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Miniatures Adventure => Fantasy Adventures => Topic started by: KGatch113 on 10 December 2022, 05:27:48 AM
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I thought I remember someone posting or talking about there being different Conan RPG's. Is there a D20/3.5 DnD version of one???
Thanks if anyone has any info.
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Mongoose did an edition using the D20 system, back in the early 2000s. It's out of print and mostly unavailable, going for silly money when it is.
The licence is currently held by a company called Modiphus, their game is still in print and there are billions of supplements for it. It is an entirely different game and does not, I think, use the D20 system.
Before that I think there was an RPG in the 80s, some D&D Conan supplements, and even a GURPS Conan. Not sure I fancy your chances of finding them, though.
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The Modiphus system uses their own 2d20 system which is indeed entirely different. It is a very interesting and cool system though, with a very flavorful lifepath character creation system.
Personally I feel like the idiosyncrasies of the d20 engine don't fit conan that well, conan almost resets every story, you can read them in most any order as he starts as he begins, rather than accruing xp, gaining new abilities and spells or equipment all that much.
That being said, if you are set on the d20 engine I'd look for more generic "sword and sorcery" supplements, its the genre that is solidly rooted in conan and most of the books for that style tend to be conan with the serial numbers filed off.
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Drive Thru RPG has this lot:
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?keywords=CONAN&x=20&y=10&author=&artist=&pfrom=&pto=
But Jeff Talanian has just released v3 of Hyperboria (the game previously known as Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperboria) which is more "Conan" than Conan.
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/4453/North-Wind-Adventures
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The best RPG I've run for this is Barbarians of Lemuria (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?keywords=barbarians+of+lemuria&x=0&y=0&author=&artist=&pfrom=&pto=). It's not designed as a Conan game but for Lin Carter's Lemuria (heavily influenced by Howard). But it works perfectly for Hyborian adventures, and it's a great system - very simple, intuitive and fun.
There are two editions (shown at the link above): the Legendary one ($4) and the Mythic one (currently on sale at $6.90 but usually more expensive). There are slight differences between them, but nothing major. Either is great for a Conan RPG.
One especially Conan-ish aspect of the game is that characters are built with several points in different careers (slave, mercenary, pirate, merchant, dancing girl - whatever). The players can then use their past careers creatively to gain advantage in certain situations (a former slave might be good at passing unnoticed in the background of a bustling palace or temple; a sailor would be good with knots and charts; a merchant might be able to bargain well in non-commercial situations, etc.).
There are some specifically Hyborian adventures available free online - including Tower of the Elephant (http://hyboria.xoth.net/adventures/tower_of_the_elephant.htm), which I ran for my group a couple of months ago (it worked really well). All the specifically Lemurian adventures would work just fine in Hyboria too.
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There was a garbled email from Morphius last week which IIRC stated that their license had expired.
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There was a garbled email from Morphius last week which IIRC stated that their license had expired.
Interesting, I'm curious to see who will pick it up now!
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There was a garbled email from Morphius last week which IIRC stated that their license had expired.
That's correct, the licence stops at the end of the year and they have until the end of June 2023 to dispose of any remaining stock. So get moving if you want to get anything you missed.
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I have an 80s Conan roleplaying game, translated into German in the 90s. I’ll look up to see which was the original edition.
Thanks for all those great ideas. I didn’t know either AW&WH nor Lemuria,
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Oh blimey. Every time I think I want to get into a Conan RPG, it turns out it has gone or is going out of print. :)
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Genuine quetsion; do you "need" a Conan RPG or just a suitable RPG to run Conan in? I understand if you want stat blocks for all the famous encounters, etc. but I feel you could run Conan in any decent non-tabletop RPG, etc.
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Genuine quetsion; do you "need" a Conan RPG or just a suitable RPG to run Conan in? I understand if you want stat blocks for all the famous encounters, etc. but I feel you could run Conan in any decent non-tabletop RPG, etc.
Yes,…and no. I do accept that it’s actually the GM who sets the tone of the campaign, but through all my experience as a GM I would say, that it’s more than stats, but a „feeling“ that matters.
In my experience, for instance, any D&D style Rpg with increased HP/Level is not really suitable for horror. Cthulhu, on the contrary, does a great job in that regard. No matter how experienced a character is, he can always die very easily.
So for the Conan RPG, I would expect a gaming analogue to Conan‘s rage. Often in the stories he is able to do heroic feats without any warning or build up, because he is an „uncivilized barbarian“…and we all know how REH thought about that…
Otoh: if you just want to play an rpg in the Hyborean Age, well you’re right, therr are probably a lot of good rpgs out there that could be easily modified to fit.
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The Modiphus 2d20 system is interesting and can make for very heroic game play. Monolith is picking up the license after this. At 21 or so books it's pretty well fleshed out for any stage of Conan's life you wanted to play. I would think you could get quite a few months (if not years) out of their published adventures. I would not recommend it for more than 4 players though.
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Genuine quetsion; do you "need" a Conan RPG or just a suitable RPG to run Conan in? I understand if you want stat blocks for all the famous encounters, etc. but I feel you could run Conan in any decent non-tabletop RPG, etc.
I have my own ideas about what would make a good RPG game, but I wanted to see if the games set to reflect a Conan type world/game had any unique mechanics that would help out.
For example, to me one of the problems of a Conan DnD game would be the fact that Conan fights a ton of normal guys, not a collection of more and more powerful monsters. And to me, leveling up guardsmen to be a challenge to Conan is a silly way to keep the game challenging, because leveling up = power and if the town guard is all made up of 10th level fighters, why aren't they conquering the neighboring towns and cities etc.
So I came up with a different way to do hit points and wounds which allows a low level mook the ability to challenge a powerful opponent like Conan, without punking him. If a player controlling a Conan like character gets killed by a 0 or 1st level guard, its because he played poorly and made bad decisions....which to me is realistic. At the same time, the system allows you and the players to create stories where the hero can do feats normal men cannot do.
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Savage Worlds can do the hero against a horde situation very well. It has a setting "Beasts & Barbarians" which is basically Conan with the serial numbers filed off.
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I agree that even just in general, the savage worlds engine is well suited for the genre.
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I agree with what others have said here - what matters is genre emulation rather than Hyborian specifics (stats, etc.). As KGatch113 intimates, D&D is quite a poor fit because powerful (high-level) characters won't be troubled by beasts and beings that Conan has to avoid (the lions in Tower of the Elephant, for example).
And YPU makes an excellent point about most "sword and sorcery" stories being essentially lightly reskinned Conan (which is why Barbarians of Lemuria is such a good fit - it's designed for the world of Thongor of Lemuria, who is essentially Lin Carter's tribute act to Conan).
While D&D isn't a great fit, RuneQuest and its descendants (BRP, Mythras, OpenQuest, etc.) are: the introduction to the classic RuneQuest second edition noted that the game's heroes are "Fafhrds, Conans and Rustums" rather than Arthurs, Lancelots and Galahads. The RQ lineage preserves the sense of danger so that a mere guardsman can still be a threat to a powerful character (you can always get lucky with a single arrow or slingstone ...).
But RQ, Mythras et al. are quite complex, crunchy games, and you can just as easily emulate the genre with something much lighter (like Barbarians of Lemuria) or with something in between (Savage Worlds, as YPU noted).
A very nice bit of genre emulation that Barbarians of Lemuria has built in is the squandering of treasure - players are encouraged to describe how they drank, gambled or otherwise squandered their last lot of loot in order to earn advancement points. So the game's set up to return the PCs to the default Conan-ish position of being penniless and in need of a patron ...
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Savage Worlds can do the hero against a horde situation very well. It has a setting "Beasts & Barbarians" which is basically Conan with the serial numbers filed off.
Beasts and Barbarians is cool. I got several for the books to use as wargaming references. SW is actually a wargame with some RPG on top.
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Beasts and Barbarians is cool. I got several for the books to use as wargaming references. SW is actually a wargame with some RPG on top.
you are missing a layer. It was the deadlands RPG first, then simplified for use in the great rail wars wargame (anybody played that? Those new plastic cowboys get me itching to give it a shot maybe) which then was evolved again into the savage worlds engine (and again used for deadlands) its a nice little cycle.
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you are missing a layer. It was the deadlands RPG first, then simplified for use in the great rail wars wargame (anybody played that? Those new plastic cowboys get me itching to give it a shot maybe) which then was evolved again into the savage worlds engine (and again used for deadlands) its a nice little cycle.
I just didn’t want to go too much ot. 😉The Deadlands TT is actually really great. Actually so great that they substituted the rather complicated RPG engine of Deadlands with it.
Anyway, it’s a great toolbox for pulpy heroes!
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I think Dungeon Worlds could do Conan pretty well - but it's the antithesis of D&D. It's one $17 book...and not a "money making machine" like D&D.
The GM and characters are responsible for the setting, the story, etc. In fact, one of the DW games I ran was actually pretty Conan in theme now that I think about it. :D
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I think Dungeon Worlds could do Conan pretty well - but it's the antithesis of D&D. It's one $17 book...and not a "money making machine" like D&D.
The GM and characters are responsible for the setting, the story, etc. In fact, one of the DW games I ran was actually pretty Conan in theme now that I think about it. :D
Good call! The Powered by the Apocalypse freewheeling/cooperative style is well suited (Barbarians of Lemuria has a bit of that - players can spend points to (e.g.) find ways out of the cell they're locked in, and so on.
There are other PbtA games that might get even closer than Dungeon World, though: Hyborian Saga (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By4fR8hnM-BPNWRkNTNlMTktNjIxOS00YjY1LTg1NDktMGQ4NTg1NGE4ZWY4/view?resourcekey=0-4TrxQuwIKv3qZY3WnNPbFQ) and World of Conan, which you can download free on the author's site here (https://www.simoncarryer.com/rpgs.html).
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Yep, even better. I'm not familiar with the other PBTA titles, but just that style of game is...super-open ended. Not the kind of "mother may I?" approach that modern D&D is setting up for people.
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Yes - and the "players create the world" approach is a natural fit for sword-and-sorcery settings, which are generally lightly sketched and don't have Middle-earth levels of detail. For a Conan game, all you'd need to do is to give the players a printout of Howard's The Hyborian Age to read (and refer to during the game if needed), and you'd be off and away!
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That is something I didn’t know. Thanks for pointing it out!
A vague bell rings when reading about the system, and I like the idea of giving the players some freedom. That’s how we had most fun with rpgs back in the 90s.