Poniards and Prestidigitation

So we’re talking about roleplaying games (primarily, but not exclusively, Dungeons & Dragons), and their relationship with the development of fantasy fiction. But first, I’m going to go off on a tangent a little. See, I’m going to be doing a lot of talk about sword & sorcery as a subset of fantasy, and while other people having no idea what I’m talking about has never stopped me from yammering on ad nauseum in the past, it’s probably a more effective column if we’re at least pretending to be on the same page.
But sword & sorcery is very difficult to define. It’s one of those things that people seem to have an easy time identifying, but not so much describing. And there are a lot of traits often attributed to S&S that aren’t universally applicable. For instance, many readers tend to assume that, for a book or story to qualify as S&S, the hero must be a purely physical character, with magic and sorcery the purview of the villains alone. This might be the case for a Conan, but certainly not for a Cugel the Clever or an Elric. So rather than trying to sharply delineate precisely what defines the sub-genre–something that’s been done to death elsewhere–what I prefer to do is figure out what tends to make an S&S story, and if a story has most of those, it probably qualifies.

In short, as I see it, S&S stories tend to focus on individuals or smaller groups rather than large “adventuring parties”; they tend toward a focus on action (often violent action) over more cerebral tales; they tend toward personal or regional struggles, rather than save-the-world plotlines or empire building; they tend toward characters of moral grays, rather than absolute heroes; and while the protagonists may indeed be proficient with powerful magics, S&S tales tend to pit said protagonists against even more potent and/or alien powers.
Oh, and they’re dirty, focusing more on the gore and grime than on the heroic ideal of mythic adventure (metaphorically if not literally). That one’s almost not negotiable; if any trait is a must-have for S&S, I’d argue it’s this. But the point is, that’s the definition I’m using, and I think it’s accurate enough that, even if you disagree with a detail or two, most of you will be on board with the bulk of it.
So, back to D&D. (The motto of my life, really.)
Today, a lot of people think of D&D as the embodiment of high, epic fantasy. It involves large parties of characters with fantastic powers, made up of multiple (and often bizarre) races. At high levels, they’re often involved in world-shaking events, and can sometimes wield more power than almost any other creature in the game short of gods. And as discussed in my prior column, D&D led, at least in part, to the prevalence of sweeping epics in the genre of written fantasy.
But the first irony is, that wasn’t the creators’ intentions. Gary Gygax wrote, more than once, that his preferred influences, and what he was drawing upon during the game’s creation, were the S&S greats: Howard, Anderson, Leiber, Vance, Moorcock, and the like. He included many aspects of Tolkien, obviously, but he maintained that he did so because he knew they’d be popular with others, not because he himself cared for them. Dave Arneson was less vocal about his preferences, but looking at the projects and settings he worked on, one can reasonably assume that his fantasy tastes, at the time, were comparable to Gygax’s.
Indeed, the earliest incarnations of the game, and the adventures written for it, were focused largely on gaining material reward, and didn’t assume characters of a heroic bent. Definitely closer to the S&S aesthetic. But as the game progressed, it shifted more and more toward the epic, with the influences of Tolkien and similar writers coming to overshadow the S&S crew. The threats in various adventures grew larger, the efforts of the player characters more world-changing. The game slowly began discouraging evil characters, and even morally neutral ones were often sidelined by assumptions that “thwarting the powers of darkness” was sufficient motivation to drive a published adventure.
One could argue that the game had to drift away from its roots. By definition, gameplay revolves around larger groups of heroes, rather than the narrower focus of S&S. The ability to see one’s character advance, to take on ever-greater threats, led to the characters acquiring enormous powers; and the need to make the game playable removed the darker and more mysterious aspects from the magic system. For the sake of wider appeal, good characters took prominence, and for a great many players, saving the world and toppling empires simply provided more satisfaction than smaller stakes. But whether or not one agrees that it had to happen, the fact is that it did. D&D became much more epic in scope, and thus played at least a part in driving the mainstream of fantasy fiction in that same direction.
S&S still exists in modern mainstream fantasy fiction, of course, and it’s become more popular in recent years. For quite some time, however, it tended to lurk on the periphery. The most popular fantasies were either broad epics, spanning continents and saving worlds–often times in a series long enough to choke a dragon–or else took fantasy in a modern, or at least an urban, direction. Look at some of the most popular series of the last few years: Harry Dresden, Harry Potter (What’s with all the Harrys?), Miéville’s Bas-Lag series… And all the most popular traditional fantasies, such as The Wheel of Time or A Song of Ice and Fire, are arguably either epic fantasy, or combine enough aspects of the epic and the S&S that they cannot readily be slotted into either category. Exceptions exist, as they always will, but as a tendency, S&S has been the third-party in a two-party race.
Or at least, that’s what many readers, many critics, and–dare I say it?–even many publishers believe. It is, however, not true. S&S has not only survived, but thrived; it just did so under a new guise.
Tie-in novels.
There’s an unfortunate tendency amongst many readers to automatically dismiss tie-ins as trash. (Indeed, I can actually see some of you blanching or turning away through my monitor.) It’s an unfair and inaccurate assessment. Are many tie-ins poor? Sure. But I’m sure you don’t like every non-tie-in fantasy out there, either. The list of tie-in authors who have bestsellers, who were “good enough” to move from tie-ins to original works, or even who chose to do tie-ins after establishing themselves as original authors is enormous. Even more importantly, we’ve already talked about how many writers of original fiction based their works on their gaming experiences; what, other than the use of licensed names, differentiates them from people writing novels that are formally tied to those games?
(I’m sure some of you will wonder if I’m biased, since I myself have written some tie-in fiction. To which I say, “Maybe.” But I’ve been reading it far longer than I’ve been writing it. More importantly, I also write fantasy; I don’t think that makes me unqualified to argue that “Lots of fantasy is good,” so I shouldn’t be any less qualified to say “Lots of tie-in fiction is good.” Also, it’s my column, and I’ll be biased if I want to. Nyah, nyah.)
Anyway, if enough of you are interested, I’ll expand on that in a future entry. Right now, though, my point is this: If a reader doesn’t dismiss tie-in fiction off the bat, then an entire new arena of fantasy fiction opens up. And within those covers, you’ll find a lot–a whole lot–of S&S.
And that’s where D&D’s second ironic contribution comes in. Because while the game arguably helped shift fantasy’s focus away from S&S, the game’s tie-in fiction also helped to preserve it.
(I need to take a moment to mention that this thought–that D&D fiction is a bastion of S&S–didn’t occur to me on my own. It was an observation made by Paul Kemp that first got me thinking along these lines.)
Remember what I said last time, about roleplaying games appealing to multiple niches as well as to the mainstream? And what I said earlier, about D&D’s original inspirations drawing more from S&S than epic fantasy? The result of those facts is a large percentage of the fanbase who prefer styles of fantasy other than the high-magic epic to which the game heavily leans. And in order to serve those fans, the game’s tie-in fiction spans a wide assortment of fantasy sub-genres.
Including, very often, S&S. This has been the case from the beginning, perhaps starting with Gygax’s own Gord the Rogue novels (or at least the early ones; they’d sort of drifted away from S&S by the later installments), but still persists today. While the Forgotten Realms setting is widely considered a high-magic, epic setting, a great many of its individual stores are S&S in nature. R.A. Salvatore’s character of Drizzt Do’Urden often undertakes adventures that fit every one of the above criteria. Ditto Kemp’s own Erevis Cale stories and quite a few of the Harpers series. D&D’s other high-magic setting, Eberron, boasts many high fantasy epics, but–due to its explicit pulp and noir influences–also a variety of S&S tales (including several in the Inquisitives series).
(There are also supposed to be novels attached to the forthcoming new version of the Dark Sun setting. While I can’t say for sure, since I’m not working on them, I’d imagine that, given the setting’s “sword & sandals” vibe that they’re certain to have many elements of S&S.)
And of course, that’s just talking about D&D. Other fantasy roleplaying games–such as Warhammer–also boast a wide selection of tie-in novels that run the gamut of fantasy styles.
It can, admittedly, be hard to find. If you’re not familiar with the games or the settings–or sometimes even if you are–picking an S&S novel over an epic fantasy novel, when both belong to the same shared world, can be tricky. And as with any sub-group of fiction, you’re likely to have to dig through a bunch you don’t like to find those you do. (Hey, just like the old, much maligned pulps where S&S first got its start. The more things change, right?) But the sword & sorcery is there, just waiting for the market to find it again.
I’ve already run longer than I meant to, so we’ll call it for now. Next time, I think, I’ll be tying all this together with my comments on why I think up-and-coming fantasy authors are well-served by taking up roleplaying games, and what they can learn–and what they shouldn’t learn–in the process.