The cover of The Hour of the Dragon by Robert E. Howard, the only full-length Conan novel.
Sword-and-sorcery, also sword and sorcery or swords and sorcery, is a genre of action-adventure fantasy. The term was coined by Fritz Leiber in 1961 to describe stories in the style of Robert E. Howard's Conan. The genre significantly overlaps with other modern fantasy genres. Most often, the main characters in sword-and-sorcery stories are sword-wielding adventurers facing foes both supernatural and mundane, and the stories tend to include elements of romance, intrigue, swashbuckling, and exotic adventure. Characters are generally self-interested or morally ambiguous, and rarely help others or save the world for altruistic reasons. Unlike high fantasy, magic is generally considered unnatural and inherently dangerous and threatening. Settings in a pseudo-historical Bronze Age are common. The style has a mythical or yarn-like quality, usually written in a light literary style.
Sword-and-sorcery role-playing games[]
- Barbarians of Lemuria by Simon Washbourne
- The Bloody-Handed Name of Bronze by Joshua A.C. Newman
- Robert E. Howard's Conan by Modiphius
- Sorcerer and Sword supplement for Sorcerer by Ron Edwards
- Swords Without Master by Epidiah Ravachol
External links[]
- Sword and sorcery at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.