My friend wants me to run him a D&D game set in the Conan setting for his birthday. I am all for it! The only problem is, I've never touched anything Conan related in my life.

I know enough that it's "swords and sorcery" and that I think D&D's meticulous tracking of resources won't fit the feeling the game should have if it's Conan. I'm looking at systems like Dungeon World to potentially create the "Conan" feeling.

But that leads me to a question: what exactly is a "Conan" style adventure anyway? Does Conan dungeon crawl like D&D? Or is it something different? What would a typical session of a Conan themed game look like?

Basically I am trying to figure out how it's different from regular old D&D as a system and its adventures. (5e to be specific.) In both feel and content.

First and foremost, you would need to devour Conan stuff to run a Conan game. What Conan media has your friend enjoyed? The Conan of the novels, the Conan of the comics and the Conan of the movies are cousins, not triplets.

There is a new Conan RPG. I believe they have a Quickstart. It might be worth a read. There are some narrative elements which kept me from jumping into the KS.

Personally, I would use Exemplars & Eidolons from Sine Nomine, or buy his Scarlet Heroes RPG. Why? Conan's stories are usually about Conan (maybe +1-2 companions) kicking serious ass against many foes and prevailing...and not counting coins like an accountant.
http://www.rpgnow.com/product/144651/Exemplars--Eidolons

The new Conan game is out, but you have to like the 2d20 system to play it. The Mongoose d20 version of Conan is pretty decent if you like d20. Otherwise, Conan can be played with pretty much any RPG as long as it's a bit dark and gritty.

As Spinachcat mentioned, reading Robert E Howard's original stories is the best way to get "into" the feel of Conan. A Google search ought to help you find some of those pretty quickly. Basically, a Conan world is human-only fantasy. There is some magic, but not a lot. And most of the magic is wielded by evil sorcerers who want to rule the world. Conan is mostly about thieves and warriors looting and fighting. Conan games could involve dungeon crawls or city adventures. Conan spends time as a mercenary, a pirate, a wanderer, and eventually a king.

I'm reading through the stories right now.

In perhaps 75% of the stories Conan hears about some bured treasure somewhere and hesds out to dig it up. Sometimes he's accompanied by someone trustworthy and sometimes untrustworthy. The "dungeon" had a couple odd monsters or traps that Conan has to figure out.

You might try having really bizzaire and lethal traps that you describe and your players have to figure out, talk through it, etc.

Conan despises sorcery and sometimes the hairs on the back of his neck rises in warning. Many sorcerers get their powers from a magical object that may have just "fallen from the sky." Sometimes just smashing that object is enough to defest a sorcerer - but that usually requires a distraction.

Conan can reliably defeat normal men in 1 on 1 combat but his swordsmanship is usually irrelevant against monsters and sorcerers.

Oh, and this is very important. Almost every adventure Conan is in he defeats the trap / monster / sorcerer band gets to the treasure, and for whatever reason can't get the treasure, often because someone else steals it from him. It's like a running theme. The 1 or 2 times he gets a real treasure it's quite satisfying.



He spends most of it on drink and women anyway. You might need a system where carousing is part of the rules.

Ruffians are corrupt but honest about their corruption. Nobles are corrupt all the way.

Hope this helps.

Quote from: Ashakyre;1036777Oh, and this is very important. Almost every adventure Conan is in he defeats the trap / monster / sorcerer band gets to the treasure, and for whatever reason can't get the treasure, often because someone else steals it from him. It's like a running theme. The 1 or 2 times he gets a real treasure it's quite satisfying.

A great observation. I've run a couple of once which were patterned after Conan/Lankhmar stories and I flat-out told my players that if they get a huge cash windfall that they could spend a little of it but that the rest would be assumed to be "lost" by the start of the next adventure. The players could decide if they spent it on a drinking binge, on gambling, it was stolen by some shady NPC, or whatever. Sometimes their ideas were plot threads for the next adventure.

The missions are usually robberies.  Conan lives like there's no tomorrow and will buy a few rounds for the house to get the attention of a lady.  He's often out of money at the start of a story.  Anyhow, most of his stories have a twist.  The home owner's assassin's in the house.  The sorcerer is keeping a poor, suffering elder god prisoner.  The lord he's hired on with has hung him out to die and his enemies are decent guys.  Also, magic is horrific, people turn into a swarm of beetles after a snake bite or explode in a shower of blood.  The most powerful groups of sorcerers are the Hyperborians, The Black Circle, and the Stygians in that order.  Thoth Ammon might be on par with one of the Hyperborians and probably studied with them but on the whole, the Stygians are third rate dabblers by comparison.  Conan barely escapes Hyperboria with his life.  Though that's true of most Conan stories, he's a scary dude but his overconfidence constantly gets him into trouble.

The Kurt Buesik / Cary Nord Conan run is a fairly true to the originals retelling of Robert E Howard's stories, and is well worth finding if you want something fast and visual to bring you up to speed.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1036762But that leads me to a question: what exactly is a "Conan" style adventure anyway? Does Conan dungeon crawl like D&D? Or is it something different? What would a typical session of a Conan themed game look like?

Basically I am trying to figure out how it's different from regular old D&D as a system and its adventures. (5e to be specific.) In both feel and content.

There are about 50 zillion Conan or Conan-esque games out there, but honestly any old system will work, so long as you work to maintain the genre. D&D is highly influenced by Conan, so a lot of the basic D&D shell works just fine. Some of the decidedly Conan-esque genre conventions that D&D mirrors include:

• The 'hero' is really more just 'the protagonist,' their acts are definitely exciting, but how good they are is fairly questionable.
• The hero is out for treasure, and getting the treasure (out of the place where it is and to a place where they can spend it) is more important than what they do with it (gp=xp really works for this, although Conan really also should get reasonable xp for fighting things. His is not the merry 'Oceans 11 in a dungeon' that gp=xp is sometimes compared to).
• The hero adventures in something not dissimilar to a D&D dungeon (tower, tomb, etc.). And some of the traps or guard situations or the like make it seem like the place would be very impractical for actual everyday use (and that's fine)
• The hero can kick the butt of multiple (sometimes massively multiple) regular guards or cultists or whatnot.
• The hero is omni-competent (at least in terms of physical, social, and survival skills, knowledges not so much).

I'll agree with others, the bean-counting resource tracking and simple, easy, reliable magic of D&D are both un-Conan-like (although bean-counting of equipment/encumbrance does hew well to the whole 'how much treasure can you drag out?' focus).

Note, however, that Conan is a set of Stories, and as such no game will ever work quite like it. Conan rolls successes (and failures) exactly when he needs to for the story to work. Other things are 'informed events' and the like. For example, Conan is a renowned pirate at different times in his life, yet there were pretty much no examples of him doing any day-to-day pirating (probably because the readers, while expecting him to be selfish and money-hungry, didn't really want to read stories about him capturing merchant ships and killing mostly helpless people). So, like Wesley in Princess Bride, he's a pirate... that never pirates.

I'm sure there are other things I can't think of right now. I'll think on it some more.

Project Gutenberg Australia is your friend, Conan stories for free!

What's the timeframe like?
What RPG systems does your friend like, or dislike?

There is an out-of-print GURPS worldbook for Conan, which could serve as a setting intro/sourcebook and world orientation for a Conan campaign using another RPG. GURPS also has a few programmed adventures for Conan, but they're designed to be played with GURPS so the balance/style would tend to be off for other systems.

And be sure to check out this thread:
 
https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?38671-Hyborian-Age-Suggest-adventures-for-conversion

The thing is, Conan was partly just a way for Howard to write historical fiction and sell it to pulp magazines. He did a lot of different things, from thieving, to pirating, to exploring ruins, to trying to rape a giant's daughter, to political intrigue trying to be the power behind the throne.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1036800Project Gutenberg Australia is your friend, Conan stories for free!

What's the timeframe like?
What RPG systems does your friend like, or dislike?

I have until the end of May to get ready.

He likes roleplaying Conan style characters, wants to just kick ass, and gets bored when the game gets bogged down in book keeping and positioning type stuff.

Though I suppose if it more "boardgame" like by having an elaborate battlefield with terrain laid out he would have fun being engaged by the fancy geography and tactile feelings. He likes boardgames. But that would take way too long as I never have made any terrain before.

There is the new Conan boardgame.

As for RPG, you want something fast and either theater of the mind or something without counting squares.

Your friend might really like Exemplars & Eidolons because your PC (even at 1st level) is killing multiple foes per round. When PCs roll damage, they roll against Hit Dice, not Hit Points. AKA, you might roll D6 damage and kill 4 orcs in one attack. E&E is also Sword & Sorcery focused so you could Conan-ize it with no effort.

I've heard Barbarians of Lemuria is good choice too. RPGPundit reviewed it a few months ago. Check the Review forum for more info. That thread got several BoL fans involved who posted lots of detailed info. Worth a look.

I'll check out Exemplars & Eidelons.

My friend in question actually bought Barbarians of Lemuria because he thought it was cool (the concept) and we were going to play it once, but it never went through. Maybe I should try that game. The only reason I didn't consider it is that I am wholly unfamiliar with it.

If your friend still has interest in BoL, check out the thread about it.
https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?38512-RPGPundit-Reviews-Barbarians-of-Lemuria