Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Reynard" data-source="post: 4860456" data-attributes="member: 467">If anything, I think the tendency to quantify everything in strict game mechanics has caused the "confusion" as to what class(es) Conan might be. After all, the games inspired, at least in part, by REH's Conan stories didn't get so fiddly with character abilities. Sneaking around, climbing walls and ambushing enmies weren't the province of a class, they were things anybody could -- and probably should -- do when confronted with the same situations Conan found himself in.Remember, "Hide in Shadows" and "Move Silently" were, in AD&D (OD&D didn't even have a "thief") weren't "stealth" -- they were literally super special ways of being sneaky (and you couldn't do both at once). "Climb walls" was actually "climb sheer surfaces" -- any idiot with some brains and some brawn could try and pull himself up a rugged cliff or a stonework wall.  Players were expected to be creative, and in return they expected that the game world worked "realistically" and their mighty thewed barbarian (aka 3rd level fighter with a 17 strength) would have a reasonable chance of scaling the tower wall to get to the gem encrusted crown.It wasn't until the advent of skills/proficiencies/what-have-you that the classes really started to be restrictive in this regard. Once mechanical elements were added to determine exactly what a character was capable of, the list of what the character wasn't capable of became huge. Suddenly, Conan *had* to be a fighter-thief because fighters just couldn't climb walls.I think one of the reasons that the retro-clone, and similar games like the new Hackmaster, have come back into vogue is that with movies like Jackson's Lord of the Rings, players once again expect to be able to *do stuff* that a hero of their type and caliber should be capable of. Aragorn performs many varied tasks -- riding, healing, fighting, leading men, tracking, diplomacy -- because he is a Dunedain Ranger.  He doesn't lack for skills because he *isn't* something else.</blockquote>

Verification