Empires of the Hyborian age What happened to it???

[zozotroll]

One of the problems with simple systems is that PCs start looking more alike. I started in 1977 with the first 6 DnD books. Other than stats, all fighters where pretty much alike. Then a year later, RQ came out, and you could be whatever, and have big differences between PCs.

Then DnD 3.x came along, and you could have very different fighters, but still have the class system. Conan seems to support that. I dont know that I am interested in a game that has so few choices that you can bang out a good PC in 10 minutes. I like more options than that.

 

[Dark Mistress]

PrinceYyrkoon not saying you are being partizan. I am just saying a lot of the stuff you are saying is the exact same thing lots of people where saying back in the late 90's.

I only pointed out that after that 3e came out which is argueably more complex than 2e DnD and it was a huge success. Which is why I question about the simple rules be the wave of the future cause I have been hearing it for over 10 years.

Plus TT RPG's need to focus on things MMORPG's can't do. I am not sure simple rules is a the answer. I mean game play and combat will always be better in MMORPG's cause they computer does all the work. TT games need to focus I think on story, indepth character creation and interacting with a indepth and rich world.

As I said I am just saying I don't buy the arguement about simple games and why is all. Not saying you are wrong only saying I think you are and why. But for each it is just a opinion and nothing more, so who knows.

We should know in 10 years.

On a aside note about the success of selling being set at 100-150k books. Just as a FYI Paizo has said that the preorders of their new D20 Pathfinder book has far exceeded their expectations. Which they based off the 50k beta rules download number. How does that mean they have sold? I have no clue but it sounds like they might very well be hitting those numbers on preorders alone. I am sure they included preorders from distribution chains as well.

 

[PrinceYyrkoon]

I think the complexity came from when rpgs were a new way to play games, a whole new medium. The rules tended to try to adjudicate for every eventuality, in a game where you could conceivably do anything, the rules had to address every possibly outcome.

I remember one early Call of Cthulhu scenario which detailed some poor guys chattels saying something like, 'on the table, there is a set of silver salt and pepper shakers, worth $5 as a set', or something. As if the players would play the same way they played D&D.

Thing is though, players dont need much encouragement to play within the structure that game describes. No Call of Cthulhu supplement details the worth of condiment containers these days, its not part of the game. Roleplaying now has more clearly defined parameters, theres no need for huge complex rules for this or that. Today, people know that individual games are about this or that, not everything. Hence, we can have games that detail certain things and broad brush other things. Complexity when its needed, simplicity when its not. Streamlining all those behemoths of the past.

 

[PrinceYyrkoon]

PrinceYyrkoon not saying you are being partizan. I am just saying a lot of the stuff you are saying is the exact same thing lots of people where saying back in the late 90's.

I only pointed out that after that 3e came out which is argueably more complex than 2e DnD and it was a huge success. Which is why I question about the simple rules be the wave of the future cause I have been hearing it for over 10 years.

Plus TT RPG's need to focus on things MMORPG's can't do. I am not sure simple rules is a the answer. I mean game play and combat will always be better in MMORPG's cause they computer does all the work. TT games need to focus I think on story, indepth character creation and interacting with a indepth and rich world.

As I said I am just saying I don't buy the arguement about simple games and why is all. Not saying you are wrong only saying I think you are and why. But for each it is just a opinion and nothing more, so who knows.

We should know in 10 years.

On a aside note about the success of selling being set at 100-150k books. Just as a FYI Paizo has said that the preorders of their new D20 Pathfinder book has far exceeded their expectations. Which they based off the 50k beta rules download number. How does that mean they have sold? I have no clue but it sounds like they might very well be hitting those numbers on preorders alone. I am sure they included preorders from distribution chains as well.

Well, apart from D&D, the biggest selling rpg is Call of Cthulhu, which has sold almost 250,000 copies, this of course is over almost 30 years, and includes every edition. Pathfinder is interesting, its kind of D&D 3.75, will it have the same sales as a new edition of D&D? Maybe. But probably just a healthy fraction.

Usually, if you look at a hobby magazine, in the eighties, it would have a circulation of 60,000 - 80,000, these days, its something like 15,000 - 20,000 copies. Id say you are doing extremely well to sell 20,000 copies of any rpg book, and it will frequently be substantially less.

 

[rabindranath72]

One of the problems with simple systems is that PCs start looking more alike. I started in 1977 with the first 6 DnD books. Other than stats, all fighters where pretty much alike. Then a year later, RQ came out, and you could be whatever, and have big differences between PCs.

Then DnD 3.x came along, and you could have very different fighters, but still have the class system. Conan seems to support that. I dont know that I am interested in a game that has so few choices that you can bang out a good PC in 10 minutes. I like more options than that.

For us it works fine. And it's also easily houseruled, so for example I added very simple rules for background, so a fighter who chose one option was better at hunting, for example; another was better at horsemanship; yet another was a better tactician etc. etc. Then we have weapon mastery etc.
We just used Fighter, Thief and a variant Magic-User with the spells adapted from the d20 Conan book.

 

[Demetrio]

Hey, Flatscan, now I think about it, RQ was really dead by 1984/5 - when it ditched Glorantha, so my comments really apply to the years '79-83ish rather than the 80s as I originally said. I'm pretty certain CoC was nowhere near as big by '83. It certainly had far less space in Games Workshop (when its shops were general RPG shops, rather than the current incarnation of GW) Traveller might have outsold RQ in those 5 or so years but its books were cheap compared to D&D and RQ rules and - especially -modules so a unit for unit comparison isn't quite right (I think anyway).

 

[ferrinwulf]

To me the biggest issue is cost and the fact that my group is half way through a campaign. A new system for Conan would be pointless for me as I'm not stopping the campaign and changing the rules to fit the new material. like most people having spent a truck load of money on D20 I don't want to start buying all over again. I do love the Conan game and the mongoose products, if conan had been RQ from the start I don't think it would have mattered though. Lets hope with the Pathfinder RPG due out soon Mongoose are just adjusting it to fit these new and in my view very good rules for D20.

 

[zozotroll]

Hey, Flatscan, now I think about it, RQ was really dead by 1984/5 - when it ditched Glorantha, so my comments really apply to the years '79-83ish rather than the 80s as I originally said. I'm pretty certain CoC was nowhere near as big by '83. It certainly had far less space in Games Workshop (when its shops were general RPG shops, rather than the current incarnation of GW) Traveller might have outsold RQ in those 5 or so years but its books were cheap compared to D&D and RQ rules and - especially -modules so a unit for unit comparison isn't quite right (I think anyway).

Actualy, if RQ was really dead we would not be haveing this discusion. After all nobody is worried aout Powers and Perils are they? Or any of the other horde of games that poped out for a few months and disappeared just as quickly.

The ones we discuss are those few that had enough going on to survive. Often it was not the game itself, but the lack of buisness knowledge that killed them. Not that Chaosium was a market genius, but they are still banging out CoC, so they certainly were not the poorest company fron that time.

 

[flatscan]

That doesn't change the point. Yeah, Cthulhu is still around. My point was about RuneQuest. People on this board are claiming OGL as dead. Yet they want Conan to be in a system that's more dead than OGL. It's a system that couldn't hack it back in the 80s and is less popular now than it was when it was 4th or 5th fiddle to D&D. Now I don't even think it would be in a top 20 list of games ppl play. A system that had fucking Ducks as a playable race. For Conan? Yeah, I'll pass.

 

[Teriudin]

I could care less about the system - it was new to me when I started playing conan. Much of the strength of this game is due to the strength of the fantasy realm, not the system.

What I care about is not having my books become obsolete.

If it changes over, one of two things will happen:

A) Our campaign changes over and we have to learn a new system. Not so bad, but I'm not looking forward to the few months of clunkyness as we trudge our way through a new system and all the conversion factors and corner cases. All our books become somewhat obsolete(assuming some sort of conversion) - also bad.

B) Our campaign retains the current rules and ignores the change. We do not get any additional supplements. That sucks, since they tend to inject a little freshness everytime something new is released. Permanent Damage, I'm talking to you! There is the underlying knowledge that we are playing a "dead game" - that also sucks.

I guess some combination of the two could happen, we are upset that we don't get new books becuase we dont' switch over. Then some book is released that the DM just loves and we convert over, so I guess it is the worse of both worlds.

------------

Of course, If we're still playing this 2,3 years from now, then any change might be worth it and we'll look back fondly or less so about this discourse (Of course, assuming the rumors are anywhere near correct)

I honestly don't see that happening - we'll probably switch over to another game environment at some point just to keep the fantasy(or sci-fi) fresh.

 

[zozotroll]

For dead systems, RQ and Rolemaster both sell an amazing amount of books. Like a dead guy running a 100 meters in 10 minutes. Sure thats slow for a living guy, but damned fast for a dead one.

No RQ is not dead. Nor is Rolemaster, nor D20. They are still sold, and people still play them. And likely will many years after 4$ has done the GW thing again and is long gone.

Certainly RQ and RM have never been #1, but so what? If you are not #1 you are not allowed to exist?

I still dont see Matt makeing an announcement here on the Conan board that good things are comeing, when he plans to kill D20 Conan. Just not his style. Wotc, sure they do stuff like that, but not the Goose.

So breath, relax. Lets talk about Thunder River or some such instead of wailing on about something none of us here have any control over.

 

[zozotroll]

If you read the latest Planet Mongoose, Matt says straight out that Conan is not going to change systems. So we can relax and argue about other things. Apperently Vincent is working on a number of cool new Conan books, but we wont know what they are for some time.

 

[zozotroll]

BTW, this is good news for me as well. Altough I would like a RQC, I have way to much invested in D20 Conan to want to see it go away.

 

[flatscan]

(sarcasm) Ducks as a playable race. Really, how can anybody defend this? (/sarcasm)

Maybe it should've been called RuneQuack. 8)

 

[Demetrio]

Ducks were a class act. RQ only failed because Chaosium basically went bust and the company (Avalon Hill) that bought RQ made a hash of it. Now that Mongoose have resurrected it, I'm almost tempted to start back into Glorantha, have been for a few years but I can't really justify the expense... kind of wish I'd kept all my source material...

If Conan's not changing systems (hoorah!) then perhaps the system is being tweaked (if so hoorah! again).

 

[flatscan]

Ducks were a class act. RQ only failed because Chaosium basically went bust and the company (Avalon Hill) that bought RQ made a hash of it.

Duck hash. Now that sounds tasty! :wink:

 

[Demetrio]

You have no soul...

Only the other day I noticed someone had produced an RQ source book all about ducks. They seem very much alive and quacking...

The think I liked about Glorantha was that the intelligent non-human races were very different to humans rather than the humans in fancy dress of most D&D worlds. More like the humanoid alien races in Traveller, but rather more so, being better fleshed out (in the 80s, for all I know Traveller alien races may be incredibly detailed now).

And although ducks seemed on the face of it utterly ludicrous, they had a very good backstory. They also showed that Chaosium, unlike TSR (tm) didn't take itself too seriously.

 

[flatscan]

And although ducks seemed on the face of it utterly ludicrous, they had a very good backstory.

Oh? Can you quack that tale out?

I just don't see the value of anthropomorphized creatures in a game setting. Once played in a HackMaster game with a guy who was playing an Aardvarkian. (shudder) No thank you. I can barely tolerate demi-humans in my gaming. One of the big draws of Conan for me is the diversity of human races and no quack-tacularness at all in the setting. I mean seriously, my players would laugh me out of the house if I told them they were meeting a noble quackbassador or duck knight or something. The extent of the role-play to be had would be trying to figure out how to cook the thing.

 

[Demetrio]

They're not especially anthropomorphic. They're not like humans, other than the fact they can talk (cursed with flightlessness, intelligence and speech). But they don't have human values or human society (or at least they didn't, except in a free BRP adventure), but the initial Chaosium concept, as I understand it was that they were as alien as dragonewts, elves (living plants) and more so than RQ trolls.

They're really no more silly than trolls or dragons. Though they do have a certain inherent comic value, I agree.

I rather agree with you n some ways, I prefer non-humans to essentially be either animals or 'demons' rather than human-equivalent, but a lot depends on the strength of the world. Glorantha was a really strong world. An awful lot of obsessive thought went into its makeup.

And of course, I like ducks.

 

[zozotroll]

As far as suspension of disbelief, ducks are no worse than magic. It is just a matter of what pushes your personal button. For that matter, two weapon fighting is pretty silly. Sword and shield (or sword and board if you preffer) will win almost every time unless there is a big difference in skill level.