What is best for CONAN ROLEPLAY?

Really? I've been using the Mongoose books for fluff. What does the GURPS one have that's so great?

I Kickstartered the new Conan RPG but I've yet to receive my copy in the mail...

There's also ZeFRS.
And a Conan AW hack
And the S&S SW setting.
RQ6 is an option, but it doesn't do conan magic well. The magic is too easy to get and do, and not evil enough.
Buffy/angel/ghosts of Albion would likely work well.

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The GURPS one sticks pretty close to source and gives you the basics on just about everything for the setting and as usual quite well researched.

I can't speak to the quality of the Mongoose books.

Going to add to my own post here:

GURPS source books are just like GURPS rules books: Toolboxes to let you figure out your own direction and what you want to use rather than highly detailed inch by inch descriptions of a setting like some other games do.

Not saying one is better, just pointing it out to give expectations of what you'll see.

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Gotcha. The Mongoose ones are pretty good (except for the maps) but they do fill in the blanks of modding information using stuff from writers other than REH, so if that bothers you, you'll notice.

Personally I'd rather have stuff from the latter writers, because using only REH stuff doesn't detail enough about the world in the time of the hyborian age, IMO.

>This may seem silly, but is there a Barbarian's of Lemuria supplement for Conan/Hyboria?

This is pretty silly, since core BoL skirts the edge of Conan copyright about as closely as they can.

A middling amount. The Forever GM I live with and I would use it for random pickup games. Kind of an off and on campaign staring my straight Cimmerian Barb. Original, I know.

You've got your standard 3rd ed ability score bonuses, but since magic items should be rare (unless you're a Scholar who has made his own or are part of a cult and get things handed to you by your masters) you also get a +1 to ALL stats at 6th level and every 4 levels thereafter. Favored class bonuses now add bonus feats, allowing for more customization. There is no weapon finess feat, just weapons you can use your dex mod with. Combat Manovures open up depending on stats, levels, skill ranks and feat selection allowing for even MORE options in combat.

For example, having Power Atack lets you use To the Hilt, getting bonus damage, If your die roll on damage is higher than than X (iirc con score,) you've jammed your weapon in them and the take 1d4 dmg every time the take an action until they take an action to remove it, which causes another 1d6 dmg.

Armor provides DR. A dude who has some full heavy ass armor is quite hard to kill. Even a 20 str Cimmerian Barb had a hard time taking down a Stygian in full getup. (Dude was pissed his sorceress mistress got turned on by the barb and tried to kill said barb after barb did the thing he was hired to do.) Barb ended up using his superior str to and a combat manovre to just toss the dude off the peir and into the harbor. Guy had no ranks in swim... poor bastard.

There are nichey classes like the pirate and the nomad, but they offset this with the multiclass options presented in all the splats. Since the favored class bonus only goes to lvl 10, adding 10 levels of another class allows yet MORE diversity.

Magic is handled wonderfully, very themantic to Connan. There is no wizzard class to start with, schollar gets you the eaisest time with it due to innately getting the feats to work your mojo.

Really? Are the cultures all 1:1 just renamed? I didn't notice if they were or not.

That's really the only aspect that needs "conversion".

However, EVERY class has a Magic Attack Bonus and Power Points (yeah you need to build up your mojo to work a spell. If you're weak, amoral, or downright evil you can get mojo from a cult or blood sacrifice)

However, your scholar is not going to get everything exactly as he wants. You've got several choices for how your char goes about gathering his magical knowledge and expanding his spell repertoire but they really boil down to you have a master or you don't. Self Study has a risk of you failing to grasp what you're trying to learn, having a master means you learn what your master says you learn. Red Flag on a That Guy GM, but hey...

Oh yeah, NO ALIGNMENT SYSTEM. You do have an Honarable, Dishonarble, No Honor choice and weather you have Civilised or Barbarian Honor. Basiclly breaking down whether you adhere to, openly defy or simply give no fucks about the basic morality of the culture you were raised in, loosley divided between bronze age wild man or City Dweller.
Aside from being an RP tool it gives you a bonus to will saves. Taking the apathtic route leaves you with none of the action constraints, but you also don't get the WS bonus, though you can take a feat to gain inner strength through moral apathy. Hey, there's a feat to gain magical power form having debauched orgies and leading others into temptaion so that's not much of a stretch.

See, I never felt the need for the excess information I guess. Since everything is culturally related to real world stuff, if you needed detail or inspiration you can go to Wikipedia or whatever and look up the real stuff.

I think I prefer the loser overviews, both from a writing and gaming standpoint, I think some things should be kept in the dark and leave surprises for the players as well as their characters.

>What do you think of the new Conan RPG?
Have not seen it yet.

>Do you like Conan D20?
For D20 it works fairly well to replicate the setting.

>Are there any other systems that work well for the setting?

Runequest or Desolation for a more complex system. Rules light I would use Sorcerer, Barbarians of Lemuria, or Fate.

Ive actually thought 5E might work good for this sort of setting considering the lower power levels of bounded accuracy and restricting all caster classes outside of Warlock which is perfect for a caster in this setting

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RQ magic is an awful fit for Conan, though.

I disagree. If you stick with just sorcery and battle magic it will work just fine. Even spirit magic would be thematically appropriate. Mongoose publishing did a series of Sword and Sorcery supplement and adventure books utilizing sorcery and variants of that system. It works fine.

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As the other user stated, the conan d20 ruleset is a pretty good representation of Conan, at least as much as 3.x allows for.

Pros:
- Melee combat is much more varied than in 3.x, and this is helped tremendously by significantly reducing the availability of magic.
- magic-use is handled very appropriately, with large drawbacks, and integrating the use of alchemy (such as using magic to toss globes of fire-concoctions in lieu of, say, fireball spells). It's a good way of balancing Scholar gold usage with the optional rules for splerging all your cash that other classes get.
- Armor DR system works fairly well

Cons:
- it's still 3.x, so if you're not a fan, this probably won't change your mind.

A serious question:

In a Conan game, should players have magic at all? Clearly D&D magic is terribly inappropriate but should magic just be in the hands of the NPCs, and if so, do you need rules for them?

This is debate I've had with myself each time I considering running but have never settled on a final answer. As a GURPS guy I have lots of options, but which fits the theme best?

Yes the PC's should have access if they want. Conan himself used magic in at least one of the stories, and there were plenty of friendly spellcasters in the books. This is why I like using MRQ. Players can be dabblers, or full fledged sorcerers if they choose.

Well in the books you either a big bad that sacrifices virgins and children to demons or your magic sucks.

Without sacrifices mages must work for their spells everyday and pay in sweat and blood even more than warriors for their skill. All this while spells are rarely the direct attack type. Being able to levitate an object is really good, being able to levitate yourself or someone else is like "OMG! Boy! You are a wizard!".

Curses work through having a part of your target - hair, blood, nails, etc. On the plus side they don't care much about distance.

So a wizard should be something between a real wizard and a con man. Because he actually probably doesn't have the magics to back up most of his claims and needs to hide how much he can actually do. Because spells also can have some drawbacks or flaws that can be exploited if known.

In GURPS the best way probably will be magic as powers. And make players do the spells themselves. If the spell isn't made right or just can't exist in your world still cut the ingame time they spent on trying to do it. And always mention that they can easily circumvent such problems by just placing their signature under this simple contract.

How do you do human sacrifice magic in RQ?

Because that's the most common type.

>and if so, do you need rules for them?
If you really care about conan books, YES

you use elric of melnibone magic rules it's compatible and is perfect for conan magic

Our last Conan campaign had 2 mages. It worked well. One was just Khitan scholar. The other one a khitan mystic/martial artists. The martial artist only had a couple tricks, and she played up her mystic-ness. The second was a full on Asian sorcerer. My hyrkanian archer was mostly okay with him, and my friend's "civilized" character had an innate distrust.

He could do some magic that was useful, but was constantly tempted to round up human sacrifices for the mechanical benefits and big spells.

The martial-arts mystic mostly had stuff that made her much better at fighting unarmed, and a called animal companion (which is a spell, in Conan). She could also summon scorpions from the area for attack, I believe.

What system were you using for this?

By the actual rules as written?
If you want full-on evil magics, just chuck out the magic point-thingy and replace it with raw sacrificial POW.

Each HP you burn off the sacrificial victim nets you one MP to cast spells. Seriously The Spider God's Bride has everything you need to run Conan under the Runequest system.

OH! What about that blood magic book Mongoose put out for legend?

D20 Conan.

Specifically, d20 Conan 2e, with all splats available.

Here's what I have from that campaign:

>Blank Character Sheet
docs.google.com/document/d/1j0BgOCYBdq0gAjTjdhnV7zY6QplJ_KVYtuNdukSBrjQ/edit?usp=sharing

Characters
docs.google.com/document/d/1LI1WaGiTf3d8PeehPhbTTDhdASndhv262gbvMyOwqYA/edit?usp=sharing
docs.google.com/document/d/1cX-EHumXXpz4gaxZJhjLTLouPxVQa5QPeuHunGxHxQQ/edit?usp=sharing
docs.google.com/document/d/1MUxDWEcYuvgkU1NMQFvGhTWIEAC7i9dj3LOB8Ls20bg/edit#heading=h.8yihxfy0kue9

Unfortunately I don't have a link to the Sorcerer's character sheet, only he and the GM saw that one. I understand he built it as a singleclassed Scholar, though.

Here's a link to the d20 books grabbed off the old conan general that never took off.
mediafire.com/folder/ha03bym6qwatw/Conan[d20]

And a link to Conan Music for atmosphere
mediafire.com/folder/ma3836qy9243a/Conan_Music

That's a good one too. It feels like Mongoose was working on a Conan setting for Legend when they lost the licence.

And if you're contemplating a monk type, there are several options, and the "monk" class is often regarded as being the worst one.

Warrior's Companion: Monastic Scholar.
Replace your spells with Chi-based Kung-Fu Techniques.

And you can also trade out your Sorcery Styles for Bonus Feats.
Scholar can do a decent kung fu mystic with good skills. Here's a build I came across online for a monk, it seems cool.
docs.google.com/document/d/16xOghH6Hme7nHgHfmzAIGFrmcbfDqpUEN732Cle--WY/edit?usp=sharing

Other suggestions include Sorceror of the Scarlet Circle, Vendhyan Soldier, and Brawler.

Also; there's a Dex to damage feat in the PG. Fencer's Finesse. While it implies it's use is for fencing; it has no weapon type restrictions, and you can RAW use it whether finessing or not.

So Monk = Some mix of Soldier/Thief/Scholar/Barbarian/Pirate; with feats chosen from: Imp. Unarmed, Fencer's Finesse, Brawl, Greater Unarmed Strike (can be taken multiple times, stacks), Weapon Focus (Unarmed Strike), Meditation Feats, Improved Grapple, Power Attack, Improved Bull Rush, Crushing Grip, Defensive Martial Arts, Stunning Attack, Weapon Focus (grapple), Improved Critical (unarmed strike or grapple), Cleave, Great Cleave, Weapon Specialisation (unarmed strike), Combat Expertise, Blind Fight, Improved Sunder, Improved Disarm, Striking Cobra, Web of Death, and Whirlwind Attack, Combat Reflexes, Greater Combat Reflexes, Dodge, Mobility, Light-Footed.

You could get your damage up to a d12 (takes 4 feats); you can use dex for damage; you can make it so missed attacks provoke aoos (greater reflexes), and combine that with cleave; and you can combine that with weird eastern Ki techniques or oriental magic as desired as well.

Interestingly, everyone on the mongoose forums suggests using any monk build EXCEPT martial disciple.

People have suggested the Pirate's seamanship ability for a monk have the condition changed from "on a boat" to "unarmored and unarmed/monk weapons."

d20 Conan is pretty good.

If I run/play another Conan campaign, I suspect I would run it in GURPS 4e with Martial Arts and Low Tech and RPM(and a houserule that makes it hard to cast a spell on the fly, so the spellcasters would use the "inventing" rules to design their spells in advance - I might pre-build a bunch of spells from d20 Conan in it, then slap together some Conan themed Racial Templates and Cultural/Training Lenses) , but d20 Conan has worked well for me in the past, and you could make it work with RQ6 if you added some supplemental magic systems like Blood Magic, or maybe something from Elric! or Magic World.

Those would be my choice systems for Conan, in that order.

>If I run/play another Conan campaign, I suspect I would run it in GURPS 4e with Martial Arts and Low Tech and RPM(and a houserule that makes it hard to cast a spell on the fly, so the spellcasters would use the "inventing" rules to design their spells in advance

This sounds brilliant.

Give me a call when you start it up if you have a slot ;)

Sarcasm, I assume, because of a real or memes dislike of GURPS?

Either way, I game in meatspace, so unless you live in London, Ontario (where I'll soon be moving), that's unlikely to happen.

No, GURPS is my top RPG, the sarcasm is strictly the idea of a random Veeky Forums person coming to play.

The interest is real, the logistics are sarcastic.

Ah. Yes. Impractical logicstics indeed.

Still, I think those options would work for it.

Yeah, they sound good. Magic should be slow and ritual like, I'm not expert on RPM but think it captures the flavor well. I'm not sure if it has it already but an option for sacrifice would be important to have.

Most "priests" in Conan are probably "wizards" as well, though I always liked the Divine Favor (Powers Supplement) and would consider that as well.

Rpm has rules for sacrifice, or for magic through channeling Mana from the area.

Not quite sure how I'd handle priests, though. Maybe the same, but without the power boost a sacrifice gives.

Thanks for the books.

>Well in the books you either a big bad that sacrifices virgins and children to demons or your magic sucks.
Hahahahahahahaahahahahahaaaaaaaaah!

Have you even read Conan stories?

The priest of Asura didn't seem like they were into that kinda stuff and they still managed to aid Conan in a big way.

Don't forget that old witch that used all kinds of weird animal and nature magic to aid Conan.

And that old "lich" wizard fart had so much magic coursing through his veins, he didn't even need sacrifices to cast spells. He just needed his sort-of phylactery...

I think magic was just whatever Howard said it was. It didn't need a system.

Sounds to me like we need various "schools" of magic. Magic that come from one's own power, and magic that come from the power of others.

Let's imagine a necromancer. One necromancer might have a single undead servant, a near unkillable fighting machine with perfect martial skills - powered by his own magical power. The other necromancer has a temple full of armed corpses numbering in the thousands, but if he misses one monthly sacrifice as demanded by his moon calender, his entire army turns to dust.

Kind of the difference between the typical Conan villains who rely on others for their strength, and the more rare ones like Xaltotun who pretty much bodies Conan with some simple telekinetic movements.

I don't think it matters too much. Hyborean magic is not as specific as the Earthsea or whatever.

I' been monkeying around with the idea of something Chainmail/Platemail based. Mostly it's because I like the idea of each fighter level determining how many fighters you count as. A level 10 warrior has the might of 10 normal men! He can make 10 attacks per round and it takes 10 attacks to successfully slay him.

Combat can be broken into multiple systems for different kinds of fights: One where you go all out rolling your total attacks all at once to see how many motherfuckers you can kill and possibly forcing them to make a moral check or flee. Another where you take on one or two guys at a time, taking turns making more detailed attacks and revenuers. And One where you once again you go all out in the dice rolling against some giant mythical beast or hero, determining in a single roll which one of you dies.

The system definitely has it's flaws and could use some touches to be a bit more intuitive but I think it has a lot of potential for simple hacking and slashing, definitively more so than standard D&D.

>Sounds to me like we need various "schools" of magic.
Well, I don't know about different schools as much as there needs to be substantially different levels of ability between people.

Magic requires substantial amounts of power to do serious shit. Either you: Make a deal with Things That Should Not Be for help in the area, do lots of sacrifices, rely on natural help (star alignments, location) or just need to be really fucking good.

Anyone can do magic, but some people just have much greater innate ability to wield the power behind it. A greedy merchant can find a spell and make a sacrifice to help next months profits, but someone with real skill and talent could forgo the sacrifice and most important know how to create a similar effect with less power.

Reaching high levels of skill is very hard of course as magic is rare and hard to master, explaining one of the reasons why wizards are always trying to extend their lifespan.

There was also the Pict wizard Zogar Sag in the story Beyond the Black River who was fathered by a demon.

Like, canonically or figuratively? I mean, I was fathered by an ass, but I'm not half-donkey.

>i blacked out where am i

Modiphius are launching their Conan 2d20 game. Not kickstarting, or announcing, but actually releasing in PDF and hardback book.

I haven't read it but I followed the development. They did a lot of work with Paradox (the rights holders) with Mutant Chronicles and that's carried over into Conan. The fluff they've released so far seems to really understand Conan, and they even did a playtest video in Robert E Howard's house with some scholars (?) from the Conan society.

He had a twin brother who was a proper demon. So I would say that it was literally a demon.

Isn't this out and been disliked by Veeky Forums?

Adhering to the lore and understanding the IP is very important, but in a way only half the battle here.

I like this system too. Currently running a game of it.

Eh, I'm neither of you, but there are ways to do it. In London ON, I think both Imperial Hobbies and LA Mood (both downtown) have game space available to reserve. Or you could always just book a meeting room at the downtown library, I think that's free.

Finding a random group online or in real life (I'm a crippled shut in anyways) isn't too hard as much as finding a GURPS Conan one.

The only thing I can say about it after skimming it quickly is that it looks ugly. Some neat art but badly presented, no consistency in artstyles and the layout is at best basic.

System seems pretty standard . Nothing special.
Only thing I found weird so far was that there's a mechanic for mandatory expenses (like drinking in a tavern) which is the kind of rules I find completely pointless and obstructive.

A very fair point.

One of the things I liked about Barbarians of Lemuria is their treasure system. In the aftermath of an adventure you were to describe how you were blowing your new found wealth. It was also a way for players to create their own plot hooks.

Give this a read if you like narrative systems. As far as I'm concerned it does Conan better than anything as far as dice-based mechanics go.

What does?

Don't know why the PDF didn't load. Here you go.

Gonna give it a look. Thanks for the suggestion.

Enjoy

Cool.