What are your Thoughts Return to the Road of Kings ?

[zorlak21]

After 2 year is it stil a great conan book ? your thought .
8)

 

[zozotroll]

Yes. With it and the basic book you have all you need to run most anywhere. Certainly worth getting even if you plan on getting most of the other books.

 

[Hervé]

You can't live without it if you ever plan to run a Conan campaign. If you must get only one book from the whole range, it must be this one.

 

[LucaCherstich]

Definitively that's the best book in the series, especially if you like the "fluff".
Vincent collected here so much material from so many sources...he even put there a bibliography!(And rpg books RARELY have a bibliography!!!)
The whole work was clearly conceived as a kind a academic book on Conan stuff with reference notes but (if I remember well from something Vincent said sometimes ago in these forums) these notes were cut out due to space requirements.
Even the material directly created by Vincent (especially in the Black Kingdoms) is really high quality stuff, quite believable for an Hyborian Age setting and with plenty of links with real-world cultures.

 

[Scorpion13]

Good book. As Ive said before, Conan is one of the few RPGS (WH40k being the other) where I actually like reading the fluff, and the fluff doesnt actually restrict your game ideas.

The whole thing whets your appetite with possibilities. The Black Kingdom Stuff certainly, but then theres the stuff about Turan, Vendhya, the Border Kingdoms....

And the Aquilonian Kingdoms certainly arent given the short end of the stick. I just find the other kingdoms more interesting, but even the Aquilonian stuff is interesting.

 

[zozotroll]

Aquilonia is mostly standard midevil europe. Nothing wrong with that, just that it is easily found in other games. The other countrys just are not covvered in many games, and that makes them interesting.

 

[Sourcerer]

What really shocks me about the question is the implication that a sourcebook might be less good because it is older (not that 2 years would remotely quality as "older").

 

[VincentDarlage]

What really shocks me about the question is the implication that a sourcebook might be less good because it is older (not that 2 years would remotely quality as "older").

I was thinking the same thing, just couldn't quite phrase it the way I wanted to.

 

[Demetrio]

In 'The Hour of the Dragon', Servius says this to Conan:

'The merchants and commoners, dreading anarchy and a return of feudal days when each baron was his own law...'

implying perhaps that Aquilonia was not a feudal society (without getting into the controversy over what exactly feudal is).

Of cours ehe may just mean that Aquilonian law had independent judiciary and all free men were entitled to trial by their peers.

 

[Rex]

It's without a doubt, other then the main rule book, the Must Have.

~Rex

 

[Scorpion13]

I dunno, the deal with Aquilonia, whether feudal or not, but what I think the OP was trying to say about an older book is like "How do we think of the book now that we have 2 years of perspective on it?"

 

[Rex]

I dunno, the deal with Aquilonia, whether feudal or not, but what I think the OP was trying to say about an older book is like "How do we think of the book now that we have 2 years of perspective on it?"

I only bring two books with me when I go Demo Conan. The Main Rule Book, and RTTROK. Often just shortened to the Two books of Doom. Pretty good one two punch combo.

~Rex

 

[Sourcerer]

After 2 year is it stil a great conan book ?

what I think the OP was trying to say about an older book is like "How do we think of the book now that we have 2 years of perspective on it?"

A very generous interpretation.

Back on the topic, today I stopped by at the store of my choice and took a closer look at the Road of Kings... and bought it.
Usually I prefer to create most of the background myself, but the more I reread from the Conan books, the more I wanted to keep my stories close to the original.
The sourcebook really does a great job at gathering and presenting the necessary information to set foot onto Hyperboria.

On a side note, I also picked up the Secrets of Skelos, which seems to contain to make the game darker.

I also took a look at the Bestiary but it was a bit disappointed. Copying all creatures from the rulebook is a weak move, some of the new stuff looked interesting, but the majority wasn't convincing.
Didn't seem to be worth the buy.

 

[zozotroll]

I boiught Bestiary, but agree, recycling the monster from the main book made a thin book thinner. There should be more monsters than that. Just because REH only included so many, players still want to run into thenm from time to time. And if you only use them once, you need more than ever.

 

[tarkhan bey]

If you own the 1stEd Road of Kings, is it a worthwhile purchase?

 

[Rex]

If you own the 1stEd Road of Kings, is it a worthwhile purchase?

For me it was because my 1st Ed ROK, well, let's say, it would not have lived long in a Robert E. Howard realm. 'Twas a touch Flimsy by Crom!......

Also, I always tend to update. Just habit.

~Rex

 

[Hervé]

If you own the 1stEd Road of Kings, is it a worthwhile purchase?

Return is most reprint material from RoK, with some 80 new pages added, mostly on the Black Kingdoms. I found them very useful, due to the lack of information on these lands. For me, it was well worth it.

 

[hades13]

If you have Return to the RoK, is the RoK redundant then? Or is there separate information that still makes it worth getting?

 

[Hervé]

RoK has more maps (not always accurate, as always with Mongoose...), nice colours, a few lines that may have been dropped in RttRoK, but nothing really worth the buy if you already own the new edition.

 

[David St-Michel]

Return to the Road of Kings is the first book I bought after the core rulebook. I thought I had a good grasp of how the world worked before getting it.

Ymir blind me, was I in for a shock!

Simply put, this book is AMAZING. It is brimming with information on just about every single country that exists, and a few specific provinces here and there just for kicks. You get to understand not only how the country works, but how it thinks, feels, and is. The atmosphere of every single sector of the world is there, and it just lands in your face.

I constantly have my core rulebook in each and every one of my games, and my RoTK in my lap, turned at the page of the country my poor gamers are stumbling through.

I encourage every single player of Conan to get this book.