"These [editing criticisms] sound like a bunch of nit-picky little gripes..." Oh no, trust me, they don't. As someone who's been trying to comprehend Shadowrun 5e, the importance of good editing in a rule book CANNOT be understated!
Shadowrun’s rules are like a run itself: planning, disparate cross-referencing, help from others, lots of legwork, frustration, and of course - it never goes down the way you anticipated
Editing and formatting. Playing old WoD, man the layout of those books is just bad. When you finally find the entry you are looking for on something. It turns out it is just a header giving you the page of another book where you can actually find it. FML
the main book is unfortunately 1 revision away from being perfect. Looking up different rules across the book for simple combat does take a bit of flipping back and forth the first time.
Really a seriously perfect review, absolutely nailed every aspect. My group has been playing this amazing game for 6 months now and I do finally feel pretty comfy GMing it, but learning the game regularly goes beyond the rulebook into online discussions in forums, into blogs, and (especially) places like your videos on RU-vid which were and are super-helpful.
I completely agree that Momentum is wonderful for teamwork in RPGs. Modiphius does the same mechanic in their Star Trek RPG and finally we have an RPG where the each member of the crew actually makes a difference in how the group succeeds.
@@Kilakro Modiphius has become one of my favorite game companies out there lately. Besides Trek and Conan, they've also done John Carter of Mars, Infinity, Mutant Chronicles, and have a Fallout game coming out as well. All their games use some variation of the 2d20 system, but kind of changed around just enough to fit the setting better.
Their first game, I believe, was _Achtung! Cthulhu_ which was dual-statted for CoC 6th edition and Savage Worlds. They also came out with a Fate version, and I've heard they're currently working on converting it to 2d20; I'll be interested to see how that turns out. I wonder if Seth has ever run _A!C_ or if it's a game he'd consider running.
These problems sounds really typical for Modiphius. I remember playtesting Star Trek and there was one point where all of my players and I were rooting through the book to try to find out an answer to something similar to the guard-break in this video.
It is, we had the same problem with all of their games, including Fallout. They also had a tendency to put very important rule information or stat blocks in sidebars.
Guard break in Modiphius Conan Monolith edition tabletop game is as easy as using energy gems of stamina for an action. Actions have different color dice, each one with different values of axe, which is a phoenix in this game. And comparing your roll axes with enemy axes tells you if guard was defeated or not if you are guarding or the enemy is.
Seth, I would also add to your final note there (about the soundtracks) that the soundtracks to both Age of Conan and Conan Exiles do a GREAT JOB of continuing the flavor and style of Basil Poledouris' legendary scores for Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer. I ran a Conan campaign using the old d20 Conan rules and everywhere my players chose to go, thanks to those games, I had music for. They're wandering in the brooding hills of Cimmeria? Check, got music. They're infiltrating a temple in a major Stygian city? Got the music. Raiding an island in the Barachans to find a treasure before a gang of vicious pirates? Got the music for it. I use both the movies and games' soundtrack interchangeably and it's amazing how well they mesh.
Grip in the system means the hand your PC is dominant with.If you use your "off-grip" for Combat,it's supposed to impose a +1 to the Difficulty.They have a similar system in their Star Trek adventures game,so they might've forgot to put it in the copy they sent to the printers.Also,don't feel bad 'bout nickpickin Jack,it took me about 3 month's to learn the Star Trek corebook enough to run a game.Hope this helps Seth!
You'd be suprised at just how often that can happen when making a large amount of books in a short amount of time. While Palladium was rather bad for it,it been known to happen in other's...
I'm in total agreement with you there.But unlike Palladium, at least their not at the mercy of an Adult 8-year old and an overtly complicated Rule system(i should know,i ran it in both HS and College) so they got a fighting chance,at the least...
Your channel is so amazing. By far and away the best channel for DM's . So many D&D channels out there that are cashing in on the trend. You are very genuine and it shows that you have played for years in very exciting campaings.
I was recommended Conan some time back because we wanting to play a fantasy game other than Pathfinder 1E and D&D as we were on it for quite some time. Here's a summary of 2 months worth of playing Conan. 1) Starting the game. This was the most fun we had with Conan. As long as we were creating characters, meeting up in the world, getting introduced to the world, exploring, we had so much fun. 2) The first third of the game excluding starting. We didn't have a lot of fun, but it was still bearable. This started with our first combat and it spiralled from there. It just turns out we had different understanding of rules, and this was resolved by a lot of printing of our book. Sorry for piracy. 3) Mid Story. We hated Conan. Nobody knows what's happening. The reason why the DM is not adversarial is because he is just as frustrated with the game as you are. 4) The last Acts. We started somewhat enjoying ourselves again, although the frustration is still there. Someone at the table liken this to Stockholm Syndrome. I won't go that far, but I agree you have to get used to the "wheel of frustration" to like playing Conan. I was thinking whether it was a good idea to recommend this game to another person when something happened right at the end of the campaign that answered it. We read our epilogues and I announced we were going back to Pathfinder. Someone heaved a sigh of relief, and another player said "Finally". This moment convinced me to never recommend TTRPG Conan to anyone whose time I didn't want to waste.
I bought MechWarrior Destiny which is an RPG to play in the Battletech mecha universe of medieval space houses fighting each other. MechWarriors are the pilots of these mechs. The game also uses zones and has very minimal mechanics which I find very good as the skeleton of an RPG. I plan to understand this Conan RPG and then merge both to make a She-Ra RPG game just for fun. It should have the simplicity of Destiny and the epic feeling of Conan RPG. Wish me luck.
I'm a big fan of the 2d20 system - from Conan to Star Trek to John Carter and the various ways they change the system enough to emulate the license exceptionally well. That being said, the issues you mention are definitely a thing (I'm surprised you didn't comment on the Gold system) but the rules are pretty straight forward and I found that at the mid point of our 20-ish session campaign I wasn't referencing the book all that often.
I Kickstarted Conan and therefore have a shelf groaning under the weight of every book. This review is so bang on to my experience. I love the game but it is soooo difficult to read and reference. Amazing game though.
Honestly, the Phoenix symbol has never been an issue for me or my players. It only takes a few minutes into session zero for everyone to grasp what it means, and nobody in my group has ever been tripped up using a standard d6 or expressed any interest whatsoever in buying the proprietary dice. Annoying, maybe, but not a real issue in my experience. Not like that Star Wars RPG where special dice do make a difference.
It has been several years for me, but I do not remember any WoD game books being anywhere near as difficult to navigate as Shadowrun 5th edition. My first SR character I tried making was a Rigger which is a vehicle pr drone pilot and should be the most straightforward character concept. Just figuring out what equipment was required to be a Rigger had me consulting four different chapters spread randomly through the book. I cannot think of any indy titles with such poor book organization, much less a professional flagship product from an experienced publisher.
@@lordzaboem YEah this is not the first time I've heard that SR 5th edition as having some bad design philosophies all around. Makes me wonder how they managed to go from 4th edition which I personally love and think they did a great job on to 5th where it seems like a massive dumpster fire from everything I've heard.
@@jcwolf886 Some people love SR 5e, primarily those guys who played all previous editions and already know 95% of the rules. It's just hostile towards new players. SR: Anarchy fixed a LOT of these problems because it's designed by different folks. It's not the streamlined version of the standard game that some gamers were expecting it to be. Anarchy is very narrative and player-empowering to the point that players can dictate what the NPCs are doing. It's just a very different style of game which doesn't sit well with the established player base. I have not looked much into the brand spanking new edition which is slowly coming out this year. I pretty much gave up on SR outside of a rare session of Anarchy.
I am currently churning through the core books for Conan, Mutant Chromincle 3E, John Carter of Mars, and Star Trek Adventures (I don't own the Infinity RPG yet, but that is next up in the queue). It's a little like trying to learn the Spanish, French, Italian, and Catalan languages simultaneously. The games have similarites due to all of them being rooted in 2D20, but they have just as many differences. One thing that I have found is that each of them explain similar concepts differently, so if there is something I didn't grok in Conan, I frequently found the corresponding rules in Mutant Chronicles and understood things much better, from a different perspective. That said, you are correct. As beautiful as the core Conan book is, once you get past character creation, deciphering the rules is a messy process. Great review!!!
How I beat the rules layout issue is to take some preparation time before the session & put what I need onto index cards that I can easily access. (I also went [or go] into the module I'm running & go through the rules iterations I might need to get the flow down pre-session so as to ensure a smooth game flow...) It helps...
I have to admit that I am firmly in the "Pro Zone" team. They really make the game feel much more cinematic and with clever map design it all makes sense and flows together nicely. I'm not saying they work for every game out there, but they fit the feel of Conan so damn well to me. Having said that, as much as I love the game it does need some editing here and there to tighten things up a bit. Still, it's no Shadowrun at least. I would pay real money to see you have to dig through and review 5th or 6th edition. heh
I just mentioned SR 5th edition under a comment immediately above yours. That team of reviewers he had with 20+ years of experience each might still be exclusively fantasy genre players.
I remember TSR's Marvel Superheroes in the early 80's had die role random character generation. We didn't use it often, but when we did we'd run off an entire team and just to challenge ourselves to see if we could mesh the randomness into a cohesive group. FASERIP!
Speaking of character sheets, could you please make a video analyzing character sheets for different games, and how well they work? Maybe showing also (better, if there are any) alternative sheets?
Thanks a lot for the review. As a fan of all things (well...most things) Conan I've been thinking about picking this up. Good advice to maybe take it for a spin first with the free quickstart adventure.
Thank you for taking the time to review this game. As one of the Kickstarter backers that backed this game at its highest level to get a character in that 30 pages of NPCs you complained about, you have to consider the reason Modiphius was able to afford Brom and all the great Conan artists who contributed to the book, was because of the money the Kickstarter backers who paid to get NPCs in the book contributed. I agree with you that the book is not easily navigable, it definitely plays better than it reads. As a GM that has run an 8+ year campaign in the Mongoose d20 Conan rule set, and is now running a successful campaign using the Modiphius rules, hear me when I say these rules do right by Robert E Howard's Conan character! Your own players each bought a copy of the hardback rules, so you know the game itself is a success as that RARELY happens, in my experience. Anyhow, thank you for your videos and game on!
I liked a couple of the backer created characters. The Spider Sorcerer is an especially inspirational one to use as a recurring nemesis, along with some others.
The 30 pages of backer characters were great for use as ready made NPCs or villains, IMO. I personally had no problem with their inclusion. Especially since this setting should host more human adversaries than monsters if the game is being played true to Howard's stories. Looked at it as an extension of the bestiary section more than anything. That's my 2 coppers anyway.
I would have liked to see the premades in a soft back supplement myself, I understand the reasons for their inclusion, its just a massive misuse of space and resources though. They need more examples and clear rules in the core book, they didnt need more fluff and filler to make finding those things such a chore.
I actually picked up the tiles while at gencon just so I could understand the zone rules with some examples. it makes...more sense now. I still want to convince my players to play the game. I think I have enough of a grasp of it to get going. As for the dagger vs bow problem. I decided that thrown melee weapons use brawn to determine the extra CD. A dirty fix but I think it's fine.
I'm currently DMing a Star Trek Adventures campaign for my players, and I have the exact same complaints about the game than you have about Conan. The game is awesome (the momentum/doom pools coupled with the advantage/complication system works incredibly well), the 2d20 system and the character creation fits perfectly the Star Trek vibe, and the core rulebook is gorgeous... But it is so damn awfull to use ! I can't find any information I need during my games, so I always have to improvise some rules to avoid losing time and wasting the pace of the game. Unlike you however, I have no problem with zones in combat. I find them being a pretty elegant solution to abstract distance, but I can understand your point of view. I still haven't played Conan despite owning the rulebook, because there are a lot of small differences with STA (such as momentum costs, how wounds work etc...), and it might confuse my players (and myself). But still, I'm looking forward to try the game ! Thanks for the review.
Excellent overview and sums up my sense of reading it. Grip is poorly explained but from example character sheets it's the 1H or 2 Handed and Size is the Encumbrance (e.g., Sword 1, Crossbow 2). Overall a game that plays better than it is written.
The "zones" way of breaking down ranges and distance also makes an appearance in the old '80s Marvel system from TSR. In that case, so much melee and dashing around is to be expected, a granular ranged weapon or running distance wouldn't have made sense.
As long as you're playing the music from the 2 Conan movies in a loop. I suggest find the music from the game Conan Exiles and use it as well, it fits the tone of the 2 movies as well.
I have an idea why they thought they were being clever using phoenixes as the definitive dice rolls. In Conan: The Adventurer, the animated series, Needle was Conan's trusty phoenix. He always complained about the big, dumb barbarian not appreciating Needle, he was capable of turning into sigil on any flat surface (usually Conan's shield), and Needle loved pomegranates.
And Needle was inspired by the first published Conan story, where the ghost of the sage Epimetrius puts the Mark of the Phoenix on Conan's sword so that it will be able to harm the demon that is hunting him.
Zones are great. They don't need to be bounded by terrain. They're just chunks of relative range. Cuts down on counting individual feet/yards/meters and all that math. There are still range differences between weapons, just not so granular (which we don't really need anyway).
And yet, in the 75% of a page they use to define zones, they use the word "Terrain" 7 times. Including the sentence, "An environment is divided into a number of zones based on the terrain features present in the area."
@@SSkorkowsky Understand the wording wasn't clear. Like some other parts of the rulebook. I was fortunate to have read other 2d20 games, and others outside the line which use the same Zone system, where they were explained better. I think a visual representation of what's going on would've helped. It's really just a matter of replacing a lot of small 1-man sized squares with much larger ones and then designating melee range by denoting figure/character adjacency when in the same zone (as yes/no adjacency for melee range). May sound confusing, but it's simpler than denoting specific ranges or squares, in practice, and leaves more open to narrative description. Sorry your first experience with Zones was with such a confusing write-up, Seth.
After backers payed arms and legs for this one? Nerds will be screaming angry if a 2nd edition were released at any period less than years after the intial edition. Remember that we are talking about fantasy gamers here, and many of these guys still use AD&D and refused 3rd, 4th, and 5th edition D&D because they consider additional editions to be money grabs. A second printing with some errata would be acceptable.
Thanks for reviewing Conan. We have just started our second campaign - the original got a bit out of hand - and are really enjoying the system. Your commentary pretty much matches our experience: love the mechanics but sometimes there is just something missing. Some core component that isn't explained or is just absent: I'm looking at you Grip. We modded the rules to include ranges and the cheat sheet also includes guard. One thing I found irritating on the character sheet is how the mechanics of talents seems somehow less important "view-wise" than where the talent came from. All of that said, having a shoggoth chase your players through a crumbling temple on the top of a mountain only to have them jump off a cliff into a pool of water (losing all the treasure) to escape the collapse of the building... something that it seems only possible in this system.
@@codypatton2859 Probably not the place for these kind of gaming grognardia but if you do a quick attack with an off hand weapon, it would cost 1 doom (second weapon) but the basic difficulty would be 3? (1+1 for second action +1 for offhand?)? Apologies to the host...
A friend of mine just mentioned this game system to me so I'm glad to see that you've reviewed it. Also Full agreement with your final comment, I play the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack in my head whenever I'm running RPGs, playing RPGs, or thinking about RPGs
I look forward to seeing your reviews. I like your NPC'S you do and you are full of information. How would someone get a set of the Mustache Mike dice?
THAC0 Factor, I like Seth's reviews as well, as well as his skits. He likes the "Call Of Cthulhu" RPG more than D&D. Oh well, no one is prefect :-P ... That last part was a joke. :-D
Those custom dice are adorable. The rulebook sounds like a challenge - can it actually be worse than, say, World of Synibarr, Avalon Hill's Powers & Perils, FGU's Space Opera, or (FSM protect us) the Realm of Yolmi? I have my doubts.
Your complaints about the difficulty of finding specific rules, the layout problems and inconsistencies remind me very much of my experience with Rifts. Palladium games had a big problem with organising their books in a logical matter. That, and when actually playing Rifts, the problem is spread across about 20+ different books. Rule references in fluff sections, specific combat rules only referenced in skills or, at times, character creation, stats that have no bearing on gameplay, no consistency of skill progression, skills using different rules systems or dice to utilise, the list goes on.
That. Ye gods & goddesses, Kevin cannot organize his scattershot rulebooks worth a darn even after decades of trying. But hey, never forget, paladins get a bonus to the Dance skill.
You are not wrong about any of your observations. I'm just surprised that you would single out Rifts as your target when there are far, far worse offenders. I never had half as much trouble finding a rule or stat or piece of gear in any Palladium game as I had with Shadowrun 5th edition.
Shadowrun being a mess doesn't make Palladium's books any better. When the best layout of any Rifts product is the licensed Savage Worlds port, you know your editing sucks.
Thanks Seth...Agree...it's a great game and yet so frustrating. My group loves it and plays twice a month for more than a year and yet we all still do the rulebook search practically every game for those one-off situations that aren't so clearly explained. We've gotten into the habit of having a pdf at the table and searching for rules that way. It's not quick, but quicker than leafing through 430 pages. Cheers!
I can understand your critisism even if i am not familiar with this book. We are starting a "changeling the lost" campaing at the end of this week and so i decided to have a look at the coe rulebook. White wolf rulebooks are showing the same problems you mentioned for Conan. While there is a lot of flair and mood in the story based rule descriptions, it sometimes is annoying as hell if they tell you about character creations and how many creation points you can spend on differend things when these powers are not explained at this point of the book and you have no indicator on which page they will talk about it
*The whole thing about short stories being in the limited info examples is mild compared to white wolf games .* *White wolf is prone to giving everyone a short novel to set up for a quarter to half a page of explanation of a mechanic / rule .*
Because of your coverage of this game I have been going back and reading ALL of the Robert E Howard Conan stories (as well as Kull and Bran Mak Morn) and something became really apparent to me. While I had always considered the film Conan The Destroyer to be one of the best onscreen example of AD&D I discovered a deeper root in the actual Howard tales - the most obvious being Chapter 9 of The People of The Black Circle. If you took the time to stat-out this chapter, as written, you have a classic dungeon-crawl. Have a read, you won't be disappointed. Great video as always!
I'd love to hear your thoughts on Ars Magica. It's a skill-based game that I love for truly delivering on being able to play a fantasy wizard - not just on adventures, but in what's supposed to go on in the "background". I mean things like building your fantastic lab, fashioning magic items, learning from old books, questing to find that magical ingredient you need for a longevity potion, devling into unknowable mystic secrets - even sending adventurers off on quests at your service. It all just makes sense in terms of the rules and in-setting. I think it's the only game that does "wizard" that well. It has its flaws, though, which is why I'd love to hear your opinion on it. Most of all - it's very much for number-crunchers, especially all that off-adventure "background" stuff.
Perfect review. Personally I fell in love with this game even with its “flaws” and has become one of my favorite of all time. Talking about zones, I can understand why many people don’t like it, but with FATE I learned to love it, it’s something that works with very narrative and cinematic combat, from my point of view it’s just what Conan tries. Now let me recommend you to take a look at Frobidden Lands.
About character's sheet: I personally never understood why they always offer only a very small space for inventory. Like here: Belongings. Okay, additional belongings on other side, but hey, why not simple inventory part on second part, and fatigue and despair instead of the first page small inventory?
I agree with everything said. I am converting the Conan adventures to dnd 5e. For momentum, I use luck ponts. Whenever a player rolls a Nat 20 they get 3 luck points. There is a limit of 7 luck ponts. Each luck point raises any roll by one. Luck points can be shared with other players but only when they are gained. Each morning the players can roll for more luck points. These luck points basically function like momentum in Conan but they are more flexible. I have more homebrew to make Conan adventures work in dnd 5e. I also have a simple way to limit magic to match Conan sorcery. I am preparing to start the games on roll20. Thanks for your great video.
Thank you so much for creating an actual review of this game! I've been trying to work out whether it's worth looking into, but every other review of this game just spends its entire length trying to justify the meta currency mechanics.
Excellent review, and it's pretty accurate. I backed this game from the beginning (I'm not in the character section though) and I remember thinking more or less the same things when I read through my copy. Great look and feel, but some serious design missteps.
I've seen a few systems that use zones, but the only one I can think of is Chris Perrin's Mecha. It makes sense in that context since weapon ranges would generally be pretty huge, so range is mostly a cinematic consideration more than "is it physically possible to fire this weapon that far away". Also, that system really takes the deliberate decision to abstract away many potentially complex rules in order to capture the "feel" of mecha anime with minimal fuss (with mixed results, imo). So zones take potentially complex movement rules to turn them into really simple ones, and the consequences on weapon ranges are easy to explain away with "well, it's not like mecha anime is super consistent with weapon ranges anyway" (and also iirc there are abilities for range-focused mecha to increase the range of their weapons, which helps mitigate the problem of ostensibly long-range weapons not being usable when they obviously should). It also allows for playing a mecha game with minimal miniatures and movement/positional bookkeping, in a genre which is known for having a lot of that. Which is not really the approach Conan seems to be taking (and I don't think it would be a good approach for a gritty sword-and-sorcery feel at all). So it is a strange choice in that case, but I'm not sure they did it "just to be different". Possibly they wanted it to be easier to play without a detailed combat map and miniatures, as zones are a good way to help with that. But it seems like it wasn't the right way to go about that, if that really was their goal.
My take away from this is that a good DM can make an entertaining game out of anything and that knowledge of the source material really helps the players enjoyment. Also Seth consistently has the best t-shirts.
I do agree with your complaints with the system seth, I still enjoy the game when I play, once the group gets to grips with it and it starts running smooth it’s fun, but it’s far from perfect.
Thank you for talking through this! I few gold nuggets I'm going to try to add to my game have been found. I hope they are actual gold when implemented.
Ok so thinking about zones, I don't think it's based on how far an arrow can fly, but how easy it is to shoot into another area of obstruction. Like I'm coming from Infinity and inside of ships or buildings the rooms and obstructions provide zones. So say, dense jungles have small zones, because you're slower to move through it, and it's harder to shoot through it. While open spaces contain huge zones (course, infinity uses guns, bows and arrows are shorter range).
That makes sense, and was my assessment as well. But, if Zones are determined by obstructions like jungle foliage or being in different rooms, how does Cover work into the equation? When do I make it a new Zone versus simply apply Cover, or do I always apply both Zone and Cover? Since terrain does work on movement in creating Zones, should Ranged attacks have a different Zone size than Melee Zones? In the book, their example of Zones includes "behind the bar". So let's say we're in a tavern, where the open area of the Tavern is one Zone, but the person behind the bar is in another, because attacking them would require leaping over the bar or running around it. So does that make it a different Zone for a thrown/fired weapon, or simply Cover? Does the person behind the bar have a Zone penalty for firing out from behind the bar? These are the questions that make Zones fall apart for me and why while I think the concept is cool, they don't hold up during games.
@@SSkorkowsky I agree that the zone system has several faults, but for me, I would have the bar as cover, for me, a zone is an open space, and another zone is another open space sufficiently obscured from the first. For example, one of the examples of zones in the infinity GM guide is as follows: -one zone is the raised base of a statue on a large dias. -a three zone-wide crowd surrounding the statue. -a highway -three buildings on the other side. In this, the crowd constitutes three zones as it's difficult to move and shoot through, and is also a saturation zone where complications cause collateral. The road is a zone, so the most direct route to a building is through two zones (one crowd, one road). And when shooting through a crowd, your enemy is in bonus cover. But moving up onto the raised base of the statue provides a cleaner shot and so there's no penalty for shooting over the crowd. Point being that the zone system is largely GMs choice and some zones have unusual properties. In the tavern, I would probably have the bar either be a zone of it's own with the caveat that shooting out from that zone incurs no range penalty (I think that is a written rule called high ground or something but I forget). Or consider it the same zone with good cover and require a check to vault over the bar. In open spaces I would consider it a distance of 30-50 feet like you said (in a jungle, maybe 10-30 feet, but in enclosed environments the system works best, since hallways and rooms can easily be divided into zones.
My big problem with them comes down to why they're necessary. Weapon range and range/cover modifiers have been around for ages, so the Zone system just feels different for different sake. I don't think it adds anything (other than as a decent conversation starter, as it is right now). Conceptually, I like the idea of it. I can see what they were trying to go for. But in game-terms, I feel it just gets messy. Rather than Zones being a thing that's on the map, I see them as something that's more individual for every character in the scene. So PC #1 has different zones than PC #2 because they're higher up, using a bow, standing far apart, or other factors. So why not just go with weapon and movement range? It's something I can get behind in a rule-light system, but Conan, with lots and lots of specific rules, it just feel really out-of-place.
Always great to see your reviews. And has been a while since you reviewed a system! A request though- you seems like a fan of Connan. I know it's your normal thing, but vids about Connan's lore would be welcomed. At least by me.
Thanks for the review. I did the kickstarter and picked up all the PDFs. Watching your reviews of the free adventures makes me want to run this for our group. Also I picked up Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea it’s an A retro clone of 1st Edition AD&D steeped in the flavor of Howard, Lovecraft, and Clarke Ashton Smith.
I just played my first session of Conan 2d20 on Sunday. Playing a Zingaran Pirate with most of his focus put into Observation (3 talents!), Athletics, Stealth, Survival, and Thievery. Discovered how not-so-helpful he is in actual combat, but he at least managed to warn the party and gain some Momentum doing so, and he's great for spotting/searching. Unfortunately, we ended on a cliffhanger where his nervousness from messing with what appears to be an ancient Atlantean tomb actually caused him to miss the late night ambush... Luckily, as he's used to keeping watch from a crow's nest on the ship, he prefers to continue doing so from trees when on land. >.> Welp... my backup character is a Cimmerian Bard who is even less useful in combat, but will be a great loremaster/face/healer. :)
One good thing about the Momentum system during combat: you don't necessarily have to perform a damaging attack to help defeat your enemies. You could do stuff like Athletics action checks to put/lure them into a bad position, in order to set up your allies for an especially deadly attack (for example). Via gaining Momentum to pass along to your teammates. Same with many other skills, even some considered non-combat. I mean.. there are some rules for "damaging" enemy minions' Mental points, sending them fleeing, surrendering, or persuading them to turn on their buddies "or else". The mechanics can reward all kinds of narrative approaches besides the usual stabby. Give it a try! :-)
@@NefariousKoel Oh, I know. My Agile Talent and decent Acrobatics allowed me to drop 20 ft (as the beast was in the tree with me at first) without taking damage while alerting the team, and the high Observation skill roll I had made just before helped that roll AND our damage dealer protect her ward while slaughtering the beast. But when it came to actually attacking the thing, I was quite ineffectual, instead just basically lightly massaging it with sling stones. And my "mental" attacks are my weakest as I'm not playing a Face character in the slightest, so... just gonna stick to shadows. As it was the first battle, I just had to see if my skill level was effective at all. Thankfully the warrior more than makes up for my lack of combat skill, and my high mobility/awareness skills will definitely make for an interesting character who baits foes into positions that are more advantageous for the party. I look forward to almost being stabbed/clubbed/slashed/eaten in my attempts to give the party the Momentum to kill whatever is chasing me. :) I gotta say: even with only the GM having had experience with the system, combat is relatively quick and brief. I read all the important bits beforehand, so I had a good idea of how things work. The only thing I really still have to remember (or just have a list on hand) are things I can do with Momentum and Fortune spends. Combat Actions are pretty common sense, especially as someone who as been playing and GMing since '95 and '96, respectively.
My group had the same issues. We all loved Conan, and the hyborian universe however the game felt to cumbersome. We switched over to the fantasy age system( wich we've all grown to love) kept the setting, and everything has been going great.
Would you ever return to this game for an updated review/tips on running it or thoughts about newer supplements if you’ve picked any of the newer ones up? This review is great either way though; as I’ve probably said in a past comment. Rewatched it today!
I have a point to make on zones. It seems to me that they were included as a way to tie in to the board game by Monolith. And I think the idea works much better with (these kind of) maps than without (like FFG's star wars where I find it frustratingly abstract). Modiphius also have tile sets that use the same style of zones as the board game (but aren't as clear). So to take advantage of the zone system you really need to spend a lot more money... Even if you already have the board game that only provides a limited array of locations so the tile sets are really needed. I'm usually opposed to maps in RPGs as I find that they make people (myself included) more likely to play the mechanics than the role. That turned out to be a bigger wall of text than intended.
I feel exactly as you do about 2d20. I love the ideas, flavor, etc. The rules are overly complex or just plain wonky at times. I like it for Star Trek Adventures, but then again, combat is a proper Star Trek session might not even happen, so the 2d20 system shines for RP, perception type checks, etc.
Seth, this was a dead on review. I GM for our group and feel the same way you do about the game. I even been using the same bowl that you have for the doom.
Man I bounced off the Star Trek game for all those reasons. I felt like I was reading it but couldn't understand it. Watched a few vids on it too. Seth cleared up some stuff for me, I'm going to take another run at it. Thanks Seth!!
I run a Gurps Hyboria game and Nameless Cults is my second favorite source book after the Gurps Conan source book. Really, Id love that book even if I didn't run Conan.
Hello Seth, Coming from Blades in the Dark, I found the balances very easy to pick. a lot of the skills you need as a GM for the 2d20 system. I think you have to think more as a fictoin forwards GM - also a lot is to do with the target number you need. (also, LOVE the cup idea!)
The rules seem pretty similiar to the new StarTrek RPG. I know that momentum-mechanic, the 2D20 and the specialised combat dice (for StarTrek however, there are special D6 with printed stars and federation symbols (for damage resp. effects). It's a pretty good system - and yes, it really really encourages working together, which is great.
In the past I've ranted about how most RPGs feel like they were never meant to be played. My go to example is Spycraft. The Faceman (the charismatic stealth expert) and the Wheelman (the driver) are completely at odds when it comes to gameplay. Your review makes Conan sound like one of those games. While some of the problems you describe could be excused as oversights when writing the book, the recurring problems like not describing how zones work in both the quickstart and full rules makes me think they either didn't expect players to actually use those rules, or they didn't have anything concrete in mind. I think the idea of zones is to get rid of all the range counting that goes on in grid based games, but they should at least explain it.
Since i've been running Star Trek Adventures(Modephius' other game using the same system) for a little over a year now,i feel i can help awnser this one: For STA, Zones are split into 2 categories: Space combat&planet-side.For Space Combat, a "zone" is equal to 20 feet,so the range for,let's say your Proton Torpedos, is 5 zones.5X20=100ft. For anything in the way of your shot,you either deduct 5 ft. or add +1 to the difficulty of the shot(you COULD theoretically use this for Ship-to-ship combat in Conan as well). These same rules are shortened when your planet-side,however.In this case,a zone equals 10 feet but the same rules as above apply. Now i can only guess why they didn't print this in the Conan corebook.Maybe they grabbed a previous manuscript by accident and currently can't afford to do reprints of that many books,i got no idea,but i hope this helps you out SabreXT....
@Darcy Dettmann Junior -- Fair enough. In that case they might've improved the System when it came to STA. It might be like when Green Ronin made the Dragon Age RPG system, then made a more streamlined version of it with Fantasy Age. Since both systems are still the same(in this case at least), you COULD concevably use the Movement rules from STA in Conan, just ignoring the Up&Down bits when it comes to Ship combat and Weapons. Although now that i think 'bout it, Cannons could do about the same damage as High-Yield Proton Torpedo(at least mechanically)....
Hey Seth! Just had it in my grasp today and hesitated. I went with my gut and picked up Symbaroum instead. I love conan, don't get me wrong! Thanks to your review I think I decided the right way for myself for now. I will test the quickstart rules first, I guess.
I’ve been thinking about this game in light of the OGL debacle. The world of Hyborea is a very iconic fantasy world. One of the most iconic fantasy worlds of all time in fact. Seems like a good time to switch.
Unfortunately, right before the OGL debacle happened, Modiphius announced that their license wasn't renewed and they were ending the Conan line Jan 1. I had no idea Conan was licenced. I'd thought it was all Public Domain.
Always enjoy the reviews, even if I'm not interested in playing the game. Thank you. There are two games in my collection which I like very much but can't get the gang interested. One is RuneQuest. I bought the recent edition because all my old stuff is so difficult to wade through. It's not just there's a lot of it, but the text can be turgid. The other is The Dark Eye aka Das Schwarze Auge. I find it interesting but it's a steep learning curve. It'd be great if you could review these games sometime.
Hey Seth, I decided to give this game a try thanks to this review. Now, six players and I will likely be starting a campaign soon. I'm a little worried about how the system handles everything after roughly 2,000 experience. I would be very thankful if you could give me some forewarning about how the game is going to feel as it scales. Thank you for introducing us to the game, and thanks again for the review.
Conan the Barbarian : Classic Historic Fiction. Conan the Destroyer : Motion Comic Movie, I see more camp in the film the older I get. Questions that young teenagers put to their religious parents, 1.) You let us watch "Barbarian" movies ? 2.) You let us play Conan in the yard with our friends, hitting each other with plastic base ball bats ? 3.) Why can we not play D&D ? The two Conan movies and Red Sonja is what got people into D&D back in the 1980's. Right along with "He-Man."
The Zones are from their own printed battle mats, and also make the games minis and combat compatible with the conan monolith board game. If you search for the maps they produce you'll see it's split up into somewhat explainable sections (part of a tavern's floor, the stairs nearby, the overhead landing, the area behind the bar etc.) This is more freeform than the usual 5 ft grids, replacing hundreds of inch squares with twenty or thirty zones that are more easily delineated. But yeah, in theatre of the mind zones dont help much.
I highly recommend you do! I had gotten Modephius' Star Trek Adventures books(my group has enough Trekkies in it that i had the excuse to buy it) and know for a FACT that the system itself(especially the Momentum/Threat mechanics) works real well.
