alt title(s): Sword And Sorcery
The exploits of mighty-thewed, sword-wielding heroes and their thiefly, wizardly and/or priestly companions, as they
spend their days smiting evil, fighting monsters, recovering treasures and quaffing ale.
Tends to be distinguishable from
High Fantasy by its scale — the problems are generally those of the hero, not the world — and moral standards — absolute evil and absolute good make fewer appearances. (Well, absolute good makes fewer. Absolute evil, in the form of a
Religion Of Evil or the like, makes a convenient foe.)
Heavily influenced by
The Heros Journey, the
Arthurian cycle, the
Conan The Barbarian stories and movies, the game
Dungeons And Dragons, and classical myth.
Sometimes set in a world that looks
an awful lot like medieval Europe, although it can range all the way back to a "forgotten prehistory" such as in
Conan The Barbarian, or even the "classical" period (ancient Greece, Mesopotamia, etc.), as found in
Xena: Warrior Princess (this variant is sometimes called "
Sword And Sandal"). May involve
Mythopoeia.
Sometimes it can be found in the future, often in
After The End setting; sometimes it comes close to
Planetary Romance. Also often features
Medieval Stasis.
Also known as "sword and sorcery", though there is much debate of the definition of these genres. Unkind souls have even described Heroic Fantasy as nothing but an upmarket term for Sword and Sorcery.
The odd tendency for
anime to use
Heroic Fantasy settings with an obvious European flavor is noted under
Medieval European Fantasy.
Good live-action film and television fantasies can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Dying is easy. Fantasy is hard! On the other hand, roughly half of all RPGs ever written fall under this genre, if not more.
See also
Wuxia.
Examples:
Comic Books
- Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis was an attempt to make the titular character's comic this genre.
- Red Sonja.
Film
Literature
Live Action TV
Manga
Tabletop Games
Video Games
Western Animation
