VSF vs. "Sword and Planet"

[warrenpeace]

Would anybody like to join me in commenting on the differences between VSF and the "Sword and Planet" genre of Pulp literature?

I primarilly drop in here because of two reasons:  1. I enjoyed Edgar Rice Burroughs' books as a kid, particularly the John Carter of Mars books, and VSF flying machines evoke some of that, and 2.  I game colonials on a more or less regular basis, and VSF has a lot of crossover with VSF.

The difficulty of meshing VSF with the colonial interest for me is all the nasty weapons spewing out so much carnage that it might as well be a WW1 battlefield, only about 4 decades early.  At least playing straight colonials one of the sides usually doesn't have enough firepower to rapidly sweep all the enemy models off the table.

The difficulty of meshing VSF with the "Sword and Planet" genre which I enjoyed growing up is that there doesn't seem to be much room in VSF for the swashbuckling swordfights and duelist ethos of the John Carter series, much less the fantasy oriented muscles and abbreviated costumes.  I just don't know where a John Carter type Martian who revels in sword fighting really fits on the WW1 battlefields of VSF.  Although Edgar Rice Burroughs postulated some pretty advanced weapons and flying machines, his characters generally seem to ignore the potential high tech carnage that could be dished out by their high tech missle weapons while they gleefully engage in hand to hand gore fests that last hours, or even days.  And there's romance at the end and along the way. Unfortunately, I'm not seeing where there is room in VSF for either swords or romance.

[Heldrak]

While they may be set in similar historical periods, I think that VSF and Sword and Planet (or Planetary Romance, as it is sometimes called) are distinct genres that don't really overlap (particularly on the gaming table).

While VSF tends to make vaguely rational extrapolations of period technology, in Sword and Planet stories, the technology is nothing more than props and plot devices that might as well be indistinguishable from magic (not that there's anything wrong with that).

On the gaming table, the Sword and Planet genre is well-represented by Rattrap Games Fantastic Worlds, which tends to focus on roleplay-driven small skirmish actions. VSF is better represented by Valor, Steel and Flesh, which focusses on larger troop actions and heavy weapons/vehicles.

That being said, there's nothing to stop you using Fantastic Worlds to play out a character-driven story set in a VSF world, or in using Valor, Steel and Flesh to play out larger struggles on Barsoom.

(For what it's worth, I'm a big John Carter fan too ).

[Leapsnbounds]

I'm a big John Carter Fan too.  I understand that there will be a movie out soon.
I never heard of the Sword and the Planet

[flooglestreet]

VSF Is a period style, specifically from the Victorian era. Planetary Romance is an SF style somewhat independant of era although the Pre-Gernsback 20th century was the heyday of Planetary Romance. You are technically incorrect to associate Victorian Scince Fiction with WW1, although a steampunk armageddon typifies most current VSF ganing.War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells is VSF (although it translates well into other periods) and it is not Planetary Romance. Vance's Tschai Planet of Adventure is Planetary Romance but not VSF. ERB Mars tales are both because Burroughs had the Victorian ethos.

You also ask a question that many SF pros have debated. Why use swords when the other weapons available are so lethal. Swords have a dramatic quality that other weapons, such as halberds and machine pistols, lack. Actually VSF has a lot of room for swordplay. The Victorian era was the end of muskets and the dawn of breech loading rifles. The sword was still a respectable weapon and the bayonet saw a lot of use as well during Victorias reign.  Burroughs puts John Carter in that era with his civil war background. Then he negates it with his radium bullets and rapid fire Barsoomian weapons.

It doesn't make tactical sense, but it makes perfect swashbuckling story sense. It makes dramatic senseIt is what people would allow, at least in the era of ERB and Otis Adlebert Kline. Tactical sense ran a very poor second to drama, thats all.

[Heldrak]

I'm a big John Carter Fan too.  I understand that there will be a movie out soon.
I never heard of the Sword and the Planet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_and_planet

[HerbyF]

I have played in a number of VSF games. Some times they are a little like WWI when you have some colonial forces massed to take each other on. But most of the time they have been very much the colonial era flavor, with a small colonial force well are & drilled facing a large & motivated native force using terrain & numbers to overwelm the intruders of their domain. And there is usually plenty of face to face hand to hand combat.

[former user]

dishing out lots of firepower als implies that hand to hand combat is more something for specialists, because the regular soldier would be pretty scared if confronted by a stealth assault specialist eg.

And since it's VSF, said specialist could also use swords...
and occasionally encounter the skilled officer
Even in historical times, fencing skills ceased to be important on the battlefield at the beginning of 19th C.
Therefore I don't see problems.

It is the level of gaming - if You want swashbuckling, it is skirmish level
The warrior who has the guts two face the enemy in close combat is still a valued asset - think of veteran US marines wielding machetes, tomahawks and captured samurai swords.

This difference is in fact the key difference in every war throughout history and prehistory.
Think of prairie first nations and coup sticks.
Not every Musketeer of the Black Powder era was a d'Artagnan.

if You regard the evolution of weapon technology, the focus on increasing firepower and range always distracts from the fact that less training of the soldier and lowering his kill threshold by simply not facing him with the result of his actions were an issue too.

ever heard of PTSD in medieval times?
(please note here that I am not disregarding PTSD as a problem nor the people suffering from it!)
of course not - this occurs only when You are not used to see people dying all the time from childhood on...
and this does not happen if the only thing required is to squeeze a trigger

And this does not mean that being able to kill people is natural thing You can learn - it is only a matter of training to better deal with it - and it requires the veteran or elite status of a swashbuckling hero

[Plynkes]

VSF is what you make of it (and what people usually make of it seldom ressembles anything I've read in a piece of Victorian Scientific Romance). This sounds like a failure of the imagination to me. Where is the rule book that says you have to play VSF in the Warhammer 1889 style that everyone else seems to enjoy so much? You really don't have to follow the herd, you know. Nobody is forcing you to build a massive army of steam tanks, walkers and flying machines.

You are allowed to play a game with a handful of plucky, swashbuckling heroes if you want to. Or anything else that takes your fancy.

[Dewbakuk]

Warhammer 1889

While I agree with the gist of your post, will you stop throwing that in people's faces please? I've no idea where this Warhammer link is coming from in your head but it's clear you've never played in any of our games. You've mentioned it a few times and bolding it within your posts does nothing more than draw attention to your distaste of it. As to Victorian Scientific Romace, while I enjoy the books and am happy to read such things, I have no interest in adding romance to my Wargame, other than to have a 'lady in peril' as an objective or somesuch.

With regards to the original post, I see sword and planet games as a seperate thing to VSF. To me and many people I've spoken to about it, VSF is about the science and the technology, it's a time of engineers and scientists. This is in contrast to Victorian Adventure Gaming (a term I don't think will ever catch on due to it's abreviation) which is all about adventurers exploring new locales etc and the technology is very much secondary. VAG (see?) is ideally suited to small skirmish games and adding the romance or swashbuckling, whereas VSF is compatible at all gaming levels from small skirmish adventures to world shattering wars. The difference is in 'setting' portrayal, although they aren't mutually exclusive, there is no reason you couldn't play a VAG game in a VSF setting.

[Plynkes]

A few times? Perhaps you're right, though I only remember using the phrase once before, and I deleted it immediately precisely because it was provocative (dunno why I let myself type it this morning, it was a stupid thing to do). You've got a point, I have let my distaste for such gaming get in the way here - the whole England-Prussia steam war concept and things of that sort are something I just don't like, but I shouldn't bang on about it all the time. What I was trying to get at was there are other ways of gaming than having mass battles where one or both sides have lots of powerful war machines (I used the aforementioned phrase because to me such games look like games of 40K). Sorry for letting stupid snide comments get in the way of me making a sensible level-headed post.


Scientific Romance has nothing to with falling in love. It's the old name for Science Fiction, a phrase which a Victorian would be totally unfamiliar with.

[former user]

I don't know what WH 1889 is meant to be

for me Wargaming is what You make of it, no matter of the rules You use.

From skirmish battles to large scale mass assaults, you can do whatever you LIKE in whatever period you LIKE.
using certain rules is hardly a matter of ideology (unless one is 12 years old), but of adaptability.
I have never encountered experienced wargamers who do NOT alter rulesets, simply because every ruleset has it's flaws.
Now I think this thread was about the perceived conflict of mass firepower versus a "swashbuckling" elite warrior and it becomes apparent for me that the point is the scenario and scaling the battle.

Usually the use of rules seems to be a matter of gaming groups - what is more comfortable because it is well known or miniatures collections have been adapted to army lists.
If one overcomes this threshold and relies on experience and that rulesets are pretty similar apart from what mechanism they focus on - of course one needs to recognize that - wargaming life becomes very simple.
As in any real life setting, rules are only needed to balance the peoples inability to come to terms or agree on certain things. Since we all are pretty well informed about the reality of warfare, provided there is a friendly atmosphere and everyone wants to have fun with miniatures one could simply move them around and say "bang bang" and rely on the fact that his opponent knows the effect of the represented weapons and how many miniatures to remove.
the rest is a nice background story or a campaign

You need strict rules only for competition games, because the purpose of gaming there is to win.
In this case I strongly recommend chess   - simple rules, no discussion and proven for millenia

this is my approach of 20 years of wargaming - so everyone who wants to interrupt a game for a rule discussion (not clarification), should :
realise that the subconscious purpose is the eagerness to win, take a step back, a swig of water and a glance to a mirror, throw a coin and continue having fun

[Dewbakuk]

I don't know what WH 1889 is meant to be

for me Wargaming is what You make of it, no matter of the rules You use.

Our little spat had nothing to do with rules, it was about perceptions, but it's past now. 

Scientific Romance has nothing to with falling in love. It's the old name for Science Fiction, a phrase which a Victorian would be totally unfamiliar with.

I didn't know that although after looking it up I'm sure I've come across the term before, probably while reading HG Wells as he apparently uses the term within his writing.

[former user]

oh, sorry I did not mean to interfere
I tried to stay on topic

[Plynkes]

I hadn't really come across or considered that particular defined distinction between VSF and VAG, I had merely heard VAG spoken of as an alternative name for VSF that was more encompassing of all its facets. But the distinction works, I guess.


Going by your definition I think I'd have to say I'm the type of chap that prefers VAG (and so we can write sentences like that is precisely the reason why the term must be encouraged until it catches on!  ).

[Plynkes]

A majority of cavalrymen were totally dedicated to the arme blanche long past the time when it was sensible to be so, right unto the jaws of German Maxim guns.

There's no reason if you want to mix this Sword and Planet idea with VSF why you can't have a Victorian cavalryman as your hero, one who prefers to buckle his swash (or is that swash his buckle?) rather than resort to industrial methods of slaughter. I can see him now - perhaps he guns down the first few minions with his revolver, but he doesn't stop to reload it, rather he leaps across the ramparts of the Martian fortress swinging his sabre, cutting down foes left and right before his final duel with the warlord and timely rescue of the sexy Martian princess, who he then takes in his strong, manly arms...


"They're kissing again. Do we have to read the kissing parts?"


And if he runs into any Prussian aristocratic baddies with dueling scars, they certainly aren't going to settle the matter with Nordenfelt guns at ten paces (though that might be fun too).



Also, if you do want to do bigger battles, as has already been said, you can give them more of a colonial flavour rather than making them a steam-powered Great War. That will encourage more hand-to-hand fighting. You might decide that the expense of transporting a military expedition to Mars is so great that only a small force of regulars can be sent. This could be supplemented by a force of locally-recruited irregulars, whose military culture is one of swordplay.

Similarly, there may be no space to take great heavy battle-winning technological wonders all the way up there. Just having a machine that can get you to Mars might be considered enough Sci-Fi in itself. The few plucky Brits find themselves armed with nothing more than their historical counterparts did, and face a horde of angry Martians waving swords at them.

But if you do want to have that flavour of technological marvels, you could decide that their very experimental nature makes them unreliable, so they become the equivalent of the colonial gamer's old favourite - the Gatling that jams just when you need it. Or perhaps they are so power-hungry that there is a long recharge between shots, so the Royal Navy Lightning cannon is ringed with a band of cutlass-armed Jack Tars, to prevent it being overrun by a massed charge of Martians in between shots.

Just a couple of ideas, to make up for my unfortunate negativity of earlier this morning.