I updated my opening post with a bit more detail and dates.

So allmost a half dozen. A full dozen if you count my old RPG from the 90s. Parody though so I do not count it.

I could have sworn there was another called Hyborian Age or somesuch. But seems not. There was a Vallejo CCG called that though.

La Puerta de Ishtar if you understand spanish, lends itself very well for emulating Conan. As a matter of fact there's a fan made pdf that gives all the info needed for this.

That said so far my favorite published game for playing Conan is BoL. Hope my Urth game will do it better since I'm designing it from the ground up to do just that.

One game I haven't seen anybody mention is Zerf's, TSR Conan with the numbers filed down (if not mistaken) and freely available.

Edited to add: Low Fantasy Gaming also emulates Conan pretty well if you ask me.

Jaws of the Six Serpents from Silver Branch Games is a PDQ System game designed for Conan-style swords and sorcery.

Requires Green Ronin's Dragon AGE AGE of Conan

Oh, found the one was misremembering. Was Hyborian War, a PBM wargame if I recall correctly rather than an RPG.

Yeah there are like a bazillion Conan-esque knock offs. Nearly as many as there are novels. Including the Thongor series which nearly beat out Conan as the first modern barbarian movie. With David Prowse as Thongor no less! The Green Cross Man battling monsters of Lemuria!

Yeah, ZeRFR's isn't too bad, and it was the system TSR used for CONAN in the 1980s. There is a poster giving a very good overview of it on RPG Pub at present.

As another simple system to rival BoL, Jaws Of the Seven Serpents (JSS) is really good. It uses the PDQ system, which as a much more much more 'narrative' flavour than BoL.

PDQ would appeal to those who like Fate or HeroQuest, and requires a bit of creative thinking during the char gen process. It is very good however, I put JSS on a par with BoL for simplicity. It really boils down to personal taste, JSS requires more thought initially, whereas BoL char gen is very straight forward.

BoL and JSS aren't CONAN games per see, but they are heavily inspired by that flavour of Swords & Sorcery, and the Hyborian World can easily be used for their default setting.

Quote from: Mankcam;1097930BoL and JSS aren't CONAN games per see, but they are heavily inspired by that flavour of Swords & Sorcery, and the Hyborian World can easily be used for their default setting.

BoL is my S&S system of choice, I would just take the "fluff" from Howard and the comics if I wanted to run a game in the Hyborian Age.

I wonder how DCC would handle Conan?  The magic rules already smell very Howardian.  I guess Character generation change would be  a way to land closer to Conan, but actual play I think it is pretty close now.

It's a shame that there aren't that many actual plays of Modiphius Conan. Those that play seem to like it. I have the pdfs but I don't think my players would like it. The system is a bit confusing and clunky. An acquaintance of mine made maps for some of the supplements, btw.

For a crunchy system, Modiphius Conan seems quite good. There is a micro-game with the Momentum-Doom Pt economy to get used to, and that can put off some people. Although I prefer a version of BRP for a crunchy set of mechanics, the Modiphius 2D20 is not a bad option for this kind of thing.

I'm not sure if I will ever run it, but I will happily play in a Modiphius Conan game if someone GMs it for me.

Conan D20 was the best of the bunch in my opinion. I DMed a campaign that went on for the better part of 5 years, and the players loved it.

It massaged the D20 system enough to make it better adapted to Hyboria, but still had enough crunch to satisfy 3.0/3.5 players. I didn't allow any sorcerers, to keep them essentially misterious and otherworldly. It's amazing how quickly people adapt to a world where there is no magical healing, and the level of tactical play goes up dramatically. My guys started becoming master ambushers and used all tactical advantages they could muster in order to reduce return fire and the possibility of being wounded.

Mobbing rules allowed the traditional image of the horde of Picts overwhelming even the strongest of warriors to become a gaming reality, avoiding the D&D trope of the high-level warrior ignoring all the guardsmen because they could not even touch him most of the time and did negligible damage whenever they were lucky enough to hit.

All in all, an extremely enjoyable experience and by far my best go around with DMing Conan (I also DMed GURPS Conan back in the mists of time, and it was good too, just not quite as good as Conan D20).

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1097870Jaws of the Six Serpents from Silver Branch Games is a PDQ System game designed for Conan-style swords and sorcery.

JotSS is my personal favorite S&S game. It would absolutely work well for Conan.

The true beauty of Conan is the "f*** you" setting. The Hyborian World carries no favors for PCs.

It's fun & nice but, also deadly.

Quote from: Theory of Games;1098156The true beauty of Conan is the "f*** you" setting. The Hyborian World carries no favors for PCs.

It's fun & nice but, also deadly.

It certainly has the illusion of being deadly, but if your heroes are made on the level of Conan himself (which the Modiphius version certainly provides), then death most often comes from them rather than to them. Modiphius has metacurrency that ensures every scene feels like death is on the table, but it is generally not too likely unless the people at the table (GM and players) want it to happen and spend the pools to make it go that way.