How is the new Conan game? How does it compare to the old ones?

How is the new Conan game? How does it compare to the old ones?

The fluff is good, and might be worth the price of admission.
The rest would be improved if you ripped out the pages to use as tp.

Ouch, why's that?

It's just a mess. Take the worst parts of 3.x and modern narrative games and you got 2d20. It's crunchy in all the wrong places, clunky in play and focuses on metamanaging diverse pools of story points.
And this is just from reading the Conan quickstart and playing MC. I don't want to think about the full version.

Generally "narrative" games don't have story points. Could you make an example?

Lets say you're minding your own business carousing and someone spills mead on you. This is of course a good enough reason to fight.
You will go first, unless the GM fucks you over by spending a doom point and give the initiative to your opponent.
You're a bit drunk, so actions are difficult, and you give the GM another doom point to make sure your blow connects.
Dice are rolled, rerolled, and interpreted. Your blow hits, and your friend was lucky enough gambling in the other end of the tavern to give you a momentum point to spend.
More dice are rolled, rerolled and interpreted, momentum is spent, and you manage to knock your foe to the ground.
GM decides to liven things up and spends more doom, making more thugs appear from an up until now empty room, at which point you better hope they're just rabble, or you might have to start dipping into your fate points to avoid a beating..
And hope the GM doesn't arbitrarily decide to spend a handful of doom to break your arm or bring Thoth Amon into the brawl..

Sounds like a GM problem.

Apart from Thoth Amon, these are all RAW GM advice. Never said they were good, but they're representative for the game.

The problem isn't that the GM can use them, the problem is that the GM doesn't know WHEN to use them.

Good thing the game isn't shy about telling the poor sucker then.

If it does that, then it's dumb. You didn't write that in your original reply though.

>doom point
This kinda shit is retarded, the whole idea that players are fighting against the GM is retarded. The GM is supposed to weave an enjoyable story, not let everything fall flat suddenly because he ran out of doom points so the main villain drops dead due to a lucky blow mid-speech.

How are doom points assigned?

Just play BoL

Barbarians of Lemuria if you want less crunch and GURPS Conan if you want more still seem like the best two options if you want some good Conan action.

The fact that Mongoose had Conan ready and good to go for their MRQII when they lost the license upsets me.

D&D any edition works better for Conan and costs a fraction of what these idiots charge.

You niggas all a bunch of haters. The games is fun as fuck if you dont play with a bunch of spastic neckbeards. My group has a blast playing this game

Lots of fun can be had with a good group, no matter the game, that isn't the same as being willing to recommend it for others to buy. I enjoyed playing Pathfinder with my old group, but I'd never suggest anyone buy or play it if given a choice.

The GM gets doom points when players do various things, like ask for a bonus on a roll, roll a natural 20, or defend more than once a round. The GM can spend doom points to make the enemy win initiative (players always win initiative otherwise,) add enemies to an encounter, give enemies bonuses, or fuel enemies' magic spells.

In addition to , the somewhat older Mongoose d20 from 2007 is fairly decent and had quite a varied amount of splats. It's 3.x, but with the magic system gutted and replaced with an appropriately sacrificial pseudo-alchemy system instead, and a more fleshed out melee maneuvers bit.

It's a bit... old-fashioned by modern standards (it's before SW:SAGA's streamlining of d20 skills systems, and isn't as neat as Fantasy Craft), but it does a fairly reputable job of getting that Hyborian age feel across, for a d20 system anyway.

i fail to spot the problem with what you just described

Background is great (no pastiche shit), system plays well and is easy to learn. For some reason folks get unreasonably butt hurt about it having narrative-style meta game currency. Worst part is, most of them wailing about it have barely read the rules, let alone understand them and hate things like doom and momentum simply because they hate meta-mechanics.

Overall it's a fine game on its own, plays smooth and its background blows all previous attempts out of the water. Manages to be a damn fine S&S RPG and those meta-game mechanics create a great tension curve. Feels about as true to REH's vision as anything else without turning to pastiche garbage to fill in holes.

Give the free one a try, and if you don't like it then it isn't for you. But I was pleasantly surprised by it.

in fact, I am looking at the PDF right now and it all sounds quite intriguing, not sure what your problem is.

Reminds me of Edge of the Empire. Sounds like it would be slow and frustrating as fuck to play.

>For some reason folks get unreasonably butt hurt about it having narrative-style meta game currency. Worst part is, most of them wailing about it have barely read the rules, let alone understand them and hate things like doom and momentum simply because they hate meta-mechanics.
they seem to not understand that it is impossible to recreate stories like conan (or LOTR) without them

i don't like rerolls in general, as they slow down the action needlessly but as long as the interpretation part isn't too complicated, it sounds kinda okay.

Having played about a dozen sessions of the game so far, my group is having a lot of fun and pretty happy with it. The metamechanics are a major part of the game so it won't be for everyone. Proclaiming the game is shit because of them or that people are ignorant for making an issue out of them is simply not acknowledging other play styles exist. YMMV is far more accurate.

At my table, I try to ensure the metamechanic is somewhat explainable in-game. If a room is established to be empty and there's no way for anyone to get into it, no goons are going to appear in it due to Doom spends... etc.

When you look at the metamechanics as a player's vs. GM thing, it would appear to be a bad system. But, in any game, the gm could do any of the shit that doom spends facilitate. But that's not really how I look at doom spends. Or any meta point spend. They're all there to help the players and the gm to tell and advance a story together. Can this be accomplished without metamechanics? Absolutely... but hat, by itself, is not an argument against the metamechnics.

>At my table, I try to ensure the metamechanic is somewhat explainable in-game. If a room is established to be empty and there's no way for anyone to get into it,
this goes without saying. no mechanic is responsible for gross misapplication by the GM.

>Can this be accomplished without metamechanics? Absolutely... but hat, by itself, is not an argument against the metamechnics.
this is very difficult. metacurrency is a valuable tool for GMs to shape the on-going plot.

shit, back when rolemaster still was a thing, our GM gave every PC 3 rerolls per lifetime - we introduced a metacurrency without realizing it, out of sheer necessity.

metacurrency is good.