Stygian Overlord
Mongoose
After running my first game session I quickly came to realize that the life of a wandering Cimmerian that follows the "Barbarian code" was NOT going resemble the adventures of Conan very closely. Here's a few of the things that I found odd that happened when I ran "The Stones of Kovag-Re"
We had 1 Cimmerian Barbarian, 1 Poitian Noble and 1 Corinthian Pirate (Escaped Turanian Slave)
1) The module is somewhat misleading. After a little bit of flavor text, a few missed spot checks and 1 missed sense motive check I found myself scrambling as my players were left with the impression that the girl had fled into the city and they were supposed go to the Maul and threaten/beat people into giving up information.
2) The Noble in the group had trouble rationalizing NOT doing everything the Governor wanted because his civilised honor code didn't seem to leave him a lot of wiggle room no matter how badly the governor treated him. (Which is not in and of itself a problem but he had a conflict between his personal decency and the wording of his honor code)
3) The Barbarian in the group had no problem threatening any random person he felt like and even held a defenseless shopkeeper/fence while the pirate stabbed because they thought that he might have some information. (He's a fence so he's not honorable, so it's perfectly ok for me to torture him under the barbarian code. Doesn't seem very "Noble Savage" to me.)
4) According to the Barbarian Honor code stealing is ok at worst and sometimes even good, turned into shaking down seemingly innocent people is ok.
5) There's nothing to suggest in either honor code that if there's one opponent then it's not HONORABLE for the Barbarian with an HONOR CODE and the Noble with an HONOR CODE to doubleteam him while their pirate ally sneaks up and stabs him in the back. I know that in the heat of battle concessions have to be made but do HONORABLE people START the encounter that way? As far as I Can tell from the Honor codes...yes? Sometimes? If they feel like it?
I just don't remember Conan beating up noncombatants for no reason or picking on weak people "because he could". Maybe I just haven't studied the Barbarian honor code enough, but it certainly doesn't seem as "honorable" as Conan seemed to me. Been a while since I read the stories so maybe I am just forgetting. I know that he had no love of rich people, but I don't remember him kicking over and beggars and taking their last coins or stealing candy from babies.
Am I just confusing the words "Noble" and "Honorable" with "Good" in my head? Was Conan a bad person? Not that I can remember, but then again I remember likeing Starwars movies.
We had 1 Cimmerian Barbarian, 1 Poitian Noble and 1 Corinthian Pirate (Escaped Turanian Slave)
1) The module is somewhat misleading. After a little bit of flavor text, a few missed spot checks and 1 missed sense motive check I found myself scrambling as my players were left with the impression that the girl had fled into the city and they were supposed go to the Maul and threaten/beat people into giving up information.
2) The Noble in the group had trouble rationalizing NOT doing everything the Governor wanted because his civilised honor code didn't seem to leave him a lot of wiggle room no matter how badly the governor treated him. (Which is not in and of itself a problem but he had a conflict between his personal decency and the wording of his honor code)
3) The Barbarian in the group had no problem threatening any random person he felt like and even held a defenseless shopkeeper/fence while the pirate stabbed because they thought that he might have some information. (He's a fence so he's not honorable, so it's perfectly ok for me to torture him under the barbarian code. Doesn't seem very "Noble Savage" to me.)
4) According to the Barbarian Honor code stealing is ok at worst and sometimes even good, turned into shaking down seemingly innocent people is ok.
5) There's nothing to suggest in either honor code that if there's one opponent then it's not HONORABLE for the Barbarian with an HONOR CODE and the Noble with an HONOR CODE to doubleteam him while their pirate ally sneaks up and stabs him in the back. I know that in the heat of battle concessions have to be made but do HONORABLE people START the encounter that way? As far as I Can tell from the Honor codes...yes? Sometimes? If they feel like it?
I just don't remember Conan beating up noncombatants for no reason or picking on weak people "because he could". Maybe I just haven't studied the Barbarian honor code enough, but it certainly doesn't seem as "honorable" as Conan seemed to me. Been a while since I read the stories so maybe I am just forgetting. I know that he had no love of rich people, but I don't remember him kicking over and beggars and taking their last coins or stealing candy from babies.
Am I just confusing the words "Noble" and "Honorable" with "Good" in my head? Was Conan a bad person? Not that I can remember, but then again I remember likeing Starwars movies.