Conan the Roleplaying Game

[Ibram]

Conan is one of my favoret d20 books, and is rapidly coming to replace my PHB as the supplement to my homebrew setting.

 

[scourger]

For me, the core book unnecessarily reinvents the fantasy RPG rules mechanic. What is a D&D barabrian if not patterned after Conan? Conan d20 simply presents too many variant rules for my tastes and for the people with whom I game. I would much rather have seen a book that enabled me to play a cool game (D&D) in one of the coolest settings ever (Hyboria). The Road of Kings is a nice step in that direction, but I doubt anything in the line will appeal to me. I believe the game will suffer a fatal lack of published adventure modules. So, I'll hope for a market correction.

 

[takyris]

Wow. I liked it a bunch. The class abilities did, in my opinion, a great job of making non-magical classes that could shine. Taking a full move while performing a full attack at very high levels? Yes, thanks, I'd love that. Combat maneuvers? Yep. The Dodge/Parry mechanic? Liked it. Rules that make being attacked by a mob still dangerous for high-level people? Works for me.

I thought it was great.

 

[Akrasia]

For me, the core book unnecessarily reinvents the fantasy RPG rules mechanic. ...

Huh? Last time I checked it uses the d20 mechanism. Anyone familiar with 3.x should have no problem with the "RPG rules mechanic" of Conan.

However, I think that it would have been nice if Conan had pursued a "rules lite" approach to its rules. While marginally faster to play than 3.x (mainly due to the removal of 3.x magic), it is still not as "fast and furious" as a Hyboria game should be.

 

[scourger]

For me, D&D already presents all the archetypes. I would have preferred a product that suggested ways to play D&D in Hyboria, not a game that is substantially revised--so much so that it loses its portability to other d20 (or OGL) games. It's not like it's a completely different genre. It's still a sword & sorcery, fantasy RPG. All the new rules are just unnecessary complications of an already complex core rules set. At some point--and it's a difficult point to quantify--all the variants become overwhelming. I think the "rules lite" goal is a great one and could have been achieved with a few simple but dramatic tweaks to the game rather than a near-complete overhaul of the rules system. Small changes that could easily be made by any DM or player to any other source material would have been much better, in my opinion. But, that doesn't sell new rules books.

 

[Ibram]

A point to remember is that the Conan book was ment to be independent of the PHB (that is you can play the game with just the Conan book). That is why there are so many classes and all the rules.

And though some of the PHB core classes mesh rather easily with a Conan style campaing (Fighter, Rogue, Barbarian) others do not fit (Druid, Paladin, Monk).

Finaly the magic system used in the PHB is vastly different from what is found in REH's Conan stories.

 

[Turanil]

Hearing about several people complaining about rules too complex, maybe an option would be to convert the classes and the magic system to the new Castle & Crusades game (a simplified D&D; see this thread ) to have a "fast and furious" Hyborian campaign?

 

[Bill Scott]

Assuming that the picture included in the post is a copy of the edition that he got, it's the 2nd edition.

Question; How can you tell that it's the 2nd? I was'nt expecting them out for another couple months. If they're available already, coolness

 

[DrZombie]

I love the game (and books).While they've tweekd the rules, it's still fairly easy for a DnD player to build from tha basic rules. The changes to the combat system are relatively easy, and the magic system is completely different, wich suits the novels quite well.
Overall a great job, IMHO,


cheers

 

[MonsterMash]

I've only read the core book and I like it. As its designed as a stand alone product it did have to have all the clasess, skills, etc included.