Conan VS standard D&D game

[Trodax]

(On a side note, whoever drew the map for these books went a bit nuts with the mountains. For example, Howard described the landscape of Khauran very clearly - and it has no mountains. Yet their cartographer drew mountains.)

The overabundance of mountains isn't a new thing though, is it? The map in Blood of Wolves is identical to the map in GURPS Conan (artistically different, but all the borders and mountains are exactly the same). Anyone know where this mountain-mania originates from?

 

[VincentDarlage]

Anyway, the idea behind the game is to play it fast and loose without worrying over bookeeping ("Did we get 29 coppers from the goblin or just 26?"), play more for the carpe diem spirit than bogged in a quagmire of a quest which might be found in a Middle Earth type of setting. I'd really recommend the GM start a game en medias res as often as possible, fast & furious play. Keep 'em playing, fighting, looting & loving, rather than solving logic puzzles. & Don't let 'em forget their lives could be severed by any cut at any time. That's my idea behind the Conan game.

Excellent comment! That is the idea behind my Conan game also!

 

[VincentDarlage]

Is the second one out already? I hadn't seen it in stores yet, though I was similarly disappointed with the first one. I think I was a bit more generous with it than most folks have been, only because compared to most pastiches, I did not feel overly offended the way they make me.

Yes, it is out. I felt very offended by the way the writing was handled. The jarring nature of the constant incomplete sentences kept me from being drawn into the story. I am shocked the publisher did not just hand the manuscript back for a re-write.

The fragments might have worked had it been a 1st person narrative, but it doesn't work as a 3rd person narrative. The over-use of sentence fragments just does not work for me.

I also read that the author might have been instructed to 'spin his wheels' a bit. Instead about going into the insane amount of minutia about frostbite and other survival elements, it seems to me that if he had written complete sentences throughout the novel, he might have achieved more words and a lengthened book.

Just on the second page of the second novel I read:

All with large swords strapped over their backs or sheathed to their sides. Broadswords. Warswords.

Those are three fragments all in a row. When he writes page after page of sentence fragments (some paragraphs are nothing but a collection of fragments - see the 4th complete paragraph of page 3 for an example), that is a writing style I have no appreciation for.

For those without the second book, here is the 4th complete paragraph of page 3:
Him and any Cimmerian who dared follow him.

That is not a sentence and it certainly should not have comprised an entire paragraph.

 

[Faraer]

Vincent, the use of verbless sentences is a longstanding and legitimate method in prose fiction. It's often overdone, it doesn't work for you here and may not work overall, but it doesn't make Loren Coleman inept. I'm speaking as an editor here, and as someone who hasn't read these books.

I don't know where all those silly mountain ranges came from either.

 

[Thoth Aw C'mon]

...I lump in Thomas Harris' abysmal Hannibal (loved Red Dradgon & Silence of the Lambs, was sickened by this piece of dirt). :roll:

I couldnt agree with you more on Harris's Haniibal. I loved the first two books, but couldnt believe what a steaming pile of Pict-dung Hannibal turned out to be. That whole racism thing about Starling shooting a black drug dealer who's shooting at her was too stupid. You can just imagine Harris thinking to himself: "This racism thing will give the story gravitas." And the character Hannibal is good as a secondary character when he was locked up in the first book and the first three quarters of the second book. But a character like him running around free for a whole book is sadism- not just against his victims but against the reader. Sheesh. You could just see Harris wiht dollar signs in his eyes as he hacked that one out, IMHO.

 

[VincentDarlage]

Vincent, the use of verbless sentences is a longstanding and legitimate method in prose fiction. It's often overdone, it doesn't work for you here and may not work overall, but it doesn't make Loren Coleman inept. I'm speaking as an editor here, and as someone who hasn't read these books.

It is probably a good thing that I am not an editor then, because I would have sent the manuscript back and asked the author to complete his sentences, or otherwise indicate that such incomplete sentences are dialogue or clearly shown to be a character's thoughts, and not the thought processes of the narrator.

Maybe I don't read enough modern books, but I found the technique distracting - just like I found Roland Green's use of "wit" and its variations distracting. Using incomplete sentences once in a while works but using it every single page detracts from the effectiveness of the technique.

I have seen the technique before. I just think there are less jarring ways to write a story. Of course, despite all my reading, this is the first time I have encountered this technique used to such excess.

 

[Bregales]

Vincent, the use of verbless sentences is a longstanding and legitimate method in prose fiction. It's often overdone, it doesn't work for you here and may not work overall, but it doesn't make Loren Coleman inept. I'm speaking as an editor here, and as someone who hasn't read these books.

It is probably a good thing that I am not an editor then, because I would have sent the manuscript back and asked the author to complete his sentences, or otherwise indicate that such incomplete sentences are dialogue or clearly shown to be a character's thoughts, and not the thought processes of the narrator.

Maybe I don't read enough modern books, but I found the technique distracting - just like I found Roland Green's use of "wit" and its variations distracting. Using incomplete sentences once in a while works but using it every single page detracts from the effectiveness of the technique.

I have seen the technique before. I just think there are less jarring ways to write a story. Of course, despite all my reading, this is the first time I have encountered this technique used to such excess.

Well, like I'd written earlier, based on your criticism I'm not the least interested in these books. It sounds like the books are written in 3rd Person Subjective, where the narrator is basically a character voice although not an active character in the story, he has a distinct voice of his own. Though it sounds horrible and inept, it appears that this author is trying to give a narrative voice, as I remember reading Howard's stories as if hearing them in a smoky waddle and daub hut as it's being told by an old sire. This writer by comparison, is so based on the modern media age that it souds like he's incorporating contemporary fragmented social speech in an ancient age, which seldom if ever works in fiction.

...I lump in Thomas Harris' abysmal Hannibal (loved Red Dradgon & Silence of the Lambs, was sickened by this piece of dirt). :roll:

I couldnt agree with you more on Harris's Haniibal. I loved the first two books, but couldnt believe what a steaming pile of Pict-dung Hannibal turned out to be. That whole racism thing about Starling shooting a black drug dealer who's shooting at her was too stupid. You can just imagine Harris thinking to himself: "This racism thing will give the story gravitas." And the character Hannibal is good as a secondary character when he was locked up in the first book and the first three quarters of the second book. But a character like him running around free for a whole book is sadism- not just against his victims but against the reader. Sheesh. You could just see Harris wiht dollar signs in his eyes as he hacked that one out, IMHO.

Yes, I was disgusted with Hannibal. I assumed right off the first chapter that dollar signs were flashing too, and disgustedly thought that Harris was writing a book/screenplay at the same time so it could be rushed right into production and he could be handsomely paid for two medias with very little effort put forth. :roll: The Robert Jordan example I just attribute to poor grammar/lazy writing.

Which speaks more affably for Howard, as his stories were richly told, though forthrightly simple in the use of conflict which the protagonist must overcome, but that was his aim, it was fantasy escapist literature, and recalls those letters and commentaries of 'simple men in a more simple time' and all that. Makes you appreciate the source of inspiration all the more by how sunken these imitators fall below the mark. :!:

 

[VincentDarlage]

This writer by comparison, is so based on the modern media age that it souds like he's incorporating contemporary fragmented social speech in an ancient age, which seldom if ever works in fiction.

I don't think it works well at all in Coleman's books. Sometimes it is an attempt to give the narrator a "voice" but other times it is just confusing.

On page 325 of the 1st book, Coleman writes: "Daol and Hydalla joined him first. Reave and Desa and Ossian. They came limping up singly or in pairs after that, like rogues called back to the pack."

Notice, if you will, the second grouping of words. That is not a sentence; it is a list of three names. Did those three people arrive next? Were they missing in action and not arrive?

When I first read that list, and then read the sentence following the list, I thought those three were limping, then I got confused because of the singly or in pairs comment.

Who does "they" refer to? Who is limping up in pairs and singly? Is he referring to the list of four characters? How hard would it have been to have written, "Reave, Desa and Ossian arrived next, limping from their wounds and sore muscles"?

What does "that" refer to? The others limp after what? Just what is Coleman emphasizing here? I think it is just one of many examples of unclear, confusing writing present in the Coleman works.

All of that, plus most of his characters (and there are a bunch of them) are just names without distinquishing characteristics.

 

[Bregales]

I don't think it works well at all in Coleman's books. Sometimes it is an attempt to give the narrator a "voice" but other times it is just confusing.

I understand. Thanks very much for taking the time to respond. I'm convinced that these books you mention are not what I'd want to waste time or money on. Funny, I think of the examples you'd given, the last one is the best written, (I can get the gist of what he's saying, can almost hear the narrative voice). But the voice doesn't fit the setting, as you've so emphatically pointed out it distances the reader from the setting and characters, and alienates them instead of drawing you in; a narrator must draw you in to a hyborian age story, you must be eager to hear more, not disgusted at the incongruity and ineptitude of the book itself.

Point taken, I'll steer clear. Thank you sir :!: