Conanesque flavor?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Any tips for giving an adventure a Conan feel? I have one group of characters in my campaign running away from the law and heading into a Stygia-esque setting complete with large barren wastes, strange ancient magics and depraved cults. I'd like it to be exciting and more than a little intimidating.

I'm reading through the paperbacks of the Marvel Comics Conan series (the early good stuff) and I'm impressed, for instance, at how creepy Red Nails is, and want to impart a bit of that skin-crawling effect to the game.

So far, I'm planning on using the stone idol template from the Advanced Bestiary to create a cult around a snake statue (which, of course, comes to life and influences its cultists), a depraved costal village by a lighthouse that actually seek to wreck ships (partially for piracy, partially as sacrifices to Dagon) and a mysterious ruin tied into one they've seen before at home, but this one under the watchful eye of an eldritch giant living in an enormous tower a safe distance away.

Suggestions greedily accepted.

 

[Pbartender]

Suggestions greedily accepted.

Pseudonatural Kraken.

Nothing says creepy like giant tentacles made out of innumerable tiny tentacles.

You also need to make your ancient temples out of impossibly immense blocks of stone that are perfectly joined, perfectly polished and are oddly colored... blotchy greyish-green, or black with veins of blood-red, or someting similar. Even better if the stones are warm and pulsing to the touch -- not hot, but more like body temperature.

 

[Crust]

At some point in some urban setting, make sure that the PCs stumble across an old, crotchety street vendor who beckons them forward, holding aloft a clay pot. "Black lotus. Stygian. The best!"

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Heh, I already have Kemite characters messing about with various types of lotus.

I lived in Egypt, and they all loved this hibiscus petal tea there, so I have the sinister Kemite wizard in Midwood drinking red lotus tea as his drink of choice, pulling the dessicated red petals from a pouch around his neck ...

 

[gizmo33]

Are you considering rules changes? Are you just looking for the Lovecraft-type elements? Have you looked at the Conan RPG?

 

[EricNoah]

Suggestions greedily accepted.

Some stuff I put together for an Iron Heroes game with a Conanesque flavor.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Are you considering rules changes? Are you just looking for the Lovecraft-type elements? Have you looked at the Conan RPG?

This is just an interlude in Kem, not a new campaign, so staying with 3.5E and the current ruleset.

 

[gizmo33]

You also need to make your ancient temples out of impossibly immense blocks of stone that are perfectly joined, perfectly polished and are oddly colored...

The problem I have with "impossibly immense" and similar themes (while a distinct theme in the literature as you point out) is that I don't know what "impossibly immense" would mean to a typical DnD PC who can teleport around places instantly and kill a rhinocerous with one sword swing. In the fantasy game genre, and DnD game in particular, there's already an expectation for a certain magic level. Players seem to be understandibly jaded, and an elf wizard is really as "impossible" as a huge stone block.

Ever since Ravenloft (and probably before), there's been attempts to bring a certain heightened level of fear and suspense to a game whose roots are in monster bashing. People want to recreate the horror and suspense of a gothic novel in a game system with party orders and prevelant magic.

Some people swear it can be done. I'm more of an agnostic. I think it might be possible to incorporate some details into the game, but I don't think the nature of the game is conducive to recreating the experience of reading certain kinds of novels.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I've had success with mysterious things and notes to characters, where only they see or hear something happening. And I make sure that those things are real often enough to make them wonder.

 

[gizmo33]

This is just an interlude in Kem, not a new campaign, so staying with 3.5E and the current ruleset.

Sounds like Kem has already been designed to use Conan elements. For instance I imagine that Serpent Folk already rule the area.

To give PCs an inside look at a degenerate cult or tyrant's palace, you could consider having the PCs hired by an evil ruler - or perhaps the ruler's neutral or good cousin that's trying to fight off rivals and doesn't trust locals. All the better if the cousin is a really attractive priestess of Mitra. IIRC Conan often found himself being forced to take sides in civil wars and palace in-fighting.

Mass combat would also fit the Conan theme, though it might not be what you want.