At the Sign of the Prancing Pony, or, Is This the Place to Start Our Adventure?

[M. Robert Gibson]

At the Sign...

Issue 128, September 2022

www.swordsandsorcerymagazine.com

Every fantasy role-playing adventure, many sword & sorcery tales, any number of heroic fantasy comics, all seem to begin in a tavern in an inn. It is one of the traditional tropes of heroic fantasy, right? I have to wonder where this traditional starting point originated. Did Robert E. Howard begin it, as with so many of S&S's standard ideas? Did he steal it from Lord Dunsany? Or is it all Tolkien's fault? That is my quest, which I humbly embark upon, having just left the inn of The Prancing Pony....

What's fascinating about that article is the copyright notice at the end!

 

[BAYLOR]

Questing Beast ? Le Morte D' Arthur ? T H White's the Once and Future King ? 1967 Lost in space episode The Questing Beast?

 

[Guttersnipe]

Perhaps inspired by mead-halls used by ancient Germanic peoples, and/or Heorot in Beowulf?