GM Responsibility Toward the Conan RPG

[Strom]

Ha! I had that one coming to me I guess, what with all my ribbing.

I'm just attempting to stretch the discussion beyond the normal & dry (yet very informative and useful) mechanics discussion.

I'll just give you this to chew on for a while. It seems, to me at least, that you are claiming that a GM's responsibility is towards a distinct Conaneque, or REH-like, causal relationship between the actions of the protagonists and the world they operate in. My point is that this definition of responsibility to the Conan-stories is to narrow to fully capture the essence of REH's world. There is more to this than your in-game causality thinking.

REH canon and the examples I've given are extremely broad and very flexibile, allowing for diverse adventures, limited only by your imagination. Take the Barbie & Ken Hyboria adventure - 95% of the adventure could be Barbie meeting Ken, shopping at the market, horseback ridding etc. But at some point, the sweet smelling misma of Barbie's perfume, needs to be washed away with the reality of the Hyborian Age. The dirt, the lust, the leering of the not-as-fortuante should show it's face. The kindly guard who always smiles at Barbie steals her purse or Ken is confronted at the market with a artifact of Set that demands he buy it - something. The members on this board are 100x's more creative then me when it comes to situations like those I listed above. Howard's civilization is corrupt and doomed to fail and everyone is out for themselves for the most part. The world is pretty and nice when you glance at it - look hard and you will see the worst (and all that entails), especially in the cities. I think it is important (maybe that is a better word :lol: ) for the GM to make that clear to the PC's - not once, but repeatedly, regardless of the PC's actions.

rgrove0172 - well written post! RPG's lend themselves to evaluation and theroy all around:

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[Aholibamah]

I think that you've given a reasonably good example. One thing you don't want btw is to imitate Conan in everything--otherwise the pcs will constantly spend all their money on drink and lechery, triumphantly win battles only to have their entire force wiped out the next week, and find themselves getting lampooned in bad pastiches every now and then. (those pesky minstrels!)