D&D General Reassesing Robert E Howards influence on D&D +

[pemerton]

There's one Conan story with an abandoned city in a desert, where the remaining residents are passed out on drugs, and there's a shadowy monster prowling in the dark passages, which I think has somewhat of a similar feel to some early D&D dungeon modules.

Xuthal of the Dusk.

And one that has a ruined underground city in which the two small groups of remaining survivors are in a permanent war with each other and try to get Conan on their side to destroy the other, if I remember right.

Red Nails.

Ruined lost cities deep in the wilderness, where some trace of the sorcerous calamities that destroyed them are still lingering is a recurring, but not exactly typical, thing in Howard's fantasy stories. But the adventures taking place in them are nothing like a D&D dungeon crawl.

<snip>

I've been seeing no real parallels between Howard's stories and 70s D&D.

I agree with this.

 

[Yora]

Having gone through the whole thread again after sharing my own perspective based on just my own memories, I think while Gygax probably wasn't much of a Howard Fan, it very much looks like Zeb Cook was.

Dwellers of the Forbidden City is the most Howardian D&D product I can think of. The one that introduced yuan-ti, aboleths, tasloi, and mongrelmen. In a ruined city in the jungle with a maze of ancient dark tunnels beneath it (for the GM to detail).
And he also made The Isle of Dread, Master of the Desert Nomads, and The Temple of Death.

 

[Vikingkingq]

I'm pretty sure that he's someone from the Hyborian age, a sorcerer that survived a run-in with Conan. Now though, I'm going to need to go back and find my books to read them and find out.

He's 100% a Stygian sorceror who secretly follows Set - he has the same snake eyes that Thoth-Amon did.

 

[cbwjm]

He's 100% a Stygian sorceror who secretly follows Set - he has the same snake eyes that Thoth-Amon did.

Yep, I was rereading one of them last night, saw the eyes and thought, yep he's an old sorcerer.

 

[Vikingkingq]

Having read a lot of Howard, I actually don't think there are really that many elements from his s
tories that have something similar in early D&D.

I think there are more than the ones you cite.

• "The Tower of the Elephant" is absolutely a low-level dungeon crawl where two thieves are looking to pillage an evil wizard's tower for loot and have to deal with guards and wandering monsters - there's even a magical MacGuffin, although Conan ultimately chooses to do the moral thing and free Yag-kosha rather than taking the Heart for himself.
• "Rogues in the House" is all about Conan getting hired to assassinate the evil Red Priest and having to make his way through the traps that the Red Priest has installed throughout his mansion, in order to get to the big fight with the boss monster and his reward from the aristocrat Murilo.
• "Shadows in the Moon" deals with a magical ruin where statues come to life in the moonlight (complete with a magic spell that the parrot remembers), which Conan has to deal with at the same time as a pirate band and a giant ape. He doesn't get any loot by the end of the story, but he does get the pirate ship and a band of hirelings.
• "Jewels of Gwahlur" is likewise a dungeon crawl through an abandoned city where a mummified oracle that's secretly been replaced by an actress decides the fate of a nation, complete with a treasure chase for the eponymous jewels, secret doors, and yet more ape-monsters. Ironically Fritz Leiber hated this one.
• "Queen of the Black Coast" involves lots of ruins with lost treasure, hyena-men, winged demons, and a cursed magic necklace that brings about Bêlit's death.

And so on.

 

[pemerton]

D&D echoes many of those tropes, but the game play does not push towards those stories.

 

[Vikingkingq]

D&D echoes many of those tropes, but the game play does not push towards those stories.

How so? Can you add specifics, because I think it kind of does.

 

[Kurotowa]

D&D echoes many of those tropes, but the game play does not push towards those stories.

Early D&D was a unique synthesis of its influences that didn't entirely emulate any one of them.

From Conan it took the historical kitchen sink setting and hunt for treasure, while ignoring that Conan treated treasure as a fleeting luxury and constantly passed it up in favor of Saving The Girl. It took the party structure, magic items, races and monsters, and some of the classes from Lord of the Rings, while completely ignoring the story structure and cosmology. It's been quite a while since I read the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, but IIRC those are heavy on heists while dealing with traps both mundane and magical, as well as some obvious influences on the classes again.

There have been various licensed TTRPGs that tried to more directly emulate the look and feel of these works, but all of them seem to have had limited impact. My feeling is that there's a limited appeal to playing out what amounts to fanfic. D&D took pieces from all of them and put them together into something that was new and unique, and that's why the genre D&D most closely adheres to now is D&D. It defines its own genre.

 

[pemerton]

How so? Can you add specifics, because I think it kind of does.

As I posted upthread:

Classic D&D emulates many REH-esque tropes.

But I don't think the gameplay produces REH-esque stories.

Conan frequently succeeds by acting on instinct, by rejecting moderation or subtlety, and by imposing his will on the situation he find himself in. And in many of REH's stories he finds himself needing to choose between riches and doing the right thing, and he does the right thing.

Whereas classic D&D gameplay encourages caution, planning, and understanding the situation on the GM's terms and responding to that. It encourages being calculating and expedient. None of this is very REH-esque, in my experience.

 

[Thomas Shey]

E
There have been various licensed TTRPGs that tried to more directly emulate the look and feel of these works, but all of them seem to have had limited impact. My feeling is that there's a limited appeal to playing out what amounts to fanfic. D&D took pieces from all of them and put them together into something that was new and unique, and that's why the genre D&D most closely adheres to now is D&D. It defines its own genre.

Comparing them to D&D and saying they have limited impact is almost redundant. I have trouble picturing that not being true about almost any RPG given the dominance of the former.