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If you don't mind highly complex combat, Riddle of Steel?
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Jun 10, 2015 16:05
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There's probably not a good system for Conan. The closest thing I can think of is a system where the player is basically invincible and can do whatever they want as long as they behave selfishly and keep their ambitions petty. If they try to do anything altruistic or noble then they can actually fail and hurt others. This sort of mirrors the Conan stories where Conan can escape anything through luck or skill but can get in trouble by falling in love or trying to help someone or doing anything beyond serving his base nature, basically. Once Conan becomes King he gets in a lot of poo poo but when he's a wandering guy and small-time criminal or adventurer he's pretty much invulnerable (and perpetually broke as he drinks and gambles all his coin away)
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Jun 10, 2015 16:35
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Conan works better as a benchmark to compare one's PC to than an actual character to be played in a game. This is kind of how GURPS did it where he had like four or five stat blocks, each representing a period in his life.
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Jun 10, 2015 17:02
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Fate (especially FAE) do it just fine, really.
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Jun 10, 2015 17:29
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:There's probably not a good system for Conan. The closest thing I can think of is a system where the player is basically invincible and can do whatever they want as long as they behave selfishly and keep their ambitions petty. If they try to do anything altruistic or noble then they can actually fail and hurt others. In A Wicked Age does something like that. Stats are "For others", "with love" or "with violence". Generally you slap two together for a role. It's a really good game that tells some over the top mythical stories.
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Jun 10, 2015 17:32
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That Sandy Petersen interview is a pro click. I also think the openness towards the interviewer shows how important yog-sothoth.com is to the fandom of Call of Cthulhu. It's a tremendous resource, one of the better fan sites out there. Very smart for Petersen to recognize that.
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Jun 10, 2015 17:36
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It's really surprising to me to see that nobody actually suggested any of the multiple officially-licensed Conan RPGs that have existed over the years could reasonably represent Conan himself. Have they all been that bad?
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Jun 10, 2015 17:58
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Leperflesh posted:It's really surprising to me to see that nobody actually suggested any of the multiple officially-licensed Conan RPGs that have existed over the years could reasonably represent Conan himself. I've never played one so I couldn't comment. I'll bet they are pretty bad. But Conan shouldn't have hit points or even the ability to be hurt or permanently confined until his noble goals have been thwarted. How about this: Conan is basically invincible and unstoppable as long as he remains a petty thief/sell-sword. However if he does something altruistic or noble we get standard resolution mechanics. If succeeds he gets plot marker that he can redeem for a big goal (being king, having his own pirate ship, etc) If he fails he can be harmed or killed. This basically means that Conan is constantly vulnerable once he moves beyond his barbarian roots and actually becomes King Conan or Pirate Conan or whatever. However once that's all taken away from him (loses the ship, is deposed and thrown in the dungeon, etc) and he's laid low again he becomes unstoppable/unconfinable and can escape to brood and adventure another day. That seems to get the pacing/feel of a Conan adventure correct IMO. This is essentially a system that kinda models Unknown Armies in the sense that the player has a classic archetype that they derive their power from, and stepping beyond it can cause problems.
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Jun 10, 2015 18:16
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:I've never played one so I couldn't comment. I'll bet they are pretty bad. Hmm, this sums up my problems with a lot of indie rpgs very well, so thank you.
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Jun 10, 2015 18:22
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:I've never played one so I couldn't comment. I'll bet they are pretty bad. A reverse paladin.
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Jun 10, 2015 18:26
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Evil Mastermind posted:Sandy Petersen gave a very frank interview about the changes at Chaosium, with a lot more information about why this is all happening than we normally get in these situations.
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Jun 10, 2015 18:27
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The Conan movies were our primary influence when we played AD&D as kids and teens. We mostly used fighter/thief, illusionist/thief, bards, and reskined Rangers as PCs. Our game were lethal as gently caress to so no one ever really made it to the Pirate King level.
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Jun 10, 2015 18:39
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:I've never played one so I couldn't comment. I'll bet they are pretty bad. OK well, part of it I think is that a lot of "Conan" RPGs were more about "adventures in Hyboria" than actually about Conan himself, who is at best an NPC somewhere. Lately I've been making my way back through all of Howard's original Conan stories (available for practically nothing on Kindle!) and I'm not sure I completely agree with your approach. Definitely Conan tends to lose companions. It's usually the companion's fault somehow, though: Belit dies because she insists on going someplace very dangerous (and known to be dangerous) to get loot, and then she splits up the men under her command (including Conan). Conan is also often betrayed (which makes him really angry). His Kingship is almost lost when he leads his army out to help an ally, but it's a trap and his army gets mostly wiped out. He does eventually escape, get back to his capitol, depose the would-be replacement, and rally his people, all with the help of a companion with some magic at his disposal. To me, then, it's not Conan himself that becomes vulnerable (that is, his survival) but rather, the stories emphasize the vulnerability that civilized people have, often due to their civilized ways (which include hubris, dishonesty, physical weakness, etc.) Howard maintained a long-term correspondence with his contemporary, H.P. Lovecraft, whom he deeply respected, but strenuously disagreed with on the matter of "barbarism vs. civilization." It's worth reading some of that correspondence, or at least commentary on it, because it sets his Conan stories (not to mention many of his other characters, such as Kull, Bran Mak Morn, and Soloman Kane) into an important context. My take then is that a good Conan RPG would carry forward this conviction: Robert E. Howard posted:Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph. Conan triumphs when he is barbarous (by Howard's definition). When he disregards rules and trappings of civilization and reverts to his (as a proxy for mankind's) "natural state" - slay, love, laugh, grieve, do what drives you, bring justice as defined by your personal whim, by force if need be, be entirely self-sufficient, wary, decisive, take what you want, have no great regret about giving up what is lost, destroy that which is foul (again by your personal standards), be open to any opportunity, avoid or destroy the unnatural, and don't worry too much about the ethics of killing people who get in your way because hey, life is short and the gods don't really give a poo poo about anyone anyway. Conan's weaknesses then aren't necessarily based on his desire for stuff: a woman, a treasure, a throne. More often, he gets into trouble when he makes the mistake of trusting civilization or civilized principles; laws, social structures, the loyalty of underlings, etc. His failing isn't altruism or nobility, it's undeserved trust given to others, or failure to recognize a social hazard. He is also weak to the immense power of dangerous sorcerers and alien, Lovecraftian gods from beyond space; Conan is repeatedly described as possessing an atavistic fear of the supernatural, which at times leads him astray. (On the other hand, Conan's typical reaction to something he fears is to investigate it rather than flee from it, because his instinct is that running away makes you prey; investigation is how you discover the way to defeat or avoid the horrifying thing that is maybe trying to kill you.) Sometimes Conan wins through his nobility. Deep in the dungeon he finds another prisoner; only by freeing the prisoner does he find a means of escape. If he had been callous or disinterested in the fate of a stranger, he'd have lost. How would you structure the mechanics of an RPG around these themes? I'm not sure (I have not tried to design RPG mechanics before), but it's pretty clearly not going to have much to do with ability scores and hit points.
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Jun 10, 2015 18:49
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There have been four (official) Conan games: 1) TSR (1985-ish): A series of AD&D 1E adventures (with Arnold whatsisname on the cover) that adapted Conan and his world to AD&D 1E. There was even a Red Sonja adventure (no Brigitte Neilsen, alas) 2) TSR (1985-ish): A standalone boxed RPG with its own system that got a couple of adventure modules as support. A vaguely recall the system looking interesting; it had a full skill system which was unusual for a mid-1980s TSR game) 3) Steve Jackson Games (1990-ish): GURPS Conan, plus a couple of adventures (mostly solo CYOA numbered paragraph things, oddly enough). Full sourcebook for GURPS, including a half-dozen writeups for Conan showing him at different ages and power levels (Conan the Thief, Conan the Pirate, Conan the Mercenary Adventurer, Conan the King) and it's fun to see him evolve over time. At his peak, Conan was a 600-point character, which if you know anything about early GURPS character creation is a hell of a lot of points. 4) Mongoose (mid-late 2000s): D20 Conan adaptation, two editions, with a wall of supplement books (seriously, there were like 50 different books which was great if you wanted to buy and read 128 pages about the Kingdom of Shem or whatever). Typical dodgy D20 adaptation (although with the world de-emphasizing spellcasters it's probably more balanced and playable than most games). Worth it mostly for the sheer amount of gameable world detail they published. There was also a very early (late 1970s) Dragon article by Gygax adapting him to early AD&D. He was ludicrously overpowered (18s across the board for stats, 15th level in a bunch of classes, psionic powers, and a number of unique special abilities) and Gary suggested he was useful for killing PCs who had gotten out of control or were simply "brash". Thanks, Gary. Weirdly reminiscent of the sort of unkillable metaplot characters that showed up in game lines in the late 1990s (Stone, I'm looking at you). Conan games are also tough because they are often just one PC versus the world, or one super-PC and his less capable sidekicks, and that's hard to do in a group setting. Lots of pulp-y properties have that problem (see TSR's Indiana Jones game, where one player got to be Indy and everyone else got to be Short Round or Willie or Marcus Brody or Sallah).
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Jun 10, 2015 18:56
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Was that a real personal belief of Howard's or just something that was true in his stories? I would imagine the first but it would not be the first time that an influential fantasy author believes something bizarre.
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Jun 10, 2015 18:56
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paradoxGentleman posted:Was that a real personal belief of Howard's or just something that was true in his stories? It was a real, personal belief of Howard's.
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Jun 10, 2015 18:58
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I will never stop finding the desire to cut the "game" part out of role-playing game bizarre.
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Jun 10, 2015 19:03
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paradoxGentleman posted:Was that a real personal belief of Howard's or just something that was true in his stories? That's a real belief. I had already read the stuff mentioned- Leperflesh, Lemon Cursturdian, and I are probably the biggest REH Conan nerds on this forum - and so I was familiar with Robert E Howard's beliefs on civilization et al. Leperflesh was going one level deeper then I was attempting and getting to the philosophy behind the Conan stories, while I was just dealing with the narrative mechanics. The reality was that Robert E Howard had a very unique upbringing, he lived in Texas during the 1920s oil boom and seems to be an extremely conflicted liberterian - as in, he recognized that people were ultimately bad, strove only to enrich themselves, abused others, etc. - which you would think would make him a progressive - but sorta kinda believed that maybe you should be tough enough to take it, get back up, and poo poo on the people who were making GBS threads on you. He was also a feminist. In fairness, it also must be said he was a racist, although there is some evidence that this was softening as he grew older, traveled, experienced new things and interviewed black storytellers and other "different" people outside of his lily-white Texas circle. Unfortunately he killed himself fairly young because he was a huge momma's boy and she was dying. He's actually a very interesting cat. Edit: forgot about LC...I suck Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Jun 10, 2015 |
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Jun 10, 2015 19:05
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He also seemed to have some manner of untreated depression, his mother falling into a coma was probably just the last trigger in an already suicidal man.
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Jun 10, 2015 19:11
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WWI prompted a lot of writers to question the value of civilization itself. As Orwell said, the Great War would have been impossible without canned food.FMguru posted:2) TSR (1985-ish): A standalone boxed RPG with its own system that got a couple of adventure modules as support. A vaguely recall the system looking interesting; it had a full skill system which was unusual for a mid-1980s TSR game)
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Jun 10, 2015 19:23
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Yeah Conan is fascinating in part because of how corrupted it's become since Howard died. Most Conan things that people have seen or read, were done later. Several (inferior, in my opinion) authors have written officially-licensed Conan stories; there have been many Conan comic book runs, there's the movies (I have a deep and abiding fondness for the first Arnold Conan movie, despite its huge flaws), etc. Weirdly I have never been tempted to buy a Conan RPG, probably because I just assume that they're terrible. The Conan setting is fascinating. It's a low-magic fantasy setting, fleshed out and detailed by Howard only through his short stories and maybe the odd sketched map or two. The magic in the setting is mostly demonology or cosmic meddling, very Lovecraftian stuff, Things Man Ought Not to Know. There are lots of countries and regions that are imagined as ancient versions of modern places: there's a Zimbabwe, for example. It's an "age undreamed of" that takes place "between the fall of Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Aryas," a sort of proto-bronze age (but with steel). Howard was progressive for his time. Definitely Conan rescues damsels, there's plenty of naked women caught in the clutches of evil villains, etc. But at the same time, characters like Belit are in leadership positions, sexually liberated (at least as far as being happy to bed Conan, lol), capable in combat, and not there merely as window dressing. They are still supporting characters for Conan, but all of the characters in Conan stories are either antagonists, or supporting characters for Conan. By modern standards, you'd look at a Conan story and maybe cringe. There's the entirely typical portrayal of blacks as mostly savages, although Conan's vocal racism waxes and wanes depending on whether you're reading an early or later Conan story, as Megaman mentions. I just read a story where Conan voices approval that a white is back in charge of something; but Conan has also had black allies and voiced respect for black characters. The stories have to be seen in the context of the early 1930s pulps. Nobody was writing pulp adventure stories that would stand up to modern standards of racial and gender equality, but Howard was more than a few steps ahead of most of his contemporaries. And yes, Howard was clearly suffering from long-term depression. I'm not sure how much his depression is related to his philosophies regarding civilization vs. barbarism. He lived in small-town oil-boom Texas, was a fan of boxing, was a nerd with a typewriter, loved his mom, had few in-person friends, and killed himself at the height of his popularity. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Jun 10, 2015 |
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Jun 10, 2015 19:24
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That's patently not true, I can think of...exactly one character that is neither supporting cast nor antagonist, largely because that character is entirely incidental to what Conan is doing and is there to mostly be the interesting part of the story. You know, the alien Conan ran into when he went to go steal that one gem.
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Jun 10, 2015 19:28
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The thing that I respect the most about Howard: he was churning out stories at a rate that would destroy the average person. I mean seriously, check out the guy's output. He was machine. And he seemed to have plenty of good ideas and awesome turns of phrase left in him. I also enjoy the Conan movie, probably because even if the particulars are kinda off it gets the "vibe" right. That's a dirty, greasy, nasty movie and the city in it seems like a garbage dump that should be burned to the ground. Mors Rattus posted:You know, the alien Conan ran into when he went to go steal that one gem. The Heart of the Elephant in the short story The Tower of the Elephant. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Jun 10, 2015 |
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Jun 10, 2015 19:30
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:That's a real belief. I had already read the stuff mentioned- Leperflesh, Lemon Cursturdian, and I are probably the biggest REH Conan nerds on this forum - and so I was familiar with Robert E Howard's beliefs on civilization et al. Leperflesh was going one level deeper then I was attempting and getting to the philosophy behind the Conan stories, while I was just dealing with the narrative mechanics.
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Jun 10, 2015 19:32
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Mors Rattus posted:That's patently not true, I can think of...exactly one character that is neither supporting cast nor antagonist, largely because that character is entirely incidental to what Conan is doing and is there to mostly be the interesting part of the story. The elephant guy? In the Tower of the Elephant? He's a supporting character for Conan, because he helps Conan defeat the bad guy. Narratively his presence is supporting cast, the story isn't "about" him.
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Jun 10, 2015 19:40
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FMguru posted:4) Mongoose (mid-late 2000s): D20 Conan adaptation, two editions, with a wall of supplement books (seriously, there were like 50 different books which was great if you wanted to buy and read 128 pages about the Kingdom of Shem or whatever). Typical dodgy D20 adaptation (although with the world de-emphasizing spellcasters it's probably more balanced and playable than most games). Worth it mostly for the sheer amount of gameable world detail they published. The Mongoose Conan books were also infamous for having absolutely atrocious editing, even by the standards of RPGs, which I believe was a factor that spurred the second edition in the first place.
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Jun 10, 2015 19:40
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dwarf74 posted:Wow, yeah, such a contrast with how close to the vest most companies play this sort of thing. Clear details about the takeover, etc. Glad I listened. Yeah, that's good to hear, and it's good to hear why it happened. While the future of the company's up in the air - way up - it at least sounds like it has folks with good intentions and experience at the helm. Really, with the industry being as small as it is, rumors and hearsay have a lot of power, so it's smart for them to get on top of this.
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Jun 10, 2015 19:53
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Effectronica posted:I will never stop finding the desire to cut the "game" part out of role-playing game bizarre. Sometimes what you're going for works better as Kings Quest then Fire Emblem.
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Jun 10, 2015 19:56
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To get a better example of Howard's attitudes towards black people, look at the Solomon Kane stories. Many are set in Deepest Darkest Africa, and feature horrific caricatures: spear wielding savages in loin clothes who are terrified of monstrous apes that stalk the jungles at night. Racist as hell, even before we get to the white queen of the tribe, or the group easily duped by the clever Frenchman. At the same time, Kane's most consistent ally is N'Longa, an African shaman who saves Kane's rear end on multiple occasions (usually by defeating the villain or stopping the menace plaguing the village), and eventually gives him the Staff of Solomon that he'll wield in a few of the other stories (said Staff also saving his rear end). N'Longa is a caricature as well, an ancient JuJu man who speaks in an affected patois, steals bodies, animates corpses, etc. But he is also clearly the smartest person Kane ever meets in any of the stories, is unfailingly heroic, is the only reason Kane is alive in many of the stories, and is someone for whom Kane has a great deal of respect, despite their differences in religion (which is a big deal for a fanatical Puritan). So... racist? Yeah. Definitely. There's a hugely racist element to most of the Kane stories. But not uncomplicated so.
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Jun 10, 2015 20:05
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Effectronica posted:I will never stop finding the desire to cut the "game" part out of role-playing game bizarre. Making a game is harder than making a guide for simulating the outcome of playing a game.
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Jun 10, 2015 20:16
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Ferrinus posted:Making a game is harder than making a guide for simulating the outcome of playing a game. Yeah I don't know how you would use these mechanics concretely. Just spitballing. On another note, I cannot believe there isn't a pen and paper Witcher Role Playing game where characters take on members of different Witcher schools and their allies and go around and fight monsters and meddle in poo poo.
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Jun 10, 2015 20:19
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Halloween Jack posted:Available free as ZeFRS (Zeb's Fantasy Roleplaying System). Kinda neat.
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Jun 10, 2015 20:20
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Yeah I don't know how you would use these mechanics concretely. Just spitballing. ...and have sex with every woman you meet and collect collectable cards with images of them as mementos of that woman you conquered... Because that's a thing in the Witcher games.
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Jun 10, 2015 20:42
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Leperflesh posted:...and have sex with every woman you meet and collect collectable cards with images of them as mementos of that woman you conquered... No, it's not a thing in the Witcher games. It's a theme in one of the games, the very first one, which is now 8 years old.
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Jun 10, 2015 20:44
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Effectronica posted:I will never stop finding the desire to cut the "game" part out of role-playing game bizarre.
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Jun 10, 2015 20:54
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:No, it's not a thing in the Witcher games. It's a theme in one of the games, the very first one, which is now 8 years old. Oh. Well, that's good then! I only tried the first Witcher game.
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Jun 10, 2015 21:01
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Leperflesh posted:...and have sex with every woman you meet and collect collectable cards with images of them as mementos of that woman you conquered... It's a thing in one Witcher game. They've been getting increasingly better about sex. I still haven't seen a video game sex scene that wasn't just weird and awkward, though.
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Jun 10, 2015 21:03
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Leperflesh posted:Oh. Well, that's good then! I only tried the first Witcher game. I would strongly encourage you to give Witcher 3 a chance at some point, it's really very good and you won't miss anything from the first two titles.
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Jun 10, 2015 21:12
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Only one game contained collectible fuckcards so it's all good.
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Jun 10, 2015 21:12
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On the subject of Conanchat, you could whip up someone who is invincible within their paradigm but increasingly vulnerable outside it very easily in Chuubo's, of all things. You could make a mundane version very easily with skills like Superior Thews, Steely Glare, Shine, etc. or for a miraculous version a mixture of The Ace and Become Someone would give him that 'unstoppable so long as he's doing Conan-like things' power. You'd have to swap the standard pastoral genre for epic fantasy, though, or Conan would spend a lot of time doing chores or staring out to sea and sighing wistfully.
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Jun 10, 2015 21:20
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