As folks may remember, @StMichael is running an excellent Barbarians of Lemuria game with the title "I Remember Lemuria."

I'm playing Nymox the Red, the Best Thief South of the Axos Mountains. (And maybe North. He hasn't been yet.) Now, normally, I tend to play the talker of our gaming group. The guy who bargains and finagles and convinces the NPCs to go along with our plans or stay out of our way. However, we've got another player whose character is a Courtier (Noble) and a Trickster (more Performer than Thief) with the Silver Tongue boon. So I'm trying to stay out of his lane as much as possible.

I'm still an instigator, using Nymox to try and push the story/action forward, but I'm noticing something odd. The longer we go, the less Nymox is the cool-headed, slick criminal I envisioned him to be and the more hot-headed he becomes. Not necessarily when pulling jobs, but when dealing with NPCs.

I think this may be down to my having a deeper background in S&S fiction than the other players. That is, they're  tending to take a more cerebral approach and I'm thinking "What Would Conan Do?" Or, perhaps more accurately, "What Would the Gray Mouser Do?" Which, to my mind, is to resort to the blade to settle disagreements with uncooperative, aggressive, or rude personages we encounter.

So, as the game goes on, I notice I'm playing Nymox with more of a chip on his shoulder, unwilling to suffer fools lightly. (He once spat on the corpse of a king who Just Wouldn't Listen. We didn't kill him, but he certainly got what was coming to him. I'm pretty sure I surprised StMichael with that bit of business.)

So my question (yes, I have a question) is this: Does anyone else notice themselves playing S&S characters with a bit more swagger, a bit more arrogance, and a bit more quick to settle problems with sharp metal objects? It feels pretty natural for the setting, but I do worry that, perhaps, I'm overdoing it.

I do keep thinking of the Nemedian Chronicles quote about Conan being "...sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth..." S&S simply doesn't feel like the genre (sub-genre?)  for intellect over instinct, diplomacy over disembowelment. Talk, yes, but be quick to act.

As Conan said in Queen of the Black Coast, describing being repeatedly asked to give evidence against a friend: 

“But I choked my ire and held my peace, and the judge squalled that I had shown contempt for the court, and that I should be hurled into a dungeon to rot until I betrayed my friend. So then, seeing they were all mad, I drew my sword and cleft the judge’s skull; then I cut my way out of the court, and seeing the high constable’s stallion tied near by, I rode for the wharfs, where I thought to find a ship bound for foreign parts.” Once he realized his captors were unreasonable (by his standards), he cut down as many people as he needed to escaping.

Am I overthinking this? Or not thinking enough?

(I should note that I haven't had any pushback from the other players at this point.)

Thoughts?

Paul