REH, Swords & Sorcery, and Gaming

Conan & FRP Gaming
In 1932 the pulp magazine Weird Tales published The Phoenix on the Sword written by Robert E. Howard. It was not Mr. Howard’s first heroic adventure story, nor the first to feature a fantastic setting of make believe. It was a run-a-way hit with fans however and Conan is now the character we most associate with Mr. Howard and with the Swords & Sorcery sub-genre of fantasy fiction.
In the last few days I have been revisiting the Conan stories, reading them in the order they were first published. The Phoenix on the Sword is set late in Conan’s career, after he has taken the crown of Aquilonia by his own hand. King Conan battles a conspiracy in his palace intent on overthrowing him, one that involves demon summoning, a magic ring, a dream encounter with a god-like figure and a magic sword. In fact, there are many of the tropes present in the story that we now associate with Swords & Sorcery fiction. Many of the same tropes which are characteristic of the Fantasy Role-Playing hobby. This is not an accident.
The inventors of the world’s first role-playing game are known to have been fans of Mr. Howard’s Conan stories. Many of us have grown up reading those captivating adventure tales, an experience which can make the Fantasy Role-Playing hobby that much more attractive to us. The world’s first role-playing game can even be seen as an extension of such fantastic heroic fiction stories into a tabletop game environment where players can partake of the shared fantasy realm and character cast rolling dice and creating new stories through the interactive process of gaming.
The Scarlet Citadel is the second of Mr. Howard’s Conan stories to be published, once again in Weird Tales. In it we see even more of the elements which define Swords & Sorcery. King Conan is captured by an evil sorcerer and thrown into a dark underground dungeon where he confronts a number of fantastic creatures and traps including a monstrous snake and an intellect devouring plant.  Aided by a friendly sorcerer, who happens to be an enemy of the first sorcerer, Conan escapes the dungeon, returns to Aquilonia and of course defeats the forces intent on destroying his kingdom.
In The Tower of the Elephant, the third of Mr. Howard’s Conan stories to appear in Weird Tales magazine, Conan is depicted as a young warrior who attempts to steal a legendary jewel from a sorcerer’s tower. Early in the adventure, which begins in a tavern, Conan encounters a veteran thief who also aims to steal the fabled jewel and they form a temporary partnership. The veteran thief kills many of the tower guardians with a magical powder that slays silently. After scaling the shear walls of the tower, the pair encounter a giant spider and an epic fight ensues. Naturally Conan prevails in the fight with the spider and then sneaks through the rest of the tower encountering much treasure and other fantastic wonders.
If any of this sounds like an old school D&D adventure, I don’t think that would be an accident. The game seems inspired by just such fantastic literature and cleverly gives us the tools we need to make those stories into the kind of tabletop game experience many of us crave. To quote Mr. Gygax in his Foreword to the 1974 rules, "Those...who feel no thrill upon reading Howard’s Conan saga...will not be likely to find Dungeons & Dragons to their taste. But those whose imaginations know no bounds will find that these rules are the answer to their prayers."