Writer Robert E. Howard remains a major figure in sword & sorcery literature despite his relatively short career. His character Conan the Barbarian is arguably the best known hero of the genre. Comics, movies and of course the original stories featuring the fictional barbarian have remained popular since he first appeared in the 1930s. In the 1960s Lancer Books published the Conan stories of Mr. Howard and his imitators in a collection of several mass market paperbacks which inspired a generation of imaginative gamers, including the creators and future players of White Box.
Mr. Howard wrote for the "pulp" audiences of the 1920s and '30s - mostly a male audience and one with "older" more stereotyped beliefs. Despite this, the tales are action-packed and full of graphic depictions of "worlds undreamed of". Good fodder for the imagination of anyone playing White Box or the games that have come since. Conan was a relative late-comer in Mr. Howard's career, but tales of other bigger-than-life heroes such as Kull, Bran Mac Morn and Soloman Kane are similar in many ways. The Swords & Sorcery genre is closely tied to the character of Conan and some give Mr. Howard credit for largely creating the sub-genre of fantasy fiction. Set in an antediluvian past drawing heavily on historic types for his inspiration, Mr. Howard created an entire world or milieu for his Conan character to adventure in. One-time thief, pirate, mercenary, conqueror and eventually king, Conan's fictional career is a model for many players wishing to recreate in the game some degree of the thrill they have experienced reading the stories.
The 1960s publication of both the collection of Conan stories, often with eye-catching covers by artist Frank Frazetta (above image), and J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy in paperback greatly boosted interest in heroic fantasy. White Box arrived on the scene allowing us to take the fantastic adventure stories we were passively reading about and convert them to active tabletop play. Since the publication of White Box, several game aids and separate game systems have specifically focused on the Conan properties and it looks like there is still a lot of interest in gaming the world Robert E. Howard created for his Conan stories.
My introduction to the great barbarian was through the Marvel Comics series. Many of the early issues followed the plots of some of the Howard stories. In the back of the comics,there were articles on the world setting, Mr. Howard and other related topics. A larger graphic magazine, Savage Sword of Conan (later Savage Tales) had b&w adaptations of some Howard stories as well as other features and helped broaden my interest in fantastic fiction and the supernatural. Eventually I of course found my way to the Lancer Books Conan series and many other sword & sorcery titles. So by the time I got my White Box, I was well steeped in fantastic stories of imagination and jumped in with both feet. I still read and re-read the old favorites and continue to mine them for ideas and inspiration for the gaming table.
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