#sword & sorcery

[a-space-opera]

[prokopetz]

Could I ask where dungeons of the kind in D&D came about? Like they’re a cultural icon now, but I don’t understand their origins very well

The dungeon crawl is a pretty standard trope in 1960s and 1970s sword and sorcery fiction and its near ancestors. A lot of ink has been spilled about how Dungeons & Dragons has become so creatively insular that it's basically emulating itself, and while there's some truth to that, the claim that dungeon crawls are part of that is a misconception. That bit is lifted more or less directly from the contemporary literature which original flavour D&D was inspired by – modern commentators tend to miss that because nobody reads sword and sorcery anymore. If you look at Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, Robert Howard, you'll see dungeon crawls aplenty; Conan the Barbarian* went on not a few!

Of course, that just kicks the can down the road a bit: if Dungeons & Dragons got the dungeon crawl from 1960s and 1970s sword and sorcery fiction, where did they get it from? That's a question I'm less qualified to address, since literary history isn't my area. I know there are several students of early to mid 20th Century popular fiction following this blog, though; perhaps a qualified party can weigh in?

* Yes, I'm aware that Conan the Barbarian was 1930s; I'm including him in the "near ancestors" of 1960s sword and sorcery fiction

[pikala]

The forest parts and the sword glows. Do you take it or leave it be?

[swornsword]

[browsethestacks]

Death Dealer

Art by Bill Sienkiewicz

[omercifulheaves]

Art by William Stout

[saprophilous]

Young Elric illustration done for a new Michael Moorcock short story in New Edge Sword & Sorcery issue #1

[faiiryteethh]

It’s dangerous to go alone, take this

[armouredelf]

[thehauntedrocket]

Red Sonja

Art by Richard Pace

[oldschoolfrp]

Frank Frazetta's Death Dealer novels by James Silke, Tor Books

Prisoner of the Horned Helmet (1988)

Lords of Destruction (1989)

Tooth and Claw (1989)

Plague of Knives (1990)

[venusmage]

🔥 🐍 🔥

[prokopetz]

I'll see your anime boobsocks and raise you whatever is going on on the covers of those 1970s sword and sorcery fantasy paperbacks to make the barbarian hero's loincloth so perfectly outline his testicles.

[arcadebroke]

[swornsword]

[a-space-opera]