Best Scenarios

[Tobester]

Though I'm familiar with Howard's world, and don't mind winging it on overall background, I wondered if anyone could advise me on the scenarios that Mongoose has published thus far? I'm not too bothered about sourcebooks.
What are they about, and are they any good? I realise discussion of quality could be uncomfortable on Mongoose's own forum. Let's just say - could you rank them in order of preference, and give reasons for your decision.
Many thanks.

[VincentDarlage]

I enjoyed running the adventure in Across the Thunder River and I really liked the Heretics of Tarantia adventure.

[Clovenhoof]

Well, all that is _available_ can be found here:
http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/home/ ... qsSeries=7

Plus various stuff available for free in Signs & Portents, also on this site.

I haven't bought/read/played any of the printed scenarios, but as I understand, they are pretty linear (as usual for published scenarios) and made for rather lower level parties. Someone else will have to comment on the quality.

[Trodax]

In this thread I listed what I thought about some of the published scenarios.

Might as well repost what I wrote back then:

The Tower of the Elephant and Heretics of Tarantia are two great adventures, IMO.

Tales of the Black Kingdom is sort of a mini-campaign comprised of three loosely connected adventures (I think we played through the whole thing in roughly six sessions). It has some minor quirks, but there are a couple of threads on these forums that discuss ways to fix them. Overall it is good stuff with a nice Conan-vibe, and we had fun with it.

If you want to quickly get a campaign started, I would recommend you to just get those three books and choose from them what you'd like to run.

There is other stuff as well, though:

Reavers of the Vilayet can probably be a fun adventure, although from reading it there were a few things that felt a bit odd to me. I'll probably try to use it (slightly modified) in the future, though.

The Lurking Terror of Nahab I personally didn't like all that much.

Across the Thunder River has a campaign included (it's about 30 pages, IIRC) that I think could be a lot of fun (I'm thinking of using it for my next Conan game). It's more of an campaign outline, though, and will probably require a little more preparatory work than what you're looking for right now.

Messantia has a 32-page adventure included that was quite decent.

Shadizar likewise includes a 32-page adventure, but this one I wasn't too fond of.

The Conan Compendium includes a number of shorter adventures (was it three?) that I haven't really looked all that closely at.

If you don't mind putting in some extra work, you could probably get a lot of cool stuff out of using the adventure locations in Ruins of Hyboria and the original Conan tales (Ruins doesn't have any ready-to-run adventures, though). It's probably not what you're looking for, but Ruins is such a fun book that I feel a need to recommend it anyways.

Oh, there are also two PDF-only adventures; The Coming of Hanuman and The Black Stones of Kovag-Re. Hanuman is OK, Black Stones not so much.

[Aholibamah]

"The Horror in Numalia" in issue 44 of Signs and Portents is rather good. It's fairly straightforward but with enough info for you to manipulate the plot depending on pc actions.

Also "Slaver Caravan" (which I can link you to if you'd like) is a good starting adventure set in Zamora. It has a premise you can readily adapt if need be--one way or another the pcs join a slaver's caravan going from Shadizar to Arenjun. It's a good way to link any Shadizar based adventures with say something like "Tower of the Elephant" as well. That would be my third choice.

[Tobester]

Thanks for the advice. I wonder though - do some of the published scenarios use locations or characters who end up dead or destroyed during Conan's expoits in print? The Tower of the Elephant, for example, sounds like it can only be utilised in a certain timeframe. This I would view as a weakness.

[VincentDarlage]

That one presumes your Players are going through the adventure instead of Conan.

[Trodax]

Yes, The Tower of the Elephant and The God in the Bowl (in the Conan Compendium) both assume that Conan never had those adventures and that they instead happen to your PC's. If you don't like that, or if your players now their Howard-stuff very well, you might want to skip them.

Those two are the only ones that are like that, though, IIRC. As for "a certain timeframe" that you mention, Heretics of Tarantia takes place during the time when Conan is king of Aquilonia. Didn't really understand if that also bothers you or not.

[Oake]

I'm going to take my players (we're starting next week, The Slaver's Caravan will be their beginning adventure) through the campaigns in Across Thunder River and Tales of the Black Kingdoms. One of them I'll have to adjust for the pc's being a little higher level than the campaigns are set for, but that doesnt look too hard. I like both supplements very much.

[Clovenhoof]

Slaver's Caravan is quite okay, but if I may humbly suggest to take out some of those cheesy elements... ("Buy me, Master"... my eye!)
I haven't run that one by my players yet, but it may well be their next adventure. Slavery is playing quite a role in my world.

[Aholibamah]

Actually I was talking to the guy via email and he's a little bit of a Gor fan--you can kind of tell. So it's a little bit of that slipping into it. I intend to adapt it myself anyway and make it a part of a larger caravan. The other thing that I intend to change is the stats--some of the slave girls are tougher on pure physical levels than the guards! I kind of chuckled to myself--I mean they're depicted as concubine types for the most part not as gladiators! I was picturing one of the slave girls in a paraphrase of Gary Larson saying to another, "Hey, these chains actually break pretty easy!"

Generally what I liked about it is that it is fairly straightforward but has room for roleplay and is a good starter adventure for Zamora which is what I wanted.

[Clovenhoof]

I was picturing one of the slave girls in a paraphrase of Gary Larson saying to another, "Hey, these chains actually break pretty easy!"

Muahahaha I love it!

[Kyorou]

The other thing that I intend to change is the stats--some of the slave girls are tougher on pure physical levels than the guards! I kind of chuckled to myself--I mean they're depicted as concubine types for the most part not as gladiators!

"Move away, thugs... or I release my slave concubine !"

[Majestic7]

I plan to run the Heretics of Tarantia, changed to fit to the Nemedian capital in my current campaign - if the current characters ever get back home alive. It is pretty easy to customize to fit the current plots involving strange cults and I will replace Asure with Ibis. Characters will be personally involved from the beginning, as well.

[Tobester]

Thanks for the tips so far. Another question comes to mind.

Are there perhaps other adventures, concieved by pre-human hands (or what ghastly alien protuberances pass for such), whilst the forefathers of man did yet swing from the trees of steaming jungles? Aye, before even the names of Set, Mitra and Mongoose were first uttered by malformed lips? Could such dusty tomes and broken fragments, if studiously and meticulously gathered and translated by willing scholars or monks, still contain the power to delight? To evoke awe, mystery and wonder, in he whose eyes are granted such otherwordly revelations?

For I recall glimpses, in my distant youth, of AD&D modules bearing the glowering countenence of Arnie on the front cover. Could those scribblings, stridently proclaimed by the hook-nosed merchants of that far off bazaar in Hammersmith, be worth hunting down with tireless fervour, as I would a lion or wolf?
Such truths I seek...

[Aholibamah]

That was kinda cool.

I think that you can probably still get those original three Conan adventures that TSR did, as well as the Red Sonja ones. I remember reading them but thinking "ah, what's the point...now if someone had written up Hyboria as a campaign setting..." but my pcs at the time (way back when) were not all into REH so I didn't bother. Alas!

Certainly you could adapt Call of Cthulhu or Elric nicely to Conan--for instance some parts of Masks of Nyarlathotep would work very well I think for Conan. In particular the adventures set in Egypt and in Kenya.

Also there is Nyambe! http://www.nyambe.com/ which has some good free downloads to whet your appetite for more. If I were not busy with my own game I'd buy it outright. Maybe later.

[Axerules]

Take a look at the sticky "Conan.com & Useful RPG links", at the bottom of page 1, in Bregales post, you will find a lot of useful things, including a very good list of different ressources found on the web (everything's free). There's also a link in the same post to the thread "online scenarios" in this forum were you will find a lot of adventures.