Conan game, or Conan world?

[zozotroll]

Before I started my latest game, i sat down with the players and we discussed what we all expected from the game. One things we discussed was did they want to try to play as close to Coana as they could, or did they juast want to play in a Coana style world?

They all wanted to be thier own PCs. Conan has already been done. And they all had something diofferent they wanted to do. Leaping in sword flailing works best when the Auther wants you to survive. Sometimes it doesnt work so well in a game.

So what do most of you do? Stick to the story line, or forge thier own way?

 

[PrinceYyrkoon]

Ripping in with all guns blazing is the benefit of D20 games, especially at high level. Usually your forwarned that youre in trouble, (i.e., down to 8 hit points). I'd say the thrust of d20 games is combat, sandwiched between short bursts of roleplaying.

 

[flatscan]

My campaign is definitely in the same world as Conan, who currently reigns as king of Aquilonia. Though there has been a change of detail when necessary. For instance, I really wanted to run the PCs through the Mongoose adventure, "The Tower of the Elephant." So in my take on Conan's world, the Cimmerian didn't defeat Yara in his youth and the corrupt wizard still had Yag-Kosha imprisoned in his tower as the barbarian was rampaging on his many adventures. The outcome of the story was quite different than the REH short story with the PCs battling their way up through each floor of the tower which was wonderfully detailed in the adventure. I used the rough maps, e-adventure tiles, and photoshop to create a combat mat for each floor. Worked great. So the PCs battled Yara before they encountered Yag-Kosha. In the end, one of the PCs took control of the Elephant Heart which the Yaggite poured his life-blood into which led to the PC attuning himself to it and gaining a powerful artifact until it was lost during the current adventure.

So I guess what I'm saying is, I use the parts of the world that work best for my campaign and change what doesn't fit. YMMV.

 

[Malcadon]

flatscan is right, you can play the Hyborian Age in any way you wish. Dont forget, the first Conan yarn was a rewrite of a Kull yarn, and Red Sonja was loosely based on Red Sonya from The Shadow of the Vulture - a 16th century pirate-age story. So, recycling is not unusual for the fiction.

I made note about this in the module post about how I like my adventures. I find Conan is best played without the weight of all the canons - unless your a stickler for such details. The point of these pulp yarns, is that they are escapist fantasy, and RPGs should be no different. With RPGs, the plot helps the story to get started, but its the players who get the story moving!

 

[Strom]

GM Responsibility Toward the Conan RPG

 

[zozotroll]

Dont get me wrong. We are certainly in a Conan world, where most conversation with NPCs is insults exchanged over blades. But the players reseve the right to fight smart, not just rush into everything.

The Kushite Barbarian wants to do just that. Watching the Zamoran thief talk her out of it part of the time is great, and a good bit of roleplaying. But those discusions are about tactics, not intenet.

 

[Malcadon]

Dont get me wrong. We are certainly in a Conan world, where most conversation with NPCs is insults exchanged over blades. But the players reseve the right to fight smart, not just rush into everything.

Fights dont need to be mindless brawls. Such tactics may fly with that '4e' boardgame, but in Conan, rushing headlong into fights is suicidal! There are no Clerics to shower the party with healing potion nor are there any Paladins to give healing handjobs! The Hyborian Age is harsh, and the players need to fight smart. The beauty with the Conan game, is that XP is not dished out for killing the baddies and taking their sh!t. Conan XP is vary flexible - you can apply it to anything, even using tactics that avoids combat even if the opponents are vary hostile - like: taking to them, driving them off, setup the situation so the enemies are at a major disadvantage, getting them to surrender, and so on. All sorts of things are possible! What I like about the Conan game is how their are classes that allow for more roguish tactics - namely the Noble, Temptress, and Thief.

A good example of good strategy is with the kitchen/orgy scene from the Conan the Barbarian movie (I wish that video was still available on YouTube). Conan and pals used camouflage and sneaked in through the kitchen. They set fire to the tapestries so they could fight in the cover of smoke and panicking naked chicks (best scenario, EVER! :wink. When bad guys ran up the steps, Conan pushed over the cauldron of boiling green human stew (yum!). There was a big fight, but Conan had the upper hand, and made use of what was at hand (see Use the Battlefield, page 212 of the 2e rulebook).

 

[flatscan]

While I don't agree that 4e brawls are mindless. There's definitely tactical combat and the best skirmishes are when there's something important to the PCs on the line. That can be done in 4e, as any game. Depends on the DM/GM.

But yeah, combat is serious in Conan and I agree, smart play is certainly necessary in this fine RPG.

As to Strom's thoughts on it, the REH stories are fantastic and ideally you let those stories influence how you tell your yarns. Lots of action and danger. Fast-paced narrative. Get your players on the edge of their seats. Forge your own stories. You're not telling Conan's tale, it's been told in a damn fine way already. The PCs in my game for instance have had some interesting things happen to them and the decisions they made certainly differ from Conan's. But they're definitely "living" in the same world where danger lurks everywhere, waiting to strike down the unwary. :twisted:

 

[Hervé]

My PCs are certainly not Conan (he actually doesn't appear in my campaign), but I try to incite them to play "Howard style" heroes in wild and furious adventures in the pulp tradition.

Catching the mood is the trick, not mimicking.

 

[valentinoharrison]

LOL....Malcadon "healing handjobs" Aw man I think I just crapped myself from laughing. You're definitely right about the deadliness of combat. That along with a conceptual "manuscript" in the form REH writings is what makes Conan so different from other games. Not only can you die but its almost expected (fate points). I'd go so far as to say conan wasnt really the star of his stories so much as the world that howard created was.

In his adventures Conan was very careful about picking his fights and used advantage whenever he could. In People of The Balck Circle he didnt attempt to rescue his men by force in stead he kidnapped that nations premiere in an attempt to ransom her for the lives of his men....and it still didnt work out for him.

IN order to keep it seperate fromother games I feel that Conan should have a dark, deadly, gritty, human and desperate feel. Lets remember these stories were written down by Howard but were told to him by "Conan" himself.