#sword and sandal

[oldschoolfrp]

Jason and the Argonauts, Columbia Pictures, 1963, directed by Don Chaffey, starring Todd Armstrong and Douglas Wilmer -- but really starring the animated creations of Ray Harryhausen (born June 29, 1920)

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Spartacus - Movie poster art by Reynold Brown (1960)

[k-wame]

ALEXANDER 2004 ‧ Action/War ‧ dir. Oliver Stone

[heroperil]

Beastmaster (1982) - Dar's Village Attacked

Working in the fields, Dar (Marc Singer) sees his village's enemy, the Juns, approaching for an attack. He and his friends race to defend their people, but the Juns overwhelm them. Dar fights the Juns, but is ultimately overwhelmed & knocked out during the battle. GIFs made from the 4K UHD release of Beastmaster. I've reduced some of the heavy grain present in the print using Topaz AI. GIFs from Beastmaster, Peplum & Superhero content also on my heroperil.tumblr.com page.

[theresattrpgforthat]

Hiya! Do you know of any good rpgs for fiction in the Sword and Sandal genre, or really anything that would fit a largely-historical game set in the ancient to late antique Middle East?

Thanks for everything you do!

THEME: Sword and Sandal

Hello Friend, I don’t think I found anything here that meets what you’re looking for exactly, but I think there are a few things here that are in the same neighbourhood of what you’re looking for. I’ve found a few Bronze-Age and Mesopotamian games that might interest you, as well as a setting in Ancient Egypt!

I know that there’s not a lot here that is likely to hit the mark that you were looking for, so I’m also hoping that folks who see this will add their own suggestions in the comments and reblogs!

Champions of Osiris, by Zadmar Games.

“King Osiris and Queen Isis once ruled ancient Egypt—until Set murdered his brother and usurped the throne. Isis was a powerful sorceress who used her powers to escape, but Set chopped his rival into dozens of pieces and scattered them across the land, preventing his resurrection.

With the aid of her sister Nephthys, Isis recovered the remains of her husband’s loyal bodyguards and retainers, imbuing their spirits with potent sorcery and granting them immortality. These fierce heroes began the formidable task of seeking out and gathering the lost pieces of their king’s corpse.

You are the “immortal champions.” You once swore to guard your king’s life with your own—and you did! Now you’ve sworn another oath: to destroy Set’s legacy and restore Osiris to the throne.”

The Tricube Tales System is a genre-neutral rules set that is meant to be easy to learn and great for short games. The designer has created countless scenarios for this system, with Champions of Osiris being one of them. Players receive karma tokens, which they can use to increase their chances of success, and gain by increasing their chances of failure. They also have a resolve track, which erodes with each failure, potentially removing a player from the scene if they aren’t careful.

This is definitely not a historical game, but it’s probably the closest to the “Middle East” inspiration that I was able to find during my search.

Into the Bronze, by Lantern’s Faun.

Into the Bronze is a RPG of sword, sorcery and sandals in Mesopotamia from the Bronze era.

The plains between the Tigris and Ephrates rivers hide silent, gloomy valleys where demons and lesser gods devise their evil plans. Defy the gods of Sumeria, behold the beginning of civilization.

This is a rule-set, but it doesn’t have much in terms of lore, which may be good if you have the kind of world you want to play in already in your head, but just need a framework in terms of player skills and dice resolution. Into the Bronze is inspired by Into the Odd, by Chris McDowell, renowned for its flexibility and simplicity. I think it would be very easy to take characters built in this world and then put them into a world like that of Undying Sands, which isn’t a game in itself but provides you with plenty of locations, encounters, and characters to fight, barter, and conspire with.

Fragments of the Past, by Dev9k.

Fragments of the Past is a rules-light roleplaying game set in a Bronze-Age world evoking the atmosphere of ancient tales and poems of the archaic Mediterranean, where conflicts are resolved on a roll of a d10 or a d100. 

Experience the great tragedies, deeds, and ambitions of larger-than-life characters, dwelling in a world of sacred places and untamed wilderness. Pray and live according to the ancient customs of long-forgotten civilizations, if you dare. 

Fragments of the Past is meant to emulate mythic and tragic stories from a world that could have been, a world with references to ancient mediterranean cultures, but its locations and peoples are uniquely named. This is a world where the Gods’ wills have visible effects on the world around them: this is most visible in Talismans - relics that became powerful because of their place in great stories and actions of heroes.

This is a game designed for long-form play. Your characters are built from a mix of quantifiable stats and descriptive abilities that point to the personality and narrative arc desired by the player. As the characters grow, they will primarily manifest new Epithets, which are specific areas of knowledge born from the characters’ experiences. When rolling to actively do something using an attribute, players pick up a d100. When doing something that involves luck, hubris or willpower, the player will instead pick up a d10.

If you want to check out this game before buying it, you can check out the free Quickstart, which has over 100 pages of lore and guidance to introduce you to the basics of this game.

AZAG, by Dank Dungeons.

"You must travel far, beyond the spider-haunted towers of Byzaron and the red mists of The Yielding Plain. The Sleeping Augur awaits, through azure pylons inscribed with sigils both beneficent and doomed.”

AZAG is a combination tabletop role playing game and five track instrumental album.  Featuring a rule system inspired by the likes of Fighting Fantasy and Troika! in a setting inspired by Lovecraft's Dream Cycle, Howard's Conan, and Smith's Hyperborea. 

Treat with strange entities, battle against weird magics, and explore a world of mystery and wonder!

Looking at the inspiration and references for this game, as well as the rule system it draws from (Troika), I have a feeling AZAG is going to be extremely un-serious. This is not a game of historical realism, but of sorcery, action, and storage gods. Based on its source material, I”m also guessing that character creation is going to be rather simple, and survival is going to depend on your creativity more-so than the luck of your rolls. If you like your games dangerous and a little over-the-top, you might want to try AZAG.

2400 BC, by ozmodeuz.

"…at dawn a black cloud came from the horizon; thunderous with wrath. The seven judges of hell raised their torches, lighting the land with their livid flame. The earth cried despair to the heavens as daylight turned to darkness and the land was shattered like glass. For six days and six nights the tempest raged and gathered fury, and poured over the people like the tides of war. All sense and hope was lost, and the gods cowered in heaven…"

2400 BC is a hack of Jason Tocci's 24XX about rebuilding community in the aftermath of an environmental catastrophe, thousands of years in the past. It was inspired by Mesopotamian myth, particularly the Epic of Gilgamesh.

2400 BC explores a recent tragedy, devastating your homeland and driving you to fight for survival. It’s a small game that makes extensive use of roll tables to help generate characters quickly as well as provide a GM with quick ideas as to what kinds of opportunities and problems your characters will face. The character generation tables have plenty of options for making characters that aren’t necessarily good people, so I have a feeling survivability is a bit low.

All in all, if you want a quick to pick up game about catastrophe hitting the ancient world, this might be the game for you.

[stanningjay]

Auro, the God of Spring, turns to stone each year at his season’s end, only awakening the following year at its beginning.

For four hundred years, it has been a dreamless sleep for Auro.

This year, he knows he will dream of Alexios until he can walk the earth again.

🖼️ by @crossroadart-seabear

[fitsofgloom]

“No man will ever penetrate my body with sword or with himself!”: Laurene Landon strikes a blow -- many blows -- for womankind in "Hundra."

[pulpsandcomics2]

Reynold Brown

[emstrange]

Leofric totally has NO idea how he ended up in this situation. None at all. And he’s going to fight his way out of Cosmo’s arms any second now.

[bitter69uk]

“Not surprisingly, Mickey played Hercules, well-oiled and wearing what seemed to be a very short skating skirt adorned with leather suspenders. Unlike any other male in the movie, Mickey is tanned and greased and so muscle-bound that he can’t walk with his arms at his sides but looks like some kind of great, jerky mechanical bear. The plot, very sketchily, has Mickey’s first wife murdered. He sets out to seek revenge, meets a black-haired tribal queen and falls in love in nine minutes. The black-haired queen is played by Jayne, wearing a black wig and a padded bra. It was some kind of gravitational miracle that she didn’t fall over with all that frontage on her. At any rate, she and Hercules have to overcome a lot of obstacles to their love, including the murderous impulses of the red-haired Amazon queen who captures Hercules. Jayne plays the Amazon queen in a different wig but the same bra. The movie is dubbed in a variety of accents so that Mickey delivers Shakespearean English, Jayne West Coast American and the others sound indigenous to locales between Los Angeles and London … Jayne’s dual roles were an object lesson in male fantasy. She gets to play the demanding, emasculating woman men fear and the demure, passive woman they want.”

/ From Jayne Mansfield and the American Fifties by Martha Saxton, 1975 /

Released in Italian cinemas 63 years ago today (19 August 1960): “sword-and-sandals” peplum film The Loves of Hercules (aka Hercules vs the Hydra) starring fabulous fame-crazed husband and wife duo Mickey Hargitay and Jayne Mansfield, made in Cinemascope at the height of the “Hollywood on the Tiber” era. In the UK at least, this movie is seemingly impossible to see. Over the years some scratchy, faded versions have surfaced on YouTube – but always dubbed exclusively in Italian! Where oh where is the 4K restoration English language director’s cut Blu-ray?

[supermen-with-black-hair]

May Zeus bless

whomever made this gif...

٢٣٠٣٢٥

[atomic-chronoscaph]

The Arena (1974)

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

AND THE INTERNET AWARD FOR GREATEST FAUX CRITERION COVER GOES TO...

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on custom and/or faux Criterion Collection cover art for the 1960 Sword and Sandal epic "Spartacus," directed by Stanley Kubrick, based on the 4K/Blu-Ray Steelbook cover inspired by 1974 theatrical re-release German poster art by Lutz Peltzer.

Resolution from largest to smallest: 2205x1289, 1141x1289, & 1000x1500.

FILM OVERVIEW: "Stanley Kubrick directed a cast of screen legends —including Kirk Douglas as the indomitable gladiator that led a Roman slave revolt—in the sweeping epic that defined a genre and ushered in a new Hollywood era. The assured acting, lush Technicolor cinematography, bold costumes, and visceral fight sequences won "Spartacus" four Oscars; the blend of politics and sexual suggestion scandalized audiences. Today Kubrick's controversial classic, the first film to openly defy Hollywood's blacklist, remains a landmark of cinematic artistry and history."

-- CRITERION COLLECTION, c. spring 2001

Sources: www.reddit.com/r/criterion/comments/olrjb4 & Limited Runs.

[kadalsaurus]

Spear and fang (primal)

[ambrose123four]

FASHION THINGS TO DRAW #12: Björk’s Swan Dress

[fitsofgloom]

"I'll be no man's slave and no man's whore, and if I can't kill them all, by the gods they'll know I've tried!": Lana Clarkson as Amethea in 1985's "Barbarian Queen."