"I live in a world of fire and sand. The crimson sun scorches the life from anything that crawls or flies, and storms of sand scour the foliage from the barren ground. This is a land of blood and dust, where tribes of feral elves sweep out of the salt plains to plunder lonely caravans, mysterious singing winds call travelers to slow suffocation in the Sea of Silt, and selfish kings squander their subjects' lives building gaudy palaces and garish tombs. This bleak wasteland is Athas, and it is my home."
— The Wanderer, Dark Sun
A subgenre of Heroic Fantasy, with which it is often lumped together, but having its own distinguishing characteristics. The term was coined by Fritz Leiber in the early '60s to define the style of his own works and those writers that inspired him, and to differentiate it from other works described as Heroic Fantasy. Sword & Sorcery is a genre of fantasy that is often considerably less glamorous and all about fast-paced action. Almost universally, Sword & Sorcery stories are about mighty warriors fighting supernatural horrors with blade in hand, either an Eldritch Abomination or Evil Sorcerer. Any political or criminal leaders are usually merely an Unwitting Pawn of a much darker power. Many victories will be by the skin of their teeth and usually won more through quick thinking and cleverness rather than physical might. There will be at least a few times where they cut their losses and bail on a fight, and they will have at least one Run or Die moment when they recognize that a threat is way out of their league. While they may have genuine allies here and there, they know better than to trust most people; as far as they are concerned, everyone they meet has a hidden dagger in their clutches until proven otherwise, and even then, they are usually still prepared for betrayal at some point. The world itself typically does not resemble a Medieval European Fantasy with the Standard Fantasy Races, but instead looks like an earlier, Iron Age (or even Bronze Age) setting where humans are essentially alone, and any other intelligent beings are mysterious and unknowable.
Sword & Sorcery protagonists can usually be identified by three main traits, which separate them from most heroes from Heroic Fantasy:
- They are men (and occasional women) of action, larger than life and fighting evil through pure strength of will until their final breath.
- In some way or another the protagonists are outsiders, not having a real place in society even when among their own people. Quite often they are The Drifter and Walking the Earth.
- They are ultimately motivated by self-interest, offering their martial skills either for money, fun, or because doing so benefits them in another way.
Robert E. Howard is widely seen as the Trope Maker of the genre, with Fritz Leiber and Michael Moorcock being the Trope Codifiers a generation later. Many famous stories were first published in Pulp Magazines and short story anthologies are still a popular form of the genre. The genre had a boom in the '60s and '70s, followed by a bust in the '80s due to a glut of Conan the Barbarian clones that sullied the genre's reputation. It mostly lay fallow for the next few decades before making a modest comeback in the 2020s with the "New Edge" movement, which has seen the development of subgenres like "Sword and Soul" (African-inspired Sword and Sorcery) and "Sword and Silk" (East Asian-inspired Sword and Sorcery).
If the heroes of a story are actually heroic and morally unambiguous, it's probably Heroic Fantasy. If there is only a low supernatural presence, it is most likely Low Fantasy (although there can be overlap). Can sometimes overlap with Dark Fantasy. See also Wuxia and Sword and Sandal, the Chinese and Bronze Age Mediterranean versions (respectively) of the genre, both with very strong overlaps. Unrealistic and formulaic sword and sorcery stories have been referred to with the disparaging term "thud and blunder
", a play on "blood and thunder".
Because of the genre's history in pulp fiction, which goes as far back as the 1920s, there are a few bits of Values Dissonance that have become tightly associated with the genre and may result in some Unfortunate Implications if an aspiring sword and sorcery author isn't careful. Such problematic tropes include Orientalism, Fantasy Counterpart Cultures, Romanticized Abuse, and Noble Savage. Tread lightly, brave writer.
Not to be confused with Sword and Sorcerer, which is a character duo trope.
Common tropes in Sword & Sorcery:
- Adventure-Friendly World
- Ambition Is Evil
- Anti-Hero
- Barbarian Hero
- Black-and-Gray Morality
- The Dark Arts
- Deliberate Values Dissonance
- Eldritch Abomination
- Eldritch Location
- Evil Sorcerer
- Good Is Not Nice
- Human Sacrifice
- Humans Are Bastards
- Magic Is Evil
- Pale and Fey
- Proud Warrior Race Guy
- Rated M for Manly
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge
- War Is Glorious
- Warrior vs. Sorcerer
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Amon Saga: A story set in a chaotic fantasy world with magic and monsters based around a young man seeking revenge for the death of his mother. Many of the characters are mercenaries or villainous soldiers, dark magic is used by evil sorcerers and the hero has to slay both man and beast in his quest for vengeance.
- Berserk, particularly in the Black Swordsman arc at the start of the story. Though it mainly veers straight into Dark Fantasy and Cosmic Horror, the general concept of an anti-hero with a giant sword Walking the Earth and slaying monsters on a quest for revenge in a pseudo-European fantasy setting fits quite neatly within the conventions of the genre.
- Claymore: The titular Claymores are warrior women who hunt monsters called Yoma but are shunned by humans for being part-Yoma themselves.
Comic Books
- Cerebus the Aardvark started off as a comedic parody of Conan, with the title character being basically Conan as an aardvark. Over time, however, it became a more general Black Comedy Satire and then... something far stranger, due to behind-the-scenes struggles from the author.
- Conan the Barbarian, being based on the Trope Maker, is naturally all about this. Created in response to Conan's resurgent popularity in the '70s, it continued the adventures of Howard's hero, even popularizing the "barbarian" title for Conan.
- The Goddamned has elements of the genre. A morally-grey Barbarian Hero with nothing but bones for weapons, Amazonian Beauties, a Sandal Punk setting full of giant beasts of dubious physiologies, barbaric Frazetta Men, giants, cults and cult-leaders, curses and the duality between faith in oneself and a higher power.
- Hillbilly goes a little lighter on the Black-and-Grey Morality - the hero is genuinely heroic, if a bit of a Knight in Sour Armor - but the Appalachian-inspired Fantasy Americana setting is plenty grim and barbarous, the monsters are grotesque, and the action is quick and visceral. Exaggerated in the in-universe folk tales of The Iron Child, a Kid Barbarian Hero in the stereotypical fur pants and horned helmet.
- In Robin Wood's Or-Grund, the protagonist is a blond and muscular barbarian hero with some similarity to He-Man (although only physically), who travels the world facing vampires, ghouls, snake-men and all kinds of evil creatures. He is quite primitive at first, rather silly and acts solely on instinct, like an animal, but out of necessity he must become smarter and more cunning, as well as less impulsive.
- Red Sonja was originally created for the abovementioned Conan comics, but spun off into her own series set in the same universe as Conan's and featuring thus much of the same elements.
- The Tales of the Jedi series is quite different in style from most Star Wars stories and has very strong allusions to Sword & Sorcery, being set 5,000 to 4,000 years before the rest of the Expanded Universe. Being the stories of the ancient Sith, it's full of demonic-looking evil sorcerers, their huge palaces and temples, and alchemy — all classic hallmarks of the S&S genre.
Film
- The 13th Warrior, which follows a band of 12 Viking warriors and an accompanying Arab traveler as they battle a band of mysterious savages, plays close to the genre, but eventually subverts it. All the magic and monsters turn out to be simply intimidation tactics by the savage warriors.
- Ator, the Fighting Eagle (and its sequels The Blade Master and Quest for the Mighty Sword) is a great example... in the ironic sense. Following the adventures of the eponymous barbarian in a world quite similar to that of Conan's as he battles various foes and goes on dangerous quests — while being plagued by questionable writing and even worse special effects. The first two were famously featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
- The Beastmaster (1982) features the titular Beasmaster Dar facing off against an evil cult leader who murdered his royal father and took his throne. However, it stands in stark contrast to the original book, which is a Space Western whose main hero is a Native American war veteran living on a cowboy planet.
- Conan the Barbarian has of course starred in a few movies, most famously played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Conan the Destroyer, and then by Jason Momoa in a 2011 reboot. The plots, sets, costumes, and dialogue of these films have influenced how many imagine the genre and its characters.
- Conquest follows an exiled warrior teaming up with a barbarian to fight an evil sorceress, making it a pretty standard member of the genre... sort of, if looking like it was made on several drugs still counts. Look, it's a Lucio Fulci movie, just roll with it.
- The movies that started with Deathstalker (1983) are classic examples of '80s grindhouse sword and sorcery. A Follow the Leader to the 1982 Conan, it follows a Designated Barbarian Hero going on a quest to retrieve artifacts to fight an evil wizard, with plenty of sex and violence ensuing along the way. Deathstalker (2025) is a reboot of that franchise, and more broadly, a Genre Throwback to '80s sword and sorcery movies in general.
- Hawk the Slayer was one of many movies in this genre made around the same time the Schwarzenegger Conan movie came out, obviously as a Follow the Leader, and like most of them, it's pretty standard for the genre, with a muscular hero with a magic sword gathering a band of warriors to fight an evil wizard, and yadda yadda, all that jazz. Nonetheless it became a minor Cult Classic, with a sequel currently in Development Hell and a comic spinoff even being produced.
- Hearts and Armour, a loose adaptation of Orlando Furioso from 1983.
- King Arthur: Legend of the Sword puts Arthurian Legend into this genre, reimagining King Arthur as a Street Urchin who rediscovers his royal linage after pulling Excalibur from the stone and then having to battle the Evil Sorcerer who has usurped the throne of Camelot.
- Mandy (2018) takes place in (a stylized version of) the real world in the early 1980s and adds elements of horror and psychedelia, but it qualifies. It's about a Barbarian Hero taking brutal but justified revenge against an Evil Sorcerer cult leader and his demonic mooks for murdering the woman he loves.
- The Northman has been described as the story of Hamlet (more or less) told in the style of Conan the Barbarian (1982). The sorcery elements are very much in the realm of Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane, but the characters certainly think they're real.
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Aside from the unusual setting, the movies match the genre perfectly, with less-than-morally-scrupulous characters facing off against magic, gods, and monsters being a pretty good coverage of the genre's conventions. Just change the setting to the West Indies during the Golden Age of Piracy and take your fantastical elements from nautical lore, and voila!
- Red Sonja (1985) puts Brigitte Nielsen in the eponymous role as she seeks vengeance against an evil queen with empowerment from mysterious forces. Arnold Schwarzenegger shows up here as a musclebound warrior again, but he's not Conan the Barbarian himself this time, rather an Expy (incidentally, the movie was originally meant to be a Conan movie).
- Red Sonja (2025) has the eponymous heroine enslaved by evil tyrant Draygan The Magnificent and has her unite a group of unlikely warriors to face off against the tyrant and his deadly bride, Dark Annisia.
- The Scorpion King, a spinoff of The Mummy Returns, takes the franchise to a very fantastical and anachronistic take on the Ancient World where a warlord leads an army of barbarians to conquer the world, and the remaining kingdoms recruit the last of a culture of legendary assassins to slay an evil wizard assisting the warlord. Very classically S&S type stuff.
- Sorceress is another Conan imitator, with the twist that it takes much inspiration from The Corsican Brothers, featuring twin sisters raised as boys who have to prevent their own birth father, who's an Evil Sorcerer, from sacrificing the eldest to gain more power from his master, a dark god.
- The Sword and the Sorcerer: The plot is pretty standard for the genre, with a mercenary warrior and former prince fighting an Evil Sorcerer using a three-headed sword.
- Yor: The Hunter from the Future is about a Handsome Heroic Caveman in a Future Primitive world, and while he is undeniably a brave and mighty warrior, the movie also makes it painfully obvious that he does not really care about anyone except his immediate friends.
Literature
- "The Barbarian and the Sorceress", a short story which is clearly in the original style of these, with a heroic wandering warrior having to fight an Evil Sorcerer. It subverts some conventions, though, as the hero has to be rescued by the title sorceress, who learned magic from the sorcerer's books without him realizing.
- Beating Hearts & Battle-Axes is an anthology combining Sword and Sorcery with Romantasy.
- Beowulf, as well as its many adaptations, are probably the Ur-Example. While obviously made long before Robert E. Howard established the genre, Beowulf's adventures have many of the same elements, particularly in the idea of a warrior proving his glory against increasingly deadly and monstrous foes.
- Brak the Barbarian is a book series about a Barbarian Hero Wandering the Earth and occasionally fighting grotesque monsters. According to the author, the stories originated as a direct pastiche of Robert E. Howard's style.
- Some of Edgar Rice Burroughs' pulpy Two-Fisted Tales provide formative early examples. Though the stakes are often high enough to push the stories more into High Fantasy territory, the magic — or, in the case of the Planetary Romance John Carter of Mars series, Psychic Powers — is limited enough to keep the focus more on swashbuckling action and swordfights. His heroes are principled and unambiguously heroic, but typically still have a little bit of Blood Knight in them. The Frank Frazetta covers many of Burroughs' books received later were a natural fit.
- Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian is the Trope Maker — if not Trope Codifier — of the entire genre. In addition to the titular Conan being the Trope Codifier of the Barbarian Hero, almost everyone who uses magic is portrayed as some type of Evil Sorcerer due to its nature (the one exception, who tried to use magic to help Conan, creeped the latter out to the point he wanted nothing more to do with them), Conan faces off against said sorcerers and things that should not be regularly (keep in mind the franchise is technically part of the Cthulhu Mythos), and he's an Unscrupulous Hero unafraid to get his hands dirty. It's almost impossible to find any sword and sorcery fiction that doesn't owe its existence to these stories in some shape or form.
- Howard's companion of the Lovecraft Circle, Clark Ashton Smith, has the Hyperborea and Zothique cycles. Of these, Hyperborea is more of a straight example, as it happens in Medieval Prehistory whilst Zothique is in the far post-apocalyptic future. In these worlds, Jerkass Gods (often an Eldritch Abomination of sorts) rule over dangerous worlds where civilization is on the decline and magic is a force to be feared. Owing to Smith's relationship with the Cthulhu Mythos, there's a lot of overlap with Lovecraft's work, much like with Conan.
- Cyrion from Tanith Lee involves the titular Cyrion, a hero known to be a sage-like scholar and Master Swordsman. The story works on the following framework - a young girl in a standard Sword and Sorcery world, is in grave peril and she's searching for Cyrion as the only hero who can protect her. The first half of the novel has her hearing various tales about Cyrion in her search. These stories show that he's a Guile Hero as cunning and intelligent as he is skilled with a sword. The latter half of the story has Cyrion take up her cause.
- The Deathdealer books from James Silke are stories about the character from Frank Frazetta's painting — a large, mounted armoured warrior with an equally large axe and a sinister horned helmet. In these novels, the titular character is a large superhumanly strong barbarian with an equally mighty soul named Gath. Gath soon becomes the owner/vassal of the horned helmet which belonged to that setting's God of Death.
- Discworld: The early novels, particularly The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, are Affectionate Parodies of the genre, where an inept wizard and the world's first tourist wander in and out of stock plots and cursed ruins and meet expies of Howard's, Moorcock's and Leiber's characters as the gods play dice with the universe. The humour largely comes from the cast's Genre Savvyness and their commenting on the genre's conventions and idiosyncrasies as they go along.
- Dread Empire: Some of the short stories fit here; Glen Cook explicitly cites Fritz Lieber as an inspiration. The full-length novels, however, which have much more epic scope and higher stakes, fall more into the High Fantasy side of things, albeit of a rather dark and gritty sort. Nonetheless, the darker morality and focus on an ordinary soldier's viewpoint in a world ravaged by conflicts between immortals and sorcerers is quite characteristic and appropriate for the S&S genre.
- The Eddie LaCrosse series is sometimes placed in this sub-genre, although it's sometimes closer to Low Fantasy than other works called sword-and-sorcery (depending a bit on exactly which book you look at). Regardless, the series sticks out with its protagonist being a Hardboiled Detective rather than a Barbarian Hero, creating heavy overlap with Fantastic Noir despite being otherwise set in a typical fantasy world.
- Egil and Nix books by Paul S. Kemp features the gigantic Religious Bruiser Egil and Nix, his thieving partner with a bit of sorcerous talent. Clearly a modern nod to the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories if even lighter in tone (Egil and Nix are more morally upright than Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser).
- Michael Moorcock's The Elric Saga, which alongside Conan the Barbarian and Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser is considered one of the defining entries in the genre, telling the story of a decadent but sickly sorcerer-king who becomes a great warrior after acquiring a demonic soul-eating sword, traveling the world in search of redemption and constantly running into tragedy thanks to said sword's effective enslavement of its wielder.
- The Eye of Argon is an infamously terrible novella that goes for this sort of tone, mostly trying to mimic the style of Conan. It tells of a Barbarian Hero named Grignr getting mixed up in the decadent city of Gorzom, running afoul of The Evil Prince, and rescuing a princess from being sacrificed by a cult. Its legacy as a try-not-to-laugh contest played at science fiction conventions is more than well-deserved. The sequel, The Sacred Crest, leans in even harder on the moral ambiguity. After fleeing from a civil war between feuding royals he doesn't care about and was planning to betray anyway, Grignr is captured by enemy soldiers, but ends up forming an unlikely friendship with their Worthy Opponent captain. Unfortunately, he has also activated some kind of ancient curse, and every bad thing that happens in the story is ultimately his fault.
- Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser is considered one of the pioneer entries in the genre, retelling the adventures of a hulking Barbarian Hero and his thief/wizard friend as they do mercenary work and battle all manner of foes, typically in the city of Lankhmar, when they're not boozing, brawling, wenching, and gambling.
- Fangbone! Third Grade Barbarian and its Animated Adaptation Fangbone! are a kid-oriented Affectionate Parody of the genre, with the title hero being a young barbarian warrior from the fierce world of Skullbania who must protect a magical artifact of immense evil (in this case, the severed digit of an Evil Sorcerer) with the help of his friend and ally, a clever but otherwise normal kid. Creator Michael Rex even confirmed Conan the Barbarian to be a major inspiration for the series.
- Goblin Slayer is a grim Deconstruction of the genre that follows the bloody exploits of a man and his relentless quest to murder every goblin he comes across.
- The Iron Dream is a Deconstructive Parody of the genre by posing an Alternate History where Adolf Hitler became an author of pulp fiction in the mode of Robert E. Howard, where mighty Aryan warriors fight villains who are thinly veiled antisemitic stereotypes.
- Jirel of Joiry by C. L. Moore has probably the first female protagonist in these, which inspired many more Action Girl heroines. Regardless of gender though, the series' general premise of a fearsome military leader fighting to protect her homeland against a variety of deadly foes fits quite well with S&S conventions. Notably though, Jirel lacks the Chainmail Bikini common to S&S heroines and is dressed in a full suit of armor (though that doesn't stop some illustrators from giving her one anyway).
- Kane Series by Karl Edward Wagner feature the eponymous Barbarian Hero (or rather Anti-Hero), who has been cursed to a life as an eternal vagabond after being cursed by a mad god. Most of his adventures involve discovering and/or encountering various dangerous and evil forces or those who want him dead.
- Legends of Panthera is set in the semi-medieval world of Panthera and follows the adventures of a group of champions who battle against gods. Notably though, the characters are primarily anthropomorphic animals, as opposed to the typically human-centric nature of the genre.
- Nift the Lean by Michael Shea involves the titular thief and his barbarian pal Barnar as they go through various sword and sorcery hijinks in a setting with New Weird elements that leans more to Jack Vance's Dying Earth tales than Conan the Barbarian.
- The Pusadian Series was L. Sprague de Camp's attempt at making a version of the Hyborian Age that matched better with the world's real history. Set during the Ice Age, it lays out a world of empires and barbarians set on an ancient continent in the Atlantic that became the basis for Atlantis in our time, with monsters, sorcerers, and gods running rampant as their influence wanes with the rise of iron (which counteracts magic here).
- Raven aka Raven: Swordmistress of Chaos was a series written by Robert Holdstock under the psuedonym Richard Kirk. Set After the End of a mythical age, the books feature a crippled old man who narrates the story of a beautiful escaped slave girl who is rescued by her eventual partner/lover, the sorcerer Spellbinder and the mysterious, supernatural black bird that follows him. The girl renamed Raven is trained to be a great warrior and prophesied to end tyrants and supernatural forces that have stagnated humanity and usher in an age of chaos that will eventually lead to a better world, our own timeline.
- Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz by Garth Nix, are sword and sorcery/gunpowder fantasy short stories about a mercenary knight/artillerist Sir Hereward and his magical puppet mentor Mister Fitz as they journey on adventures often fighting interdimensional beings aka "gods".
- Tales of the Black Raven by Seth Skorkowsky is a collection of stories about a master thief in a world of tombs, corrupt city-states, evil magic, and femme fatales.
- The Testament Of Tall Eagle by John R. Fultz is a Tribal Fantasy about a Fantasy Counterpart Culture for the Comanche dealing with Cthulhuoid monstrosities and Human Aliens threatening their land.
- The Ties That Bind (Hayes) is set in a spectacularly grim and gritty world where the world's second-best swordsman has to deal with a lot of trouble from her male rivals. Thankfully, she has help.
- Mercedes Lackey's Vows and Honor trilogy is a collection of her Tarma and Kethry stories. Written as a reaction to characters like Red Sonja, these are Feminist Fantasy adventures of a goddess-touched master swordswoman from a destroyed desert tribe and her best friend, a young artisocratic sorceress who owns a relic enchanted sword.
- The Witcher: Monster hunter Geralt travels the land, killing monsters and lifting curses for coin, using swords, alchemy, and magic.
Live-Action TV
- Conan the Adventurer, being a TV series adaptation of Robert E. Howard's work, naturally qualifies. Made as a Follow the Leader to Hercules: The Legendary Journeys below, it followed Conan as he battled against an Evil Sorcerer, but ultimately didn't last very long at only 22 episodes over a single season.
- Hercules: The Legendary Journeys adopts a Sword and Sandal element to its take on the usual Sword and Sorcery tropes as it follows the adventures of Hercules as he battles monsters, tyrants, and the machinations of the gods with the help of his sidekick Iolaus. Of course, it's pretty campy, and the series is well aware of its own cheese factor, never taking itself too seriously.
- Xena: Warrior Princess is the Distaff Counterpart to Hercules: The Legendary Journeys above and a staple of not only sword and sorcery, but Feminist Fantasy as well, following Lucy Lawless as an Amazonian warrior fighting monsters and struggling with her warlord past while being accompanied by the bard Gabrielle. She actually started off as a character in Hercules' show, but became popular enough to get her own series, with much of the same tone as the parent show.
Music
- Heavy Metal band Eternal Champion's albums chronicle the adventures of Ultimate Blacksmith Rænon, and his forging of the Godblade against the Mad God Brakur.
- GWAR positively adores this trope. Especially in their 2001 album, Violence Has Arrived. Their whole schtick is based around presenting themselves as Evil Overlords straight from the genre, having come to Earth in ancient times and usually singing about sex and violence.
- Castle Rat are a throwback to old Heavy Mithril acts, doing unabashedly cheesy songs about dragons and wizards while styled in goofy '80s Hair.
Tabletop Games
- Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea, a retro-clone of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons explicitly based on the works of early pioneers of the S&S genre, notably Clark Ashton Smith, from which the setting's name is derived..
- Atlantis: The Second Age, which awards experience depending on how heroically you slay your enemies and revolves heavily around mechanics that require you to do outrageous and badass things the whole time.
- Barbaren The Ultimate Mach Roleplaying Game is a tongue-in-cheek take on the material, actively evoking the style of all the countless 80s B-movies made in the wake of Conan the Barbarian (1982) - including their sleazy, exploitative nature and Male Gaze as integral part of the mechanics.
- The whole point of making Barbarians Of Lemuria was to have an off-brand Conan game and as such, it borrows left and right from sword and sorcery pulps, along with the more modern take on the material. The end result is a game about larger than life buff heroes and scantily-clad sorceresses in the rough panorama of city states and empires carving small enclaves of civilization in the untamed wilderness full of ancient ruins, artifacts of the precursors and long-extinct animals.
- There have been plenty of Conan RPGs over the years, with another one currently being published by Modiphius Entertainment. They let you pretty much play out the kinds of adventures Conan himself would get into, so naturally GMs are encouraged to take as much inspiration as possible from the source material.
- Dungeons & Dragons: The game's roots are in this genre, with Gary Gygax claiming the game owes more to Robert E. Howard, Fritz Lieber and Jack Vance than to Tolkien. This is especially evident with art in early editions of the game, as well as the mechanics and visuals for certain classes early on, taking heavy inspiration from Conan and similar characters. Over time however, later editions have diverged from the genre, opening up greater flexibility, although most lean towards Heroic Fantasy.
- The Dark Sun setting (which also provide the page quote) specifically aims to emulate old pulp stories and is heavily influenced by John Carter of Mars, as well as Conan the Barbarian. Set in the post-apocalyptic desert world of Athas, the setting is ruled by depraved sorcerer-kings of godlike power whose magic corrupts and drains the landscape. Brutal and deadly, only the strong survive, with Gladiator Games and Psychic Powers being commonplace.
- Primeval Thule is a campaign setting set in the world of Robert Howard's Conan the Barbarian and Kull and Clark Ashton Smith's Hyperborea (with a bit of the Cthulhu Mythos thrown in) but taking place in a time between them, on a then-tropical Greenland. As a result, there's tons of S&S tropes in the game's world, and players practically bring to life their own S&S adventures.
Video Games
- Bound by Flame: Even though the goal of the protagonist is to prevent the destruction of what little is left of the world, Vulcan keeps fighting the Ice Lords mostly out of self-preservation, rather than saving the world.
- Ecstatica: A traveller stumbles into a town ravaged by eldritch beasts, and must fight their way out using swords and magic.
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Compared to Oblivion's Tolkienesque High Fantasy and Morrowind's Weird Tales trappings, it is this. The "canon" Dragonborn shown in promotional art fits the role of the Barbarian Hero, and the Big Bads of the main game and DLC cycle between a world-devouring Draconic Abomination (Alduin), a demon-worshipping Vampire Monarch (Harkon), and a cult-leading Evil Sorcerer closely allied with an Eldritch Abomination (Miraak and Hermaeus Mora respectively).
- God of War is epic in scale and revolves around a war of the gods, but Kratos is really only out for revenge and nothing else, simply not caring for the cataclysmic destruction following in his wake.
- Golden Axe, the side-scroller inspired by the countless cheaply made "barbarian movies" of the 80s, with the most archetypal characters imaginable.
- Heavenly Sword: A young warrior claims an ancient magical sword to rescue her father from the evil sorcerer and his monstrous henchmen, even though the spirits of the weapon are likely to doom her.
- Icewind Dale: A group of mercenaries sets out to find the power behind the monsters and unnatural winter coming from the mountains.
- Legacy of Kain: While lots of people are trying to convince him to fulfill his destiny and restore balance to the world, Kain really is only after personal power and revenge against those who got in his way. Raziel is somewhat more noble, but also mostly motivated by getting back at those who wronged him.
- The Witcher video game series (also includes Assassins of Kings and Wild Hunt), much like the books they are based on: A lone monster hunter hunting a sorcerer who stole the alchemical secrets from the witchers.
Western Animation
- Conan the Adventurer was a Conan-based Saturday-Morning Cartoon with all the '80s camp on account of being much Lighter and Softer than the source material and instead having Conan as a former blacksmith's apprentice who battles the evil Wrath-Amon, rule of the Serpentmen, with help from a small group of allies. The much less well-received follow-up, Conan and the Young Warriors, was more Heroic Fantasy.
- Dave the Barbarian is an Affectionate Parody of the genre starring a wimpy barbarian who defends the kingdom of Udrogoth (ruled by his parents) from a variety of comical threats (most prominent the Dark Lord Chuckles the Silly Piggy).
- Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal is practically a love letter to the entire genre, moving it into a Hollywood Prehistory world where cavemen coexist with dinosaurs and other Prehistoric Monsters, supernatural horrors, and ancient kingdoms. The series follows neanderthal Spear and tyrannosaur Fang as they survive their vicious world together, pitted against a variety of deadly, monstrous, and terrifying opponents from all the above categories.
- He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983) is what you would get if you took a corny '80s sword and sorcery film and turned it into a kids' cartoon, following the adventures of Prince Adam of Eternia as he wielded the Sword of Power against the forces of the wicked Skeletor by transforming into He-Man.
- Korgoth of Barbaria is kind of a straight example and an Affectionate Parody at the same time, featuring the Bloody Hilarious adventures of a brutal warrior in a post-apocalyptic Scavenger World full of demons, mutants, dinosaurs, and magic.
- Samurai Jack combines the genre with a heaping helping of science fiction. Following a samurai warrior displaced in time by the demonic Evil Overlord Aku, the series' Fantasy Kitchen Sink allowed the title character to face off against a wide variety of enemies, from murderous robots and alien bounty hunters to soul-stealing demons and armies of undead.
- Thundarr the Barbarian is another classic '80s action cartoon that is set in a post-apocalyptic future, that describes its setting as "A world of savagery, super-science and sorcery!".
- Twilight of the Gods, inspired by Norse Mythology, features bloody battles, a fierce Ms. Fanservice Action Girl as protagonist, Jerkass Gods and sex.
