A Crunchy Take On Conan From Modiphius Entertainment

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Yeah, we could all do without "reviews" farming for affiliate link attention.

I backed this on Kickstarter and I'm not a fan. I've only even tried it a couple of times, and don't find it enjoyable. The mechanics of the system don't evoke for me any of the magic of the Conan setting. It feels like exactly what it is: an existing system that has been re-skinned for a specific genre. It's a functional (if unexciting, to me) generic set of rules, wrapped in a bunch of Conan fluff.

I realize that the whole point for Modiphius was to adapt 2d20 for Conan's world, but I would have rather that they had started with an analysis of what the central themes and tropes of the REH stories are, and then built a system around it to reflect those themes.

For example, a recurring theme in the stories is that it is Conan's wildness, his lack of civilization, that gives him an edge. It also tends to get him in trouble. So I would have loved to have seen a mechanic where your character exists somewhere on this spectrum between Civilized and Barbaric, with neither end of the spectrum being "better", just different.

Here's another one: in almost every Conan story he has a different weapon, and often ends up replacing (or improvising) a weapon during the story. Ergo, there should be a mechanic that leads to that behavior in the game, but that isn't just constantly trading up to better and better weapons. I'm not sure exactly what that would look like, but one idea would be to reserve some of the extensive crunch in the game for weapon wear/breakage. (You're in Turan and your broadsword breaks. What do you do? You pick up a Turanian scimitar.) Mastering all these different weapons would also fit the setting & source texts quite well.

That...and more like it...would have gotten me more excited. I wanted rules that feel like Conan, not just generic rules that happen to be set in the Hyborian Age.

Elfcrusher said:

I backed this on Kickstarter and I'm not a fan. I've only even tried it a couple of times, and don't find it enjoyable. The mechanics of the system don't evoke for me any of the magic of the Conan setting. It feels like exactly what it is: an existing system that has been re-skinned for a specific genre. It's a functional (if unexciting, to me) generic set of rules, wrapped in a bunch of Conan fluff.

I realize that the whole point for Modiphius was to adapt 2d20 for Conan's world, but I would have rather that they had started with an analysis of what the central themes and tropes of the REH stories are, and then built a system around it to reflect those themes.

For example, a recurring theme in the stories is that it is Conan's wildness, his lack of civilization, that gives him an edge. It also tends to get him in trouble. So I would have loved to have seen a mechanic where your character exists somewhere on this spectrum between Civilized and Barbaric, with neither end of the spectrum being "better", just different.

Here's another one: in almost every Conan story he has a different weapon, and often ends up replacing (or improvising) a weapon during the story. Ergo, there should be a mechanic that leads to that behavior in the game, but that isn't just constantly trading up to better and better weapons. I'm not sure exactly what that would look like, but one idea would be to reserve some of the extensive crunch in the game for weapon wear/breakage. (You're in Turan and your broadsword breaks. What do you do? You pick up a Turanian scimitar.) Mastering all these different weapons would also fit the setting & source texts quite well.

That...and more like it...would have gotten me more excited. I wanted rules that feel like Conan, not just generic rules that happen to be set in the Hyborian Age.

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Sorry, but every rules-point you make in support of you not liking the game is utterly wrong.

Firstly, the background generation system allows you to make a very high number of different characters everywhere on the spectrum between barbaric and civilised. You can have started as either one and your background steps can have moved you through to the other through interrelated steps which modify your stats, character's skills and talents appropriately to that change - and all before you first play the character.

Secondly, the improvised weapon rules are right there in the core book. Each weapon (whether improvised or not) has pros and cons and the rules on reach make this even more so. Both my groups players have a range of weapons on their characters and its the same with armour. Weapon breakage is dealt with in the Complications rules. It even uses the example of Conan's sword breaking in 'The Phoenix on the Sword' story right there in the flavour text as an illustration of how a Complication would work in-play right there in the core rulebook!

Weapon 'upgrades' as you put it are so vanishingly rare they might happen only once in a character's lifetime. There are only two options - enchantment (rare as rocking horse dung as it's S&S low fantasy) and Akbitanan steel, which is very expensive, rare and often a normal weapon made to look like it is the legendary steel of Akbitana - and it is hard to tell the difference, and there are rules covering all of that.

As many of these points are self-evident on a first read-through I find it odd that you have read the main rule book and then made so many fundamentally mistaken claims. You most definitely cannot have played it using the RAW to think it works the way you state, as it doesn't, whatsoever.

I am sorry you don't like the system. I cannot however feel that you have pre-judged it based on at the very best a skim-read of the highlights.

As I said, I will be running a game at Games Expo - if you are in the UK, head on over and allow me to show you how it actually plays. I am quite happy putting my money where my mouth is on this...

... you want it to feel like Conan? - try it, and perhaps consider that the R.E. Howard society think it is by a very long way the most authentic Conan rpg ever made, and those guys are pretty fanatical about the IP.

Caliburn101 said:

Sorry, but every rules-point you make in support of you not liking the game is utterly wrong.

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Ha! That made me smile. Ah, the Interwebz.

Firstly, the background generation system allows you to make a very high number of different characters everywhere on the spectrum between barbaric and civilised. You can have started as either one and your background steps can have moved you through to the other through interrelated steps which modify your stats, character's skills and talents appropriately to that change - and all before you first play the character.

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I don't think you are understanding my point. It's not that you cannot create a character across that spectrum, it's that the spectrum itself isn't encoded in the rules.

Imagine a Star Wars game that didn't have a mechanic for Light Side/Dark Side. "What? You can be as good or evil as you want!" isn't the same thing as having mechanics that reinforce the difference.

In Conan's world that spectrum, that dichotomy that is core to the fiction, is Civilized vs. Barbaric. To oversimplify my position: where's the box on the character sheet for that variable?

Secondly, the improvised weapon rules are right there in the core book. Each weapon (whether improvised or not) has pros and cons and the rules on reach make this even more so. Both my groups players have a range of weapons on their characters and its the same with armour. Weapon breakage is dealt with in the Complications rules. It even uses the example of Conan's sword breaking in 'The Phoenix on the Sword' story right there in the flavour text as an illustration of how a Complication would work in-play right there in the core rulebook!

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Again, making it possible isn't the same as making it intrinsic.

Weapon 'upgrades' as you put it are so vanishingly rare they might happen only once in a character's lifetime. There are only two options - enchantment (rare as rocking horse dung as it's S&S low fantasy) and Akbitanan steel, which is very expensive, rare and often a normal weapon made to look like it is the legendary steel of Akbitana - and it is hard to tell the difference, and there are rules covering all of that.

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Here I was misunderstood: I was only clarifying that what I was looking for is not simply an endless upgrade path (c.f MMOs), not that this particular game is doing so.

I find the weapon mechanics here, in effect if not in implementation, to be similar to Dungeon World, in that you can prioritize concept and story over crunch when choosing a weapon. And in general I really like that! In any other genre/setting I don't think you should have to take a different weapon because it's "better".

I think it's great design...usually...when a player can say, "I picture my hero with a broadsword" and that's a perfectly fine decision and nobody is going to say, "Dude, you should really switch to an Axe because (insert Calculus).

But in Conan's world I think that player should be frequently forced to pick up other weapons, maybe even in every adventure. And some of those weapons will be worse, for whatever reason, than a broadsword. And sometimes it will be an awesome weapon...but don't get too attached to it.

Because that's what Conan does.

... you want it to feel like Conan? - try it, and perhaps consider that the R.E. Howard society think it is by a very long way the most authentic Conan rpg ever made, and those guys are pretty fanatical about the IP.

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Well...not to be TOTALLY cynical here, but aren't they getting paid royalties?

In any event, I agree that the fluff is all very nice. And I'm sure I'd have fun playing at your table; I've had a blast playing lots of systems, even more so when the GM has a lot of experience with the system. And I'm sure you're awesome at narrating Conan-esque stories.

But I bet you could also run a really good Conan game using GURPS. That doesn't mean the GURPS rules are built around the fiction, even if you have a "GURPS - Conan" supplement.

I'm setting a very high bar here. I'm an unabashed fan-boi of The One Ring, which (to me) illustrates how a game system that is built from the ground up to support a specific setting, and pares away extraneous rules to get down to the essence...the "minimum viable product" as it were...of the fiction, can reinforce that setting. TOR changed my expectations/hopes of what RPGs could look like, and I was really hoping the Modiphius Conan game would do something similar.

@Elfcrusher

Let me deal withy each answered point in turn;

1. Your point isn't so much misunderstood as poorly explained. If you want a particular 'variable' on the character sheet - then state what that variable IS. You don't do so, at all, and when called out on what you do seem to say, you claim that's not what you meant. Get to the point with an understandable explanation of what you seem to think is missing and maybe then I can address the point you are trying to make here.

2. By intrinsic you want to force a counterintuitive 'your weapons break get new ones now' or a 'your weapon breaks you need to pick up your dead enemy's to continue fighting' event with some kind of rule? Like the point before, it seems you want a board-game style mechanic to force your individual idea of what a Conan story trope is in this regard on both GMs and players in a way backed up by rules. No thanks - I and my players run the narrative of my games, so the possibility of these things is all we need. If you want something as deterministic as you imply - read a graphic novel on your own, you'll have no choice where the story goes there either.

3. Your third point is at least better explained the second time around. But once again - why should I as a GM force my players to abandon perfectly good weapons just because 'that's what Conan does?' Read the stories again, it is the circumstances he finds himself in that FORCE weapon changes. Grom's helmet breaks his sword and he has to pick an old axe off the wall of his bedchamber; he is imprisoned and stripped of all weapons until Xenobia gives him the fine fighting mans dagger he admires her judgement for. These are story elements any GM can put in for players - it does not need some rules mechanic to enforce. Any such mechanic would be clumsy, crunchy, counterintuitive and would remain unused by any GM or player I can think of.

This is an rpg - not a Fighting Fantasy gamebook. Frequently forcing players to have their characters change weapons when they don't want to will piss them off - they are not playing the character of Conan, and they are not playing characters with a script to stick to - THEY have agency.

4. I bought the GURPS Conan supplement the first week it came out. I have always loved Conan - ever since I first read the entire series of paperbacks in the 70-80s. I have run every version of Conan ever made for an rpg, and I have run a RuneQuest conversion I made myself as well. Not one of them ever got it nearly as right as this rpg did. GURPS could have done, but it didn't - it took the easy way out on magic and depth of material. C'est la vie I suppose, because I like GURPS and have run that perhaps more than any other system over the years. But that flies in the face of your preceding point - The One Ring is indeed built for the setting, but actually GURPS isnt' is it, it is generic by design, and yet you think it would work well for Conan...

I don't have any problem with your last line but one thing.

Please don't conflate your disappointment with the Modiphius Conan with specific points you don't support with a cogent argument.

It is absolutely fine and legit to say you don't like it because it doesn't evoke the feeling of Conan as you read it. That's subjective and individual and thus defensible. Making out like the game is a fail due to the fact it doesn't have rules binding GMs and players into the tropes you personally argue are 'essential' to the 'Conan experience' is myopic reasoning. Points like frequently forced weapon changes, or that a rule could possibly exist that somehow factorises the 'barbarian/civilisation dichotomy' in a meaningful mathematical way to an rpg are both significantly wrong-footed.

The flavour and background text in this game is considerable and talks about all the tropes that Howard used and does a decent job of talking about how these can be integrated into the narrative and style of a game. But that is the point - such elements should be worked into the NARRATIVE, not crowbarred in with a random table, dice mechanic or 'if a go to b' flowchart approach to running the game. Any rule that forces an outcome such as you suggest, where every 'x' times a session or 'y' sessions you lose your weapon, or that the barbarian/civilised conflict has to be dumped into a scene is entirely missing the point. It's a Howardian narrative element that applied to one character, in a subgenre of fantasy, to be paid homage to in the flavour of the adventures run, nothing more.

I seem to have pressed some kind of button for you, unless you respond with such hostility and aggression to everyone on the Internet. I don't know if you've got some kind of financial stake in the game, or you are friends with the publishers, or what, but clearly for you this isn't just a philosophical debate about game design.

Nevertheless, although it doesn't seem you either want to or are able to understand my point (or both), I will proceed under the assumption that I am just communicating poorly and try to clarify:

Caliburn101 said:

1. Your point isn't so much misunderstood as poorly explained. If you want a particular 'variable' on the character sheet - then state what that variable IS. You don't do so, at all, and when called out on what you do seem to say, you claim that's not what you meant. Get to the point with an understandable explanation of what you seem to think is missing and maybe then I can address the point you are trying to make here.

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My point, and my only point, is that the mechanics seem to be generic mechanics re-fluffed for the setting, rather than being mechanics intentionally designed to reinforce the unique aspects of the fiction.

The specific things I mentioned...the Civilization/Barbarism dichotomy, or the weapon thing...are simply examples that I made up while typing my first post to illustrate the point. Those aren't specific requests from a wish list I have. Maybe they're terrible ideas. Probably they are terrible ideas. I don't really want to argue that. But I don't see better ideas in the game.

2. By intrinsic you want to force a counterintuitive 'your weapons break get new ones now' or a 'your weapon breaks you need to pick up your dead enemy's to continue fighting' event with some kind of rule? Like the point before, it seems you want a board-game style mechanic to force your individual idea of what a Conan story trope is in this regard on both GMs and players in a way backed up by rules. No thanks - I and my players run the narrative of my games, so the possibility of these things is all we need. If you want something as deterministic as you imply - read a graphic novel on your own, you'll have no choice where the story goes there either.

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Yes, you have demonstrated that it is easy to take a general idea that you hate (or, more accurately, an idea that you hate in this context because it implies criticism of something in which you are vested) and fill in details that make the idea seem ridiculous. Congratulations. Low bar, but congratulations anyway.

Let me know if you ever become genuinely interested in the idea, instead of just trying to prove it's bad, and we can discuss the mechanics of how it might work.

3. Your third point is at least better explained the second time around

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Oh gosh. Thanks. /blush.

But once again - why should I as a GM force my players to abandon perfectly good weapons just because 'that's what Conan does?' Read the stories again, it is the circumstances he finds himself in that FORCE weapon changes. Grom's helmet breaks his sword and he has to pick an old axe off the wall of his bedchamber; he is imprisoned and stripped of all weapons until Xenobia gives him the fine fighting mans dagger he admires her judgement for. These are story elements any GM can put in for players - it does not need some rules mechanic to enforce. Any such mechanic would be clumsy, crunchy, counterintuitive and would remain unused by any GM or player I can think of.

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If you are in fact close to the Modiphius crew then I am beginning to understand why no novel, imaginative mechanics made it into the game. You seem to be quite sure that there are aspects of RPGs which have no room for innovation, as you are latching onto only one possible implementation of the idea.

This is an rpg - not a Fighting Fantasy gamebook. Frequently forcing players to have their characters change weapons when they don't want to will piss them off - they are not playing the character of Conan, and they are not playing characters with a script to stick to - THEY have agency.

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A similar argument might be made if an RPG made killing monsters a "Misdeed" that led the accrual of penalty points. Keeping your preferred weapon (however unrealistic) is a sacrosanct part of RPGs, just like killing bad guys is.

Yet this is exactly what The One Ring does (in some cases). Not by actually preventing players from killing, but by creating incentives to think in a new way about their choices. And, sure enough, veterans of other RPGs frequently argue the point on their forums. "What?!?! Of COURSE I can kill orcs with impunity!" But if you actually play the game as intended, the mechanic leads to behaviors that simultaneously both un-D&Dish and very Tolkienesque.

4. I bought the GURPS Conan supplement the first week it came out. I have always loved Conan - ever since I first read the entire series of paperbacks in the 70-80s. I have run every version of Conan ever made for an rpg, and I have run a RuneQuest conversion I made myself as well. Not one of them ever got it nearly as right as this rpg did. GURPS could have done, but it didn't - it took the easy way out on magic and depth of material. C'est la vie I suppose, because I like GURPS and have run that perhaps more than any other system over the years. But that flies in the face of your preceding point - The One Ring is indeed built for the setting, but actually GURPS isnt' is it, it is generic by design, and yet you think it would work well for Conan...

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So here you just completely missed my point. Re-reading what I wrote I can't quite see how, unless you weren't really even trying, but I'll take that at face value and try again:

A good GM/DM can evoke a mood or setting regardless of the game system, especially if they are expert in that system. So I was trying to say that I have no doubt you run a great Conan game, and could probably do so even with GURPS given that you are so familiar with the fiction. It was a compliment.

But that's not the same thing as having a game system which itself is designed to reinforce/support the fiction.

I realize that the concept itself might be alien. Before TOR it wasn't anything I had even considered, and if I had I probably would have been where you are, thinking that it's nonsensical. I would have thought, for example, that to adventure in Middle-earth would simply require the right races, classes, abilities, etc. ICE did an amazing job in many ways with MERP, but the underlying rules & mechanics were simply an extensively and well-researched re-fluff of their house system. They tried to do justice to the richness of the setting with sheer volume and variety of character choices, but apparently never asked themselves if their beloved "Law" system was actually appropriate to the tone and flavor of Tolkien's writings. (Appropriate parallel, no?)

I've come to the conclusion since that the actual mechanics, not simply the labels attached to the mechanics, can both evoke and inhibit the feel of a particular setting. And that if you are trying to get a setting right, simplicity...with a focus on the essential elements...rather than complexity and exhaustiveness...is probably the right way to go about it.

Please don't conflate your disappointment with the Modiphius Conan with specific points you don't support with a cogent argument.

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...or perhaps one you don't seem to understand. Yet. (Growth mindset!)

It is absolutely fine and legit to say you don't like it because it doesn't evoke the feeling of Conan as you read it. That's subjective and individual and thus defensible.

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Uhh...isn't that what I did? I expressed what I was hoping for that I didn't find in the rules.

Making out like the game is a fail due to the fact it doesn't have rules binding GMs and players into the tropes you personally argue are 'essential' to the 'Conan experience' is myopic reasoning. Points like frequently forced weapon changes, or that a rule could possibly exist that somehow factorises the 'barbarian/civilisation dichotomy' in a meaningful mathematical way to an rpg are both significantly wrong-footed.

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Yay! The badwrongfun argument!

In any event, those aren't "the two specific tropes I find essential". Again, I was trying to offer illustrative examples of how the unique aspects of a fiction can be incorporated into the fabric of rules.

The flavour and background text in this game is considerable and talks about all the tropes that Howard used and does a decent job of talking about how these can be integrated into the narrative and style of a game. But that is the point - such elements should be worked into the NARRATIVE, not crowbarred in with a random table, dice mechanic or 'if a go to b' flowchart approach to running the game. Any rule that forces an outcome such as you suggest, where every 'x' times a session or 'y' sessions you lose your weapon, or that the barbarian/civilised conflict has to be dumped into a scene is entirely missing the point. It's a Howardian narrative element that applied to one character, in a subgenre of fantasy, to be paid homage to in the flavour of the adventures run, nothing more.

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Yup. You don't get it. Not surprising. Few do.

Game on.

@Elfcrusher

I don't have any financial stake, and you are confusing your right to have your own opinions with the non-existent right to have them regarded as facts by other people.

All I have done is called out the fact that your opinions do not in fact, reflect the facts.

If you are taking my critique of your opinions as a personal attack, then rest assured you are mistaken. I shouldn't have to explain the difference to someone who engages in debate, but there you go. Respect for the person is a given. Respecting their right to have an opinion and express it is a given. Regarding your own opinions as facts and expecting others to respect them as facts is not a given - your argument has to earn that...

In the end, and as you put it, "I expressed what I was hoping for that I didn't find in the rules.".

I then told you what you were telling everyone wasn't in the rules in fact was in them. You then told me I didn't understand your argument and you laboured that same point when I told you that I did in fact understand what you were saying.

I didn't agree with your argument... and you conflated that with me getting 'personal' and 'lacking understanding'.

Fundamentally, everything you are talking about in the Conan stories (I have read them all many times) can be simulated by the very rules you stated don't have that capability. There are passages in the core rules about the trope of S&S as Howard wrote it and the rise and fall of civilisation - the inevitability of the return to barbarism. There is also text on how to deal with wealth and possessions, armour damage and loss and the fact that weapons and equipment isn't dealt with the same in Conan as in a typical fantasy rpg.

It would seem you missed all of that. It is there - I know for a fact, and I don't need to prove it to you - you actually need to find out for yourself by actually reading the whole book before passing judgement and expecting your opinion to be given due weight. It is your errant opinion that it isn't there. It is my clear observation that it is as I have read it and played with the game enough to know for a fact.

What you seemed to be saying was that you didn't like HOW they dealt with those tropes (and the others you never mentioned). That's a personal opinion not backed up by facts, it's a statement. It shouldn't be passed off as a truism.

Now stop assigning relationships or motives to my actions which don't exist to support your argument or attacking ME personally (see quotes below) and either disengage or stick to the argument. In fact, you did exactly the same for the R.E.Howard Foundation people! Is everyone who doesn't think you are right 'on the take' or 'bias', or are you just fond of conspiracy theories?

"Well...not to be TOTALLY cynical here, but aren't they getting paid royalties?"

Tell me now - do you REALLY think the experts who love Howards work so much are selling it's authenticity down the river for money? You just said they are!? I'd retract this ill-considered argument if I were you. But then, I wouldn't have made such an accusation in the first place. I don't sully the integrity of people I have never met and know little about to suit my arguments.


"I seem to have pressed some kind of button for you, unless you respond with such hostility and aggression to everyone on the Internet. I don't know if you've got some kind of financial stake in the game, or you are friends with the publishers, or what, but clearly for you this isn't just a philosophical debate about game design."

You defined flaws that don't exist and said one thing is another when it demonstrably isn't. That's well within the realm of philosophy. As for the rest of your 'reasoning' - assigning motives or relationships like you know what you are talking about makes your argument look groundless, and petty for that matter. I am sure that isn't the case though and I am equally sure you'll make it clear that you just typed that in haste.


"...or perhaps one you don't seem to understand. Yet. (Growth mindset!)"

I have a more than robust IQ and my English is excellent thanks. As for the lifecoach stuff - if I need that I'd go to a professional who knows what they are talking about... but then, thinking about it, how could I trust them to help me - they'd be getting paid wouldn't they!!??


"Uhh...isn't that what I did? I expressed what I was hoping for that I didn't find in the rules."

No you didn't. Your message changed from post to post. You made accusations of something being missing without defining it in any meaningful way, you redefined it once your opinion was engaged with and then you made the argument personal. It is actually just easier to admit that your point was subjective and there was something missing for you, rather than passing it off as objective and trying to make the system the cause of the problem. You also don't bother to define what you didn't find - because everything you said you didn't find is right there in the only meaningful way it can be. What you did do was change what you meant when your claims of things being missing were shown to be incorrect. In short, there was 'something missing' and you can't really define it as it is logical to assume you would have done so already were this true.


"Yay! The badwrongfun argument!

In any event, those aren't "the two specific tropes I find essential". Again, I was trying to offer illustrative examples of how the unique aspects of a fiction can be incorporated into the fabric of rules."

Mislabelling an opposing position to try to undermine it - another 'sully the opposition' move. The very lamest and least intellectually rigorous of approaches to debate which claims that the person that thinks your argument is full of holes is criticising how you have fun. What rubbish - I am telling you that your claims don't reflect the facts. There is a difference, albeit you can't slap a fake negative label on my actual position with any credibility.

You specifically mentioned weapon changes and the barbarian/civilised trope, and that's two points, and I can count. You still won't rise to my challenge and state how YOU would incorporate these into the rules. They are subgenre specific narrative tropes, not something that can be codified further into a set of rules in any meaningful, workable or interesting way more than they already have been. If you disagree, let's see you attempt to house-rule on these, and then explain to me how you would introduce them into a game without taking significant agency away from your players?

If you can't do that, then say so. If you want to duck the challenge because it's too much effort for an argument online then consider that conceding the point only takes seconds.

"Yup. You don't get it. Not surprising. Few do.

Game on."

No. You can't explain it. Not surprising. No objective facts.

Now, as I said, why don't you come up with some objective facts, and perhaps a set of rules that does what you say you want and allow me to point out the flaws? You claim that important rules are somehow missing in this game - put your money where your keyboard is and prove it!

Game enough for that?

Caliburn101 said:

If you are taking my critique of your opinions as a personal attack, then rest assured you are mistaken.

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Where did I say "personal attack"? I said "hostility and aggression". You seem almost desperate to discredit me. To wit...

...utterly wrong...
...fundamentally mistaken claims...
...at the very best a skim-read of the highlights...
...poorly explained...
...Get to the point with an understandable explanation...
...you want to force a counterintuitive...
...[absence of] a cogent argument...

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And that's just in the first two posts. (I started to punch back after that, so further such comments are fair.)

Respect for the person is a given.

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That's what I would have thought.

And please don't offer the disingenuous, "Oh, I wasn't disrespecting you, just your poor reasoning skills and articulation..."

I didn't agree with your argument... and you conflated that with me getting 'personal' and 'lacking understanding'.

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What 'personal' are you quoting there?

And, yeah, I either think you don't understand my argument, or are unwilling to consider that it might be valid because that would imply a legitimate criticism of this game you so ardently defend.

Fundamentally, everything you are talking about in the Conan stories (I have read them all many times) can be simulated by the very rules you stated didn't have that capability.

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Evidence for lack of understanding. You don't seem to understand the difference between "can be simulated by the rules" and being a foundational concept to the rules. For example, you can simulate playing chess using D&D 5e rules (e.g. Int vs. Int, plus proficiency if proficient in chess) but that is not an argument that chess is a core theme to D&D.

It would seem you missed all of that. It is there - I know for a fact, and I don't need to prove it to you - you actually need to find out for yourself by actually reading the whole book before passing judgement and expecting your opinion to be given due weight.

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I thought I had to extensively play the game, not just read the book...? OMG YOU ARE CHANGING YOUR ARGUMENT! (Not really, but I'm trying to show how silly it is for you to keep accusing me of the same.)

Honestly I don't really care if you give my opinion due weight, and I'm nearly certain you never will. I do think it's funny you are trying so desperately to discredit me to protect this game, and yet all you are doing is bumping this thread.

"Well...not to be TOTALLY cynical here, but aren't they getting paid royalties?"

Tell me now - do you REALLY think the experts who love Howards work so much are selling it's authenticity down the river for money? You just said they are!? I'd retract this ill-considered argument if I were you. But then, I wouldn't have made such an accusation in the first place. I don't sully the integrity of people I have never met and know little about to suit my arguments.

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Oh, please, such drama. If they are motivated by pure love of Howard, why do they try to extract royalties on something that is almost entirely out of copyright?

Anyway, I'm not saying it's not "authentic." (Again, evidence you are not understanding my point.) The fluff is very authentic. I'm saying the rules do not reinforce that authenticity. They are orthogonal, not opposed.

(...blah...blah...blah...)

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Wow, you are really pissed about this.

Actually, here's one more question for you that will both illustrate my point and, perhaps, persuade me that my view should be moderated:

When Conan was written, how much of the 2d20 system was changed. Not what new options or table entries were added, but what new rules were added, or old rules deleted? What would a veteran 2d20 player have to learn new?

For example, Momentum, Fortune, and Doom: were those concepts added to 2d20 for Conan, renamed for Conan, or did they already exist as-is? (Note: I'm not saying these are particularly Conan-esque or not, just giving examples of what I'm asking for.)

The Carousing section is sort of what I'm talking about. On the one hand it is very Conan-esque in how the phase represents the transitions from story to story. ("Conan then wandered south and worked in private equity for a while before he got bored and accidentally summoned an ancient god..."). The fact that an off-screen, in-between-adventure phase isn't a novel idea in no way detracts from it's value.

On the other hand, there isn't much in the way of iconic mechanics in Carousing. It's a whole bunch of explanatory text plus a table of colorful (yes, thematically appropriate) events. (I may have missed something...the book is currently packed away.)

I know you HATE the idea of forced weapon loss, and you may be right that it is a terrible idea, but just for illustrative purposes* imagine that whenever you took a Carousing phase, you randomly rolled to determine if you get to keep your weapon(s), and if not, what weapon you start the next phase with, with the table changing depending upon your location. Maybe you could expend some resource to keep a weapon you loved, or to re-roll from the list, etc.

I don't know if it's a GOOD idea, but it is an example of what I mean by mechanics, not just nomenclature, that are designed to support a specific setting.

So...back to my question: can you point me toward mechanics that were added/changed in 2d20 specifically for Conan? I'm sure there are (please please please tell me there are) but since I don't know what 2d20 looked like previously, I genuinely don't know which they are.

*This suggestion is neither the one missing feature, nor a feature from a wish list. It is merely an illustrative example. It has not been thoroughly thought through or play tested. It might not work in practice. It may not be a novel idea, and apologies are extended to any game designer who previously thought of such a thing. No suggestion is implied that a GM cannot improvise a similar rule, or use a result from the existing table to accomplish something similar. No Picts have been killed in the creation of this idea (unfortunately).