Quote from: oggsmash;1098482I remember the folks on the mongoose forums explaining that even though they had the Conan license they were only allowed to publish it with one game system, so they originally intended to publish a runequest version, but were legally not able to.   Their d20 version was not bad at all IMO, but I never played it and only read it.  But it made d20 "feel" like Conan (low massive damage save vs death with escalating DC, sorcery dark, unreliable and dangerous, AC (defense) based on dodge or parry characteristic and armor being DR instead of armor class.

   They were also planning to do a Savage Worlds version, for the 'things that might have been' list.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1098777They were also planning to do a Savage Worlds version, for the 'things that might have been' list.

Well, Savage Worlds does have a Solomon Kane game, which seems rather fun.

Which edition was the one with a half naked chick on every page? Since I have little experience with the Conan games I'll vote for that one. You have to support the scantily clad women you know  

Quote from: Trond;1098791Which edition was the one with a half naked chick on every page? Since I have little experience with the Conan games I'll vote for that one. You have to support the scantily clad women you know  

  Atlantean.   All the books in that edition were very evocative of Howard's world.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1098777They were also planning to do a Savage Worlds version, for the 'things that might have been' list.

  Beasts and barbarians pretty much is Conan.   Savage worlds I think can cover Conan pretty well, with some flavor rules for magic.   In Howard's stories, Conan does tend to have plot armor, but everyone knows this because the first ever published Conan tale was one where he is already King.  So the reader already knows, Conan is not buying the farm in any other tale.  I would say the vibe I look for in a Conan game is the world and rules around it, meaning though Conan may have plot armor in the stories, most everyone else is naked.  If I play or gm in conan's world, I like for it to be clear hyboria is a dangerous place and there is one Conan, so choose wisely.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1098586Conan loses, but he never comes close to death at all. There is the illusion that he's close to death, but the writer is never going to kill him off and the reader pretty much knows this too. The meta-currency of Modiphius' 2d20 game actually allows the game to play much more like this than purely traditional games.

And that is the thing that turns me off Modis Conan game.

The game focuses on the GM and Players re-creating a R.E. Howard "Conan-style" story, set in Hyboria, with different characters.

And they throw 3 types of meta currency at the game to make it work.

You are not playing Characters having adventures in R.E. Howards world of Hyboria.

It may seem like a subtle difference, but it is there.

It's a shame because the underlying 2d20 system is not bad at all.

Quote from: Mankcam;1098666Yeah from what I can see, Modiphius Conan ain't Savage Worlds. The meta-currency can help make the PCs more capable, and thus make them feel more powerful, but death is always on the cards. All the GM has to do is have a bigger stack of Doom Pts to even things up, then the opponents will be pretty challenging.
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This is my #1 hate on the new Conan game meta currency's.

GM's do not need meta currency to do their jobs. As a GM I find GM meta currencies annoying to keep track of. Why? I don't need it! Why design the NPC abilities around them? WTF?

And as player I find GM meta currencies to induce a very board game style feel to play. Because you have a physical indicator (tokens or dice counter) when the GM is intentionally holding back, or about to bring the pain.

Quote from: Jaeger;1098832And that is the thing that turns me off Modis Conan game.

The game focuses on the GM and Players re-creating a R.E. Howard "Conan-style" story, set in Hyboria, with different characters.

And they throw 3 types of meta currency at the game to make it work.

You are not playing Characters having adventures in R.E. Howards world of Hyboria.

It may seem like a subtle difference, but it is there.

If there is a difference, it is so subtle that you are not making it clear.

When playing Modiphius Conan, you absolutely are playing characters having adventures in REH's Hyboria. The play uses mechanics you might not like, but that doesn't make the first sentence any less true.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1098833If there is a difference, it is so subtle that you are not making it clear.

When playing Modiphius Conan, you absolutely are playing characters having adventures in REH's Hyboria. The play uses mechanics you might not like, but that doesn't make the first sentence any less true.

What Jaegar is getting at is that due to the system putting such a high focus on meta-currencies to emulate fiction, you're playing characters in a Howard Story set in the Hyborian Age.  That's not the same thing as playing characters living in the Hyborian Age. The 4th wall awareness of the meta-currencies practically demands a separation between character and player with regards how those currencies will be used and the side effects they will have.

Quote from: Jaeger;1098832And that is the thing that turns me off Modis Conan game.

The game focuses on the GM and Players re-creating a R.E. Howard "Conan-style" story, set in Hyboria, with different characters.

And they throw 3 types of meta currency at the game to make it work.

You are not playing Characters having adventures in R.E. Howards world of Hyboria.

It may seem like a subtle difference, but it is there.

It's a shame because the underlying 2d20 system is not bad at all.



This is my #1 hate on the new Conan game meta currency's.

GM's do not need meta currency to do their jobs. As a GM I find GM meta currencies annoying to keep track of. Why? I don't need it! Why design the NPC abilities around them? WTF?

And as player I find GM meta currencies to induce a very board game style feel to play. Because you have a physical indicator (tokens or dice counter) when the GM is intentionally holding back, or about to bring the pain.

That is pretty much how I felt when I first received the book via the kickstarter. I ended up shelving it and getting the resources purely to read the content, and thought I would play Conan using BRP/Mythras or BoL.

However I saw the game in action at a local games shop, and it seems surprisingly fun, including the Momentum/Doom Pt flow. Then I watched some youtube vids and now I am keeping an open mind. It might go well with my own group, or it might go down like a sack of lead.

So I won't be critical until I've got some games of it under my belt, that's the only way I will know whether it works for us or not.

However I do share this concern regarding the growing trend of rpgs using meta-currency. Perhaps they work well for club and convention play, but I know that my own gang of friends usually prefer loose games without all these kind of dials.

Quote from: Mankcam;1098843That is pretty much how I felt when I first received the book via the kickstarter. I ended up shelving it and getting the resources purely to read the content, and thought I would play Conan using BRP/Mythras or BoL.

However I saw the game in action at a local games shop, and it seems surprisingly fun, including the Momentum/Doom Pt flow. Then I watched some youtube vids and now I am keeping an open mind. It might go well with my own group, or it might go down like a sack of lead.

So I won't be critical until I've got some games of it under my belt, that's the only way I will know whether it works for us or not.

However I do share this concern regarding the growing trend of rpgs using meta-currency. Perhaps they work well for club and convention play, but I know that my own gang of friends usually prefer loose games without all these kind of dials.

I know GM meta currency does not work for me - both as a GM and a player. (I have played other games that used similar Meta mechanics.)

As a GM, it's just one more thing to track, continually pulling away from the Flow of the game. And the way 2d20 Conan does it is particularly distracting as it is tied to NPC abilities.

As Player - Too many out of character group decisions made on whether or not to give the GM more "juice" to use against us later. Also makes a lot of fights a bit anti-climatic as you can easily tell when the GM is 'holding back' his fuck you points so as not to hit/Pick-on any single player too hard in a fight. I find that very immersion breaking.

I Find GM meta points makes RPG's have an inherently more adversarial GM/Player dynamic.  And they make the game part of an RPG much more 'gamey'.

And the 2d20 Conan has fiddly damage dice on top of it all too. Really? You guys couldn't just use a d6 the normal way? And then there's the whole vigor/Wounds stuff.. Really just couldn't use  a simple wound or hit point system could you?

Which sums up my whole opinion on the game: Fiddly, just to be different from everyone else because they can. A lot like the FFG star wars game...

It's a shame because the basic 2d20 mechanic is rather clever, and would work very well adapted to the Opposition roll mechanic used in Mythras.

Quote from: Jaeger;1098845I Find GM meta points makes RPG's have an inherently more adversarial GM/Player dynamic.  And they make the game part of an RPG much more 'gamey'.

It's a matter of taste; I find that any game that makes heavy use of miniatures and a combat grid pulls me out of roleplaying while making me more adversarial and likely to make 'gamey' decisions than the metacurrencies do. This likely goes back to decades of boardgaming & wargaming where you don't necessarily play the character (or even the character of your army) but instead play the game and play it to win. It's not something that is enjoyable for myself or others in RPGs, so I avoid it.

Warning, strong opinions incoming. (Because it obviously touches on my game and the style of game that I like.)

Quote from: Jaeger;1098832And they throw 3 types of meta currency at the game to make it work.

So does mine, I just think that my types are clearer in purpose: Standard Fortune of which both the party and the GM have their own pool respectively with expended currency going straight to the opposing pool. Favor, which is individual Fortune Points (reflecting being personally more lucky than the average protagonist). And Power Points which get expended whenever you use a Trait or cast a spell. Essentially your do-cool-stuff points. They effectively limit how often you can use your cool tricks per "episode" as well.

Quote from: Jaeger;1098832You are not playing Characters having adventures in R.E. Howards world of Hyboria.

It may seem like a subtle difference, but it is there.

It's a shame because the underlying 2d20 system is not bad at all.

I can see the difference. The point is that I believe that most people who want to play on Hyboria don't want to play some guy in that world. They want to play as a protag - like Conan or Red Sonja or Subotai. The same people who play on Arda want to play as a protag comparable to Bilbo or Boromir or Gimli.

If you want to play as a character in one of these fictional worlds that has pretty much the same skill as these characters but not the same amount of luck, that's fine. A valid preference. But there's just other people who'd prefer PCs with comparable skill levels AND the same amount of luck as these characters. Isn't that boring because you're preordained to survive and succeed? Nah. You never know whether you character won't end up like Boromir, when you run out of luck.

But it's kinda interesting: there's reality simulation (think Hârnmaster), then there is genresim (think 2d20 Conan, or better yet KotBL ). And then there is what you and the RPGPundit seem to prefer which seems to be inbetween (as you seemingly don't want to emulate heroic luck that's typical for the genre). I need to come up with name for this style of play (which hopefully indicates that I am not dismissive of it).

I wonder if gamism and narrativism can be so cleanly dissected as well...

Quote from: Jaeger;1098832This is my #1 hate on the new Conan game meta currency's.

GM's do not need meta currency to do their jobs.

The sheer amount of GM dice fudging behind the screen in this hobby, including the one I have personally observed, puts that statement mightily in doubt. Or to be more precise: meta currency might not be required for certain play styles. They are a valid tool for modeling heroic luck (or villainous luck in the case of my game's GM pool) though.

Quote from: Jaeger;1098832As a GM I find GM meta currencies annoying to keep track of. Why? I don't need it! Why design the NPC abilities around them? WTF?

That makes sense. If you don't want heroic luck in your games, due to your personal preferences, they at best are an unnecessary burden and at worst they subvert the type of game you want to run to begin with.

Quote from: Jaeger;1098832And as player I find GM meta currencies to induce a very board game style feel to play. Because you have a physical indicator (tokens or dice counter) when the GM is intentionally holding back, or about to bring the pain.

I kinda like expanding the tools of the GM by boardgame elements. For the Deathwatch RPG I made these cards, it was pretty sick and the artwork helped everyone getting into the spirit of the game

Quote from: CRKrueger;1098839The 4th wall awareness of the meta-currencies practically demands a separation between character and player with regards how those currencies will be used and the side effects they will have.

Everything about rule systems is meta, everything is 4th wall, as soon as you apply modifiers and stuff. The main difference I see is that heroic luck (and the metacurrencies which reflect that) has no correspondence in actual life. It's not tangible from that viewpoint.

Quote from: Jaeger;1098845As Player - Too many out of character group decisions made on whether or not to give the GM more "juice" to use against us later.

I'm attaching an additional price on using metacurrency (Standard Fortune), with the effect that both the party and the GM only expend it when they really want to. In the case of the party, when they're really in trouble or stuck, in the case of the GM when he, for example, misjudged the difficulty of the encounter and made it too hard for the PCs. Otherwise spending that metacurrency is kinda rare (there's freebie points though in some encounters).

Quote from: Jaeger;1098845Also makes a lot of fights a bit anti-climatic as you can easily tell when the GM is 'holding back' his fuck you points so as not to hit/Pick-on any single player too hard in a fight. I find that very immersion breaking.

Well, that could only arise in KotBL against a villain who has Favor (the individual luck metacurrency). But again - if you misjudged the encounter, you're supposed to get "punished" for it as GM by paying metacurrency. If you didn't misjudge the encounter and the players used bad tactics or rolled badly then whatever you planned in advance for that case should take place. You should know the stakes in advance. If you don't intend the players to die in that encounter, then don't put it at stake. Put something else at stake. (If you can't think of any immediate in-setting consequences, then you can put the loss of metacurrency at stake, which will lead to in-setting consequences later.)

Quote from: Jaeger;1098845I Find GM meta points makes RPG's have an inherently more adversarial GM/Player dynamic.

I can see that. The thing is that in KotBL more devious things happen to the PCs the more metacurrency the GM has left as the story reaches its finale. So for the GM the question prior to that moment becomes then "Do I spend the metacurrency NOW for short-term pain or do I hoard the metacurrency for long-term pain LATER, during the scenario's final scene?"

So this type of GM metacurrency is not adverserial - because the pain is going to happen anyway. The GM decides only where and when, if sooner or later. And if he's a good GM, he will decide based on what makes for a most interesting and entertaining game.

Quote from: Jaeger;1098845And they make the game part of an RPG much more 'gamey'.

I don't feel that. I mean... it depends on what they do. For me as a GM, Fortune Points are a GM (not player!) empowerment tool, as it helps me to steer the flow of the scenario in entertaining ways. I made an encounter way too easy? Alright, I'll throw in a complication for the players. Which means I have to spend metacurrency, which means I have less metacurrency at the finale. Which means overall less pain for the players because I just spend 1 point to merely make the too-easy encounter a bit more challenging, instead of other pain.

I feel this is a win-win for an on-going game.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1098777They were also planning to do a Savage Worlds version, for the 'things that might have been' list.

Sigh. To just imagine. A decent Conan game without funky charts, mind boggling overly designed rules bloat and pretentious "artsy"-dice-wanking. And I am not that deep into SW in general.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1098839What Jaegar is getting at is that due to the system putting such a high focus on meta-currencies to emulate fiction, you're playing characters in a Howard Story set in the Hyborian Age.  That's not the same thing as playing characters living in the Hyborian Age. The 4th wall awareness of the meta-currencies practically demands a separation between character and player with regards how those currencies will be used and the side effects they will have.

The meta-currencies turn the game into an abstract skirmish game.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1098855Everything about rule systems is meta, everything is 4th wall, as soon as you apply modifiers and stuff. The main difference I see is that heroic luck (and the metacurrencies which reflect that) has no correspondence in actual life. It's not tangible from that viewpoint.
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Modifiers are comparatively  quick to apply.  In 2d20 Conan every time someone takes a turn there is a lengthy discussion about the use of some none or all of the meta-currencies.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1098855I'm attaching an additional price on using metacurrency (Standard Fortune), with the effect that both the party and the GM only expend it when they really want to

Only after a long discussion. That includes the GM stirring off into space or mutter while deciding whether or not to use Doom.