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Anonymous01/28/26, 16:13No.97458024
Thoughts on the Hyborian Age and Robert E. Howard's worldbuilding in Conan the Barbarian?
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Anon01/28/26, 16:15No.97458036
I like it.
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Anon01/28/26, 16:16No.97458045
Aquilonia being high medieval is bullshit, the entire setting should be low-tech bronze age.
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Anon01/28/26, 16:19No.97458073
Did you know? Technically this is the same universe as the Cthulhu mythos.
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Anon01/28/26, 17:04No.97458310
>thoughts
Casually interesting but not deep dive material. Having enough to run a sword & sorcery game is more of a rule of cool and vibes than worldbuilding. Trying to make a sensibly cohesive in exhausting detail version would be needlessly futile. Howard didn't bother with that shit, wrote about and included what he thought was cool. Do that.
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Anon01/28/26, 17:04No.97458312
It's good!
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Anon01/28/26, 17:27No.97458429
It's a charming playground for Howard. It's essentially built on the mental images common folk have of the real-life, geographical/historical counterparts of lands within Hyborea. This allows the setting to be populated by the reader himself. It doesn't try to fight your assumptions but leans into them. Plays with them. It's simultaneously rich enough to stimulate the imagination and empty enough to accommodate whatever story you want to tell.
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Anon01/28/26, 18:56No.97458907
A fun setting that most of my friends show little interest in. I don't think they vibe with the pulpy, magical-realism of the setting. I think they prefer something more gonzo and familiar.
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Anon01/28/26, 19:19No.97459064
It's pretty bare bones, the world is just surface knowledge of irl history and vibes.
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Anon01/28/26, 21:39No.97459889
The cultures are a little too direct and on the nose. The Black Kingdoms? "Kitai" is just how russians say "China." Brythunia?
Honestly, it's just very childish and basic. That in addition to the fact that the lore is just genuinely barebones. You could say that the Warhammer Old World is also just a bunch of lazily copied real world references, but at least there's a different historical and social context. Hyborea doesn't have that because it doesn't have the worldbuilding; you may have imagined these as unique cultures, but why? There's nothing there.
It's just too lazy and basic for me. I prefer more.
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Anon01/28/26, 21:57No.97459976
Worldbuilding might be a strong word here. Yes, it does work perfectly or close to, but it IS basically "ok, I need vikings, that's a good spot to have them".
A century after him I think it does feel way more sensible than your usual dnd kitchen sink mostly because it is basically just "scenery" historical settings put together, and the magic is secret and all. That and maybe it's a little less jarring as far as cultural divides go.
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Anon01/28/26, 22:04No.97460020
>Iranistan
Seriously?
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Anon01/28/26, 22:12No.97460069
I actually like 'basic' worldbuilding with names that are lightly-altered real world names, and similar cultures being in places where you'd expect them to be. People criticising this come across as pretentious twats who like forced complexity.
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Anon01/28/26, 22:54No.97460280
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Anon01/29/26, 01:28No.97461131
What are your thoughts?
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Anon01/29/26, 02:43No.97461470
Biblically accurate Aquilonia.
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Anon01/29/26, 02:45No.97461483
>Create the original gigachad of fantasy based on your own vision of peak masculinity
>Kill yourself immediately after your mother passes away
Write what you don't know I guess
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Anon01/29/26, 02:50No.97461509
Let's see what Howard thought of the BASED roman empire
>"When I dream of Rome, I am always pitted against her, hating her with a ferocity that in my younger days persisted in my waking hours, so that I still remember, with some wonder, the savage pleasure with which I read, at the age of nine, the destruction of Rome by the Germanic barbarians. At the same time, reading of the conquest of Britain by those same races filled me with resentment. Somehow, I have never been able to conceive fully of a Latinized civilization in Britain; to me that struggle has always seemed mainly a war of British barbarians against Germanic barbarians, with my sympathies wholly with the Britons."
A huge fan of rome.
>I was, as always, much interested in your remarks concerning the classical world, of which I know so little. What a city Alexandria must have been! I had no idea of the origin of the word parchment. As I’ve said before, your letters are an actual education for me. Some day I must try to study the ancient Grecian world. Its always seemed so vague and unreal to me, in contrast to the roaring, brawling, drunken, bawdy chaos of the Middle Ages in which my instincts have always been fixed. When I go beyond the Middle Ages, my instincts veer to Assyria and Babylon, where again I seem to visualize a bloody, drunken, brawling, lecherous medley. My vague instincts towards classical Greece go no further than a dim impression of calm, serene white marble statues in a slumbering grove. Though I know the people of the classic times must have wenched and brawled and guzzled like any other people, but I can not concieve of them. The first mythology I ever read was that of Greece, but even then it seemed apart and impersonal, without the instinctive appeal I later found in Germanic mythology.
Yeah it's obviously clear from that excerpt that Howard HATED the middle ages and wanted nothing to do with it.
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Anon01/29/26, 03:10No.97461590
Now let's see the Kingdom of Poitain, a semi independent state of Aquilonia resembles.
>The rolling country at the foot of the towering mountains was now a borderland, in a state of turmoil, where the barons reverted to feudal practises, and bands of outlaws roamed unhindered. Poitain had not formally declared her separation from Aquilonia, but she was now, to all intents, a self-contained kingdom, ruled by her hereditary count, Trocero. The rolling south country had submitted nominally to Valerius, but he had not attempted to force the passes guarded by strongholds where the crimson leopard banner of Poitain waved defiantly.
>Palm trees and orange groves smiled in the sun, and the gorgeous purple and gold and crimson towers of castles and cities reflected the golden light. It was a land of warmth and plenty, of beautiful men and ferocious warriors. It is not only the hard lands that breed hard men. Poitain was surrounded by covetous neighbors and her sons learned hardihood in incessant wars. To the north the land was guarded by the mountains, but to the south only the Alimane separated the plains of Poitain from the plains of Zingara, and not once but a thousand times had that river run red. To the east lay Argos and beyond that Ophir, proud kingdoms and avaricious. The knights of Poitain held their lands by the weight and edge of their swords, and little of ease and idleness they knew.
Feudalism. Castles. Knights. So Quintisentially Roman.
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Anon01/29/26, 03:25No.97461655
And before our local autist tries to pretend the Aquilonian borders are roman
>His garb was common enough for that country—a coarse tunic, belted at the waist, short leather breeches beneath, and soft buckskin boots that came short of the knee. A knife-hilt jutted from one boot-top. The broad leather belt supported a short, heavy sword and a buckskin pouch.
>No one spoke. Balthus had had a good look at his companions in the fort before they slipped out of the stockade and down the bank into the waiting canoe. They were of a new breed growing up in the world on the raw edge of the frontier—men whom grim necessity had taught woodcraft. Aquilonians of the western provinces to a man, they had many points in common. They dressed alike—in buckskin boots, leathern breeks and deerskin shirts, with broad girdles that held axes and short swords; and they were all gaunt and scarred and hard-eyed; sinewy and taciturn.
It's pretty obvious that the border aquilonians are just american frontiersmen in a pre gunpowder setting.
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Anon01/29/26, 04:38No.97461881
You guys gotta just accept that every fantasy author wasn't that bright except for the RR guy