pulp and the darkness of...

[James V. West]

I just got my copy of Sorcerer and Sword and was reading through some of it tonight.

Ron has once again reached into my deep, personal, mythical world and pointed things out for me. I love this stuff.

Some of my earliest and most powerful memories of discovering fantasy were Robert E. Howard, Tanith Lee, and Marvel's Savage Sword of Conan. I read Tanith Lee's Death's Master when I was just entering high school. I had never read anything quite like it and it has left an impression on me that I can't fully explain. The same holds true with REH. I remember reading "The Tower of the Elephant" and being similarly stirred. Of course, I lacked any sort of language to describe how these kinds of stories made me feel (in fact...I still do!), but the point is they really got to me much more than some of the other fantasy novels and stories I stumbled onto.

This is all resonating even more with me now because my current comic project is inspired by all of these early influences and then some: Frank Thorne's Red Sonya comics, Bode's stuff, films like The Road Warrior (the whole Western-style story ties in very closely with Heroic Fantasy in my book), etc..

Of course, there is also a game brewing in me. The game and the comic are sort of percolating...budding...gestating together. One of the core ideas in the game is the difference between Fate and Will--which I was glad to see Ron tackle in Sorcerer and Sword. But I want to distinctly avoid labelling the comic/game as pure S&S, although that kind of story certainly bears heavily on it.

I've been wanting to run a Sorcerer game anyway, and now that I have this suppliment I'm even more eager to do it. I'm envisioning bald priests of some nameless thing resurrecting their dead god into the stomach of an alcoholic bar-brawler.

Anyway, just a kind of rambling post from the guy who doesn't post enough!

[Voidwalker]

Well, speaking of Pulp, why not have the Sorceror Setting in a Pulp Fiction Era? Have the characters dark, 'myffic' heroes, struggling against their inner darkness to save the day from the truly dark? Y'know, 1930s 'Modern Day'...

[Ron Edwards]

Ha! Nailed it!

People are always asking how the existential violence of 1930s sword-and-sorcery (Sorcerer & Sword) can be reconciled or combined with the angst-ridden murders of 1930s-60s detective fiction (The Sorcerer's Soul).

That's how.

Best,
Ron