Using Castles & Crusades for an OSR Sword & Sorcery Campaign - A Different Perspective - From The Player's Side

 Getting the  Castles & Crusades rpg system to do Sword & Sorcery isn't rocket Science. It takes three things 1. A copy of the Castle Keeper's Guide and to read through the CKG picking out what alternative rpg systems one wants to use. Two players that are willing adhere to the guidelines set down by the campaign's dungeon masters. And for us a healthy knowledge of the Sword & Sorcery genre conventions. And no, it's not simply, "have hulking barbarian go kill evil sorcerer in tower". There are far more to the genre then simply that. DM Steve recently grabbed the Castles & Crusades Starter Bundle. 

If we look at the Wiki entry on Sword & Sorcery literature  we begin to get a far more solid picture that emerges; "American author Fritz Leiber coined the term "sword and sorcery" in 1961 in response to a letter from British author Michael Moorcock in the fanzine Amra, demanding a name for the sort of fantasy-adventure story written by Robert E. Howard.^[3] Moorcock had initially proposed the term "epic fantasy". Leiber replied in the journal Ancalagon (6 April 1961), suggesting "sword-and-sorcery as a good popular catchphrase for the field". He expanded on this in the July 1961 issue of Amra, commenting:

I feel more certain than ever that this field should be called the sword-and-sorcery story. This accurately describes the points of culture-level and supernatural element and also immediately distinguishes it from the cloak-and-sword (historical adventure) story—and (quite incidentally) from the cloak-and-dagger (international espionage) story too!^[4]

Since its inception, many attempts have been made to provide a precise definition of "sword and sorcery". Although many have debated the finer points, the consensus characterizes it with a bias toward fast-paced, action-rich tales set in a quasi-mythical or fantastical framework. Unlike high fantasy, the stakes in sword and sorcery tend to be personal, the danger confined to the moment of telling.^[5] Settings are typically exotic, and protagonists often morally compromised" 

For Castles & Crusades forget the idea of a low fantasy and low magick campaign.What?! How dare you! Hear me out before you feed my feet to the fires of rpg & OSR howls. The real seed of the gerne and running adventures within it is contained within it's explaination ;"a bias toward fast-paced, action-rich tales set in a quasi-mythical or fantastical framework. Unlike high fantasy, the stakes in sword and sorcery tend to be personal, the danger confined to the moment of telling.^[5] Settings are typically exotic, and protagonists often morally compromised" This again isn't theorical physics but instead is a blend of pulling the levers and conventions of Castles & Crusades as an rpg system to get the right feel to a campaign going in. 

For the last several months I've been personally involved in DM Steve's Sword & Sorcery campaign that uses Castles & Crusades. I haven't been blogging about it for two simple reasons. One is that I really wanted a handle on his take of Castles & Crusades plus house rules. Two I reallly needed to be up to my neck in the actual play of his Yerth campaign setting. His Yerth setting draws far more from Edgar Rice Burroughs with magic then it does from Tolkein because he definitely draws in Fritz Liber's fantasy asthetic into his campaign. What do I mean by this? DM Steve has started with, "Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser sequence, beginning with "Two Sought Adventure" (1939)". Which was required reading for us players. 
The real sense of his Castles & Crusades Sword & Sorcery campaign hasn't been the magick or the C&C magick system. No instead it's the moral nature of the PC's which is pretty comprimesed after the PC's were on the losing side of a political war. We're mercenaries now without a country and outcasts because of the war. Yes this incredibly different then third Edition Hyperborea. Why not use that rpg system?! First of all I'm already running that OSR system. And second Castles & Crusades is a system that DM Steve knows and likes.