A Melting Pot of Tastes

[PrinceYyrkoon]

So how about posting some real Pict prayers so we can compare/contrast?

So far, you have brought nothing beyond the name and skin colar to show that they are based on Picts.

You dont need to post here, this argument isnt the one youre looking for...

 

[zozotroll]

Acly, it seems to be exactly the one I am looking for.ua;

 

[PrinceYyrkoon]

Acly, it seems to be exactly the one I am looking for.ua;

Ok, if it is, I'd suggest rereading the last four or five pages.

 

[zozotroll]

considering the number of times you have replied to me, I think your memory is slipping of who you are posting to. Of course, I suppose you have so many it is not surprising you forgot one or two.

 

[PrinceYyrkoon]

considering the number of times you have replied to me, I think your memory is slipping of who you are posting to. Of course, I suppose you have so many it is not surprising you forgot one or two.

:lol: Im old, I get confused easily!

Anyway, its been enjoyable. I bet Supplemet Four is amazed at how successful his thread has been!

 

[zozotroll]

When everybody agrees, there is not much reason to go beyond 1-2 pages.

I do sometimes learn something from these things. Mostly by researching my own position. But the reason doesnt matter so much as as that it happens.

 

[PrinceYyrkoon]

When everybody agrees, there is not much reason to go beyond 1-2 pages.

I do sometimes learn something from these things. Mostly by researching my own position. But the reason doesnt matter so much as as that it happens.

Yeah, what are forums for, if not to have a good old barny? I hope no one gets offended, its just forum talk. I really like Vince's Across thunder River, its probably one of the best supplements for the game.

 

[zozotroll]

Does anyone here have any idea of just what REH could have known of real Picts? I know we cant tell what he actualy knew himself, but I have no idea just what scholars knew about them.

Many old cultures where very poorly understood. Perhaps REH knew little beyond the name, and just tacked on whatever came to mind.

 

[Clovenhoof]

Ever noticed how, in most frpgs, there's one taste that is followed, which is usually based on medieval Europe?

No, can't say I did.

Most FRPGs I know are, on the contrary, a kind of "kitchen-sink" scenario, where you find _EVERYTHING_ from Arctic to Jungle and from Stone Age to Baroque.

REH's world is a little bit better in this respect because it tends to make those cultural and techlevel transitions in a gradient. With the one big exception of Pictland (practically stone age) lying _right next door_ to late-medieval Aquilonia, and that's really my biggest beef with that world.

But as I implied, a good many FRPG worlds do that kind of blunder much more blatantly and frequently. The worst one I know, and I mean BY FAR the worst, is the main setting of the Dark Eye, which bloody well compresses this stone-age-to-renaissance and arctic-to-jungle gradient in a peninsula the size of friggin' Argentina.

Then there's also other mainstream worlds like the Forgotten Realms, pretty honking big and featuring everything from arabs over mongols to japanese, just spread out over a wider space, which doesn't really matter though because you can just teleport yourself wherever you want to go...

So, no, the diversity of REH's world is no exception.

 

[Supplement Four]

So, no, the diversity of REH's world is no exception.

I guess I was referring to fantasy novels...or, at least, that's what I was thinking when I wrote the OP.

If someone says, "Here, read this!" The first thing that pops into my head is "traditional" fantasy.

 

[Spongly]

Does anyone here have any idea of just what REH could have known of real Picts? I know we cant tell what he actualy knew himself, but I have no idea just what scholars knew about them.

Many old cultures where very poorly understood. Perhaps REH knew little beyond the name, and just tacked on whatever came to mind.

Well this is a very good point - at the time Howard was writing, almost nothing was available in mainstream scholarship that had anything very sensible to say about the real historical Picts. They were regarded as a strange aboriginal bunch of pygmies driven into the far reaches of the British Isles and speaking a non-Indo-European language.

Nowadays, the evidence has been marshalled, reconsidered and massively added to by archaeology, and the picture which emerges is of the Picts as a confederation of tribes formerly known to the Romans as Caledonii - basically another group of British "Celts".

Proverbially speaking of course, to Romans in Britain, Pictland in the 3rd century AD, when the Picts are first mentioned, is "Injun Country" - it's the barbarian territory beyond the Wall where people still paint themselves and live in feuding clans. Therefore the name fits well as a "Latin" style name meaning simply "painted men" - as Aquilonians have a bit of Latin gloss in their culture, it would make sense that any group of painted savages could be, to them, "Picts".

Certainly the atmosphere in Wolves Beyond the Border and Beyond the Black River does seem to mirror something like James Fennimore Cooper's Last of the Mohicans more than anything else, and the cultures both of the Aquilonian settlers and Picts do seem remarkably like those of the American settlers and Native Americans in the 18th century, only without gunpowder. Is that surprising given that Zingaran and Argossean pirates are esentially 18th century Captain Hook types without muskets as well?

Howard's world is really not as logically thought out as people seem to be assuming - it's a grab bag of almost every historical period and culture all thrown into one world to allow him to tell stories with one central character set in almost any milieu - Conan can go from being in a Wild West story one day, to an 18th century pirate tale the next day, before turning up in Bronze Age Egypt at a later date.

 

[Demetrio]

Howard's world is really not as logically thought out as people seem to be assuming - it's a grab bag of almost every historical period and culture all thrown into one world to allow him to tell stories with one central character set in almost any milieu

I agree entirely. He wanted 'bags of flavour' and so mixed and matched at his whim. And a jolly good thing too.

Is that surprising given that Zingaran and Argossean pirates are esentially 18th century Captain Hook types without muskets as well?

I certainly don't think so (though I'd say they were C17 pirates sans powder myself). I'm only amazed that anyone would think Howard's Picts weren't rather caricaturish 'Red Indians' of Cooper vintage, as you say.

As for what was known about the Picts at the time he wrote, it certainly was far less than now but stuff like their stone buildings, writing, afgriculture and animal husbandry was known, if still the subject of some debate. In essence, if Howard really did think that he was basing the Picts off the real Picts and not stereotypical American Indians, he clearly did zero research into the matter.

 

[Jacek]

Howard's world is really not as logically thought out as people seem to be assuming - it's a grab bag of almost every historical period and culture all thrown into one world to allow him to tell stories with one central character set in almost any milieu

I agree entirely. He wanted 'bags of flavour'

...or simply wrote down whatever idea that had come to him and used the character he felt comfortable with. In time as the number of stories and locations grew, he decided to collect them all and shape one world that accomodated everything he created.
That's one possible way of originating the world of the Hyborian Age :wink:

 

[Demetrio]

Except he wrote The Hyborian Age

'When I began writing the Conan tales...'

 

[Jacek]

So he did. The cultural-social differences between neighboring nations seem to deep for me, though. As if there wasn't any influence getting over frontiers.

 

[Demetrio]

Oh certainly.

Howard's world has pretty tight cultural boundaries. Another blow against its realism (mind you it is fantasy...)

 

[Sting52jb]

I've stayed out of this argument for the reason I stay out of most of them you can never win. Anyways I though i would through my two cents in.

In one Kull story he is wounded and has what he believes is a dream where he is transported to roman occupied Britain. There he helps the decedents of Brul (a Pict) united the different clans to fight the Romans.
So the Picts are very much suppose to be the historical Picts.

Now Culturally, while Howard may have latter given the Pict some Native American cultural traits, this could very well be because he didn't know all that much about historical Picts.

I for one do not like the fact that many people use the Picts as Native Americans and actually do not care for the Across the Thunder River book because of these parallels.

Also your arguments that Culturally the Picts of Howard's pictland do not culturally match true world picts because of metal working and animal husbandry is nonsense as the Asir and Vanir do not really match up as Vikings or Norsmen. The Argosian do not really match up as ancient Greeks, and the Stygian only superficially resemble ancient Egyptian culture.

Just my two cents and I'll probably have a dozen people disagree with me but

 

[PrinceYyrkoon]

I've stayed out of this argument for the reason I stay out of most of them you can never win. Anyways I though i would through my two cents in.

In one Kull story he is wounded and has what he believes is a dream where he is transported to roman occupied Britain. There he helps the decedents of Brul (a Pict) united the different clans to fight the Romans.
So the Picts are very much suppose to be the historical Picts.

Now Culturally, while Howard may have latter given the Pict some Native American cultural traits, this could very well be because he didn't know all that much about historical Picts.

I for one do not like the fact that many people use the Picts as Native Americans and actually do not care for the Across the Thunder River book because of these parallels.

Also your arguments that Culturally the Picts of Howard's pictland do not culturally match true world picts because of metal working and animal husbandry is nonsense as the Asir and Vanir do not really match up as Vikings or Norsmen. The Argosian do not really match up as ancient Greeks, and the Stygian only superficially resemble ancient Egyptian culture.

Just my two cents and I'll probably have a dozen people disagree with me but

I agree with you!

 

[David St-Michel]

So do I, to a certain extent!

 

[VincentDarlage]

In one Kull story he is wounded and has what he believes is a dream where he is transported to roman occupied Britain. There he helps the decedents of Brul (a Pict) united the different clans to fight the Romans.
So the Picts are very much suppose to be the historical Picts.

I'll have to find it, but I read an excellent article which showed Howard's progression and understanding of the Picts through his stories, from Kull, to Conan, to Bran Mak Morn and other stories, showing how he kept changing the Picts and his portrayal of them not only based on his understanding of them, but also based on his story needs. Certainly, the Picts of Bran Mak Morn's stories are considerably different from Hyborian age Picts. Even that article remarked on the Indian aspects of the Hyborian age Picts. Yes, eventually they morph and change as their circumstances change.