recommend supplments after the core rulebook?

[GlassJaw]

Hi all. I have the Conan rulebook and love it. I know there are quite a few Conan supplments out now and was wondering if anyone had any recommendations.

I've always been a fan of dark and nasty cities so I was thinking about the Shadizar boxed set. The Scrolls and Skelos and The Pirate Isles sounded cool too. Any recommendations?

Also, how are the modules overall?

Thanks!

 

[toothill man]

baring tower have everything and everthing has a good point love the black kingdom adventures a real conan feel for a over veiw you cannot beat road of kings but if you whant source material thunder river is awesome so the choice is up to you but there my recomendations 8)

 

[Strom]

I'm currently reading The Free Companies and loving it! It complements the excellent Road of Kings supplement by describing the military capabilities and resources of each country in great detail. If you are planning on running any mass combats or joining a mercenary company or just creating a PC soldier, then Free Companies is great!

Scrolls of Skelos is a wicked fun read and Across Thunder River is all you need to run adventures with Picts or in the Westermark - has a cool adventure in it too! I like the village creation rules in The Pirates Isles. I bought but haven't read Hyboria's Fiercest - looks great though.

I say add the ones you want that will help your game now but I recommend you pick them all up! 8)

 

[Higa]

I plan to buy Shadizar... can any one make some comment on that supplement? Whats the best stuff in it? Is it a "must have"?

I have recently ordered Scrolls of Skelos and the GM screen, soon to be followed by Road of Kings and Pirate Isles. These are the must haves for me, but I gladly get more info on other must haves from you guys.

 

[urdinaran]

Shadizar, eh, it's not bad, some good information in it. The adventure is ok, kinda forced and assumes that the GM can successfully lead the PCs by the nose. As for the rest of it: Nice feats, lists of NPCs, lots of background for Shadizar and the rest of Zamora.
*Map*: bad city map, and I STILL haven't gotten my replacement copy in the mail.
Personally, I don't feel that it should have been published as a boxed set ($50), could have been a hardback ($34.95). One of the reasons why I haven't picked up Messantia yet.

As for the other books to buy:

Road of Kings - really expands on the Hyborian world, great tool for a GM
Scrolls of Skelos - very useful even if no PC plays a scholar
Pirate Isles - Lots of good stuff here, mostly for seafaring campaigns, but once you read it you will be inspired.
Free Companies - Similar to Pirate Isles, just warfare related
Across Thunder River - basically a campaign source for Pictish wilderness adventures, well done and lots of info
Black Kindoms - Haven't read it yet, looks good though

 

[René]

Personally, I don't feel that it should have been published as a boxed set ($50), could have been a hardback ($34.95). One of the reasons why I haven't picked up Messantia yet.

dito!

 

[Strom]

I don't feel that it should have been published as a boxed set ($50), could have been a hardback ($34.95). One of the reasons why I haven't picked up Messantia yet.

Amazon has Shadizar new for $39 with free shipping! 8)

 

[urdinaran]

Given the amount of pages that the 3 booklets encompass, it actually could have been a softcover. The counters are a nice touch but really not necessary. Basically, the box is alot of empty air; no reason for it, and it takes up alot of room on the shelf.

 

[GlassJaw]

Given the amount of pages that the 3 booklets encompass, it actually could have been a softcover. The counters are a nice touch but really not necessary. Basically, the box is alot of empty air; no reason for it, and it takes up alot of room on the shelf.

Formatting issues aside, how is the info on the city itself? How does it compare to other city supplements?

Thanks for the info so far!

 

[René]

Formatting issues aside, how is the info on the city itself? How does it compare to other city supplements?

I don't have a copy of Messantia, so no comparisons to that from me.

Shadizar is neither excellent nor bad - it is somewhat above average.

Why?

First the bad things:
- The map is wrong, because the artist cheated Mongoose and sold them an old AD&D map. The map looks totally silly and is much too small for Shadizar (60,000 inhabitants). A new map is available for free and looks really nice (although scale is missing :? ).

- The adventure Dens of Iniquity is .. well ... read the thread with this title to get my opinion about the adventure.

The middle thing:
The second book is about several sample NPCs, new feats, monsters, a PrC & a new race. The sample NPCs are useful, but too many. The feats are good and have flavour, although they make sense only in Shadizar or a similar urban environment. The monsters are divided in Conanesque ones like the Giant Bat from an excellent Comic story (included in ISBN: 1593070160) and some that give an ironic feeling like the giants & dwarves combo which seems to be born from Gulliver's Travels (but are probably from bad pastiche).
The PrC is an interesting approach to give the Thief more variance and to get away from the standard assassin type. The new race is OK.

The (mostly) good thing:
The book describing Shadizar does a good job in giving detail to the various quarters, persons (incl. stats) and locations. Excellently detailed are customs regarding prostitution, the role of women in Zamorian society and the various types of religions (+ examples). On the other hand some persons / locations are relatively poorly written - IMO, because the author clung too much to various pastiches. Useful is the chapter about DMing in Shadizar.

The problem not only I had is that the book is not able to give you the real sinful, debaucherous etc. feeling Shadizar is supposed to have. Maybe this is because the real perverted things would be too offensive to describe. I don't know...

I can recommend Shadizar with the above mentioned reservations.

 

[toothill man]

often find that suggestion works far better than out right gross out with the sin not needing the sort of detail as in say book of vile darkness instead there is a scence in one of the eddings books were a brothel was talked about in the third person far more effective

 

[Bregales]

I don't feel that it should have been published as a boxed set ($50), could have been a hardback ($34.95). One of the reasons why I haven't picked up Messantia yet.

Amazon has Shadizar new for $39 with free shipping! 8)

Every product I ordered on Amazon took 4-9 months to ship AFTER it came out, (and I pre-ordered as soon as Mongoose announced it)!!! So I'm sure I'm about the only one who had this pathetic handling, but am against Amazon for Mongoose's books while at the same time I applaud their movies, other books, etc. FRP Games also has a decent deal, although no free shipping, it ships within a week.

 

[Bregales]

Here's the link on this site to Mongoose's Conan page, which has all of their products available listed on it (am sure you've already found it, but just for the sake of it am including here).

I agree with urdinaran & René's posts above about Shadizar & Messantia, I also haven't picked up Messantia yet becuase of the cost, design, box aspect. Shadizar's okay, good to have for it's environment, off-hand I'd say that Aquilonia is a great book by comparison for a regional reference, as is Across Thunder River. The BEST book to pick up next is The Road of Kings, which I whole-heartedly recommend.

If you have a sorcerer PC in your group you'll want to get Scrolls of Skelos, otherwise you could do scholars however you want & could skip it. Likewise, pirates or bandits necessitate purchasing Pirate Isles: in fact this is one of the best supplements. I just wish my guys weren't so afraid of the game water, I'd love to get them involved just to use this book. Hyboria's Fiercest is a sourcebook for the less-than-civilized types with multiclass options, & etc. Since I typically ignore combat maneouvers I didn't make use of this part of the book, but it's got a lot. And because of problematic sorcerer in group I don't use much of The Free Companies, which is an excellent sourcebook for armies, mercenaries, etc.

I really had problems with the major assumptions the adventure "Black Stones of Kovag Re" assumes the players will make, and since my players said "Yeah right" & ignored the suppositions in the adventure, it quickly went off the path. By contrast, "Coming of Hanuman" doesn't make as big a group of assumptions, IMO, and has enough adaptability to work for low to mid-level character groups. Haven't gotten "Tales of the Black Kingdoms". Lastly, GM Screen is good reference to have, but much of what it lists on the screen shouldn't have been printed there, and what was left out was much more important. Still, when I don't want the group to see my notes/die rolls, it's great to have, & the cover is one of the nicer ones for game GMs.

Hope this helps.

 

[The King]

I don't feel that it should have been published as a boxed set ($50), could have been a hardback ($34.95). One of the reasons why I haven't picked up Messantia yet.

Amazon has Shadizar new for $39 with free shipping! 8)

Every product I ordered on Amazon took 4-9 months to ship AFTER it came out, (and I pre-ordered as soon as Mongoose announced it)!!! So I'm sure I'm about the only one who had this pathetic handling, but am against Amazon for Mongoose's books while at the same time I applaud their movies, other books, etc. FRP Games also has a decent deal, although no free shipping, it ships within a week.

I recommand you www.nobleknight.com
They ship quickly and also have second hand item (great for out of print books).

 

[Bregales]

I recommand you www.nobleknight.com
They ship quickly and also have second hand item (great for out of print books).

Thanks. I've used NobleKnight before and sold them all my West End star wars game stuff, but I've found FRPGames to have better prices and they ship in less time, although it does cost a few dollars to have things shipped.

I typically look between NobleKnight, FRP and another site for Mongoose's Conan products. Thanks again.

 

[The King]

You're welcome.
you sold of your star wars books ? Too bad. I feel they're far better than under D20 rules (because one can do several things at the same time).

 

[Bregales]

You're welcome.
you sold of your star wars books ? Too bad. I feel they're far better than under D20 rules (because one can do several things at the same time).

Yeah, I agree, but I was really turned off by "The Phantom Menace" and decided I'd had enough of the lucas franchise, so I got rid of it all. For my gaming group, I'm the only one who thought like you did compared to d20. These guys don't really go for cinematic feel so much as game balance.

 

[The King]

In fact I didn't see the phantom menace and the second one until last year. And I found them quite good especially the difficulty to produce an as good trilogy as the first one.
The second was also great but the last could have been better.
Now than West End Games belong again to the gaming industry I hope they will acquire the licence for SW because I can't imagine a better system than D6 for this game. You can try and do much thing even with a beginning character and that is my reproach to D20 (or old ADD); it begins to be interesting when you reach level 5-7. At 1st level you can't do much and the wizard (or sorcerer in Conan) is almost useless;

 

[Raven Blackwell]

Re: West End 2nd Edition Star Wars

I also agree that the West End d6 system was superior to the d20 system out today- I still have my core book and a few supplements and I run a campaign still. West End has released a watered version of their rules under the title d6 Space, but w/o the Star Wars franchise, it's a shadow of its former self.

My next trick though is to remake Fading Suns under the d6 system. I call it 'Fading Stars' 8)

Re: The actual subject:

Of the titles I have

Necessary Titles to get:
Road of Kings
Pirate Isles
Scrolls of Skelos
Hyboria's Fiercest

Optional Titles:
Free Companies
Messanita
Across the Black River

Useful to some but find morally destestible myself:
Shadizar

 

[***BARON***]

Pirate Isles is absolutely drop dead fantastic... it's more than a Conan splat book; it's a great swashbuckling system for all purposes in that genre. The boarding and ship mechanics, pirate codes, feats, etc are very stand alone.