And lo, in the time of Kickstarters, I did succumb mightily, and parted with many coins for Modiphius’ new 2d20 based Conan Roleplaying game. So it is, after an age undreamed of, they have, eventually, released a Beta PDF of the core book to backers. The game is not quite there yet. Some more art and tweaks required, including another round of proofing, but it is close, and should be printed and out into grimy hands earlyish in 2017. Here are some of my reflections on the book and the underlying game system that will drive the action.
The Conan property attracts lumbering heavy handed systems to emulate the quick fire and explosive energy of Howard’s writing. I don’t know why. Barbarians of Lemuria captures it all perfectly. So, although heavier than I would usually put up with these days, we’ll get to the bottom of it and get it working.
Here’s the Beta of the online character generator: http://conan.modiphiusapps.hostinguk.org/
The book is going to be very lovely, well laid out and clearly put together in physical form. One glaring niggle is the introduction of many rule based details before the rules are explained. On a first read through in page sequence you simply have to ignore some stuff trusting that it will start to become clear when you get to page 97!
As expected there is more fine grained detail than I would choose in a game these days, but I’m going to say that I like what I see. Characters are formed of 7 fairly familiar attributes and a fairly manageable list of skills. Skills have three dimensions. An expertise level, used when calculating what you need to roll for success, a Focus, which provides the range needed to get extra successes and Talents, which are set out as a tree of extra facets within each skill. More than usual, but well laid out and look manageable. The talents are not especially overpowering, providing for re-rolls and small bonuses in thematic situations. So far I see them as nice tweaks, but they also open up new avenues for characters (perfidious sorcery, I’m looking at you) and help to individualise your character. I have this feeling that there will be extensions to the Talent trees with all those source books, so I’m likely to lose track of things as the game weighs down with pages. I expect that all of this is ignorable if you want to focus in, but I think rolling with it and spooning them onto the game will be part of the experience.
Character generation can take a number of methods. Careful crafting and selection through to go with the dice and random are both accommodated with balances between the two as you wish. I like the way that each stage also builds a lifepath and story, providing you with someone a little rounded and ready for play, rather than just a list of numbers and abilities.
So far so good.
Rules next…
The game is simple at core, with a range of layered twiddles that I will forget without the most cunning of contrived GM summary documents. Tasks are defined as Attribute + Expertise for the core difficulty number to roll equal to or less than by a number of d20 in your pool. Tasks either have a set difficulty number or one set by an active opponent. This increases the number of successes you need from your pool. D1 is a default difficulty of one success needed.
Your pool is 2d20 as a base. GM and Player can increase the number of d20 in the pool using the dynamic resource pools used in the game:
- Momentum – when you roll more successes than difficulty you gain momentum. This is either spent immediately or provided into a group pool (er, I think). This spend includes adding in more d20 to a future roll. There is a list of things to spend momentum on, including the notion that you can make extra things happen by spending it with a flourishing narrative. Momentum declines by one per action round, so it dissipates as time progresses.
- Fortune – hero points which provide auto successes and other life savers.
- Doom – the GM equivalent to Momentum that powers up the NPCs and gives the GM extra options to endanger the PCs.
Action scenes operate in similar vein to other simulatory games, with combat rounds (PCs go first unless Doom points are spent) and each spending a Standard, Minor and multiple Free actions.
Damage inflicts stress which returns quickly, but enough stress creates, Harm which translate to wounds and lasting trouble.
Weapons and Armour have ‘Qualities’ that tailor there use and provide them with advantages and disadvantages in use. I can see these bedding in during play.
Hit locations seem a but unnecessary but allow for more detail in combat and for varied armoured characters to be hit in the right or wrong place.
I think this is all fairly workable, if slightly heavy. Beads for pools essential. Feels like the sort of
game that you could run at a convention or at the home group, but would value from proper online support (which I think the Kickstarter is covering) to manage the moving parts. Hangouts and a diceroller doesn’t feel like quite enough when you have a couple of main fluctuating pools to manage.
My play experience is restricted to running a couple of sessions of the Quickstarter. Now that I have the full game I can appreciate all the more what a good job it did of introducing the game. Most of the core of it is there. During that playtest we found that by about the third action scene we had got on top of the mechanics reasonably well. Some of the ambiguity of the Quickstarter (I’m thinking of shields) have been clarified in the main game.
Overall I’d say it looks playable, especially for campaigns. You can get a group running with it over a standard 4 hour convention slot, but you’ll need to be in tutor mode for half the game and build in layers of complexity (or discard) as you go.
Sorcery is next up…
Sorcery has be imbued with the appropriate menace and damnation, dissuading happy go lucky adventurers to dabble in these perfidious arts. There’s a lot in here. We start with alchemical creations and other minor enchantments including talismans, poisons and application of the lotus. Then we are falling into the ultimately cursed talent tree for sorcery, either taking the path to barter your soul and perhaps a form of eternal life, or head towards enchantment and binding. Either way if you follow the talent tree you will be on a dangerous and reviled path, guided by a shadowy patron or three.
Spells are learnt and cast using the Sorcery expertise with Willpower, with a continual option to turn the test into a battle for heinous consequences. Human sacrifice is greatly efficacious, but not thought to be worthy of the dabbling player character, so there is some hard stares and finger wagging in the writing at this point. Spells are grouped into a dozen or so generic affects from Astral Wanderings to Summon a Horror and Venom of the Wind. With spell difficulties and Momentum and Resolve spend. Each of the spells have many types and effects within. We get a good evocative range with GMs lightly caressing ‘Dismember’ and the ‘I Will Take Your Heart’ use of it. The elements, the dead, the power of form and weather can all be at your beck and call. Not much sign of Cure Light Wounds I’m glad to say, so a good constitution, healing arts and poultices will be needed to keep you on the road to glory.
Chapter 8 gives us a very nicely put together summary of the Hyborian World. A scholarly rendition of the ‘Mysterious Hyborian Age’ assures us we are heading into the authentic experience. What we get is a meandering journe through the realms following in the footsteps of Conan himself. These realms will be expanded on in the numerous sourcebooks to come, but there is enough here to get you started with some flavoursome text and guidance to the analogies that each kingdom loosely represent. The Mongoose ‘The Road of Kings’ supplement is still kicking about and made available to Kickstarter backers, so we have lush text to draw on even as the core book lands with a thump sometime next year.
Chapter 9 provides lengthy guidance on running the Conan RPG. Some of this is familiar, drawn from the established canon of good GM tips, whereas others focus on the specifics created by the mechanics of 2d20. Momentum, Doom and Fortune all get some extra treatment to help the GM use them effectively as pacing mechanics.
Adventure design the Robert E. Howard way gets a lot of treatment. A series of questions are asked and guidance provided on how to answer them in the construction of your adventures. It’s worth reading, even if you think you know the answers. Old dog brother that I am, I found the guidance within helpful. You want your Conan adventures to be full of the lusty power and themes that Howard so powerfully presented in his writing. A few pages are further devoted to the link with Lovecraft, the weird and the pessimistic and fatalistic world view that permeates Howard’s view of existence. The Outer Dark may well find its way inside, into the heart of your adventures. It is also a time of forgotten science and learning from back in the distant past of the days of Kull in the Thurian Age. More of this will be layered on in future supplements.
Who the player characters are, and how they bind together is also given quite a lot of coverage. Again, the question is posed: what would Howard do? I must say there is a faithfulness to the text, a desire to cleave to the vision and outlook of the inspirational author. If you want your own inspiration then get yourself on the 2d20 Carousing Events table to see where simple downtime might take your character’s story.
The experience point system feels a bit tacked on. At moments in time determined by the GM, XPs are doled out with the usual wobbly guidance on performance rewards. These get spent on increases in various generated numbers. Wealth gets the derisory treatment that Howard would of approved of. Gathr your coin and grow your Renown, so that you are recognised, feared and targeted for others gain.
And so to encounters…
NPCs, foes and unspeakable horrors nestle together in Chapter 10, ready to tear your characters apart,
some more impatiently than others. NPC stat blocks are simplified a touch from the detail provided for PCs, but there is still a lot mechanically going on with them. Foes have levels of power from Minion to Nemesis, which governs how easily they can go down and how Harm affects them.
With special powers, advice on group attacks, and structuring encounters, we go into the stat blocks for Mortal Foes, Wild Beats, Monstrous Foes and Otherworldly Horrors. Lots to get stuck into here and more to come in supplements and adventures no doubt.
We get full game statted descriptions of some of the key characters in the Conan stories starting with the Cimmerian himself. Always good to compare yourself with the heroes of the books.
The book rounds out with a full adventure, which looks like a good dunking in the themes and flavour that we have seen in the book so far. Pregen characters are to be provided, though not yet in the beta of the book and we get a character sheet that will be modified further for the printed book. I would have liked to have seen a gathering of the best and most useful of the tables at the back of the book, but coin will be spent on luscious GM screens no doubt, or fevered copy and pasting of the PDF for those with time and inclination. I haven’t looked, but expect ardent fans have already looted the pages and constructed the most virtuous of ‘quick reference’ resources.
Overall I am very impressed with the book and content. I’m fairly predisposed to want to like it as I have gone in very deep on the Kickstarter. I can’t admit to myself that it might be a turkey. It certainly isn’t. Honest and true to the text, I’m still looking at 2d20 with a slightly furrowed brow. Actual play will sort out my view on it. Familiarity, cheat sheets and a laminator will hopefully allow me to make the game sing and fly with urgent and pulsing pace. It might. Possibly.
I’m looking forward to the release and the follow-up sourcebooks. I need to arrange to get some actual play in sharpish and to wheel out for convention play too.
“I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, & am content.”
― Robert E. Howard, Conan the Barbarian Omnibus -The Original Stories
