Post by eDGT on Jan 24, 2016 14:36:09 GMT
Know, O prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars...
Proposal
Hello everyone, I posted this to the CK2 subreddit yesterday, but it's better to spread the net wide in order to get the bigger catch. So first off thanks for reading, I hope you find my proposal interesting, now allow me begin.
I want to help build a mod for CK2, one which is set in the world of Conan the Barbarian, Hyboria, as created by Robert E. Howard and expanded by many other authors following his death. The wealth of lore left behind by Howard and his fellow writers is great indeed, more than enough for us to bring their world to life on our screens. With few exceptions every kingdom and race is based off of cultures which exist in game already, from the Nordic Aesir and Vanir, the Gaelic Cimmerians, to the Indian princes of Vendhya; and Hyboria itself is based off of the vague (now debunked) notions we had of pre-Ice Age Eurasia.
I am here for a recruitment drive. I am educating myself on the lore of the universe, but it's too much for one man to handle alone. Therefore I need people who know the books better than myself, and I especially need people who have played games related to the series, like Age of Conan or table-top RPG versions. Likewise I need historians and anthropologists, which this sub is not short on. Howard based his world off of a twisted version of our own history, any gaps we come across can therefore be filled from there and whilst I have no small knowledge on certain periods I need to work alongside people whose expertise in various fields far outweighs my own. But worse than that though I need coders, men and women who know how to tear the game apart and rebuild it as something new and totally fucking awesome.
Please read on for more details about features and lore which I hope to implement in this mod, but if you're interested already then please message me your interest.
Roleplaying
I personally am not the biggest fan of roleplaying in my games, but I know that a lot of you out there do enjoy it. Considering this, and the impact Conan and Hyboria have had on table-top roleplaying over the years, I will attempt to implement a game style which is reminiscent of classic RPGs. This includes stacking traits and skills by culture and race, for example Picts and Cimmerians and other barbarians would all have very high martial but little to no intrigue skills, meanwhile Stygain or Zamoran characters would all have great intrigue, but poorer martial.
Beyond this I would like to put a high emphasis on prestige. Conan was all about prestige, he built his entire life around his martial prowess and intense wanderlust, it is what brought him from a barbarian slave to the ruler of the greatest kingdom of the west all on the back of his reputation. In Crusader Kings a player can go from a one county petty king to the emperor of the god damn world. I want our players to be able to start even below that. If possible I want the player to be able to up sticks from their home and go on an adventure; traveling across the world, looting temples, slaying sorcerers, eloping with young princesses/princes, before they decide to settle down on a bit of land which they gained by either royal favour or through the blood of conquest. The key benefit of this would of course be the massive prestige a successful player could gain from this, building themselves a name to rival even the great Conan. But of course the treasure gained from your travels would also be a perk, whether you rob the graves of long dead kings or earn glory as a mercenary in one of the countless border disputes.
Owning land and being a part of a dynasty is of course the core aspect of the game (since Horse Lords I'm not sure how essential land really is at the moment), therefore I am unsure if this would be able to work. A back up plan would be to allow the players to become absentee rulers, adventuring whilst still holding their primary titles.
Map
Hyboria is huge. It is also of disputed shape. So far the only truly canon map I have seen is this one, which is based off of sketches by Howard himself. Other maps have expanded on the world, but as you can see everything east of the Vilayet Sea is pretty much up in the air. Howard did claim that Hyboria was the Eurasia of the ancient past, the geography altered by the Ice Age, however its clear to our modern eye that his guesses were incredibly inaccurate.
As CK2 has not yet expanded far enough east to cover China we will not be including Khitai, Howard's east Asian analogue. However we will still be able to cover the the more central areas of the story thanks to Rajas of India, therefore we will be able to include the Hyrkanian steppes and the subcontinent of Vendyha.
The size of the world is also debatable. Nemedia is meant to be comparable in size to France, and the Vilayet Sea to the Red Sea. Careful editing could hopefully cut down the size into something more manageable without negatively affecting gameplay. At the very least the game will include the primary focus on the Hyborian kingdoms and Stygai, with the southern limit at the Black Kingdoms and the eastern one at the Vilayet.
The unpleasant subject of 1930's racism
The original stories were written in a different time by a man whose views were considered standard in their day, that is a fact and to pretend otherwise is pointless. Race played no small part in the background of the Conan stories. The Kushites (Africans) were backwards and primitive, often worshiping demons and vengeful deities who they would sacrifice unwitting travelers to, practicing cannibalism en masse, and more often than not becoming the slaves and thralls to more advanced groups. Other non-Hyborian peoples such as the men of Khitai, Stygai, Zamora, Zingara and Vendyha were naturally duplicitous and often blood-thirsty in their dealings with others. Hell Stygai was pretty much ruled by an evil demon worshiping cult with designs on world conquest (they will be a popular choice I know). The true heroes however were often as not the non-Hyborian barbarians of Cimmeria, Asgard, and Vanaheim, the ancestors of the Celts and the Germanic peoples and the majority of Howard's ancestry, noble savages to the end.
I do not want to edit the work which I consider excellent regardless of the authors prejudices. Hell Lovecraft seemed terrified of Asians and I still read the Mythos. Some cosmetic changes will be necessary, Kushites will not be refereed to as Negroes unless it is seen as completely unavoidable, but aside from that I believe that the races and cultures of the stories should be represented as they were in the mods. Overt racism will be cut, but the unpleasant doings of what are still fantasy races in an imaginary world will still be kept so as not to break lore.
The stacked stats based on culture which I mentioned earlier are related to this topic in that back when Conan was created it was still believed that someone's race directly affected their nature and personality. Therefore all Cimmerians are naturally honourable and fierce fighters, and all Stygians are duplicitous devils and skilled at intrigue and magic. I would be inclined to keep this in the game as an homage to classical RPGs, but I can understand if a player would find it annoying. Hopefully the feature can be optional, that way your Pictish spy master can actually work on plots rather than being a waste of a council seat.
Start dates
There is no concrete timeline in Howard's definitive essay on the Hyborian Age. However it does give us a general lay out to work with. I intend to use Conan's ascension to the throne a Aquilonia as a dividing line to mark the years. BC and AC, Before Conan and After Conan. This will only be a temporary measure however, hopefully we can settle on something a bit less dumb.
I therefore have considered three potential state dates. The first one would be 50 BC, roughly starting around the time of Conan's birth. The player will be able to rule or adventure as they wish, explore Hyboria untainted by the sullen eyed bozo, before he managed to tread any jeweled thrones beneath his sandaled feet. Hopefully the player will even be able to meet Conan on his travels, just try not to fight him.
0 AC, upon Conan's ascension to the throne of Aquilonia. This seemed as good a start date as any, and doubtless many players would love to play as Conan as he goes on to conquer. Build the Aquilonian empire and crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women!
500 AC. This is the period when according to Howard the Hyborian Age did draw to a close. Aquilonia overextended herself, and a Pictish chieftain came about who was not a mindless savage. Not only this but the Ice Age was beginning and a second Great Cataclysm was once again beginning to dawn upon the world. A period of great turmoil and chaos across the face of the earth. Play as a barbarian Pict and tear down the ruins of the great Hyborian kingdoms, or as a Cimmerian or Aesir and lead your people either to safety or to glory from the creeping ice, or even as one of the crumbling realms as you try desperately to hold back the tide of history and keep alive the dying flame of the Hyborian Age.
Conclusion
That covers pretty much everything I wanted to discuss. I hope you have found it at least interesting to hear my proposals, if not intrigued and eager to join the team, which as of now is just me and a large notebook.
Thanks for reading, please feel free to message me if you're interested!
Proposal
Hello everyone, I posted this to the CK2 subreddit yesterday, but it's better to spread the net wide in order to get the bigger catch. So first off thanks for reading, I hope you find my proposal interesting, now allow me begin.
I want to help build a mod for CK2, one which is set in the world of Conan the Barbarian, Hyboria, as created by Robert E. Howard and expanded by many other authors following his death. The wealth of lore left behind by Howard and his fellow writers is great indeed, more than enough for us to bring their world to life on our screens. With few exceptions every kingdom and race is based off of cultures which exist in game already, from the Nordic Aesir and Vanir, the Gaelic Cimmerians, to the Indian princes of Vendhya; and Hyboria itself is based off of the vague (now debunked) notions we had of pre-Ice Age Eurasia.
I am here for a recruitment drive. I am educating myself on the lore of the universe, but it's too much for one man to handle alone. Therefore I need people who know the books better than myself, and I especially need people who have played games related to the series, like Age of Conan or table-top RPG versions. Likewise I need historians and anthropologists, which this sub is not short on. Howard based his world off of a twisted version of our own history, any gaps we come across can therefore be filled from there and whilst I have no small knowledge on certain periods I need to work alongside people whose expertise in various fields far outweighs my own. But worse than that though I need coders, men and women who know how to tear the game apart and rebuild it as something new and totally fucking awesome.
Please read on for more details about features and lore which I hope to implement in this mod, but if you're interested already then please message me your interest.
Roleplaying
I personally am not the biggest fan of roleplaying in my games, but I know that a lot of you out there do enjoy it. Considering this, and the impact Conan and Hyboria have had on table-top roleplaying over the years, I will attempt to implement a game style which is reminiscent of classic RPGs. This includes stacking traits and skills by culture and race, for example Picts and Cimmerians and other barbarians would all have very high martial but little to no intrigue skills, meanwhile Stygain or Zamoran characters would all have great intrigue, but poorer martial.
Beyond this I would like to put a high emphasis on prestige. Conan was all about prestige, he built his entire life around his martial prowess and intense wanderlust, it is what brought him from a barbarian slave to the ruler of the greatest kingdom of the west all on the back of his reputation. In Crusader Kings a player can go from a one county petty king to the emperor of the god damn world. I want our players to be able to start even below that. If possible I want the player to be able to up sticks from their home and go on an adventure; traveling across the world, looting temples, slaying sorcerers, eloping with young princesses/princes, before they decide to settle down on a bit of land which they gained by either royal favour or through the blood of conquest. The key benefit of this would of course be the massive prestige a successful player could gain from this, building themselves a name to rival even the great Conan. But of course the treasure gained from your travels would also be a perk, whether you rob the graves of long dead kings or earn glory as a mercenary in one of the countless border disputes.
Owning land and being a part of a dynasty is of course the core aspect of the game (since Horse Lords I'm not sure how essential land really is at the moment), therefore I am unsure if this would be able to work. A back up plan would be to allow the players to become absentee rulers, adventuring whilst still holding their primary titles.
Map
Hyboria is huge. It is also of disputed shape. So far the only truly canon map I have seen is this one, which is based off of sketches by Howard himself. Other maps have expanded on the world, but as you can see everything east of the Vilayet Sea is pretty much up in the air. Howard did claim that Hyboria was the Eurasia of the ancient past, the geography altered by the Ice Age, however its clear to our modern eye that his guesses were incredibly inaccurate.
As CK2 has not yet expanded far enough east to cover China we will not be including Khitai, Howard's east Asian analogue. However we will still be able to cover the the more central areas of the story thanks to Rajas of India, therefore we will be able to include the Hyrkanian steppes and the subcontinent of Vendyha.
The size of the world is also debatable. Nemedia is meant to be comparable in size to France, and the Vilayet Sea to the Red Sea. Careful editing could hopefully cut down the size into something more manageable without negatively affecting gameplay. At the very least the game will include the primary focus on the Hyborian kingdoms and Stygai, with the southern limit at the Black Kingdoms and the eastern one at the Vilayet.
The unpleasant subject of 1930's racism
The original stories were written in a different time by a man whose views were considered standard in their day, that is a fact and to pretend otherwise is pointless. Race played no small part in the background of the Conan stories. The Kushites (Africans) were backwards and primitive, often worshiping demons and vengeful deities who they would sacrifice unwitting travelers to, practicing cannibalism en masse, and more often than not becoming the slaves and thralls to more advanced groups. Other non-Hyborian peoples such as the men of Khitai, Stygai, Zamora, Zingara and Vendyha were naturally duplicitous and often blood-thirsty in their dealings with others. Hell Stygai was pretty much ruled by an evil demon worshiping cult with designs on world conquest (they will be a popular choice I know). The true heroes however were often as not the non-Hyborian barbarians of Cimmeria, Asgard, and Vanaheim, the ancestors of the Celts and the Germanic peoples and the majority of Howard's ancestry, noble savages to the end.
I do not want to edit the work which I consider excellent regardless of the authors prejudices. Hell Lovecraft seemed terrified of Asians and I still read the Mythos. Some cosmetic changes will be necessary, Kushites will not be refereed to as Negroes unless it is seen as completely unavoidable, but aside from that I believe that the races and cultures of the stories should be represented as they were in the mods. Overt racism will be cut, but the unpleasant doings of what are still fantasy races in an imaginary world will still be kept so as not to break lore.
The stacked stats based on culture which I mentioned earlier are related to this topic in that back when Conan was created it was still believed that someone's race directly affected their nature and personality. Therefore all Cimmerians are naturally honourable and fierce fighters, and all Stygians are duplicitous devils and skilled at intrigue and magic. I would be inclined to keep this in the game as an homage to classical RPGs, but I can understand if a player would find it annoying. Hopefully the feature can be optional, that way your Pictish spy master can actually work on plots rather than being a waste of a council seat.
Start dates
There is no concrete timeline in Howard's definitive essay on the Hyborian Age. However it does give us a general lay out to work with. I intend to use Conan's ascension to the throne a Aquilonia as a dividing line to mark the years. BC and AC, Before Conan and After Conan. This will only be a temporary measure however, hopefully we can settle on something a bit less dumb.
I therefore have considered three potential state dates. The first one would be 50 BC, roughly starting around the time of Conan's birth. The player will be able to rule or adventure as they wish, explore Hyboria untainted by the sullen eyed bozo, before he managed to tread any jeweled thrones beneath his sandaled feet. Hopefully the player will even be able to meet Conan on his travels, just try not to fight him.
0 AC, upon Conan's ascension to the throne of Aquilonia. This seemed as good a start date as any, and doubtless many players would love to play as Conan as he goes on to conquer. Build the Aquilonian empire and crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women!
500 AC. This is the period when according to Howard the Hyborian Age did draw to a close. Aquilonia overextended herself, and a Pictish chieftain came about who was not a mindless savage. Not only this but the Ice Age was beginning and a second Great Cataclysm was once again beginning to dawn upon the world. A period of great turmoil and chaos across the face of the earth. Play as a barbarian Pict and tear down the ruins of the great Hyborian kingdoms, or as a Cimmerian or Aesir and lead your people either to safety or to glory from the creeping ice, or even as one of the crumbling realms as you try desperately to hold back the tide of history and keep alive the dying flame of the Hyborian Age.
Conclusion
That covers pretty much everything I wanted to discuss. I hope you have found it at least interesting to hear my proposals, if not intrigued and eager to join the team, which as of now is just me and a large notebook.
Thanks for reading, please feel free to message me if you're interested!