D&D General No One Reads Conan Now -- So What Are They Reading?

[Voadam]

I think to Salvatore’s credit, his characterizations and just his writing in general improved a lot over the course of the years writing the character.

I found the change in writing style and characterization of such things fairly significant between even his original Icewind Dale trilogy and the prequel Drizzt trilogy that were written next. With just those six novels I remember at the time thinking that going in chronological order you would get a hard shock coming into Icewind Dale.

 

[Voadam]

I think Howard's Hyboria has a fairly big influence on D&D, particularly the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk with lots of fantasy versions of real world Ancient to Middle Ages/Renaissance cultures and kingdoms mashed up together. FR in particular was designed from the start to be a Conan style sword and sorcery backdrop setting with barbarian swordsmen and powerful mages for Greenwood to write fiction stories in before there was D&D and this has continued through to 5e FR in a lot of ways. Thay is very much a version of Stygia.

Also the ancient world and Norse style pantheism in Hyboria seems a good fit for a lot of D&D.

 

[Distracted DM]

FR in particular was designed from the start to be a Conan style sword and sorcery backdrop setting with barbarian swordsmen and powerful mages for Greenwood to write fiction stories in before there was D&D and this has continued through to 5e FR in a lot of ways. Thay is very much a version of Stygia.

Seriously? Do we have a quote or source or something? FR nowadays seems as far as you can get from S&S... But yeah it has certainly come a looong way.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I think audiobooks are a symptom, not the cause. Our lives are much busier than they used to be, with a great deal of cultural pressure towards productivity, which coupled with shortening attention spans makes very uncomfortable with inactivity. We want information quickly, and we don’t want to just be passively consuming it; we feel the need to at least multitask while we consume that media. Hence, audiobooks become popular.

Some of it is just getting to a less distracting environment, I get to the cinema an hour before so I can sit and read a book in a waiting area.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I dont find REH's writing any more racist than that of Tolkien

Then you "don't find" the obvious.

 

[Voadam]

Seriously? Do we have a quote or source or something? FR nowadays seems as far as you can get from S&S... But yeah it has certainly come a looong way.

You could go to his wikipedia page where it says "Greenwood grew up in the upscale Toronto suburb of Don Mills. He began writing stories about the Forgotten Realms as a child, starting in the mid-1960s; they were his "dream space for swords and sorcery stories". Greenwood conceived of the Forgotten Realms as one world in a "multiverse" of parallel worlds which includes the Earth. He imagined such worlds as being the source of humanity's myths and legends."

It cites the book 30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons.

I think the first realms story in Dragon (edit, it was not Dragon, it was a pre-Dragon story) was a Conan type character who goes after a villain in a tavern, but the villain is actually a well-known powerful magical villain well beyond an ultracompetent well-thewed barbarian's ability and he knows it, but as the death magic begins, two other customers drop their magical disguises and the Symbul and Elminster blast the villain. They then exasperatedly explain how this ruins their undercover operation to learn about villainy going on beyond the one they blasted. So it starts out looking like a Conan type story in a sword and sorcery world, then does reveals about powerful magic users that take over the narrative from the protagonist and subvert the tone with the always a bigger fish trope.

Apparently also Elminster was supposed to be an only occasionally showing up quirky Tom Bombadil archmage who could save people and occasionally help out but end up being so quirky that he would not be helpful if relied upon too much by PC types and it was supposed to focus on PC type protagonist heroes, but he kept being asked by TSR to write more Elminster stuff including him as a main character in books and stories and Sage narrator overview of sourcebooks so it just built and built.

Thay always struck me since 1e as a D&D version of Conan Stygia/Acheron with fantasy evil Stygian sorcerers as exotic pulp bad guys. Both are fantasy Egypt stuff with fantasy big magic users in their setting, but the Realms are a bit higher magic.

 

[Distracted DM]

You could go to his wikipedia page where it says "Greenwood grew up in the upscale Toronto suburb of Don Mills. He began writing stories about the Forgotten Realms as a child, starting in the mid-1960s; they were his "dream space for swords and sorcery stories". Greenwood conceived of the Forgotten Realms as one world in a "multiverse" of parallel worlds which includes the Earth. He imagined such worlds as being the source of humanity's myths and legends."

It cites the book 30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons.

I think the first realms story in Dragon (edit, it was not Dragon, it was a pre-Dragon story) was a Conan type character who goes after a villain in a tavern, but the villain is actually a well-known powerful magical villain well beyond an ultracompetent well-thewed barbarian's ability and he knows it, but as the death magic begins, two other customers drop their magical disguises and the Symbul and Elminster blast the villain. They then exasperatedly explain how this ruins their undercover operation to learn about villainy going on beyond the one they blasted. So it starts out looking like a Conan type story in a sword and sorcery world, then does reveals about powerful magic users that take over the narrative from the protagonist and subvert the tone with the always a bigger fish trope.

Apparently also Elminster was supposed to be an only occasionally showing up quirky Tom Bombadil archmage who could save people and occasionally help out but end up being so quirky that he would not be helpful if relied upon too much by PC types and it was supposed to focus on PC type protagonist heroes, but he kept being asked by TSR to write more Elminster stuff including him as a main character in books and stories and Sage narrator overview of sourcebooks so it just built and built.

Thay always struck me since 1e as a D&D version of Conan Stygia/Acheron with fantasy evil Stygian sorcerers as exotic pulp bad guys. Both are fantasy Egypt stuff with fantasy big magic users in their setting, but the Realms are a bit higher magic.

Wow that's awesome. Thanks for the explanation! I hope my "seriously?" didn't convey the wrong tone I just couldn't believe it based on what I've seen of FR over the many years.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Then you "don't find" the obvious.

As much as I enjoy REH's works, they contain some deeply racist elements, full stop. Far more overtly than Tolkien's writings.

You could go to his wikipedia page where it says "Greenwood grew up in the upscale Toronto suburb of Don Mills. He began writing stories about the Forgotten Realms as a child, starting in the mid-1960s; they were his "dream space for swords and sorcery stories". Greenwood conceived of the Forgotten Realms as one world in a "multiverse" of parallel worlds which includes the Earth. He imagined such worlds as being the source of humanity's myths and legends."

It cites the book 30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons.

I think the first realms story in Dragon (edit, it was not Dragon, it was a pre-Dragon story) was a Conan type character who goes after a villain in a tavern, but the villain is actually a well-known powerful magical villain well beyond an ultracompetent well-thewed barbarian's ability and he knows it, but as the death magic begins, two other customers drop their magical disguises and the Symbul and Elminster blast the villain. They then exasperatedly explain how this ruins their undercover operation to learn about villainy going on beyond the one they blasted. So it starts out looking like a Conan type story in a sword and sorcery world, then does reveals about powerful magic users that take over the narrative from the protagonist and subvert the tone with the always a bigger fish trope.

Apparently also Elminster was supposed to be an only occasionally showing up quirky Tom Bombadil archmage who could save people and occasionally help out but end up being so quirky that he would not be helpful if relied upon too much by PC types and it was supposed to focus on PC type protagonist heroes, but he kept being asked by TSR to write more Elminster stuff including him as a main character in books and stories and Sage narrator overview of sourcebooks so it just built and built.

Thay always struck me since 1e as a D&D version of Conan Stygia/Acheron with fantasy evil Stygian sorcerers as exotic pulp bad guys. Both are fantasy Egypt stuff with fantasy big magic users in their setting, but the Realms are a bit higher magic.

If I recall correctly, he wrote the stories of Mirt the Moneylender and Durnan as his own riff on Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, too.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Apparently also Elminster was supposed to be an only occasionally showing up quirky Tom Bombadil archmage who could save people and occasionally help out but end up being so quirky that he would not be helpful if relied upon too much by PC types and it was supposed to focus on PC type protagonist heroes, but he kept being asked by TSR to write more Elminster stuff including him as a main character in books and stories and Sage narrator overview of sourcebooks so it just built and built.

Your post on this is very interesting/informative but I feel like Greenwood sometimes does a "The lady doth protest too much" re: Elminster, and that he was "getting high on his own supply" at some points, especially in the late '90s and early '00s when he was writing Elminster as basically a super-sexy super-agent who was also a very skilled Fighter, Rogue, etc. and saying he should be played by Sean Connery in a movie and so on. I believe him when he says TSR/WotC maybe asked for more Elminster, but I don't believe they asked for "sexy Elminster".

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Your post on this is very interesting/informative but I feel like Greenwood sometimes does a "The lady doth protest too much" re: Elminster, and that he was "getting high on his own supply" at some points, especially in the late '90s and early '00s when he was writing Elminster as basically a super-sexy super-agent who was also a very skilled Fighter, Rogue, etc. and saying he should be played by Sean Connery in a movie and so on. I believe him when he says TSR/WotC maybe asked for more Elminster, but I don't believe they asked for "sexy Elminster".

Well I think my author insert character should be played by Sean Connery too! Seems perfectly reasonable to me.