Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of - Detailed Review from a GM and Player

[CapnZapp]

There is nothing in the game stopping you from playing a half naked barbarian - it's just going to hurt more when you get hit.

The Conan the barbarian supplement has a Berserker Talent Tree if that is the sort of thing you like - although it is a mystic tradition as much as a representation of someone who should go to anger management sessions...

With the importance of parrying and the reach of weapons, fighting unarmoured is viable, just risky, although there is a Resistance Talent called Iron Skinned that gives you 1 point of armour even when you aren't wearing any physical armour, as well as other Talents in that tree that increase the damage threshold (normally 5 or more) for taking a Wound, and one which allows you to spend a Fortune point to shrug off a Wound inflicted on you.

So you have support for the kind of Conan game you want right there, and if you want it bronze/iron aged and like the graphic novels then just use the Mongoose material for the background. The same rules will serve you just as well.

If you want a bronze age/early iron age S&S game from the ruleset as is, there will be a supplement for the world of Kull the Conqueror along in the not too distant future which will cover the Valusian Age - where it was very much as you want flavour-wise.

I have stated my preference in my earlier post. If that's not in the core rulebook, then it isn't.

 

[Caliburn101]

I have stated my preference in my earlier post. If that's not in the core rulebook, then it isn't.

The Resistance talent rules are all in the core rulebook, and as for the rest, you can just play it that way.

If your preference is for graphic novel pastiche, then you aren't lacking material from those very sources, and the rules will serve you just fine as written, even without using the Barbarian supplement.

I have considered using these rules for a Beasts and Barbarians gameworld game, and even a Primeval Thule game - both of which are very much what you prefer, and to do that I'd have to do next to no conversion.

 

[CapnZapp]

The Resistance talent rules are all in the core rulebook, and as for the rest, you can just play it that way.

If your preference is for graphic novel pastiche, then you aren't lacking material from those very sources, and the rules will serve you just fine as written, even without using the Barbarian supplement.

That still does not change the fact that the game rulebook either does or does not embrace and paint a lurid world.

It is a simple question. One or the other. It can't be both. What it is?

That I can add things myself is a given, and bringing it up only serves to deflect the issue. I don't need to know "nothing stops me from playing a game the way I want", and it does not answer the question asked.

Here, let me be crystal clear:

Does the supplements describe NPCs in various states of undress for no particular reason? Are seduction and allure tools characters are using to get what they want, at least on a semi-regular basis? Are sexual mores open and uninhibited? Does the authors take every chance to describe flesh on display, much like Frazetta did?

Or

Does the game shy away from locations such as bath houses and brothels? Does it gloss over nudity? Is sexual proclivity and preference left up to the reader? Does it prefer images of sensibly-clothed characters (much like a non-sword&sorcery game)?

Or... what? You're not telling.

I'd appreciate a straight answer much more than these coy word-games.

 

[darkbard]

On racial stereotyping, in the core book several of the archetypes are black or oriental.

<snip>

In short, you need have no worries over racist or sexist elements to the game, it is not an issue.

I'm not sure you're qualified to make the latter statement in light of the former. Its, I'm assuming, quite unconscious use of a racially loaded term (see the fairly recent thread about "Oriental" Adventure) may indicate there are racist or sexist elements that escape your notice.

 

[mach1.9pants]

Oriental maybe a loaded racist term in the USA, due to how it was used there in previous times. It is not so in the UK, where the op is from, nor NZ where I am from. I have lots of Asian friends, that is the term themselves here

 

[darkbard]

Oriental maybe a loaded racist term in the USA, due to how it was used there in previous times. It is not so in the UK, where the op is from, nor NZ where I am from. I have lots of Asian friends, that is the term themselves here

I have many British friends (many made from my time living in Asia), and this is simply not true. They consider it a racist term, a legacy of British imperialism which sparked the (fraught) cultural movement of orientalism.

 

[Caliburn101]

That still does not change the fact that the game rulebook either does or does not embrace and paint a lurid world.

It is a simple question. One or the other. It can't be both. What it is?

That I can add things myself is a given, and bringing it up only serves to deflect the issue. I don't need to know "nothing stops me from playing a game the way I want", and it does not answer the question asked.

Here, let me be crystal clear:

Does the supplements describe NPCs in various states of undress for no particular reason? Are seduction and allure tools characters are using to get what they want, at least on a semi-regular basis? Are sexual mores open and uninhibited? Does the authors take every chance to describe flesh on display, much like Frazetta did?

Or

Does the game shy away from locations such as bath houses and brothels? Does it gloss over nudity? Is sexual proclivity and preference left up to the reader? Does it prefer images of sensibly-clothed characters (much like a non-sword&sorcery game)?

Or... what? You're not telling.

I'd appreciate a straight answer much more than these coy word-games.

You clearly haven't read the Conan stories, or you would know that titillation for it's own sake wasn't Howards thing. His characters were nearly always sensibly dressed and armoured for fighting, and when it came to sensual/sexual encounters it was understated as one might expect for Weird Tales in the 30's.

If you are interested in that aspect of the pastiche, then you're going to be disappointed.

I for one cannot really imagine how such things might be put in without wandering over the line somewhat offensively, and I had enough of that back in the day when rpg conventions were 100% men.

Frazetta's art was iconic - but it also had far more flesh on show than the stories, and I can tell you straight that no woman ever hung off Conan's leg like window-dressing while he stood over his dead enemies.

If you want that kind of 'Conan', then look elsewhere - you won't, thankfully, find it in this rpg.

 

[Caliburn101]

I'm not sure you're qualified to make the latter statement in light of the former. Its, I'm assuming, quite unconscious use of a racially loaded term (see the fairly recent thread about "Oriental" Adventure) may indicate there are racist or sexist elements that escape your notice.

Always a bit of a risk assuming what other people mean, and trying to make out you know what they consciously or unconsciously know or why they do things.

I rarely say anything unconsciously, especially in written form, and your opinion on this reflects a certain point of view which I first pondered at some length when I lived in Hong Kong years ago. I was also taught at university about the particular pitfalls of cultural stereotyping and the way in which labelling and interpretation can be unconsciously applied when interpreting other cultures (especially ones with no surviving members to correct you). There was plenty of lecture time devoted to how to avoid doing that.

So perhaps unsurprisingly, I regard myself as reasonably well informed on the matter, and therefore won't on this occasion be re-examining what I am qualified to say or not to say.

I believe you have confused 'Orientalism' (the process whereby Oriental cultures were in times past misrepresented as being culturally and technologically static and lacking in the spirit of innovation or the capacity for adaptation) with the words Orient or Oriental. The first was racially and culturally bias, even racist, but the latter two terms are merely forms of reference.

If you are interested in the actual purpose of the review, then look at the book yourself and reflect on the relative validity of what I'm saying. Only then you can hold an informed opinion on whether such negative elements are in the book. If you then really feel that there is some racism there, then I would advise you to get in touch with the team at Modiphius and ask them why they didn't hire someone to ensure they avoided racist terminology or stereotyping.

I am sure they will have plenty to say on the matter, as from what I have been told by Lloyd Gyan (customer support guru over there) when I talked to him at the last Dragonmeet event, they spent long hours making sure this issue was appropriately handled in their offering. Like any responsible publisher really.

So bearing all of that in mind, I would encourage you to find it in yourself to 'agree to disagree' about the nature of the terminology I used in pointing out that the game isn't racist. You have implied I witlessly used a racist term because of unconscious bias, and having a right to answer, I have refuted anything of sort.

So we have both said our piece.

This thread is about the game, so I would genuinely appreciate it if you would agree to drop this particular issue forthwith.

 

[CapnZapp]

You clearly haven't read the Conan stories, or you would know that titillation for it's own sake wasn't Howards thing. His characters were nearly always sensibly dressed and armoured for fighting, and when it came to sensual/sexual encounters it was understated as one might expect for Weird Tales in the 30's.

If you are interested in that aspect of the pastiche, then you're going to be disappointed.

I for one cannot really imagine how such things might be put in without wandering over the line somewhat offensively, and I had enough of that back in the day when rpg conventions were 100% men.

Frazetta's art was iconic - but it also had far more flesh on show than the stories, and I can tell you straight that no woman ever hung off Conan's leg like window-dressing while he stood over his dead enemies.

If you want that kind of 'Conan', then look elsewhere - you won't, thankfully, find it in this rpg.

Thank you for - finally - providing a clear, unequivocal, answer.

Though there was no need for scorn. I am able to separate sexism from prudishness; you seem unable to.

 

[Caliburn101]

Thank you for - finally - providing a clear, unequivocal, answer.


Though there was no need for scorn. I am able to separate sexism from prudishness; you seem unable to.

Prudish!? lol

That's priceless... if you want to know what actual scorn looks like - ask a random female gamer who you don't know (like you don't know me or nearly anyone else here) which rpg's "take every chance to describe flesh on display" and "describe NPCs in various states of undress for no particular reason" because that's what you really want to play.

In fact, sell tickets, I'd probably pay to watch you do it.