OK, so I decided to run some games at KublaCon, and ended up deciding on a HERO System Star Trek game and a Conan RPG game. (I feel a twinge of guilt since neither of these are indie, but I figure I'm doing my part in other ways.) So I wanted to talk about the Conan game since I'm a little wary of it. It's very much a test run, which can be bad. I put up a skeletal web page with the event description.

Centuries after Conan was king, the Aquilonian Empire collapsed and Hyrkanian hordes descended upon the west sweeping over the ruins, even into the harsh land of Cimmeria. This was the twilight before darkness for the Hyborians. This is the tale of a band of Cimmerians who came to face the empress of the Turanian Empire. It tells of the indomitable spirit of the Cimmerians deep in the unfamiliar lands of the easterners, in the teeming city of Aghrapur. There is intrigue and action within the forbidden city of the Turanian Empress, as the band seeks to free not only themselves, but their country.

John Kim wrote:

• I want a group of 6 characters who are all pretty similar on the surface: all tough, cool, and sexy Cimmerians. So I'm going to have to struggle with nuances to make them each distinct. It's a challenge I've faced before, but still a tough challenge.

John Kim wrote: • I'm concerned about sex. It'll be tough in a crowd that I expect will be hardened male gamers, but I also consider it vital. I dealt with this some in my James Bond 007 game -- which has a system that looks good but I found was rather dull in practice. Ideally, I'd like system to take the edge off of the embarrassment but still give it more flavor than JB007's approach.

John Kim wrote: • My players may well know the system better than me. I've never GMed a d20 game; I just played in a D&D3 game for a few months. I figure I just need to study and in particular run through the combats.

Hello,

John, I guess I don't understand your concern about sex in the game. Meaning, I can't tell from your post exactly what you're concerned about, out of the many possibilities. Can you clarify for me?

Best,
Ron

StalkingBlue wrote: I'd suggest using pregens with clearly defined differences - backgrounds, races, if not classes. You'll make your players' job easier and have a better chance of an un-disgruntled game.

StalkingBlue wrote: You want rules mechanics for sex? I'd run stuff like that freeform, focus on the flavourful descriptions of NPCs, and Veil any actual physical activities going on (which is exactly what Howard did in his stories btw, although as I hear some of the pastiche authors didn't). Much easier to play things by ear and avoid embarrassment that way.

StalkingBlue wrote: Also if there's still time, maybe get your DnD group together to test play your Conan Con game before the actual event.

John Kim wrote: Well, that's OK as a rule of thumb, but as I see it, the characters are absolutely central to what the event is about conceptually. It is about male identity, and informed by the Conan mythology as its center. That's what interests me about the adventure in the first place. I'm starting to come up with who the PCs are, and I may post more about them.

I'm still not sure how I'm going to handle it, but it's something I'd like to prepare the players for in some way. The end might be just some qualitative principles which doesn't involve any numerical mechanics, or it might be a combination of rolls and description like JB007. I'm not sure yet.

Sex in Howard's stories often seems to be about power so maybe turn seduction into a system similar to combat. Use something like charisma rolls for attack and wisdom as hit points. Let the players roll out the seduction combat and add whatever flavour dialog they like but it all comes down to the rolls so they needn't feel embarassed.

Caldis wrote: Sex in Howard's stories often seems to be about power so maybe turn seduction into a system similar to combat. Use something like charisma rolls for attack and wisdom as hit points. Let the players roll out the seduction combat and add whatever flavour dialog they like but it all comes down to the rolls so they needn't feel embarassed. Conan wasn't one for flowery dialogue anyways it's raw animal magnetism that got him the girls.

The final step of course is to reward them as much xp for seducing women as they get in combat against a warrior. Seducing the queen of course will be worth more than seducing a barmaid.

John Kim wrote:
As I ponder the issue, I think I disagree with your principle, though. The seduction rules for James Bond are fitting for the genre because James Bond would actively manipulate to seduce women, and indeed it was one of his primary skills :-). But Conan in the Howard stories is quite different. As far as I recall, he never manipulates or forces women to sleep with him in the stories. Instead, women are attracted to him because of his strength, spirit, and honor. There is no guile in his relationships. In an RPG, the PCs may be different than Conan and have such guile -- but it shouldn't be an implicit part of the system.

Setting it up as a combat system casts things in a different light. This implies that sex is defeat and loss for the object of a PC's attention. On reflection, I think I would want this to be more than zero-sum. i.e. Sex could be a mistake for both parties, or a victory for both parties.

John Kim wrote: Setting it up as a combat system casts things in a different light. This implies that sex is defeat and loss for the object of a PC's attention. On reflection, I think I would want this to be more than zero-sum. i.e. Sex could be a mistake for both parties, or a victory for both parties.

Hi John,

Do you consider Conan RPG strongly Gamist (obviously it can be played that way but isn't it inclined towards Setting or Situation Exploration Sim)?

Bifi

Caldis wrote:

John Kim wrote: Setting it up as a combat system casts things in a different light. This implies that sex is defeat and loss for the object of a PC's attention. On reflection, I think I would want this to be more than zero-sum. i.e. Sex could be a mistake for both parties, or a victory for both parties.

I think you misread me there. I wasnt intending for it to be a form of manipulation or to signify using force, rather it's sheer animal magnetism. A contest of his barbaric natural power of life versus the womans socialized desire to sleep only with an acceptable mate that will provide for her, which wins out. He always sleeps with the woman, and she always wants to sleep with him he never has to put any effort into wooing the woman, the combat is purely an abstraction it's not meant to signify anything actually taking place.

Caldis wrote: Maybe it's just from the film but I seem to recall women trying to use seduction to control Conan, it rarely worked for long, but that is the same type of situation I'm thinking of here and an example of the woman winning the sexual battle.

This may not be what you are looking for I realize. I see it as a tool for contextualizing the sex, seeing on who's terms the event takes place. If you arent interested in that then it's useless to you.

John Kim wrote: My players may well know the system better than me. I've never GMed a d20 game; I just played in a D&D3 game for a few months. I figure I just need to study and in particular run through the combats.

Seduction in d20 - in my current campaign one of the PCs is a courtesan; for her seduction attempts I use Performance rolls. :)

This, or a simple CHA check, works fine for d20 IMO.

I think in the film Conan the Barbarian much of the sex is explictly about power and power relations - not just the actual sex like Conan with the demon-witch; Thulsa Doom's serpent gaze is clearly portrayed as sexual in nature too. Modelling something like that movie, sex as combat would make sense _except_ for the Valeria-Conan relationship, which is one of equality (unlike Belit-Conan in the books, where he becomes her henchman).

I haven't seen anything comparable to sex-as-combat in the REH Conan stories I've read, unless you count Belit's seduction of Conan in which she, not he, is clearly the active party. As pointed out above, unlike James Bond, Conan never 'fights' the will of the woman to triumph, he fights the monster. You could say that mighty sword vs big snake or whatever is actually a metaphor for sex of course, but if anything that just makes the idea of 'combat rolls for sex' _less_ appropriate here than in other genres - by the time Conan has slain the snake and rescued the damsel, he has already won the combat.

I guess in conclusion - a Conanesque hero seeking sex does _not_ make seduction rolls, he makes melee attack rolls. When the monster is killed, he gets the sex (and the XP) as reward. By contrast a lustful NPC like Belit or the Witch may attempt to seduce the male PC for her own ends; in that circumstance combat mechanisms are appropriate - the default d20 approach would be a Will save for the PC vs a check DC set by the seductress. This could be expanded into a full d20 combat system with each party having ablative Will Points instead of hit points, and the winner getting to determine the result of the exchange. Personally I would probably stick to a mix of roleplaying it plus Will saves if necessary, with the DC affected by the player's actions for the PC - a PC who is clearly interested in the seductress will have a lower save DC than one who displays icy froideur.

Sex and violence are very explicitly linked in Conan, even in the edited versions that got published. Generally Conan does not use violence against the woman to gain sex from her, but he does gain sex after committing violence against the world -- and often the more transgressive the violence the hotter the sex.

When he killed the brothers in "The Frost Giant's Daughter" he almost got to have sex with the daughter. (And if that story doesn't have a sexual power dynamic I don't know what does.) In "Queen of the Black Coast" he gets sex from Belit after brutally slaughtering her followers in front of her. (The MS original contained the line “He felt an impulse to lock his iron fingers in his companion’s black locks and subject her person to moderate violence” and other gems like “bruise me with your fierce love.”) In “Iron Shadows on the Moon” and “The Pool of the Black One” Conan gets not only sex but a loyal companion after he kills her current lover and master. And stories like “The Devil in Iron” are all about Conan seducing a woman who was trying to seduce him for her own reasons. I think the most telling quote is from a letter Howard wrote about “Black Colossus” in which he said:

“My heroes grow more bastardly as the years pass. One of my latest sales concluded with a sexual intercourse instead of the usual slaughter. My sword-wielder grabbed the princess – already considerably stripped down by the villing [sic] – and smacks her down on the altar of the forgotten gods, while battle and massacre roared outside, and through the dusk the remains of the villing, nailed to the wall by the hero, regarded the pastime sardonically. I don’t know how the readers will like it. I bet some of them will. The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”

Compare this to stories like “People of the Black Circle” (in which Conan is never promised sex and doesn’t end up getting any) and “Shadows in Zamboula” (in which he is promised sex to manipulate him, but ends up not getting it) where the people Conan kills are mostly the enemies and attackers of the lovely maidens of the piece. He wants sex from them, but as he contains his violence to the knightly-protector roll he doesn’t get it. In that light it starts to seem like the more violent Conan is, the more he intrudes his barbaric violence upon the world of the woman, the more likely he is to get sex. And when he comes into the woman’s world without violence, such as in “Xuthal of the Dusk” or the crypt scene in “Hour of the Dragon” where two nearly identical voluptuous Stygian noblewomen try to seduce him, he becomes the one subject to being preyed on by female sexuality.

So in Conan stories you’re either eating or being eaten, and the relative violence of either determines how hot the fire is going to burn.

So I really think that the suggestion that Conan characters (who are following the Conan path, rather than the path of one of the other minor heroes from the Conan stories, guys like Valerius who earn loyalty through loyalty) don’t make seduction rolls – they make melee rolls. The more shocking violence they make that rocks the world of the woman in question, the more likely they are to get sex from her. You don’t gain sex by seduction, you gain sex by violence with the thin veneer of acceptability because you aren’t being violent against the woman. (Though it is worth noting that several times in the stories Conan grabs a semi-willing woman and kisses her until she becomes willing and melts in his arms.)

Otoh, if they allow themselves to become passive then the woman may try to seduce them for her own ends: in which case the Will Save vs Bluff or Performance is a good suggestion.

Now, I’m not sure how this is going to fit in with the comfort level of the players, which I know was a concern. Played to blatantly I can see it causing a great deal of consternation among a lot of con players, as it goes against a lot of the rhetoric around sexuality, and could be even worse than normal sexuality in an RPG. However, if it is played down and put on a level of “accomplishment in feats of arms gets you sex” level that exists in oh so many legends, it may become acceptable. That way the GM doesn’t have to have great descriptions of sex or long seduction scenes, because things are focused in other places while still subliminally being about sex. You introduce an obviously desirable sexual partner, give her a situation fraught with the potential for violence, and let the PC slay their way up the ladder, only occasionally bringing the sexuality back in to spur the violence and action higher.

Of course, having the flashing eyed heaving breasted maiden watching from the sidelines, growing more frantic while two men grunt and struggle for their lives could still make some people uncomfortable, but at that point I have to wonder why they are playing a Conan game.

Brand_Robins wrote: So I really think that the suggestion that Conan characters (who are following the Conan path, rather than the path of one of the other minor heroes from the Conan stories, guys like Valerius who earn loyalty through loyalty) don’t make seduction rolls – they make melee rolls. The more shocking violence they make that rocks the world of the woman in question, the more likely they are to get sex from her. You don’t gain sex by seduction, you gain sex by violence with the thin veneer of acceptability because you aren’t being violent against the woman. (Though it is worth noting that several times in the stories Conan grabs a semi-willing woman and kisses her until she becomes willing and melts in his arms.)

Otoh, if they allow themselves to become passive then the woman may try to seduce them for her own ends: in which case the Will Save vs Bluff or Performance is a good suggestion.

S'mon wrote: BTW I think the Con was last year (2004), I hope there's no rule against summoning up an old thread. :)

Edit: I really should know better at this point...

Sigh. Sorry Ron.

Chris

Sorry if I breached etiquette - should it be a split thread?