RQ: Conan?

[C. Chapman]

Hey,

I know Mongoose publish the OGL Conan game, but I was curious, are there any plans to be a RQ Conan supplement for folks like me who love Conan, but detest d20 and OGL (and so therefore don't buy the existing Conan stuff except possibly Road of Kings)? Hell, I'd even be happy with a single core Conan supplement for RQ, and conversion notes or documents for the OGL publications.

I've seen a number of other folk mention that they'd like a RQ: Conan supplement, both on RPG.net and here, so I'm certainly not alone in wondering this.

cheers!
Colin

 

[Archer]

I have mentioned that I want such a supplement now and then on this forum. But no answer yet. But then I never made it a straight forward question either.

 

[DreadDomain]

Hey,

I know Mongoose publish the OGL Conan game, but I was curious, are there any plans to be a RQ Conan supplement for folks like me who love Conan, but detest d20 and OGL (and so therefore don't buy the existing Conan stuff except possibly Road of Kings)? Hell, I'd even be happy with a single core Conan supplement for RQ, and conversion notes or documents for the OGL publications.

Colin

I am in the exact same boat. The Hyborian Age is one of my favorite setting and among the games I have played, d20 is one of my least liked system. The end result is I bought Road of Kings and might buy regional books but won't buy anything else of the current line.

I believe RuneQuest Conan is a match made in heaven and I would be quite happy to see a single published core book. The setting book are very light on rules so they could be dual-statted (but that could enrage some d20 fans) or the RQ conversion could be put on the net. The same goes for the adventures.

 

[Archer]

DreadDomain: I have advocated the same idea on this forums and others. While they have the license for both RQ and Conan, it is certainly a match made in heaven. They will be able to reach a group of customers that resent d20, but would very much like to play RPGs in Conans world.

They certainly would not be the first or the last games company to dualstat their creations (L5R was both original and d20 system for a while).

It certainly is possible to tweak the basic role-playing system (or the new RQ system, I would assume) to be suitably heroic. It is much harder to make d20 both lethal and heroic at the same time (which would be required of a Conan RPG). Mongoose has done a good job at it with d20, but I think they could make an even better job of it with RQ.

 

[SteveMND]

You know, altho I personally have no desire to play a Conan-based RPG, I do find it interesting that whenever I thought of the old Second Edition D&D, my mental picture went to that of the movie Excalibur. Yet when I thought of RuneQuest, I alway associated it with the movie Conan: the Barbarian.

 

[Archer]

... Yet when I thought of RuneQuest, I alway associated it with the movie Conan: the Barbarian.

You are not alone. I have always associated Basic Role-playing games with Conan. I do not know why, but it feels like this type of system are the perfect match for Conan. It might be that it is lethal enough, flexible enough, and you are able to actually create a character that can be as diverse when it comes to skills and abilities as Conan. Given that you also can manage to hold your own without loading up on a ton of armour, through parrying and dodging, you have the basic fightingstyle of Conan pinned down.

And everytime I listen to the Soundtrack of Conan: The Barbarian I get a sudden near overwhelming urge to start a Conan campaign using basic role-playing.

I have the Conan RPG by Mongoose, and while it feels "Conan" in some aspects, I do not see it as the same fit as BRP. BRP would fit a Conan RPG like a glove IMHO.

And now I have said "Conan" too many times already...

 

[GbajiTheDeceiver]

Yet when I thought of RuneQuest, I alway associated it with the movie Conan: the Barbarian.

Or the old Sláine strips from 2000AD. The original early 80s ones.

 

[Archer]

Yet when I thought of RuneQuest, I alway associated it with the movie Conan: the Barbarian.

Or the old Sláine strips from 2000AD. The original early 80s ones.

That would also be a good setting.

 

[andakitty]

To me it says Conan because the combat tends to be short nasty and brutal. It just feels like the descriptions of combat in fiction like Howard, Leiber, all the really good writers of the 30's and 40's. A fight in D&D is, well, boring. Using most BRP (and MRQ?) you can feel the fear and smell the blood...and if you win you tend to be relieved and surprised your character is still alive. Superior physical stats and training will give a distinct edge but your character will NEVER be able to laugh off a sword in the guts. Or wade into 50 armed foes without a worry in the world. For me games such as D&D simply cannot duplicate the feeling.

 

[Adept]

To me it says Conan because the combat tends to be short nasty and brutal. It just feels like the descriptions of combat in fiction like Howard, Leiber, all the really good writers of the 30's and 40's. A fight in D&D is, well, boring. Using most BRP (and MRQ?) you can feel the fear and smell the blood...and if you win you tend to be relieved and surprised your character is still alive. Superior physical stats and training will give a distinct edge but your character will NEVER be able to laugh off a sword in the guts. Or wade into 50 armed foes without a worry in the world. For me games such as D&D simply cannot duplicate the feeling.

D&D Conan is terrible. The only problem with RQ conan is that a straight d100 system will make things too deadly for our unarmoured barbarian and his kind. In RQ you miss parries and dodges a lot, and need armour.

RQ conan would need some sorts of fate points (nope, that didn't hit me afterall) or something like three points of natural armour.

Still, for Hyborian adventuring without Conan the new RQ could be just the thing. Low amounts of magic with a brutal and bloody combat system.

 

[Archer]

D&D Conan is terrible. The only problem with RQ conan is that a straight d100 system will make things too deadly for our unarmoured barbarian and his kind. In RQ you miss parries and dodges a lot, and need armour.

RQ conan would need some sorts of fate points (nope, that didn't hit me afterall) or something like three points of natural armour.

Still, for Hyborian adventuring without Conan the new RQ could be just the thing. Low amounts of magic with a brutal and bloody combat system.

Or you just ramp up the %, and voila you have a heroic enough game. That is basically what Stormbringer 4/5 did, and it works like a charm.

 

[Adept]

D&D Conan is terrible. The only problem with RQ conan is that a straight d100 system will make things too deadly for our unarmoured barbarian and his kind. In RQ you miss parries and dodges a lot, and need armour.

RQ conan would need some sorts of fate points (nope, that didn't hit me afterall) or something like three points of natural armour.

Still, for Hyborian adventuring without Conan the new RQ could be just the thing. Low amounts of magic with a brutal and bloody combat system.

Or you just ramp up the %, and voila you have a heroic enough game. That is basically what Stormbringer 4/5 did, and it works like a charm.

I don't know. Percentile systems where the skill goes much past 100% get silly or boring very easily. RQ II/III works best when the characters are in the 50-80% range in their skills.

If you guys have the chanse, I recommend checking out Hârnmaster, especially the older versions. In Härnmaster a roll divisable by 5 is a critical success or critical failure (equal to the RQ special success). A normal success parries/dodges a normal success, a special parries a special and so forth. A critical attack vs. succesful parry => normal success hit, and so on.

This four level system keeps things interesting even if both combatants are over 100% skill. It's also _much_ simpler and faster than calculating the critical, special, success, failure and fumble percentages of RQ, especially if there's fatigue and wounds changing the numbers.

 

[andakitty]

But Archer is referring to Stormbringer in it's latest incarnation, not RQ. The game has the same sort of interface as the system that you are talking about, with varying skill check results compared against each other to find the final results of an attack. As well, parry and dodge are interchangeable within a round, each parry/dodge successively -30% from the previous one (and no upper limit to skill level, weapon skills of 500% or better are possible). You also have multiple attacks available, given enough weapon skill and DEX. It is one of the very best systems for actually simulating the give and take of combat. Perhaps better than RQ in its own way, and a bit simpler overall, IMO. Each game has elements that give it a different feel, but Stormbringer 5 is definitely worthwhile for any RQ fan to check out if they haven't already.

 

[Archer]

Having 110% in a weapon skill, and parrying with a -30 cumulative penalty per parry beyond the first, greatly ramps up the scale, so that the system becomes rather heroic, and you can choose to ignore wearing armour.

This is how it works in Stormbringer. The characters there that reach such high skill levels, have very little to fear in combat, just like Conan. So I think this approach is perfect for a RQ Conan game.

It seems, from the previews, that MRQ will be somewhat similar to Stormbringer 5, and as such, it should not have any difficulties in ramping up the % to get more heroic characters that can choose to not wear armor, and still survive battles.

Add to that the specific abilities in preview 4, where it seems you can buy certain heroic abilities, and you basically have all the makings of a RQ Conan RPG.

 

[andakitty]

You are assuming that MRQ will have percentile skills that go above 100%?

 

[Archer]

You are assuming that MRQ will have percentile skills that go above 100%?

No, I am assuming that it will be easily modifiable to allow such things. Just like Basic Role-playing was.

 

[andakitty]

Fair enough. Myself, I am hoping for a game I don't have to modify. Having spent most of my rpg 'career' modifying BRP this way and that. I just hope these things don't bear too much resemblance to feats. Right now I am still willing to withhold judgement.

 

[GbajiTheDeceiver]

It's supposed to be able to go up to 10,000. Or was that 1,000?

Very high anyway

 

[homerjsinnott]

You know, altho I personally have no desire to play a Conan-based RPG, I do find it interesting that whenever I thought of the old Second Edition D&D, my mental picture went to that of the movie Excalibur. Yet when I thought of RuneQuest, I alway associated it with the movie Conan: the Barbarian.

But Excalibur was a great film.

It's best for all concerned if we don't mention what Conan was.

 

[homerjsinnott]

You are assuming that MRQ will have percentile skills that go above 100%?

come on, we all know it will, it has already talked about Heros and the like, the way it uses those skills may be different, but they won't stop increasing.