Conan - supplements
So far I've picked up Road of Kings, Free Companies, Pirate Isles, and Scrolls of Skelos. None of them are essential, but all are well done and will greatly enhance your campaign if it focuses on the topics covered within each.
Road of Kings - Hyboria fluff, no crunch except for a few NPC write-ups. Good for providing cultural background, plot hooks, history, etc. Not a "must-have", esp. if you're familiar with Hyboria but highly recommended if you're like me and only have a passing familiarity with the setting. Best general purpose supplement for Conan I've seen thus far.
Free Companies - Awesome treatment on mercenary companies, warfare, and the life of the soldier/mercenary. It also provides descriptions and rules for different duty-posts: garrison, patrol, etc.; camp life, rules of engagement/plunder, etc. All of which have been topics that inevitably came up in my campaigns that focused on warfare or a warfare-dominated plot. Now you have suggestions and game mechanics to back them up. This ain't your Dad's "sanitized for alignment and modern sensibilities" treatment of medieval warfare. In fact, the Free Companies would make an excellent companion volume to your mass combat book of choice - most of which seem to focus only on the mechanics of mass combat (or perhaps also including rules for governing ala Fields of Blood). Free Companies focuses on the execution and impact of warfare and the soldier's life during war. It also includes a narrative mass combat system that can either replace or supplement your mass combat system if your players aren't thrilled with throwing their lot in with a group of Generic 1st-Level Cavalry. For example, I have Fields of Blood. I can use Fields of Blood for the tactical resolution of the combat. Free Companies narrative system gave me a lot of ideas on how I could "zoom in" on the characters when they are engaged and how that could influence the tide of battle if I choose.
Pirate Isles - As with Free Companies, this isn't a sanitized Errol Flynn treatment of pirates. These are bloodthirsty cutthroats and this book provides rules, plot hooks, pirate codes of honor, rules for dividing plunder, fencing plunder, pirate coves, mutinies, and the settling of disputes among the various pirate brotherhoods of Hyboria. The travel, naval combat, and ship descriptions all seem well thought out. Not sure how they compare to other d20 treatments, but I suspect that at a minimum, Pirate Isles will make a nice companion volume to the other naval sourcebooks on the market for addressing topics other than ships, feats, naval combat, and prestige classes.
Scrolls of Skelos - if sorcerers are important to your game, if you're looking for greater variety in your sorcerors, or if you want more threats from beyond this world, this supplement's for you. If none of these are important, you're not missing anything if you skip it. Don't misunderstand, it's a good book, but given the rarity of spell casters in your typcial swords-n-sorcery, you will probably want to pick up some of the other books first.
All of the Conan supplements listed above are first-rate - and unlike their d20 brethren, are not comprised of the typical endless lists of Feats, Prestige Classes, Spells, Magic Items format that leaves maybe 20% for fluff, campaign flavor, or bonna-fide new ideas. Those items are there, where they make sense, but comprise a much smaller page count than they do in other d20 books. For example, Scrolls of Skelos is the only supplement I've discussed that includes Prestige Classes. The ones described are reserved for high-level sorcerers and reflect different cultural or "roads to power" choices the sorcerer has made. In fact, the Conan supplements have gone out of their way to avoid Prestige Class glut - Free Companies instead shows sample multi-class combos that create archetypes such as the Berzerker (Soldier/Barbarian), Scout (Soldier/Borderer), Adjutant (Soldier/Scholar), etc. and highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the combination.
If the Conan supplements continue to be of the same quality moving forward, I may be selling off my D&D books altogether and make Conan my only d20 FRPG. It's already become the baseline for any d20 FRPG I will run.
Azgulor
