I've never GM'd, but have been wondering whether being familiar with an RPG  sourcebook is enough to correctly impart the feeling of a genre in any given campaign or adventure.

Those of you who GM, how essential do you feel it is for you to familiarize yourself with the literature of a genre in addition to the sourcebooks? Why?

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;795918Those of you who GM, how essential do you feel it is for you to familiarize yourself with the literature of a genre in addition to the sourcebooks? Why?

Depends on the genre of course, but overall I would say yes. Do you have some unfamiliar (to you) genre that you have in mind to run?

I can't recall ever running a genre where I wasn't already interested in and familiar with the genre before ever buying a sourcebook,  Even with the old Runequest 1 & 2 set in Glorantha (and I see Glorantha as a kind of a genre) I was interested in Glorantha from playing the original White Bear, Red Moon and Nomad Gods board games. As IIR, those games had little bits of literature included in the game rules. And I was also fairly familiar with bronze age culture and stories from earth history.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;795918I've never GM'd, but have been wondering whether being familiar with an RPG  sourcebook is enough to correctly impart the feeling of a genre in any given campaign or adventure.

Those of you who GM, how essential do you feel it is for you to familiarize yourself with the literature of a genre in addition to the sourcebooks? Why?

I think it can vary a lot. If it is a game that is very specifically about a genre, I would want to be familiar with the genre before running it. On the other hand, if it is something more amorphous like D&D, where you can pull from all sorts of sources of inspiration, I wouldn't worry about it so much. I think we get a little too hung up on this idea lately. You could do a great fantasy campaign that is mainly inspired by history for example. I read a lot more history books than fantasy novels and I feel I get more bang for my buck from them in terms of giving me ideas for adventures and setting material.

@Bren and @BedrockBrendan,

That's sort of what I figured just trying to imagine myself in the shoes of the GM.

Quote from: Bren;795926Depends on the genre of course, but overall I would say yes. Do you have some unfamiliar (to you) genre that you have in mind to run?

As of now, it's just an idea I'm entertaining and haven't broached it to my friends.

After reading a review of the Crypts and Things, and AS&SH games on this site, I would very much like to try running a game in that swords and sorcery vein with my pals. The only sources I'm familiar with are movies like Krull and Beastmaster, along with the Conan movies from the 80's.

I worry that if that is all I know, anything I set up won't be sustainable in the long run.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;795943After reading a review of the Crypts and Things, and AS&SH games on this site, I would very much like to try running a game in that swords and sorcery vein with my pals. The only sources I'm familiar with are movies like Krull and Beastmaster, along with the Conan movies from the 80's.

I worry that if that is all I know, anything I set up won't be sustainable in the long run.

Short version: Don't worry about it.

Longer version:
(1) A lot of the Swords and Sorcery genre source material is pretty episodic in nature. That certainly fits Conan or anything written by Robert E. Howard, virtually all of the pulp fiction from the 1930s, as well as all of the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories. While writers like Edgar Rice Bourroughs wrote long series, many of their books were either a paired set of tales or almost totally stand alone novels set in what in effect was a shared setting. I think that the popularity of the Lord of the Rings trilogy in the late 1960s and early 1970s paved the wave for the now almost overwhelming popularity of the tightly connected sequential series that we see so much of today. So the movies versions aren't a bad example for a fantasy RPG.

(2) Most people seem to run campaigns that don't last for decades but for months or a couple of years. The source material you are familiar with is sufficient to start a game and quite possibly sufficient for a campaign of normal or typical length. Once you get started, you can read more when and if your campaign is successful.

(3) I get ideas for the campaigns I run from all sorts of sources outside of their specific genre. A recent example: I read a Batman comic last week from which I'll steal the storyline for a possible adventure in my Honor+Intrigue campaign which is historical and is set in France in the 1620s. So pretty darn far away, genre-wise from a modern superheros game. You can use nearly anything you read in fiction or fact and nearly any movie you watch for ideas for a Sword & Sorcery campaign.

Have a look at your audience (the players).

In one of my groups, there's a big fan of the "Pulp" genre. So if I'm going to run Hollow Earth Expedition or something, I want to make sure I have the fundamentals of the genre well understood and have read a smattering of fiction for that genre. I also rely heavily on him to add flavour and authenticity. So if a question comes up in game like "would my character have X" or "would I know X", I ask the expert and add his opinion to my judgement.

For another group, I run my game based on how the genre is understood in popular culture. So Hollow Earth Expedition as free-form Indiana Jones is full of goodness.

That said, I run a lot of Gamma World and haven't read anything post-apocalypsy ever. The nice thing about games like D&D or Gamma World is that the setting sort of comes in the box with the game. It's largely what you want it to be.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;795918I've never GM'd, but have been wondering whether being familiar with an RPG  sourcebook is enough to correctly impart the feeling of a genre in any given campaign or adventure.

Those of you who GM, how essential do you feel it is for you to familiarize yourself with the literature of a genre in addition to the sourcebooks? Why?

It really depends on the players' expectations.

Some games are just everyone trying out a genre based on the sound of it, where no one is very familiar with the genre. Other games have a bunch of players who are fans of the genre, and most have read every book and/or watched every episode.

Both of these can be plenty of fun, but they clearly have different expectations.

As in the novels?

None at all.

Half the times the novels dont quite jibe with the game and so make for some problematic events sometimes. When novels arent flat out contradicting eachother or just generally irrelevant.

As in the game background, if any?

That I read if only for some possible ideas where to start or plot hook ideas. Or to learn why so-n-so is here and not over there. Rare that game backgrounds are so informative.

Quote from: languagegeek;795970In one of my groups, there's a big fan of the "Pulp" genre. So if I'm going to run Hollow Earth Expedition or something, I want to make sure I have the fundamentals of the genre well understood and have read a smattering of fiction for that genre. I also rely heavily on him to add flavour and authenticity. So if a question comes up in game like "would my character have X" or "would I know X", I ask the expert and add his opinion to my judgement.

My standard response to "would I have this thing" or "would I know this subject, I've got whatever skill" is "yeah, sure" (Unless it's too obviously gamebreaking or immediately out-of-character); I'm generally curious as to what they'll do with it, and if they've asked for it, they obviously think it's important to playing their character, it fits in with their vision of the game.

I currently running a sword and sorcery game with Atlantis the Second Age. I am reading the genre literature (including watching related TV and movies and comics) as its a lot of fun (that's why I am running a sword and sorcery game) as well as providing me with a font of inspiration for the game.

On saying that, the RPG also supports playing in the genre through various means. There is considerable source material of the world, its monsters, magic , story seeds, etc and its highly evocative.

The mechanics also include several aspects that convey the genre too, such as:

- there is an lifepath system that does a good job on ensuring that all PCs are within the genre and of appropriate ability. It also provides a wealth of genre appropriate story seeds for the GM to work from at the outset.
- PCs advance by doing the kinds of things that S&S heroes are known to do i.e. notable deeds, extravagant debauchery and striving to achieve their destiny
- magic is powerful yet dangerous and worshipping the gods is difficult and costly but can break the rules of the universe

You can never underestimate the extent of implicit assumptions present in gaming. I good grasp of the genre conventions is what helps fill in the gaps.

Some games are more reliant on genre conventions than others. I would not dream of running Pendragon or superhero games without a good grasp of the source material. The Pendragon books are very well research and informative, but if you are GM you really want that sort of knowledge to be instinctive, something you feel in your gut.

But even for the players understanding the conventions is important. I've never really got the hang of the WoD games. Having I've never read any of the inspirational material I've felt somewhat lost as if I've half way through into a foreign language movie and I've left my glasses home so I can't even read the subtitles.

Other games are less reliant on genre conventions. Often these are ones that are more grounded like the hardish sci-fi of Traveller or straight historical settings.

And then some games have created their own genre conventions, by that I mean the culture around the game has created a new set of conventions that aren't longer based on the source material but are most on like oral tradition passed from GM to GM. I think both D&D and Shadowrun are examples of this.

Beastmaster sounds like an excellent source for a Crypts & Things game! I generally find that the cheesier stuff like that is much easier to riff off of than top-level stuff - Conan pastiches give me more inspiration than RE Howard's own short stories, because they leave me thinking "I can do that!"

Krull, I would say, is definitely not swords & sorcery, it seems more 'Palaces & Princesses' with some sf patina. It has some elements of Sword & Planet I guess; the 'love conquers all' theme is very un-s&s but would fit there, along with the tech.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;795943After reading a review of the Crypts and Things, and AS&SH games on this site, I would very much like to try running a game in that swords and sorcery vein with my pals. The only sources I'm familiar with are movies like Krull and Beastmaster, along with the Conan movies from the 80's.

Well, beyond Soylent Green's excellent post, I've a couple thoughts.

First off, the movies present an aesthetic all of their own.  They present their own genre, in effect.  It may not be the same as the books (see below), but that doesn't invalidate that aesthetic.  It may well be that your pals are likewise familiar with the movies to the exclusion of the books.

Secondly, as long as you're all having fun, what's the diff?  I recall a thread on TBP where a poster raised the issue of a setting book I wrote for SJG, and somewhat huffily asked how I'd feel if I knew of a GM completely distorting the genre in playing it.  Why should I care? I answered.  Yay that the fellow bought my work, yay if he enjoyed it, but any gaming group has the sovereign right to mash, slice, dice and change anything it suits them to do.

Finally, the very genre you're thinking of is one of the more notorious mashups in all of fiction.  The Conan movies bore little resemblance to the plot of any of the Conan books, but take the Lancer/Ace "Original 12" books that formed the core of public knowledge of the written series for decades.  The sources were all over the place: quite aside from original material written by the editors, they took a bunch of REH's other genre fiction and rewrote them into Conan stories, something REH did himself a few times.  (I admit I had my socks knocked off when I first read "By This Axe I Rule!", the far-superior Kull story that was rewritten into "The Phoenix On The Sword.")  I wouldn't worry too hugely about getting it "wrong."

Quote from: Ravenswing;796107I admit I had my socks knocked off when I first read "By This Axe I Rule!", the far-superior Kull story that was rewritten into "The Phoenix On The Sword."

Ahhh...If only the Kull movie had the tone and style of that story. I was lucky enough to have found this before reading the Conan pastiches.

Good stuff. Thanks everyone. I'll just give it one shot at least.