Conan's Morality

[Corathon]

Gary Gygax suggested that Conan's alignment was Chaotic Neutral (but with good tendencies) at the beginning of his career, but had become Chaotic Good (with neutral tendencies) by the end of his career. Sounds about right to me.

 

[S'mon]

I'd say CN in the early stories, N or N(G) at the end.

 

[Thanael]

Let's take a look at the Conan the Barbarian by level stats for D&D on this awesome site:
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral - Conan the Barbarian (Level 1) - The Battle of Venarium (an unwritten tale, but referred to by Howard as having happened).
Alignment: Chaotic Good - Conan the King (Level 20) - "The Phoenix on the Sword", "The Scarlet Citadel"

 

[MortalPlague]

I'm just chiming in to say that this thread was a good read. I enjoyed the debate.

 

[hamishspence]

Yes.

Complete Scoundrel's sample media characters with alignments, might be a useful place to start- for comparison.

Han Solo is listed as TN
Mal Reynolds (Firefly) is listed as CG
Jack Sparrow (Pirates of the Carribean) and Al Swearengen (Deadwood) are listed as CN
Riddick (Pitch Black) Sawyer (Lost) and Carl Denham (King Kong) are listed as CE

Is Conan more Chaotic than Han?
Is he less Good than Mal Reynolds?
Is he more Good than Jack Sparrow?
Is he less Evil than Riddick?

These sort of comparisons might support the CN suggested alignment.

 

[GreyLord]

Yes.

Complete Scoundrel's sample media characters with alignments, might be a useful place to start- for comparison.

Han Solo is listed as TN
Mal Reynolds (Firefly) is listed as CG
Jack Sparrow (Pirates of the Carribean) and Al Swearengen (Deadwood) are listed as CN
Riddick (Pitch Black) Sawyer (Lost) and Carl Denham (King Kong) are listed as CE

Is Conan more Chaotic than Han?
Is he less Good than Mal Reynolds?
Is he more Good than Jack Sparrow?
Is he less Evil than Riddick?

These sort of comparisons might support the CN suggested alignment.

Interesting, but I never saw Riddick as Chaotic Evil. He did go back eventually, even if it was with a little prodding. Or was that his alignment change?

 

[hamishspence]

Maybe. CE characters doing acts of kindness isn't unheard of- in FRCS, Klauth "Old Snarl" the statted great red wyrm is pretty malevolent- to the extent that the rulers of neighbouring cities are thinking of getting together a "Great Hunt" to deal with him- yet he "does small acts of kindness for those he thinks aren't capable of harming him" on occasion.

 

[gamerprinter]

Well since Conan is essentially an ancient Celt, raiding is a very Celtic past time. If I had to give Conan an alignment, I'd call him neutral - able to go in any direction, based on how the wind is blowing or where the threats and opportunities lie.

While Celtic raiding was mostly stealing cattle (so stealing is obviously OK with Conan), slaying clan enemies, taking slaves, burning buildings/villages are part and parcel to raiding activity.

I don't think I remember any Conan activity involving rape directly. Forceful sexual advances might fall under rape in this day in age, but not so in Conan's days. Conan had plenty of voluptuous encounters (I think voluptuous was Howard's favorite word - it was used a lot in Conan books) that didn't involve rape.

Raiding is seldom the total destruction and death of a village's inhabitants. Raiding is mostly taking stuff. Its never complete genocide.

 

[Corathon]

Interesting, but I never saw Riddick as Chaotic Evil. He did go back eventually, even if it was with a little prodding. Or was that his alignment change?

I would say that Riddick changed alignment in the course of Pitch Black. His reaction to the new captain's self sacrifice and the last line, something like "Tell them that he died there" sort of clinch that for me.

 

[hamishspence]

I wouldn't say alignment change is required though (in a RPG fantasy campaign featuring a CE Riddick-like character making similar decisions).

In The Chronicles of Riddick, Aereon seems happy to label him as evil:

"In normal times, evil would be fought by good. But in times like these, it must be fought by a different kind of evil"