PrinceYyrkoon said:
I'll say right up front, I'm not familiar with C&C, but, is it that much less complex than D&D (or D20)? It may be a streamlined version, but, I guess the added convolutions arent in D20 Conan for convolutions sake, the addition (or emphasis), comes from attempting to accurately portray the the source material. So, if you take any D20 system, and house-rule it to play in the Hyborian Age, aren't you going to end up with something similar to the Conan rpg? Seems like a lot of work for little gain.
Why not just strip down the system as is? Throw out feats, maybe, scholar as an npc class, (very 'Conan' IMO), have no weapon proficiencies/armour proficiencies, etc.. At least the combat system is the right way round for Conan now.
rabindranath72, if I remember correctly, sir, you were working on a MRQ version of Conan, is that right? Maybe more fruitful? Especially if you gear it towards BRP.
It's much less complex, yes. No feats and no skills, for example. And combat does not need a grid to adjudicate attacks of opportunity or other amenities.
C&C works with a system of broad "ability focuses".
You can easily add to the game, though (feats in particular).
You can surely strip-down d20 Conan to the essentials, but what you end up with, is something really close to C&C anyway.
The only things in d20 Conan distinctive enough from brand d20 are in my experience:
1) Sorcery (including corruption and spells)
2) Armor class increasing with level
3) Armor which absorbs damage
4) Code of honor, reputation, no alignment etc.
5) Faster natural healing
6) Combat maneuvers
In my experience, these are not the parts which make the game convoluted; the core part of d20 3.5 rules are.
It turns out that you can easily port the above bits to core Castles & Crusades, and get a fully working Hyborian Age game which plays much faster than standard d20 Conan, both in terms of combat, character creation, GM preparation time etc.
I have approached the conversion in two different ways, and GMed both (always adding the above elements):
1) Use some of the core C&C classes (namely: Barbarian, Fighter, Rogue, Assassin, Ranger, Knight)
2) Write new classes which mimic more closely the d20 Conan ones (see the start of the thread).
The main stumbling block in all cases is the conversion of races. I am not fond of the way in which the d20 Conan races have been implemented, they depend too much on the skills system and related micromanagement, whereas races in C&C tend to be more strongly archetypal. In particular, in C&C humans get to choose three Primary attributes, whereas demihumans choose only two, but they also have special abilities. I like the broad culture descriptions in the MRQ supplements Lankhmar and Elric, so I went a similar route for the conversions.
I will see if I can post some parts of my updated documents for your perusal.
RE: MRQ, I have abandoned the project in favor of using Stormbringer 4th edition (the version written by Ken St. Andre), which provides a more complete base from which to work (the classes in particular are spot on, and the skills system is very light). I am (slowly) writing the Hyborian Age racial writeups following the outline in the core SB4 book. I will post the details when the material is ready.
I was working on something similar, and I must say that we adapted many things the same way. Great minds etc. etc. 
