New release

DanFor

Mongoose
"The God in the Bowl" has been added to the future releases for January 2006. It appears to be a follow-up for "Tower of the Elephant".
 
This is my favourite Howard tale. I'll buy this simply for the stats of the creature involved. I'd like to say more, but I'll keep shut incase readers have not read the tale. If not, I urge you too. One of Howards best, personally.
 
Love the tale too, but I'm a bit worried with this trend. The same way I would never gamemaster a Lord of the Rings game where players went to Mt. Doom and destroyed the One Ring by themselves I find it hard to make players substitute Conan in any of his quests, be it the Tower of the Elephant or this one.

Perhaps if it were an unfinished tale, I could find a way to involve players along Conan, but changing REH stories is perhaps too much for me, as it detracts from the main NPC in all Hyboria.
 
Mongoose making large adventures from the fragments and unfinished tales Howard left us, would be brilliant!
 
I agree with Maximo here. Drawing adventures directly from stories will lead to dead ends. Even a book that is a list of adventure seeds based on the gaps and hints that REH left in the books would be cool. No company has ever really done that before - three or four paragraphs, maybe some stats, maybe even a full page or two devoted to something, but not much more. the SG1 RPG was great about that in their season books (at least the two that made it to print).
 
I won't judge the trend until i read TotE, but I am excited by it. I can't wait to get my hands on it.

Since only 1 of my players knows *anything* about Conan except for that movie, retracing his steps is fine with me. As long as *enough* is different, I'm all for it!
 
Well, some of my players don't know the Conan stories as well. Plus I doubt they'd have the integrity to play Conan as well as REH wrote him. While I've not yet picked up my copy of this new supplement, I'm hoping that the quest can be completed multiple ways and not just the way that Conan did it or, as someone else has already said, it would probably just lead to dead ends.

Recreating stuff like this can be fun, especially to those whom are completely virginal to the subject matter. However, it can be dangerous too, especially when, to again cite and example from above, Gollem fumbles his jump check and falls into the lava at Mt Doom thereby leaving Frodo to bugger off with the ring, etc.
 
I am anxious to see the adapted scenarios.

I pushed for them a long while ago, as I felt they'd do quite well. Players aren't always familiar with the original stories, and enough can be changed to make them feel new and distinct. There's a considerable difference between reading about Conan doing something and having to make the choices for yourself.

The old James Bond 007 game did quite well with the adventures adapted from the books and films, managing to offer familiar elements leavened with original twists and turns, and taking the best elements of text and film for the gaming experience.
 
The old stories as adventures are good for many reasons, including:
1. Some people simply want them!
2. Many PCs aren't that familiar and it can be run directly.
3. With a minor tweak, they can be run without affecting the timeline (I did this with Shadows over Zamboula, simply set it before Conan was there with a different priest).
 
I suppose I can see the apeal, but not being one of those folks well versed in Conan stories, plus being wary of pre-packaged adventures based on poor track record from other companies, I'm more than a little leery to plunk down 20-30 bucks on something that I'll use about 25%-50% of or have to do re-writes to make fit. It becomes more of a hassle than it's worth. I've been at this whole RPG thing for something like 30 years now, so this isn't something completely unfounded. (lol)

That said, some of the shorter stories may not need more than about 10-15 pages each and could possibly be put into anthologies of adventures. Short and sweet with just the essentials.

I'd still like to see more straight-up adventure seeds a based on canon, but filling in gaps or going on reasonable tangents jsut in case I play with a hard core Conan canon nut that keeps wanting to re-live the books and play "correct the GM".

I hate those guys...(lol)
 
:idea: You should be delighted to see that Tower of the Elephant is only $9.95!

I have been playing RPG for 25 years or so myself, so I know exactly what you mean. Too often I have purchased supplements that look good but just didn't fit my campaign. However, if a pre-fab adventure can save me a few hours of work prepping for a game, it is easily worth $10 to me. Also since My PCs have just entered Zamora, the timing is ideal! :twisted:
 
slaughterj said:
The old stories as adventures are good for many reasons, including:
1. Some people simply want them!
2. Many PCs aren't that familiar and it can be run directly.
3. With a minor tweak, they can be run without affecting the timeline (I did this with Shadows over Zamboula, simply set it before Conan was there with a different priest).
Hey, I did the same thing (my guys didn't even go to the temple, they got so involved in the house of Aram Baksh, the house was raided by angry slaves/cannibals, but Aram was able to escape the mob/the PCs, and the PCs had a close call escaping themselves. Now they'd love to go back to extract revenge on Baksh!

I did this one because of the story & where the group was/it was easy to tie in to another adventure (based on pastiche-rewrite of non-Conan Howard story).

Me though, I can totally understand Sutek's point, (even though I'm one of those annoying players who eats up the Howard stuff :lol: ) and I'm not a fan of re-writing history anyways, even though I'm placing my group 26 years before The Hour of the Dragon (meaning I don't like the "Conan didn't kill Yara, you guys do instead using this adventure!"). Now, that being said, I'm taking my lunch break to see if the local game store got a copy of "Tower of the Elephant" adventure yet. :p
 
first I like the idea of it being based on the canon works also see a great place for these little adventures as tasters to wet players for a long campain and as short fillers between the epic campains we all map out 8)
 
I also imagine how excellent a campaign made after the adventure of Conan the first movie could be:
- a big sect
- many serpent towers across all the nations
- conditionned people to assassinate the rulers and regents (like the short story "the Kriss").
 
The King said:
I also imagine how excellent a campaign made after the adventure of Conan the first movie could be:
- a big sect
- many serpent towers across all the nations
- conditionned people to assassinate the rulers and regents (like the short story "the Kriss").
Lol. Well, I might have jumped on this years ago, but am not as inclined at present. I think I remember reading or hearing John Milius say that he & Oliver Stone worked that idea from the whole Jonestown incident, although I could be mis-remembering now?

Anyway, TSR's first Conan adventure CB1: Conan:Unchained! could be adapted w/o too much work (maybe removing some of the monsters for brainwashed devotees), it's got a big tower, a snake, an evil sorcerer creating a power state in Turan, and an imperiled princess. Oh well, now my players are in on it. Oh well, I'll just have to make this a total party kill when I run it. :twisted:
 
Bregales said:
The King said:
I also imagine how excellent a campaign made after the adventure of Conan the first movie could be:
- a big sect
- many serpent towers across all the nations
- conditionned people to assassinate the rulers and regents (like the short story "the Kriss").
Lol. Well, I might have jumped on this years ago, but am not as inclined at present. I think I remember reading or hearing John Milius say that he & Oliver Stone worked that idea from the whole Jonestown incident, although I could be mis-remembering now?
I thought it was partially inspired from the short story "the Kriss" by de Camp, one of his best Howardian pastiche.

Anyway, TSR's first Conan adventure CB1: Conan:Unchained! could be adapted w/o too much work (maybe removing some of the monsters for brainwashed devotees), it's got a big tower, a snake, an evil sorcerer creating a power state in Turan, and an imperiled princess. Oh well, now my players are in on it. Oh well, I'll just have to make this a total party kill when I run it. :twisted:
I truly disliked the CB1 module. It was a adventure solely based on encounters with no story. CB2 was somewhat better with a better Conan feeling.
In fact I prefer the 3 adventures published by TSR for its Conan game. Though the rules weren't very good IMO, the adventure made after Conan the triumphant was a real surprise: a whole campaign with military mass battle and court intrigues and many other plots in 32 pages! I am still amazed at the excellent quality of this booklet.
 
The King said:
Bregales said:
The King said:
I also imagine how excellent a campaign made after the adventure of Conan the first movie could be:
- a big sect
- many serpent towers across all the nations
- conditionned people to assassinate the rulers and regents (like the short story "the Kriss").
Lol. Well, I might have jumped on this years ago, but am not as inclined at present. I think I remember reading or hearing John Milius say that he & Oliver Stone worked that idea from the whole Jonestown incident, although I could be mis-remembering now?
I thought it was partially inspired from the short story "the Kriss" by de Camp, one of his best Howardian pastiche.
Probably was. Not familiar with this story myself. I'm just going off of memory, replying from work while running stats for the library. :oops:
The King said:
Bregales said:
Anyway, TSR's first Conan adventure CB1: Conan:Unchained! could be adapted w/o too much work (maybe removing some of the monsters for brainwashed devotees), it's got a big tower, a snake, an evil sorcerer creating a power state in Turan, and an imperiled princess. Oh well, now my players are in on it. Oh well, I'll just have to make this a total party kill when I run it. :twisted:
I truly disliked the CB1 module. It was a adventure solely based on encounters with no story. CB2 was somewhat better with a better Conan feeling.
In fact I prefer the 3 adventures published by TSR for its Conan game. Though the rules weren't very good IMO, the adventure made after Conan the triumphant was a real surprise: a whole campaign with military mass battle and court intrigues and many other plots in 32 pages! I am still amazed at the excellent quality of this booklet.
Well, I understand. I scanned CB1 & am in the midst of adapting it for my Saturday Conan group because I can paste some of the elements into their campaign, and I promised it to a player in our Sundays Conan group, but I haven't read the adventures you mention. I'll give them a read when I get the time, thanks for the tips.
 
Then I wish you a good playing session and great entertainment. Though I don't like this adventure, a good GM can make it enjoyable.
 
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