Tell me about Conan 2d20 system

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I really want did to like Conan 2D20, and the jury is still out on it for me. However, all this talk about a Conan RPG makes me want to pull the old TSR box set off of my shelf and give it a look through!
 
I really want did to like Conan 2D20, and the jury is still out on it for me. However, all this talk about a Conan RPG makes me want to pull the old TSR box set off of my shelf and give it a look through!


Really liked that system. It still lives through the retro-clone ZEFRS
 
I've never been able to read or play TSR's Conan game. What was it like?
 
That's very informative, thanks. I appreciate these kind of mechanics when they fit the game's premise or are cleverly used (like in Pendragon or Masks imo).

I remember UA2 had Obsession and Sanity meters which I found worked well for that game context. Does UA3 add more stuff like that? And to what purpose, if you don't mind me asking?

I can't really give any good specific examples, unfortunately, because I sold the books.
 
I've never been able to read or play TSR's Conan game. What was it like?

Oh man, it's been years but from what I remember - without taking the box down from the shelf - it had an action table similar to Marvel Super Heroes. I think that you took a weapon skill and compared it to your opponents movement and that determined the column you rolled on, if I recall correctly. If a hit was scored you would take the damage of the weapon and subtract the armor that's how much damage you would do.

Character creation was amazingly simple. You don't have ability scores but Talent pools. Talent pools were 6 areas of expertise for your character, like fighting, knowledge, perception, and each pool had talents (read: skills) associated with them. I remember you got a certain amount of points - 30 or 40? - to make your character. There was a default score for each of your talent pools, which governed how you use skills which you didn't put points into but I can't remember how those were generated.

I remember the magic system being very hard on the magic-wielding character. The spells were open-ended and in a design-your-own nature. There were no spellcasters in our group so I don't remember this very well.

EDIT: I also remember game didn't all go you down with a lot of fluff. That can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your view, but I rather liked it. I remember there being a small section about living in the world in the main book. There was another book that was kind of like a gazetteer and a monster manual rolled into one. Man, I'm jonesing to get into that boxed set again!
 
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There was a default score for each of your talent pools, which governed how you use skills which you didn't put points into but I can't remember how those were generated.
Wasn't it, perchance, "add together your skill levels from that pool and divide by 10, that's your default value":tongue:?
 
Wasn't it, perchance, "add together your skill levels from that pool and divide by 10, that's your default value":tongue:?

Damn you, man! :tongue:

*goes to get box off of shelf*

Yeah, that's it. "Add the ratings for all the talents in the Talent Pool, then divide by 10." So, if I had Sword 7 and Brawling 5, both talents under the Fighting Talent Pool, I would add those ratings together (12), divide by 10 (1.2), and drop all fractions, (1). So any other fighting skill that I didn't have points in could be used at a skill of 1.

I thought this system fell into the "simple but elegant" category, myself.
 
Damn you, man! :tongue:

*goes to get box off of shelf*

Yeah, that's it. "Add the ratings for all the talents in the Talent Pool, then divide by 10." So, if I had Sword 7 and Brawling 5, both talents under the Fighting Talent Pool, I would add those ratings together (12), divide by 10 (1.2), and drop all fractions, (1). So any other fighting skill that I didn't have points in could be used at a skill of 1.

I thought this system fell into the "simple but elegant" category, myself.
That rule is actually retained in the new ZeFRS clone. So I simply knew the answer is right:grin:!

Also, that's a very simple but elegant and true-to-life rule that I've been thinking about introducing into Cepheus:shade:.
 
I was just thinking the other day about systems that didn't have - or need - ability scores. Thanks to that dang blog post or whatever it was floating around the Internet, about some dude talking about doing away with them (or some of them). I don't prescribe to that idea, but it got me thinking about what a system would look like without ability scores. Little did I know - or remember, rather - that I had such a system on my shelf!
 
I was just thinking the other day about systems that didn't have - or need - ability scores. Thanks to that dang blog post or whatever it was floating around the Internet, about some dude talking about doing away with them (or some of them). I don't prescribe to that idea, but it got me thinking about what a system would look like without ability scores. Little did I know - or remember, rather - that I had such a system on my shelf!
It would look like Fate, A Song of Ice and Fire by Green Ronin, or yes, like ZeFRS and Faserip:smile:.

Or you could argue that Maelstrom is actually one of those systems. It just gives you one skill per category, and gives you specialisations in particular skills:wink:.
 
I'd say FASERIP is NOT that type of system, at least in my opinion. Despite the similarities between it and Conan, I feel they do have ability scores.
ASoIaF...well, I feel it closer, but if I squint I still see ability scores. There's just 20 of them (I'm estimating...but I know that's close) instead of six or eight, with specialties being the "skills" of the system and derivative of the ability scores.
Maelstrom is the closest to the idea of an ability score-less system of the ones you mentioned*. While called "attributes" they're treated more like skills (in my recollection and experience).

I don't mean to sound argumentative, and my apologies if I'm coming across that way. Obviously, these are my opinions...we might simply look at ability scores differently.

*In my years of playing RPGs, I've avoided FATE. :wink: So, it may be even closer, but I would not know.
 
I've never been able to read or play TSR's Conan game. What was it like?
Oh man, it's been years but from what I remember - without taking the box down from the shelf - it had an action table similar to Marvel Super Heroes. I think that you took a weapon skill and compared it to your opponents movement and that determined the column you rolled on, if I recall correctly. If a hit was scored you would take the damage of the weapon and subtract the armor that's how much damage you would do.

Character creation was amazingly simple. You don't have ability scores but Talent pools. Talent pools were 6 areas of expertise for your character, like fighting, knowledge, perception, and each pool had talents (read: skills) associated with them. I remember you got a certain amount of points - 30 or 40? - to make your character. There was a default score for each of your talent pools, which governed how you use skills which you didn't put points into but I can't remember how those were generated.

I remember the magic system being very hard on the magic-wielding character. The spells were open-ended and in a design-your-own nature. There were no spellcasters in our group so I don't remember this very well.

EDIT: I also remember game didn't all go you down with a lot of fluff. That can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your view, but I rather liked it. I remember there being a small section about living in the world in the main book. There was another book that was kind of like a gazetteer and a monster manual rolled into one. Man, I'm jonesing to get into that boxed set again!
Maybe someone should post a "Let's Read." Any volunteers? The entire rules take up fewer than 30 pages. Samples:
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Magic takes up all of 2 pages:
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The setting is presented as 48 pages from the notebooks of a professor of "Hyborian Studies":
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The resolution table:
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I'd say FASERIP is NOT that type of system, at least in my opinion. Despite the similarities between it and Conan, I feel they do have ability scores.
That might be true in a way. I admit that when I see "fighting" listed as an attribute, I start treating them as extremely broad skills:smile:.
So maybe it's on me, not you:wink:.

ASoIaF...well, I feel it closer, but if I squint I still see ability scores. There's just 20 of them (I'm estimating...but I know that's close) instead of six or eight, with specialties being the "skills" of the system and derivative of the ability scores.
Possibly. I don't remember any specialties, but I admit I've only played it twice.

Maelstrom is the closest to the idea of an ability score-less system of the ones you mentioned*. While called "attributes" they're treated more like skills (in my recollection and experience).
Yup, exactly my point:thumbsup:.
I don't mean to sound argumentative, and my apologies if I'm coming across that way. Obviously, these are my opinions...we might simply look at ability scores differently.
Hey, whether we call something "attribute" or "ability score" is a matter of semantics. Be as argumentative as you like on such trifling matters, and I promise not to take offense:grin:!

*In my years of playing RPGs, I've avoided FATE. :wink: So, it may be even closer, but I would not know.
Fate can really go one way or another...there are no attributes, a number of skills that's about 15 in the corebook, but then you have Aspects and Stunts.


In the end, it doesn't matter much, IMO. We're basically talking about systems that have only one kind of mechanically-relevant list of numbers and you don't add them to a "base" number. The rest is semantics:shade:!
 
In the end, it doesn't matter much, IMO. We're basically talking about systems that have only one kind of mechanically-relevant list of numbers and you don't add them to a "base" number. The rest is semantics:shade:!
Yeah basically. There's ultimately a sense in which the division between skills and attributes is somewhat arbritray anyway (eg White Wolf's Perception + Awareness rolls). Once you get down to one level, this becomes clearer.

Like in Symbaroum which has no skills and eight attributes, two of which are Persuasive and Discreet (which is basically stealth).

A lot is in how you present things.

Imagine a game which had no attirbutes and only 6 skills.
These skills might be:

Athletics
Endurance
Reflexes
Education
Awareness
Socialising.

You could then rank the six skills on a scale from 3 to 18.

A more old school interpretation might be.

Melee
Health
Reflexes
Arcana
Religion
Presence
(Although this wouldn't really work as they are not 'checked' unless you house rule in a system to do this.)
 
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What was the old ZeFRs Conan game like?
Free, and similar to the old Marvel roleplaying game.


I’ve heard many good things about it, but I’ve spent no time on it.
I really want did to like Conan 2D20, and the jury is still out on it for me. However, all this talk about a Conan RPG makes me want to pull the old TSR box set off of my shelf and give it a look through!
I've never been able to read or play TSR's Conan game. What was it like?
Oh man, it's been years but from what I remember - without taking the box down from the shelf - it had an action table similar to Marvel Super Heroes. I think that you took a weapon skill and compared it to your opponents movement and that determined the column you rolled on, if I recall correctly. If a hit was scored you would take the damage of the weapon and subtract the armor that's how much damage you would do.

Character creation was amazingly simple. You don't have ability scores but Talent pools. Talent pools were 6 areas of expertise for your character, like fighting, knowledge, perception, and each pool had talents (read: skills) associated with them. I remember you got a certain amount of points - 30 or 40? - to make your character. There was a default score for each of your talent pools, which governed how you use skills which you didn't put points into but I can't remember how those were generated.

I remember the magic system being very hard on the magic-wielding character. The spells were open-ended and in a design-your-own nature. There were no spellcasters in our group so I don't remember this very well.

EDIT: I also remember game didn't all go you down with a lot of fluff. That can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your view, but I rather liked it. I remember there being a small section about living in the world in the main book. There was another book that was kind of like a gazetteer and a monster manual rolled into one. Man, I'm jonesing to get into that boxed set again!
You've got my vote, Dumarest! :thumbsup:
 
There's also these:

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ZeFRS - Cimmerian Quickstart - OSR | OSR | DriveThruRPG.com

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Legends of Steel: ZeFRS Edition - Evil DM Productions | DriveThruRPG.com
 
I'll pass. The quickstart rules unsold me pretty hard.
 
I got in on the KS, but at a base level. I do like the art and the story stuff. I think it's probably pretty decent for that. Maybe I'll get in on the bundle just to get the rest of the things that I missed.
 
I got in on the KS, but at a base level. I do like the art and the story stuff. I think it's probably pretty decent for that. Maybe I'll get in on the bundle just to get the rest of the things that I missed.
There's stuff there that KS backers haven't received?
 
Everybody and their mother knows how I feel about 2d20. Even at that hot price, I have to take a pass on principle.
That's how most of us found the Pub.

"Hey dear, you know those RPG things you play. I don't know much about them, but apparently some Kermit the frog look alike over at a place called the RPGPub hates the 2d20 system"
"Sounds like a place with an erudite user base and handsome but even handed moderators. Thanks Mam I'll check it out!"
 
So, the Bundle of Holding prompted me to dig out the Conan 2d20 quickstart I picked up at a Free RPG Day many years ago (in the time after Atlantis sunk into the sea, but before etc, etc...). This time I read all the way through the quickstart rules and honestly, unless the full ruleset has a lot of extra stuff, I don't see anything I can't already do with the Genesys corebook. And I've already put the time and effort into learning the Genesys/Star Wars rules. I'm not sure I would need to add yet another system to my already crowded memory banks if it doesn't add something special.

Is there something special to the full game? Are the other 2d20 games good enough to warrant learning the system to "unlock" them all in my gaming repertoire? I mean, there's a Fallout 2d20 coming out next year...but the very first fan supplement for Genesys was Fallout! I'm willing to be sold on the system, as I like Modiphius as a company (I love the Fallout minis game) but I just don't see why I should bother, yet.
 
So, the Bundle of Holding prompted me to dig out the Conan 2d20 quickstart I picked up at a Free RPG Day many years ago (in the time after Atlantis sunk into the sea, but before etc, etc...). This time I read all the way through the quickstart rules and honestly, unless the full ruleset has a lot of extra stuff, I don't see anything I can't already do with the Genesys corebook. And I've already put the time and effort into learning the Genesys/Star Wars rules. I'm not sure I would need to add yet another system to my already crowded memory banks if it doesn't add something special.

Is there something special to the full game? Are the other 2d20 games good enough to warrant learning the system to "unlock" them all in my gaming repertoire? I mean, there's a Fallout 2d20 coming out next year...but the very first fan supplement for Genesys was Fallout! I'm willing to be sold on the system, as I like Modiphius as a company (I love the Fallout minis game) but I just don't see why I should bother, yet.
There's currently an RPG out based on the minis game so you may want to check that out and skip the 2d20 thing.
 
Emulating CONAN is a challenge for rpgs, as there is two facets of the genre.

The first facet is the Hyborian World, which is gritty, rich, and detailed. Both Mongoose Conan and Modiphus Conan get this part right. The richness of the setting is quite palatable in both games, perhaps moreso in Modiphus due to the very high quality art direction. The content is great in both game lines, and I recommend either one to those who like in-depth settings.

The other part of CONAN is that many of the stories also have a swashbuckling pulpy nature to them. Games like Barbarians of Lemuria, Savage Worlds, ZeFRS, etc do a reasonable job capturing this flavour (BoL perhaps the best of all, due to it's straight-forward nature).

Finding a system to mix both the heavy setting lore with the pulpy action is difficult, as rpg mechanics, by their nature, often emulate one style over another.

So I'm not sure if there will ever be a perfect CONAN game.

Modiphus tends to loose me with the meta-currency throughout game play, I will need to play it much more to grok it.

I actually like the idea of Momentum in theory. It allows PCs to generate cool effects based on how well they have been rolling. But at the game table I find it a bit clunky for the GM to keep track of, especially if you have more than two PCs playing. I think it's just not my kind of game flow, and if I want to play Hyborian games with crunchy combat, I can do that more easily with BRP/MW/Mythras.

Although if I want to have a more light-prep game, then its hard not to consider using BoL set in the Hyborian World.

Despite that, I do like the random character generation in Modiphus Conan. It is moderately crunchy, but a lot of fun and does create very rich setting-specific characters that definately feel like they are already living in the Hyborian World.

The whole Modiphus Conan line is rich in setting lore and high quality artwork. I recommend it for those who love the Conan setting, as the narrative content in the books is worth it even if one doesn't end up playing the actual game.

So I find myself in the unusual position of collecting Modiphus Conan for the content, but if it comes down to rolling dice at the table, I doubt I'll be using the actual system. We'll see.
 
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Have you checked out Crypts & Things?
Yes, I already followed D101 Games due to OpenQuest (BRP), so I was aware of Crypts & Things when it was first published. I have a pdf of the second edition, and it is pretty good. It is Swords & Wizardry D20 OSR fine-tuned for a Hyborian-style setting, so it's not a bad vibe.

Yeah I should have listed it among the rpgs I suggested for the 'lighter' side of sword & sorcery, as it captures that flavour quite well.
Personally I would run BoL over C&T, but I certainly wouldn't mind playing in a C&T game :thumbsup:
 
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The core rulebook adds much more lore, and provides an excellent detailed character generation proces; but the combat mechanics and such work the same as the Quickstart.

That is an excellent playtest review of the Quickstart, pretty much captures the experience of gameplay quite well.
I agree with your overall reaction summary that it does a reasonable job, but not enough to poach people away from BRP/Mythras which achieves a similar effect, with less meta-currency.

However, for those who don't have BRP/Mythras, then Modiphus does a decent job if you want to run sword and sorcery with a crunchy system.
(Just need to track Momentum and Doom etc)

Thanks for the repost, very entertaining! :thumbsup:
 
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I think I need to run the quickstart. I'm genuinely unsure whether my players would be lost in the system, or would love it. Savage Worlds has a lot of metagame to it (especially as we also use the Adventure Cards), and at least one of my players just loves that shit (I don't mind it at all), so running the quickstart seems like the best thing to do for us, and see how it goes (kind of the point, I guess).
 
The core rulebook adds much more lore, and provides an excellent detailed character generation proces; but the combat mechanics and such work the same as the Quickstart.

The character generation process was part of what I disliked about the system. It locks you into limited choices along the way, so it is hard to create a character with the mix of skills that you want. People who are really into guided lifepath generation would probably enjoy it, but it isn't very good for people who like to have more control over character creation.
 
The character generation process was part of what I disliked about the system. It locks you into limited choices along the way, so it is hard to create a character with the mix of skills that you want. People who are really into guided lifepath generation would probably enjoy it, but it isn't very good for people who like to have more control over character creation.
Sometimes I like quick and loose character generation, and other times I don't mind a more lengthy process. I felt that the Conan 2D20 character generation did a decent job creating detailed characters who feel part of the setting.

I agree it is a bit limiting in some areas, perhaps the Talent trees may appeal to mmo players who want to play tabletop rpgs.
It's another one of the reasons I still prefer BRP/Mythras if I want to run a 'crunchy' Hyborian game; it's just a bit more free-form in that respect.
 
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