Sword and sorcery video games are inclined to enchantment to the old-fashioned aspect of the function enjoying recreation viewers. Supply materials like Howard’s Conan and Leiber’s Fafhrd enormously influenced Dungeons & Dragons and loom giant within the minds of followers who’ve been within the pastime a very long time. Whereas heroic fantasy is arguably the preferred in the mean time, there’s at all times 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, appears to be like at this traditional style from a brand new perspective. Its PbtA design appears to be like to emulate the beats of these traditional 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 quite a lot of casting about, nearly blindly,” stated Sellers.” I needed issues. My brother was dying, so I needed to make a recreation that drank deep of life, that took characters and their gamers on a wild trip earlier than the top. I needed 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 advised me) feeling; which sits in a flippantly sketched-in world, normally earlier than our written historical past; and whose world is commonly situated extra easterly, southerly, and traditionally sooner than Tolkienish excessive fantasy—although that additionally carries with it a number of Orientalism, which I realized about alongside the way in which and did my greatest to root out.”
Defy The Gods appears to be like to give attention to the emotional journey of its characters. There are traditional 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 at all times 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, via their mechanics, towards deeply significant moments that I by no means would’ve chanced on if I used to be simply dungeon-delving. So, I knew I needed an interpersonal dimension to the journey.”
Usually, these video games make magic an unknowable pressure to the gamers in a quest to focus on the down and soiled elements of the traditional world. Lots of the playbooks incorporate just a little little bit of magic. The Sorcerer, for instance, lets gamers channel that power on the threat of dropping management.
“Their magic system is wild,” stated Sellers. “You roll a bunch of cube and search for patterns in them, like a haruspex. For those who can match a sample to a spell , you’ll be able to solid that spell. For those who match multiple, you get to decide on. However in case 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 historic tales typically fell in love recklessly and whereas they may be capable to tear aside monsters naked handed, their hearts had been typically damaged. Sellers additionally discovered inspiration in fashionable movie.
“I rewatched Princess Mononoke,” stated Sellers. “I noticed how a lot it has in widespread with traditional sword & sorcery—barbarian swordsman coming to a singular city-state, physique horror, gods and god-killers, out-of-control magic—and in addition how a lot richer that each one is due to the remarkably candy romance at its core.”
Having the ability to romance the gods as a part of these epic tales invitations characters to discover relationships they may not 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,” stated Sellers. “with characters who resonate with queer themes as a lot as with sword & sorcery archetypes. Not quite a lot of sword & sorcery tales have queer characters (though we have now extra to select from yearly!). However what I discovered whereas writing is that sword & sorcery characters and queer characters have loads in widespread. Each are sometimes outsiders preventing in opposition to 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 dwell our lives. Nevertheless, 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 point out a distinct manner of taking a look at ‘bizarre’.”
Defy The Gods is on Kickstarter from now via July 10, 2025. Backers are presently anticipated to obtain rewards in late 2025 or early 2026.
