Quote from: Anon Adderlan;940603The same things which keep Fate from being OOC are the same things which keep 2d20 from being OOC.

Not quite.  In FATE, unless they've changed things, you don't have to spend FATE points to do ordinary tasks, it must be a pretty serious Stunt for it to have a FATE activation cost.
In Conan 2d20, if I choose to parry, the GM gets a Doom Point.  That's not spending a Momentum, but it is a cost.
Now on the GM side of things, many NPC powers must be activated with a Doom expenditure.  Many things that most systems simply assume the GM will decide through fiat or random roll, are taken out of the GM's hands (because remember, Modiphius thinks GMs need to be restricted or are n00bs who need to be led) and assigned Doom costs for.

To "de-OOC" 2d20 you'd have to...

• Get rid of Fortune, or at least severely curtail it down to "got luckily saved from death without any choice to spend involved" like WFRP1.
• Get rid of buying dice by giving Doom to the GM (which incidentally, makes the highest level of difficulty in the system mathematically unattainable).
• Get rid of "banking" Momentum and restrict it's usage.
• Take the Doom costs off of nearly everything the GM does, because without players putting Doom in, the GM won't have enough Doom generated through Momentum to make happen what logically would.

You can De-OOC Savage Worlds pretty easily, without affecting the system all that much.  It still plays fine, just comes down a few notches on the 1930's Serials Scale.
You can De-OOC FATE with more difficulty, leaving you wonder why not just start with Fudge or Old Fate 2.0 to begin with instead of a hamstrung New Fate?
You can De-OOC 2d20 which will be more complex than Fate (because there are simply more point economies at work here), but I'm not sure the system without the Narrativium is really worth playing.  You take away a One-Trick Pony's Trick, you're left with an Untrained Pony.

If I go to 2d20, it's because I enjoy Roleplaying+Storytelling, I want Players Choosing to be Awesome, knowing that if they keep doing it, Shit.Will.Get.Real because the GM's Doom Pool is growing.  I want that collaborative/competitive give and take that makes me feel like I'm inside a Howard Story as opposed to Howard's World.  

If you don't like Narrative Point Economies, if you don't like OOC decisions as players, if you don't like the GM to be restricted in rules like players are, why in god's name would you even think about choosing this system?  It's like buying a Range Rover for street racing.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;940112...GURPS makes playing Conan feel like you are playing GURPS still, rather than playing Conan. ...

This is well put! I think the most natural match with Conan is BRP; really, you wish someone had done a thoughtful mashup of RQ2 and original Call of Cthulhu - that would hit the tone of original stories almost perfectly.

Quote from: Larsdangly;940612This is well put! I think the most natural match with Conan is BRP; really, you wish someone had done a thoughtful mashup of RQ2 and original Call of Cthulhu - that would hit the tone of original stories almost perfectly.

No, you just want Mythras, or, amusingly enough, Tunnels and Trolls for the combat stunts;).

Quote from: Christopher Brady;940480In AUSTRALIA they are by LAW there.  Not in the rest of the world.  Although technically, they should have been public domain since the 1960's (I THINK it's 1964, given my calculations) but Paradox claims otherwise, and their legal department has managed to bully the rest of the world into believing them.

In Australia more of Howard's stories are PD. In United States it turned out that many of the original Weird Tales magazines never had their copyright renewed which was the law at the time. So those stories, as published in the 1930s, are public domain. Note all the Weird Tales covers displayed in the link.

What complicates things is that Conan is primarily known threw the Ace book series which not only had original Howard stories but patisches written by Carter and de Camp. Along with other stories from Solomon Kane, Kull, etc that were re-written as Conan stories by the two. Plus that series came up with the Conan timeline of his life which is followed more or less by the dozens of novels and stories written afterward. All that is very much under copyright.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;940603The same things which keep Fate from being OOC are the same things which keep 2d20 from being OOC.

My point, which I didn't clarify very well, is that most of the narrative mechanics of FATE can be removed and the game can be played as a traditional IC RPG.  I just basically run the skill and damage system with aspects limited to characters (no more tagging the fire aspect of the building zone, etc.).  Aspects and compels just become a sort of free-form feat/advantage/disadvantage system for a very course grained skill based RPG.  At it's heart, if you remove all the clever narrativy crap - like you can only die when you think it is dramatically appropriate BS - FATE works OK as a fairly generic skill based RPG with a "make up your own boons and flaws" thing going on.  There are several threads around here about it.  I know pundit did it for Starblazers and I have done it with Anglarre.

This same just isn't true with 2d20 where the fortune/doom thing is so deeply woven into every facet of the game that removing the OOC mechanics leaves it completely formless and without structure.  In FATE, you can remove narrative bits and it still chugs along.  In 2d20, it just collapses and has to be rebuilt to be put back into service.  It's not worth it

Quote from: rgrove0172;940494I dunno, I think its all a matter of perception. I can recall many scenes in REH's stories (Conan's and others) were the "hero slips on a pool of blood" or "barely catches hold with his finger tips" or "has an enemy's blow glance off his armor as he turned" etc. (Quotes are not direct) The action appears to the reader to be a matter of fate, luck or whatever - be it beneficial or detrimental. Nobody is measuring to see if they even out but it seems obvious that sometimes "shit" just happens without the direct influence of the character's ability/skill/desire etc. There is another element there, some other force at work.

Conan's company of mercenaries is fired on by enemy archers and scores drop in the metal rain, but not the Cimmerian, somehow he only takes a shaft in the thigh which he shrugs off. Conan's ship goes down in flames and his crew drown but not him, he wakes up on the shore sun burnt and exhausted but alive. Conan is about he eaten by wild wolves but suddenly an old tomb entrance appears granting him an unexpected and miraculous escape. Howard's stories are full of this kind of stuff and sure, you can explain it any number of ways but who cares? The point is the 2d20 system allows for it to be recreated in the game, which I think was most likely the point.

I can agree that it may well be directed at permitting each game to recreate a Hyborian tale rather than presenting a simulation but personally Im ok with that. Why am I interested in playing a game based on Howard's work? Because I read and enjoyed Howard's work and would like to take part in something similar to it. I get that others may have a different vision of what they want to get out of it but I would think most fans of the genre would be ok with a mechanic that allows the action on the table to more or less imitate the stories.

Nah.  The action never appears to be fate, luck, fortune, the gods, karma, cosmic balance etc in Howard's Conan stories.  That is the opposite of what Howard was writing about.  Conan lives by his strength, wits, skill, reflexes and steel.  He is sometimes lucky and sometimes unlucky. If he comes out on top when he gambles it is because he knows how to play the odds. He trods the jeweled thrones beneath his feet and carves out a kingdom by his own hand.  Right?  No otherworldly forces give it to him. No power smiles from above to pluck him from danger.  I am a historian and not an expert on literature, but it seems to me that the stories are about the power of a mortal man (and yes it is a bit misogynistic) to overcome nature, the wickedness of civilization, and the uncaring unfathomable universe.  You might argue that Conan never dies, but that is only because REH's literal pay check depended on his survival.  The doom/fortune economy in 2d20 absolutely kills these Howardian themes - if you play RPGs from an IC perspective.  

Modiphius Conan is not about playing a character in the Hyborian age.  It is a game where the group collectively plays REH, as some kind of collective rule-bound hive-mind, in the process of writing a Hyborian age story.  Players push points around competing for REHs typewriter.  At least, that is the only angle I can come up with that makes the fortune/doom economy make any sense.

Quote from: CRKrueger;940608Not quite.  In FATE, unless they've changed things, you don't have to spend FATE points to do ordinary tasks, it must be a pretty serious Stunt for it to have a FATE activation cost.
In Conan 2d20, if I choose to parry, the GM gets a Doom Point.  That's not spending a Momentum, but it is a cost.
Now on the GM side of things, many NPC powers must be activated with a Doom expenditure.  Many things that most systems simply assume the GM will decide through fiat or random roll, are taken out of the GM's hands (because remember, Modiphius thinks GMs need to be restricted or are n00bs who need to be led) and assigned Doom costs for.

To "de-OOC" 2d20 you'd have to...

• Get rid of Fortune, or at least severely curtail it down to "got luckily saved from death without any choice to spend involved" like WFRP1.
• Get rid of buying dice by giving Doom to the GM (which incidentally, makes the highest level of difficulty in the system mathematically unattainable).
• Get rid of "banking" Momentum and restrict it's usage.
• Take the Doom costs off of nearly everything the GM does, because without players putting Doom in, the GM won't have enough Doom generated through Momentum to make happen what logically would.

....
.

From time to time, I think that perhaps Conan 2d20 won't be so bad, and that I could give it a chance, I don't know, a few houserules here and there, and I could have a perfect serviceable system. And then Madprofessor and CRKrueger come along, and remind me how wrong I am, and how difficult and laborious it would be.

Mother of God, the rule that if you parry, the GM gets a Doom Point, made me cringe.

I think its hilarious that they cribbed a design element from a board game that was cribbing design elements from a much older board game that was cribbing from Conan.

Full Circle.

Quote from: Madprofessor;940649Nah.  The action never appears to be fate, luck, fortune, the gods, karma, cosmic balance etc in Howard's Conan stories.  That is the opposite of what Howard was writing about.  Conan lives by his strength, wits, skill, reflexes and steel.  He is sometimes lucky and sometimes unlucky. If he comes out on top when he gambles it is because he knows how to play the odds. He trods the jeweled thrones beneath his feet and carves out a kingdom by his own hand.  Right?  No otherworldly forces give it to him. No power smiles from above to pluck him from danger.  I am a historian and not an expert on literature, but it seems to me that the stories are about the power of a mortal man (and yes it is a bit misogynistic) to overcome nature, the wickedness of civilization, and the uncaring unfathomable universe.  You might argue that Conan never dies, but that is only because REH's literal pay check depended on his survival.  The doom/fortune economy in 2d20 absolutely kills these Howardian themes - if you play RPGs from an IC perspective.  

Modiphius Conan is not about playing a character in the Hyborian age.  It is a game where the group collectively plays REH, as some kind of collective rule-bound hive-mind, in the process of writing a Hyborian age story.  Players push points around competing for REHs typewriter.  At least, that is the only angle I can come up with that makes the fortune/doom economy make any sense.

This quote is pretty much encapsulates what's wrong with the game:

"...He dwells on a great mountain. What use to call on him? Little he cares if men live or die. Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will send you dooms, not fortune! He is grim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and slay into a man's soul. What else shall men ask of the gods?"
Queen of the Black Coast

Quote from: CRKrueger;940608Not quite.  In FATE, unless they've changed things, you don't have to spend FATE points to do ordinary tasks, it must be a pretty serious Stunt for it to have a FATE activation cost.
In Conan 2d20, if I choose to parry, the GM gets a Doom Point.  That's not spending a Momentum, but it is a cost.
Now on the GM side of things, many NPC powers must be activated with a Doom expenditure.  Many things that most systems simply assume the GM will decide through fiat or random roll, are taken out of the GM's hands (because remember, Modiphius thinks GMs need to be restricted or are n00bs who need to be led) and assigned Doom costs for.

To "de-OOC" 2d20 you'd have to...

• Get rid of Fortune, or at least severely curtail it down to "got luckily saved from death without any choice to spend involved" like WFRP1.
• Get rid of buying dice by giving Doom to the GM (which incidentally, makes the highest level of difficulty in the system mathematically unattainable).
• Get rid of "banking" Momentum and restrict it's usage.
• Take the Doom costs off of nearly everything the GM does, because without players putting Doom in, the GM won't have enough Doom generated through Momentum to make happen what logically would.

You can De-OOC Savage Worlds pretty easily, without affecting the system all that much.  It still plays fine, just comes down a few notches on the 1930's Serials Scale.
You can De-OOC FATE with more difficulty, leaving you wonder why not just start with Fudge or Old Fate 2.0 to begin with instead of a hamstrung New Fate?
You can De-OOC 2d20 which will be more complex than Fate (because there are simply more point economies at work here), but I'm not sure the system without the Narrativium is really worth playing.  You take away a One-Trick Pony's Trick, you're left with an Untrained Pony.

If I go to 2d20, it's because I enjoy Roleplaying+Storytelling, I want Players Choosing to be Awesome, knowing that if they keep doing it, Shit.Will.Get.Real because the GM's Doom Pool is growing.  I want that collaborative/competitive give and take that makes me feel like I'm inside a Howard Story as opposed to Howard's World.  

If you don't like Narrative Point Economies, if you don't like OOC decisions as players, if you don't like the GM to be restricted in rules like players are, why in god's name would you even think about choosing this system?  It's like buying a Range Rover for street racing.

The whole concept of the Doom Pool is just... I have no words for it. Why the fuck would a GM need to spend meta-currency to be allowed to do anything? It's absurd. And this Doom Pool is fueled by the players having their PC do awesome stuff?

Now I have not studied the system in detail, let alone tried to play or run it, but it would seem to me that everybody will turn out shifting meta-currency around the table all the time slowing down the pace and breaking immersion. Makes me wonder if discussion about this game shouldn't be in Other Games?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;940696This quote is pretty much encapsulates what's wrong with the game:

"...He dwells on a great mountain. What use to call on him? Little he cares if men live or die. Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will send you dooms, not fortune! He is grim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and slay into a man's soul. What else shall men ask of the gods?"
Queen of the Black Coast

Exactly. The doom/fortune mechanics create a universe that is very different from this theme of man's struggle in an uncaring universe.

If you really want to support this theme that runs through all of the Conan stories, you need a game with skills and stats (preferably random stats - point buy suggest a fairness that doesn't exist) and zero ability to influence anything in the game world other than through your character's action - no re-rolls, no fate points, none of it.

Quote from: 3rik;940700Why the fuck would a GM need to spend meta-currency to be allowed to do anything? It's absurd. And this Doom Pool is fueled by the players having their PC do awesome stuff?

1. Because a few of the higherups are of the opinion that GMs need to be restricted in power and forced to play within the lines to create a good session.
2. It's part of the collaborative storytelling.  When players are buying Dice, they are giving the GM Doom, so essentially to be more Pulpish, Conanish, or what I call Choosing to be Awesome, they do so knowing the GM is going to do the same.  They are basically granting the GM the ability to kick it up a notch.  They have their hand on the Meta-Throttle.

Quote from: 3rik;940700Now I have not studied the system in detail, let alone tried to play or run it, but it would seem to me that everybody will turn out shifting meta-currency around the table all the time slowing down the pace and breaking immersion. Makes me wonder if discussion about this game shouldn't be in Other Games?

To be fair, once you get used to it, the game speeds up, not slows down once the metapoints become involved.  Buying dice means extra successes.  Extra successes means Momentum. Momentums kills shit faster, powers Cool Things and can give others dice which generates more successes, etc.  It's when you play it "straight" that things slow down.  True, you don't have the meta-decisions to worry about, but your character isn't dropping three Mooks an action either.

If Immersion for you in the context of roleplaying means "immersion into the character who's role I'm playing" then yeah, you're gonna be losing that all the time.  If your perspective is shifted just above the character, to the Howard Story about your Character, then you can switch back and forth, IC and OOC, and still be in the Story, even if you're not in your Character.  

To a lot of people, that's what's they've always meant by "roleplaying", games like this just give you a game to play in each headspace.

Quote from: Omega;940675I think its hilarious that they cribbed a design element from a board game that was cribbing design elements from a much older board game that was cribbing from Conan.

Full Circle.

Could you name those elements and the game they were cribbed from for us boardgame-illiterates:)?

Quote from: Madprofessor;940711Exactly. The doom/fortune mechanics create a universe that is very different from this theme of man's struggle in an uncaring universe.

If you really want to support this theme that runs through all of the Conan stories, you need a game with skills and stats (preferably random stats - point buy suggest a fairness that doesn't exist) and zero ability to influence anything in the game world other than through your character's action - no re-rolls, no fate points, none of it.

Destiny and fate don't exist? Because Conan said so?
Conan is, in your minds, more aware of the workings of the world than...oh, I don't know, the protector saint of Aquilonia in the first Conan story ever written by Howard who has been protecting the country for 1500 years:D?

Quote from: REH - Phoenix in the Sword"Oh man, do you know me?"

"Not I, by Crom!" swore the king.

"Man," said the ancient, "I am Epemitreus."

"But Epemitreus the Sage has been dead for fifteen hundred years!" stammered Conan.

"Harken!" spoke the other commandingly. "As a pebble cast into a dark lake sends ripples to the further shores, happenings in the Unseen world have broken like waves on my slumber. I have marked you well, Conan of Cimmeria, and the stamp of mighty happenings and great deeds is upon you. But dooms are loose in the land, against which your sword can not aid you."

"You speak in riddles," said Conan uneasily. "Let me see my foe and I'll cleave his skull to the teeth."

"Loose your barbarian fury against your foes of flesh and blood," answered the ancient. "It is not against men I must shield you. There are dark worlds barely guessed by man, wherein formless monsters stalk—fiends which may be drawn from the Outer Voids to take material shape and rend and devour at the bidding of evil magicians. There is a serpent in your house, oh king—an adder in your kingdom, come up from Stygia, with the dark wisdom of the shadows in his murky soul. As a sleeping man dreams of the serpent which crawls near him, I have felt the foul presence of Set's neophyte. He is drunk with terrible power, and the blows he strikes at his enemy may well bring down the kingdom. I have called you to me, to give you a weapon against him and his hell-hound pack."

"But why?" bewilderedly asked Conan. "Men say you sleep in the black heart of Golamira, whence you send forth your ghost on unseen wings to aid Aquilonia in times of need, but I—I am an outlander and a barbarian."

"Peace!" the ghostly tones reverberated through the great shadowy cavern. "Your destiny is one with Aquilonia. Gigantic happenings are forming in the web and the womb of Fate, and a blood-mad sorcerer shall not stand in the path of imperial destiny. Ages ago Set coiled about the world like a python about its prey. All my life, which was as the lives of three common men, I fought him. I drove him into the shadows of the mysterious south, but in dark Stygia men still worship him who to us is the arch-demon. As I fought Set, I fight his worshippers and his votaries and his acolytes. Hold out your sword."

Or maybe saints ain't good enough, and we want to check, I don't know, The Hour of the Dragon for a dark wizard and a witch:p?

Quote from: REH, Hour of the DragonThe horse was tiring fast. Conan recognized the grim finality of his
position. He sensed an inexorable driving fate behind all this. He
could not escape. He was as much a captive as he had been in the pits
of Belverus. But he was no son of the Orient to yield passively to
what seemed inevitable. If he could not escape, he would at least take
some of his foes into eternity with him. He turned into a wide thicket
of larches that masked a slope, looking for a place to turn at bay.

***

Zeiata stirred the fire without replying.

"These things are governed by immutable laws," she said at last. "I
can not make you understand; I do not altogether understand myself,
though I have sought wisdom in the silences of the high places for
more years than I can remember. I cannot save you, though I would if I
might. Man must, at last, work out his own salvation. Yet perhaps
wisdom may come to me in dreams, and in the morn I may be able to give
you the clue to the enigma."

***

A long silence ensued, in which the crackle of the tamarisks was loud
on the hearth.

"Find the heart of your kingdom," she said at last. "There lies your
defeat and your power. You fight more than mortal man. You will not
possess the throne again unless you find the heart of your kingdom."

"Do you mean the city of Tarantia?"

She shook her head. "I am but an oracle, through whose lips the gods
speak. My lips are sealed by them lest I speak too much. You must find
the heart of your kingdom. I can say no more. My lips are opened and
sealed by the gods."

***

In that great emptiness the voice of the man beside the altar sounded
hollow and ghostly:

" And so the word came southward. The night wind whispered it, the
ravens croaked of it as they flew, and the grim bats told it to the
owls and the serpents that lurk in hoary ruins. Were-wolf and vampire
knew, and the ebon-bodied demons that prowl by night. The sleeping
Night of the World stirred and shook its heavy mane, and there began a
throbbing of drums in deep darkness, and the echoes of far weird cries
frightened men who walked by dusk. For the Heart of Ahriman had come
again into the world to fulfill its cryptic destiny. "Ask me not how
I, Thutothmes of Khemi and the Night, heard the word before Thoth-Amon,
who calls himself prince of all wizards. There are secrets not meet
for such ears even as yours, and Thoth-Amon is not the only lord of
the Black Ring."

So, the learned people in the stories all know about fate and gods influencing the events.
Conan, in his barbaric indifference to the workings of the outwordly forces, just rejects whatever plots they forces beyond Veil have prepared, and fights until he changes it, or is brought low. But there are things even he couldn't fight, unless helped by an outworldly force or two (Epemitrius and the Heart of Ahriman, respectively). All said powers, tellingly, help him in order to fulfill their destinies.
In short, Conan is a pawn in a Universe-wide game of chess. He's just the Pawn that lives long enough to get promoted into a more important figure;).

And Fate points, Mythras-style, are quite useful in this set-up. The Doom Pool would require, admittedly, more mental gymnastics, but it's doable.

Asen actually makes a decent point.  You look in Howard's stories, it's NOT Full.Lovecraft.  Yes, there's the Outer Void and Gulfs Unknown to Man filled with Demons and Things Unimaginable.  But there's also the more immediate conflict of gods.  Crom might not care, but Mitra and Set kinda do, and they don't like each other much.

Mythras has Luck points, not Fate points.

That was my point, Green One - and also, that you're unlikely to play a follower of Crom in a game that has you playing characters from all over the setting;).

Besides, what's the point of playing a Cimmerian? You can at best hope to match Conan, while you can always strive to do better than the other Aquilonians, Nemedians and Hyrkanians in the stories:D!