The Song of Evermorrow is the ruleset I use for fantasy TTRPGs. It is built out of the same engine that powers the world’s most lucrative adventure game, but heavily modified, like most of my gaming endeavors. I’ve been working on codifying my house rules since the middle of 3rd edition. I’m going to try to post one chapter or revision each month, but this month, I’m just going to write an introduction to the ruleset stating my goals and inspiration.
My tastes in ancient fantasy have changed over the years and my tastes in fantasy RPGs has changed even more so. The stories that have intrigued and inspired me over the years have always been grounded, gritty, and personal, rather than fantastic, magical, and epic. To me, the epitome of sword & sorcery cinema is 1982’s Conan the Barbarian. Since first seeing that movie at fifteen, I’ve been trying to capture its essence at the gaming table.
Grounded vs. Fantastic
Other writers have said it far better than I could, but the thing that makes sword and sorcery so compelling is its proximity to our own ancient world. The best art and fiction of the genre seems credible, where the speculative elements of the works give rise to logical consequences. Studying the historical record gives us a glimpse at the lives, ideas, and concerns of our ancestors, and the genre seeks to parallel those lives, ideas, and concerns. This gives us, the storytellers, a solid grounding from which to explore the nature of our characters.
The best sword and sorcery fictions, those I wish to emulate, are set in worlds that might have been. Sword and sorcery grew hand-in-hand with early science fiction, and the core of those great, old stories was the exploration of the changes and consequences that would arise from one speculative change made to the world and lives of human beings that we know and understand. In sword and sorcery, that speculation is: what if the supernatural were real?
Gritty vs. Magical
It is relatively easy to understand the limits of a warrior with a sword; we still have people today that practice those skills, as well as records and artifacts of those who did. It can be harder, and tempting, to wave away anything beyond this as magic, but in a gritty setting, magic is only another tool and must have its own limitations to give the choices of the heroes meaning. It is up to the author to set these limitations so that they align with the tone of their setting.
In seeking these limitations for sword and sorcery, I look to folklore and superstition. What our ancestors believed and codified becomes the shared base of knowledge we have to limit magic. It is why garlic repels vampires and silver weapons can harm the were-beasts that stalk the night. Our ancestors believed that the prayers they offered, the talismans they wore, and the spells they cast influenced and controlled magical energies and supernatural beings. In a sword and sorcery setting, they do.
Personal vs. Epic
A fundamental cornerstone of sword and sorcery versus high fantasy is the scope of the stakes and the motivation of the heroes. In sword and sorcery, the stakes are usually much lower than in high fantasy. In high fantasy, heroes contend with gods and fight to save the world for altruistic reasons. In sword and sorcery, heroes contend mostly with other humans and fight for wealth, revenge, survival, sport, or redemption for mostly personal reasons. These base impulses are something we can all relate to, making it much easier to explore the personality, integrity, and choices of a hero.
When seeking inspiration for storylines and themes, I look more to historical fiction, war movies, westerns, Kurosawa’s samurai movies, gangster pictures, and horror films than I do to higher fantasy like Harry Potter or Middle Earth. The focus of the stories I like is not on the importance of the stakes, but on what they mean to the heroes. Willow Ufgood did not set out to save the world, he set out to protect Elora Danan, and Madmartigan did not join him to save the world, but to prove, mostly to himself, that he was a better man than he had become.
A Fresh Coat of Paint
There is a lot to love about sword and sorcery, but it has a shameful history of bigotry. The original stories of the genre are full of blatant racism, ethnic fetishization, and rank misogyny. These stories, like other iconic fantasy “classics”, were written by white men at a time when eugenics was advocated by the scientific establishment and white exceptionalism was accepted as empirical fact. Sadly, many of the tropes they established have lived on in the genre, making it difficult to separate the compelling narratives from their haunted past.
If we wish to evolve beyond these antiquated and harmful notions, we must both admit them and redress them. To that end, I strive to keep my writing gender neutral with the use of ‘they’ and ‘their’, and strive to present the cultures of my setting in a way that is respectful of the real-world cultures to which they are clearly analogous. That being said, a fictional setting based on ancient humanity would contain a sadly large number of characters who harbor prejudice and bias about different races, genders, and religions. Please understand that these negative opinions are those of fictional characters, not the author.