Conan in Freeport city of adventure

Camelon75

Mongoose
Whilst I have not yet purchased all the supplements for this city, I am considering it as a base of operations for my new campaign.

Now that I have Conan RPG, I am toying with dropping Freeport into The Hyborean Age.

Has anyone played these and how easy would a translation be to fit Conan. Indeed does it fit at all? :?

Where should I place it and are there any great difficulties I should consider.

How do I translate the level of magic? Cant have everyone dabblers?

Any thoughts would be helpful :lol:
 
Would Freeport fit as a port city in the Baracha Isles? AIR it has sepent-men, which REH had in the pre-Cataclysm Kull tales, so that ought to fit fine. The novelisation of Conan the Barbarian had movie-Thulsa Doom as a serpent man (although personally I preferred the movie keeping it ambiguous), so they could be linked to the Set cult.
 
Re magic - if an NPC needs to be a spellcaster, make them a Scholar and assign or create spells to fit with what they need to fulfil their role in the plot. Eg I'm converting the 2e scenario 'Beacon Point' for Conan. It has a woman known to be a skilled healer - in the scenario she's a cleric, but just giving her high Healing & Herbalism skills, no actual magic, seems fine for Conan. Whereas another character is known as a 'powerful Sorcerer' and much feared - in the scenario he's a Wizard, translating him to Conan he's clearly a Scholar with some fairly powerful spells.
 
Camelon75 said:
Has anyone played these and how easy would a translation be to fit Conan. Indeed does it fit at all? :?

Man, does it fit? Oh yes it fits like a glove!
In fact I have the same idea myself.

Why do I think this is a nice fit?

Well... simple really.

Freeport is very Chtulhu-esque. The whole first three adventures are basically a "CoC" adventure fith fantasy elements. A cult of serpent people from an ancient civilization worshiping the Yellow-Sing (even ripped that one straight off didn't they?) And an evil serpent diety named Yig.... ring any bells? Freeport is all about a sunken civilisation, cultists, intrigue and preventing the cult from bringing forth their god. In a nut shell... CoC!

Why is this a good combo with Conan?

Well Robert E. Howard did a fair deal of correspondance with H.P. Lovecraft. Rumour has it they even helped eachother and stole eachothers ideas, from time to time. Rober E. Howard has used the name Yog-Sothoth in at least one place, and so on. So there definetly IS a close link between these two. The World of conan is also about lost civilisation, evil gods, cosmic voids of insanity and the players quest of trying to bring down the cults plotting to destroy the world. In a nut shell... CoC!

The name Hyperborea is taken from one of the five ancient civilizations that presumably existed thousands of years before man, when continents had still not drifted apart and so on and so forth... all this is stated in the Conan Game, what it doesn't say though is that a 19th century pseudo occult spiritualist named Helena Petrova Blavatsky was the first person that came up with the idea of this civilisation. And she took it very seriously... believed it real even. Both Lovecraft and Howard read and loved Blavatsky it seems cause their work is riddle with references to her work. Lovecraft calls his Evil Toad god Tsathogua King of Hyperborea in a couple of places... and so on...

So yeah if you ask me it is a perfect match.

You will ofcourse have to scrap all the classes and NPC's creating them anew according to the Conan system, or at least I will. But hey!? It's not that big a deal right?

This just has to be done.

/wolf

ps. I could go on for hours about this but I'll spare you the boring details.
 
I now have the trilogy of adventures and hard back and will look to converting the details to fit.

With the NPC sheets provided here on this site I should be able to make small notations regarding which template to use for each Freeport NPC.

One thing though are there NPC professions like "expert" and "warrior" for Conan.

Would help conversion over from d20 D&D.
 
Camelon75 said:
One thing though are there NPC professions like "expert" and "warrior" for Conan.

Would help conversion over from d20 D&D.

Nope, just Commoner & Soldier. For Experts I'd recommend using Commoner but with d6 hp, 6 skill points/level and good Will save, maybe 3/4 BAB although they don't really need it. You can use the Conan Commoner dodge & parry bonuses. I'd just make Warriors straight Soldiers, maybe -1 level, or whatever PC class fits the NPC best - Pirate, maybe.
 
I seem to remember when Freeport first hit the scene that the good folks at Green Ronin actually said they were inspired by Howard's work.

And yes, Lovecraft and Howard corresponded and formed a mutual admiration society. Howard wrote a number of Mythos tales. Naturally, there are some Conan stories that have Mythos-like themes, as well.

I do not own Freeport (although I have read it on TV), but I think it would be an ideal setting for a Piratical CONAN game.
 
Yuan-Ti said:
I
And yes, Lovecraft and Howard corresponded and formed a mutual admiration society. Howard wrote a number of Mythos tales. Naturally, there are some Conan stories that have Mythos-like themes, as well.

Come to think of it... what was the original civilization called where the Serpent People lived in Freeport??? I don't have the book here, but I have a naggin feeling it was Valusia wasn't it?

And if you read closely in one of the "race" descriptions in Conan (can't remember wich at this point... have to check my facts when I get home) I seem to recallt a certain race with a hinte "Racial memory from the serpent people of Valusia"... TA-DA!

BTW: other so-called-lost civilizations (besides Hyperborea) that figure in Occult writings (including Blavatsky's) and that have been used by Both Howard and Lovecraft is: Lemuria, Mu, Valusia and of course Atlantis.

Lovecraft interpreted the Ancient continent of Mu as being the South Pole Plateau... and judging from the Mu continents placing in the Hyperborean Map, I'd say it is pretty close to becomming just that after the rift. Mu is traditionally placed in the middle of the Pacific otherwize, with the several Island kingdoms that exist there today, being the "mountain peaks" of this great continent before it sank into the ocean.

Man I love this shit! :) :lol:

/wolf
 
Anonymous said:
Come to think of it... what was the original civilization called where the Serpent People lived in Freeport??? I don't have the book here, but I have a naggin feeling it was Valusia wasn't it?

Close. It's called Valossa in the books, but it's pretty clear (to me anyway) that it's Valusia. ;)

And Freeport in turn has a lot of crossover with Green Ronin's Mindshadows CS (a vaguely India-type world), so maybe we can use that to flesh out the big continent of Mu on the Mongoose map.
 
Ordovician said:
Anonymous said:
Come to think of it... what was the original civilization called where the Serpent People lived in Freeport??? I don't have the book here, but I have a naggin feeling it was Valusia wasn't it?

Close. It's called Valossa in the books, but it's pretty clear (to me anyway) that it's Valusia. ;)

And Freeport in turn has a lot of crossover with Green Ronin's Mindshadows CS (a vaguely India-type world), so maybe we can use that to flesh out the big continent of Mu on the Mongoose map.

Exactly! I just checked my facts and Yes Green Ronin Call it Valossa, but hey? As close a mach as you will ever get right?

The reference to Serpent-People from Valossa/Valusia is on page 30 in Conan RPG. Under the Pict Religion section.

I also checkecd my CoC rule book but could not find any name on their ancient civilization in there. In "Petersen's Field Guide" (the dreamlands version) the tell us more though:

"This ancient race reached prominence in the Permian Age, long before the first dinosaurs. Their primordial civilization built black basalt cities, fought deadly wars, and mastered profound chemical and hypergeometrical techniques. The species dwindeled in the Triassic. In the Pliocene, Serpent People increased and once again built cities, thriving into early Pleistoncene. /.../ "

Ah well... no mention of Valossa there... you can't win them all...

But we all KNOW the truth right? ;)

/wolf
 
Ordovician said:
Anonymous said:
And Freeport in turn has a lot of crossover with Green Ronin's Mindshadows CS (a vaguely India-type world), so maybe we can use that to flesh out the big continent of Mu on the Mongoose map.

This is exactly what I plan to do with Mu :D

Unsure where I want to drop Freeport yet. The Barachan Isles are a bit to close to the civilized kingdoms for me. I like the idea of using the Southern Isles more and more, or I may just add them in as another small island chain in the Southern Sea.

I also plan on changing Hyperborea a bit. For some reason I have always associated that place w/ an ancient race of witch-kings. I think I may have read that somewhere but I don't remember. I'm going to turn them into frost giants so I can give them an albino appearence so I can add the Melinbonians to the world :D They'll have been in decline for a mileu the general populace will be as described in the book, and the giants just rare figures who are rarely seen and have long ago lost control of the country and just control the areas around their keeps high in the mountains.

And for those who would like to use the serpent-men, white wolf has a supplement out called "vigil watch: secrets of the aasatthi". I picked it up the other day and it has lots of neat ready-made ideas in the book for the Valossa serpent kingdom. Just strip out the the more traditional D&D aspects and add the weird fantasy elements of Conan/D20 Cthulhu.

As you can see as much as I love REH's Conan I'm also really fond of the weird fantasy aspects to the genre, and in the campaign I'll be setting up I'll be pulling those things on to stage just a bit more than they appear in a more traditional Conan game.

Terry
 
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