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

[Bedrockgames]

So while many people see the influence of Tolkien on DnD, Gary Gygax himself said that while the success of Tolkien did encourage him to develop the game, the overall influence was minimal. Instead he sites Conan the Conqueror as seminal influence on his “concepts of adventure”.

Conan was first recreated for Greyhawk (D&D Supplement IV) as a Fighter Level 15/ Thief Level 9 and this concept added to things like magic resistance, animal instincts and rage eventually developed into the Barbarian class. He even went on to inspire a couple of early modules and his own TSR RPG

But it was Sword and Scorcery inspired concepts of adventure that really carried DnD to what it is - over-the-top characters engaging in hard combat in a world of flashy magic. REH also had Conan come across various guarded wizard towers, lost cities with monster haunted dungeons, warring factions, which became the site based dungeons of DnD.
Its certain that Hobbits and Ents and similar were lifted from Tolkien, but Gygax calls these influences superficial as being based on the same mythologies rather than being wholesale adaptions. Gygax further claims that the seeming parallels and inspirations of Tolkien in DnD was contrived as an attempt to attract Tolkiens readers to the game even though Gygax opined that it was well nigh impossible to recreate any Tolkien-based fantasy within the boundaries of the game system.
The original forward to the game states “These rules are strictly fantasy. Those wargamers who lack imagination, those who don’t care for Burroughs’ Martian adventures where John Carter is groping through black pits, who feel no thrill upon reading Howard’s Conan saga, who do not enjoy the de Camp & Pratt fantasies or Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser pitting their swords against evil sorceries will not be likely to find DUNGEONS and DRAGONS to their taste.”

No mention of Tolkien there, as Gygax considered the Rings trilogy tedious and “considered in the light of fantasy action adventure, Tolkien is not dynamic.” and as such REH was a much better foundation to an interactive ‘fantasy action adventure Game’, than Tolkiens LotR.

Anyway what do you think, just how important is Howards Conan and other such pulp writers to DnD
(PS while Tolkien may be cited in discussion, lets not make this a debate about the merits of Tolkien v REH)

One thing I have noticed about Conan stories is how easily they inspire adventure ideas for D&D, at least for me. I can read Lord of the Rings, and get some inspiration. But every time I read a Conan story (even if it is one I have read many times before), I find myself inspired to work out some adventure location, NPC, complete adventure, etc.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I just wish the idea that Conan couldn't be modeled as a Barbarian (but instead, a Fighter/Thief) had made the designers realize that "Barbarian" was a dumb name for a Class. They should have long since changed it to Berserker. Then the word "Barbarian" would have been free to have been a background.

I tend to think of Conan as a Barbarian/Thief as well. Even the Arnold version of Conan is more of a fighter thief. I don't know that Conan needs a class unto himself. I like the Barbarian class, but I wouldn't use it to make Conan as a PC or NPC

 

[Willie the Duck]

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.

emphasis added

I think it's helpful to remember that EGG's first product leading into D&D was a fantasy supplement for a wargame. There, it was really just including play pieces that looked like things from your* favorite IPs, without mind to have them emulate their in-story actions (excepting how they would make opponents dead). The second stage was people using those rules during a siege's mining/countermining actions, and realizing that people enjoyed exploring tunnels and finding treasure** in that scenario sometimes more than the original siege scenario. D&D started as a game where the fantasy/swords&sorcery aspect was a 'skin'*** and then the essential play loop was discovered before any attempt to pull the thing back to emulating the stories from which the skin came from. Honestly, it's rather fortuitous that what came about ended up being relatively similar to Conan, Fafhrd&Grey Mouser, and The Hobbit (because they already included a lot of treasure seeking in dangerous tunnels or caves).
*or your prospective customers, if EGG truly wasn't a huge JRRT fan.
**no doubt the idea of placing treasure in the winding tunnels was influenced by the fiction thus referenced, so there is that.
***might be using that term wrong, not much of a computer game player.

Regarding Conan's actions vs. D&D's, I think the main differences are those that emerge from his being a narrative instead of a game. Having the goal of getting treasure is fun characterization, but for a story it's more interesting if the treasure hunt ends up being saving the girl, meeting a new friend, defeating a serious villain. Likewise, as a protagonist, Conan can be a omnicompetent character with near-all 18s, who only rolls a failure when the story needs it; whereas games* need ensembles of near equals and a reasonable (and unplanned) distribution of success and failure. One thing that happened in Conan stories that D&D** has rarely been good at is him getting caught unaware, knocked unconscious, and waking up in a jail cell***. Stuff like that that rely on certain story beats playing together don't work for emergent games like early D&D.
*intended for more than one player
**especially early D&D, where there wasn't much in the way of defeated-but-still-alive, particularly from non-magical causes
***often seducing-the-conveniently-placed-female-servant his way out of it

Yes, this absolutely. There are times when it's not just a rage either, but raw fury or pure instinct on his part. Normally this is where he starts killing everything in sight and shows superb martial skills in combat.

I tend to think of Conan as a Barbarian/Thief as well. Even the Arnold version of Conan is more of a fighter thief. I don't know that Conan needs a class unto himself. I like the Barbarian class, but I wouldn't use it to make Conan as a PC or NPC

I think D&D rage was taken from Norse berserkers (shield-chewing fearless warrior with more than a touch of madness) who were stapled to the barbarian role after the fact. Conan's occasionally described fury seems much more a minor detail and not something to build a class around. Conan, to me, was a 1974 Fighting Man (as in, before all the cagey-theme got shuffled off to another class). Other than being pretty good without armor* and not collecting magic items, Conan works pretty well as a pre-thief-roles-removed fighter who just happens to roll perfectly except as needed.
*although it is clear that he wore it whenever feasible, it was story prompts that ended up with him shirtless or the like

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

FYI, recolored text can be near-invisible for users using something other than the "omg, it's bright" default board color scheme.

 

[Willie the Duck]

FYI, recolored text can be near-invisible for users using something other than the "omg, it's bright" default board color scheme.

I got complaints about my previous footnotes* being too small for aging eyes, so I switched to recolored text. That way, anyone really interested can highlight the text with their cursor and read it without the shenanigans required to re-size someone's text. If there's a different method you would prefer, feel free to suggest it, and if better, I will gladly adopt it.
*Done like this.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I got complaints about my previous footnotes* being too small for aging eyes, so I switched to recolored text. That way, anyone really interested can highlight the text with their cursor and read it without the shenanigans required to re-size someone's text. If there's a different method you would prefer, feel free to suggest it, and if better, I will gladly adopt it.
*Done like this.

Your use of asterisks is fine. If it were me (and obviously, you're not me), I wouldn't have multiple ways of adding parenthetical information.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

***often seducing-the-conveniently-placed-female-servant his way out of it

It worked for Mister Toad!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Your use of asterisks is fine. If it were me (and obviously, you're not me), I wouldn't have multiple ways of adding parenthetical information.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Your use of asterisks is fine. If it were me (and obviously, you're not me), I wouldn't have multiple ways of adding parenthetical information.

I don't. I have one way, used relatively consistently. I just changed it when people complained about using smaller font size to section off the footnotes. Or am I missing something?

It worked for Mister Toad!

It sure did. Also for Conan. What it doesn't do, is work for early D&D*. Other than wandering monster checks**, the game tended not to include abstract 'well, it would make sense for there to be a ______ if needed, so if a certain situation arises, there will be one.' Narratives, like the Conan books, are basically all that. That's kind of my general point -- differences in initial setup of the scene (whatever the story needs vs. a fixed location with mostly pre-determined challenges) and actual goals for the protagonist (save the day in some way vs. obtain the designated success metric proxies) are much of the difference between a Conan story and an oD&D adventure.
*At least not unless the DM specifically decided that there should be a seduce-able or just bribable jail cell guard (or jail cell) present.
**which abstract a pretty reasonable point of 'there will be more monsters around, and they don't stick to a specific location, so you will run into them if you don't move quickly.'

 

[Mannahnin]

I think D&D rage was taken from Norse berserkers (shield-chewing fearless warrior with more than a touch of madness) who were stapled to the barbarian role after the fact. Conan's occasionally described fury seems much more a minor detail and not something to build a class around. Conan, to me, was a 1974 Fighting Man (as in, before all the cagey-theme got shuffled off to another class). Other than being pretty good without armor* and not collecting magic items, Conan works pretty well as a pre-thief-roles-removed fighter who just happens to roll perfectly except as needed.
*although it is clear that he wore it whenever feasible, it was story prompts that ended up with him shirtless or the like

Yes. 100% on Conan being an archetype Fighting Man a la OD&D prior to the Thief class being a thing. Same with Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. "The two greatest swordsmen in this or any universe", as Leiber lauds them, though Mouser is also one of the most famous antecedents for the Thief.

AD&D Barbarians were directly modeled on Conan and had no rage feature. Early Dragon magazines had a Berserker class, but the concept was separate and distinct as far as TSR was concerned.

2nd ed made Barbarian and Berserker separate kits for Fighters, and brought back the Barbarian class as an appendix in the Complete Barbarian's Handbook.

3rd ed is where WotC stapled the Rage concept onto the Barbarian class to give it a shtick more distinct from Fighters and Rangers.