Any of you try the new Conan RPG ?

Any of you try the new Conan RPG ?
I myself am very much a pleb whom has never touched a Conan book or comic yet watched the old yet not so close to the source material 80s movie.
But still the setting appeals to me.

would a pleb such as myself enjoy it ?

Read the stories nigger. They're short, freely available on the internet and great.

but what the RPG ? anyone tried it ?

with what book I should start ?

I'd probably start with tower of the elephant.

SCARLET CITIDEL

I haven't read the system yet but I'm fairly excited. I enjoyed the Mutant Chronicles system which Conan is a refined version of.

Modiphius do good quality books and they had a lot of "Conan scholars" from the official Conan Society or whatever. But importantly, they have a pretty good working relationship with Paradox already because of Mutant and MC.

Modiphius' 2d20-system... Thanks, but I'd rather chew on this broken glass, it is more enjoyable.

explain. now.

>2D20

Wait, this exists?

>the D20 system is absolute shit, how do we make it better?
>how about... we add another D20?

Hyborian Age setting is retarded, basically just a transparent one-dimensional collection of movie sets for Conan to look cool in front of, and the stories are massively overrated schlock.

Some of them are good, like Rogues in the House* and The God in the Bowl*, maybe Phoenix on the Sword, the Frost Giant's Daughter is kind of cool because of the surreal mythical feel of it (if you can get past the fact that the synopsis is basically "Conan tries to rape a woman but fails"), but most tend to range from okayish to shit, even putting aside Robert E. Howards... views.

*Those two are really fucking good. Like holy shit, they're honestly so good they seem out of place, and I'm pretty sure they're the main, if not sole, reason Conan has a fanbase. If you don't read any other Conan (and I suggest you don't; just go with Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser or something if you need a Sword and Sorcery short story fix), read those.

It runs on excessive dicerolling, wonk and metagames for the metagaming.

Oh, and the one with the elephant is good too I guess.

>blaming a game for being bad because it uses a 1-20 chance system.
>hating something because it has 1-20 numbers and not 1-10 or 1-100.

Basically the first three short stories (by order of publication I think) and Rogues in the House. I'd add Tower of the Elephant, maybe, but thats a good list. Any decent Conan anthology will have these. My "The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian" by Ballantine Booms / Delrey has all 4 and 9 more. I read them in order and I can say there's no need to, just read them in whatever order.

I've run the playtest at a con. It's a clunky narrative system almost entirely based on passing around the three different kinds of plot points: Doom, Fortune, and Momentum. It's hard to actually fail at something because there are so many ways to give yourself more dice, but the real gauge of success is how much the players deny the GM from receiving Doom points. It's very players-vs-GM in that sense, as the GM is unusually limited in what he can do.

It encourages a lot of metagaming, because you have strong incentives to make your character do things he'd never do just to prevent the GM from getting more Doom points. Perfect example: you can take as many defensive reactions (dodge or parry) as you want in a round, but each one adds progressively more Doom. Often, when many enemies are on you, you just want to take the hit instead.

Another example is Momentum: excess successes add to a pool of points that the players can spend later. This means the players want to make as many completely trivial dice rolls as possible to fill up the Momentum pool before every fight starts.

You could make a good game with twenty-sided dice in it, but you'd better call it something that will prevent too many comparisons with the d20 system. Calling it the 2d20 system just makes it sound like a joke.

hmm, sounds like it could use some work.
I would personally prefer the system to be less GMvsPlayers but still kind of lethal.
I mean this is Hyboria we are talking about ! getting killed easily from stupid mistakes should be a part of the game.

It's so hard to die in this fucking game. I had a player who kept making stupid decisions and I kept trying to make an example of him, but it turns out that heavy armor, a shield, and the right talents make you pretty much immune to physical harm. Psychological stress is a thing in the game, but it never builds up high enough to worry about.

what about good old magic ?

Funny thing about magic, enemies can't use it unless the GM spends Doom. Doom is also required to add enemies to an encounter, to fudge enemy dice rolls, or to let a single enemy win initiative (by default the players always win initiative.) So there's a lot of stuff that's hungry for your Doom and you've got to ration it very carefully to challenge players and counteract the combined effects of their Momentum and Fortune.

It's cinematic magic. That's the best kind!

Sounds kinda like story game bullshit... and nothing in this thread suggests anything that would make me want to run this game as opposed to say, an OSR game or Barbarians of Lemuria.

The old d20 conan game (from the mid 2000's, I think Mongoose published it) was actually pretty good. Dialed the power of magic users way back and offered some interesting stuff for warriors to do besides full attack.

I am a big fan of Barbs of Lemuria, does S&S well. Dont know much about the previous Conan D20. Personally, I like the 2D20 system. It has story game elements yes, but most characters in S&S are bullshit lucky/competent. The doom pool is great at building tension in my opinion. Furthermore mooks and the like are a bit of a non threat unless encountered in large numbers, just like in S&S. The real danger lies in nemesis and toughs. In the game I am running characters have died through clever uses of my doom and the players getting a bit too confident. I recommend it, and worse case scenario its not for you. Which is okay. Cause you still have the excellent Barbarians of Lemuria to play!

>characters have died through clever uses of my doom

In what way is this good? PCs should die from their own stupidity, not because a GM decides to spends 4 Doom to break someone's legs (an actual official example 2d20-rules)

If you can, find a copy of the Coming of Conan. It's got all of the original Howard stories, placed in the order they were written if I remember right. It's a great read and once you read it you'll get kinda pissed off at how literally every other piece of media that covers Conan never does it quite right.

I've read the book. Not played yet it but it seems as though it's a good game for playing the Pulp Fantasy of Conan.

But read the books faggot.

And if you kept reading you would see them getting overconfident. Which is part of stupidity (or at least leads to stupid decisions). Most clever and fair uses of doom makes things more difficult, not outright impossible/rock fall. Theoretically you could use your doom to outright fuck players over, but then why GM for them if you dislike them so much.

If you have to be careful not to spend all your Doom at once if you get too much Doom, what's the point of having it as a system at all? The alleged point of Doom is to make sure each adventure is just hard enough without being too hard. If that's just as hard to accomplish with Doom as without it, then it's a useless rule and should be ignored.

you shut your whore mouth, the stories are great. I admit they get samey in tone but the prose is great and Conan is more well rounded than people give him credit for.

Fafhrd & Gray Mouser while good is too urban for my tastes. I also always disliked the ghouls as a concept.

Also nothing necessarily wrong with Howard's views in relative to his time and the time he was writing in. In the world he wrote, Race was a tangible thing and it saddled you with a cultural identity and baggage. This was true when a Race in this context was the people of one region of the world united under one culture.

Of course you have to be careful. Use it when it makes sense, or if the players have it too easy, save some and so forth. Its not hard to accomplish, for me at least. Sure you can ignore it if you wish, part of the fun is coming up with something that works for you and your group! And if Meta-Currency is not your cup of tea thats perfectly okay, dont use it or dont play games that have them. As I said in previous posts, Barbarians of Lemuria is perfectly suited for Conan style adventure, in my opinion so is 2D20 Conan.

>You see a precariously balanced boulder
>I go and stand under the boulder

A half decent GM would not let the rock fall.
A killer GM might roll a 50/50 to see if it fell or not.
A "clever GM" spends a token and lets it fall (if he's really clever, by letting an, until then non-existing, brigand appear out of nowhere and push it), with the excuse that the PC was being stupid when giving to GM a doom point to avoid being mauled in a bandit ambush earlier.

I'll say that the core 2d20-resolution is rather nice. It is unfortunately the proverbial nugget of semi-precious metal under the mountain of shit that is the rest of the ruleset.
That's as positive as I can be about it.

Use "Shadow, Sword, and Spell" instead. I'm using it to run a game set in an alternate Dark Ages (around 400AD) that has a very "Conan / Lankhmar" feel to it. It works very well for the genre.

Savage Worlds would also work for that "pulp adventures" feel as an alternate.

Most players probably would not stand underneath it in the first place. But I see your point. Some people would not like that. Some people might think it adds some drama or tension. Different people have different tastes and styles, enjoying certain things over other things. I personally like trying different things and this system is new and interesting.
Thanks for the talk, you've assisted me in my thinking of the system as a whole.

Go to bed Michael Moorcock.

Though seriously, having just finished the complete collection of Conan stories, I have to say that his criticisms of them being themeless schlock are pretty sound. They were entertaining, but not thought provoking in the slightest. The character of Conan himself was pretty obnoxious as well.

What if I tell you that there is a game with 3d20? And it is the most rpg in my country?

*most popular rpg

>I am a big fan of Barbs of Lemuria, does S&S well.

I really want to like Barbarians of Lemuria, but there's so little to the system, and I find it falls flat in the area of fighting multiple combatants, which seems to be a staple of the Conan stories. Also the critters are on the whole too fucking tough.

The little to the system used to bother me. I never encountered a issue of people fighting multiple critters, care to explain? Big monstrous shit can be too tough, at least in terms of HP but that can be reduced if need be.

>I never encountered a issue of people fighting multiple critters, care to explain?

It's been a while since I picked it up, but there aren't really many options for PCs to deal with multiple things at once, still being primarily stuck in the "one attack per turn" thing. But I may be misremembering it.

As for there being so little to it, it's more just that for a genre where combat was such a big deal, it doesn't really offer much more meat to its combat than an OSR system (which offer basically nothing).

Typical nothing mooks have one to three hp, which nearly guarantees one being dropped per turn. A heroic success and legendary sucesses can be used to do things where one point of damage is one mook killed, or cause disarms and trips. My players read lots of S&S and come up with things to do, I say yes, and tell them what to roll and give appropriate bonuses on a success. Read through it again, you might be inspired! Or if you can afford/find a pdf, try this 2D20 system, as you can tell I enjoy it too... You also have Zerfs which is a bit older, and I am no expert on it. Someone mentioned Shadow Sword and Spell which I have heard good things about.

Stop being polite and reasonable, you bastard!

But since you insist; Yes, different people like different things. Unfortuntely for Modiphius,it seems like the number of different people liking 2d20 is not too high.

>Typical nothing mooks have one to three hp, which nearly guarantees one being dropped per turn. A heroic success and legendary sucesses can be used to do things where one point of damage is one mook killed, or cause disarms and trips.

That's the thing, banking on rare occurrences or expenditures of meta-currency to function well at something that's part and parcel to the genre is poor form; at that point you're not really doing anything something like Labyrinth Lord can't do.

>My players read lots of S&S and come up with things to do, I say yes, and tell them what to roll and give appropriate bonuses on a success.

Again, back to the whole point about how Labyrinth Lord can do this.

Which is my point here: Barbarians of Lemuria isn't especially well suited to the genre it's supposed to be modeling.

With people not liking 2D20, in my opinion it seems to be because its new, so people have knee jerk reactions to the unfamiliar? Idk, just a thought. Might be totally wrong.

You bring up good points but you must realise its a game? If players could absolutely ruin large groups on a whim it wouldnt be impressive when they do so? Or when they do that awesome move to win the fight against the big baddy. Most games have some form of critical strike, or greater success system, the meta currency in Barbs allows you to do those very things more often, like in S&S. While also getting lucky every now and again. Dont play Barbs if its not what you want. But there is no harm in trying it, or letting other people try it. You dont even have to shell out money, try before you buy with the good help of PDF share, if you like it and wanna support the company that made it, buy it, if not you lose nothing except maybe a day playing a game with your friends that wasnt to your taste.

I've played a four d20 fudge dice system. It was actually pretty cool.

I already bought it dude. Legendary and Mythic. I was excited for the game, but found myself less impressed with it upon further review.

I'm not saying you shouldn't enjoy it, but it's not what I'm looking for. I only voiced my opinion in this thread so fence sitters could get another perspective on it.

>If players could absolutely ruin large groups on a whim it wouldnt be impressive when they do so?

That kinda goes for everything you do in S&S. If players could easily wield swords, would it be impressive when they do so? If players could easily climb wet rigging during a storm on a ship, would it be impressive when they do so? It's a larger than life genre, and the actions of the players should fit. I would say BoL's making a task that Conan does repeatedly time consuming, while being not especially well-suited to it over some other popular RPGs, would be a failing with it as a option for a Conan game.

Its interesting you mention the non-combat sorta rolls. If memory serves its a nine on 2d6 to succeed. More than 50% of the time you roll a seven or higher. And most typical characters get to add one or two to a roll due to stat and careers. So you roll, because there is a chance you could slip on that rigging, but just like Conan there is a decent chance you grit your teeth and pull through. Of course other difficulty modifiers come into it at certain points.

Well its good you offer a different opinion, if everyone was parroting the same thing it'd be horrible. This debate/disagreement allows the fence sitters to exactly see whats what. Because its not what you're looking for, and you're of the opinion that people wont play 2D20, I'd try maybe Zerfs? SS&S. Savage Worlds could do it but thats not my game too much.

On the other hand, I did run a successful S&S with GURPS

>it seems like the number of different people liking 2d20 is not too high.
There are 21 people in this thread. Not really a good sample size.

>Its interesting you mention the non-combat sorta rolls. If memory serves its a nine on 2d6 to succeed. More than 50% of the time you roll a seven or higher. And most typical characters get to add one or two to a roll due to stat and careers. So you roll, because there is a chance you could slip on that rigging, but just like Conan there is a decent chance you grit your teeth and pull through. Of course other difficulty modifiers come into it at certain points.

Well, my point wasn't that it does these poorly. The 2d6 mechanic is actually a good choice, and to be entirely fair to the system does give it an edge in modelling the genre, since your characters will generally be quite competent and you'll rarely find yourself repeatedly bungling tasks as you might in a d20 or percentile system.

>Because its not what you're looking for, and you're of the opinion that people wont play 2D20, I'd try maybe Zerfs? SS&S. Savage Worlds could do it but thats not my game too much.

I actually haven't looked at 2d20, don't have an opinion on it.

So far, two systems I've found to be well-suited to it are Fate and Scarlet Heroes, both for the same reasons. Both systems are good at making player-characters feel competent without being overwhelmingly capable, both have fairly loose systems for differentiating your characters that make it easy to do the broad backgrounds of expertise you'll see in S&S games, and both have damage mechanics that allow damage to overflow from one mook to another, allowing players to mow through hordes of mooks like Conan did. On the downside: Fate can be obnoxiously vague and minimalist in its design; Scarlet Heroes is designed for one on one and doesn't use a bellcurve for attacks.

>On the other hand, I did run a successful S&S with GURPS

If you're willing to put the leg work in, GURPS is well suited to it if you don't mind it trending towards being kinda gritty.

So it seems like different systems have different strengths and weaknesses, good mention of fate, I had not thought of it before. Might look into it myself.
Thanks!

Oh also, GURPS is well suited for it, with a harsher feel of course but that can be enjoyable.

what are the classes and races for the game?

It doesn't work like that.

ok so how does it work user?

You have archetypes and homeland, both of which are part of a life-path style character creation.

>You have archetypes and homeland
so what are they?

Homeland includes basically everything on this map. Archetypes are Archer, Barbarian, Noble Warrior, Nomad, Priest/Priestess, Mercenary, Shaman, Pirate and Scoundral. I may be missing one or two but I am not 100% sure.

Homelands: Aquilonia
Bossonian Marches
Keshan
Kush
Khoraja
Cimmeria
Hyperborea
Border Kingdom
Nordheim: Asgard or Vanaheim
Ophir
Koth
Argos
Gunderland
Brythunia
Nemedia
Zamora
Shem
Zingara
Corinthia
Stygia
Khauran
Zembabwei
Punt
The Black Kingdoms
Darfar
Turan
Hyrkania
Iranistan or Afghulistan
Vendhya
Khitai

Homeland gives you a talent and a language.

thanks user

Caste (social standing): Crafter
Escaped Serf/Slave
Farmer
Herder
Merchant
Outcast
Petty Nobility
Priesthood
Warrior

Caste gives you two talents, a skill, and sets your social standing.

Each caste has six 'Story' events (backstory events) that give you a trait.

Seconded, for anyone reading this thread who wants to know more about the Cimmerian. The Tower of the Elephant is great.

Archetypes are as listed here , with the addition of Scholar.

Archetypes give you a Career Skill, Career Talent, four Mandatory and two Elective Skills (smaller bonus than the Career), and a collection of equipment.

Natures: Cautious
Curious
Inspirational
Learned
Practical
Scheming
Sneaky
Stoic
Supportive
Wrathful

Natures give you a boost to an attribute, three mandatory and two elective skills, and a talent.

You also have Education: Against your Parents' Will
Apprenticed Abroad
Educated on the Battlefield
Elder Mentor
Family Footsteps
From Masterful Tutors
Largely Absent
On Your Own Terms
Traditional
Under Duress

Education gives you three mandatory skills, two elective ones, a talent and (maybe) some equipment.

And finally you have the War Story: Defeated a Savage Beast
Dispossessed
Gained (and Lost) a Great Treasure
Gained the Favour of a Local Noble
Prevented a Disaster
Shipwrecked
Survived a Duel
Survived a Massacre
Survived a Stint at Court
Survived Witchcraft or Sorcery

War Story gives a bonus to two skills.

You also get some extra things at the end of character creation (attribute and skill boosts, talent, language, fortune points, personal belonging, garment, and a weapon).

>Black Kingdoms.

The black kingdoms are a group of countries/lands which make up proto-Africa.

Yeah, a lot of that stuff didn't age well. Especially Darfar, Zembabwei, and fucking Iranistan.

Except that the amount of Doom in the pool is public knowledge. In other systems, if the GM has to fudge things to make the challenge correct for the players. there's a good chance the players don't notice it. If the GM is intentionally not spending Doom to make things easy for the players, the players can see that. If the GM has spent all his Doom and still failed to challenge the players, they can see that, too, and the GM is a lot more limited in how he can challenge them further. 2d20 makes things all metagamey when they could have gone for a more immersive experience for the players.

Totally dependent on the group. For some yes it could take them out of the experience, which I recognise. For me and my players, when we're in the mindset the Doom Pool creates tension. When its low they act more brashly for good or ill, when its high they know something bad is gonna happen any time, and sometimes doom does fail to challenge the players, because dice can do that like in any game that utilises them as a resolution mechanic. Its like in Marvel Heroic Roleplaying (the Doom pool that is).

Also with a Screen or some such, and by engaging the players well enough, your average player will lose track of exactly how much Doom you have, if them knowing is such a issue.

Defending a core rule by saying that maybe you can distract the players enough to make them forget about it isn't exactly a glowing endorsement.

You can distract them. You dont have to if its not a problem. If that core rule is a problem that could be fixed with a distraction or a bit of entertainment, then why not? And if that doesnt fix it for you, then dont play. There are lots of games for S&S in the world!

Liking or disliking meta-currency and how they're used is entirely subjective. Some people like them, some people dont, some people like them in certain circumstances, others dont and so on.

Personally I dont have a issue with how this game uses them and me and my group believe they add something. On that note everything added is a possible detraction (in this case mystery, but adds tension).

Howard was a great writer, if you think the setting is as shallow as that, you likely wimped out of reading any of the beefier Conan storis

I'm laughing so hard at Iranistan, and I can't stop.

I got all the Conan RPG I need decades ago.

Now get off my lawn you kids!

Take into account the general chatter and the desert that is Modiphius' forums, and the sample size becomes better.
They're good IP-snatchers and salesmen. Half-decent writers too. But crap game designers.

Its almost like he didnt wanna hide it anymore haha.

Hiding what? It's deliberate.

Almost all these cultures are intended to be related to ours because it's supposed to be a pre-history version of our world. That map doesn't look familiar at all?

I know they're all pre-history. But at least he gave them different names that for the most part didn't have its inspiration in the title.

...

I haven't run this Conan RPG, but I've run the one before this (Mongoose, d20). It's a significant overhaul of the 3.x system into a low magic swords and sandals game. Fun, but not perfect.

I have yet to play the Modiphius one. I'm waiting for my book to come in. It seems interesting from what I've seen, but I can't speak to how it plays.

I was disappointed that the map only really covers the same stuff Howard's map covers, and not a good world-map extrapolation based on the research done by the Conan Scholars. The Mongoose World Map is a mess, and I want a map with the Black Kingdoms, Hyrkania, and Khitai.

Add all the Mongoose Conan Setting books to that, and the Conan World Guide (Not an RPG Book), and maybe some of the world Guides Modiphius is putting out, and I'm Sure it would work great.

Personally though, I thought the GURPS version didn't have enough setting.

This game is lethal as fuck to PCs. Almost every encounter I end up with at least 1 PC near death. The way wounds/healing work make it very easy for the party to get hindered early on and face an uphill battle the rest of the session.

Maybe whichever version of playtest he used is significantly different from the finished version. Wouldn't be the first time.

Ive played everything from the alpha up, and im pretty sure wounds have always been handled about the same

Oh Snap, I played the old Mongoose Publishing version. That shit was lit. How is this one?

I enjoy it.

It's the best one, IMO.

It's almost the same as 1e, but with errata, and some new/revised character options. You can mostly mix and match it with 1e products and options.

Only issue I have with it is the NPCs.

The NPCs in 2e Conan are much weaker than they were in 1e Conan (A Chieftain in 1e might be level 10 and in 2e it might be like, 4), due to some kind of design paradigm shift, which means that you can mix and match everything from 1e to 2e except for NPCs.

Where can I download them ?

google it you lazy fuck

Not the other user, but damn. Most of those really do have very real-world-similar or obviously-inspired names, man.

Conan belongs in D&D!!

Of course. Aquilonia, Picts and Argos. Its all obvious, my point is that there are only a couple as blatant as Iranistan.

And Corinthia.

>Howard was a great writer

THEWS THEWS THEWS THEWS THEWS THEWS THEWS THEWS THEWS THEWS THEWS THEWS THEWS THEWS THEWS

Wait, you're getting crabbed about Conan attempting to womanize and failing but completely ok with Fafhrd, who impregnated his betrothed childhood sweetheart and subsequently left her the literal moment he met a city girl?

Oh yes that one too haha.

Hey guys, you like 3.5 right? If you want to Conan, why not just play me? Everything's just how you would need it! I've got stunt rules and mundane heroes and risky sorcery and all that stuff.

I mean look, there's a picture of Conan killing a black right on the cover!

Well, it is just the core. I imagine the supplements will expand the map in various directions.

So no different races?