Conan 2nd Edition companion book: Secrets of Skelos

[The King]

There is at least one book totally new : trial of blood (which howver doesn't appear anymore on the schedule).

I have also to point out that Vincent Darlage expressly told us that the Return to the Road of Kings was written for those who already own the Road of Kings sourcebook. There should be thus (hopefully) minimal reprint material.

On the other side, the secrets of Skelos will be 160-pages heavy and I learnt that there should at least be new regional spells.

 

[VincentDarlage]

New Rulebook...
New Road of Kings...
New Scroll of Skelos...
New Bestiary...

When will we get something that's REALLY new? I'm getting pretty much bored by these "upgraded" reprints.

You forgot the Player's Guide. It has new material from beginning to end.

 

[Mongoose Gar]

There is at least one book totally new : trial of blood (which howver doesn't appear anymore on the schedule).

I have also to point out that Vincent Darlage expressly told us that the Return to the Road of Kings was written for those who already own the Road of Kings sourcebook. There should be thus (hopefully) minimal reprint material.

On the other side, the secrets of Skelos will be 160-pages heavy and I learnt that there should at least be new regional spells.

Current new stuff in Secrets -
* New spells for all the styles in the core rulebook
* Four new Sorcery styles
* Revised research and spellbook rules
* New rules for cults
* Expanded War of Souls rules
* More GMing advice and resources
...and I still have at least 30 more pages to fill.

 

[The King]

...and I still have at least 30 more pages to fill.

I wouldn't mind if you would use these pages for an adventure or something to "configure" demons (something akin to the old Stormbringer rules from Chaosium) with several demonic features and feats demons could be created from.
In fact I think of the sorcerer tells the GM what kind of demon he needs and the GM computed all the requested charactéristics/feats/skills/power and tell the player how much XPs this kind of demon will cost him to summon.

 

[Vortigern]

Indeed. Demon generation rules would be a godsend, so to speak.

 

[VincentDarlage]

I wouldn't mind if you would use these pages for an adventure or something to "configure" demons (something akin to the old Stormbringer rules from Chaosium) with several demonic features and feats demons could be created from.

In fact I think of the sorcerer tells the GM what kind of demon he needs and the GM computed all the requested charactéristics/feats/skills/power and tell the player how much XPs this kind of demon will cost him to summon.

I had written something like this back when I was assigned the Bestiary (Mongoose cancelled that assignment, though, opting for someone else to write the book. I guess I could send my demon-creation engine to Thulsa for his site). I haven't seen the Stormbringer version. That sounds interesting.

 

[Prof.Dogg]

Vincent, I've started using some of the Elric d20 rules in my Conan game (I have some Pan Tangians pirates and sorcerers raiding the Vhilayet Sea through some gates they've cooked up). The demon generation engine they have is flexible and very easy to convert but a probably a little iffy on the balance factors (it was originally a 3.0 product). The great thing about Conan d20 however is that the emphasis on mechanical balance is less important than the emphasis on story balance.

Check out

http://catalog.chaosium.com/product_info.php?products_id=60&osCsid=b72d18eabe5377cbb281e8ab8b8ff5de

for the Chaosium rulebook.

 

[The King]

Yes, that could be a good idea to forward it to Thulsa, but perhaps Gareth can include it too.

I can't remember the D20 version of Elric. In the BRPG system, the cost to summon was paid with Magic Point. It was very expensive to summon something useful but you could always stack some MP, but this should go in line with the Conan OGL system.
Basically in this system, you could for instance want a creature that spit acid (or fire or web), with wings, with horns (to gore opponents), which could regenerate, have a very developped scent, have some knowledge about specific subject, etc... and all this special features did cost MP.

You may probably talk about this with Lawrence as he is developping the RQ Stormbringer for Mongoose and already worked on the Chaosium system.

 

[Trodax]

Current new stuff in Secrets -
* New spells for all the styles in the core rulebook
* Four new Sorcery styles
* Revised research and spellbook rules
* New rules for cults
* Expanded War of Souls rules
* More GMing advice and resources
...and I still have at least 30 more pages to fill.

Sounds nice.
Are any of the Sorcery styles new new, or are they the ones we have seen before (Cosmic, Immor(t)ality and the two from Pirate Isles)?

As for the 30 extra pages to fill, I think it would be fun with some examples of sorcerous cults and societies and adventure ideas for using the same (cults other than known ones like the Black Hand, I mean, as I assume these are already in there). Wouldn't mind if a touch of Cthulhu-esque horror was thrown in either. No 30 pages of prestige classes and feats please!

 

[Mongoose Gar]

Cosmic (now expanded with several new spells) and Immortality (also with a new trick or two) are in there as well as four new styles.

 

[The King]

I just find the link to the Mongoose RQ Elric : http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=30808

 

[Trodax]

Cosmic (now expanded with several new spells) and Immortality (also with a new trick or two) are in there as well as four new styles.

Oooh, interesting! Any hints/spoilers as to what these new styles might be?

 

[Mongoose Gar]

There are three new 'thematic' styles - Fire Magic, Frost Magic and Serpent Magic. They're all designed to have a wide variety of effects based around a particular theme. There's also Hedge Magic, which is a low-power style mainly intended for NPCs and Dabblers.

 

[azoth999]

I want to know how backward compatible the 2nd edition is with the old stuff.

I've recently acquired the 2nd Ed Rules. Am still pouring through them to see what's changed. By and large thus far, nearly everything is compatable with previous sourcebooks. The main changes thus far that I've ran across are the integration of the Temptress class into the classes in the core rulebook (with some sensible revisions there vs Hyboria's Fallen version), some other class revisions, some revisions to the races section which also seem quite sensible, and perhaps some minor changes to the combat section which clarify some things.

I haven't made it too far into the sorcery chapter yet to see how much things have changed in the details yet. But, thus far, my overall opinion is that all the old sourcebooks remain quite useful. The main areas that will differ thus far I've noted above.

If I see anything down the road, I'll try to post more. Overall, I'm impressed with the layout and presentation of the edition. One thing I personally would have wished for is a quick reference summary of charts, tables and key rules in a manner that I would not to be flipping through the book to locate things on the fly. But that's not much of a change from the past editions. Thus, as I've done in the past, I'm making my own quick reference sheets in Excel for my own usage.

AZOTh999