Conan Roleplaying Game

If you are looking for a Pen and Paper challenge in these cold days, we have something for you right here. A detailed description of the Conan RPG from Mongoose Publishing.



Introduction

With Christmas approaching, many of you will be searching for a suiting present to your fellow role-player or AoC-player. Some of you will be familiar with the D20 rule-set that is used in numerous role-playing settings and has come to fame through the popular father of most modern role-playing games called D&D. The Conan world has seen many iterations of role-playing rules being attuned to it, but Conan RPG by Mongoose Publishing is one of the most complete and perfectly attuned rule-sets and the main rulebook will be the perfect Christmas present for any role-player or even people that only dabbled into role-playing within MMORPGs. To those people I can only say: its time to gather your friends, buy some chips, cola and more unhealthy food and gather around a table to feel the magic of Pen and Paper role-playing and experience the fun that inspired the creation of Age of Conan.


Mongoose Publishing

The UK located Mongoose publishing has started pushing out role-playing books and trading cards in 2001 and has quickly become the biggest third party supplier of D20 supplements. Some of their folk have helped to create Age of Conan and we greedily stole one of their great story writers to flesh out Age of Conan's rich world with the needed detail and depth. Their creations have been and are a constant pool of ideas and inspiration for our story writers and designers. They started the creation of the Conan RPG in 2004 and the Second Edition of the main rule-set came out in 2007 together with numerous area supplements and adventures since 2004.


Changes to Standard Fantasy D20

Some of you already might be familiar with some D20 fantasy role-playing setting and are looking for an alternative to the very common tried and true D&D settings and rule-set variants of D20 and newcomers are presented with a very different start on role-playing compared to what other D20 systems are offering. This little part of the article serves as an introduction to the main important themes we have come across while playing the Conan RPG.


Realism

Though fantasy and also Sword and Sorcery are always unrealistic to some extent, Conan D20 aims to be an RPG that has some kind of fantastical realism, just as the world of Hyboria, no matter its wonders, follows the same rules as our world. The underlying tone of the rule-set changes to D20 are centred around more manageable, more believeable modelling of reality.


Darkness

The world of Robert E. Howard is a dark place, a world that has already seen devastating cataclysms and is very likely to see another one very soon, that will change the worlds surface to what it is today. Its a time 10 000 years before the birth of Christ and the darkness that decadent, self-loving medieval cultures bring with themselves, combined with dark sorcery and the underlying knowledge of a terrible end of time fills the whole Hyborian world. More than once the players will have to flee a certain enemy to survive instead of slaying everything that's in their way. In that regard Robert E. Howard has been influenced a bit by his friend H.P. Lovecraft.


Magic Revisited

The magical system is drastically changed and overhauled. Its much deeper socially and the gameplay mechanics make for a very deep gameplay experience when diving into the sorcerous ways. Newcomers will find endless possibilities and D20 experts will find it to be a new and fresh take on magic, that provides a new challenge to master.


Combat Improved

Since magical items and artefacts are not a central part of the world and the change of pace to gameplay this would mean, the rules for combat are modified to be similar to some proposed changes in the Unearthed Arcana D&D rulebook. The combat is a good bit more realistic and flexible and through the addition of more "fighting tactics" more challenging to master, while staying just as accessible as the standard D20 combat.


Multiclassing Encouraged

The classes are closer to each other in regard to how they level up their base attacks, health points and there is no penalty for multiclassing. That encourages experimentation and provides a lot of freedom to try out new ways with your character. Since the in-house magazine Signs & Portents, that can be downloaded for free from Mongoose Publishing's homepage, introduces more character classes regularly, there are a lot careers to explore.


Rich and interesting background

The world of Robert E. Howard as most likely everyone, who is playing and enjoying Age of Conan's storylines, already knows is a very rich, detailed and deep background to set your role-playing campaign into. Many parts of the world provide detail but not too much, so that Gamemasters can attune the world and its features exactly to their needs within the given boundaries. Very frequent releases of new source books for the campaign setting enhance the world description constantly and the already existing hordes of Books, Comics and Games offer a lot of ideas and inspiration on how to flesh out the world of Hyboria and bring it to life. This is not just a muscle movie setting, with no background and the D20 setting slapped on it, this is a deep and rich setting with a perfectly attuned rule-set that transports the uniqueness of one of the first fantasy worlds ever created!


Contents


In this section of the article we want to give a short overview of the contents in the book itself based on its own "Contents" directory, while we pass on the more obvious sections like "Credits" and "Index", because they are self explanatory.


Introduction

In the short introduction the authors bid you welcome and quickly explain the nature of Howard's world and its challenges as well as its basic difference from traditional fantasy.


Overview

In the Overview, there is an outline of the book's contents as well as a basic description of how you will have to create your character for the Conan Role-playing Game.


Races

The races chapter lists all playable races in detail, rule and lore wise, giving hints to what are the differences between the cultures or subcultures and providing you the player with useful and short description of the typical features each race will bring to your characters personality. It even goes as far as having name suggestions for each race, to help you find a suiting name in the Conan background. Some races are also portrayed in visual form. Even though all "races" are only human cultures, the influence on the character values is as strong as a typical difference between elf and dwarf, making the racial selection just as interesting as in any other high-fantasy pen and paper rule-set. The playable races are a wide selection from all over Hyboria, from its icy north, down to the desert filled south.


Classes

The class selection provides choice for the future Hyborian adventurer starting with the obvious Barbarian and ending in a very grown up class, the Temptress (which is a very interesting class to play and I personally salute the designers for creating such a class). In general the classes differ a good bit, but are not as extremely different than lets say the typical Wizard from a Barbarian in the D&D D20 game, which makes the balancing for the Dungeonmaster a lot easier, while still providing enough difference for every class to be unique. The fact that multiclassing is not punished and the classes all have a respectable health dice, makes multiclassing a real joy and provides a lot of freedom for how you build your character.


Skills

The skills are well known from any D20 game and differ only slightly if at all from the traditional tried and true list of skills of the D20 system, so you will feel right at home if you come from other D20 based systems.


Feats

The feats section gives a detailed overview of the feats that can be selected by most classes as well as more detailed description on class or race specific feats that are not explained in detail in the class description themselves. The basic D20 feats are all there and are enhanced with an interesting class specific list of new feats to choose for your certain class. Most of the rule and gameplay changes are adjusted to still work within the limitations of the D20 rule-set and so the feats are often used to give a certain class a very special ability.


Equipment

The equipment chapter includes all necessary basic items and tools for any aspiring adventurer. The items are often not simply priced on "power" but also on lore-focused availability to show the differences in the Hyborian world, making it a hard choice for a character to choose a certain weapon over another less glamorous one, because he simply cannot afford that prestigious weapon in the early days of his adventuring. The list is not too long and crazy half-magical two blade swords are also not part of it, but it offers a broad enough selection of realism based weapons, that often have their roots in the different cultures of the Hyborian world.


Combat

The Combat in the Conan RPG differs from traditional D20 combat in some ways and the differences are explained alongside the basics of D20 combat, so newcomers will plough through the section and quickly learn to be experts at Conan combat and the more experienced D20 players will easily spot the differences and grasp the new potential fun, this change of pace and structure to combat the new system brings. There are two fundamental changes: Changes to AC, which is split into Parry (STR) and Dodge(DEX) and the introduction of Damage Reduction on armour. Other additions like being able to choose to fight with finesse instead of buying it with a feat, round up the changes which get rid of some old weaknesses and inconsistencies in the D20 system in my opinion.


Sorcery

Sorcery is where Conan D20 really shines. It differs a lot from the classical D20 system and adds another layer of fantastical realism to the rule-set and setting. They got rid of slots and introduced Power Points and schools of magic. All magic in Hyboria is kind of dark, or people that dwell in the magical realms to much, are subject to corruption and that corruption can lead to more levels of power but ultimately is very dangerous. Due to the encouraged multiclassing its possible to multiclass with magical character classes and still have some kind of progression in the magical realms, as all magical attacks are tied to a magic attack bonus. As a class with sorcerer abilities you have many ways and deep possibilities to advance. Its certainly a very interesting new take on playing a magical character in a fresh setting.


The Hyborian Age

The contents of this chapter are written by Robert E. Howard himself. He wrote this article to have a general idea of what and how the Hyborian Age works and his general outline is just as useful for any future GM to have an idea of how the tone of his self-written adventures should be, to meet with Howard's vision of Hyboria.


Gazetteer

This chapter is the treasure chest for the Gamemaster. Here you will find all information on the Hyborian continent, that you need to write your own adventures and campaigns. It has enough detail that you get a good overview and a taste for what's to come with the more detailed area description books that Mongoose also published. Just by reading through the overview of the wondrous areas of Hyboria, you get a lot of inspiration for adventures and some adventure hooks are provided, so Gamemasters have a starting point and an idea of how adventures begin in the Hyborian Age.


Religion

Even though Religion is not as a present and real factor in the gameplay, the social part of religion is still an important part of the Hyborian Age and in this chapter you will find descriptions of the most important deities on the Hyborian Continent, what the structure of their followers is, how to obtain priesthood and other things that are important for the players and the Gamemaster to be able to include religion into their gaming sessions in an Hyborian way.


Bestiary

The Bestiary is not very big, but will give any Gamemaster a feeling for how encounters are structured in Conan RPG. There are values and descriptions for some of the most prominent monsters, such as beasts and savage humans like the Picts.


Campaigns

As often mentioned the Sword and Sorcery Setting of Conan is quite a bit different from other normal fantasy RPGs and this chapter details the differences and takes the future Gamemaster by the hand to show them the unique possibilities they will find in this different Pen and Paper experience.


Preview PDFs from Mongoose Publishing



Additional Conan Material

Mongoose has not been slow with releasing great supplements the basic rulebook, for Gamemasters and Players pleasure. Here you find a list of the most important additions to the Conan RPG book collection published by Mongoose.

Here you find the original article on the portal