rredmond wrote:

That Donovan is the man!
Before the button was even up!!
--Ron--
PS: guess I should hit the intro thread now eh? ;)

The button was up for less than five minutes! 
 

rhialto wrote:

Rhialto here. Started in '78 in high school with Holmes, then 1E AD&D, then RuneQuest, Dragonquest, CoC, Traveller, etc., etc. Dropped any form of D&D until 3E came out and played a quite enjoyable years-long campaign with it until we discovered high-level play was a headache. The rest of my group dabbled in 4E or moved on to Pathfinder while I tried to tweak the latter to be more S&S-like (inspired by the Xoth Publishing series of modules). Finally gave up and went back to a more familiar system (BRP/Stormbringer) until AS&SH came out then switched over to it for my Atlantean campaign. Now running AS&SH in my homebrew Atlantis, with tweaks from Akrasia's S&S house rules and additional magic rules & spells from the old Bard games Arcanum. Keeping S&S kid-friendly is a must, since we've got a newer generation of 8 - 11 year-olds just starting (and they, rightly IMO, just call it "D&D").

That's excellent. When you have the time, I'd love to see you share some more about your Atlantis campaign here, maybe at the "campaign" forum. I play D&D with my kids, too, but I just have them using B/X. Welcome aboard, Rhialto the Marvellous!  
 

For me,the mechanics really are not the Thing, as you surmise. To me, it's about the setting. It (I hope!) establishess the tone, the mood, the flavor, and certainly Baggley's art captured that spirit. 

Yes, those Nightshade volumes are incredible. I've got them all, and I enjoy them greatly. CAS is my favorite of the Big Three when I am reading his work . . . but then I change my mind and say HPL when I am reading his work. But I cut my teeth on the works of REH, and when I am reading his work, it feels  like a punch to the gut and like home all at the same time. Recently I finally read all the El Borak tales, and my infatuation with Howard's fiction and poetry was rekindled.

JasonZavoda wrote:

So many of these lines could be book titles.

"Between the Bourns of Time"
"Weary of all Recorded Years"
"The Abiding Place of My Conceptions"
"Aeons That Are Too Recent"
"The Years When the Moon Was Young"
"Eternal Slumber in a Breath"

He was first a poet.

Yes, the wizard of Auburn. Even his prose was so lyrical and rhythmic, it reads like poetry. Like yourself, I was late to CAS, and didn't start reading his work until about 10 years ago. It seems silly, but I wonder if I would have read him much earlier if he'd been an Appendix N author...
 

Welcome JasonZavoda, Chainsaw, and ElricS! 

Chainsaw wrote:

So, which years or issues are the ones to read? The last Conan comics I read were the black and white magazine versions, which I always loved because they felt like The Real Deal compared with my other comics. I need to recollect those, whichever ones they were...

Chainsaw, I also loved Savage Sword of Conan. John Buscema is, to me, the best Conan artist after Frazetta, especailly when Alcala was his inker. And Roy Thomas had more leeway with "mature" content, because it was considered a magazine, so in general it was better than Marvel's Conan the Barbarian, but I read them both and still have all my originals.

So the Dark Horse series. Start here:

http://www.amazon.com/Conan-Volume-Giants-Daughter-Stories/dp/1593073011/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1393814081&sr=8-1&keywords=conan+busiek

And then here:

http://www.amazon.com/Conan-Vol-Bowl-Other-Stories/dp/1593074034/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y

And you'll be on your way to some great entertainment.
 

francisca wrote:

I dropped my subscription about 6 months ago, because I was over 18 months behind......

Sounds like you dropped it at just about the right time, but as I understand it, Wood's time is through. You should treat yourself to Truman's six-issue mini-series that covers Hour of the Dragon, if you have the chance.

Just got back from TotalCon 2014, and I had a lot of fun running Ben Ball's Beneath the Comet (an AS&SH adventure to be published in the near future), and also my own Mystery at Port Greely, which is slated to appear in Gygax Magazine #4. I also had the priviledge of being a panelist at a panel on Game Desgin, while AS&SH editor Dave (DMPrata) Prata was a panelist at a panel on Game Editing.

This month Dave and I will be at Gary Con VI. I'll be running AS&SH games, as will Morgan Hazel and Rich Franks.

In June, I'll be at North Texas RPG Con.
 

For me it started with my brother Bob's green book shelf. My two brothers and I shared a bedroom when we were young, but when my brother Bob turned about 17, our dad built a basement bedroom for him. It was the Seventies, and Bob would often blare Pink Floyd and Elvis Costello in his basement pad. He never let me in, but I would often linger outside his door where he kept this green bookshelf stacked with paperbacks. That was where I discovered Tolkien, Asimov, and my favorite, Robert E. Howard. The cover of Conan the Conqueror by Frank Frazetta was the one that stuck out in my mind the most. It really captured my imagination. Still does. The horror and brutality of it! Yes, for me it starts with Frank Frazetta.