CONAN LIVES! Info on the new Conan RPG

[CoreyHaim8myDog]

What are Chronicle Points? Is that the new name of Luck Points in the playtest doc?

If so, don't the rules say that a character can only have 3 Luck Points per game session?

Oh, sorry. I used the MC3 term. Yes, that's the current rule, but you could alter it if you take out Threat.

What would you like to see in the Conan RPG? We're going into beta, so you might as well tell us what you want. I'm sure it'll be considered.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

It's still pulp, but it's also great. It sound to me like you prefer narrativist games. That's totally cool, but why get angry at a game for not being the kind of game you want?

As I understand the term, a Narrativist game would be a game which has rules for enforcing genre conventions, so this game as-is would definitely apply and it would not sit well with me for that reason. My personal balance skews strongly toward Simulation (of the process - players making all decisions from the in-character perspective, and GMs making all decisions agnostic of whether it would make for a good story - rather than trying to simulate our own reality), but I also understand and appreciate where rules have to be shaped toward making a fun and balanced Game (since a pure Simulation of any fantasy world would probably be unplayable due to complexity).

Speaking of, what do you and WaterBob want from a Conan game?

Rather than a game which tries to generate stories similar to the original novels, I would like a sort of 'reality ensues' version of the setting. After all, the original stories can work out the way they did because they are just stories; but for the characters within a Role-Playing Game, the game world is their real world. If I'm playing as my character, and I see that the world around me is unfolding as though it was a story, then that makes it difficult to keep suspending disbelief. For any setting, there should be a way that it can be presented without making it seem as though it was powered by narrative causality.

Personally, I just want the setting, and rules for how elements within the setting interact with each other. Tell me about the different lands, and their inhabitants. Tell me how magic works, and what happens when you stick a sword into the wizard before the spell can be completed. Tell me how long it takes to starve to death, or to recover from a wound.

Basically, I just want a traditional sort of RPG - something like AD&D 2E, or Rifts, or Shadowrun.

 

[Water Bob]

Our goal is to capture the feel of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories in a fun game. Neither REH, nor this game, attempts to recreate reality. I have my actual life for that. Lots of people love pulp, and pulp does not have to be bad. Raiders of the Lost Ark took pulp and serials and made them into a great film. It's still pulp, but it's also great. It sound to me like you prefer narrativist games. That's totally cool, but why get angry at a game for not being the kind of game you want?

Speaking of, what do you and WaterBob want from a Conan game?

I don't care if the rules are lite or crunchy, as long as they are well written rules, and the game is fun to play.

I want a game that captures the gritty feel of Conan's Hyborian Age.

I want to be able to create new and interesting characters for the game--even those that are vastly different from Conan--but still fits with the Hyborian Age.

I want to be able to re-create Conan, or a character very similar to Conan, using the game.

I want rules that simulate what I've read in the stories. Since Conan jumped onto Belit's Tigress and fought off a deck full of her Black Corsairs without getting much of a scratch because of his chain hauberk, then I want it to be possible to duplicate that in the game--where a chain hauberk will protect any character (that knows how to use the armor) as well.

I want a Barbarian or Zamorian Thief, wearing only a loincloth, carrying on a knife, to be a viable combat choice. Armor should be extremely protective, as Conan says of it in Beyond The Black River. At the same time, armor should not be a requirement for all types of fighting. There should be a negative to wearing armor--something that makes not wearing armor attractive. Maybe it's fatigue. Maybe it's heat. I want a mechanic reason, that makes sense, for why people wear armor in combat but tend to shed it when they can. There certainly should be a penalty for sleeping in it.

I want rules that serve the game--rules that are easy to understand, and easy to play, but don't draw attention to themselves. I want my players thinking about the scenario--living through the game via their character's eyes. I don't want my players focusing on dice and modifiers and checks.

I want interesting, exotic equipment such as that Taurus had in The Tower of the Elephant.

I want a smart system for fighting large scale battles, so that the major combats shown in Black Colossus can be played. This should be a flexible system, easily used with Black Corsairs sacking a village in Shem or a tribe of Picts nailig an Aquilonan Fort. I want to use a version of it to run ship battles.

I want combat to be gritty, and immersive, so that players feel the excitement through the mechanics.

I'm sure I can think of some other things, but that will do for starters.

 

[Water Bob]

I really like Combat Options. So much of Howard's story is about combat. Conan's ultimate response to just about ever major problem is, "Smash it with a sword."

So, instead of just a to-hit roll, I want specific options, each with pros and cons. Not a generic, one-size-fits-all mechanic where the player makes up his move. If a player wants his character to feint, he does this. If a character wants his character to grap his foe and attempt to slit his throat, then he does this.

I think combat can be extremely fun when players are mixing and matching combat options.

Some combat options should serve as basic ones. Others should be specific to the type of character or the abilities of the character. No one character should be able to master all options.



And, there should be fighting styles, too. Spear and Shield is different from short sword and shield. Long polearms have an advantage because....? A big, honkng, two-handed sword like the Vanir use can break a small tree in half if used by the right person. But, a light, small, sharp dagger has its uses too, as one can get inside the reach of a slow, large weapon and slam, slam, slam home on the target.

That kind of stuff.

 

[Water Bob]

Oh...and NO META-GAMING.

 

[CoreyHaim8myDog]

As I understand the term, a Narrativist game would be a game which has rules for enforcing genre conventions, so this game as-is would definitely apply and it would not sit well with me for that reason. My personal balance skews strongly toward Simulation (of the process - players making all decisions from the in-character perspective, and GMs making all decisions agnostic of whether it would make for a good story - rather than trying to simulate our own reality), but I also understand and appreciate where rules have to be shaped toward making a fun and balanced Game (since a pure Simulation of any fantasy world would probably be unplayable due to complexity).

Rather than a game which tries to generate stories similar to the original novels, I would like a sort of 'reality ensues' version of the setting. After all, the original stories can work out the way they did because they are just stories; but for the characters within a Role-Playing Game, the game world is their real world. If I'm playing as my character, and I see that the world around me is unfolding as though it was a story, then that makes it difficult to keep suspending disbelief. For any setting, there should be a way that it can be presented without making it seem as though it was powered by narrative causality.

Personally, I just want the setting, and rules for how elements within the setting interact with each other. Tell me about the different lands, and their inhabitants. Tell me how magic works, and what happens when you stick a sword into the wizard before the spell can be completed. Tell me how long it takes to starve to death, or to recover from a wound.

Basically, I just want a traditional sort of RPG - something like AD&D 2E, or Rifts, or Shadowrun.

I'd say the game falls closer to traditional than experimental for sure, but that's my opinion. Experimental to me is something like Lacuna or Over the Edge back in the day.

I don't care if the rules are lite or crunchy, as long as they are well written rules, and the game is fun to play.

I want a game that captures the gritty feel of Conan's Hyborian Age.

I want to be able to create new and interesting characters for the game--even those that are vastly different from Conan--but still fits with the Hyborian Age.

I want to be able to re-create Conan, or a character very similar to Conan, using the game.

I want rules that simulate what I've read in the stories. Since Conan jumped onto Belit's Tigress and fought off a deck full of her Black Corsairs without getting much of a scratch because of his chain hauberk, then I want it to be possible to duplicate that in the game--where a chain hauberk will protect any character (that knows how to use the armor) as well.

I want a Barbarian or Zamorian Thief, wearing only a loincloth, carrying on a knife, to be a viable combat choice. Armor should be extremely protective, as Conan says of it in Beyond The Black River. At the same time, armor should not be a requirement for all types of fighting. There should be a negative to wearing armor--something that makes not wearing armor attractive. Maybe it's fatigue. Maybe it's heat. I want a mechanic reason, that makes sense, for why people wear armor in combat but tend to shed it when they can. There certainly should be a penalty for sleeping in it.

I want rules that serve the game--rules that are easy to understand, and easy to play, but don't draw attention to themselves. I want my players thinking about the scenario--living through the game via their character's eyes. I don't want my players focusing on dice and modifiers and checks.

I want interesting, exotic equipment such as that Taurus had in The Tower of the Elephant.

I want a smart system for fighting large scale battles, so that the major combats shown in Black Colossus can be played. This should be a flexible system, easily used with Black Corsairs sacking a village in Shem or a tribe of Picts nailig an Aquilonan Fort. I want to use a version of it to run ship battles.

I want combat to be gritty, and immersive, so that players feel the excitement through the mechanics.

I'm sure I can think of some other things, but that will do for starters.

I'd still debate metagaming, but almost all of what you said were part of the original manifesto we came up with for the game. Griity, Howarding, fast, fun, etc. Be able to play a barbarian in a loincloth that can take out lots of villains. Yeah, that was all at the top of our list.

As for seting, there's going to be a lot more setting over the course of the game than crunch.

 

[Water Bob]

I'd say the game falls closer to traditional than experimental for sure, but that's my opinion. Experimental to me is something like Lacuna or Over the Edge back in the day.

I think he's talking about the non-traditional dicing system. 2d20 doesn't use the full range of the d20, counting successes on multiple dice (and even more than one success on a single die), with the ability to add more dice at the expense of Threat Points that are used by the GM. It's pretty wacky and gimmicky, in my opinion, but I've seen games like that before. I can't remember the title (was it Decipher Star Trek? Or, the short lived Chronicles of the Imperium Dune game? I can't remember. Maybe neither of those.), but I've seen a "count the successes" game using a handfull of d6 before. There's a neat d20 based combat system for 3.5 d20 games that uses up to 4 d20 for attacks and defense rolls--where you use the highest die. And, lots of game uses "Hero Points" or "Fate Points" (as in the Mongoose Conan game) to change aspects of the rolls (the thing is, with those uses, they aren't meta-game).



As I said earlier, Threat Points would work if you could find a way to use them (1) on the character that generated them (2) when the character generated them. The problem is, that would really punish heroics because you could expect something to go wrong or enemies to get tougher right then.

What if you had a Critical Fumble rule, and made it where Threat Points were not automatic. If a character tries to do something heroic, he just risks rolling Threat--he doesn't automatically get it. And, if Threat comes up, the the GM spends it right then on his enemy or whatever task the character is trying to do.

If the character is opening a lock and generates Threat, then the GM can use it to activate the poison needle trap. Otherwise, failure on the task says the trap isn't sprung.

If the character is fighting an enemy and generates Threat, then the GM can use the Threat to give the enemy a special extra attack, better defense, special maneuver (like a disarm attempt), or create some problem for the character, like loose footing where he has to make a check or fall.

Do something like that, and you've taken the meta-game aspects out of the Threat rule AND it makes a lot more sense.




As you have Threat now, it punishes heroics, and it punishes the entire party for what could be one person's heroics.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I'd say the game falls closer to traditional than experimental for sure, but that's my opinion. Experimental to me is something like Lacuna or Over the Edge back in the day.

Some of it is a matter of scope, and some of it probably comes down to personal sensitivities, but I would consider any game with a strong meta-game mechanic to be fairly non-traditional. Even something like Savage Worlds would be mostly traditional, except for its extensive focus on Bennies as a core game mechanic which interacts with almost every sub-system. It only takes one rule to cross the line, if that rule is so important that it can't be avoided.

 

[N01H3r3]

I think he's talking about the non-traditional dicing system. 2d20 doesn't use the full range of the d20, counting successes on multiple dice (and even more than one success on a single die), with the ability to add more dice at the expense of Threat Points that are used by the GM. It's pretty wacky and gimmicky, in my opinion, but I've seen games like that before. I can't remember the title (was it Decipher Star Trek? Or, the short lived Chronicles of the Imperium Dune game? I can't remember. Maybe neither of those.), but I've seen a "count the successes" game using a handfull of d6 before. There's a neat d20 based combat system for 3.5 d20 games that uses up to 4 d20 for attacks and defense rolls--where you use the highest die. And, lots of game uses "Hero Points" or "Fate Points" (as in the Mongoose Conan game) to change aspects of the rolls (the thing is, with those uses, they aren't meta-game).

As I've learned from discussions of "associated vs disassociated mechanics", individual perceptions on what counts as "metagaming" vary considerably, and there is no absolute objective definition of 'meta-game'.

As you have Threat now, it punishes heroics, and it punishes the entire party for what could be one person's heroics.

"Punishes heroics" is subjective, and bears little resemblance to practical experience. Within the last year, my group have played both D&D5 and Mutant Chronicles... and Mutant Chronicles, 'metagame' elements and all, produced more acts of heroism and daring than D&D5 did.

I've looked at options for Threatless 2d20. They're seldom as satisfying, IMO, and I find that discussions of them detract from actual playtesting (we can't get accurate playtest feedback if groups aren't engaging with the rules-as-written, but what you do once the playtest is done is up to you).

In this instance, I think the digression might be constructive.

Each character receives a small quantity of "Effort", which refreshes relatively swiftly. Each point of Effort spent adds 1d20 to a test, up to a maximum of +3d20, allows a character to perform a Response action, or otherwise allows the use of something that would normally require paying Threat.

The issue here is that individual NPCs need to be given their own Effort pools, which adds something extra for the GM to track. The GM also has to track any of the personal resources that NPCs use, such as ammunition, which are normally subsumed into Threat.

I'd recommend three Effort per PC, and can't go any higher. Out of combat, at the end of each scene in which the PC doesn't use Effort, they regain one lost Effort. In combat, each round the PC doesn't use Effort, they regain one Effort. This mirrors the rates at which banked Momentum decreases.

The end result would be a little more static and restrictive, but it could work. It's unlikely to be in the Conan rulebook, but we've had internal discussions of a basic 'system book' that gives options and different ways to use the system.

 

[Water Bob]

As I've learned from discussions of "associated vs disassociated mechanics", individual perceptions on what counts as "metagaming" vary considerably, and there is no absolute objective definition of 'meta-game'.

To be specific about the new Conan game, when I say "meta-game" mechanic, I'm talking about the Threat Pool. When players can look at the Threat Pool and decide to not be heroic anymore for no other reason (nothing in-game) than because the Threat Pool his high and they no longer want to contribute to it getting larger, then that's meta-gaming.

"Punishes heroics" is subjective, and bears little resemblance to practical experience.

I'm not sure how you can say that. It's pretty clear. It's 2 + 2 = 4.

Players buy extra dice to be heroic, paying for those extra dice with Threat Points.

The GM then uses Threat Points to add obstacles to the game.



That's pretty cut and dried. Player wants to be heroic. Player generates Threat in order to have bonuses on a throw. Any Threat generated can be used by the GM to make the adventure more difficult for the characters.

That's a pretty clear relationship, there: If you are heroic now, the GM gets ammunition to make the adventure more difficult later.





[quoteThe end result would be a little more static and restrictive, but it could work. It's unlikely to be in the Conan rulebook, but we've had internal discussions of a basic 'system book' that gives options and different ways to use the system.[/QUOTE]

I'm not the only person who dislikes Threat (and the 2d20 mechanics, in general). I'm just one of the loudest detractors. I'm loud because I'm invested in Conan. Those not as into Conan as I am just don't care and will skip over the game.

I suggest at least putting a side-bar in your game for people like me who can't stand the mechanic. That little bit of page space, even if it is a half or entire page, will translate into more sales, I would think, for those who don't like the meta-game aspects of this game.