Sword and sorcery video games are likely to enchantment to the old fashioned aspect of the function enjoying recreation viewers. Supply materials like Howard’s Conan and Leiber’s Fafhrd significantly influenced Dungeons & Dragons and loom giant within the minds of followers who’ve been within the passion a very long time. Whereas heroic fantasy is arguably the most well-liked in the meanwhile, there may be all the time an viewers for tales of mighty thews, blasphemous sorcery and getting away with the rating over saving the day.
Defy The Gods, from designer Chrys Sellers, seems to be at this basic style from a brand new perspective. Its PbtA design seems to be to emulate the beats of these basic tales with extra fashionable guidelines. We spoke with Sellers shortly after the Kickstarter for the sport launched.
“This undertaking took some time as a result of it began with a variety of casting about, nearly blindly,” mentioned Sellers.” I wished issues. My brother was dying, so I wished to make a recreation that drank deep of life, that took characters and their gamers on a wild trip earlier than the tip. I wished the limitless discipline of chance that comes with an unknown world. And I used to be uninterested in the bog-standard Western European medieval setting of different fantasy adventures. All these led me to sword & sorcery, which has a joyfully embodied, “carnal” (as Marc Majcher instructed me) feeling; which sits in a frivolously sketched-in world, often earlier than our written historical past; and whose world is usually situated extra easterly, southerly, and traditionally sooner than Tolkienish excessive fantasy—although that additionally carries with it plenty of Orientalism, which I realized about alongside the best way and did my finest to root out.”
Defy The Gods seems to be to give attention to the emotional journey of its characters. There are basic archetypes like The Sword and The Sorcerer however their journeys are distinctive that overlap with the group quite than the extra episodic nature of a few of these video games. Sure, Conan gained and misplaced fortunes however he additionally brooded loads.
“My favourite PbtA video games have all the time been emotionally wealthy character tales—typically utilizing their style’s tropes to discover interpersonal drama. Masks: A New Era involves thoughts. In addition they steer me, by means of their mechanics, towards deeply significant moments that I by no means would’ve found if I used to be simply dungeon-delving. So, I knew I wished an interpersonal dimension to the journey.”
Usually, these video games make magic an unknowable power to the gamers in a quest to focus on the down and soiled points of the traditional world. Lots of the playbooks incorporate somewhat little bit of magic. The Sorcerer, for instance, lets gamers channel that power on the threat of shedding management.
“Their magic system is wild,” mentioned Sellers. “You roll a bunch of cube and search for patterns in them, like a haruspex. If you happen to can match a sample to a spell , you possibly can forged that spell. If you happen to match multiple, you get to decide on. However when you can’t match any spells, chaotic power blows again on you. So that you by no means know precisely what’ll occur earlier than you roll. You’re risking severely altering the course of the story and your character’s half in it.”
There are extra risks than unpredictable magic and big toxic snakes within the recreation. The strikes take inspiration from video games like Monsterhearts and Thirsty Sword Lesbians. Heroes in historical tales typically fell in love recklessly and whereas they could be capable of tear aside monsters naked handed, their hearts had been typically damaged. Sellers additionally discovered inspiration in fashionable movie.
“I rewatched Princess Mononoke,” mentioned Sellers. “I noticed how a lot it has in frequent with basic sword & sorcery—barbarian swordsman coming to a singular city-state, physique horror, gods and god-killers, out-of-control magic—and likewise how a lot richer that every one is due to the remarkably candy romance at its core.”
With the ability to romance the gods as a part of these epic tales invitations characters to discover relationships they won’t in any other case in actual life. What do the gods care about genders once they fall in love with mortals?
“It is a self-consciously queer recreation,” mentioned Sellers. “with characters who resonate with queer themes as a lot as with sword & sorcery archetypes. Not a variety of sword & sorcery tales have queer characters (though we’ve extra to select from yearly!). However what I discovered whereas writing is that sword & sorcery characters and queer characters have loads in frequent. Each are sometimes outsiders preventing towards seemingly insurmountable odds. Conan refuses to bow to kings, gods, or those that discover his methods unusual. Queer individuals, too, need to face tyrants, different individuals’s concepts of God, and intolerance of how we stay our lives. Nonetheless, for all that sword & sorcery loves the bizarre—the unique, decadent, and sorcerous—it typically portrays this stuff as sources of battle—to bolster the acquainted, (barbarically) easy, and bodily sound. I’m making an attempt to indicate a distinct means of taking a look at ‘bizarre’.”
Defy The Gods is on Kickstarter from now by means of July 10, 2025. Backers are at present anticipated to obtain rewards in late 2025 or early 2026.
