How do you run a conan campaign?

[parejf63]

Hi again, first off, I was on these forums a year or so back as Koski, I had a bout 500 posts. One day, I got an attitude sold my books, and I left the boards.

That was a mistake on both parts. Since then, I have gotten the 2nd edition books back. I also have the orginal version.

But the question remains, "How do you run a Conan Campaign?"

I am not asking this for the ideas, as I have my own, I am asking this for the purpose of knowing how others run thiers...

Thanks for any responses...

And it is good to be back...

PS I am on Dragonsfoot forums as MILO

 

[Spectator]

Generally I need players to be consistent in their attendance.
I have my girlfriend usually mosey around the house in scanty clothing, taking care to giving them a quick look, smile, and then scampering to the bedroom where they may hear some inappropriate sounds accompanied by a mechannical sound. This works every time.
She then comes out, relaxed and happy, brings us a cold beer or three, and then asks them about their characters.
Needless to say they are distracted a bit, but attendance is never a problem.

 

[Hervé]

Welcome back, Koski!

 

[flatscan]

Generally I need players to be consistent in their attendance.
I have my girlfriend usually mosey around the house in scanty clothing, taking care to giving them a quick look, smile, and then scampering to the bedroom where they may hear some inappropriate sounds accompanied by a mechannical sound. This works every time.
She then comes out, relaxed and happy, brings us a cold beer or three, and then asks them about their characters.
Needless to say they are distracted a bit, but attendance is never a problem.

ROTFLMAO

Epic post. :shock:

As to my game, I encourage players to bring food and drink to the games by awarding Fate Points. We play twice a month to allow other activities and responsibilities on weekends, we play on Saturdays from noon to 6. I try to emulate REH's word usage and fast paced action as much as possible. Like the Conan stories, my campaign is episodic with little to no connection from one adventure to the next. Character progression is relatively slow with 3 years into the campaign the PCs have completed 10 adventures and just hit level 8. The reason being is again inspired by Howard and the 19 tales he told of Conan's adventures. At this rate we should hit something like 22 adventures and the PCs will be lvl 20 (possibly before as I'd like to have an adventure where the PCs are as high in power as they can get and explore what they do with it).

 

[David St-Michel]

Attendance.

Fun with the players.

Interesting characters.

I run my game like I'd want a DM to run any game; with passion, with fun in mind, with ease on rule and depth on story. A generous sprinkling of blood, gold and wenches.

 

[parejf63]

Thanks for the responses, and yes, some were hillarious.
But I was referring too the tone, feel, and howardesqe approach to your games, not what the women do to attract players! :roll:

 

[PrinceYyrkoon]

Generally I need players to be consistent in their attendance.
I have my girlfriend usually mosey around the house in scanty clothing, taking care to giving them a quick look, smile, and then scampering to the bedroom where they may hear some inappropriate sounds accompanied by a mechannical sound. This works every time.
She then comes out, relaxed and happy, brings us a cold beer or three, and then asks them about their characters.
Needless to say they are distracted a bit, but attendance is never a problem.

I guess theres a waiting list for your sessions?

 

[PrinceYyrkoon]

Hi again, first off, I was on these forums a year or so back as Koski, I had a bout 500 posts. One day, I got an attitude sold my books, and I left the boards.

I got rid of some stuff one time. Ive regreted it ever since. NEVER get rid of your stuff, guys!

1st Ed D&D, mint Giants series and other modules with monchrome covers, Slavers series, Greyhawk, 1st ed Forgotten Realms, Brown crayon RQ, Big Rubble, Pavis, early RQ stuff, 1st ed Harn & mags, 1st Ed Call of Cthulhu with supplements, Traveller, Traveller 2300, Mega Traveller, complete with Digest Publications mags, 1st Ed Stormbringer, 1st Ed Dragonquest, 1st ed Hawkmoon, 1st & 2nd ed Twilight 2000, Bushido, the list goes on. It makes me weep. I got a few back, but at a bit of a cost.

Never get rid of stuff.

 

[flatscan]

Never get rid of stuff.

I vehemently approve this message! I too got the insane notion to purge my gaming book collection once, for me it was in college. I thought I'd "outgrown" RPGs and needed to focus on more serious things in life. Didn't play for several years, then went into a Hastings book store and saw the Conan Atlantean edition on the shelf. My resolve broke then and there. And since that day I've re-purchased all the books I'd erroneously purged. The expense to my wallet was great as was the joy in my heart at having all those games again, even some I knew I'd never play again but had fond memories of. Let this be a lesson to all the gamers of the world, never let go of your game books. You'll only be buying them again sometime down the road. 8)

 

[PrinceYyrkoon]

Yes! All you people! Beware the voice that says youve 'outgrown' something.

 

[zozotroll]

How about things you just dont like? If I could find some sucker, or should I say properly motivated individual, I certainly would unload all my GURPS stuff. Not that I have outgrown it, I just dont like the system.

 

[Spectator]

Hah, I totally ditched everything in 2006. My parents had a steamer trunk full of 1st Ed ADD, Paranoia, Pendragon, Runequest, Elric, Shadowrun, Wharhammer FRP (one of my all time favorites), MERP (ICE edition), TMNT, Marvel Superheroes, Batman RPG, and god knows how many White Dwarf Mags too. It went the way of the city dump.
I had the Conan Book in 2004 and that's it.
I "PirateBay-ed" a lot of Pdf Torrents or whatever recently, but Conan and Slaine are the only two recent systems I got.

I guess the hardest part about it is that you Really NEVER use the old stuff, though, so Guess the ideal would be sell it on Ebay. The next hardest part is telling your girlfriend you hang w. a bunch of guys and pretend to battle sorcerors while wearing fur speedos.

 

[Majestic7]

We just had adventure number #61 last Saturday, so the campaign log is lagging something like 30 sessions behind! I hope we can catch up the pace before the campaign ends...

http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/conan-ae

As to how... my idea is to mix sword & sorcery with lovecraftian feeling. The game has migrated towards higher fantasy scale since three characters are sorcerers. Four, if you count active cohort traveling with the player characters. (A priestess of Zath married to Dionysos)

I've allowed the players to make any kind of characters they wanted to. I could have simply forbidden them from making sorcerers, but I wanted to see how it would turn out. I'm the kind of GM who sets the scene and then lets the players do whatever they want about it, instead of tweaking the world to better fit for the characters.

Interestingly enough, the two original sorcerers are the last original characters still in play. The others are dead or in the case of Barathus, joined the winning team in a Lovecraftian sense.

Thus most of the player characters are more Howardian villains than heroes. They smoke black lotus all the time, buy and sacrifice slaves, follow local laws to the letter when it suits them, use demonic minions and associate with cults and conspiracies. In a way, it fits the spirit of the campaign in a very powerful way - the King in Yellow and all that. They started out pure, but while fighting forces of corruption, have slowly become something despicable themselves. Walking in the darker shades of gray just makes things easier than holding on to moral codes...

Perhaps the campaign will end with the player characters ruling through fear and sorcery...and a group of honest barbarians coming to cleave their heads off.

 

[PrinceYyrkoon]

How about things you just dont like? If I could find some sucker, or should I say properly motivated individual, I certainly would unload all my GURPS stuff. Not that I have outgrown it, I just dont like the system.

You should especially hold onto the stuff you dont like. Thats a basic life-lesson right there.

 

[PrinceYyrkoon]

Yeah, the city dump is the best place for WHFRP.

 

[Darrin Kelley]

Well for the setup, I'd say start the characters off about as far away from Conan as you can get. Running into high powered literary characters can only serve to promote childish attempts at oneupsmanship of that character, or will result in one or more dead PCs. Dead PCs are no fun.

I'd consider dropping the characters in areas that are far enough out on the frontier to keep them out of the way of the big movers in the setting, but give them plenty of room to try to carve out their own place in the world.

 

[David St-Michel]

Hell...

My characters started as slaves rowing to their own inevitable doom. Got caught up in one nasty storm that send the ship crashing into jagged rocks. They swam for an hour or so in the storm to land on an island. They found one another in a cave, and decided that they should work together to survive.

Found an abandonned village, stayed there for a night, made some primitive weapons, fought their way through pirates to steal a ship and bugger off. Oh, and they were witnesses to a throng of Deep Ones attempting to summon up Dagon and hacked their way through a dozen of them as they fled on the ship.

That was game 1.

 

[ferrinwulf]

Get your ideas flowing, use the stories, comics, films, sourcebooks etc, write your adventure (I would guess you have pretty much done that). Make it gritty and add a touch of darkness (slaves, debuarchary, drinking wenching, turn on the blood and guts make your villians evil, have damsels to rescue etc), maybe a hint of Lovecraft now and again and sprinkling of dark humour and your off. Keep the monsters to a minimum though, most antagonists should be humans, use the environment too it can be overlooked, the really good thing is its easy to visualise a lot of the areas in Hyboria as they are all based on past cultures so ancient history and mythology is another good source.

Most importantly let the players explore their characters, my players had never played the game and most were unfamiliar with D20 as a system (although they had played ad&d) so it was a learning curve. The game is very rich with background and as the races resemble past cultures its fairly easy to slip in to the roles and assume a persona. I am now 15 sessions in and the players and me are loving the game and I have a very dynamic party.

I think what I'm trying to say is get the world right, use the stuff above keep it gritty and you and the players will fall in to the Howardian style of play with ease, it will become 2nd nature.