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Review of The Monolith Sourcebook
Blurb from the publisher: 'Based on the hit boardgame and the award-winning roleplaying game!
'Consider what I have told you, Barbarian', said Xaltotun. 'You will have plenty of leisure. I have not yet decided what I shall do with you. It depends on circumstances yet unborn. But let this be impressed upon you: that if I decide to use you in my game, it will be better to submit without resistance than to suffer my wrath.'
Since the introduction of fantasy into wargaming, Robert E. Howard's Conan has loomed large across popular culture, recently inspiring the award-winning Robert E. Howard's Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of roleplaying game and Monolith's hit Conan boardgame. Here, for the first time ever, is the crossover between these two games: miniatures and roleplaying adventure meet in the Hyborian Age!
Developed closely with Monolith Entertainment, The Monolith Sourcebook provides players and gamemasters with a host of exciting material: new campaigns for both games, standalone adventures, and advice for creating original boardgame adventures using the roleplaying resources.
- A Red Tide to Kush, a complete boardgame campaign with ten new scenarios.
- A solo/cooperative campaign made up of nine new scenarios for the boardgame.
- Shadows from Gulsaggah, a complete roleplaying adventure campaign set in the legendary Black Coast.
- Rules for solo and cooperative play for the boardgame.
- Guidelines for using Conan tiles and roleplaying resources to create new scenarios for the boardgame.
- Characters, monsters, equipment, and artifacts, from Amboola the Spearman to Xuthal's Crown.
Get the most out of Monolith's Conan boardgame with this essential sourcebook!
Requires two Conan tile sets — Perilous Ruins & Forgotten Cities and Forbidden Places & Pits of Horror — to play; the Conan boardgame King's Pledge for tabletop action; and the Robert E. Howard's Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of core rulebook for roleplaying game excitement.'
What you get: Your EUR 23,99 or USD 26,99 or GBP 19,99 will buy you the, full-colour 114-page hardcover Robert E. Howard's Conan: The Monolith Sourcebook, a hybrid sourcebook that caters both for the Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of game line, as well as Conan the boardgame. With that price the buyer purchases both the hardcover along with the pdf edition. The book boasts an integrated black cloth bookmark.
The pdf version alone costs EUR 11,99 or USD 13,99 or GBP 9,99.
In order to use this sourcebook optimally, one needs to have access to the Conan roleplaying game, the aforementioned Conan boardgame, as well as two out of the four tile sets published for the roleplaying game: Conan Geomorphic Tiles: Perilous Ruins & Forgotten Cities and Forbidden Places & Pits of Horror.
Contents: The first part of the sourcebook presents a new, eight-scenario campaign for the boardgame, as well as two scenarios that can be played outside of the campaign. The (quaintly nameless) campaign can be played by five players, and includes rules for carrying over victories and defeats to the next game, special rules that uniquely apply to each scenario, as well as instructions on how to combine the differently sized tiles published for both the board game and the roleplaying game.
The second part includes Shadows from Gullsaggah, a 12-page roleplaying game adventure. It is a straightforward adventure structured in a way that allows the owners of the board game to utilize its miniatures. In fact, it is a continuation of the first chapter's boardgame campaign, meaning that boardgame players can run through that first, and then tackle the present one in a more roleplaying-oriented premise. The adventure is well-placed into the Conan timeline in case players want to experience it with the named heroes. As expected in many Conan stories, the heroes' victory might not be conclusive, and the evil they fought might rise again.
Chapter three provides The Lost Crawlings of Skelos, an eight-part, nine-scenario campaign for the board game. This campaign however does not feature an Overlord. It can thus be played either as a coop or as a solo endeavor. The rules for the players do not change. The Overlord is substituted by a series of automatic commands starting by the random activation of as many tiles on the board as there are players. If a hero dies, the Overlord will receive on activation less. The automated rules also cover the activation token pool, the river and its dredging, who the baddies' target will be etc. These rules work better with smaller scenarios which have fewer moving parts, and require the adaptation of certain existing skills. The ruleset works well for a campaign, tackling subjects like victory points, character progression, death etc in a variety of ways. As expected, the players may increase or increase the difficulty of their campaign
The 15-page Scenario Creation does exactly what it says: it provides ideas about how to create scenarios for the boardgame. Do not expect tables and algorithms, even though the process is structured in steps that follow a logical order: choosing concept and objectives, choosing a map, setting up the Overlord forces, special rules and event cards etc. The chapter also discusses balance and how to attain it, analytically examines one of the existing scenarios in order to explain the thought process that went into it, and touches upon all sorts of subjects like equipment, starting positions, stamina etc. The Tile Packs couldn't have been missing from the discussion, nor could a focused discussion about creating solo and cooperative content without any Overlord looming around.
Artifacts & Antagonists is the book's closing chapter. It deals with gear, weapons, and encounters that can be found in the board game yet which hadn't made it to the roleplaying game... until now. Expect anything from censers to fetishes, artifacts like the Mace of Mitra, bone golems, dark demons named adversaries like Skythus the alchemist, and more.
The strong points: How often do you get a book that gives added value to both a board game and an RPG line that you have invested in? Modiphius and Monolith did the most logical thing in the world and collaborated in order to revisit their respective products through a new angle. I am extremely pleased about the sourcebook catering to both lines. The players of the boardgame will find two new campaigns (one fully oriented towards solo play along with new solo rules), while the fans of the RPG get a new adventure along with gear and encounters they can incorporate in their roleplaying escapades. The material is thus mostly oriented towards the board game players than the roleplayers, at the end of the day however everybody wins, and even more so the Conan lovers who are into both. It shouldn't be hard for a crafty GM to entice a boardgame player to the RPG through a clever use of this book alone.
I did not have as much time as I wanted in order to playtest every single scenario out there. The ones I did however came out as challenging. The most easy amongst them were at least entertaining. That is a very strong positive; Conan is a rather simple boardgame, and the elevated difficulty implies that players will have to approach these adventures more thoughtfully.
By far the most alluring part of the book is the solo play that it introduces in the regular Conan boardgame experience. For those who want to satisfy the Conan itch even when they don't have adversaries (or for those who enjoy pitting their combined intellect against the board), these rules are great news. The game is mechanically simpler than when one plays against a human opponent, the scenarios however are cool. The reduced playing time of those scenarios is also a plus.
The chapter on scenario building is solid, even though I admittedly expected more meat and an even more tight and structured approach. The Conan fanatics that will use it will have quite a range of options when it comes to every single parameter of the board game. How about a claustrophobic map with fewer adversaries and a tightly timed component? Or relatively open areas with armies of hostiles?
The book's production values are of the usual Modiphius standard. The cover art is zoomed in straight from the board game's cover, in order for everybody to make the immediate connection of this line to that one. The interior art is what one would expect in the Conan line. The bookmark has become a staple of Modiphius' hardcover books; I can no longer imagine books being done differently.
The pdf is very well done, as Modiphius' pdfs usually are. Everything from the table of contents is directly linked, with the bookmarks going down two levels deep. This is one of the few times I cannot complain about the bookmarks not going deep enough; each bookmark covers an entire adventure after all.
The weak points: The obvious things first: if you don't own all the materials mentioned in the presentation of this product, you are unlikely to make an optimal use of it. An RPG Conan completist might buy it anyway only for the short adventure and the handful of pages on the magical items, gear and adversaries that it introduces to the RPG. Admittedly however you would be paying that content rather dearly. If you are not into the RPG on the other hand, this is still a valid purchase, even though I can understand why someone who vehemently refuses to touch the RPG would be complaining about not being able to use one fifth of this book, and why should be pay so dearly for it anway?
Seeing how the scenarios use existing maps from the base game, expect a certain visual déjà vu when you play through some of these adventures. Thankfully, the adventures are different enough in order to be exciting.
Both the Conan boardgame as well as the Conan RPG are widely distributed. Unfortunately, the print run of the Conan RPG tiles was rather limited. Without those tiles you will need to make alternative arrangements in order to play the numerous scenarios that need them. This could have been handled better.
Conclusion: The Monolith Sourcebook is a must for the fans of the Conan boardgame. A new campaign, solo rules that open a new range of options, and interaction with the current Conan RPG, are some of the elements that make it interesting. Fans of the current Conan RPG who do not own the Conan boardgame will also be enticed; isn't it time you invested in the boardgame already?
For more info on Robert E. Howard's Conan: The Monolith Sourcebook visit the Modiphius Entertainment website at http://www.modiphius.com.
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