D&D General Reassesing Robert E Howards influence on D&D +

[Paul Farquhar]

Maybe a separate thread for Anderson? I don't think anyone has suggested REH was to blame for gnomes.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Maybe a separate thread for Anderson? I don't think anyone has suggested REH was to blame for gnomes.

Howard's gnomes would be wild and probably a lot like Pratchett's Nac Mac Feegles.

 

[Mon]

The Barbarian should have been called the "Conqueror." Conquer magic, the plans of weaker fighters, and the obstacles in your way to take what you want. Alas, what could have been.

Anyway, it's so interesting to me that Gygax had these inspirations, yet the OSR routinely creates adventures about people that are nothing like Conan. In virtually every OSR game, the first handful of levels at the minimum are levels where you will likely die, can't do anything, aren't supposed to fight because of "combat as war," and so on. Meanwhile, Gygax waxes poetic about how Conan is flying around and slashing down whole platoons of people and literally choking half-giants to death (I forget the story name). Talk about a big miscommunication, but I don't know where in what direction or how it happened.

I must be missing something here. Conan would not be modelled as a 1st level character in the stories… higher level AD&D fighters do all of that stuff. What’s the miscommunication?

 

[cbwjm]

Has anyone here turned any of the Conan stories into adventures? I wouldn't be surprised if the old tsr version, MP d20 version, or the last modiphius version turned some of them into adventures; but, right now I'm working on a version of Queen of the Black Coast. I'll likely run it as a 5e game, but I'm also kind of making it for OSE, it's great for shipwrecked adventurers washed up on a coastline, in the distance they can see what looks like buildings further up the river for then to explore.

Tower of the Elephant would be another great adventure, especially for any thieves in the party but a wizard might also want to seek the knowledge of Yara, to cast him down or replace him.

These are the stories I've read recently which I'mturning into adventures, I have some other stories to read that might also lead to adventure creation.

 

[cbwjm]

Howard's gnomes would be wild and probably a lot like Pratchett's Nac Mac Feegles.

One of my players played a Feegle. He was named: No' As Big As Medium Sized Jock But Bigger Than Wee Jock Jock Feegle.

He used a home-brew faerie race I created.

 

[Shardstone]

I must be missing something here. Conan would not be modelled as a 1st level character in the stories… higher level AD&D fighters do all of that stuff. What’s the miscommunication?

What you're talking about and what I'm talking about are so far apart that I don't really know how to respond.

 

[Clint_L]

Huygen and Poortvliet's Gnomes was everywhere in the late 70s; it was a ubiquitous coffee table book. Several of my relatives had it, and they knew nothing of D&D. While I agree that Gygax's particular interpretation of gnomes was borrowed pretty heavily from Anderson, I think it very likely that he settled on including them in the PHB because the concept of gnomes was so widely popular. The whole Gnomes pop culture phenomenon is a little inexplicable and hard to explain if you weren't there.

 

[cbwjm]

I must be missing something here. Conan would not be modelled as a 1st level character in the stories… higher level AD&D fighters do all of that stuff. What’s the miscommunication?

This is true. If you wanted to run a conan-type adventure the minimum level you'd probably be looking at would 5th.

 

[pemerton]

Has anyone here turned any of the Conan stories into adventures?

<snip>

Tower of the Elephant would be another great adventure, especially for any thieves in the party but a wizard might also want to seek the knowledge of Yara, to cast him down or replace him.

Not literally, but I was inspired somewhat by Tower of the Elephant when I ran my first Burning Wheel session: https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/burning-wheel-first-burning-wheel-session.736425/

 

[Voadam]

Has anyone here turned any of the Conan stories into adventures? I wouldn't be surprised if the old tsr version, MP d20 version, or the last modiphius version turned some of them into adventures; but, right now I'm working on a version of Queen of the Black Coast. I'll likely run it as a 5e game, but I'm also kind of making it for OSE, it's great for shipwrecked adventurers washed up on a coastline, in the distance they can see what looks like buildings further up the river for then to explore.

Tower of the Elephant would be another great adventure, especially for any thieves in the party but a wizard might also want to seek the knowledge of Yara, to cast him down or replace him.

These are the stories I've read recently which I'mturning into adventures, I have some other stories to read that might also lead to adventure creation.

Mongoose d20 had a 32 page Tower of the Elephant adventure. The Mongoose d20 Reavers of the Vilayet was heavily influenced by "The Devil in Iron" and "Shadows in the Moonlight".