Grim and Realistic 

In the grim and realistic world, things are tough for the heroes. They are tough for everybody but the characters suffer in general because they have to go out and do the business on an everyday basis. This is a world that really aims for the grit and grime of the middle ages. Suitable rules for a grim and realistic world are: defence bonus, constitution as hit points, and armour as DR. You can still use quick healing but if you want to be really nasty let players heal only 1 HP per day and only if they have help. For magic you should use high taint levels and use Constitution based magic for spells. You might want to consider setting a maximum spell level of 3 or even less. Supernatural creatures are fairly rare and usually hostile. They almost certainly cause fear. The atmosphere is usually pretty horrific. The Averoigne and Zothique stories of Clark Ashton Smith are pretty good examples of this.


Chain Mail Bikini 

In this style of sword and sorcery nobody ever seems to have to bother about armour. Everybody wanders around in leather weapon’s harnesses, loincloths and chain-mail bikinis. Classic culprits are Thongor, John Carter and countless comic books of my youth. Unfortunately all these people still live in a world where the rules were built around the concept that armour makes you safer. How do we live with this?

One method is to give characters one level of the defensive fighting feat for every level of armour proficiency they have. Despite the name chain mail bikini camapigns can actually be quite realistic aside from the running around in thongs thing. Conan has been known to fight in no armour at all when he had no other option.

Other Styles 

There are plenty of other styles of S&S that you could play none of which are covered (to my knowledge) in the sourcebooks.

Visitors from another plane. In this variant you could send the PCs from your current standard campaign off for an adventure or two or a short mini-campaign in a S&S world. They can pass through a portal, be victims of some sort of planar gateway spell or be dispatched on a quest by a high level mage or god. To keep things simple you could use a hybrid of rules from the ones given here to the core rulebooks. Your PC spellcasters can prepare their spells according to the rules of their home campaign but suffer fatigue when they cast them (perhaps because there is less ambient magical energy to draw on, or their gods are far away, or whatever else sounds reasonable). Their magical items should probably not function or they will simply totally outclass the magicless natives. Perhaps they are not attuned to the laws of magic in the new plane and cannot adapt themselves the way living things can. Use whatever sounds plausible. Magical armour and weapons simply become masterwork items. Use whatever S&S combat rules you choose. Hopefully by the time they get back to their home world they will be thoroughly grateful for what they have there.

Running Sword and Sorcery Campaigns 

Much of the source material gives ideal pointers for running campaigns. Many S&S series were conceived as series of linked short stories featuring the same characters. It’s hard to imagine a better model for a RPG campaign. Your characters are the heroes of the series. Each adventure stands alone. The continuity comes from having the same characters in them. There are other things that give S&S campaigns there distinctive feel.

Treasure 

In S&S stories the heroes spend a lot of time looking for treasure, sometimes find it, and very rarely hold on to it. They fritter it away on any number of vices, leaving them broke and looking for their next adventure. You should encourage your players to do the same, unless they are sorcerers in which case it probably should all go on research. 

Travel 

Swords and sorcery heroes often travel to the ends of the earth in their quest for loot, vengeance and/or power. Your heroes should do the same. Don’t bother with a lot of overland questing either. It’s only important when it’s the start of an adventure-such as when they are abducting by slavers en route to the mystic east, or when their ship is attacked by the Red Corsairs and driven ashore onto an abandoned island amid whose steaming jungles lie the ruins of some prehistoric civilisation. 

It’s perfectly acceptable to start a scenario with a line something like this: “After your attempted coup against Prince Asbrutal failed you fled into the desert to escape his vengeance. Now your horses are exhausted, your water-bottles near empty and ahead of you lies the haunted oasis of Yok Latha. What do you do?”