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But then comes this Conan game, and no, it’s not technically d20 – it’s OGL – but it has the system you know and love, but with a few tweaks to fit the genre. And not only that, but the writer knows more about Conan than you know about Star Trek (or Star Wars, or Cowboy Bebop, or Middle Earth, or Spiderman, or whatever geeky topic you’re an expert on) and this book is so accurate, and so awesome, that you are powerless to resist.
I don’t usually spill my opinion on a book until the end of the review, because I want you to read the whole thing and form your own opinion based on my comments. But in this case, tough nuts, because I want you to like this book, go out and buy it, and buy two more for your friends. Because this game, in the phraseology of the internet elite, roxxorz 733t skilz (or something like that).
Introduction
The Conan RPG starts off with a brief overview of the Hyborian Age, better known as ‘when Conan was kicking arse.’ A quick glance will tell the reader that the author, Ian Sturrock, knows his Conan. I learned more about Conan in three pages than I picked up in ten years of comics and novels.
Overview
This section basically outlines a little background and the basic rules for playing Conan. And because Mongoose is good people (or not, maybe they just want happy fans), a handy section tells the reader the differences between Conan and standard OGL stuff. If you’re a rules lawyer already, you’ll know which parts you want to skip. For me, the parts I wanted to skip were ‘none.’ I know OGL pretty well, but I just really liked reading the book.
Races
This chapter in the Conan RPG illustrates just how well the game fits the source material. There are, of course, no elves, dwarves, halflings, tieflings, or kobolds. Race, in this case, is more an indicator of nationality. Physical traits distinguish characters, as do national viewpoints and widely-held superstitions. My favorite, not surprisingly, is the Cimmerian. Everyone else is just fodder.
This chapter is especially good because it contains sub-races. Canadians might looks like their neighbors to the south, but the fact is, only one of us has nationalized health care (sadly, it isn’t me). The same goes for the various Hyborian races. The Bossonians have a much more militaristic society than, say, Taurans, but both are still Hyborian races. Races are broken down into sub-races whenever it is appropriate, which means that not every race has a breakout. Which is fine, because Howard didn’t write four kinds of Pictish barbarians.
Classes
If you weren’t giddy from a read-through of the races, the classes are sure to make you get light-headed. There are no paladins, no druids, not even mages. As any good Conan fan knows, a priest can have just as much magic power as some library-loving madman. The classes are thoroughly Conan, and very well-researched. The barbarian is my personal choice (again, unsurprisingly), but the noble, the pirate and the thief are all very valid. If you want magic, you pick a scholar, because those are the guys who get the special powers. They are also the ones who lose their souls to terrible demons or go insane.
I should emphasize here that none of these classes are inappropriate for the game, and all are thoroughly valid. For instance, if you look at Conan, he starts out a barbarian. As his career progresses, he takes on the roles of pirate, thief, and eventually even noble. Just because I like the barbarian does not mean I’m stuck with it. In fact, by removing experience point penalties for multiclassing, the Conan RPG makes the process a really good idea.
Skills
This is pretty standard fare for d20 fans. If you buy class skills, they’re cheaper than cross-class skills. However, Conan characters are remarkably self-sufficient, so if you buy skills with the bonus points for high intelligence, they’re just as cheap as class skills. The game encourages players to play to their classes, but it does not force the issue. Which is good, because Conan got awful good at a lot of different things.
The skills in this chapter are pretty much just what you’re used to seeing. There are some small differences from the PHB, but not enough to dwell on in the review.
Feats
This chapter starts off looking just like the one you’ve read until you memorized it, but it gets different in several places. For instance, there is no reason for meta-magic feats, as the game doesn’t really use magic the way you’re used to seeing it. Plus there are some additional feats that are decidedly Conan – Pirate Code, Eyes of the Cat, Gunderland Pike-and-Shield Fighting, and a few others are thoroughly appropriate for the setting, but not standard.
My favorite setting-specific feats are those that scare little kids. The Opportunistic Sacrifice lets you kill someone in a combat situation and use his blood to power a spell, while the Tormented Sacrifice lets you gain a little extra power from a sacrifice by really hurting your victim. This stuff is gruesome, but if it were any more Conan, it would jump off the page and summon an ape-man.
Equipment
If you came here looking for endless pages of weapons and armor, masterwork lockpicks and magical rings, you better keep looking. Everyone knows that Conan doesn’t spend his career hunting down magic sword after magic helm. He doesn’t hoard his cash – he spends it on whores and ale.
Which is not to say that there is no gear in the equipment chapter. There are many different weapons and types of armor. There is a wealth of stuff here, and it just isn’t all high-fantasy thorn bows and ebony jackhammers. The coolest thing about this chapter is that all the weapons in the illustrations have blood on them. Of course, closing the equipment section with the section on slaves screams Conan, too.
Combat
Here’s an interesting fact: Conan never goes more than 3 pages without killing someone. Okay, I made that up, but you have to admit, Conan gets a lot of blood on his hands, and most of it is not his own. A Conan RPG has to have a ridiculous amount of information on killing people and breaking things, and by Crom, this one does.
The main difference between standard d20 rules and the Conan rules is that armor reduces damage instead of making it harder to get hit. In fact, there is no armor class – there are base dodge and parry numbers for each class. Armor never helps you avoid getting smacked, and probably even makes you an easier target. However, when Conan, King of Aquilonia rides into battle, he wears enough steel to build a car, because no amount of dodging and parrying is going to keep his hide intact when fifty crazed Nordheimers come at him with meat cleavers.
Another new rule is the addition of fate points and the ‘left for dead’ classification. If you spend a fate point when you get dropped below -10 hit points, you can declare yourself left for dead. Everybody around you thinks you’re dead, but you can be healed and will eventually live again. This is nice because if your character gets resurrected in the Conan RPG, he is probably rotting pretty badly and just a pawn for some psychotic sorcerer. In other words, resurrection is rare, and when it does happen, it ain’t pretty.
There is not much in this chapter that needs a lot of exposition. If you have played d20, you know these rules. A veteran of the OGL might want to give a quick breeze-through to make sure he hits the high points, but this is pretty much what you would expect.
Sorcery
Characters who want access to magic abilities pursue the scholar class, which grants them access to the diabolical powers contained in this chapter. While there is a pretty good spell list, you can’t select a big pile and just copy them into your spell book. A character who wants to remain sane and keep his soul progresses very slowly in spells, while a pact with a demon will get you all kinds of great knowledge. Sadly, said pact will also cost your soul, but you weren’t using it, were you?
Scholars get a few base points of magic power just for knowing what they know. These points are enough to mix it up with evil sorcerers, but they are not enough to turn groups of men into slavering were-hyenas. To get that much power, you flat-out have to kill someone. And the uglier you do it, the more power you get. If you’re thinking that this is a gruesome and dark magic system, then you’re getting the idea. This is not D&D. This is Conan, baby, and if you want high fantasy, drop the book and go play something with pretty elves and happy bards.
Many of the spells in this chapter are exceptionally evil. There is just no way to justify the casting of a spell that summons the black plague, creates were-beasts, or sucks the soul out of a man’s body. Many of these spells are torn right out of Conan stories, and many even have a sidebar quoting the novel when the spell occurs. It doesn’t get more authentic than that.
There are a few magical items here. It should be thoroughly noted that players will rarely use magic items, because unlike that games with tinker gnomes and illusionists, these magic items almost always have a side effect. And we’re not talking headache or nausea side effects, either – these will suck your brains out of your head or force you to commit heinous misdeeds while you sleep. I love that.
The Hyborian Age
If you want authentic Conan, you have to go to the source. Fortunately, Robert E Howard wrote a treatise on the history of Hyboria entitled, coincidentally enough, The Hyborian Age. That piece is reprinted here, along with maps to help the reader follow along. That is as authentic as it gets.
Gazetteer
Once Howard’s piece is done, it’s time for Ian Sturrock to show us how much he knows about Conan. This section contains better research than I have ever seen for this subject matter. Sturrock knows his stuff inside and out, and this section will let you go anywhere as long as you can make up something to do when you get there. Sturrock draws primarily from the Howard books, but does not hesitate to peruse Jordan or even the comics to fill spaces left by Howard.
After I read this section, I was in awe. Ian Sturrock should have become a Conan scholar – after all, if you can spend your career studying Middle Earth, someone ought to give this guy a full-time job just knowing stuff about Hyboria.
Religion
Religion in Conan is as dark as the rest of the book. Many people don’t bother to worship gods, and those that do are often acolytes of Set or the Zamorian pantheon. These are bad, bad gods, and they like nothing more than a quick bath in a lake of human blood. All gods provide some small benefit for their followers, but they do not grant enormous spell lists and healing powers out the wazoo.
Bestiary
At least half of this bestiary is composed of animals, because Conan didn’t spend every adventure battling purple worms and bugbears. He did, of course, face down supernatural terrors, and those suckers are in here, too. Man-apes, black fiends, and smoke serpents all make appearances, but most foes in Conan are people, and so the bestiary is understandably sparse.
Campaigns
If you want to run a game of Conan, this section is invaluable. The tips given here will help you turn your game into Conan instead of smash the bad guys, steal their crap, rest up at the inn. Those types of adventures can be fun, but they are not appropriate for Conan. Well, they might be a little, but only if the bad guys are Stygian mystics, the crap is a treasure that slips through the characters’ fingers, and the inn is a hay-covered wagon that hides the beat-up heroes as they slink out of the burning city.
Of course, any GM short on ideas has about a century of material, so there is no excuse for screwing this up. The tips here are helpful and will add a lot of depth to the game.
Presentation
So if the meat in this game is spot on, all that’s needed for a perfect score is a gorgeous book. Fortunately, the Conan RPG is the best-looking book I have seen that wasn’t made by the world’s biggest RPG company. The interiors are full color and the art is perfect. The writing is enjoyable and the decorations are perfect. And for those with a slightly lecherous bent, literally every other page has a bare nipple. What more could you ask?
You might ask for excerpts from the novels to be used throughout the book to help explain design decisions and magical effects – and you would get them. You might ask for an index that can help you find that one elusive rule in a hurry – and you would get it. In fact, I can’t think of a single thing that was left out.
Summary
Only once in a great while does a game come along that is good enough to get a perfect review score. The Conan RPG is that game. The writing is great, the topic is researched incredibly well, the art is perfect, and the overall presentation is fantastic. An excellent index is just icing on the cake. If you have even a passing interest in Conan, you should buy this game.
Style: 5 – The Conan RPG could hold its own against anything any other company can produce.
Substance: 5 – Impeccably researched and chock full of great details, the Conan RPG is everything you could ask for in a core book.
