Damn! Kelly for the win!!
(Paul takes the pot of gold pieces and swaggers out of the inn pausing only to adjust his fur loincloth.)

Alison ran a second S&S game of 'Goth' yesterday. Safrax finally found out why the Wolf Clan had stolen Embla for sacrifice. An unlikely alliance was made with Wolf (!), Stag and Eagle clans, and an expedition to the east - close to the shore of the Black Sea -  was made to free Goth slaves taken by Persian horse warriors. The Persians were exiles, fleeing the Sassanids who had recently taken power in Persia. Along the way the Goths faced bandits, monsterous (and hungry) giant otters, before slaughtering sleeping Persians in a nighttime raid on their camp.

Oh, and all this had to be done without disturbing a great white worm who dealt nearby, who has hungry after its usual sacrifice had not been performed by the decimated and enslaved Stag Clan. (It feasted in the end on the fresh corpses of the recently  slaughtered Persians.)

One thing to decide in my development of Garnett Elliott’s ‘Primordial’ setting from the Codex, is what to leave out, or rather what don’t I like about it. The answer is very little.

 However, the crown and military helmet imagery of brain-devouring trilobites doesn’t sit well with me – it reminds me too much of really cheap, cheesy and rubbish 1980s S&S films like Kull, which is not what I want in my games – YMMV, which is totally fine of course. So the crown will be a regular (if possibly gaudy) crown, and the army’s helmets will be functional and like Carthaginian ones.

Mind you, I have no problem with: “To this day, the priesthood of Yx uses spider, crab, and other arthropod imagery, while openly vilifying the serpent men and their kind.” That sets up suspicion about the origins of the Yxian religion, which seems a good plot point to me.

The setting has megafauna taking the place of traditional monsters which I like very much. I see it as a setting where supernatural colour is provided by demonology and necromancy (Harryhausen skeleton warriors!) However, a lamia or two seem appropriate here, and possibly with so many demons around thanks to those pesky sorcerers, perhaps Lillith, the biblical mother of demons might be tweaked to make an appearance.
(“Do not call up that which you cannot put down.”)

I agree that the peplum films are spot on, as is Harryhausen of course. I used some ideas from 'Hercules Unchained' in my 'Warlords of Atlantis' campaign, and Harryhausen pops up everywhere as inspiration. As does Caroline Munro! 

As well as sword & sorcery films, many straight historical flicks have useful things to steal - evil plots, great ideas for ambushes, and unusual tactics. 'Centurion' is a great example of a survive behind enemy lines plot and can be lifted as a game session just as it is - it doesn't have to be about Roman soldiers in Northern Britain, and you can add magic if you want to. 'Beowulf and Grendel' is a different take on the old poem and has great visuals.

And both 'Romeo & Juliet' and 'The Magnificent Seven/Seven Samurai' have been stolen and reskinned for fantasy games so many times Will Shakespear and Akira Kurosawa should have taken out lawsuits!
 

Alison ran her first sword and sorcery game ever yesterday – ‘Goth’.
 
Above I posted about my PC. The game starts with Safrax returning to the settlement of his adopted clan, the Barenstark Clan of Goths, after some months raiding the Roman provinces of Asia Minor. (The nominal date is AD 210, but this is a pulp S&S game setting, so Alison doesn’t feel tied to real history.) The clan have been in this settlement for the last few years (it’s somewhere in modern day Moldova) and the men have returned for the harvest.
 
After reacquainting himself with his wife Amalfrida, and his children – son Guntheric (8) and daughters Helchen (7) and Sunigilda (5); Safrax spends the next few days bringing in the harvest. The Reik (chieftain of the Barenstark is old and defers many of his duties to his lazy son. This man sends Safrax to lead a boar hunt in the forest across the river, the hunting party composed of young boys(13-14)  learning to hunt and wield spears. When a cornered boar charges most of the boys forget their training and frankly panic, all aside from one lad Eloric (13), who helps Safrax despatch the boar. This boy’s father died in an earlier raiding season and afterwards he sort of becomes Safrax’s shadow around the settlement. Earning the rather dismissive nickname from some of ‘puppy’.
 
Later, towards the end of the day, Eloric says to Safrax that during the boar hunt he thought he may have spotted a man dressed in grey watching them for the trees. Safrax takes Eloric to the Reik to say what he saw and suggests that perhaps the Reik should send some scouts into the forest to see if people have been camping there. However, just then a woman called Boda who had accompanied the Reik’s daughter, Embla (the apple of his eye) to the river, arrived back in camp alone, bleeding from a head wound.
 
She said men in grey cloaks had pounced from the forest and kidnapped Embla, striking Boda with a sword hilt when she tried to intervene. The Reik