It's my contention that people who want to run a game set in Lankhmar/Nehwon using the system of their choice do not need an expensive, heavily-padded book. You can do it for yourself, and I'm here to show you how.

The best place to start, of course, is Fritz Leiber's books. Where else are you going to get the tone? If you've never read them, they're really very short and snappy and easy to read.

You'll notice that most of the time, Leiber just mentions places and lets it go at that. This is good news, because it means you can make stuff up for yourself. What the heck is that hairless place about? Set an adventure there and off you go – that seems to be what Leiber did.

If you want a bit more detail, plenty of fans have trod this road before you (and what is a writer of RPG supplements but a fan with a CV?). To that end, I've spent a rather small amount of time gathering some useful links.

We can start with the Wikipedia entries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lankhmar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehwon

A couple of reviews are useful for getting an overview:
The SF Site Featured Review: The First & Second Books of Lankhmar
Fritz Leiber: Ill Met in Lankhmar - an infinity plus review

Fan sites:
Map of Nehwon
Map of Lankhmar
Maps of Nehwon
Lankhmar Geomorphs
The Scrolls of Lankhmar
Lankhmar: Carnival of Swords
Welcome to Lankhmar Home of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
lankhmar.pbwiki
Swords against Nehwon

I'll take questions now. If anybody has any other useful sources, by all means post them as well.

Droog, you're not hearing it, but I'm applauding you right now. I LOVE Lankhmar. All a good GM needs are the books and maybe a good memory.

Thanks, dude. I think I put this in the wrong forum, though.

Which one do you want it moved to? I could see it either on the Roleplay forum or the Theory forum...

RPGPundit

Lets make it Roleplaying Games, then. I guess there is a theoretical side, but what spurred the thread was Mongoose's upcoming Lankhmar for RQ.

I just received my initial batch of books from the SFBC today, and two of them were the collections of all the Lankhmar material.*  I've been searching for Swords and Ice Magic forever; the Lankhmar material seems to be out of print in the U.S., other than these SFBC editions.

I'm working up an Iron Heroes campaign that'll draw from the Lankhmar stories for inspiration, and I'd definately agree that the best source for a direct Lankhmar campaign would be the stories and novel.  


* Well, not all, as it turns out.  The Knight and Knave of Swords isn't collected in the books, but I already had a copy of that.

Somehow I caught the entire ENTIRE collection on eBay in a lot for like...five bucks or something. It was crazy.

I still have the ones I shoplifted when I was 17!

A couple of years back I decided to run a game inspired by Conan.

We used the Elric! system.

At the start of play, I told the players that they were each travelling to the city of Illyria of the seven towers, which lay across the Great Western Desert which curiosly enough lay to the East.  Why they were going was a matter for them, the setup was simply that they had good reason but they could work out what that was.

So, how much had I statted Illyria?  Not at all, it's a name, nothing more.  Each week, about an hour before play, I made up some names of the places they were coming to and some key people and winged it, the world unfolded as the players travelled, but always there would be references to far off things or places.  Not things or places I had detailed in any way, just references.

It worked very well, sword and sorcery is not about the map, the world can and probably should be broad brush, as long as you're one step ahead of the players getting there you really don't need to sweat the details.

True20 would be excellent for Lankhmar.

RPGPundit

:cool: Great links and thread. Very much agree with the flesh it out as you go approach.

(adds the books to reread list and bumps them to the top)

Are there any particular aspects of the setting/stories that would need adding to a RPG? Or should say any lower powered fantasy system work pretty much as is? Just took a look at ye olde Deities & Demigods Newhon entry and nothing struck me as requiring modification from a vanilla fantasy RPG baseline.

Never had the other adaptations but heard they were nothing special. The above links provide more than enough background info.

Quote from: Casey777Are there any particular aspects of the setting/stories that would need adding to a RPG? Or should say any lower powered fantasy system work pretty much as is? Just took a look at ye olde Deities & Demigods Newhon entry and nothing struck me as requiring modification from a vanilla fantasy RPG baseline.

Some aspects:

One of the main things I'd look at would be the wide variety of magic (none of it explained in any depth). I could easily model this in, say, HeroQuest, but I'd be interested to know how others would handle it in their system of choice. An effects-based approach might be best.

I'd pick a system in which two men are a challenge for an experienced fighter (see 'The Jewels in the Forest'). An ability to describe unusual tactics  would also be good.

Quote from: RPGPunditTrue20 would be excellent for Lankhmar.

Would you like to outline some ideas on how people could go about it? Any specific tweaks?

Quote from: BalbinusA couple of years back I decided to run a game inspired by Conan.

We used the Elric! system.

Maybe we should have a series of threads on DIY worlds.

The setting in Leiber, Howard and other S&S is at the service of the characters, not the other way round. What you need is some way to get at the essential feel or colour of the world.

One advantage of DIY Lankhmar is that you would not have to suffer the absolutely shitty cover art for the Mongoose book.