Conan The Barbarian

Howard is named in Appendix N and the debt shows in what the game assumes a hero is:

• A wandering adventurer with no lord, no land and a reason to enter a ruin
• Treasure as the actual goal, which is where experience points came from before combat
• Sorcery as something dangerous and other, practised by the enemy rather than the party
• A pseudo-historical world of fallen empires, which is Hyboria's structure and Greyhawk's

probably the clearest influence. Ilona Andrews has said she loved Conan, and Kate's combination of sword-fighting, mercenary work, independence and a brutal supernatural world has a strong Howardian

Miura has talked about the sword and sorcery paperbacks and their cover art as part of what he was drawing toward, and Guts is built from that shelf: a wandering mercenary with no allegiance, oversized muscle rendered as anatomy rather than as style, sorcery as an enemy power, and a world of ruined kingdoms. The Frazetta lineage is visible in the posing of almost every full-page panel. Filed MEDIUM. Miura's most cited influences are Japanese, and this is the Western half of a mixture rather than the whole of it.

Gemmell writes in the tradition Howard created: a warrior without a kingdom moving between cultures, violence described as work rather than as spectacle, and no elves or wizards to carry the plot. Where Gemmell departs is the moral centre, and that departure is what the series is known for. Druss is old, has a code, and the books are about whether a man who is good at killing can be a good man. Conan never asks. Filed MEDIUM, as heroic fantasy inheriting from its founder rather than a debt Gemmell stated.

Pratchett's Cohen the Barbarian, introduced in The Light Fantastic, is a parody of Conan: the sword-and-sorcery barbarian hero grown old, toothless and still fighting.