, but they've come together to help each other and save the world and so on. Sword and Sorcery often has smaller party sizes, and the members are frequently scoundrels forced together for personal preservation or gain, at least initially.

TL;DR: High Fantasy is a five-man diversity squad out to save the kingdom in your latest novel. Sword and Sorcery is a two-man murderhobo campaign taking place in the world your previous murderhobos conquered and ruined immediately upon gaining power.

Are you replying to bait with more bait? The vast majority of his adventures featured outright magical fuckery of some variety.

Buxom tavern wenches, sultry merchant's daughters, and exceedingly grateful rescued maidens. If there's not at least light fanservice, it's not Conanesque Sword and Sorcery.

Hierarchy and meritocracy.
Everyone worth being named is a self made man/woman who suffered hardship or made great sacrifices for their power. Everyone else is meaningless and weak because they didn't.

Heroic fantasy is about birthrights and morals in a fantasy world, intrusion fantasy is about the effects of magic on an otherwise plausible society, S&S is about individuals and their struggle in a fantasy world.

Loved the tldr. That's a great explanation, thanks user for the great write up.

Yeah I guess. And you just pointed out the difference--ANNNNNNNND?

Magic is usually the domain of enemies, and it's something strange and profane.

The motivations of characters are more selfish and personal, rather than epic and on a grand scale.

Source

t. Projecter

I don't get why that show didn't get a series.

We cling too much to labels like this

Go down the list?

>The Phoenix on the Sword
Vision of things he shouldn't know, sword flaming as I recall
>The Scarlet Citadel
Wizard Shit(tm) out the ass.
>The Elephant Tower
Man shrunk into a gem, tower collapsing.
>The Black Colossus
Thousands of years old.
>The Slithering Shadow
Admittedly, don't remember any out-and-out on-screen magic in the City of Eternal Dreams And Creating Food From Nothing.
>The Pool of the Black One
Voodoo bullshit, giant water tentacle.

And so on. I'd say 5/6 is fair to call a vast majority, especially considering the nature of the exception.

We do, but it's still convenient to have labels to identify things with. The problem comes when nobody can agree on them, at which point they cease serving as convenient shorthand and become a meaningless quibbling point.

bump

>What are the essential elements of a Swords and Sorcery world, Veeky Forums?

I see Sword & Sorcery as a mix of the Heroic Fantasy and Noir genres. Kind of like Dungeons & Dragons meets Sin City.

So like, just a darker and grittier version of 'normal' Fantasy?
What makes it different from Dark Fantasy, then?

Maybe it's just a labels problem, but then all these labels would be useless.

you're probably thinking of "Low Fantasy", technically anything with swords and sorcery is Sword & Sorcery (whether it is High or Low fantasy).

Genre labels in fantasy are pretty vague. Most of the time when people say 'Sword and Sorcery' they mean 'Like Conan the Barbarian, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser or Elric' since those are the defining works of the genre.

In my mind the defining features of Sword and Sorcery are:

- A classical or oriental rather than European medievalist setting.

- Noir themes: anti-heroes, moral ambiguity, crime.

- Relatively small scale plots with characters motivated by base desire, rather than the world saving quests and high mindedness that define Tolkien derived High Fantasy.

- Grit: explicit violence and sexual themes.

- Primeval imagery: dinosaurs, jungles, etc.

- Magic is perilous and mostly for villains. Demonology and visceral weirdness over scientific magecraft.

Also, when I first heard 'Dark Fantasy' it meant fantasy with a strong horror element.

Pretty much this. Swords, magic, heroics.

Modest maidens.