The following is an article of mine that appeared in issue #108 of Knights of the Dinner Table Magazine.
Lost Game Safari: The Conan RPG from TSR
By Jeff Mejia
Conan. With the exception of the works of Professor Tolkien, no other character of the 20th century embodies the spirit of fantasy gaming more than the grim, blue-eyed Barbarian from the magnificent stories by Robert E. Howard.
The hard fighting, hard drinking, savage warrior has been the favorite character of countless players through the years. Currently Mongoose games has a well supported version of the world of Conan based on the D20 system, and about 10 years earlier, Steve Jackson Games gave Conan the GURPS treatment. But did you know that once, long ago, an ancient gaming giant known as TSR took a stab at Hyborian Adventure with “Conan the role-playing game”?
It was over 20 years ago that veteran game designer David Cook created the system for TSR’s Conan game. The game comes boxed and contains two slim books, a fifteen-page reference guide, a map, some character sheets, and dice. The actual rulebook is a mere 32 pages, all crunch, no fluff. The second book is a combination Gazetteer and monster manual, written in the style of an archaeological notebook, with short snippets outlining the various countries, cultures, beasts and characters of the Hyborian world. Again, to call the entries brief would be an understatement. The reference pages are surprisingly one of the more important pieces of information; these 15 pages contain all the information for the various talents as well as several key tables containing wound charts, equipment lists, and combat modifier charts. Why these reference pages were simply not put in the rulebook completely escapes me (it almost seems as if they were an afterthought, and rushed to the printer at the last minute).
There are a number of unique innovations used in The Conan game. First of all, the mechanics are surprisingly simple with both task and combat resolution being decided off of one percentile chart, called a resolution table. “Talent pools” replace the traditional attributes of strength, intelligence, wisdom, etc. and their corresponding number ratings.
Combat of course is the heart of gaming; many people speak of the “role-playing experience” or “character development”, whatever. Gaming is about rolling dice and killing your opponents. The Conan game understands this and makes no apologies for it. The Combat in this game is both quick and brutal.
For example Khoraj, a mercenary from Turan is facing Anteus, a Bounty hunter from Ophir in an alleyway. Khoraj has a movement talent of 4 and is armed with a saber (talent 5). Anteus has a movement talent of 5 and is wielding a large club (talent 2). It is determined that Anteus will be attacking first. Anteus declares that he will be aiming for Khoraj’s head. To determine if Anteus hits, we take his fighting talent (Club 2) and subtract Khoraj’s movement (4) the difference is 2 this is the combat differential, find that column on the chart, roll percentile dice, and pray for a low roll. The roll is “23” so Anteus hits, he didn’t roll low enough on the chart to cause a specific wound to the head like he wanted to, but still he did hit (a Percentile roll on the location chart shows a hit to the right leg). The resolution chart is colored and a successful hit in a specific color indicates the amount of damage done, in this case three points of base damage are done, to this number we add any damage modifier for the weapon and any strength bonus (in both cases zero) and subtract the protection value of the opponents armor (if any). Khoraj has no leg armor so he takes the full 3 points of damage. Khoraj’s damage talent (which are basically Hit Points) is only 5 so these three points cost him dearly. Khoraj now declares an attack to Anteus’ head as well. Khoraj’s talent with the saber is 5 and Anteus’s movement is 5 which comes to a zero differential. Khoraj rolls a “02” well within the “specific wound” range. Khoraj declared a headshot as his intended target. He rolled a specific wound. The result of a specific wound to the head for an enemy is death. Khoraj’s blade slices through muscle and bone and Anteus’s head goes flying down the alleyway into the shadows. End of combat.
The rules continue with an overview of movement and travel as well as the dangers of falling, fire, drowning and poison. All of this information is covered in two pages, once again very little is given over to fluff.
The next chapter deals with magic. In the Hyborian world, mages are a rare and mistrusted bunch. The path of the arcane in the “Conan” game is lonelier than in just about any other fantasy game world. There are no Magic stores, kindly absent minded wizards, or schools of Sorcery. This however, is in keeping with the flavor of the original stories, priests and mages were adversaries to be thwarted. In some rare instances a spell caster would provide assistance, but the focus of the Conan stories were on the ability of a determined man, wielding cold hard steel to overcome his foes. The magic system In the Conan game was truly original. It was one of the first open-ended systems ever published. Basically the player and the Game master get together and agree on a spell, it’s parameters, and it’s effects. But that’s just the start.
Magic is a long and arduous process in the Conan game. To begin with the mechanics are heavily skewed against a magic wielding character; the rulebook itself discourages player character sorcerers. But just like someone always has to be the Elf with a nineteen dexterity in D&D, someone invariably is going to want to play a sorcerer in Conan.
Mages begin the game with the obsession disadvantage right from the beginning and they gain various additional weaknesses as they progress in magical talent, for every simple illusion they learn to create, or cloud of fog they summon, they are burdened with additional mental and physical disadvantages. As stated earlier there are no “wizard schools” so spell casters are tasked with researching through dusty tomes and raiding crypts to unearth scraps of long forgotten spells. And when its all said and done, the fruits of their labor are still nowhere near as powerful as their fireball-slinging brethren in other games.
The “Living in Hyboria” section gives rules and advice on currency, haggling, cost of living, dealing with NPC’s, and employment.
The “Ultimate goals” section handles the use of fame, expertise, and luck. Fame is a reflection of a characters notoriety it could be a positive or negative value. For every heroic deed, act of bravado, or victory in battle the character can earn fame points. Consequently for every cowardly act, notable defeat, act of pure stupidity etc. fame points may be detracted. Giving the character a negative or “Infamous” rating. The value of a high fame score is of course obvious, more free drinks come your way, wenches are more willing, and you tend to recruit a better class of henchman. Using your talents in an adventure is rewarded with additional talent points awarded at the end of the game. These points may be applied to increase current talent scores or to purchase new talents that the character was exposed to during play. One additional feature to encourage the reckless and heroic style of action that can be found in sword and sorcery stories is the awarding of “Luck” points; good role-playing and originality earn these points. In the Conan game heroic deeds call for heroic rewards. Luck points are valued for enabling your character to re-roll a failed result or to reduce the ill effects of damage, you can also apply them as a modifier to aid in performing extraordinary actions. Even “Codes of Honor” are touched upon in these rules, reminding the players that despite Conan’s barbaric ways and bloody adventures, he held himself to a strict barbarian code of honor. The rules encourage players to emulate the heroes of the genre and have their characters act accordingly.
The remaining three sections consist of general “how to run an adventure” type advice, including tips on preparation, mastering the rules, character death, creating adventures and campaigns, all the stuff you have all no doubt read before, but its still good to revisit every once in a while. The final section is a small mini adventure loosely based on the Conan story “The tower of the elephant” it’s a whopping four pages long.
Three modules, “Conan the Mercenary”, “Conan the Buccaneer”, and “Conan Triumphant” were all the official support the line ever received. There were no source books of the various Hyborian nations, no splat books filled with new talents, weapons, monsters or magic items, not even a measly GM screen.
But despite its minimal support there were die-hard fans out there willing to give it a shot, Fans for whom frolicking with faerie folk in the magic rich worlds of Dungeons and Dragons and other Fantasy games held little appeal. They wanted to slink through the streets of “Shadizar the wicked” making dark deals, or test Aquilonian steel against the blood red hatchets of Pictish warriors on the frontier. And for that they turned to Conan the role-playing game.
For the last couple of months I’ve been working on a little labor of love. I’m trying to take one of my favorite systems –The FASERIP system from TSR’s Marvel Superhero game and apply it to one of my favorite gaming genres- 1930’s Pulp adventure. The result is what I call FASERIP Pulp. It’s not a rewrite of the rules, it’s more like a sourcebook with tips and suggestions for taking the FASERIP system into uncharted areas. Please give it a look over and let me know what you think. Any constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated. Here is the link to the PDF draft.
As I mentioned in my Sunday post I’m currently running a game of GURPS Castle Falkenstein. My players at the moment include a former Union Officer from the United States, A gunslinger/ gambler from the Bear Flag Empire of California, A Finnish soldier of fortune, and a Dwarven engineer from Prussia. Currently they are headed to Spain from Italy via Aeroship to recover an item located in some ruins high up in the Pyrenees.
Of course there is another group of not so nice guys after the same item (heh,heh).
All they know about the other group is that one of their number is described as “a huge Turk”.
On the subject of Turks; I just received a recent EBay purchase here at the office. “The Ottoman Empire” is a GURPS sourcebook for Castle Falkenstein, that deals with the exotic classical Orient Written by Phil Masters, who incidentally is the author of GURPS Castle Falkenstein as well as GURPS Arabian nights. Flipping through this wonderful book whets my imagination of where to send my boys after they are done fetching trinkets in Spain.
Just when my players thought they had all their bases covered by taking language skills in French, Italian, German, and Latin. [Insert maniacal laughter here].
Thanks to RPGNET.
I actually did some gaming on Sunday over at the local game store. From the original group of six that discussed the game, four actually showed up. Not too bad.
We embarked on a Victorian era adventure using GURPS 4th edition rules. I was hella rusty, along with the fact that I was recovering from some kinda bug. But all in all it went off okay. The first game is always a bit slow as we get the back story set up and character introductions out of the way. Everyone said they had a good time but of course they’re gonna say that, I’d say that and then find a way to skip out on the rest of the game. The success of today’s game will be evident the next time we meet. I have some good encounters planned and some honest to gawsh combat. Now I have to go look up train schedules and travel times in 1870’s Spain.
It’s been almost a year since my last regular tabletop game closed. Since then I’ve been tweaking for a new one. My buddy Ed ran a really cool Mutants and Masterminds one shot in September, but with the holidays and all we haven’t been able to hook up since. I set up a Tribe account to see if I could recruit some players. I also posted on the D&D Meetup site. I got a few bites so I set up a meet over at the local pizza joint Sunday morning. About half a dozen folks showed up and we started discussing gaming. Everyone looked to be about 30+ years old, so there was a good “Old school vibe” going on. We went over the standard stuff-favorite game systems, rules lawyers, gamer hygiene (or lack thereof), non gaming spouses, etc. we decided on a system to play: GURPS, and on a genre: Victorian age high adventure (Castle Falkenstein, Space 1889, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Ruse, Etc.). GURPS was a system everyone had familiarity with and the genre offered something different than the standard D&D fantasy stuff, yet still offered magic, fantasy races, and high powered rifles.
It’s a new venture-new group-new campaign. My success with gaming groups is pretty good. I’d say in the high 90’s. One of my best experiences came from answering an ad recruiting gamers at a hobby store in Hawaii, as a result I made a ton of friends some of whom I’m still in touch with after all these years. So here’s to success!
Thanks to RPGNET
I consider myself a bit of a classic rock snob, when stuff comes on the radio I'm usually the guy who asks every one "Whats the name of the song? artist? and album?" and then I sit there smugly as everyone ties themselves up in knots trying to answer. My wife hates when I do that.
And don't you dare sing along with the radio and get the words wrong, I'll nail you to the floor, and mock you incessantly.
so you can imagine how dumb I felt the other morning while listening to Bob Seger's classic tune "Night moves" (From the album of the same name, by the way) when suddenly I caught something that never occurred to me. the opening of the song goes like this...
I was a little too tall
Could've used a few pounds
Tight pants points hardly reknown
She was a black-haired beauty with big dark eyes
And points all her own sitting way up high
Way up firm and high
THAT PART, right there- "And points all her own sitting way up high. Way up firm and high"
her breasts, he was singing about her breasts...teenage breasts to be exact.
I must have heard that song a bazillion times since 1976 and I never made that connection until 30 years later. geez...
Sometimes an ok film becomes memorable not for the script or the star but from the performance of a supporting actor. I suppose that why the academy awards acknowledges such efforts. Two great performances that I always bring up when discussing genre films are; Viggo Mortensen as Lucifer in the movie “The Prophecy” and Bruce Spence’s portrayal as “The Mouth of Sauron” in the extended version of the “Lord of the Rings :The Return of the King”.
I’ve seen many cinematic portrayals of the devil, but none as convincing as Viggo’s, he has a seductive, persuasive, yet callous air about him. The Prophecy is about a celestial war amongst the angels that makes its way to earth. Christopher Walken commands the show as the Archangel Gabriel, and it’s a true testament to Viggo’s skill at acting to hold his own against such an intense actor as Walken.
Spence’s Performance lasts a few brief minutes, but it leaves you with a true appreciation of what life in Middle Earth would be like and just who would be running things if Sauron and his boys were in charge.
I was reviewing my software the other day and noticed I haven't done anything with comic book creator in a while. so just to refresh myself with the program I tossed a a couple of pages together using some photos in my files. Nothing really intense just kinda putzing around with it. but doing so reminded me what a fun program it is, especially for an amateur like me. CBC has been updated considerably since the last time I played around with it. The pros may prefer Photoshop etc. for REAL projects. but for me CBC is just fine. Click on the pages for a larger view
thanks to RPGNET.
Thanks to RPGNet.
Mrs. Evil DM has never shown the slightest interest in gaming. She’s not opposed to the hobby as several of my Ex-girlfriends were when I was single (which is the most common reason they are EX girlfriends and not my wife). gaming just never interested her. I respect that, but like all gamers who are married to civilians, there is deep down, a part of me that would love nothing better than to have her by my side as we stormed the Darklords Keep or entered the Temple of Ultimate Evil. But after 10 years together I’ve pretty well resolved that it aint gonna happen. Until tonight- for the first time I cracked open a copy of Blackmorn Manor- a board game from a company called Pacesetter. Pacesetter is no longer with us and I have had this game sitting on my shelf for at least 4 years, so it was high time we cracked it open. Blackmorn Manor is a tile based horror game where one player takes on the role of a monster in the manor and the rest of the players are the intrepid explorers out to destroy it. There is combat, magic, and supernatural goings on a plenty. The “board” is made up of tiles that are placed in turn by each player; therefore no game board is the same. All in all it’s a fun game. My son and I sold it to my wife as a board game, which technically it is but there were enough RPG elements in it that we soon had her actually role playing her character- My son played the "Professor Challenger" type character and my wife was “Gina Diamond” professional singer and amateur supernatural sleuth. The minion I selected was a female vampire. After slogging through the rules for the first few minutes we were soon up to speed and chasing each other around the game board. The Professor eventually faced off against the vampire alone and was quickly defeated and turned to the Dark Side. We then proceeded to hunt down Gina who managed to thwart our efforts with skill and remarkable dice rolls-talk about beginners luck. In the end the Vampire absconded with the wooden stake (The item needed to destroy the vampire) and won the game, however Gina survived to the end without being turned into a servant of evil so it was a moral victory for the forces of good at least. The best part is that my wife said NEXT TIME she’ll win now that she knows the rules. There’s gonna be a “Next time”…WOO HOO!!
Yesterday I was thinking about my next post in the Sword of Skartaris game and “Lost World” gaming in general, when I came upon an idea that makes perfect sense. First take the Hollow World Campaign supplement for the D&D Mystara setting, and then take characters from the Masque of the Red Death Campaign supplement for the Ravenloft setting. Combine them and you have a pretty sweet Victorian era Lost worlds campaign!
Man I wish I would have had this particular epiphany back when I had a regular gaming group. I always wanted to play a Pulp game but I could never talk my players into it. They were hard core D&D geeks, but I think I could have sold them on this idea. I get my pulp fix and they get to keep the same game engine and rules they were comfortable with.
While on the Subject of gaming I found this site that has some tools worthy of a look-
RPtools. There's a dice roller,a mapping program and an icon creator. The updates look to be frequent and regular and the forums seem to be active. 
1. Bring a gun. Preferably, bring at least two guns. Bring all of your friends who have guns.
2. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammo is cheap. Life is expensive.
3. Only hits count. The only thing worse than a miss is a slow miss.
4. If your shooting stance is good, you're probably not moving fast enough nor using cover correctly.
5. Move away from your attacker. Distance is your friend. (Lateral and diagonal movement are preferred.)
6. If you can choose what to bring to a gunfight, bring a long gun and a friend with a long gun.
7. In ten years nobody will remember the details of caliber, stance, or tactics. They will only remember who lived.
8. If you are not shooting, you should be communicating, reloading, and running.
9. Accuracy is relative: most combat shooting standards will be more dependent on "pucker factor" than the inherent accuracy of the gun.
10. Someday someone may kill you with your own gun, but they should have to beat you to death with it because it is empty.
11. Always cheat; always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose.
12. Have a plan.
13. Have a back-up plan, because the first one won't work.
14. Use cover or concealment as much as possible.
15. Flank your adversary when possible. Protect yours.
16. Don't drop your guard.
17. Always tactical load and threat scan 360 degrees.
18. Watch their hands. Hands kill. In God we trust. Everyone else, keep your hands where I can see them.
19. Decide to be aggressive ENOUGH, quickly ENOUGH.
20. The faster you finish the fight, the less shot you will get.
21. Be polite. Be professional. But, have a plan to kill everyone you meet.
22. Be courteous to everyone, friendly to no one.
23. Your number one option for personal security is a lifelong commitment to avoidance, deterrence, and de-escalation.
24. Do not attend a gunfight with a handgun, the caliber of which does not start with a "4."
thanks to RPGNET
First off, in case you haven’t noticed the Lair has had a few cosmetic upgrades. We are now publishing in Blogger Beta which allows us to have a post subject header in the sidebar- so now If you want to see all the posts on this Blog regarding action figures just go to the sidebar and click on action figures. And Blogger will pull all the action figure posts and show them on a separate page. I also got rid of the “Starry background” gif and the dungeon movie and replaced it with a collage of images from past Blog entries. I also updated the links.
Please let me know what you think of the changes.
I’ve been very busy the last few days working on a variety of RPG projects.
The Legends of Steel players section is done-complete-finito! I’m working on the Game masters section now and then it should be ready for play testing, editing and layout.
For Broadsword, I’m writing three of the six adventure scenarios that will be released with the game. I want to get this done by Dec 1st so that we can roll the game out by the 15th.
I’ve also been working on my FASERIP Pulp expansion. This is where I take the rules engine from the Marvel Super Heroes RPG (commonly known in the RPG world as the FASERIP system) and adapt it to a Pulp Era setting. I’ve added a great deal of content and made some cosmetic changes to the font and graphics I’m using.
I also found a logo creation program and came up with this-
You do if it's this one.
My buddy Jeff H. turned me on to it.
I tell ya man, The Jeff's are happenin', we post the best chick pix and we know where all the "Cool Blogs" are.
Here's a sample from the "Longbox"...
Now go check it out. And tell him The Evil DM sent ya.
(He'll probably say, "Who?")
Here’s the ad.
Here’s the link
Now move yer ass!
It ends tomorrow!
Thanks to rpgnet.
