Musing on Conan themes in RPGs

[Bill Zebub]

Another spin-off, similar to this Star Wars thread.

Some themes I would like to see implemented mechanically in a Conan RPG:

• Off-screen adventure transitions: Instead of playing out all the plot hooks and travel between adventures, I would want to jump from the end of one adventure to the beginning of the next, with some random tables used to explain what happened to my treasure from the last time (because Conan NEVER manages to hold onto it) and how I got there. Mechanically, however, I could see that the quantity of lost wealth affects the results of those random rolls.
• Gear acquisition and loss: in most RPGs you find an awesome piece of gear (that +1 sword) and then you hold onto it until you find something better. In some games you might lose it before finding a replacement. But Conan almost never retains the same weapon or other gear from adventure to adventure, and often replaces them during the adventure. It's a tricky thing to balance mechanically, because finding "magic items" is, for many of us, a big part of the excitement of fantasy RPGs (and honestly one of the things I find lacking, or poorly executed, in most other genres).
• Weapon variety: Throughout Conan's travels, local variations on weapons play a big role. I don't know how exactly I would want this to be represented, but I'd like the uniqueness of local armaments to be more than just fluff.
• Civilization vs. Savagery: Conan's superiority is often attributed to his savage nature. However, in an RPG I would want both options to be viable, for different reasons. I would like to see one's "Savagery vs. Civilization" be represented on a spectrum, with each direction on the spectrum having pros and cons that get stronger the farther you are from the center.
• Magic is Dangerous: other than Pelas (who has his own issues) magicians/sorcerers are almost universally Bad Guys. (Priests of Mitra get a pass, but the extent to which they can "do magic" themselves is unclear.). Ok, there's the druid/witch character that helps Conan in one of the later novels, but off the top of my head I'm pretty sure that wasn't REH original.
• Superstition -> Shenanigans -> Supernatural. This might be more a matter of how adventures are written than in the rules of the game, but frequently in Conan stories the plot starts off with the assumption of something supernatural, which turns out to have a mundane explanation because what's really going on is the bad guys are masking their misdeeds with superstition, but then in the final confrontation there turns out to be something supernatural after all, surprising both sides.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

• Gear acquisition and loss: in most RPGs you find an awesome piece of gear (that +1 sword) and then you hold onto it until you find something better. In some games you might lose it before finding a replacement. But Conan almost never retains the same weapon or other gear from adventure to adventure, and often replaces them during the adventure. It's a tricky thing to balance mechanically, because finding "magic items" is, for many of us, a big part of the excitement of fantasy RPGs (and honestly one of the things I find lacking, or poorly executed, in most other genres).

The riches to rags to riches cycle of Conan could be done kinda like DCC Lankhmar's Carousing table. Make it a hook- and detail generating system. While I could see "You lost your magic item in a game of Three Dragon Ante, and then that person had it stolen by an evil priesthood. If you want it back you must find your way into the cult's sanctum" being a fun way to kick off an adventure, I'm sure some players would just not be okay with it.

However, for regular coinage and valuables, it would help solve the vast quantities of wealth PCs tend to accumulate over their careers. Maybe the dwarf spends 100gp on a rare cask of Mountain King Mead, or the wizard on a volume on Fauna of the Astral Sea? Or maybe the rogue gets a big score and gets 100gp, at the price of having an enemy hunting them now.

• Civilization vs. Savagery: Conan's superiority is often attributed to his savage nature. However, in an RPG I would want both options to be viable, for different reasons. I would like to see one's "Savagery vs. Civilization" be represented on a spectrum, with each direction on the spectrum having pros and cons that get stronger the farther you are from the center.

I don't know that there's any way to play this up without running afoul of REH's more problematic themes, even with giving pros and cons to either end of the spectrum.

 

[Parmandur]

The riches to rags to riches cycle of Conan could be done kinda like DCC Lankhmar's Carousing table. Make it a hook- and detail generating system. While I could see "You lost your magic item in a game of Three Dragon Ante, and then that person had it stolen by an evil priesthood. If you want it back you must find your way into the cult's sanctum" being a fun way to kick off an adventure, I'm sure some players would just not be okay with it.

However, for regular coinage and valuables, it would help solve the vast quantities of wealth PCs tend to accumulate over their careers. Maybe the dwarf spends 100gp on a rare cask of Mountain King Mead, or the wizard on a volume on Fauna of the Astral Sea? Or maybe the rogue gets a big score and gets 100gp, at the price of having an enemy hunting them now.


I don't know that there's any way to play this up without running afoul of REH's more problematic themes, even with giving pros and cons to either end of the spectrum.

TBH, you could probably just take the rules for DCC Lankmahr and give it a bit of Conan paint.

 

[billd91]

Civilization vs. Savagery: Conan's superiority is often attributed to his savage nature. However, in an RPG I would want both options to be viable, for different reasons. I would like to see one's "Savagery vs. Civilization" be represented on a spectrum, with each direction on the spectrum having pros and cons that get stronger the farther you are from the center.

I think that also can be spun as an answer to the assumption that "Civilization is superior to savagery/barbarity". Conan triumphs because he's showing how that assumption is not true. His own code of honor and inherent sense of fairness/justice is uncompromised by the decadence or hypocrisies so often present among so-called civilized men. That's doesn't have to be inherent superiority on Conan's part since he's the correction to that unbalanced view.

 

[Reynard]

• Civilization vs. Savagery: Conan's superiority is often attributed to his savage nature. However, in an RPG I would want both options to be viable, for different reasons. I would like to see one's "Savagery vs. Civilization" be represented on a spectrum, with each direction on the spectrum having pros and cons that get stronger the farther you are from the center.

The superiority of the "savage" is such a core conceit of Hyborea that I don't know you can call it a Conan game and eliminate it.

Of course, Howard wasn't talking about the actual "savage." he was simply talking about being unrestrained by the rules of civilization. He wanted to be able to punch people that made him angry, and he attributed rude behavior to believing there would be no consequences for insulting someone. And all that is to not even mention issues of race, which were pretty gross (but not as gross as his good buddy HP!)

In a game that tried to eliminate the most insensitive elements, I might be inclined to create a "comfort and decadence" sort of corruption. The more money you hold on to, in gear or property or hired men or whatever, builds some sort of "corruption" track that ultimately leaves you exposed to figures like Conan who will come in and smash your stuff and take your crown. And, of course, eventually leave the throne because being a king means being "civilized." Burning your ill gotten gains on blackjack and hookers is the one way to avoid this particular "condition" track. Something like that.

 

[Bill Zebub]

The thing is, I wouldn’t want to push players to feel they have to make their characters as uncivilized as possible for mechanical benefit. I would want “highly civilized” to be a valid character choice, with a different set of pros and cons.

 

[eyeheartawk]

Off-screen adventure transitions: Instead of playing out all the plot hooks and travel between adventures, I would want to jump from the end of one adventure to the beginning of the next, with some random tables used to explain what happened to my treasure from the last time (because Conan NEVER manages to hold onto it) and how I got there. Mechanically, however, I could see that the quantity of lost wealth affects the results of those random rolls.

Barbarians of Lemuria does this as a conceit between adventures to continue adventuring.

For that matter, Barbarians of Lemuria is a better Conan game than any official Conan game we've ever gotten.

 

[Yora]

What I feel a Conan game needs even more than Sword & Sorcery already do in general is fast paced action resolution and combat resolution.
A Conan fight is not one in which you put things on pause and take a minute or two to consider your next action. You need to be able to choose your turn in just a few seconds and then perform the action just as quickly. If it's plausible that you will frequently have to look up something in the middle of a fight, then the combat system is not suited for the purpose.

Which is why I think that despite it's production values, the Conan d20 game was a really stupid idea from the very beginning. d20 is about the last game engine I would pick for a Conan game.

 

[Tony Vargas]

frequently in Conan stories the plot starts off with the assumption of something supernatural, which turns out to have a mundane explanation because what's really going on is the bad guys are masking their misdeeds with superstitio

That sort of scoobie-doo-ism used to be super-common, because Fantasy wasn't taken seriously until (I so want to say 'recently,' but I must remember I'm old, and it's not the 80s anymore)... like, the 60s or 70s, there'a'bouts. Today, Fantasy is a robust, legit genre in literature and pop culture. But when REH was writing Conan, it was thought of as 'fairytales for kids' and he was exceptional in persistently writing & submitting fantasy stories - more so than contemporaries like Ashton Clarke Smith who also wrote amazing fantasy, but as often just re-jiggered it to be sci-fi if that's what the publishers demanded, or, HP Lovercraft who made his supernatural tales clearly horror, or, for that matter, somewhat later, Jack Vance, who's Dying Earth is a classic of sci-fi, and the major inspiration for D&D magic.

 

[Divine2021]

Good musings on Conan. I especially like the savagery vs civilization conceit, and think if you could balance it well it could lead to a lot of fun story telling.