Caliburn101
Explorer
A Review
Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of
By Modiphius
Just as an intro here, I have read a number of reviews of this system and listened to some too, and haven’t yet come across one that didn’t make some odd mistakes in their explanations about how the rules worked, or what was what in the core book. Strange really, but true.
There has also been too much bias chat about what is good or bad about the system and how it gels with people’s ideas of ‘what Conan should be’.
So, in light of these facts, I have decided to write a review that in some extra detail but with quick bullet-points where I can, with a little cross-referencing to the expansion books already out there.
I hope you read the whole thing if you are looking at this game but haven’t decided based on some of the +ve/-ve arguments you may have seen online.
So, onto the Core Book
CHAPTER 1 – GETTING STARTED
The usual preamble about what roleplay games are and what you need to play. Nothing new here unless you are new to rpgs...
CHAPTER 2 - CHARACTERS
Character creation is a step by step process with Attributes, Skills and Talents tied together with life-events preceding the start of the game. The following steps are involved, and give a wide range of choices (you can choose or roll), with expansion books making more choices available for particular life-stories (such as sorcerers, thieves or barbarians). However, all you will need for a game is here in the main book.
The steps are as follows;
1. Homeland – the where you come from is important, and not just for your languages, cultural talent and choice of example names
2. Attributes – set as descriptors for paired attribute bonuses such as Warrior-born or Charismatic
3. Caste – your family’s place in life…
4. Story – what happened to set you on the road to being an adventurer?
5. Archetype – what are you? Pirate, Priest, Noble Warrior…?
6. Nature – What are you like? (this does impact play both narratively and in terms of crunch…)
7. Education – where did you learn your archetype?
8. War Story – what conflict marked you before now?
9. Finishing Touches – extra free customisation points in stuff
10. Calculations – the recording of derived numbers (damage bonus, vigour, resolve and starting gold and status etc.) as well as a few unique items the character has to set them apart
PROS
- Generating the numbers that appear on your character sheet with a step by step build-up of how your character came to be means that you get the character and background for the effort that normally goes into just one of these
- Reduces the incidence of min-maxed characters whose existence might otherwise be counterintuitive
- Ties the character into the gameworld from the get-go
CONS
- The attribute step is wordy and can be confusing (although a free online generator makes this easy)
- You can’t jump straight in (although once again the free online generator makes this quick work)
CHAPTER 3 – SKILLS AND TALENTS
There are quite a few Skills, each under a particular Attribute. Talents are the funky things you can do with a Skill depending on how you decide to specialise. They are laid out in Talent Trees that any MMO player will recognise, and are chosen similarly with increasing xp cost the deeper you go into a tree.
The Skills are in alphabetical order with the controlling Attribute listed in brackets. Examples being Acrobatics (Agility) or Linguistics (Intelligence). Each has a section telling you what the skills are used for (we will get on to how these are rolled for later…).
In terms of Talents, there is a great deal to choose from here, and the basic Talents give you a low bar of entry, meaning you will have some of these on your character sheet from the start.
PROS
- The Talent Tree structure is intuitive and has pre-requisites that make is clear what you need to have already developed to progress further into a tree. They make individual characters in a group feel unique even when they are using the same skills as each other
- There is crunch here, but only a few of these (you only get more if you live long enough…) will apply to a character at a time, so you get to know what fun stuff you can do quickly.
- Talents are reasonably well-written and easy to understand – example – Melee (Agility) ‘No Mercy’ “When making a melee attack you may re-roll a number of damage dice equal to the total number of Melee talents (and ranks in those talents) you have acquired,…”
CONS
- It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes Talent progression can seem counterintuitive – such as the Insight Talent Tree being mainly about supernatural stuff and not interpersonal social intuition, or the Craft Talent Tree forcing you to become an Armoursmith before you can ever be a Mason.
- Some Talent Trees seem stronger than others – with the Stealth and Melee Trees being killers (pun intended). There are thankfully however no trap choices.
CHAPTER 3 – RULES
The core mechanic is simple.
You roll d20’s (usually 2, but it can be more, or sometimes less for the GM) and refer these resulting numbers to the total of the relevant Attribute number and Expertise number in a Skill.
For example – if you have 10 Agility and 3 Expertise in Melee, any roll of a 13 or less bags you a single success. Difficulties range from D0 (Simple) to D5 (Epic). You gain a Complication on a natural 20 for a skill you have at least some Expertise in, or on a 19-20 if you have no Expertise.
In addition, you may have Focus (which is like a crit-range) which can never be higher than your Expertise. Roll this or less on a d20 and you get two successes!
Complications are a bit like fumbles in other systems but narrated by the GM based on the action attempted, with more than one Complication on a single roll ramping up the negative consequences. It is interesting that you can still succeed on a roll (get the target number of successes) and get a Complication or two. The GM can take two Doom points instead of narrating an immediate negative impact on the PC or NPC, but it is the GMs choice in this instance.
Combat Difficulty is usually D1 (Average) with circumstances for any skill roll changing this – for example, bad footing may make that Melee roll a D2 (Challenging), or being drunk make that Persuade roll a D3(Daunting).
You can get more dice to roll by spending Momentum (more on that later), using up Resources (such as getting an extra d20 on a Healing roll by using up some medicine supplies), and some Talents give you extra d20. You can also burn one of your Fortune Points (more on that later too) to gain an extra dice that has auto-rolled a 1 (and remember if you have Focus of 1 or more that’s 2 guaranteed successes).
Sometimes someone or something opposes your use of a skill – a parry against your melee attack for instance, or a horse race between two riders, and these are dealt with by opposed rolls – the most successes against their own Difficulty, wins.
Difficulty 0 tests can either be hand-waived without a roll, or you can roll anyway, risking rolling a 20 and getting a Complication because you may want to generate Momentum.
So… Momentum…
When the number of successes your roll generates exceeds the Difficulty number you generate Momentum equal to the number it exceeded it by. Momentum can be spent to modify the success with a range of things, such as making an attack Piercing (it ignores some armour damage reduction) or doing the task in half the time. There is a table to choose from. In addition, some Momentum spends can be Repeated (such as piercing) meaning greater effect, or some can be Immediate – which means you can use them out of your turn and if you didn’t generate the Momentum yourself…
… how does that work you ask?
If you don’t want to use some or all of the Momentum you generated, you can put it in a group pool (to a maximum of 6 points) which other people can then use on their turn! This makes the rule quite group-orientated, and can really help those under pressure or who need a dice-pool boost on their turn.
PROS
- Core rule and dice rolling is simple
- Additional detail and control of what you can do with your Skill roll is all baked-in
CONS
- It takes about 3-4 sessions for the average group to get used to the choices associated with the core rule on Skill rolls (what will I do with my Momentum, how many extra dice can I get with my Talents and Resources) etc.
- Momentum spends are not all tabulated in one place in the book – some are, but the rest take some reading to find
CHAPTER 5 – ACTION SCENES
Turns are simple – the PCs go first, and the NPCs go afterwards. Only if the GM spends 'Doom' (another token resources like Fortune or Momentum) can they interrupt the PCs actions.
Movement is abstracted into zones – but in a good way, and with terrain obstacles, hindrances and hazards well explained on how movement is impacted by them.
There are Free Actions (usable within reason), Minor Actions (one per turn), Standard Actions (one per turn unless Momentum is spent for more) and Reactions (usable on other players/NPCs turns and of which 'Parry' is one).
These give quite a tactical range of choices which of course set up what one might do with Momentum generated.
Damage and Recovery comes next. There are two damage pools – each split into two. The first is your Vigour pool – being your energy and capacity to absorb minor damage, and under this your Wounds – each one you suffer making everything you do one Difficulty Harder. You die on your fifth Wound. The same is true of Resolve – your mental ‘hit points’ which like Wounds for Vigour, have Trauma beneath (when things really get to you…).
Physical Attacks (or some spells) do physical damage to your Vigour/Wounds, and Displays (intimidation tactics or spells) do damage to your Resolve/Trauma.
All of this is delivered by a variable pool of Combat Dice associated with the weapon or Display you are using and your CD bonus from the relevant stat. These work as follows;
Roll a number of d6’s, 1 or 2 is one or two damage, 3-4 is nothing and 5-6 is one damage and an Effect. Effects range from bleeding to knockdown, stun to burning – depending on what you did to the target and the weapon, display, poison, spell or alchemical nasty you used, some can be resisted, some not.
Armour (or Courage) reduce damage on a one for one basis, and any damage that reduces your Vigour or Resolve to 0 start doing Wounds or Trauma damage instead. Also, even if your Vigour or Resolve pools are not at 0 yet, any blow dealing 5 damage or more after reduction inflicts a Wound or Trauma. If you are unlucky enough to go to 0 in the one hit which also does 5 damage or more, you take two Wounds or Trauma simultaneously!
There are optional hit location rules but these don’t split up your Vigour or Wounds into locations, they merely track the soak of armour on different parts of the body and help narrate the serious damage inflicted. You can end an opponent by running them through the torso or chopping off an arm – but both would be the last wound they could take before going down rules-wise.
Getting Wounded or Traumatised is bad news. A Healer or Counsellor (medi-kit, not spell healers, there are no spell healers here, move long…) might be able to stabilise your Wounds or Trauma, but they ‘re-open’ the next time you are Wounded or Traumatised. Until you get some serious R&R in Downtime, you are carrying lingering injury, period.
Melee fighting takes into account the reach of weapons nicely – for each reach point you have over your opponent you get an extra d20 to attack with, for each reach you are below, the difficulty of the roll goes up by 1. This situation reverses if you drop your guard or the shorter weapon wielder breaks your guard and gets inside. That long-spear you were handily keeping the assassin at bay with suddenly becomes a liability when she’s right up in your grill with a punch-dagger…
For ranged attacks the type of weapon, its optimum range and your skill with it all modify the difficulty to hit as one might expect.
I mentioned displays, and they are one of the real innovations of this system – each has a damage rating, from the lowly ‘Steely Glare’ to the frightening ‘Impossible Feat of Might’ or ‘Sorcerous Might’. Most require a preceding action before you pull them off – such as openly displaying the severed head of your enemy, or having just cast a spell that face-melted one of the enemy.
There are also conditions that can be brought on by attacks etc. and are what you might expect from Burning to Dazed.
PROS
- Lots of lovely choice for martial characters to bring the pain, or avoid it
- Doing something intimidating really has an impact in confrontations
- The weapon you use and the way in which you use it matters
CONS
- Momentum could have been explained and summarised for reference more clearly
- Combat Damage can be swingy (rolling all 3-4’s is a pretty frustrating blowout)
- Effects can in some instances come up frequently meaning ‘stun-lock’ can sometimes be a thing with a mace for instance, which maybe realistic, but not to everyone’s tastes
CHAPTER 6 – EQUIPMENT
Gold is a unit of currency in the way a ‘measure of gold’ is– that is to say, it’s macro. You don’t coin-count in Conan. You pay your upkeep each downtime (decided by your status and other factors) and small purchases (lodgings, meals, drinks etc.) made in play come under that. The rest – expensive purchases of armour or mounts is dealt with in this chapter.
Weapons are here also, and each has a range of Traits – for instance swords all have the Parry Trait – making it less expensive in terms of Doom to parry with them, axes tend to have the Vicious trait meaning their Effects rolled do two damage instead of one, maces have stun, and so on.
Armour has encumbrance, armour soak (damage reduction) and traits such as noisy or heavy where relevant. Other equipment, from Facilities to Kits to Resources all either allow certain skills to be used in the first place (such as the Healers Kit) to adding extra d20’s on a skill use (such as Offerings for Sorcery spellcasting).
PROS
- Your choice of equipment has important in-game consequences in combat and out of combat
- Encumbrance is sensibly dealt with without making things fiddly
CONS
- The prices of some items are clearly ridiculous – 5 weights of gold for a broadsword but the same for a dagger, and a Galley only being worth 5 mules… definitely in need of a sensible re-costing exercise by the GM
- The explanation of what a Kit, Resource and Facility do for you and how they can work together synergistically could have been much more clearly laid out
CHAPTER 7 – SORCERY
I have always been of the opinion no previous incarnation of Conan in rpgs ever got the nasty and soul-shrivellingly costly nature of sorcery from the stories right.
This does.
There are Petty Enchantments (basically Alchemical and Folk-Magics) at the start of the chapter and Spells and how they are cast later.
Petty Enchantments cover everything from explosive powders, the various applications of the magical lotus to talismans designed to bolster your courage.
There are not many spells, but each is very, very customisable, essentially being its own mini-school of magic. For instance, Astral Wanderings can do everything from allow you to project yourself as a ghost, to see in darkness, spy the invisible, scry on far-away places to possessing a victim and having them do anything you want. Other spells range from horror-movie face-melting (the Dismember Spell), or enslaving mentally even to the point of forcing suicide on a target (Enslave) to controlling the weather and summoning storms that can wreck ships (Venom on the Wind) and much else besides.
Becoming a Sorcerer is costly – with constant demands made by your Patron (without whom you cannot learn sorcery at all) and the costs of further Pacts made with dark entities or even selling your soul off piecemeal for power – all whittling away permanent Resolve from your character.
Nearly all spells cost Resolve to cast, cost further permanent Resolve to learn and when they have mental impact (your leader just dissolved, screaming, into a mass of steaming necrotic horror) do not spare either the Sorcerer or their allies the negative impact of the sight.
Furthermore, failed Sorcery skill rolls to cast spells are all Complications, making ‘messing up’ sometimes very painful. Understandably, the more powerful or ambitious the effect the Sorcerer wants to bring about, the harder difficulty their Sorcery Skill roll, and thus an increased chance of failure.
This is where group Momentum needs to be watched, as canny Sorcerer players will use it as much as they can to ensure success.
PROS
- Sorcery is dark and inhuman in the stories and this is well reflected in the rules
- Sorcery is very powerful but well balanced with the risk of its use
- Petty Enchantments are flavoursome and useful
CONS
- Casting is explained in a very wordy fashion and can be confusing until you have played it out are the table
- The costs of being a Sorcerer who does more than dabble is a little too high if you roll badly – you can turn into a raving mad-person very quickly if you are unlucky or make bad build choices (this is however offset significantly with an extra Talent made available in the Book of Skelos supplement)
CHAPTER 8 – THE HYBORIAN WORLD
This one is easy to review. A snapshot of the Hyborian world as you have never seen it on the screen. The world is far more like Game of Thrones tech and flavour-wise than it has ever been portrayed in movies etc. which may surprise some.
It also cleaves only to the details as revealed by Howard himself, and not all the extra stuff developed after his death, including the comic-book pastiches with their very bronze-age look.
A delight to read for a fan of the books.
PROS
- The Hyborian Age as Howard created it
- Detailed and comprehensive enough to run a game at the start
CONS
- Not the ‘world of Conan’ some may associate with
- Not detailed enough for a long-term campaign (but the game supplements each deal with a number of related areas of the world in much more detail)
- Not enough on religions or their considerable importance in the Hyborian Age (to be dealt with in a release soon - Nameless Cults)
CHAPTER 9 – GAMESMASTERING
There has been much complaint online about how metagamey the Doom, Fortune and Momentum rules are, and here is where they are explained for the GM in terms of how they should be used to serve the game and not make it an adversarial experience.
I have already explained Momentum.
Doom is like Momentum for the GM, but can be gained in extra ways, such as powerful evil creatures appearing giving some, gained when a player want to spend Immediate Momentum when there is none in the Momentum pool( on a 1 for 1 basis), gained as an alternative impact of Complications rolled by players, or gained if the players dither too much in an Action Scene. As well as behaving like Momentum, Doom fuels important NPC abilities such as sorceries or special combat abilities, or can add extra unexpected threats into scenes such as landslides or fog. Each has an associated cost, and stat blocks and a Doom spend table make these pretty easy to understand.
Fortune is also explained – and how the GM awards it for great roleplay, achieving great goals or when a PCs Nature is roleplayed out when it disadvantages them or the group… Fortune can, as well as giving a d20 roll of a 1 on an extra dice, also allow the player to change the game narrative to an extent allowed by the GM (a sudden parting of the mist to allow the party to see the bandits, or a momentary distraction from a barking dog so the thief can sneak past the vigilant guard…).
What sorts of things you should have happen when Complications arise is also stated.
It also goes into detail on how Swords and Sorcery adventures tend to differ from the more usual high fantasy sort, and how to weave in the themes explored in these stories, such as the weakness of the human condition, the inevitability of civilisations fall into barbarity, or the carousing and carefree larger than life nature of life between adventures.
There is a large table of random events that can be rolled on to spice up any Downtime here…
CHAPTER 10 – ENCOUNTERS
Here it explains there are 3 types of NPC – Minions (with low stats and only 1 Wound and Trauma), Toughened (with better stats and 3 Wounds and Trauma) and Nemesis (as tough or tougher than PCs with decent skills and abilities and 5 Wounds and Trauma).
These allow for the canon-fodder of an attacking pirate ship for instance to be cut through by the PCs to get to that duel with the Captain, or that assault on the chanting Sorcerer on the prow, with a mixture of challenges as they progress through an action scene.
Horrors and Undead also factor here – for the appearance of the supernatural so common on Conan and S&S in general.
There is a sub-chapter on special abilities and what they do and then stat blocks for all forms of foe, from common cutpurse to ancient mummified sorcerer, from wolf to sabrecat and giant spider, and from craven cultist to demon of the outer dark. There are also famous and not so famous NPCS including such familiar ones as the pre-eminent sorcerer Toth-Amon to Conan himself.
PROS
- The three types of challenge in NPCs is well explained
- A wide selection of antagonists and protagonists
CONS
- None to speak of here
The final bit of the book is an adventure which is a nice introductory adventure which escalates in a manner familiar to Howard readers, one minute you are dealing with mundane brutality, and then the plot turns and goes all ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’ on you. Not at all bad.
CONCLUSIONS
I am bias. I have always loved Conan stories since I read all the Frazetta-fronted paperbacks in the 70-80s. But that also means I have been pretty vocally critical of rpgs that have got it wrong one way or the other, and from my point of view, all of them have.
Mongoose made a good effort, but the d20 system is wrong for gritty ‘anything can kill you and often does in a single blow’ S&S, and the GURPS attempt which had a great system for it did not go into nearly enough detail and copped out on the magic.
Modiphius have gone the extra mile and then some to provide a Conan rpg that hits the spots untouched by others and which remains true to the lore and canon of the thing.
In places, the rules are written in too wordy a fashion and could be more succinct and logically laid out. This is unfortunate, and has in my opinion lead to ‘read-through-only’ reviewers thinking it is too crunchy.
But in play, it really isn’t, and runs well.
It has three metagame currencies that work well together, but won’t please all of those who don’t like such mechanics in general terms. I have to say I was something of a grognardy-simulationist when it came to such things previously myself, but I actually grew to like how the metagame in Conan plays next to the core mechanics and crunch of the system.
Make of that what you will.
Some don’t like that the central conceit of the original 2d20 game - Mutant Chronicles' has been transplanted to Conan – i.e. that there is ‘Doom’ in the first place... This misses an important point though. All of Howards works, and indeed what he said about his own creation deliberately incorporated Lovecraft’s nihilistic cosmos and mixed it up with a greater capacity for humans to act against it, but coloured by the inevitability of humanity’s fall back into barbarity from the heights of civilisation. The Doom mechanic actually really works well in this subgenre, and is only a 'problem' if the GM is a problem. Anyone can ‘punish’ players from behind a GM screen, whether they have a set of tokens to do it with or not.
The game is clearly a work of love and one done with great attention to detail and the original works and their flavour.
It plays quickly and smoothly after a few sessions, and is fine in the first session, as my previous groups at conventions can attest. Yet despite running smoothly, it gives every player a ton of stuff they can do from scene to scene, turn to turn, and in that respect is better than many fantasy rpgs – where ‘auto-attack’ sequences can get old pretty quickly. You never have to guess how many encounters per day you are going to be given in Conan and can bring your skills to bear with am much 'in-your-faced'ness' as you want from one encounter to the next.
Overall I give this a 5/5, with a 4.5 if I am being pernickety.
If you need to try it before you buy it, play! Coincidentally I will be running my convention adventure once again - Red Moon Over Shadizar – at Games Expo this year, and at Dragonmeet in December, so if you want to have a go then, I'll be there. Alternatively you can pick up the free core rules on DrivThruRpg and give it a spin yourself.
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