Influence of Conan on D&D

[DM Howard]

I agree with pawsplay. Although you could say that one must read Howard's Conan with a filter it could also be said that one must read it, and judge it, through a historical filter.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

If you enjoy Robert E Howard you can download all of his works for free on the Australian Gutenberg site. I just finished the Conan adventures he wrote and they are excellent.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Can't give any more XP today or pawsplay would have gotten one. Howard may have been a product of his time, but he was clearly ahead of it in many ways.

 

[Puggins]

I've read Howard's Conan, cover to cover, and I'm here to tell you they are great stories, and while an older, non-dead Howard might have eventually felt some embarrassment over some of his works, the man has never written anything I would consider shameful. He was a stark writer on stark subjects.

I agree with you that his writing must be examined in context, and I have to point out that Howard is one of my absolute favorite authors, so I'm not trying to smear him and persuade people to not read him. On the contrary- I think anyone who enjoys D&D really should read Conan to see where Gary's ideas came from.

As for shameful- I agree with you in all cases but one. The Vale of Lost Women is about as starkly racist, misogynist and homophobic as Howard gets, and in that case, he gets pretty damn far. Nothing else in his Conan work comes close, but Vale crosses the line of taste for me. YMMV, of course. Still a story worth reading, but the only that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Oh, and on the misogyny thing... by the standards of his time, Howard was a radical egalitarian who championed women's intellectual and moral equality. In "People of the Black Circle," we meet a noblewoman who is fully Conan's co-protagonist in the story.

I won't argue here, since attitudes back then were what they were.

 

[triqui]

Those were mostly later writers who tried to soften the edge. Howard's original stories generally portrayed non-caucasians as wicked, sub-human, amoral or all three. Love the material to death, but the racism and misogyny is there in spades. As others said, you read it through a filter.

I somewhat disagree. Caucasians *are* the evil guys in several stories. They tend to be decadent, greedy, prone to betray, and tend to fiddle with magic and social "costumes" that make them not honest. Conan (that is, cimmerians) quite very much is the opposite of that. They are ruthless, bad mannered and savage, but they are "safe" from the "civilization decadence" and have some kind of personal honor code. Several savages share this traits, regardless of colour (such as kushites), and several white guys are complete pricks

 

[scourger]

I love the Conan stories by Howard. His other works don't do as much for me. Neither do the Conan pastiches. I have a dream of running a Sons of Conan game. Howard's stories will be the source material, but King Conan will still be a bodybuilder with an Austrian acent.

 

[pawsplay]

Conan obviously inspired the Barbarian class, but also (with Leiber's Lankhmar stories) helped shape the Thief. Howard's sorcerers, essentially secular psychics and spirit conjurors influenced both Moorcock's fiction and Gygax's wizards. Howard also popularized the pseudo-historical milieu as a conscious design choice, rather than the "long ago and far away" approach favored by other writers who just didn't know their history. His collaboration with Lovecraft helped create the stark mythology of myriad planes and dimensions full of beings indifferent to, or callously inimical to, human beings.

Conan, along with Lancelot and the Greek heroes, was almost certainly the inspiration for % Strength and the elaborate feats of strength table.

Conan also exemplified the fighter -> warlord -> ruler career path actualized in the AD&D rules.

 

[S'mon]

Conan obviously inspired the Barbarian class.

Conan inspired the 1e Unearthed Arcana Barbarian, but the 4e 'Primal' Barbarian seems closely modelled on Slaine, the Warped Warrior from the 2000AD comic. The 4e designers have stated that Conan was the model for the 4e Fighter class, AIR.

 

[S'mon]

I somewhat disagree. Caucasians *are* the evil guys in several stories. They tend to be decadent, greedy, prone to betray, and tend to fiddle with magic and social "costumes" that make them not honest. Conan (that is, cimmerians) quite very much is the opposite of that. They are ruthless, bad mannered and savage, but they are "safe" from the "civilization decadence" and have some kind of personal honor code. Several savages share this traits, regardless of colour (such as kushites), and several white guys are complete pricks

That's my impression also.

On race, well I'd say Howard was much more L Lothrop Stoddard (our civilisation may fall, other races may surpass us, and Nazis suck) than Maddison Grant (yaay Nordics!). Or to put it another way, his Scots-Irish Texan individualism made him much less conventionally racist than HP Lovecraft, whose New England Yankee Patrician concern with the tide of foreign immigrants replacing his Yankee Protestants in New England strongly coloured his work.

On sex, well there are plenty of helpless damsels in Conan, probably more than REH would have liked if left to his own devices rather than the exigencies of writing for the pulps. But there are also a lot of strong female characters, both physically (eg Belit, Valeria) and emotionally (eg Conan's wife, whose name escapes me). And he often mentions that groups of eg rogues & thieves include female members. Howard - and other '30s writers - seem to me far more sexually egalitarian than what you see in the '50s through '70s. In many ways Howard's writing seems to me less sexist than that of an avowed feminist like Moorcock!

 

[pawsplay]

Conan inspired the 1e Unearthed Arcana Barbarian, but the 4e 'Primal' Barbarian seems closely modelled on Slaine, the Warped Warrior from the 2000AD comic. The 4e designers have stated that Conan was the model for the 4e Fighter class, AIR.

Well, right. As early as 3e, the barbarian was already starting to get taken over by what AD&D called the Berserker Kit, as well as archetypes like Everquest's Barbarian race and Warhammer's Norse.