So how come most popular fantasy settings are rubbish and feel poorly thought out compared to Hyboria? I mean - Hyboria seems like a much more credible place. The cultures seems less like persistent stereotypes despite originally being created by a huge misanthrope and the mythology in the world actually seems like mythology to the people that live there.
>>46767398
Ah yes, 8The ever creative name of iranistan.
>>46767428
It's probably supposed to actually be Iran.
>>46767398
Explain to me the appeal of this setting.
>>46767509
No elves, dorfs, haflings or orcs to shit up the setting.
>>46767398
Mostly because the Hyborean age is historical fantasy and most of Howard's setting is based on the actual people who lived there.
>>46767509
I would probably say because it's the Conan setting and it's one of the oldest settings in the fantasy genre that everyone has ripped of for almost a century.
Forgotten Realms is basically a retarded version of Hyboria mixed with Michael Moorecock mythos and popular fantasy races added by popular demand.
>>46767453
it is
>>46767398
Hyboria is a mess of tech levels and philosophical ideas that aren't justified well in being as seperate as they are.
>>46767769
It's also written in a period when some people still thought of Atlantis as a distinct possibility instead of just a hypothetical place invented by Plato.
>>46767769
I never thought much about the tech level because a lot of other popular fantasy settings are typically worse and all over the place in that aspect. I could also see cultures being more segregated from eachother in Hyboria because traveling across the ocean to a distant country is a huge pain in the ass since Hyboria is a super continent.
>>46767769
Human history in general was a mess of tech levels, and even now some (admittedly, isolated) cultures on Earth use what amounts to Stone Age tech.
Why should fantasy settings be different?
>>46767959
The tech level in our current era is all over the place. Just look at North Korea.
>>46767976
NK isn't that backward. They launched a satellite and have an inter-country mobile network. It's rather that full access to tech belongs to a limited group of enlightenedsorcerer-priestsparty officials.
>>46768057
I think a lot of their millitary hardware is just stuff they steal from other countries. I remember hearing that they stole a bunch of millitary trucks from China that someone labeled out of commison. They where later spotted in North Korea and they hadn't even bothered changing the license plates on assets stolen from their allies. Then there are those Volvo vehicles from Sweden that they said they were gonna pay for in the 70's. That was also around the same time that it was made evident that North Korea used their Swedish ambassad to smuggle alcohol and other things. So then they ruined the trust of one of the few countries that was willing to try to help them function as a fledgling country.
North Korea is just weird and so are cultures across history.
Also, shooting up a satellite isn't that hard if you can make a rocket fly straight. I would be more concerned if their satellite is functional or not.
>>46767453
but it's where madagascar would be...
>>46768261
Hyboria is all the continents mashed together. It's thicker than it looks.
>>46768261
Is Madagascar part of a mountain chain?
>>46767453
>>46768261
No, it's actually roughly where it should be. In the Hyborian Age significant parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa are still beneath the oceans.
Hang on, let me...ah, here we go. This is one of Howard's original Hyborian Age maps, drawn by the man himself. It incorporates a rough drawing of Europe so you can see where that's supposed to be and where everything is in relation to it.
He never drew much beyond "Europe", but it's probable that similar things happened there - so, for example, Vendhya is one day gonna get a whole lot bigger as the rest of India rises from the oceans.
>>46768102
Or is North Korea just great from their perspective?
>>46767740
That's why it sucks. Conan and Moorecock are horrible no matter how hard people pretend they aren't. Smashing them together with Tolkien and bringing to a boil until Salvador shows up is the ultimate recipe for literally the shittiest setting. The only way it could get worse is if it was Forgotten Cthulhu Realms.
Although I admit that I have a weakness for Warhammer. Even though I know it's shit tier, it's amusingly terrible. But I will never understand Elric or Conan's appeal.
The best setting is whatever you and your friends make in Microscope or something similar.
>>46770864
>The best setting is whatever you and your friends make in Microscope or something similar.
Let's be honest with ourselves here, the overwhelming majority of those are probably just like the Forgotten Realms or Hyboria anyway, and the ones that aren't are terribly, horribly niche.
>>46771204
If you and your friends like it, it doesn't matter. Even if it is terrible, but in ways you all enjoy, it's a perfect setting.
>>46770864
I like Conan a whole lot more than Moorcock.
Moorcock is just too big on order vs disorder and portraying anarchism as a virtue harder than Conan ever did.
Elric is also a shitty character.
>>46771709
I completely agree. Conan is okay, I guess. But fuck Elric so hard. He is the edgiest Mary Sue to ever edge. He is the equivalent to a character I would make I when I was 13. He's literally worse than Drizzt.
>>46771784
I don't mind the character concept of Elric a whole lot, but he has the personality of a douchy teen. He doesn't deserve Moonglum as a friend!
>>46771882
>Moonglum? That sounds like the name of a hot goth chick, light on the goth and and heavy on the hot
>google that shit
>it's a ginger dude
>>46771979
Moonglum is also a 10/10 friend who will always have your back even if you're Elric.
>>46767398
>black kingdoms
Not even trying anymore
>>46771784
He was the first of those at least, drizzt is only a bad copy.
>>46772768
I think Drizzt might be a less retarded character concept than Drizzt, though. Elric rebells against his people because he has daddy issues and he was spoiled. To my knowledge Drizzt rebells against his people because he is empathic and he thinks that his culture is kinda fucked up.
>>46771882
>>46772059
>“Elric offered Moonglum a smile that had gratitude in it. “You are—a good friend—I wonder why . . .”
>>46767398
>Mu
wut?
>>46773576
It was a hypothetical missing continent proposed in the 19'th century. I guess Howard put it in his setting because Atlantis was also a thing there and it's just as likely to have existed.
>https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(lost_continent)
>>46773104
>and he thinks that his culture is kinda fucked up.
In fairness, it is VERY fucked up.
>>46773576
Lemuria is also a fake non-continent, but its position is off; it should be in the Indian Ocean.
>>46767398
Howard was aiming for something historical-feeling in the first place. "Most popular fantasy settings" never had that ambition.
How does it compare to Glorantha, in your opinions? It's the big exception I can think of, since it always aimed for an even greater degree of what might be called anthropological realism.
>>46773684
Heir society is fucked up because Drows seems to be a cross between Moorcock's Melbonéans and Burroughs Black Martians. So that's like two cruel cultures mashed into one.
>>46767659
>Hyborean age is historical fantasy
>based on the actual people who lived there.
Shall, I tell you about Finno Korean Hyper War and Bock Family Saga or would you prefer history of Mu the lost continent?
>>46767509
It allows you a flexibility in depicting historical epoches given you have Vikings, Dark Age with some high medieval tone Europeans, ancient Egypt and others all at once.
>>46767799
It's always good to keep that in mind that the turn of the century authors were writing from a time with much less (and much less accessible - no internet, no osprey, inter-library loans if they existed were more limited) knowledge or scholarly works on the subject. That isn't to say they were 'stupid', just that they had less solid research and all that. The whole bonanza of fiction '_____ maile' types, the over-abundance of leather (not scale or lamellar but just leather corselets). You've got REH using a motley mix of high medieval or damn well renaissance gear with bronze age stuff. For us modern autists we'd flip out doing that.
>>46767453
Iranistan is an odd duck that is on the same latitude as the black kingdoms yet is vaguely Iranian - not in any serious sense of Achaemenid or Sassanid or whatever inspiration. That is relegated to the Turanistani who are named after Iran's central asian nemeses and vaguely mix Turkic and Iranian stuff (The ruler if I recall right is Yezigerd named after the last major sassie ruler).
>>46773878
The Iranistanian survivors could have just migrated?
>>46770864
>I have a weakness for Warhammer.
I was wondering why I was going to discard your entire opinion as the rant of an insane person with absolute shit taste, and here you are providing a concrete reason.
>>46773697
>Howard was aiming for something historical-feeling in the first place. "Most popular fantasy settings" never had that ambition.
To be honest this was Tolkien's motive for writing LoTR (which like Conan takes actually place on our earth very very long ago) was to write an epic like Beowulf.
Modern fantasy usually doesn't do this though.
>>46767428
To be fair, Iran was called Persia when that was written, and Iran would have been a little-known term in America.
>>46773878
>It's always good to keep that in mind that the turn of the century authors were writing from a time with much less (and much less accessible - no internet, no osprey, inter-library loans if they existed were more limited) knowledge or scholarly works on the subject. That isn't to say they were 'stupid', just that they had less solid research and all that. The whole bonanza of fiction '_____ maile' types, the over-abundance of leather (not scale or lamellar but just leather corselets). You've got REH using a motley mix of high medieval or damn well renaissance gear with bronze age stuff. For us modern autists we'd flip out doing that.
I feel that modern age autism has ruined fantasy world building for me. I like Hyborea because it's about the notion of an age entierly lost to history. Just having it be about the dream of a world that could have been is more interesting to me than something trying to build a world that could have actually existed. It just is more emotionally loaded to me than something that a setting that is just built to fit into some kind of logical system.
>>46773697
Glorantha was written by people with an actual academic understanding of mythology and anthropology while Hyboria is just a mashup of orientalism, pop-history, and a dash of theosophy, stirred into pulpy perfection. The two are on totally different levels, and I say this as someone who loves the shit out of REH.
>>46773945
>>46773945
The cultures of Hyboria are supposed to be similar to Earth cultures because of some sort of shared human genetic memory pseudoscience, not a direct cultural transmission or anything. The ice age reset human culture to the paleolithic, then ancient patterns of culture resurfaced later because theosophy.
>>46774105
I appreciate Hyboria greatly as the spark that set a standard for fantasy that wasn't just Tolkien flavourd. Even DnD was more based on Howard than it ever was based on Tolkien.
>>46774159
That does sound like something Howard might have believed in.
>>46773981
Yep! Bloody iranians ruined iranistan.
>>46774237
>That does sound like something Howard might have believed in.
Well, sort of. In his "Hyborian Genesis" essay he's careful to point out that the whole thing is a work of fiction and is in no way meant to supersede existing science or archaeology.
>>46774105
aaand that's EXACTLY why Glorantha is uninspiring, compared to Hyperborea or Middle Earth.
>>46774345
Sounds entierly reasonable.
>>46774105
I just like Glorantha because it has talking ducks and the tech level.
>>46774382
Well, remember that it's "existing science and archeology" as in the 20s and 30s, when Howard wrote.
Also not sure a guy who memorized the entirely of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner (to the point where if you named a line number he could tell you what that line was) can be called "reasonable."
To say nothing of the fact that he shot himself almost immediately (within the hour) after his mother died. Man it must have sucked to be his dad that day...
>>46774345
>>46774382
It's a cool essay, fills in all the lore of the setting. Called "The Hyborian Age". Check it out.
>>46774066
There is way to make mashup settings like Hyborea pretty compatible with modern autistic nitpicking. Instead of "unknown past" you have "unknown future", dying earth as a fantasy genre is seriously underrated.
>>46774370
>Glorantha is uninspiring
What the fuck? Glorantha has some really cool stuff. Particularly the way mythology and gods work in that setting is pretty interesting.
>>46774468
Well, Heinrich Himmler insisted that the Germans came from Atlantis. I'm sure there was a lot of accepted crackpot theories floating around the world at the time.
I don't mind that Howard was crazy, though. It seems that it takes a certain kind of crazy to be an interesting writer.
Hell, Hemingway was kind of an overcompensating nut powered by alcohol, infidelity and being angry at his mother. He was rewarded with the Nobel price for writing one of the best fishing story ever told.
People liked Stephen King and he basically had a small pharmacy of substances in hisnworking room.
William Gibson that basically created the cyberpunk genre has the life ambition to try all the narcotic substances avaliable in the world.
>>46769714
If it's the size of Europe, it isn't that big.
>>46774627
Don't forget Lovecraft. He was pretty batshit really and didn't even need drugs for that.
>>46773576
>>46773652
>>46773693
Part of the reason why Atlantis, Lemuria and Mu (doesn't that sound redundant?) are part of the Hyborian and pre-Hyborian age is that tectonic theory had not been proven in the first half of the Twentieth century. The popular theory of how geography formed was through cataclysms. Land rising or falling, massive flooding, earthquakes, etc. And if you read Howard's essay "The Hyborian Age", you can see how the cataclysm theory shapes the world as he perceived it and why the world is different. It's silly, yet it's also interesting and makes a roaring tale.
>>46774676
I think that Locecraft was less neurotic than Howard, though, and he started mellowing out just before he died.
>>46770864
>never understand Conan's appeal
what in the actual fuck is wrong with you?
>>46774627
In modern Russia, Oleg Divov thinks he is a psychic and he writes the best damn psychics in science fiction because he really gave the subject lots of thought. And of course arguably his most interesting if also least polished work was from when he was about ten times crazier than he is now.
>>46770864
>Conan is horrible
>I have a weak spot for Warhammer though
>>46773697
Is glorantha the setting with the duck people?
>>46773947
I understand it's shit. But I think it's charmingly shitty. Which is the only way I could possibly accept anyone liking Conan, I could see it being charmingly shitty.
>>46775046
I don't like pulpy bullshit hero fantasies to overcompensate?
>>46775133
Did you even read my post? I don't pretend to think Warhammer is good. And no one should accept Conan is good. They are both trash.
I just find the overly grimdark for the sake of being grimdark funny.
And Conan screams 12 year old power fantasy. Even MORE than Warhammer, which is fucking impressive and I don't understand how anyone can un-ironically enjoy that.
>>46775334
>there's something wrong with a 12-year-old's power fantasies
Are you gay or are you just a faggot?
>>46775334
>>46775255
You reek of someone who was once edgy as all fuck, unironically, and now realizing how edgy they once were, are trying to make themselves seem as mature as they possibly can. Conan is fun as fuck.
>>46775444
Trips of truth, he's either a gay faggot or a woman
>>46775334
Keep posting, anon. Scientist are using your posts to push the envelope of what we know about being a raging faggot. Don't stop now, scientific progress demands it!
>>46775454
I was pretty edgy once. I once un-ironically loved 40k. But I don't pretend to be mature, I'm a 21 year old college student who plays RPGs.
I was mostly shitposting before, but I'm honestly surprised that people actually enjoy Conan. It just seemed too goofy to be fun, but not goofy enough to turn your brain off and roll with it. Like, somewhere between serious and something just fucking insane like Gamma World.
But I suppose if I think Warhammer can be fun, and so many people like, it's worth giving Conan another shot. How is that rpg that is coming out (or is it already out? Maybe I'll check that out.
But still, fuck Elric. You can't convince me that isn't trash.
>>46767428
Don't forget Darfar and Zembabwei. Goodness, how does he do it?
>>46767398
Howard had no clue how rivers or mountains worked.
>>46773945
I think Iranistan is just a weak link in the Hyborian landscape is all. I seem to recall one story setting there and it was really just generic mid-eastern place without the kind of strong flavor that Shem or Turan or the pseudo Crusader states of Koth and Khoraja and Khauran had. Probably REH simply had little little interest in Iran. Not a complaint since it's just the nature of things - if I was robert e howard I would have probably just had a single "Viking" area (not the Aesir/Vanir split) and instead done more with the Iranians.
>>46774066
I know where you're coming from with usually settings nowadays trying to maintain some coherence of chronology and often historical parallels. I'd say that Westeros avoids being a historical reflection since while it's war of the roses in Westeros the old world is fairly varied in theme.
>>46775334
It's not trash, it's pulp - pulp is like fast food, it has a purpose and a time and place. Not everything needs to be high brow (or more often than not just trying to be high brow and elitist but trying too hard) and can just be good, cheap fun.
>>46775645
>that RPG
You mean the MMO? That came out years ago and was dead on arrival, as far as I know, haven't heard anything about any other Conan games, except for one that was released for Xbox that was basically a God of War clone.
To me, Conan and Warhammer are pretty much the same kind of fun. Conan is everything a red blooded American boy could want out of adventure. Swashbuckling, daring do, spoopy monsters and heaving bussoms etc. etc. I guess by that logic it is a 12 year old power fantasy, but idgaf about any of that
As for Elric, I've not read a single word, seems 2 cringe edgy 4 me. Whether or not there is any irony there, idc.
>>46770864
>I hate fantasy,yet I play it
>>46775785
again, Iranistan was named BEFORE Persia changed its name
>>46775689
morons with no grasp of history know nothing - that's how! fucking moron
>>46775829
No, the tabletop rpg. And I just looked it up, it only recently was funded on Kickstarter.
>>46775829
He means the new tabletop RPG coming out. I have no idea how it is. It uses a 2d20 system, which I've heard is pretty decent.
>>46774370
Tolkien had a academic understanding of mythology and linguistics
>>46775976
But Tolkien wasn't working 'by committee'
>>46775949
>>46775966
Coincidentally enough there is a new Conan vidya in the works. Seems like its trying to ape TES, Witcher and Mad Max. This table top RPG has peaked my interest though.
>>46775829
>>46775645
I think he means the pen-and-paper one that just got kickstarted. I ran the playtest version of it for an event at a con. It's passable, I guess. The 2d20 system is extremely fiddly, with most player action taking the form of passing around the three different kinds of plot tokens.
A particular rule that annoys me is how reactions work. To take a defensive reaction, like dodging or parrying an attack, you have to spend Doom (adding it if you're a PC or taking it away if you're an NPC.) And you can do this infinitely many times a round, with the Doom cost increasing by 1 for each additional reaction you take in a round. This means that Doom is being passed back and forth nonstop, and it requires metagame thinking every turn as you decide whether or not to let your character fail to give the GM less of a purely abstract resource.
As a GM, you also have to be super careful of allowing your players to roll dice. Extra degrees of success on a roll generates momentum, a resource that only players can use. You can't just tell everyone to roll Perception or Lore or whatever, because then you've just completely filled up the momentum gauge with something that was supposed to be a relatively minor event. Momentum is the other thing that makes the game super fiddly, as it comes and goes every single turn and players have to make metagame decisions about whether to use it right now or save some for the rest of the party.
>>46776026
Are you talking about Glorantha? Neither was that setting. The vast majority was straight out of Greg Stafford, with some additions from the tabletop games he was running in the setting and some of the input of his players.
>>46775921
Knowing history is one thing. Cribbing it wholesale, changing a letter or two, and trying to pass it off as original is another.
>>46773697
In my opinion glorantha is great, but precisely because it's anthropologically realistic or whatever it's impossible for me to play it. Half of that setting is too autistic and/or weird for the tastes of my players, and there's no point on playing it instead of just something invented by me if I have to change the original too much.
>>46776099
I've been setting up for a potential Sartar campaign next school year. I've been noticing this issue as well. It'll be a challenge get to get people into a tribal mindset like that.
>>46776067
Sorry, then, anon! I know near nothing of it, based my shitty opinion on a previous anon's assertion that a group of academics made it. Academics hiding from the real world trigger me.
>>46776081
He wasn't passing it off as original. He left things 'decipherable' to help spur reader intrigue and give their imaginations a 'hook'.
>>46776061
I think I would rather just run Conan in Savage Worlds. Which is all about pulp anyway.
>>46776150
What he meant is that Greg Stafford does INTENSE research on mythology. The guy is elbow deep in it, and puts all that research into his games. You can see it in his other stuff, like Pendragon, which includes extracts of Thomas Mallory and other Arthurian literature extracts as examples, and features a lot of fairly obscure Arthurian details.
>>46776135
Yeah, I can see what you mean. I fucking love Glorantha and have read most of books just for lore, but never played in that setting (aside KoDP, but that is a computer game) and probably never will. It's just one of those kind of settings that would make really cool book or a movie, but roleplaying it is not very appealing.
>>46767398
Because Hyboria is based off things that usually aren't explored ir used as inspiration. It started out as as historical fiction until Howard realized how much research that would require.
>>46776190
His method didn't age well. He could get away with having that kind of deus-ex-machina-grade convergent evolution in the 30's, when nobody questioned why Superman looked exactly like a human, and as late as the 60's you could get away with things like Star Trek having a gangster planet and a hippie planet and a Roman planet with humans and carbon copies of specific human societies. Nowadays if you're writing a fictional history of a pre-Ice Age civilization, you can't just call your Picts Picts. You can't even change one letter and call them Pucts. It breaks suspension of disbelief.
>>46776411
His Picts are supposed to be the same Picts as our history. They also became the origin of the stories faeries after they devolved and hid in caves.
This was a very widely used idea, even among some historians. You can even see it in The Once and Future King. People hadn't quite figured out who invaded who in the history of the British Isles, and some thought the Picts were the original inhabitants, pushed out by the Britons, who were pushed out by the Saxons.
>>46775097
Yeah, this is why I stick with authors that has some kinda crazy in them. They are less likely to produce boring stories.
>>46773697
Glorantha isn't as much fun to me. It takes itself too seriously, whereas Hyboria was written to have exciting adventures in.
>>46774608
I find it dull. To each his own and all that.
>>46774105
>Glorantha was written by people with an actual academic understanding of mythology and anthropology
You mean it was designed by a college student who managed to create the dullest setting ever by simply copy things he learned in his classes and then adding duck people.
It might be the driest, most tedious setting ever conceived. It is literally more boring than reality.
>>46776241
It helps that Stafford is as crazy as a shithouse rat and thinks he's a real shaman with magic powers.
>>46776897
Everyone is allowed an opinion.
>>46775770
He was a pulp writer, not a geographer, and he lived before the internet and before worldbuilding was a real hobby. He never even finished college.
>>46775255
I love Conan for the same reason I love the adventures of mythological heroes and demigods. To me Conan is basically in the same tier as Hercules. However, unlike Hercules he is also a selfmade übermensch who radiates selfconfidence rather than just pure physical strength and skill. But above all, Conan is always true to himself and he always makes the best of his situation rather than fall into despair.
These are the qualites that makes me enjoy Conan as an action hero and a thematic character. I see no shame in enjoying this powerfantasy, because I don't want to be Conan. I just want to immerse myself for a few moments a year in a character that I consider to have moral fibres of steel and no cuntish grey moral bullshit, that is apparently the cheap trend of fantasy fiction these days.
>>46775645
Elric is trash, but some of Michael Moorcocks other stories in his setting is actually enjoyable. Hell, Moorcock was surprised that people liked Elric as much as they did back in the day.
>>46776081
But at the time Zimbabwe was named Rhodesia and Darfur an obscure part of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.
What, did you think REH came up with that by watching CNN in the 90s?
>all this Elric hate
I never thought the stories were that bad honestly. He was just never written as a character to sympathize with. He's literally the opposite of Conan - sullen, brooding and reliant on his sword and magic over Conan's typically cheerful, outgoing and reliant only on himself. That's not a bad thing, he's just harder to like.
>>46776514
To its credit, The Once and Future King is not remotely trying to be historically accurate or even plausible. Willful anachronisms are where 90 percent of the jokes come from, everything from the big stuff with Merlyn to intentionally waffling on the question of whether Uther Pendragon is or isn't supposed to be William the Conqueror.
>>46777267
He was cribbing from the ancient African kingdoms that those modern places would later be named after. I hate to break it to you, but they did not name themselves after Conan stories.
>>46777061
Of all the words I'd use to describe Conan, "moral" isn't one of them. Conan always feels like he has the right to whatever he can take by force, which is pretty much a perfect lack of morality.
>>46777293
I'm weirded out, because I actually like the Elric stories, since they're like the 80's metal album cover of fantasy.
The stories are filled with awesome ideas, they're decently written, and I enjoyed Elric's philosophical quandaries and his hopeless fight against entities beyond his ability to understand.
>>46777635
They're OK, but the dialogue is freaking terrible.
"OH MY SOUL I NEVER THOUGHT IT
WOULD
BE
LIKE
THIS"
Bleh.
>>46777533
Morals and mores change a lot in time and between individuals, look at all those Middle eastern fanatics than blow themselves up killing civilians and how are praised as martyrs be they people.
I'm not the other anon but I see what he says, Conan never betrays himself, and he does whatever he likes without breaking his own codes.
>>46777846
Morality doesn't require pacifism; in fact it often incites people to violence even if they have no chance of personal gain from it. Amoral people can at least be counted on to do what benefits themselves, but moral people sometimes ruin everything for everyone for the sake of an imaginary principle.
>>46777846
>Conan never betrays himself
He turns against his own people and switches religions just because an opportunity presents itself. He prides himself on his barbarism but hates everyone more barbaric than himself and willingly becomes king of the most civilized power in the world. He's never betrayed his principles because he has no principles to betray. He's a pure amoral sociopath in an environment where that kind of personality can thrive.
Superior setting coming through.
>>46777533
I use moral in the sense of Conan's own set of morals in his own setting, rather than the morals of modern people in first world countries.
He seldom have any doubts about his actions, he always treat his friends well, he is always straightforward, he makes a point of repaying his debts, and despite being a thief he is not dominated by greed or lament over loss of worldy possessions.
These are principles he seldom stray from and I think there is more to Conan than him just being a murderhobo.
>>46778688
"Don't take shit by force and kill people just because you can" isn't a recent development in morality; it's literally the most fundamental part of it and the only one that every culture has in some form. Being "straightforward" isn't really saying much, and neither is being nice to your friends - of course you're nice to them; that's what makes them your friends. Using your treatment of your friends as an example of your moral fiber is like bragging that you never kill or steal unless you feel like it. Repaying debts is important but not an option when you live by theft and murder, as each of your victims is a creditor you're never going to pay back.
>>46778308
Yet Conan was still a better king than the previous one. He was also a more fair and honorable ruler than the noblemen conspiring to rob him off the throne.
>>46779173
That doesn't make him good in a moral sense; it only makes him competent. It doesn't cost him anything and in fact benefits him, which is exactly why he does it. He treats his subjects equally mostly because he's equally indifferent to them all. He's smart and excellent at everything he's ever tried; that isn't in question.
>>46779173
Yeah, because seizing the throne by force would be wrong... Hey, wait...
Is Conan Chaotic Neutral? If so, does this mean he's one of the few examples of CN that's actually done right?
>>46779576
That he is. I can't think of many other good examples.
>>46779170
Morality is subjective. Some cultures don't frown on senseless killing and taking peoples shit as a throphy.
>>46780653
If a culture values it, it's not *senseless* killing.
>>46767976
Blatant lies and American propaganda. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is the world leader in technology. All other nations merely attempt to fabricate meager copies of our glorious leader's brilliant inventions.
>>46777433
Anon's point was that at the time that REH was writing, those names were obscure, especially to the readers of pulp magazines.
Like you probably wouldn't even find them in an atlas--maybe in an encyclopedia.
>>46770864
This is what /lit/ actually believes
>>46775255
>if you enjoy heroic characters you're overcompensating
>pay no mind to the insecurity that drives me to shit post though
>>46771204
Horribly niche is where all the fun happens.
Current favorite. Say what you will about Sanderson's writing, but he's a god-tier worldbuilder.
