D&D 5E A huge new sword & sorcery adventure is now available for 5th Edition

[Paul Farquhar]

It's not a comment of this adventure, but I don't really understand why people associate Sword and Sorcery with increased lethality. I've read all the Conan stories, and never felt he was in serious danger of dying, even fighting Not-Cthulhu. Elric may have died a few times, but he always managed to come back.

 

[Accaris]

It's not a comment of this adventure, but I don't really understand why people associate Sword and Sorcery with increased lethality. I've read all the Conan stories, and never felt he was in serious danger of dying, even fighting Not-Cthulhu. Elric may have died a few times, but he always managed to come back.

I mostly agree, but there's a certain logic behind this, especially from the OSR crowd. Early D&D was inspired by sword & sorcery -> early D&D was more lethal -> sword & sorcery as a theme must be more lethal.

Conan was a superhero. In fact, he inspired a lot of early Marvel superhero comics. He wasn't a hapless toadie who would die to a bandit's poking stick. But he wasn't a character in a wargame, either. If the average medieval warrior were thrust into Conan's world, they probably would die, and very quickly at that.

 

[Steampunkette]

I wouldn't say that Conan -was- a Superhero... he is, now, obviously.

But in the actual works he's often terrified and incredibly lucky. Take the Scarlet Citadel, for example.

Trapped in a magical dungeon full of demons and weirdness, A guy who secretly hates Conan for getting his brother killed during Conan's pirating days (Under the name Amra) brings the keys and toys with Conan, offering him the keys for a price. There's no price. He's just being cruel before killing the chained up Conan who can't escape. As he's preparing to kill Conan a giant snake appears from deeper in the dungeon, wraps the guy up, and snaps his bones. Conan snags the dropped keys and unshackles himself as the constrictor consumes his would be killer.

Shruekli, the Sorcerer's servant, tries to bar Conan in but gets stabbed through the bars when Conan grabs the dead guy's sword, so he lucks out there, grabs a torch, and tries to find his way out. He hears weeping and figures there must be a buxom babe in the dungeon so he follows it and finds a tentacle monster gooball.

In classic Conan fashion, armed with a sword and torch, Conan flees in terror, trips, drops his torch, gets up, runs blindly into the darkness in a wild panic, then realizes he's utterly lost.

This is -not- a Superhero, folks.

He wanders through the darkness and feels an invisible presence coming up from a pit in the darkness, so he runs away. Then in the darkness he feels the invisible presence engulfing him. So he runs away.

Then he manages to find the torch he dropped, still burning embers, relights it, and finds the Sorcerer Pelias making out with a demon-plant that is slowly siphoning his life away. He cuts the plant's stem and frees the sorcerer who helps lead him to safety by summoning a Bat Demon.

Conan kills precisely four (4) people in the entire story. The servant who tried to slam the door on him, a false-king who tries to take Aquilonia from him, the Kothian king who tried to put the usurper on the throne, and a sorcerer who is frail and weak aside from his magic.

Each fight is essentially one-hit kills, just like the Serpent killing the guy who wanted to kill Conan. He stabs the servant, he pushes the usurper off a wall, he stabs the king, and he beheads the sorcerer.

Yeah, in the end, he kills three dudes back to back with little effort, but none of them are warriors. It's like a 5th level barbarian killing some CR 1/2 bandits.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

This is -not- a Superhero, folks.

That's funny, because I'm pretty sure I watched Ms Marvel running in terror and lucking out only last night.

 

[GuyBoy]

One of the great S&S combinations of lucking out and warrior badass-ery was in (IIRC) “a witch shall be born” where crucified Conan bites the head off an attacking vulture, but would have died had Olgerd Vladislav not happened by with his bandits.

 

[Blue Orange]

That's funny, because I'm pretty sure I watched Ms Marvel running in terror and lucking out only last night.

Even superheroes face things they can't handle once in a while.

I think the original point is valid, though--Conan is a human in peak physical condition (with a fair amount of guile and common sense, often forgotten) with no supernatural powers. He's a hero, not a superhero, in common parlance.

And, that's part of the fantasy--you could be Conan, theoretically, if you spent all day working out at the gym and didn't have to make a living.

(As opposed to the ancient Greek conception where he'd have some divine parentage, or the little brown book one where he never made it past 4th level. )

 

[Accaris]

One of the great S&S combinations of lucking out and warrior badass-ery was in (IIRC) “a witch shall be born” where crucified Conan bites the head off an attacking vulture, but would have died had Olgerd Vladislav not happened by with his bandits.

A scene repeated in the movie! The same story has this passage:

“I never saw a man fight as Conan fought. He put his back to the courtyard wall, and before they overpowered him the dead men were strewn in heaps thigh-deep about him. But at last they dragged him down, a hundred against one.”

 

[Blue Orange]

It's not a comment of this adventure, but I don't really understand why people associate Sword and Sorcery with increased lethality. I've read all the Conan stories, and never felt he was in serious danger of dying, even fighting Not-Cthulhu. Elric may have died a few times, but he always managed to come back.

I think part of it's a reaction against the decreased lethality of modern D&D. People who don't like that tend to be people who have played the older versions, and those tend to be people who have read the source material due to generational factors. But those are tendencies and demographic averages--there are definitely younger people who have discovered Howard and want to play OSR games. Basically, age, desire for a higher-risk version of D&D, and taste for the old S&S fiction are correlated, but they don't always go together. There are always people who don't fit the stereotypes.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Even superheroes face things they can't handle once in a while.

I think the original point is valid, though--Conan is a human in peak physical condition (with a fair amount of guile and common sense, often forgotten) with no supernatural powers. He's a hero, not a superhero, in common parlance.

And, that's part of the fantasy--you could be Conan, theoretically, if you spent all day working out at the gym and didn't have to make a living.

(As opposed to the ancient Greek conception where he'd have some divine parentage, or the little brown book one where he never made it past 4th level. )

The thing that sets Conan apart is not his strength or combat skills, it's his ridiculous luck and plot armour of invulnerability. The same stuff some guy who is good at building stuff uses to defeat Thanos.

 

[Steampunkette]

You're largely right about that, @Blue Orange! But also: He's a Philosopher and a poet.

Because Howard was an early pioneer of Existential philosophy in an easily communicable format he was written to be a great many things. Slap a utility belt on that bad boy and he could be Batman minus the actually being good at solving mysteries and acrobatics and... nevermind.

But.

There is a second reason that Conan could never truly be a Superhero in the original works: He lacks Super Morality.

There's a reason Batman stopped killing people when he got his own comic book line, and it was the big concept that separated Superheroes from regular heroes, war heroes, and other characters from comics at the time. The idea of being super-moral. It's why Supes didn't kill, either. Green Lantern, Spider-Man, all of 'em.

Conan can't be a Superhero for real because he lacks that. He kills, he chews black lotus, he commits acts of sexual assault. He unleashes his rage and kills a Magistrate and Guards just doing their duty because he doesn't wanna go to jail for covering for his criminal buddy.