I honestly believe the title of this post. Way, way back when I first encountered D&D (white box edition), I wanted to try to edit it into a perfect representation of Middle Earth. No campaign developed from that. Instead, as I played and thought about the game, working on a setting, I realized that the basic idea of characters as adventurers trying to improve their lot in the face of a dangerous world was more Old West than Tolkien, and I embraced that. And really, Old West is only a short jump away from S&S.

Now I'm wondering (but only wondering) if efforts to impose story on the basic paradigm necessarily means either

(a) Epic via GM-led plotting
(b) Epic via Anti-immersive player empowerment via metagame
(c) Sturm und drang via focus on character "issues"

Eh, whatever.

The main reason for this post is really to link to two threads from theRPGsite and Dragonsfoot:

Sword & Sorcery in a Nutshell
Swords & Sensibility: the evolution of tone in D&D

I think it will be good read & reread them as inspiration, guidance, and corrective to both romanticized tropes and anti-immersive/disempowering setting and design.

For example, I'm realizing that a key to good setting design is: there are no good guys. In fact, most everyone is a bad guy. If you design a kingdom or empire, the dominant social system, government, and rulership should be neutral at best. Societal norms should offend modern sensibilities (e.g., slavery). If you make up an NPC, always remember Jeff Rients's dictum: Your NPCs suck and they are all going to die.

Good thread on S&S at RPG.net here. I especially liked what xnbach had to say in this post.

I've long known that my fantasy gaming had a lot in common with the (mythical) Old West, especially the morally-ambiguous antiheroes of the post-spaghetti Western. Other influences include pirates and swashbucklers--both of which are also mentioned in the thread. In general, I've discovered over the years that when it comes to "premodern settings with magic & stuff", I far prefer S&S to warmed-over Tolkien. That's something that also came up in a discussion of fantasy at Story-Games. (This isn't to say there aren't other options in magical settings, including Mallory-esque fantasy, which I enjoy.)

(Yes, I have Sorceror and Sword. Pretty good book if you need to be jolted out of the D&D/Tolkien mold. The main thing I got out of it was the idea of keeping your setting loose & sketchy and not obsessing over worldbuilding details.)