Friends, the Internet, and MMORPGs

Before I moved to Los Angeles, six years ago this August, I lived in Reno, Nevada, a college town that thinks it is a casino resort destination. Not that Reno doesn't have some very nice casinos, it does, it's just that as nice as they are...Reno is no Vegas. Then again, when it comes to quality of education...Vegas is no Reno.

While I was a college student in Reno, I made some very good friends. Two of whom are members of this blog community, Rob (Robert Barker) and Logan 5 (Patrick Ditton), and one who stops by for a visit every now and then (John Ford). These are the friends who I have managed best to keep in touch with, and I largely have the internet to thank for that.

But Fritz's last post regarding the Dungeons and Dragons Online game, I am indeed preparing an article about it but want to get some post-move play time in first, reminded me of one of the ways I had planned on using the internet to keep in contact with friends.

As you may have guessed, I am a gamer, but unlike the l33t masters of a single game I am a gaming renaissance man. If it is a game, chances are I have played it at least once or at least am familiar with it because a friend of mine has played it. I enjoy playing games for the new experiences they offer, but I also like them as cultural artifacts. The mechanics/tone/setting/subject of a particular game can tell us a lot about the game designer's (and our own) thoughts about the subject of a particular game.

Take Chess as an example. Chess is one of the most popular abstract simulation of war played in the world. The construction of its rules tell us that the "inventors" of the game felt that their are two central variables to winning a military conflict. First, you must control territory. Chess is, after all, a territory control game. Second, the elimination of the "highest ranking" piece of your opponent's army grants victory. The capture/trapping of your opponent's king is the only necessary condition for victory. That is a very simple beginning to a conversation of what Chess tells us about warfare, there is much more that can be discussed, but you can see the point. Any time a game deals with real world subject matter, it is by nature of its being a simulation of that subject matter a commentary or description of that subject.

Even when the games deal with entirely fictional subjects and situations games can tell us a great deal about the society that created them. That is why I love games, all kinds of games.

When I moved out of Reno, I had hoped to use a game to keep in contact with some of my friends. It seemed like a natural communication medium. My friends Josh and Rob both were signed up, as was I, to a MMORPG titled Asheron's Call. Like many MMORPGs, Asheron's Call is an open ended game with the ability to type text, alsolike many there were supplemental programs that allowed users to talk via microphones with other players. It was my hope that my friends and I could meet up online and catch up on what was going on in each others lives.

I had failed to take into account two things, among others I am sure. I failed to understand how much my friends', and my own, schedules would change after I moved. With Rob in Philadelphia going to Law School, me attending Graduate School in Claremont and working at a non-profit during the day, and Josh returning to school (as well as preferring odd times to play online), it was all but impossible to keep in touch using Asheron's Call. I guess we could have scheduled a regular weekly meetup, but the game design of AC didn't reward that kind of behavior. The second thing I failed to predict was how much better some of the newer MMORPGs would be. I haven't even looked at the Asheron's Call box in five years, let alone played a game. The monthly subscription cost that each MMORPG has limits the number of MMORPGs that a reasonable player will subscribe to at a given time.

I currently limit my self to two MMORPG subscriptions. Largely because my online game time is about 5 hours a week (max.) and I don't want to spend money on something I am not using. At 10 hours a month per game at $15.00, I am getting more than my movie equivelent value (MEV) of entertainment. MEV's are based on one movie costing approximatly $10 and providing 2 hours of entertainment. All of my entertainment purchases are done in MEVs. (I will do a more complete post on MEVs later). Needless to say $30.00 had better provide a minimum of 6 hours of entertainment value to meet the MEV formula, and the nature of MMORPGs mean that approximately 40% of game time is spent either "crafting," training, or getting to where you want to go.

The internet is a great communication tool, but like any other it requires effort to make it useful. I am still in contact with some friends thanks to the internet, but there are others whom I have lost contact with and that saddens me. I still think of those I have lost contact with as friends, just ones I have to hunt down and reconnect with.

So Sean, Robert June, Josh, and everyone else I am currently out of contact with, if you happen to be browsing through blogger and find this leave a comment in the comments section.

Christian Johnson would love to hear from you.

I know, I know, Dancing With the Stars?

But this is sooooooo cool.

Is the World Ready for Major League Gaming?

According to the Wall Street Journal, Major League Gaming Inc. (MLG) has received $10 million in funding to use in its efforts to elevate videogame playing into a professional sport.

Let us leave aside the question of whether playing a video game is a sport at all, let alone a potentially professional one. Rather let us ask whether the world is ready for the professionalization of what is primarily a hobby.

There is an inherent competitiveness in the mindset of most gamers. If a gamer is skilled at a particular game, then he or she wants to show off their skills. One need only spend a few minutes on Xbox Live listening to the taunts of players to see how seriously some gamers take their entertainment. Those of us who grew up with the Atari 2600 remember the Fred Savage film The Wizard and fantasized about becoming famous for our leet Nintendo skills.

For certain, there is an interest on the part of the "sportsman" with regards to professional gaming. Who wouldn't like to write off the expense of their Xbox 360 when filing taxes, let alone get paid to play?

The types of games MLG will focus its competitions on, games like Halo 2 and CounterStrike, are certainly exciting games that require quick reflexes, good manual dexterity, and well-honed skills. These are features that guarantee that the "sport" will be able to develop and promote specific atheletes. If they are lucky, these gamers will have eccentric and interesting personalities.

The question then becomes one of audience. Will anyone pay to watch other people play video games? If G4's Arena is any indication, the evidence is mixed. The show doesn't offer large prizes, it doesn't command a large audience, and it perfectly displays the difficulty of creating play-by-play analysis of gameplay. Can MLG become a televised circuit competition like NASCAR? Only time will tell, but I doubt it.

More likely, the professionalization of video games will follow a path similar to that of professional Collectible Card Game events. The cash prizes will largely be paid by the video game manufacturers and be tied to new releases. I see the development as more a grassroots occurance than a national one. Even if MLG becomes successful, they would do well to remember that even the most successful professional sports began at the grassroots professional level.

I don't know if the audience is there for a league, but I am willing to watch and find out. I do know that gaming still has a lot of PR work to do in order to overcome the negative reporting done by much of the news media. A truly successful league will have to fight against negative PR to promote the sport and will face opposition from those who see gaming as a waste of time or as a contributor to youth violence.

One think is for sure, given my skill at most video games, I won't be among the first generation of video game "atheletes." I would be pwnt by all but the least skilled newb. To paraphrase Breaking Away, "to many people 'professional gamer' is just another joke, but to me it's another thing I can never be."

DVD Review: Doom: Unrated

Doom wasn't the first first-person shooter (FPS) video game, but it was the game that defined the genre. In the action packed shooter, scientists experimenting with Star Trek style matter transportation accidently open a portal into Hell. Video game players around the world battled demons who had been released as a result of this accident. Doom was a veritable clinic in how to combine action with horror. At the time Doom was released there was very little, in any medium, that could compare to the nervous, frightened, excitement players felt while playing the ground-breaking FPS.

In 2005, over a decade after the original video game release, the film industry released a theatrical version of Doom. The film was a large financial disappointment. With an estimated budget of $70 million, the film only managed to bring in a domestic gross of $28 million. It appeared that fans and critics were disappointed with the Hollywood version of the classic shooter. But it is common knowledge that DVD sales have replaced box office as the primary revenue source for films. The Doom DVD was released on February 7, 2006, uncut and with added documentary features.

At first glance, Doom looks like a perfect popcorn film, guaranteed to entertain. No one expects a movie based on a video game to have important social commentary. The Rock, a very entertaining and charismatic actor who has proven to be a box office draw, stars in the film and his inclusion brings the promise of humor and athleticism. Karl Urban, the hunky Eomir from the Lord of the Rings movies, stars as Reaper. The very pretty Rosamund Pike, recently of Pride and Prejudice, adds a character who contributes to the drama of the film. Beauty, brawn, a box office draw, and affiliation with a successful license, it seems like a match made in marketing heaven.

But apparently Andrzej Bartkowiak has opened his own little portal to Hell and has decided to make Doom fans everywhere suffer. This film misses the mark in so many ways that it would take to long to list them, but the potential viewer at least deserves a couple of highlights.

The first mistake Doom the movie makes, is to leave its source material behind. "Scientists accidently opening a portal to Hell?" the producers ask. "No, no, that is unrealistic. Hell should be metaphoric. Let's have the 'hellspawn' be the product of genetic manipulation." After all, what fans of Doom want to see is an adaptation of Resident Evil that takes place on Mars and not an adaptation of their favorite FPS.

Doom begins with a team of marines being sent, via an archeologically discovered transporation device, to Mars to investigate an outbreak at a scientific laboratory on Mars. From there, the action begins. Or at least that is what is supposed to happen, you know...action. In the spirit of Aliens, the marine squad is whittled down one by one, but unlike Aliens it's through a rather boring set of scenes that in which this whittling occurs. There is little to no tension and no horror in this horror/action film.

The film features a gimmick that fans giggled about the most prior to the film's release. There is a five-minute long first-person shooter perspective sequence where the audience becomes Reaper. Ironically, this segment is more entertaining that the rest of the film. One could argue that this is because the director of this sequence, Jon Farhat, has a better understanding of pacing and tension. In fact, I watched this segment of the film three times.

Doom commits the one sin that is unforgivable in an action/horror film. The movie is just plain dull. It's hard to explain why the film is so dull. There is no one flaw that makes it so, like being overly "talky" which Doom most certainly isn't. It's a combination of things. The film fails to frighten, it fails to excite, and it fails to make the audience laugh. Okay, I laughed once, but if I tell you when it will be a huge spoiler for those brave enough to journey through the Hell that is Doom.

The DVD contains a few, very interesting, documentaries about the making of the movie, including one about the FPS sequence. These are well worth watching if you are a Netflix subscriber. The unrated version adds a little more gore, some unneccessary (and not even worth it) nudity, and a spoonful more boredom to the original.

Book Review: Marked for Death by Matt Forbeck

January 2006, as a part of its growing line of Eberron themed novels, Wizards of the Coast released the second part of Matt Forbeck's The Lost Mark trilogy. The Road to Death is the sequel to 2005's Marked for Death and picks up where the action of the first novel left off. Fantasy is filled with book series and when the latest book in a series arrives there are usually multiple reviews of the newest offering. The same is true in this case. You can read a very thorough book of the month club discussion over at Essential Eberron. What is usually lacking are "reminder reviews" of the first book in a series. After all, readers who don't discover a series until the second book is released will have to decide if they desire to catch up.

Marked for Death is a shared universe media tie-in story by Matt Forbeck, a long-time veteran of the role-playing game industry. Marked for Death is a part of Wizards of the Coast's marketing efforts to promote their newest campaign setting for the Dungeons and Dragons game. Forbeck's novel takes place in the Eberron world, like the other novels in the line, but does not share any protagonists with the other books in the series.

The Eberron world is a fantasy environment in which combines elements of pulp and detective/noir fiction with traditional fantasy tropes. A nice, if reductive, analogy would be to say that Eberron is like a fantasy version of Earth just after the First World War, or the Last War as it is called on Eberron. The magic of the world is pretty much what one would expect in a Dungeons and Dragons based fantasy novel with two exceptions. First, in addition to its traditional role in fantasy, the magic of Eberron has also developed in a manner similar to that of technology in our world. Powerful magic is still limited to trained users, but architecture and technology incorporating minor magic effects are common. Second, some aristocratic bloodlines in the world have magical powers associated with their ancestry, the so called Dragonmarks. Most individuals who bear a Dragonmark are members of an aristocratic family associated with one of twelve well established Marks. There are currently twelve such Marks, the aristocratic status of which was determined long ago during war between Dragonmarked houses. It was during the War of the Mark that one of what were then thirteen Dragonmarks was destroyed, the aptly named Mark of Death.

It is with this background that Marked for Death begins. The story focuses on the friends and family of a man named Kandler, a veteran of the Last War. Kandler lives with his close friend, the semi-lycanthopic "Shifter"Burch, and his step daughter, an elf-child named Esprë. This small band lives in a community that borders what was once one of the great nations of the world, but which is now a land of dust and death having been destroyed in an almost nuclear cataclysm at the end of the Last War. Recently citizens of the town have been disappearing mysteriously, and Kandler's step-daughter has manifested a Dragonmark now that she has entered puberty. Things are very tense in the small border community, but things are about to get worse.

Two groups of strangers have, by different means, discovered that the Mark of Death has reappeared and have come to the border community in hopes of capturing the person bearing the Mark. One group desires to keep the Mark out of "evil hands" and the other desires to conquer Eberron.

From this point on, the novel becomes a pursuit/rescue narrative very similar to the Carson of Venus tales by Edgar Rice Burroughs, both for better and for worse. Esprë is captured, rescued, and recaptured no less than three times in Marked for Death which can lead the reader into some frustration. Forbeck is attempting to build the cast for the series while simultaneously maintaining a cliffhanger narrative. This is not an easy task and Forbeck does a yeoman's job of it. Forbeck's narrative style is crisp and easy to read and moves at a breakneck pace. The reader isn't left with much time to breathe. Surprisingly, Forbeck manages to insert a good amount of character development into the narrative and the reader leaves the book caring about the protagonists more at the end of the novel than at the beginning, but the character development is tied tightly to the romantic B storyline. By tying much of the character development to the romantic storyline, Forbeck underdevelops one of the more entertaining characters in the book, Burch. Readers might find Burch fun and exciting, but he is a friend we see but don't yet know.

Forbeck, like many writers in the Eberron series, has his repeated descriptive line. In Keith Baker's City of Towers, the overly repeated event was the protagonist being disarmed. In The Crimson Talisman, Adrian Cole seemed to call every weapon, long or short, a dirk. Forbeck's characters sure seem to spend a great deal of time with their head in their hands, often shaking the head at the same time. But this is really a small complaint.

A good deal of Marked for Death is devoted to establishing, and raising, the stakes for the future volumes in the trilogy. Forbeck does this every well and made this reader hopeful for the series, but slightly dissatisfied with the original. Like the Carson of Venus stories, Forbeck seems too focused on the A narrative and forgets that readers like to have some small resolution at the end of a story. I wanted at least a minor story arc resolved.

Aristotle says that every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Marked for Death is merely a beginning, but it is a good beginning. If you read Marked for Death when it was released, the months spent waiting for the next volume were impatient months. The impatience I feel is sign that Forbeck effectively set the stakes for the reader. But if you're anything like me and find waiting even one week for the continuation of a narrative too long, you might want to wait until the series is finished to start reading them.

What is the Purpose of a Blogroll?

Professor Shugart over at Fruits and Votes made and interesting observation the other day during a discussion of recent changes to his website. During a discussion where he mentioned his criteria for updating his blogroll he stated, "I suspect I use the blogroll far more than any readers do, so if I don’t like a blog, why blogroll it?" Which hit on what I consider to be and underlying argument for purpose.

Professor Shugart, who I agree with on this proposition, is arguing that the primary reason for a blogroll is a kind of shared bookshelf for a particular blog. A blogroll in this paradigm would be a list of blogs that the author enjoys reading, or at least visits regularly, that he or she thinks people of similar interests might visit. But whether others visit the sites or not is of little consequence because the utility to the host blogger is sufficient reason in this model.

As I stated, I agree with this model, which is why our primary blogroll is so diverse. I have few, but a couple, of partisan/political blogs. On the left there is Daily Kos and Liberal Avenger. While on the right, we have Moxie and Odysseus. There are a couple of blogs by people who are conservative/liberal, but that the blog is of a pop-culture/personal opinion orientation, Cathy's World and Luke Y. Thompson's blog come to mind. A couple are extinct and will soon be eliminated. Right Wing Dodger Fan is a co-worker with the man who directed Ace Ventura, so I hoped he would post, but he hasn't in forever so I will remove him by the end of the week. Most of our blogroll links hit sites covering my, and others, interests on this blog and account for my daily routine. I visit Fruits and Votes for some quantitative and qualitative electoral model discussion, along with conversations about fruits and baseball. There are screenwriting blogs by the aspiring, the direct to DVD employed, and the blockbuster author. Things that interest me.

But I also have a separate blogroll which fits into another paradigm. For me it is what I would term both and "advertisement blogroll" and a "potluck blogroll." I signed up for the "homespun bloggers" link with two hopes in mind. First to increase readership of our bizarre corner of the web. Second, to find new things to read.

So it seems to me that blogrolls can serve three purposes, or combinations thereof: the living bookshelf, self-promotion, or grab bag. The question is, "is there some kind of moral/ethical standard which should be applied to blogroll use?"

Is there a kind of sleazy factor to the person who joins large cycling blogrolls, if they never intend to visit other sites on the blogroll?

Robert Howard, King Conan, and the Arts

When it comes to depictions of unreflective low art, one need look no further than the commonly perceived opinions of Robert Howard's Conan stories. If you ask the average man on the street to describe a Conan narrative, you will likely be given a tale of lust and violence. In the tale Conan will rescue some half-naked maiden from some rampaging beast and the story will end with the woman becoming all naked as she swoons at the hero's feet. In fact, a great deal of Conan pastiche has been based on this very simple formula. The largest problem with such a vision is that it is not all that accurate. Are there tales of this sort in the Conan oevre?
Sure, but there are also tales of visionary wonder.



Like most authors, whether they write literature or Literature, Howard's writings reflect his own thoughts, experiences, and education. The writing reflects the aesthetic tastes of the author, or his/her understanding of a prospective audiences literary tastes. What makes something worth reading again and again is when an author satisfies those with "lower" tastes while providing them with some food for thought. Howard is no exception. In fact, I was surprised while I was rereading the first published Conan story, Howard's The Phoenix on the Sword to find that the author seemed to be hinting at a theory of the value of literature and its role in society.

Howard's Hyborean Age is a mythic world filled with magic and wonder, but it is also a world based on the history of the real world. Howard combined multiple eras of history so that societies whose "real world" existence is separated by centuries could co-exist narratively. Conan's own people, the Cimmerians, are based on a very real historical peoples. Both Herodotus, in his Histories, and Plutarch, in his Lives, mention the Cimmerian peoples (called Cimbri in Plutarch). In The Phoenix on the Sword, Howard appears to expect his audience to have at least a little understanding of the historical Cimmerians in his conversation of the role of literature in civilization. Conan, as protagonist, must hold ideas which the reader sympatizes with for the particular narrative of Phoenix to work.

So what kind of people were the Cimmerians? According to Plutarch they were a people who were pillagers and raiders, but not rulers.

For the Cimmerian attack upon Ionia, which was earlier than Croesus, was not a conquest of the cities, but only an inroad for plundering.
Herodotus, Histories, I, 6

What did they look like? According to Plutarch:

Their great height, their black eyes and their name, Cimbri, which the Germans use for brigands, led us merely to suppose that they were one of those races of Germania who lived on the shores of the Western Ocean. Others say that the huge expanse of Celtica stretches from the outer sea and the western regions to the Palus Maeotis and borders on Asian Scythia; that these two neighbouring nations joined forces and left their land... And although each people had a different name, their army was collectively called Celto-Scythian. According to others, some of the Cimmerians, who were the first-to be known to the ancient Greeks... took flight and were driven from their land by the Scythians. Plutarch, Life of Marius, XI

What was their temperment? According to Homer:

Thus she brought us to the deep-Rowing River of Ocean and the frontiers of the world, where the fog-bound Cimmerians live in the City of Perpetual Mist. When the bright Sun climbs the sky and puts the stars to flight, no ray from him can penetrate to them, nor can he see them as he drops from heaven and sinks once more to the earth. For dreadful night has spread her mantle over the heads of that unhappy folk. Homer, Odyssey, XI, 14

It is Homer's description of the Cimmerians that Howard uses in Phoenix to describe the mood of the people and to separate Conan from his kin. When Conan is asked why the Cimmerians are such a brooding people, Conan responds:

“Perhaps it’s the land they live in,” answered the king. “A gloomier land never was – all of hills, darkly wooded, under skies nearly always gray, with winds moaning dreaily down the valleys.” – Phoenix on the Sword

The average Cimmerian is a dour and towering barbarian who destroys civilization then returns to his gloomy homeland only to begin the process again later. Howard's typical Cimmerian is similar to that of the classical scholars, and presents a figure most unlikely to advance the literary arts. But this is where Conan differs from his kin. In The Phoenix on the Sword, Conan is an older man who has conquered on of the greatest nations of the Hyborean Age expressly to free them from tyrannical rule. He conquered to rule, and to liberate an oppressed nation. A far cry from the typical barbarian. By separating Conan from his kin, Howard simultaneously increases the audience's sympathy for the barbarian king while enabling the character to advance a theory of the value of literature.

The Phoenix on the Sword is the tale of a plot to assassinate King Conan, a plot organized my a Machiavellian figure named Ascalante who desires to assume the throne. Ascalante is the product of civilization, but he is the antagonist of the story and so Howard uses his opinions of the Arts as a way to separate him from the audience's sympathy. When he describes a poet who has been brought into his conspiracy he describes the poet in perjorative terms. These terms evolve as the narrative moves from unpublished draft to final published form. Ascalante originally expresses his disdain for Rinaldo (the poet) in a long description:

“Rinaldo – a mad poet full of hare-brained visions and out-worn chivalry. A prime favorite with the people because of his songs which tear out their heart-strings. He is our best bid for popularity.” – Ascalante in Phoenix on the Sword (unpublished First submitted draft)

By the time the story is published the description is changed to the very brief, "“…Rinaldo, the hair-brained minstrel.” [Ascalante in Phoenix on the Sword(published)]. In the published form, Howard leaves out the value of Rinaldo's participation in the plot because it is redundant with information presented later in the story. When Ascalante is asked what value Rinaldo has as a conspirator, Ascalante's response is similar in both the published and unpublished text, but his hatred of Rinaldo is made more clear in the draft than in the published text:

“Alone of us all, Rinaldo has no personal ambition. He sees in Conan a red-handed, rough-footed barbarian who came out of the north to plunder a civilized land. He idealizes the king whom Conan killed to get the crown, remembering only that he occasionally patronized the arts, and forgetting the evils of his reign, and he is making the people forget. Already they openly sing The Lament for the King in which Rinaldo lauds the sainted villain and denounces Conan as ‘that black-hearted savage from the abyss.’ Conan laughs, but the people snarl.” – Ascalante in Phoenix on the Sword (published)

“Rinaldo – bah! I despise the man and admire him at the same time. He is your true idealist. Alone of us all he has no personal ambition. He sees in Conan a red-handed, rough-footed barbarian who came out of the north to plunder a peaceful land. He thinks he sees barbarism triumphing over culture. He already idealizes the king Conan killed, forgetting the rogue’s real nature, remembering only that he occasionally patronized the arts, and forgetting the evils under which the land groaned during his reign, and he is making the people forget. Already they open sing ‘The Lament for the King’ in which Rinaldo lauds the saintly villain, and denounces Conan as ‘that black-hearted savage from the abyss.’ Conan laughs, but at the same time wonders why the people are turning against him.” – Ascalante in Phoenix on the Sword (unpublished First submitted draft)

In both descriptions the poet is shown to be a blind idealist. Rinaldo, it appears, cannot look beyond the Cimmerian stereotypes as presented by Plutarch and Herodotus. Howard doesn't require the reader to have those preconceptions, but for the reader who has read Herodotus and Plutarch the stereotype becomes even clearer. Also by editing down the prose the author, either willingly or at editorial command, displays an amount of trust that his audience can reach the proper conclusion that barbarism typically destroys the valuable within civilization. What is interesting is that while Rinaldo is a conspirator, the poet is an antagonist, he is not a villain. He is a blind a foolish idealist, not acting in his own self interest. Ascalante even goes on to describe Rinaldo's motivations:

“Poets always hate those in power. To them perfection is always just behind the last corner, or beyond the next. They escape the present in dreams of the past and future. Rinaldo is a flaming torch of idealism, rising, as he thinks, to overthrow a tyrant and liberate the people.” – Ascalante in Phoenix on the Sword (published)

“Because he is a poet. Poets always hate those in power. To them perfection is always just behind the last corner or beyond the next. They escape the present in dreams of the past and the future. Rinaldo is a flaming torch of idealism and he sees himself as a hero, a stainless knight – which after all he is! – rising to overthrow the tyrant and liberate the people.” – Ascalante in Phoenix on the Sword (unpublished First submitted draft)

Ascalante specifies what kind of idealists poets are. They seek an imagined perfect society, and will always look for it no matter how good the society they are currently in happens to be. But this is Ascalante, the Machiavellian civilized man, and his opinion about what the value of the poet is. For him the poet is an easily manipulable puppet. What about the barbarian turned king, the protagonist, and oft argued proxy for the author? (It should be noted that many argue that Conan often reflects Howard's own views, this is not an original assertion on my part.)

Conan adores the poet, and understands the criticisms. He is aware that the poet's plays are leading many among the people to despise him, but he too is persuaded of the need for justice. When his chief advisor, Prospero, discusses disdain for Rinaldo, Conan comes to the poet's (and poetry in general) defense. The text is near identical in the published and unpublished format.

“Rinaldo is largely responsible,” answered Prospero, drawing up his sword-belt another notch. “He sings songs that make men mad. Hang him in his jester’s garb to the highest tower in the city. Let him make rhymes for the vultures.”
“No, Prospero, he’s beyond my reach. A great poet is greater than any king. His songs are mightier than my scepter, for he has hear ripped the heart from my breast when he chose to sing for me. I will die and be forgotten, but Rinaldo’s songs will live forever.” – Phoenix on the Sword (unpublished first submitted draft)

“Rinaldo is largely responsible,” answered Prospero, drawing up his sword-belt another notch. “He sings songs that make men mad. Hang him in his jester’s garb to the highest tower in the city. Let him make rimes for the vultures.”
“No, Prospero, he’s beyond my reach. A great poet is greater than any king. His songs are mightier than my scepter; for he has near ripped the heart from my breast when he chose to sing for me. I shall die and be forgotten, but Rinaldo’s songs will live for ever.” – Phoenix on the Sword (published)

For Conan, the atypical Cimmerian, poems and the arts have more power than weapons or royal authority. Not only that, but it is right and just that this is the case. Conan, the barbarian, is the defender of the value of literature, while Ascalante, the civilized man, sees literature as only a tool used to manipulate the foolish. Conan would seek to discuss the past and future, the ideal ones, with the poet, while Ascalante would merely use Rinaldo to destroy what he opposes. Conan's conflict between desiring a free press and swift justice, and the eventual melee that will result because of his favoring of the press, are made clear in the poetic prologue to the final chapter of the narrative.

What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie?
I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky.
The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing;
Rush in and die, dogs – I was a man before I was a king. – The Road of Kings – Phoenix on the Sword (published)

Surprisingly, Conan's love of literature and the arts, and his defense of them, is so deeply rooted that he initially refuses to kill Rinaldo when Rinaldo attacks him. He still believes he can reason with the poet, it is only when he is left no other alternative that he kills the poet (the text is identical in both published and unpublished forms).

“He rushed in, hacking madly, but Conan, recognizing him, shattered his sword with a short terrific chop and with a powerful push of his open hand sent him reeling to the floor.” – Phoenix on the Sword (published)

“He straightened to meet the maddened rush of Rinaldo, who charged in wild and wide open, armed only with a dagger. Conan leaped back, lifting his ax.

‘Rinaldo!’ his voice was strident with desperate urgency. ‘Back! I would not slay you ..’

‘Die, tyrant!’ screamed the mad minstrel, hurling himself headlong on the king. Conan delayed the blow he was loth to deliver, until it was too late. Only when he felt the bite of the steel in his unprotected side did he strike, in a frenzy of blind desperation.

Rinaldo dropped with his skull shattered and Conan reeled back against the wall, blood spurting from between the fingers which gripped his wound.” – Phoenix on the Sword (published)

What is interesting in the narrative is that of all the conspirators, there are twenty in all, none are able to injure Conan with the success of the poet. The poet has both damaged Conan's regime and his body and yet Conan was ever reluctant to, though in the end capable of, slay his greatest enemy.

“’See first to the dagger-wound in my side,’ he bade the court physicians. ‘Rinaldo wrote me a deathly song there, and keen was the stylus.’

‘We should have hanged him long ago,’ gibbered Publius. ‘No good can come of poets..’” – Phoenix on the Sword (published)

What does this tell us of Howard's thoughts regarding the arts? We know that Conan loves them, but we also know how they were used to manipulate the populace and how his own love for them almost cost him his life. Is Howard trying to discuss how Plato's critique of the poets is a good one, while at the same time defending the possible nobility of the poet (as Aristotle does in his Rhetoric)? I think these are questions intentionally posed in the narrative (I know...never guess at intentionality), and make it clear why Conan's first story The Phoenix on the Sword was so compelling to readers when they first read it.

It should be noted that the story was originally submitted as a Kull tale, though I have yet to analyze that draft like I have these two subsequent writings. The Kull version was rejected by Weird Tales and the final (rather than the first) Conan version was the first appearance of what has become a culturally iconic figure.