Conan in relation to the D20 system

Gromel

Mongoose
As a general question, how well does Conan link with other D20 material? As Conan is the only D20 roleplaying game I own, I'm unsure just how many changes are present in the rules compared to AD&D 3rd edition. Is it simply the classes and feats, giving it the Conan feel, or are there massive changes in general?

The reason I ask is I am considering buying a Diablo 2 sourcebook using the 3rd edition AD&D rules. Since Conan seems to have a far darker feel than typical AD&D, I've decided to attempt to run the Diablo game using Conan rules (also, it's far cheaper). Has anyone else played this sort of thing, and do you think it is possible using the Conan rulebook? Just how well does Conan link with other D20 material?

Thanks in advance
 
To make matters even more confusing, I can find nothing on a 3rd edition of AD&D, but only D&D. Has AD&D been discontinued? If so, is the D20 system based upon 3rd edition D&D, as is Conan? Please, a little help would be greatly appreciated to an old roleplayer, new to the baffiling world of D20.

Thanks again
 
Okay, AD&D is 1st and 2nd edition (THACC0 anyone?), D&D is the new third edition. There is no AD&D 3rd. Many times you will here it called 3E. To makes matters more confusing, there is now 3.5 ;-).

Conan is D20, but, and, it uses most of the 3E rules, but, there are sig differences.

However, you do not need 3E to play Conan, it is standalone.

We could also get into the OGL (Open Gaming License), but ...

Download the 3.5 SRD (System Resource Documents) from the Wizards sight to understand D&D 3E better.
 
Thanks. Now techincally, does this mean I can use a OGL sourcebook in my Conan games, and is the 3E part of the OGL. I'm presuming that Conan and 3E are both using the OGL D20 system?
 
Yes, and no. You could port the different rules between the two. AN OGL game could be a D20 Modern Horror game. In general, most of it would port, but, there would be some issues.

For example, Mongoose's Cybernet game is OGL and D20. But, you would have a hard time getting the rules to match 100% (Conan in cyber space .. ouch .. that just hurts).

D&D is just a sublevel of D20. D20 is the mechanics. Each game uses slightly different rules, or, really different rules.

Overall, if the game source you want to use is basically the same genre .. you could use it. But, there will always be the porting issues.
 
First things first, you can check out the d20 Open Gaming License (OGL) System Reference Document (SRD) for free at the following locations:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/20040121a

http://underdark.iti.fi/~skiriki/SRD/

http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/srd.html

Download, read, understand. It's all free (and legal).

What Conan has done is use the above documents as the starting point, then made some changes.

Conan replaces the SRD classes with new classes with powers and abilities that more closely match the Conan mileu.

d20 armor adds to a character's armor class, making them harder to hit. Conan armor does not make the character harder to hit, but subtracts from damage dealt.

In d20, your armor and possessions and base DEX make you harder to hit. It is assumed that as you rise in level, you get better armor and possessions. Conan assumes the character has few possessions and little magic, therefore all characters have a Defense Bonus based on their level, which makes them harder to hit.

Because armor reduces damage, all Conan weapons do more damage. A general rule is to up the dice one size. d4 becomes d6. d6 becomes d8. d8 becomes d10. d10 becomes d12. d12 becomes 2d8. d20 becomes 2d12.

Also, because armor reduces damage, it takes a lot longer to take down an opponent than in plain d20. Therefore, Conan introduces Armor Piercing and Finesse rules. All weapons have an Armor Piercing value. If your STR bonus + AP value is more than the armor's Damage Reduction (DR), the DR of the armor is halved. Example, your STR bonus is +3 plus the AP of your weapon is 2 equals 5. The target's armor DR is only 4. 5 beats 4 so the armor only blocks 2 pts of damage.

Certain weapons are labelled finesse weapons. For these weapons, you use DEX instead of STR to roll to hit. If your to-hit roll with a finesse weapon beats the target number by a value greater than the DR of the armor, the DR of the armor is completely ignored. Example, you're fighting with a Finesse weapon. You need to roll a 13 to hit an opponent with DR 4 armor. You roll 19, which beats 13 by 6, which is greater than the DR 4. Your attack completely ignores the target's armor and the target subtracts nothing from the damage rolled.

These two rules balance out the extra time it takes to take down an opponent using the DR rules.

d20 offers easy access to healing magic. Conan does not have easy healing magic, therefore many of the classes have more hit points in the form of higher dice sizes.

d20 Initiative is just DEX modifier + any feats. Conan Initiative is DEX mod + REF save bonus + any feats, allowing characters of higher level to have higher Initiative.

d20 provides a single stat increase every 4 levels. Conan provides an additional increase to ALL stats every 6 levels.

d20 magic is common and easily available and cast and have a completely different system than Conan, which assumes that magic is uncommon and difficult to cast.

There might be some other minor differences, but those are the big ones.

When importing weapons from other d20 games, increase damage by 1 die size (see above).

When importing armor from other d20 games, compare AC bonus to other equivalent armor in Conan to determine appropriate Damage Reduction.

When importing NPCs from other d20 games, increase their INIT by their REF save bonus and given them a Defense Bonus equal to an equivalent class in Conan. Fighter = Soldier. Cleric = Scholar. Rogue = Thief. etc. Remove Armor bonus from their AC and add their Defense Bonus from their class. Increase weapon damage (see above) and possibly hit points.

When importing monsters from other d20 games, increase their INIT by their REF save bonus. Remove natural armor from their AC. Divide natural Damage Reduction by 5 and round up. Increase all damage by 1 die size (see above).
 
First download and read the SRD which stands for System Refrence Document from the Wizards' website : http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/srd35
This document contains the "core" rules which are the assumed default rules of all OGL games unless a particular game specifically changes/alters a given rule. Even DnD players default to the SRD to settle rules disputes. This has the effect of creating a common, more or less unified game system which supports many different games/settings.

A brief note about DnD there is no longer any AD&D. Only DnD which is in its third edition of the rules often refered to as 3E. 3E was released in 2000 and about a year ago a revision was released called 3.5 The differences between 3E and 3.5 are significant but minor and mostly of interest only to DnD players. If you know how to play one game you can jump right into the other with little trouble.

A brief overview of the OGL When WotC (thats Wizards of the Coast) released 3E in 2000 they also took an unprecented, darring and noble step and released the Open Game Lisence or OGL. This lisence is a legal document (not a game system) which states, in breif, that any game material whcih has been designated as Open Game Content under the terms of the OGL may be used and reproduced by any other publisher, in whole or in part, without limit, for free, forever so long as that publisher meets two conditions. First he must follow the terms set forth in the OGL which include, among other things, reproducing the copyright notice(s) of the origional work(s). Secondly any origional material which the publisher may produce that is derived or modified OGC automatically becomes OGC itself and thus becomes free for all other publishers to use (including WotC if they so desire) so long as those other publishers also conform to the OGL. It is important to note that DnD is not OGC but rather WotC released the SRD as OGC. The SRD contains nearly all of the rules nesicary to play the game except for rules for character creation/advancement which remain the copyrighted property of WotC.

Conan is an OGL game. It uses the SRD ruleset as a basic starting point for its game system but then modifies and derives new rules from that point to create a new game using the old system (think of it as an elaborate set of house rules). Those rules are then themselves OGC and other publishers could produce material compatable with Conan and distribute it (and how we wish they would: :wink: ) Intresting side note: Conan contains some non-derivative rules for character creation/advancement which is not OGC, you can read the copyright notice on the front title page if you care.

A brief overview of d20 you may also notice some people talking about d20 or the d20 System when talking about 3/3.5 and OGL games. The d20 System is a tradmark established by WotC to indicate when a product is particularly compatiable with DnD and/or one of WotC's good budy pals. WotC itself produces d20 games which are not in fact OGL games (they can do this because they own the origional copyright to the system which spuerscedes the OGL) most notably the DnD books themselves and the d20 Star Wars game. Other publishers can publish d20 games (which are almost always OGL because non-WotC publishers use the SRD) so long as they meet certain requirements in the d20 lisence which are in addition to the OGL. A game can be OGL as outlined above without being d20 compliant. This can be a little confusing because the underlying game system is often refered to a the d20 system (for its use of the twenty-sided die) while the phrase "d20 System" is a trademark and protected under trademark law. Thus you will often hear gamers calling a game a d20 game but the d20 logo will not appear on the cover, only the OGL logo.

Conan is OGL and is a d20 game but is not a "d20 System" game. Notable material which Conan contains which would be a violation of the d20 lisence, if they were atempting to hold that lisence, are the inclusion of rules for character creation/advancement and the inclusion of sexual themes (nudity) which violate the d20 quality standards.

If you are still interested after all that nonsense you can check out this page here: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/welcome and here: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/20040121a for more information.

Disclaimer: IANAL YMMV


So, what does all that mean for you as a new convert to OGL gamming? Well Evilschemer did a prety good job already of otulining some of the important differences between Conan and DnD. The big ones are armor providing DR instead of AC, classes giving you a bonus to your defence, severall other subsystems related to those two changes, some non-standard character creation/advancement rules, and a compleate and total overhaul of the magic system. But you don't really need to worry about all that! The beauty of the OGL is that most games using it are very similar, particularly the core mechanic: roll 1d20 add your relevant modifiers and if you equal or excede a target number you sucede. If you know how to play Conan and you have read and understood the SDR then you can probably jump into almost any other OGL game with only a few hours learning curve. Learn a few different systems and you will quickly see how the underlying mechanics of the system interact with each other and how they can be changed or ported from one game to another. OGL tends to be very modular as a general rule and it is fairly easy to replace mechanics in one game with mechanics from another. Even Conan itself blends mechaincs from the SRD and MSRD. I do not have Diablo d20 but I imagine that you should have little problem running it with the Conan rules. The only warning that I would offer is that it sometimes helps to have a little seasoning with a ruleset before you go mucking about with it. But that is true for every game.

Anyways I hope that this helped, if you have any other questions feel free to ask.

Later.
 
Very informative. Now under OGL however the publisher can state that certain parts are not OGL such as Proper Names and certain fictious histories and situations that a publisher would create, am I correct in this??
 
Unfortunately, the Diablo he is referring to isn't d20, it's 2nd AD&D, complete with THACO, reverse AC, and no ability modifiers.

You might go to www.wizards.com and download the 2nd edition to 3rd edition conversion rules, as the Diablo supplement won't be directly portable over to Conan. Though you can ignore all the game stats except levels, HD, and ability scores, and build up everything from those three core components.
 
Evilschemer said:
Unfortunately, the Diablo he is referring to isn't d20, it's 2nd AD&D, complete with THACO, reverse AC, and no ability modifiers.
Maybe, maybe not. There are a couple of Diablo materials out there, and one of them is designed to be 3E. The boxed set and a couple of the modules is 2nd Edition, but at least one is newer with the revised logo and 3E statistics.

I'm not posting from my home, so I don't have the product names handy. Sorry. :(
 
Maybe, maybe not. There are a couple of Diablo materials out there, and one of them is designed to be 3E. The boxed set and a couple of the modules is 2nd Edition, but at least one is newer with the revised logo and 3E statistics.

Oh, my mistake. I didn't know about the 3E one.
 
kiln publications said:
Very informative. Now under OGL however the publisher can state that certain parts are not OGL such as Proper Names and certain fictious histories and situations that a publisher would create, am I correct in this??

That right, there is a provision in the OGL for Product Identity which covers the creative fantasy stuff that is not game mechanics. For example: the King Conan stat block is OGC but the name "King Conan" at the top of the block and his physical description and described manerisms in the stat block are Product Identity and protected. A publisher is responsible for clearly identifying what parts of a work are OGC and what parts are Product Identity (anything that is not OGC or product identity falls under normal copyright rules, for example: the Hyborian Age essay chapter in the Conan book).

Good luck.

IANAL
 
The reason here too that I asked this question was for our 2087 (TM) product. Which I was concerned over the proper names we created for our NPC's. Just making sure I am dotting my i's and crossing my t's.
 
argo said:
That right, there is a provision in the OGL for Product Identity which covers the creative fantasy stuff that is not game mechanics. For example: the King Conan stat block is OGC but the name "King Conan" at the top of the block and his physical description and described manerisms in the stat block are Product Identity and protected. A publisher is responsible for clearly identifying what parts of a work are OGC and what parts are Product Identity (anything that is not OGC or product identity falls under normal copyright rules, for example: the Hyborian Age essay chapter in the Conan book).

IANAL

Although, apparently some things aren't protected by the U.S. Copyright Act of 1978. Study the U.S. Copyright Act of 1978 closely: www.copyright.gov . For example, names aren't protected, neither are ideas. A name like Mary cannot be protected by Copyright, and a name like Conan (a real Celtic name) is similarly unprotected. The Robert E. Howard character Conan is protected by Copyright, though. It's (he's) owned by Conan Properties International, inc. A situation I find deplorable as Howard's stories are approaching "the 70 years after his death" time limit. :(

IANAL (although I should be to prevent from being pummeled by the trial lawyers of the US).
 
kiln publications said:
So when the time period after Howard's death is up do the stories become public domain? I know some things can be renewed.....

Unless CPI has renewed the copyrights already, yes . . . the original stories will pass into the public domain 70 years after Howard's death. Around 2007-2010 AD.
 
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