Conan RPG's use of British English

mthomason said:
It could be said that deciding to make the mechanics non-d20 was a marketing goof :) I've been in stores where the d20 stuff is on the main shelves near the entrance, and the non-d20 at the back. People are usually gathered around the d20 material, with the odd stray customer wandering into the back for the more "specialist" items.

But marketting LOTR as a more Specialist game system is, from what I could tell, exactly what they were after. They wanted to deviate from D20, but also the system they used was the same as Star Trek, and it's a really good one too. Troub;e was, someone over there dropped the ball and/or bit off more than they could chew and there was no plan really for tangential supplementary material.

Plus, and this is a fear I have with Conan, there are some hard-core nutters out ther that know the world and the stories backwards and forwards and those folks were constantly slamming Decipher for poor representation of either the book version, the movie version or both. They put themselves in a position to really be nit-picked and they were. The same could happen to Conan if truly hard-core fans insist on pointing out inconsistancies, but hopefully in this case D20 is so flexible and easy to engineer those bumps will already be smoothed out. I think they will, at first glance anyway.
 
Sutek said:
mthomason said:
Plus, and this is a fear I have with Conan, there are some hard-core nutters out ther that know the world and the stories backwards and forwards and those folks were constantly slamming Decipher for poor representation of either the book version, the movie version or both.

One of the things I liked about Decipher's work was how they managed to cover both the books and movies.

I'm guessing with Conan the inclusion of a chapter on adapting the RPG to the movie version would a) increase licencing costs and b) drive away a good proportion of the (I'm making an educated guess here, someone correct me if I'm wrong) far larger book-orientated audience.
 
I think it's cool as is and can see the potential for a "Thulsa Doom" to be cobbled to gether from the spells at hand. Lycanthropy chnges him into a big-arse snake is all...lol.

So far, I think Mongoose have the right idea and are sticking tightly to the books. If folks want to work up Subatai, there's enough infor on him in the movie dialogue to do so and you're free to come up with the rest. Think is, D20 allows for that kind of flexibility aned variation.
 
Arkobla Conn said:
Let me tell you - I'm a huge LOTR fan
But tell me it's a d6 base game....and I won't even read it.

Like it or not, d20 is the way to go. It's easy - most players understand the mechanics and you can easily inject flavor and special rules. Decipher goofed big time...my guess is, they took a bath on the fact that the masses don't want a different system...they wanted a different (familiar) world.

[rant]

Arghhhh, d20 is taking over the world, and the system isn't really that good either. I buy games that are _not_ d20 just to support those publishers, and to diversify the market. The RPG market does not need a standard system to work and be great.

I have the old Judge Dredd RPG from Games Workshop, and although it is an archaic system, it works for me and I'm not interested in Mongoose's d20 variant.

Have already pre-ordered the upcoming Fireborn from FFG, which seems very cool. And uses a new d6 system.

Conan is very good as OGL, at least I didn't have to buy the D&D 3.5 rulebooks. I'm not saying that "all games should not be d20", I'm saying that some are it just to sell better, even if the game would have been better with another system.

Kudos to Decipher for not making LOTR a d20 product.

[/rant]
 
D20 is the Microsoft of the RPG world.

Once you know the rules on how to play, just about everygame you play is identical. The feats are the same. Everything is the same. I recently played CyberD20geek or whatever that game is called at Mongoose. I've pretty much have decided I do not like it. Doesn't not come close to the Cyberpunk or ShadowRun. Though, the GM was from the era of the REAL cyberpunk. Unfortunately, we had players who liked D20 and wanted to give it a shot. I'm pretty much at a point that I will be refusing to play that version.

Yes, Conan is D20 and I play it. But, that is about the only D20 game I will be playing soon.
 
Odovacar's Ghost said:
D20 is the Microsoft of the RPG world.

Once you know the rules on how to play, just about everygame you play is identical. The feats are the same. Everything is the same.
Same feeling here. The "sameness" (everything look/feel the same) of D20 is both a boon and a curse. Some settings requires specific rulesets and not just variations of an heavy hack'n slash system like D20 (which is fine for Conan, of course). I just hope the Linux and other OS/2 of the RPG industry will not die on us. :x
 
Odovacar's Ghost said:
D20 is the Microsoft of the RPG world.

No...it's the Mac of the RPG world, just marketted properly. :)

Odovacar's Ghost said:
Once you know the rules on how to play, just about everygame you play is identical. The feats are the same. Everything is the same.

This "sameness" is what I believe promotes role playing. I wish that the system weren't so transparent in terms of it's dependance on Feat acquisition to be functional, but Conan puts a halt to that by favoring special feats for sticking with the character's prefered class. They also address it in the fact that what are feats in basic D20D&D like Sunder and Weapon Finesse are built in to the combat system rather than taking up Feat slots.

I think where things start going wonky is in the area of D20 being a level based system. I think that adds an element of artificiality that's difficult to overlook, but Conan fixes that too by not having Challenge Ratings or XP per HD awards - you coul splay of three sessions and the GM can simply say "Alright...you people are all 5th level now." Arbitrary level advancement is a spectacular move towards making Conan not play like other D20 environments.

I hear people say they don't like D20 and the only reason the ever give is "everything is D20" and that doesn't reall spell it out very well. It's not a criticism of the system, but more a criticism of the market saturation. I don't mind either, given the period between when I was about 16 years old and now where the only game system anybody liked was White Wolf, and even that was a rare find. (lol)
 
I like different systems. Once you know the rules on one game (D20), you can play it in any setting. Great! But, that is quite boring. Similar to eating nothing but pizza. One day you eat mushroom pizza, the next spinach pizza, the next human heart pizza. It is in the end, the same pizza. Just different toppings. How boring.

So, yes, educate yourself and try out different systems.
 
Me and a buddy came up with a rockin' system, but I'm keeping my mouth shut until everyone is really good and apathetic about d20 liek...totally through and through, ya know....

...almost there...

:lol:
 
Anonymous said:
Arghhhh, d20 is taking over the world, and the system isn't really that good either. I buy games that are _not_ d20 just to support those publishers, and to diversify the market. The RPG market does not need a standard system to work and be great.

I have the old Judge Dredd RPG from Games Workshop, and although it is an archaic system, it works for me and I'm not interested in Mongoose's d20 variant.

Have already pre-ordered the upcoming Fireborn from FFG, which seems very cool. And uses a new d6 system.

Conan is very good as OGL, at least I didn't have to buy the D&D 3.5 rulebooks. I'm not saying that "all games should not be d20", I'm saying that some are it just to sell better, even if the game would have been better with another system.

Kudos to Decipher for not making LOTR a d20 product.

[/rant]

Have to say that I disagree. The bonus to d20 products isn't that it makes them sell better. Having helped run a gaming group for several years for 30+ gamers and having worked in a gaming shop since before d20 up until recently, I found d20 to be a bonus.

The rules are fairly simple. This means you can easily introduce the game to new players, especially younger ones. This brings more fresh blood into the gaming community which will in the future give us more designers, writers and of course, players.

The rules are shared over many systems. This means that people can try out a new game without having to wade through too many new rules and can get a feel for the genre of a game to determine if they like it at minimal cost. If they do, they can then try systems based in that genre that are not d20 and will not mind paying out for a new system that they are more sure they will like.

I actually found that the advent of the d20 system boosted sales of non-d20 games. For instance, an awful lot of gamers start out with D&D as its an old favourite. Everyone seems to know someone who plays. If they already know the rules then it isn't so hard to say, pick up a d20 Call of Cthulhu book and give that a try. Not a huge outlay for a new system, whereas buying CoC straight out without being sure you'll like it really does break the bank for a lot of players. Most people that then tried this moved on to the full rules as they didn't think d20 worked properly for it.

D20 works wonderful as a way of introducing people to systems they would otherwise shy away from. Since d20 became popular we have sold more of our non-d20 systems as we find a larger customer base, and people more prepared to give things a go.
Over the years gamers had started to get a lot older and hardly any new blood was filtering in...I think its been fixed now.
 
Have to say that I disagree. The bonus to d20 products isn't that it makes them sell better. Having helped run a gaming group for several years for 30+ gamers and having worked in a gaming shop since before d20 up until recently, I found d20 to be a bonus.

The rules are fairly simple. This means you can easily introduce the game to new players, especially younger ones. This brings more fresh blood into the gaming community which will in the future give us more designers, writers and of course, players.[/quote]

Well, I did rant, so it might not have been a cohesive post overall.

Of course many products are made d20 to sell better. Publishing RPG books is still a business, and when a huge company sets a standard (and sells huge amounts of books too), others are bound to think that "if we make this product d20, it might sell better". They don't do d20 to make their system more accessible.

The rules are not fairly simple! They are actually very cumbersome. There have been lots of games that went to d20 from a much easier and faster system. I don't want to get into details, but I find that point quite obvious. The only thing that makes it easier in other games is many players have already taken the time to learn the system. But its still not simple.

Funny thing is that even though its a complex system, its not especially realistic one. And its not balanced for combat at higher level characters at all. Some games like Conan do balance the system better by removing magic and items. Those two create horrenderous problems and a nightmare for the GM in a high lvl D&D game.

There are no perfect systems. Other systems than d20 might have big problems too. But I don't like d20 in each and every game.

And I'm really sorry for highjacking this thread.
 
Busty Wench said:
The rules are fairly simple. This means you can easily introduce the game to new players, especially younger ones. This brings more fresh blood into the gaming community which will in the future give us more designers, writers and of course, players.

D20 rules aren't that simple. Buffy RPG is simple, Ghostbusters is simple.
 
Excellent. This is starting to sound like an argument is what is a better gaming system. D20 or non-D20. In the end, I guess is to each their own. If you like D20 then fine. If you like other systems then fine.

Me, I think D20 is a stepping stone. It starts you at the BASIC level. From their you can advance to more advanced systems. I believe d20 is a good game to introduce children into the system. Other systems, probably take a bit more upper brain power to understand fully.

Then again, some people I know love D20 cause you can create a million and one different critters and what not.

This thread ----->http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=44315 shows some of what I'm talking about.

Just plain madness.
 
Anonymous said:
The rules are not fairly simple! They are actually very cumbersome. There have been lots of games that went to d20 from a much easier and faster system. I don't want to get into details, but I find that point quite obvious. The only thing that makes it easier in other games is many players have already taken the time to learn the system. But its still not simple.
Yes, yes it is. My experience is that d20 falls just to the "easy" side of "average" as far as systems go. There are systems out there, mostly narrative type and some dice-pool, that you can jump right into within 10 minutes of picking up a rulebook (Buffy/Unisystem comes to mind). Then there are the more complex dice-pool systems (Shadowrun) and bell-curve systems (GURPS) that make d20 look like an excersise for first-graders. All things considered, d20 is a very good mix of mechanical simplicity and game complexity that services a supprisingly broad range of gamers. Also, however many other faillings and shortcommings a level-based system may have there is one thing it does well, and that is scale the player challenge well. Learning to play d20 at low levels is very accesssable for someone new to the hobby and I think that, with the OGL, it has defenaetly been a gateway product to bring many new players into the hobby.


And as an advanced gamer I still like it becaus the system is so transparent and modular. I can cut off hudge pieces of the system and replace them with variants with little dificulty and no need to worry about teaching my group a new system. Very handy.
 
The d20 engine is more dead simple, but it's saturated with too much flexibilty which appears to be complication. It's a simple additive, level based system with attrition based damage built around one permutation curve.

GURPS has a better curve, is skill based and feels more "realistic", Paladium has equations and loads of fluff for density which feels "realistic" and the original Cyberpunk had FNFF for all us gun nuts and was dead brutal which seemed more "realistic".

What d20 did was use the same dice to pull off the effect White Wolf had on gaming and consolidate all the varied rules of D&D previously under one permutation curve and have branches off of that basic principle.

Is it great? Hell no. Is it fun? Is it easy to grasp and get new people involved in? Absolutely. I've had people who've never role played before start digging through books and looking for thier next feat or skill expendatures without being prompted.

The problem is that it's all about min-maxing now. By that, there are a small percentage of feats and skills which are consistantly useful and if a player concentrates on them, he can become a monster, a powerhouse. Is this bad? Not at all, since that's what d20 D&D was designed for. The problem is that this superhero level of capability doesn't translate from other genres (horror, crime, military, western, etc.) and is too easily taken advantage off in anything but a full-on, over the top fantasy setting.

Personally, I think Conan has the best "re-fit" off the d20 base concept so far. I still relies on the d20 curve, but breaks the min-maxing down by giving away many of the base feats for free to all classes. Prowess also relies in some cases off of other skills of feats taken by the character, as in the case of magic creating an interdependance of abilities, which is a totally new concept for d20. Not for gaming, but definitely for d20.

Bottom line, don't mistake too many choices for complexity. :)
 
Another thing we must not lose sight of.. the ability to create d20 accessories and scenarios spawned a host of new RPG companies, including Mongoose :)
 
Faraer said:
I'm English, but if I was doing a roleplaying game based on the works of an American author I'd want to do it in American English. As it is, there's a slight, unnecessary discord between the Conan stories and the Conan RPG books. (I'd also have kept Howard's spellings, such as simitar instead of scimitar.)

I had a minor quibble with that as well, but hey, what are you going to do? :)
 
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