So I bought a collection of the original Conan stories published in Weird Tales by Robert Howard...

I find it interesting how there's that kind of a mixing between alchemy, retarded fantasy-eugenics, and overt magic.

D&D's magic system comes from Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories, which didn't come about until the late 50s or early 60s I think.

But yeah, ye olden sword&sorcery magic came from making pacts with otherworldly creatures or tricks.

From memory, Thoth-Amon and Pelias both had actual magic at their command, both ritual and direct sorcery. They used focus objects to channel their power, however (Thoth lacked the vast majority of his power without a focus, and couldn't summon any demons). In one of the pastiche books by another author, it's mentioned that Thoth-Amon does have a great deal of personal power, eldritch secrets he doesn't rely on other entities to use (usually because he pried said secrets from their corpses), but by the time Conan arrives in the setting, Magic is declining, and had been ever since the fall of Atlantis (Cimmerians are actually directly descended from Atlantis, from memory) and Acheron.

There is some wizards that can get somewhat close to medium levelled D&D colleagues. Plus some apocalyptic spells. But they are all basically Dark Lords or something similar. And they still royally sucked in combat for the most part.

I remember one wizard who was able to turn into snake, rip hearts out of chest at a distance and curse people to death if he head something from them (like hair). He was considered almost an ultimate caster. The greatest shit Conan's helper mage pulled of was levitation and even that strained him.

Like this user has pointed out, D&D's magic system originally draws most heavily from the Dying Earth, and if you've been enjoying Howard, Vance's series is worth a look.

Also of note is that magic in the Dying Earth is also rooted in the idea that magic is actually a form of technology, although it's at such a level of super-science that in practical terms it's more like having psychic powers.

Yeah, I picked up the Compleate Dying Earth a couple years ago, and it's worth reading, especially since you can see how it influenced D&D and fantasy in general. Same with Moorcock (especially his Elric stories).

And come to think of it, wasn't Greyhawk (the first D&D setting) also implied to be Earth in the far-far-far future, since you could find ancient bits of modern (by 70s reckoning) technology?

The old Marvel ones are a bit dubiously faithful, but are pretty fun.
The Dark Horse ones are very faithful, and really well done.

While it varies Lovecraft often treated magic similarly in his stories.

In one instance you have a guy who starts chanting a spell to seperate the soul from the body of the protagantsti before he realizes what's up and starts strangeling him. Another case you have a dude doing alchemy straight out of the Necronomicon to create a potion that turns you into stone.

I don't think at any point you ever see anyone shooting a fireball or anything of that sort.

>magic in the Dying Earth is also rooted in the idea that magic is actually a form of technology, although it's at such a level of super-science that in practical terms it's more like having psychic powers.

Sort of, yeah. You have to read between the lines a bit, but I believe scientists discovered other dimensions, began contacting extraplanar entities and then somebody bargained with them for power. Somewhere along the line somebody must have had one of these things dick around with our universe's laws of reality, too, I think, probably to make magic easier. For one thing, the sun is not dying in the way it should according to the way things work right now -- other dying stars we've observed don't flicker off and on like that.

>Conan
>Barbarian

Conan is a Fighter. He doesn't even do Barbarian shit that much. He really should have been called "Conan the Mercenary"

I've seen a pretty good argument on a blog somewhere that he's a high strength Thief in OD&D.

According to actual stats, he's a Fighter/Thief.

That's pretty funny actually

I guess Barbarian is actually a hybrid of Fighter and Thief like how Paladin is a hybrid of Fighter and Cleric. IIRC Nethack let you unlock stealth when you reached a certain level as a barbarian

The problem is mostly that D&D style magic nowadays occupies a lot of the collective space about what magic is, despite not being particularly interesting nor conductive to good narratives. Magic in RPGs sort of needs to be specific and measurable, for reasons related to game mechanics, but outside the scope of a game that kills most of what makes magic, well, magic.
One of my favorite bits from the first Dresden Files novels was how potions worked - you had to gather a bunch of different components that had metaphorical connections with what you wanted to do. As the series progressed, magic became more and more D&D-like, "I can cast fireball this many times before getting tired".

Magic in Hyboria isn't a trivial thing, like in D&D where every other PC cast spells and does so effortlessly. Magic is difficult, taxing and dangerous in general, often invoking otherworldly and often Lovecraftian beings. It seems that magic requires study and knowledge of the right invocations and words of power and stuff, but it seems like the actual "power sources" of magic are largely lost, so you need to tap items of power or otherworldly beings.

Though a lot of these people also learn alchemy stuff and bolster their bag of tricks with them as well. Everyone kinda knows magic is real, so when I use slight of hand to hit someone with sleeping powder is it magic or a trick? The shlub peasants watching probably think it's magic.

Most of all, it is mysterious, especially since we're more or less seeing things from Conan's view, who doesn't understand magic. This helps keep it interesting and "other".

This is one of the kind of failures in RPGs, because rules are laid out, it makes things too familiar and mundane. When everyone can take a feat or level dip to cast spells, it becomes kind of every day.

Howard was drawing on a lot of the more traditional sources for 'magic'- the wise man, alchemists, witches, shamanism, herbalists and soothsayers that where considered magical practitioners or even just charlatans that bullshitted until they made it with trickery.
Even stuff like 'necromancy' didn't have much to do with dead bodies or animated skellies running around, it was more divination to see what would happen in the future or finding out a hidden secret about something, by talking to the spirits of the deceased.

Conan and barbarians (and anyone not a dopey peon) probably saw a user of magic as being untrustworthy, because they're essentially bullshit artists or fucking around with something insanely dangerous (poison, flammables, shit that blows up) and you'll live longer not having anything to do with them.

oh not this discussion again

>applying bs D&D mechanical terms to fiction way older than D&D itself'
Conan is a Barbarian. Because Barbarian is not a "D&D class". It was a greek and then roman slur for foreigners, and since the greeks and romans were the "civillised" folk of the time it soon began to mean a member of culture at certain level of progress. RuneQuest handles it that way and it's good.
But even in D&D "Barbarian" is only a class in mechanical abstraction tier, not in universe. Neither do barbarians (class members) call themselves that way, nor outsiders diferentiate a class barbarian and fighter from barbarian tribe as different things (or at least different things where one is barbarian and another one is not).

Seconding the Dark Horse run, it's pretty great.

The People of the Black Circle, first novella, he's fighting wizards. It goes into detail as far the restrictions of powers go for certain spells and there are components to a lot of what they do. There are still straightforward moments when they start flying around and start making earthquakes by will alone

Doesn't the bad guy from the movie kill Arnie's love interest with Melf's acid arrow?

>Barbarians of Lemuria
My fucking nigger
One of the best systems and settings out there in my humble opinion

It's a literal snake that he shoots at her. Seems to be one of his tricks as a priest of set.
Also, depending on your perspective, movie Thulsa Doom may or may not be a Serpent Man and therefore has access to pretty much the deepest, heavies magic shit available in his millenia long life span.... which boils down to hypnotism, almost-never-miss arrows, and turning into a snake for no discernible reason.
On point.
Conan's primary definitive feature is in culture and attitude, not ability.
Conan strongly sees the "rugged" or "natural" life style as superior to the "civilized" one. When he's younger, he has pretty close to outright contempt for civilized people, though as he ages and matures he comes to appreciate that everyone being a brutal mercenary isn't actually a good thing and sees civilization's merits, while still having a keen critical eye for its fault.s

So technically, Conan or any like-minded individual might refer to themselves as a barbarian in the same way that "punks" or "niggers" call themselves that, because he considers this derogatory term to be a compliment, coming from civilized pussies

The Barbarian class wouldn't come out much later until the AD&D Unearthed Arcana in the early 80's.

Barbarian in UA fits Conan much better, inherent distrust of magic that allowed you to gain exp for destroying magic items, so you could smash the evil altar and the demon rings and get the same exp as if you claimed them as loot. Plus survival skills and ranger skills and a barbarian horde instead of a castle and men at arms.

Conan calls himself a Barbarian because he rejects civilization not because he holds contempt for it, but he embraces being outside the restraints of society. His "what is best in life?" Speak exemplifies that. He learns much later on that while civilization might be OK when done right, he is not a man who belongs in a civilization.

3e really dropped the ball when they changed Barbarian from what it was in AD&D to a simplified version of the Berserker and Ravager kits.

There are stories with magicians using magic, shooting beams from eyes that dissolve men, protecting men from being dissolved by those beams, opening cracks in the ground, causing rocks to fly from the ground without being touched to hit Conan, sprouting tentacles from the ground to tie up Conan, specifically called magic tendrils, evil clones of Conan, illusions of fighting statues, all of these done in combat with Conan without any mention of demon pacts but sometimes with mention of mentor wizards.

Magic in fantasy predates D&D. There's magic in Moorcock, which like Vance doubtlessly inspired D&D, Lewis, Lovecraft, Dunsany, Shakespeare, the Eddas, Arthurian cycle, Homer. There's a sample of several thousand years of magic in European literature. It wasn't called fantasy at the time but many of those tales fit in the fantasy genre now.

Howard himself had sorcerers running around in his work, such as his Bran Mak Morn and Kull stories as well as Conan. While he often did have sorcerors use trickery they did have genuine power. The vast majority of The Hour of the Dragon is a search for a magical artefact that will be able to kill the anciently dead now magically resurrected Xaltotun.

>Getting to the point, when exactly did the conception of magic in fantasy go from guys who use chemistry and snakes hidden in their pockets to guys who have psychic powers?

Never. Because magicians in fantasy have always been written by one author or another as having genuine magic power.

Look at the magic on the movie. The old movie not the new.

It is good shit, and Cugel is one of the biggest assholes i've ever encountered in literature.

Also the rules for the Dying Earth rpg are hilarious, anyone have he full version of them?

I like the compromise from ''The Magic goes Away'' where the magician is quite powerful but is happy to use tricks or a simple throwing knife up the sleeve, as it's often easier and more expedient.

Magic is dangerous shit yo, you use it when you have to.

>3e really dropped the ball

Fixed your post for you

>turning into a snake for no discernible reason.
It never helps.

I don't think that the process of making game rules trivializes magic, it's more that magic becomes trivial in a system if it's too easy to obtain. Like you say, in WoTC D&D, multiclassing into a caster is a fairly simple matter.

TSR was more restrictive in regards to class options and picking up new abilities, although that doesn't mean they're off the hook. Spells in D&D have always been incredibly potent even at low levels, such that a level 1 wizard PC will spoil any attempt at making a dark fantasy setting where is a subtle force.

>that magic becomes trivial in a system if it's too easy to obtain

One of the reasons I love Runequest and Glorantha so much is just the fact that everyone can do some magic. You're living in an era where magic isn't some scientific subject old beardy men in towers study like in (A)D&D or Ars Magica - it's a fact of lift that magic's everywhere and nobody bats an eye. In Glorantha, a farmer can cast Bladesharp on his axe when the trolls come to bother him, or on his sickle or scythe at harvest time so he can mow like a motherfucker, and everyone's cool with that.

Except for the God Learners who did try to study magic scientifically and screwed the world over in a colossal way.

I like Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser for the same reason I like Cugel: they're violent, obsessed with sex and loot, occasionally stupid and sympathetic largely because of their own failures.
Cugel is a bigger asshole on the whole though, kind of like a less-mentally ill version of Severian from The Book of the New Sun, played for laughs.

No, magic can follow rules and be interesting, it is as you said though, it is too common, also it has the issue of 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th editions making the majority of magic effects just copies of spells.

Another nice aspect of 4e is it broke away from that and so there were a lot of monsters using magic players were jealous of.

A lot of settings help with the issue, like Warhammer Fantasy, magic is genuinely dangerous to use and a risk vs reward calculation, as opposed to standardize magic that will always do X when you use it.

Yeah, the villainous magician in "Rogues in the House" is basically just a mad scientist. Which is fucking cool.