Conan Revisited

Robert Howard's Barbarian and gaming
My introduction to the character Conan probably came through Marvel Comic's Conan "comic" books. Sometime around 1970, my sister picked up a copy of Marvel Conan, which I read and instantly became a fan. In those days the back section of many comics had a brief history piece connected to the subject matter and I recall reading that the character Conan the Barbarian was the creation of pulp author Robert E. Howard. That knowledge led me to the collected stories of Robert E. Howard, especially the fantastic ones including Conan, Kull, and other sword-swinging heroic barbarian types.
Conan proved a popular intellectual product during the 1970's with many paperback books to be found in local retail book racks which featured the great Cimmerian or barbarians bearing different names, but cut of the same heroic cloth. A series of Conan collected stories published by Lancer Books and later Ace Books containing stories by Howard himself as well as some additional stories written by L. Sprague DeCamp and Lin Carter fed the appetite of a hungry group of fans. These volumes often featured captivating cover art by Frank Frazetta. The Conan popularity quickly led to a number of other paperback books by various authors using Conan-like characters and eventually to a major motion picture starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Onto my personal mental stage, prepped to appreciate heroic fiction by reading many Conan stories as well as The Lord of The Ring and other fantastic fantasy of a similar vein, came the original fantasy role-playing game. No doubt I saw this new wargame as a way to further explore my interest in heroic fantasy. The stories I had been reading, especially those Conan stories, greatly influenced my personal brand of fantasy finding their way into most of my game player character concepts as well as the settings I created as a referee. To this day, I run a home-brewed world setting that draws heavily from R.E. Howard's world of Conan.
Apparently there are/were many fans of Conan who have ended up playing adventure games and there have been a number of RPG products that have either used the Conan IP or feature heroic barbarians who much resemble the famous Cimmerian. TSR published a number of Conan related products including reference to Conan in the original Deities & Demigods, a couple of Conan D&D modules and a complete Conan boxed game authored by David "Zeb" Cook. GURPS featured a number of Conan titles during their 3e days.

Modiphius recently published a very attractive Conan RPG that draws heavily on the work of a number of R.E. Howard historians as well as the original fiction of Mr. Howard. Modiphius uses their 2d20 system in their Conan RPG and while I have experimented some with the system, and I do think I see where the intent of the momentum and doom economy is to give one the feel of the source fiction, it can all be  a bit too mechanical feeling for my taste. Barbarians of Lemuria by Simon Washbourne and Barbarians & Basilisks by John M. Stater are two role-playing games that also draw heavily upon the traditional sword & sorcery barbarian icon for inspiration and work better mechanically for me.

While moving some paperback books recently, I stumbled upon a few of my old copies of the Conan books including the one pictured above. This is one of the Ace reprints and why the layout artist choose to overlap the Conan title covering part of the barbarian's head in the Frank Frazetta illustration seems odd to me. The cover illustration is one of Frazetta's best and features Conan astride the ape-man Thak wearing a priest's red robe from the tale Rogues in the House. The dramatic effect of the facial expressions of both Conan and Thak, the use of red and the motion in the piece really stands out to me and conveys some of the energy and atmosphere found in Howard's story. Howard's writing is a celebration of nature, not the soft, beautiful side of nature, but rather the tooth and claw side. Dark, savage, and exciting, Howard, like E.R. Burroughs, brings us up close and personal with a world our collective subconscious may dimly remember and in the process provides us with engaging adventure fiction and possibly with a connection to our ancestral past. Yes, it all makes for some fantastic escapism and imaginative gaming.