The Ravens Nest

Does The Hyborean Age Concern Itself With Safety?

I have been a fan of Conan of Cimmeria pretty much my entire life. I didn’t actually get to read the stories by Robert E. Howard until the last few years and when I did, I fell in love with them.

With most entertainment being sterilized halfway to shit, this was like getting a good shot in the arm. Immediately, I could see the parallels between Howard’s stories and the stories out of The Old West. When it came to movies, these stories brought to mind the old Clint Eastwood movies. A man with no name strolls into town, sometimes he takes out the bad guys even if they’re inside the city. Sometimes he’s there to spend what he gained and gain new wealth where he is. The world itself is brutal and uncaring…life is cheap. It is a bleak, harsh, war-torn and hard world during the Hyborean Age where slavery is rampant, women can be treated like objects, people can be killed, genocides of entire tribes happen and they’re all meant to be fought against.

But Monolith games doesn’t think so. In fact, in their new version of Conan, this is exactly what they have to say…

Here we go again…like this still works.

Here’s the skinny, I’m not buying this. Now that I know for certain this is in there, I would steer clear of this. I’ve made my reasons why known in my article Greater Expectations where I did sort of a deep dive into this particular topic of discussion. I won’t be recapping here but I do want to point out something from my days in The Panic of the 80s & 90s, Yes, in the Hyborean Age there were all the horrors mentioned and then some because, on top of all of that, you had both gods and monsters to deal with as well as evil sorcerers and those vying for power. The entire world was a lesson in power struggles and vacuums happening and what the consequences were of those very things. The thing I’ll tell all of you is the same thing I tried to tell “concerned parents” about D&D back in the day, these problems exist in that society and in that world, they are something, and this bears repeating to be countered, opposed, defied and crushed underfoot.

I don’t have a particular problem with those whom have backed this game, I know there are some people that are going to look at this dumbass sidebar, shrug and go on with gaming, however, I’m opposed to giving any of my hard-earned money to Monolith for it, myself and I won’t. If your game must have this in there, okay, fine but I hope the audience you’ve selected will sustain you.

Here’s what I don’t quite understand. There are dozens of alternatives out there.

If you’re an OD&D fan, then check out The Grey Elf Website. There are literally FREE Conan & Star Wars PDFs you can download and play. You never have to go without an IP or an IP with apologies ever again. You could probably even have Staples print up some copies for personal use at your own table. Point being, these disclaimers aren’t in those books, they’re just games.

That brings me to my next point.

It’s Not That Big of A Deal.

I have some responses to this.

1. If it’s truly not that big of a deal then taking it out and dedicating that to a small table for monster conversion from other games would have been a better use of space

2. Then why include it at all?

3. Then what was the real reason for including it?

If it’s truly not that big of a deal, we wouldn’t have stuff like this floating around. Game Masters have, for decades, navigated the straits of description and no one seems to even ask the question What Is The GM Comfortable With Describing?

Thankfully, there are companies that just make games. While Elf Lair Games (Wasted Lands, Night Shift, Thirteen Parsecs) have sidebars encouraging GMs to actually speak with their players. They all read the same in each of the respective books, however, you’ll have to go to Wasted Lands’ gazetteer in order to find the section under Session Zero known as “The Talk.”

The biggest difference between the examples I’ve cited and what Jason put into his books, there’s a section of text in each one that reads, and I quote:

For some tables, this may honestly not be a necessary step. Perhaps you’ve been playing with the same group of players for 20 or 30 years. In such a case, by this point it’s likely that everyone’s boundaries have been well established.

Jason and his team of skilled peeps at Elf Lair Games didn’t include something like what Kids on Bikes did. The Talk sections seem to be a “This is for the new people” kind of crowd, at least, that’s what it’s putting out there and presenting as advice you can take or leave but it truly leaves it up to you. Here was something I found that was interesting in Night Shift, check this out:

The rules are an important part of the game. After all, every game needs rules. But the unspoken rule 0 in the gameis that it is your game. It’s not my game, it’s not Elf Lair’s game. It’s not anyone else’s game. Once it’s in your hands and you sit down to run, it’s your game. (p. 143)

Wouldn’t things be different if a sentiment like this were expressed in the Conan game by Monolith?

This brings me to my final point.

Here are a list of games that are just games:

Classic Traveller

Cepheus

Hostile

Shadowdark

Old-School Essentials

Dark Places & Demogorgons

Cyberrats & Cyberrats 2: Rise of The Briny Bastards

CBR+PNK: Augmented

Swords & Wizardry

OSRIC

For Gold & Glory

Castles & Crusades

Amazing Adventures

Vaesen

Tales From The Loop

Alien RPG

Cairn

We Deal In Lead

This is just to name a few. If I were to list games that are presented for the sake of gaming, I don’t think it would matter because a lengthy list when a few examples such as these will do would become tedious and I think you might just breeze through them anyway so let’s keep it simple. With the retro clones, you can safely assume that older versions of D&D are in there too but look at those examples. Every one of those publishing companies can make a game without apologies and disclaimers for it’s setting, so why couldn’t Monolith?

The difference in tone from most games is it truly is that one sidebar. Is it optional? Yes. Realistically, there’s no means for a company to enforce that…or is there?

We’ve talked before about the Great Combat Wheelchair Debate and to sum it up, the combat wheelchair for D&D is expensive and there are better ways to deal with that. Sara Thompson’s chair for Cyberpunk is also expensive but tell me what hardware in Night City won’t get you into crippling debt with Arasaka but it also fits the setting and does the style over substance thing really well. It looks like something out of an anime. Now, in D&D, trying to propose that you want your character to use the combat wheelchair created by Thompson is going to be a Sisyphean sell to me, frankly because I think there are better ways to do that and you’re welcome to those. In Cyberpunk RED, not so much, a proposal to play a character using one of those chairs is almost always going to get a “Yeah okay, sure.” from me without much effort. In fact, you’d probably expend more energy munching on Doritos or Pretzels out of the bowl at the center of the table.

To me, that sounds reasonable but mention it and see what happens. You’ll be labelled an “Unsafe GM” and what is that, if not peer pressure under threat of being ostracized? While the company may actually want this to just be an optional rule, there are people that will be damned if you are allowed to treat it as an option.

In comparison, and I can’t believe I’m going to even type this, Modiphius didn’t even put these disclaimers at the fore in their Conan 2d20 game in the core book. I’ve searched.

Full disclosure: I bought an entire run of PDFs for the game for what might have been five to ten bucks, same for Mutant Chronicles. I just searched the PDF of just the core book and nothing. No player safety, no X-Cards, lines, veils, none of it. If Modiphius could do it, why not Monolith?

Personally, when I saw the graphic above from the new game, I wasn’t let down or disappointed, if anything, I was expecting it. The thing is, as illogical as this is, the only way to truly defeat it is logic and I’d also recommend closing your wallets and cancelling your backing, however, it’s only a recommendation, not a mandate. I don’t have a problem with you backing it if you have already. The one thing I’ll say is when you receive this, if there turns out to be more of the same, well, you were warned that something like this could potentially be the case, the rest is up to you. I, however, won’t be but not because of that sidebar. Fact is, I have PDFs I can use, I have games like Delving Deeper, Wight Box, Wasted Lands, so on and so forth that are just games and all I need is my world map and that colossal tome of Conan stories from Robert E. Howard that I can use to flesh out that world. As chance would have it…I do already have a map of the world during The Hyborian Age so half of my problem is licked and if I must, must, must have the brand applied, I do still have the Modiphius version in PDF. Might not be the greatest game to ever bear the name but I have it.

That’s really the heart of the matter for me. I don’t need another fantasy system when I have the multitude already at my fingertips.

It’s not a colossal deal for me but it may be for someone else who wants to know what the counter arguments truly are. I think the sidebar is antithetical to the setting. I think it’s pretty easy just to adopt the “Don’t Be A Colossal Dick” rule at the table and yes, when setting expectations, it’s important to manage them. I don’t want to have to manage expectations set by a company to play a game.

If Monolith wants to do the brave and courageous thing, it’s simple; Drop the sidebar. Make a game for the sake of making a game and understand that once the book is into my hands, it’s out of theirs how it’s played and people who find themselves uncomfortable with aspects of the setting, well, I hear D&D 2024 is so great that it’s the *clears throat* Fastest…Selling…Game…of…All Time.

Sorry…it’s still hard to type that with a straight face.