Bored by REH Purism, or "Up With Pastiches!"

Iron_Chef

Mongoose
I'm bored with REH purism, especially in the Mongoose Conan books. Sure, not all the pastiches were great, but many were. I don't even like the word "pastiche" because it has such a negative connotation. I prefer to think of them as sequels by different writers. :wink: They have the "Conan" brand name on them, so they are "official" enough for me. I just choose to ignore the really bad ones and use the ones I like.

I think it is presumptuous, if not criminal, to discard thirty years worth of material just because it wasn't written by REH. It's still Conan. I've read twenty Conan pastiches since January (plus misc. short stories and comics), and only a couple of them sucked. I don't get what the big deal is. I've read most, if not all, of the novels by Robert Jordan, Karl Edward Wagner, Leonard Carpenter, Steve Perry, John C. Hocking and John Maddox Roberts. They were all great (not that I haven't heard bad things about Perry and Carpenter's later novels, like Conan The Great). The only ones I read that sucked were the ones by Roland Green (Conan The Guardian) and Poul Anderson (Conan The Rebel). Anderson is a decent enough writer [unlike Green] but I just absolutely couldn't get past his liberal use of Set and Mitra making personal appearances and having normal conversations, it read like a bad FR novel in that regard.

Most of my Conan RPG ideas are inspired by the pastiches, not by Howard directly. In fact, I bought the Coming of Conan REH Collection and PREFER the pastiches as RPG inspiration. They fill in so much more detail to the world, which is especially important without a proper Gazetteer available. I mean, you take a novel like Conan And The Treasure of Python and it just goes into so much incredible detail into the Stygian port city of Khemi, for example, or Conan The Rogue and the Royal Burg of Sicas in Aquilonia. You're not going to get that level of detail even in the Road of Kings, I'll wager! Name any pastiche novel I've read and I can probably come up with at least one cool encounter to include in a Conan game pretty quickly.

I think it's wrong to sweep thirty years worth of non-REH Conan under the carpet and pretend they don't exist. If it's such a big deal to keep 'em separated, at least give us a "Conan Pastiche Sourcebook" so we can mix and match material as desired without the REH Purists screaming "You've got your chocolate in my peanut butter!" I mean, without all the pastiche material, there would never have been a Conan movie, comic, or this RPG.
 
Worry not :)

We wanted the main rulebook (and, to an extent Skelos) to be purist because, well, we knew that is what the majority of players would have wanted. However, we are now going to be delving into the pastiches. Basically, we are giving you chaps the choice in your own games - remain purely Howard, or use the pastiches to your heart's content.
 
I'd second that vote. I dont mind at all.
I've yet to read any of these pastiches, but they can't be worse than the REH-stuff I'm reading now. :shock:

/wolf
 
msprange said:
Worry not :)

We wanted the main rulebook (and, to an extent Skelos) to be purist because, well, we knew that is what the majority of players would have wanted. However, we are now going to be delving into the pastiches. Basically, we are giving you chaps the choice in your own games - remain purely Howard, or use the pastiches to your heart's content.

Huzzah! The people (of the black circle) have spoken and Mongoose has answered! :p
 
One of the points of my review on En-world was the
scrolls of skelos " takes quite a hard line with the Conan ethos, not straying too far. This is good and bad. Some inspirational, "out on a limb" ideas in the same direction rather than adaptation of the canon might have taken this book from good to excellent or superb"

For example, I thought the prestige classes were good but rather bland. Something like the alienist, doomdreamer, thrall of Jubliex, Blood magus, archenemancer of Zath, I think would work in a Conan setting. I mean you would have to power back their magic, if they get a supernatural ability call it a new spell that you can only learn at that point in the cult. Don't stack it with new known spells (Advanced Spell). Some higher level abilities would have to be scrapped but the style, the flavour

Of course I have great heaps of respect for your work msprange, I'm just in the home-brew camp


:twisted:
 
Iron_Chef said:
They have the "Conan" brand name on them, so they are "official" enough for me. I just choose to ignore the really bad ones and use the ones I like.

I think it is presumptuous, if not criminal, to discard thirty years worth of material just because it wasn't written by REH. It's still Conan. I mean, without all the pastiche material, there would never have been a Conan movie, comic, or this RPG.

If it wasn't for the yarns written by Robert E. Howard, there wouldn't have been any pastiches to begin the trail you mentioned.

I recently re-read several of the pastiches and couldn't find any that I particularly liked. Imagine if they were to put out a Tarzan RPG. Should they include the Johnny Weissmuller movies as Canon? (I loved those movies, but my vote would be still "no".) How about the Phillip Jose Farmer pastiches? Or should it stick with ERB?

I'd rather create my own Khemi (or other cities) than have to go reading through a bunch of pastiches as game research. The descriptions of Khemi in The Hour of the Dragon are more than enough for me.

That said, I am glad the main RPG book is as purist as possible, as that honours REH and his work. Pastiches should definitely be regarded as supplemental filler, and that is fine by me.
 
If it wasn't for the yarns written by Robert E. Howard, there wouldn't have been any pastiches to begin the trail you mentioned.

Amen to that.

The pastiche happy tinkerers will turn CONAN into D&D with a slightly different combat system in a couple of years.
 
Wow Vincent, I can't stop reading pastiche novels. I read at least one a week, sometimes two or three, to get into the Conan RPG frame of mind. I've hardly touched my Coming of Conan REH collection even though I've had it since almost the same time I started reading the pastiche novels. I just go to my used bookstore and buy armloads of them every few weeks. They are fun, fast reads that really inspire me, even if they are flawed here and there (usually the endings which tend to overrely on the sudden appearance and immediate defeat or withdrawal of various demon-gods). I can vividly recall the details of every pastiche novel I've ever read (even from twenty years ago), yet I have great difficulty keeping canonical REH Conan material straight in my head aside from a few stories reread recently. Why is that? :?:
 
Anonymous said:
If it wasn't for the yarns written by Robert E. Howard, there wouldn't have been any pastiches to begin the trail you mentioned.

Amen to that.

The pastiche happy tinkerers will turn CONAN into D&D with a slightly different combat system in a couple of years.

I don't think that's the case at all. 90% of the pastiche novels I've read did not go anywhere near crossing the line into FR/D&D territory, and I don't advocate anybody doing that. A minority of the books did, granted, but most were just straight-up Conan adventures that seemed plenty consistent with REH to me.

Uh-oh! I've riled up the purists. Set preserve us! :wink:
 
Well I've only read one piece of Conan 'sucessor's litterature' (how's that ? Is that better ?) so I can't really tell. The one I read sucked, but it doesn't prove anything. I can reason by analogy though : I remember Mythos chapters in COC being far better in the editions they kicked out successor's input of (Mr Derleth, I'm looking at you !) than the ones where they kept it. The best being CoC d20 Mythos chapter where had pure Lovecraft mythos in the main text and successor's input in dedicated paragraphs. So, thumbs up to Mongoose for doing the same !
 
Iron_Chef said:
I can vividly recall the details of every pastiche novel I've ever read (even from twenty years ago), yet I have great difficulty keeping canonical REH Conan material straight in my head aside from a few stories reread recently. Why is that? :?:

Possibly because something about them excites you, which keeps the memory of them intense. I am just the opposite. The explosive action and intense atmosphere of the REH originals stay in my mind, lurking there like a gloating demon.

I've read and reread REH so much, that the errors in the pastiches just grate upon my nerves. I read most of the pastiches when they were first published, and enjoyed them at the time (I was a teenager), but the pastich plots all ran together for me even then, but Howard's always stuck out in my own mind. I also didn't like the emphasis on traditional good vs. evil that seem to exist in the pastiches (Steve Perry's white, black and grey "squares", orders of magic, from Conan the Fearless comes to mind). How many necromancers did Conan have to fight in those Tor novels? Some of the stories even went to DnD generic, stock situations - "Conan is hired in a tavern" sort of stuff (same Fearless novel, I think). The villains seemed cardboard. Xaltotun was, to me, much more memorable than Capenter's "Necromancer Horaspes".

Perhaps to you, the pastiches seem all new and wonderful. To me, they seem like rehashed work, seen a million times before in countless movies, books, comics, and TV shows. However, when I read Howard (at the young age of 13), fantasy was new to me, so Howard's stories were, to me, all new and wonderful. When I reread the REH stories, I am swished back to that mindset, to the innocence of youth, and they still are, to me, magical.

Robert E. Howard's material always seemed to be about a man struggling alone, despite the knowledge that his victories will be fleeting and only important to himself. If he chose to run for his life, the world wasn't going to end. I think he saves the world too much in the pastiches. Essentially, the elements in Howard's stories resonated within me as a youth.

I am going to quote David Weber's introduction to Baen's edition of Bran Mak Morn:

"Today's heroic fantasy seems to concentrate on worlds in which the odds may be great and the consequences of defeat dire but the hope for total victory exists. If the hero can stave off defeat, if he can survive plots, counter-plots, fell beasts, sorcerers, devious divine opponents, or what have you, then he can win through to a new golden age without the sense that "this, too, must pass" or that his moment of triumph will be fleeting.

Not so for Robert E. Howard, whose characters were engaged upon a long, inevitably hopeless rearguard action even when they seemed to be forging forward most strongly. I think we need a little more of that today."
 
Hyena said:
The best being CoC d20 Mythos chapter where had pure Lovecraft mythos in the main text and successor's input in dedicated paragraphs. So, thumbs up to Mongoose for doing the same !

Yes! I agree totally. Thumbs and hands up to Mongoose!
 
I much prefer the purist approach in the rulebooks to treating any old pastiche as canon. People wouldn't dream of treating a Tolkien pastiche on the same level as Tolkien's own works, I can't really see why Howard deserves inferior treatment. Much of the pastiche stuff directly contradicts Howard (& other pastiches). I like a lot of Marvel Savage Sword of Conan stories - my favourite is the one where Conan is captured by the ruler of 'Zamora' - a _city_ called Zamora, presumably capital of the country of Zamora - and is used to impersonate the demigod Shan, leading a Zamoran invasion of Brythunia. Annoyed by this, the _real_ god Shan comes down from the heavens to kick Conan's ass, but of course Conan kicks _his_ ass and sends him defeated back to heaven, humiliated in front of the other Zamoran gods. It was a great story but it doesn't deserve to be treated as 'canon' by the RPG.
 
I've been reading a lot of non-Conan Howard works lately, in addition to the Conan stuff and the pastiche short stories by DeCamp and Carter. I think for me the difference is that when the story (Conan or not) is written by Howard it feels like he really believes the story has certain reality, the attitude is his real attitude, and he writes unconstrained. Some of the pastiches are pretty good (I like the DeCamp/Carter story "Black Tears" for example) but most of them just don't give off the conviction that the stories are "real" they way Howard does.

on the other hand de gustibus non disputandum.
 
Let's try not to perpetuate any tribalization into 'purists' and 'non-purists'. For myself, I don't find it hard to distinguish between one of the great authors of the 20th century and the work of exploitative hacks commissioned by an even-more-exploitative Conan Properties; the only authority the pastiches have over fan fiction is that they were published by people who at the time had the legal right to do so; but, I love the idea of working in a pre-established world in principle, as long as you follow how that world actually works (as discussed very well by Ron Edwards in Sorcerer & Sword which I just got), as a few (Karl Edward Wagner, Kurt Busiek) seem to have done.

There's already non-REH Conan in the core book -- the name Arenjun, a lot of those map details (all those mountains! why?), for instance. For many, and I didn't feel this way until I got acquainted with the situation recently, the pastiches' continuity details carry with them the stench of decades of abuse of Robert E. Howard's memory. Much more important is whether the game continues to model itself on the stories' or the pastiches' MODE.
 
VincentDarlage said:
Possibly because something about them excites you, which keeps the memory of them intense. I am just the opposite. The explosive action and intense atmosphere of the REH originals stay in my mind, lurking there like a gloating demon.[/b]

Thank you, Vincent, for stating this so clearly and eloquently.

I feel exactly the same way - having come into the Conan world when the white cover Ace 12-volume series was being published.

Even then, I felt that there was something fundamentally missing from the non-REH stories - just as I consider Boris Valejo's Conan to be markedly inferior to Frazetta's.

In his prose, REH achieved passages of intense vitality and even beauty, while not a one of the pastiche writers has given me a scene with anything near the intensity of Conan's talk of the afterlife with Belit, or the savage joy I felt reading him challenge his foes with "Who dies first?"

Most of them, also, lose the core of who Conan was. I'm going to quote Karl Edward Wagner here, from an essay he wrote about the genesis of his Kane character:

Howard takes great care to develop mood and atmosphere in his best stories, and in doing so makes the reader feel the dark, desperate undercurrent of his characters' schemes and struggles. It is in this that I feel closest to Howard, and it is something that his conscious imitators have never captured. The disparity of writing quality aside, the mood immediately sets pastiche-Howard apart from the real article. Pseudo-Conan is out having just the best time, 'cause he's the biggest, toughest, mightiest-thewed barbarian on the block, and he's gonna have a swell time of brawling and chopping monsters and rescuing princesses and offing wizards and drinking and brawling and... and... etc... etc... But in Howard's fiction the underlying black mood of pessimism is always there, and even Conan, who enjoys a binge or a good fight, is not having a good time of it at all. This is particularly true of Solomon Kane and King Kull--driven men from whom not even a desperate battle can exorcise their black mood, while Conan at times can find brief surcease in excesses of pleasure or violence. I think Solomon Kane and King Kull were closer to Howard's true mood, while Conan represented the ability to escape briefly from the black reality that Howard wished he could emulate. He failed.

Simply put - Conan was Robert E. Howard. The pastiche authors aren't. They can try to be, but (for their sakes, I hope) none of them were driven by the demons that REH was, and few can approximate his dark world-view into their work - where their Conan is a rough-and-ready barbarian for hire.
 
Well said, Jason.

What a wonderful quote from Karl Edward Wagner!

Sure, the pastiches may describe more areas than Howard covered, but none of them catch the sheer power and dark spirit of the saga. Most of the pastiches stick with Conan's mirth more than with his meloncholies.

The pastiche writers would have been better off writing about other characters in the Hyborian age and leaving Conan alone.
 
I have read almost everything relating to Conan over the years...

In the dim darkness of the past there was only REH, and by Crom, we were grateful. REH had shown us the Way, the One True Path of Conan. Then came the gathering of the darkness... the pastiches. Many have fallen from the One True Path, accepting the lesser works as canon. They believe their hearts to be True... they are wrong. But even in error, they are still warriors, let no one doubt this.

Only with a grim heart, and firece determination can one read the lesser works and still follow the One True Path. Accept the lesser works for what they are... works of flattery that try to capture the spirit of the One True Path. They fail in many respects, but you cannot deny their desire. A warrior strives with his entire being to fulfill his destiny, a coward complains while never even trying.

Follow the One True Path, take what you need, ingore the rest.

Grim Wanderer
 
Faraer said:
Let's try not to perpetuate any tribalization into 'purists' and 'non-purists'. For myself, I don't find it hard to distinguish between one of the great authors of the 20th century and the work of exploitative hacks commissioned by an even-more-exploitative Conan Properties; the only authority the pastiches have over fan fiction is that they were published by people who at the time had the legal right to do so; but, I love the idea of working in a pre-established world in principle, as long as you follow how that world actually works (as discussed very well by Ron Edwards in Sorcerer & Sword which I just got), as a few (Karl Edward Wagner, Kurt Busiek) seem to have done.

There's already non-REH Conan in the core book -- the name Arenjun, a lot of those map details (all those mountains! why?), for instance. For many, and I didn't feel this way until I got acquainted with the situation recently, the pastiches' continuity details carry with them the stench of decades of abuse of Robert E. Howard's memory. Much more important is whether the game continues to model itself on the stories' or the pastiches' MODE.

I agree entirely with all of this - especially about the mountains! Very few pastiche authors have 'got' Conan - many bastardised versions of Conan look more like Sorbo's Hercules than the guy Howard wrote about. In fact it's amazing how well Ian & Paul were able to cut through the dross to perceive the real Conan spirit, something I had not managed myself until I read Sorcerer & Sword and the Conan RPG.
 
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