How Lovecraftian can the sword and sorcery be before you establish a significant enough tonal shift that it's no longer sword and sorcery?You have the answer to that question in your mind? Good. Now how Lovecraftian can the magic and monsters in your standard fantasy setting get before the tone actually shifts to sword and sorcery?
>>97452421If you've actually read any sword and sorcery stories like say Conan you would already know the answer is as much as you want
You already made this thread less than a week ago
>>97452451Right. You've got the first part down. Now the second part.>>97452617No I didn't. I haven't made a thread on /tg/ in ages and haven't posted anything in days.
>>97452421>spoilerGood question. I only play S&S so I don't have an answer, but probably pretty.
>>97452755I suppose what I'm looking for is a definitive tipping point. Just as an example original DnD was on a very different part of that continuum than new DnD, and I'm trying to find the inflection point.
>>97452421Neither of these things matter to me, because they're both fantasy.
>>97452868I think does matter. One is a subgenre of fantasy less commonly seen in contemporary works that contemporary audiences are consequently less exposed to, and the other is frequently complained about as being too derivative by some fans of the genre. Knowing when one turns into the other feels like an important question to ask.
>>97453123My fantasy games aren't contemporary, and I don't make them according to what's commonly seen by contemporary audiences or what they're exposed to.What people complain about for one reason or another doesn't affect what I put in my games.I am not a part of the contemporary audience; when I want something in a game, I play around with its mechanics a little to see if I'd actually like it. I have plenty of other things I like that retards bitch about, but my games aren't for them, they're for me.All this hemming and hawing about genre and contemporaries might be important to someone who revolves their entire personality around what other people think, but I literally couldn't give any less of a shit about it.If you'd rather sit there and wonder "oh gee there's a tentacle man is this more of a doyleismpunk lovecraftian or is it a swordsonian gamist sorcerycore" instead of examining games for how they function and playing games, good for you I guess? But I said it before, subgenres just don't matter to me.
>>97452421It can't. Yes, Conan had more than enough ecounters with cthulhu-adjacent shit. Yes, SS can be pretty scary. And even Conan went pretty much NOPE on some beings.But actual "lovecraftian" REH stories are clearly different. Read The Black Stone.
>>97452421>how Lovecraftian can the magic and monsters in your standard fantasy setting get before the tone actually shifts to sword and sorcery?I am assuming that "standard fantasy setting" means 2e style D&D? No amount of lovecraftian "worldbuilding" will fix that. Just look at Bald and Gay 3. It will never be Sword and Sorcery. This isn't a high-magic or power scaling issue either, the stakes, tone and genre assumptions are fucked. Because Modern fantasy is about Modern California, and saving it from an outside threat that stands in for anxieties about people who live according to nature. This is the reverse of Sword and Sorcery. I could explain in more detail but its not worth it unless you've read books.
>>97453318As for the second part: the "standard fantasy setting" means little, it's all about the game itself. DND would be a losing proposition.You can most surely do a Ffahrd/Mouser duo with elves, or at least make the elves... I dunno, kinda Pict-like. Not so sure about pastoral hills (altough I guess Aquilonia is not so different), but what is gonna be really difficult to implement is the evil land of all evulz people. Shit like that is better left to the aristocracy.
>>97453354>Modern fantasy is about Modern California, and saving it from an outside threat that stands in for anxieties about people who live according to nature.Why are there so many mentally ill people using their hobbies to play out their mental illness?
>>97453838Paranoid schizophrenics are forever in need escapism that they are incapable of achieving. Very Greek, really.
>>97453838>why do people do things that reflect their culture and worldview?Greyhawk reflects Gygax's conservatism, modern D&D repeats liberalism, it's not anything revolutionary here. I think there's a more liberal form of Sword and Sorcery that could exist, and you could make games about it, but not by starting from corporate high Fantasy. You'll need a lot more than fish people.
>>97453898It's funny. I love many elements of sword and sorcery, in particular sexy girls and sexy guys, but I'm quite liberal. I think the solution to "unequal sexualization" is to add more sexualization of men so everyone has eye candy.
>>97453944>I'm quite liberalwe could tell from your homosexuality
>>97453283>I am content therefore analysis is pointless
>>97452421>genre debatesGenres are descriptive. Not proscriptive. It's a stupid question without any meaning. There is no list of elements that "makes" something belong to one genre or another. Those are just labels we use to make off-hand remarks and group things into high-level categories. They're about us. Not the things.
>>97454578Genre may be descriptive but there is something underlying that changes when you modify the elements at play that in turn alters the description. Rather than acknowledge this you insist on quibbling pedantically, "oh, boo hoo, however can we know anything by giving it a label when in fact the only label is in our own minds".
>>97454603>Genre may be descriptive but there is something underlying that changes when you modify the elements at play that in turn alters the description.No, there isn't. Genre isn't a property of the thing. It's just a fuckin' novel.
>>97454618Windows and doors are just loose categorizations of similar things. Genres really based on our subjective use of them and their manners of being opened and peered through. So it doesn't really matter if you leave your second story apartment through the door or the window, does it?
>>97454636>Windows and doors are just loose categorizations of similar things.Now you're getting it! That is correct. The difference between the two is about:1. The intent of the person who made them2. The utility of the people who use themThere is no list of dimensions and features that determines whether something is a window or a door. That's determined by the intent of the people who make and use them.There is no list of which and how many lovecraftian entities a novel is allowed to have before it leaves the sword and sorcery genre. Its placement in a genre is about the writer, the readers and the reviewers. Not the specific elements that it contains.
>>97453898>Greyhawk>Gygax's conservatism>modern D&D repeats liberalism
>>97454694The desperate grasping at straws by people obsessed with identity politics that forces them to argue that "anything I like is about MY side! Reeeee!"
>>97452421The moment where it shifts from "Magic is a tool" to "The source of Magic is alive and hates but you will never understand why"
>>97454657You're really dismissing a potentially useful observation by getting way too out into semantics.There is a thing. Most would say it fits into a definitional box. A genre. There are two things that fit into two genres. Two boxes. Two genres. Now there's a third box. Take a thing from the third box and drop it into each of the other two boxes. The first box remains itself. The second box eventually becomes incorporated into the first box. There is a useful observation here and making looseweave claims about the arbitrary nature of knowledge and the subjectivity of definitions is pointless when we have an observable pattern that has qualitative definitions to it.
>>97454750You're really badly misunderstanding basic facts because you like to make lists like a teenage girl trying to figure out whether billy is good husband material based on a quiz in cosmo.There is no number of lovecraftian deities that will "make" something start or stop being swords and sorcery. It's a stupid question for autistic people comforted by trying to categorize things because thinking is confusing to them.
>>97454765>No amount of OH- being added or reduced will change the acidity of a solution anon
>>97454700I also think people are using politics here as a proxy for anti-corporate sentiment. I've been playing tabletop RPGs for more than thirty years and in that time I've seen it go from maligned counterculture to mainstream culture. It's not surprising that the profit-motivated corporations who make these games want to cash in on that, and that people who for whatever reason aren't included in the new "inclusive" culture are bitter about it.Where it gets really weird is that these counter-culture holdout gamers for some reason support the political party that wants to hand even more power to corporations and make mainstream culture even more restrictive. What we really need is another Satanic Panic to teach zoomer gamers what being on the pointy end of right-wing hysteria feels like.
>>97454776You made a good analogy earlier. Thought you'd try again with a false one? Didn't work, anon.
>>97454794Oh no. OH- and acidity is not accurate. Nor was the first one. The windows analogy is inaccurate because it assumes that definitions are purely subjective. The chemistry analogy assumes that changes in genre are like changes in acidity in that they are quantifiable. The changes are neither purely subjective nor quantitative but rather qualitative, which is what I'm getting at here. You want to grind things to a halt because you want to focus on the looseness of definition but in this specific instance definition is clearly, if qualitatively, being shifted by the inclusion of elements that can be, however loosely, qualified in a general sense.
>>97454807Ok let's point it out the other way: tell us exactly the number of lovecraftian entities it takes to shift something out the Sword and Sorcery genre. Is it twllelve? Why is that intrinsically true? Why not thirteen? There is no answer because it is a stupid question. Which I already demonstrated to you and you are now desperately butthurt about.
>>97454792>People forgot who burned Harry Potter books back in the day>Including the author of Harry Potter
>>97454820>quantitative>tell us exactly the number of lovecraftian entities it takes to shift something out the Sword and Sorcery genreI think you mean into the Sword and Sorcery genre from the fantasy genre. You're exactly correct in that the question you are posing is wrong because it is quantitative in nature asking about something that cannot be qualified. It's more like this.>qualitative>the inclusion of lovecraftian entities potentially shifts something in the fantasy genre toward the Sword and Sorcery genreNow is that a perfect argument? No. The original argument was:>the addition of more lovecraftian elements does not necessarily qualitatively shift Sword and Sorcery out of its genre>the addition of more lovecraftian elements seems to potentially shift the broader genre of Fantasy in the direction of sword and sorceryYou insist that such a claim must be quantified but things can be qualifiable even if they are not quantifiable.
Sword & Sorcery generally puts emphasis on the power and meaningfulness of human agency, while Lovecraftian fiction puts emphasis on the ultimate futility of human(and nonhuman) agency. The exact amount of Lovecraft-style monsters that appear in the story is not especially relevant.
>>97452421Sword and sorcery is a genre, not a tone.
>>97455126That's a pretty good counterargument, but also a potential basis for conflict in a story.
>>97454792>What we really need is another Satanic Panic to teach zoomer gamers what being on the pointy end of right-wing hysteria feels like.dont worry, we already are at this point
>>97452421Been running Carcosa for a while. Its both quite easily while entirely consisting of mythos monsters and aliens combined with swordmen and sorcerers as the only classes available. Your question is almost nonsense. A thing can be more than one genre at once. Your second question is total nonsense. Genre isn't a measure, as you accidentally got into about it being qualitative or quantitative. Doesn't work that way. You could have all the lovecraftian monsters in the world in a game and it still wouldn't be sword and sorcery. CoC isn't sword & sorcery.
>>97454566>my lack of reading comprehension means I'm right
>>97454566The "analysis" does not achieve anything, therefore it is pointless. Genres are useful for an audience looking for similar works to ones they like, not for engaging with individual works.
>>97452421Traditional games?
>>97454792The satanic panic never stopped. They've been doing the same shit my entire life. They just starting paying agitators to scream about the left wanting to ban titties, while also accusing them of corrupting good girls and turning them into dirty onlyfans sluts.
>>97454792>Where it gets really weird is that these counter-culture holdout gamers for some reason support the political partyIt's really weird for any counter-culture holdout to support any political party.
>>97452421>How Lovecraftian can the sword and sorcery be before you establish a significant enough tonal shift that it's no longer sword and sorcery?>You have the answer to that question in your mind? Good. Now how Lovecraftian can the magic and monsters in your standard fantasy setting get before the tone actually shifts to sword and sorcery?I think that the dividing line isn't so much the world, magic and monsters itself, but the reaction of characters to it. When they come across something truly strange and alien, do they lose their mind in horror or do they soldier on? If they are pressed to fight it, do they go at it with bling animal instinct, grim determination or a "if it bleeds we can kill it" attitude?Especially to the second question in context of ttrpgs though, I would say that basically no amount of Lovecratftian additions to the /setting/ really change the feeling of a game. If a system isn't suited to run S&S then no amount of many mawed tentacled adversaries, human leather bound tomes and forgotten alien civilizations will change that...There are official stats and rules for pretty much every Lovecraft monster from DnD 3e onward but you'll never experience Shadow over Innsmouth in modern DnD.It's just not the type of story these systems are meant to facilitate.
>>97457141Which Lovecraft stories feature anyone driven mad by seeing strange things? Rats in the Walls and Shadow over Innsmouth suggest their protagonists' madness is inherited. A few have their experiences dismissed as lunacy, but their accounts are entirely lucid. Maybe the secondary character in At the Mountains of Madness who saw Tekeli-li counts.
>>97458504nta, but Dagon is more or less the protagonist narrating his own spiral into madness. It feels like that one story overly shapes their interpretation of what counts as Lovecraftian.
>>97458504Yeah, to be fair as >>97458755 said, it's not necessarily that everyone that sees the horrors goes stark raving mad forever. That's the pop culture flattening.The protagonists usually come out of their ordeal at the very least heavily mentally damaged and often end up seeing the world in ways so different from a "normal" persons perspective as to be indistinguishable from madness.>The Shadow over InnsmouthWant's to kill himself, chickens out and goes to go live underwater>The Thing on the DoorstepKills his best friend because an evil sorcerer stole his body>At the Mountains of MadnessMC stays relatively sane but his friend goes a bit crazyBut more often than not it's just this sense of obsession that slowly builds, or a moment of blind flight followed by a kind of de-realization.>their protagonists' madness is inheritedI think that the whole "cursed blood" avenue of Lovecraft's work is an aspect that's often lost when an "Lovecraftian" aesthetic is invoked
This got me thinking. What's the difference between a "standard fantasy" orc and a sword and sorcery orc?
>>97459929One is a californian painted green to tittilate the creator's xenophilic fetishes, the other is an orc.
