1985: Conan Role-Playing Game

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

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In 1984, TSR, Inc. published CB1 Conan Unchained!, the first appearance of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian in roleplaying. It would be followed the same year by CB2 Conan Against Darkness! And then in 1986 by RS1 Red Sonja Unconquered. All were written for use with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition—though with some adjustments to accommodate the specific style of Robert E. Howard’s pulp fantasy and all were inspired by, but not based upon the films which had been released in the previous two or three years. Off the back of the strength of CB1 Conan Unchained! and CB2 Conan Against Darkness!, TSR, Inc. would develop the Conan Role-Playing Game. Like CB1 Conan Unchained!, it was written by David ‘Zeb’ Cook, an avowed fan of Conan, and that showed in much of the detail and flavour of the roleplaying game. That said, mechanically, it was a radical departure from the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition of CB1 Conan Unchained! and CB2 Conan Against Darkness!, owing more to TSR, Inc.’s other licensed roleplaying games from the previous year—Marvel Super Heroes and The Adventuresof Indiana Jones Role-Playing Game.

Like those other roleplaying games, the Conan Role-Playing Game came as a boxed set, and it is one that nicely appointed. Behind the striking cover, can be found a thirty-two-page ‘Rule Book’, a sixteen-page ‘Reference Guide’, a four-page ‘Master Reference Sheet’, a forty-eight-page ‘The World of Hyboria – A Collection of the Hyborian Studies by Professor Ervin H. Roberts’, a four-page ‘Character Folio’, and a large poster map of Hyboria, plus two ten-sided dice and a crayon to fill the numbers in. The ‘Rule Book’ dives straight into explaining what a roleplaying game is, oddly using ‘Cops & Robbers’ as an example, when you really wish that Conan was being used instead, and then into Player Character creation.

A Player Character in the Conan Role-Playing Game is defined by Talents, representing his physical abilities, skills, and knowledge. These are divided into six Talent Pools—Prowess, Fighting, Endurance, Knowledge, Perception, and Insight. A tenth of the total value of the Talents in a Talent Pool will define the General Talent value for the Talent Pool, covering every other skill within a Talent Pool that the Player Character does not have. A Player Character can also have one or more Weakness, but will definitely have a Story. This is his background which starts with his Country and his Parents, and the following form that the player has to fill in:

“____________ (Character name), the ____________ (Sex) of ____________ (Father) and ____________ (Mother), was born in the land of ____________ (Homeland). ____________ (Character name) grew ____________ (Appearance). As a youth, ____________ (Character name) learned ____________ (Talents) and ____________.”

The character creation process is simple. A player decides on his character’s name, as well as those of his parents, chooses a Homeland from the given list, and then assigns thirty-five points to his Talents. No more than five points can be assigned to any one Talent, the Player Character must have one Talent from each of the six Talent Pools, and one point must be assigned to his father’s Talent. He can gain another five points to assign for each Weakness he selects.

“Thellius, the Son of Gaenus and Hygira, was born in the land of Iranisatan. Thellius grew up lithe and wiry, but with a broad smile. As a youth, Thellius learned the songs his father taught him and to perform, but fell into what his mother called wicked ways.”

Prowess – 1
Acrobatic – 3, Climbing – 4, Movement – 1
Fighting – 1
Brawling – 3, Sword – 3
Endurance – 1
Damage – 4, Stamina – 3, Will – 3
Knowledge – 1
Lockpicking – 4
Perception – 1
Observation – 3, Minstrel – 4, Pocket Picking – 3,
Insight – 1
Danger Sense – 3, Personal Magnetism – 4

Weaknesses
Gambler, Weakness for women

The Player Character creation process is simple, but underwhelming. There is no example of the creation process, and whilst a sample character is provided, it is in the ‘Character Folio’ and not the ‘Rule Book’, and is of Conan himself and not a starting character. Similarly, the NPCs named and given stats in ‘The World of Hyboria – A Collection of the Hyborian Studies by Professor Ervin H. Roberts’ are extremely experienced NPCs. The primary problem though, is there is no guidance on how to create a character that fits either the setting or any kind of a role. So, no guidance on creating a warrior or a thief or a guide or a healer… In fact, when it comes to the thief, let alone Conan himself, there is no Stealth skill. At this point in the roleplaying game this leaves a fundamental question unanswered and that is, “How do I create Conan in the Conan Role-Playing Game?”

Mechanically, the Conan Role-Playing Game is a percentile system used in combination with a ‘Resolution Table’. A ‘Resolution Table’ that looks more like a graph. The vertical axis of the ‘Resolution Table’ runs from one to one hundred and represents a player’s dice roll. The horizontal axis is the ‘Talent/Differential’ row and runs from thirty to minus thirty. The results are banded from top to bottom, White, Green, Yellow, Orange, and Red, each band representing a complexity. A result in the White band is a failure, Green is easy complexity, Yellow is moderate complexity, Orange is hard complexity, and Red is difficult complexity. To have his character undertake an action a player rolls the dice and compares the result of the roll on the vertical axis of the ‘Resolution Table’ versus the value of the Talent his character is using on the ‘Talent/Differential’ axis. If the rest is in the right band, his character succeeds.

The colour band into which the result of a test falls can also be used to be determine the quality of the outcome. Examples suggested include NPC reactions, degree of a language understood, damage inflicted in combat, advantage gained in combat, damage blocked in combat, falling damage, the effects of poison, and more. Although the ‘Resolution Table’ looks complex and more like a mathematical exercise, in combination with the various modifiers for the different situations and just a single roll for all of them, it is actually surprisingly flexible in its application.

For example, Thellius is performing in a tavern and wants to impress the daughter of a merchant. This will use his Personal Magnetism Talent. His player has already made a Talent Test using Thellius’ Minstrel Talent. The result was Orange, so the Referee grants a +2 bonus to his Personal Magnetism Talent. This will shift it along on the ‘Talent/Differential’ axis of the ‘Resolution Table’ from four to six. The Referee has already decided that the situation is ‘Friendly’ on the ‘NPC Reaction Result Table’ as it is in a tavern. Thellius’ player rolls the dice and gets a result of eight which is in the Red band! This is a very good result and on the ‘NPC Reaction Result Table’ indicates a ‘Generous’ rection. The merchant’s daughter definitely catches his eye and raises a glass to him.

Combat also uses the ‘Resolution Table’. Before it begins, the participants roll to determine if anyone is caught off-guard using either their Animal Reflexes Talents or General Prowess rating. The better the roll, the more Advantages a player generates, either one, two, three, or four. These are compared against their opponents and the combatant who has the most left over afterwards gets a free combat action for each one. Combat takes place in five-second combat rounds and initiative is determined by rolling a single ten-sided die and adding the highest of either the Animal Reflexes or Movement Talents or the General Prowess value. It is possible for a Player Character to take multiple actions in a round, but this requires a test against his Animal Reflexes Talent or General Prowess value and a Red result. Otherwise, he cannot take multiple actions and is at a penalty to his actions for this round and the next! So, in general, a combatant will either attack, defend, move, cast a spell, or wait, at least until either Animal Reflexes Talent or General Prowess value increases. When his character makes a mêlée attack, the player declares an Aiming Point on the body of his character’s opponent. Combat modifiers shift the ‘Talent/Differential’ up and down, and then the Fighting Talent of the defender is deducted from that of the attacker. The subsequent roll will determine not only if the attacker successfully strikes, but if he does, how much base damage is inflicted. This can be modified by the weapon used, for example, a javelin or tiger claw has a ‘-1’ penalty, whilst a flail has a ‘+1’ bonus. In most cases, weapons that inflict more damage have a penalty to Initiative.

Damage inflicted then, is roughly on a scale of between one and seven points, is deducted directly from a Player Character’s Damage Talent. If the Damage Talent is reduced to zero or less, each time the character takes damage after this, his player must test his character’s Damage Talent using its current value. If the result is Red, the Player Character remains conscious, but falls unconscious if the result is Orange, Yellow, or Green. If the result is White, a failure, then the Player Character dies. However, armour does stop damage, the amount depending upon what is being worn on each location and whether a shield is being carried. In addition to inflicting a base four points of damage, a Red result on the attack also inflicts a specific wound to the location targeted, typically a stun effect against which the player will need to make a General Prowess Test.

The Conan Role-Playing Game does allow Player Characters to use magic, whether that is as a sorcerer, witch, wizard, or shaman. However, it is not recommended as it takes a great deal of time and effort to learn and it can have deleterious effects upon the practitioner. Simply having a magic-related Talent, whether that is Alchemy, Information (actually being a seer of some sort), Mind Control, Natural Magic, Physical laws, Summoning, or Transformation, only indicates an aptitude. The would-be practitioner has to spend months of game time in study. Then, there is a cost to pay, but the cost is not necessarily financial, it can be personal. Every time a Player Character magician gains a magical Talent or a Spell, he gains one or two continuing effects. One is a magical Weakness, including Animal Aversion, Disfigurement, Endurance Loss, Madness, and Nocturnal. The other is Obsession, a Weakness that is treated like a Talent which when the practitioner is tempted by even greater magic, is forced to test and if the result is Red, he must do everything in his power to obtain the new magic. The Conan Role-Playing Game does not include any spells by design, intending the Referee and her players to create them and define their effects and where they can be learned. For experienced roleplayers, this is unlikely to be an issue, but new players will find this unhelpful. On the whole, much like the source material, magic is intended to be used by the antagonists rather than the protagonists.

In addition to the rules for magic, the ‘Rulebook’ also covers movement, hazards such as falling, fire, and drowning, gives details of what life is like in Hyboria, interaction with NPCs, and rewards for the Player Characters. The latter includes Fame Points, which can be earned for heroic and savage deeds, annoying a major NPC, improving a Talent above twenty, and so on, but can be lost through acts of cowardice, stupidity, betrayal, and so on. Successful Talent use during an adventure will earn a Player Character up to ten Talent points to assign, and for originality and good roleplaying, the Referee can award Luck Points. These can be used to reroll a dice roll, to reduce the damage taken from an attack, and as means to perform incredible feats of luck. This works by the player expending as many of his character’s Luck Points as he wants, the number determining the column on the ‘Talent/Differential’ axis of the ‘Resolution Table’, and then rolling. If the result is Red, he succeeds. There is no mention of Luck Points before this.

The advice for the Referee on creating and running adventures in Hyboria is decent and there is also an adventure included at the back of the ‘Rulebook’. This is ‘The Tower of the Elephant’, based on the short story by Robert E. Howard. As in the story, it starts in a tavern where there is chance for some revelry and a fight before sneaking into the nearby tower to steal the ‘Heart of the Elephant’, a fabulous jewel in the possession of the evil sorcerer, Yara. It is a short affair, offering only a single session’s worth of play and its set-up is completely wrong for the Conan Role-Playing Game. The first problem with it is that it follows the plot of the short story fairly tightly and does not give a lot of options in terms of what the Player Character can do. The second problem is  that it is not designed to be played using any Player Character created using the rules in the game and it is not designed to be played by a group. Instead, it is designed to be played using the stats for Conan himself given on one of the character folios, who is a more experienced character. As a one-on-one, short scenario, it is adequate, but given that there is no scenario included for a group of new created Player Characters, it is anything other than fine.

Of the other items in the box for the Conan Role-Playing Game, the ‘The World of Hyboria – A Collection of the Hyborian Studies by Professor Ervin H. Roberts’ is a good gazetteer, introducing Robert E. Howard and Hyboria, the latter as if it was written down in an academic’s notebook, complete with annotations. It includes quite detailed descriptions of the various lands, their peoples, towns, and cities, and there is a decent bestiary too. Several NPCs are also detailed as are various gods, cults, magical items, and ruins and their lore. This is all solid background material that the Referee can develop for her game. The map is good too.

The ‘Reference Guide’ gives explanations for all of the roleplaying game’s Talents and Weaknesses before providing some of its charts and tables, including the ‘Randon Hit Location Table’, the ‘Combat Modifiers Chart’, the ‘Resolution Table’ a second time—the primary one is on the back of ‘Rulebook’ where it is in colour, an ‘Equipment List’, a ‘Specific Wound Chart’, a ‘Jewel Table’, a list of the ‘Principal Hyborian Languages’, and a ‘Talent List’. The tables are all useful, but they seem placed in a random order which makes their use not as easy as they should be. There are more tables on the ‘Master Reference Sheet’, which covers everything else, including NPC Reactions, a synopsis of the possible results, the combat sequence, and more, including a quick guide to being a Referee.

There is a neat, even decent set of mechanics at the heart of the Conan Role-Playing Game, good enough that they were later redeveloped as the ZeFRSRules—short for ‘Zeb's Fantasy Roleplaying System’, as the author is known as David ‘Zeb’ Cook. Yet the Conan Role-Playing Game almost goes out of its way to make the learning and using of the rules as awkward as possible. This begins almost immediately in the ‘Rulebook’ where there is no explanation of the core rules and how they work, the ‘Rulebook’ going from character creation to combat, leaving the reader none the wiser. Instead, there is an explanation of rules, roughly two paragraphs long under ‘Action Success’ on the third page of the four-page ‘Master Reference Sheet’. What this means is that the Conan Role-Playing Game, which is designed for ages ten and over, an introductory roleplaying game that is effectively hiding its rules. Add to this, the lack of an example of play, no example of character generation, no example beginning characters, and no beginning scenario for beginning characters or even multiple characters, and it is clear that the Conan Role-Playing Game is not giving proper support to either the Referee or the player.

Yet on the plus side, in addition to the very serviceable rules, the means of creating a Player Character using the form on the character sheet is a neat touch as it asks each player to think about his character in terms of his story and tying him into the world of Hyboria. The background description of the world is not bad either and to be fair, the adventure, ‘The Tower of the Elephant’, is actually reasonable enough for a one-one-one, single session’s worth of play. The problem with it is that is either not suitable for the roleplaying game on its own or it is simply not enough.

Physically, the Conan Role-Playing Game is well presented. Everything is of good quality, the layout is tidy, and the internal illustrations, all by Jeff Easley, are excellent.

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The Conan Role-Playing Game was reviewed by Mike Dean in ‘Game Reviews’ in Imagine Adventure Games Magazine No. 29 (August, 1985). He began by saying that, “With the recent influx of RPGs based on specific books, films and TV series, it is not all that surprising that we should eventually be presented with the CONAN® RPG. Along with the trend for this type of RPG has also come the unfortunate tendency for such games to be written in very simple English. CONAN RPG is no exception, and although it can be argued that the style encourages younger players and enables them to grasp the concept of the game more easily, one cannot help but feel that one is being talked down to by the authors.” He was also critical of the magic system in the Conan Role-Playing Game and the effort required both in game and out, adding, “…[I]t is almost as if by making magic difficult to pursue the authors are hoping that no-one will want to.” He concluded, “In conclusion, this game has some interesting concepts but is lacking in certain respects, notably the magic system and the slant towards the younger gamer.

Pete Tamelyn reviewed the Conan Role-Playing Game in ‘Open Box’ in White Dwarf Issue 69 (September, 1985). He was critical of the layout and organisation, saying that, “I get the impression that there were quite a few bugs in the systems as well because there is a 4 page ‘Reference Sheet’ included which makes several significant changes to the rules. ‘Last minute errata sheet’ might have been more appropriate.” Despite this, he awarded it an overall score out of seven out of ten and finishing with, “It's a great shame. With a bit of care it could have been a very good product. Most of the errors are essentially cosmetic and even with them I still prefer it to AD&D. Hopefully TSR will produce a second edition – after they’ve tightened up on their quality control.”

It was reviewed in ‘Game Reviews’ in Different Worlds Issue 45 (March/April, 1987) by Edwin King, whose initial description was that, “The Conan RolePlaying Game is a great piece of hack & slash fun that can reawaken the enthusiasm of the most jaded role-player.” Although critical of the limitations of the scenario, he was positive in his conclusion. “Essentially, it is worth the effort to overlook the organizational problems and occasional lapses in clarity in the rules. If you can enjoy the freedom of using an easily-learned rules set that leaves plenty of options, Conan is great. It makes a pleasant break from more detailed fantasy campaigning and it is certain to have its players rereading the Conan stories in search of inspiration.” He awarded it three stars out of five.

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The Conan Role-Playing Game has an experimental quality to it in combining a very simple system that gives the players a lot of freedom in terms of what they can create and play with a resolution mechanic that is surprisingly elegant and flexible and can cover most situations. It is unlike any other roleplaying game from TSR, Inc. of its era and as a development of the earlier Marvel Super Heroes and The Adventures of Indiana Jones Role-Playing Game, it could have been the basis of a system suitable for a variety of genres. Yet despite its production values, the Conan Role-Playing Game hides this mechanical simplicity behind a ragged organisation, poor explanations of the rules, and a lack of support for the player in terms of examples and advice. There are moments where the author’s love of Robert E. Howard and Conan the Barbarian does shine through even its poor organisation, primarily in the sourcebook and the rules for magic, but even this cannot stop the Conan Role-Playing Game from failing to live up to its potential.

Conan & War

Conan the Mercenary is a supplement for Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of published by Modiphius Entertainment. It is the third in the ‘Conan the…’ series of supplements which focus on and take their inspiration from Conan himself at various stages of his life and what he was doing. Over this series, the supplements will track our titular character’s growth and progress as he gains in skills and abilities and talents. Thus this third supplement, following on from Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Thief, looks at Conan as a young man and his life what he did after he left his homeland and took his next steps on his career which will take him from barbarian to king, essentially the equivalent of a Player Character having taken the first steps in his adventuring career. Yet whilst the stats for Conan himself at this stage of his life do appear in the pages of Conan the Mercenary, and so hint at his step as covered in the next supplement, Conan the Pirate, they are more a side note than a feature, for the supplement continues the path south begun in Conan the Barbarian to examine and explore more of the countries of the centre, where East meets West in the Hyperborean Age—Khoraja, Koth, Ophir, and Shem. Not necessarily the most warlike of countries, but the most likely to hire and in need of mercenaries, or sell-swords, dog soldiers, and sword-sisters. Conan the Mercenary supports the role of the mercenary and warfare in Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of. It includes new archetypes, talents, backgrounds, and equipment to help players create more varied Mercenary characters and Game Masters more varied Mercenary NPCs; a gazetteer and guide to the fractious lands where the rulers have good reason to employ mercenaries of all kinds, whether that is to protect borders, put down insurrection, buy off rampaging mercenaries, and to strike at their rivals—whether internal or external an array of detailed NPCs and monsters, including unique nemeses; and mechanics to help bring mercenary campaigns and other activities and attitudes to your game, including sieges, battles, skirmishes, small operations, and more.

Conan the Mercenary opens by introducing new options for the Mercenary type character, building upon the content in the core rulebook for Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of. This includes the fact that the mercenary can have two Homelands (although only gains the benefits of one) to reflect how well-travelled he is, and has access to two new Mercenary Castes, Born Soldier and Child of Camp Followers—the latter tying to the vivid description of the camp followers later in the supplement, and both complete with stories and associated traits, whilst there is just the single new caste Talent, ‘Scrounger’. Similarly, there are two Mercenary Natures—Professional and Blood-crazed, whilst the Archetypes include ‘Asshuri’, ‘Captain’, ‘Champion’, ‘Messenger’, ‘Unseasoned’, and ‘Veteran’. Mercenary Educations add tables for War Stories, Personal Belongings and Garments, notable Weapon and Provenance, possible Mercenary Names. These add flavour and detail, whilst the Mercenary Talents are primarily built around the ‘Veteran’ Talent tree, only available to those who have served in a mercenary company, whilst the other ten Talents, such as ‘Hostage Taker’ or ‘If it Bleeds…’, are available to all Player Characters. The new ‘Tools of War’ begin with ‘Engines of Destruction’, the siege weapons employed by armies and mercenary companies to break castles, fortresses, and cities, but they get more personal with oddities such as the mancatcher and repeating crossbow. Perhaps more interesting for most players is the examination of high quality Akbitanan steel, whose forging is kept secret by the skilled craftsmen of Shem. The resulting weapons can strike fear into the opponents of anyone wielding them and so they are in great demand.

Supporting these new character options is a gazetteer of the lands in the centre of the West—Khoraja, Koth, Ophir, and Shem. Khoraja is a nation founded by mercenaries. They captured the city of the same name from the kingdom of Koth, taking advantage of the mountains which separates it from the rest of the kingdom. It also controls Shamla Pass, not only an important trade route through the mountains, but also the route that a major invasion force would take going north or south. The kings of Khoraja repudiate their mercenary origins, but that does not stop them from employing them. Koth itself employs mercenaries not only to protect its borders, but to put down insurrections that intermittently arise as one city ruler or noble aspires to the throne. The country’s fractiousness severely hampers the efforts of King Strabonus, its much feared and much derided ruler, to chart its future, not helped by the presence of Tsotha-Lanti, the sorcerer who at best is regarded as an advisor to the king, at worst the power behind the throne. Ophir is the opposite of Koth, a settled, extremely wealthy, and decadent nation, unambitious under the rule of its king, Amalrus, but not his wife, Queen Yrrane, who secretly plans to take the throne from her husband. To that end she has gathered the fealty of many mercenary captains who would command their companies to aid the ambitious spouse. Shem, known for its highly skilled craftsmen, is divided between meadowlands and desert, the latter providing a protective bulwark against invaders from the east. In each case, an overview of each country is provided, along with a look at their major cities, traditions, culture and faiths, ruins, notable features and citizens, and more. In each case, the content of Conan the Mercenary is set before the events of Conan’s stories, enabling the Game Master to run them as adventures for her Player Characters.

If the Gazetteer examines the places where mercenaries are most frequently employed or stationed and particular reasons why, ‘Events’ is more about the general reasons for war in the Hyperborean Age—not just war between kingdoms, internecine warfare, barbaric raids, and religious upheavals, but also natural events such as plague and famine, and unnatural events like the rise of a sorcerer and incursion from the Outer Dark. These are relatively short overviews so feel slightly generic. Fortunately, the supplement shifts away from this when it focuses on the NPCs in the setting in ‘Encounters’. This includes both a look at Conan’s involvement in the politics and events of the nations of Khoraja, Koth, Ophir, and Shem, in particular, his command of mercenary companies in the defeat of the Thugra Khotan and later defeat during Prince Almuric’s uprising against King Strabonus in Koth. These are backed up by a good range of ‘Encounters’ or NPCs. Even the most basic of mercenaries, such as the Asshuri, the Free Company mercenary, or Khrajan Solider are all given good write-ups alongside their stats, those done for the persons of renown, such as Thugra Khotan—self-entombed sorcerer in the city of Kuthchemes in Khoraja, King Strabonus, and Tsotha-Lanti, are excellent, helping to bring their ambitions and resulting plots to live and ready for development by the Game Master. Oddly, although mentioned in the gazetteer, there are no stats or write-up for Queen Yrrane and given its focus later in the supplement, there are no camp followers detailed here. Nevertheless, the ‘Encounters’ section enables the Game Master to have her Player Characters encounter them if running her campaign before the events of Conan’s stories.

As with previous supplements for Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of, ‘Hither Came Conan…’ places our titular hero in the context of the supplement and provides a playable version of him early in his long career. This also ties him back into the contents of the previous two chapters and in doing so, outlines one possible plot for the Game Master. ‘The Mercenary Way’ explores mercenary life in the Hyperborean Age. It is the most entertaining chapter in the supplement, starting with a discussion of camp followers and their way of life training behind a mercenary company. Technically called a ‘tross’, it looks at the different roles—blacksmiths, camp boys, cooks, gamblers, healers, priests, prostitutes, and more—all of which lend itself to a scenario or two, if not a mini-campaign around the ‘tross’. Despite their not being involved in the thick of the action, such a setting still lends itself to plenty of conflict, roleplaying, and social dynamics that would lead to good, if likely grubby and sometimes desperate, storytelling. Several mercenary companies, from the good to the bad, from the Nemedian Adventurers which only serves the King of Nemedia to the Free Companions, are described and a Mercenary Code of conduct is given as well as an explanation of how mercenary companies are structured. Tables provide loot to be taken from a battlefield and a city, events whilst ransacking, and events whilst carousing as a mercenary. The latter are always fun, providing a nice selection of random encounters and events that the Game Master can develop. The loot tables though, do feel as if they could be longer.

Supporting the earlier discussion of reasons to go to war in ‘Event’, the section on ‘Mercenary Adventures’ looks at the types of scenarios and campaigns that the Game Master can run with the supplement. These start with scouting and reconnaissance missions, patrols, securing prisoners, and more before slipping into the weird looking how cursed ruins, ancient battlefields, and even demons and gods of the Outer Dark could get involved in a mercenary campaign. These sections are fairly broad in their overview and should be treated as starting points for the Game Master.

Surprisingly, it has taken to almost the end of Conan the Mercenary to include rules for battles and mass combat. Part of that is due to the format of the series, but it does seem like a long wait. In general, the rules for small skirmishes are provided in the core rules for Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of, but here they scale up to handle full battles and sieges. These are not wargaming rules, but a means to handle a battle in a more narrative fashion whilst still involving the Player Characters on an individual level. To that end there is advice on ‘Narrating Battles the Howard Way’ and using cut scenes for ‘Heroic Actions’ where a Player Character has an opportunity to influence the battle and be courageous, such as opening a gate to let soldiers through or sabotaging a siege engine. It does add complexity to play and the Game Master should definitely run through a few examples to get the feel for it before running it for her players. There is an example too, which can be studied. Lastly, ‘Heroes of the Age’ adds a pair of potential Player Characters or NPCs developed by backers for the Kickstarter campaign for Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of. Of the two, Freya the Red would make an interesting mercenary commander for any campaign, whether as employer or enemy.

Physically, Conan the Mercenary is a slim hardback, presented in full colour, illustrated with an excellent range of fully painted artwork. It is well written, is accessible, and comes with a reasonable index. The maps of the nations detailed in Gazetteer are a bit bland though.

Conan the Mercenary opens up new campaign and scenario possibilities, whether that is as a special operations squad involved in civil war or a rebellion in Koth or going to war against the forces lead by Thugra Khotan, as Conan did, or surviving in the tross from one campaign to the next. However, it does take a while before it comes together and begins to feel like a supplement for Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of, doing so when it begins to draw more directly from the adventures of Conan himself and the characters he involves himself with in Howard’s stories. The book needed more of that and so it comes across as being a rather slight book in places, not helped by it being shorter than other supplements in the series. 

Conan the Mercenary does feel slightly underwhelming in paces, but it shines through where it counts—and that is on the personal level. For the Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of Game Master who wants to send her Player Characters into the heat, blood, sweat, and hell of battle, to let them sell their martial skills to the highest bidder, and have them influence the fate of kingdoms at the point of a sword, Conan the Mercenary unsheathes its sword and strikes the right blow!

Conan & Crime

Conan the Thief is a supplement for Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of published by Modiphius Entertainment. It is the second in the ‘Conan the…’ series of supplements which focus on and take their inspiration from Conan himself at various stages of his life and what he was doing. Over this series, the supplements will track our titular character’s growth and progress as he gains in skills and abilities and talents. Thus this second supplement, following on from Conan the Barbarian, looks at Conan as a young man and his life what he did after he left his homeland, at the beginning of his career which will take him from barbarian to king, essentially the equivalent of a Player Character having taken the first steps in his adventuring career. Yet whilst the stats for Conan himself at this stage of his life do appear in the pages of Conan the Thief, they are more a side note than a feature, for the supplement is an examination of the countries of the centre, where East meets West in the Hyperborean Age—Brythunia, Corinthia, Nemedia, and Zamora. It includes new archetypes, talents, backgrounds, and equipment to help players create more varied Thief characters and Game Masters more varied Thief NPCs; a gazetteer and guide to the waning lands where the rule of law and civilisation force the poor and the needy, the greedy and the driven to steal and trade in what is not theirs; an array of detailed NPCs and monsters, including unique nemeses; and mechanics to help bring thievery and other activities and attitudes to your game, including burglaries, heists, assassinations, and more.

Conan the Thief opens by introducing new options for the Thief type character, building upon the content in  the core rulebook for Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of. This includes the Outlaw, a new Caste, which gives numerous reasons why a Player Character turned to thievery, such as ‘Nobility in All But Name’, ‘A Victim of Justice’, and ‘An Example Must Be Made’, and presents seven new Thief Archetypes: the Assassin, the Bloody Right Hand, the Fence, the Highwayman, the Master Thief, the Relic Hunter, and the Spy. In addition, there are Thief Educations, like Burglar, Rustler, Lock Breaker, Quack Physician, and Thug, enabling a Player Character Thief to specialise or to add thiefly elements to another character type. To these are added themed War Stories, Thief Talents, and kits and weapons. The latter includes the punching dagger, the katar, the duelling sword, and the garrote, along with the typical tools of the trade such as marbles, tripwires, smoke bombs, and more. Augmenting the core rulebook, this enables a player to create an interesting character or the Game Master interesting NPCs.

Supporting these new character options is a gazetteer of the lands between the East and the West—Brythunia, Corinthia, Nemedia, and Zamora. Zamora is famed for its thieves and for the city of Shadizar the Wicked is infamously home to the most notorious of all assassins’ guild, The Black Hand; Corinithia for its merchants and economic power, as well as its fractious cities cannot agree anything more than mutual self-defence, paying for their mercenary armies; Nemedia for being dominated by the Church of Mitra and being obsessed with the ancient cultures and ruins it is built upon; and Brythunia for being a backwater with its fractious clans, one of which could easily turn on the other at a moment’s notice or slight. The fortunes of all four have fluctuated over the centuries, being both conquers and the conquered. In the main it focuses upon the cities in each of these lands, typically the site of Conan’s adventures. So ‘The Tower of the Elephant’ in the city of Zamora in the land of Zamora and ‘Rogues in the House’ between Zamora and Corinthia (here given as Magyar, the Red City), for example. In each case, the content of Conan the Thief is set before the events of Conan’s stories, enabling the Game Master to run them as adventure for her Player Characters, but there are notes for adjusting them to be used after their events too. The emphasis is firmly on the cities in detailing Zamora, Nemedia, and Corinthia, if not least for the fact that the city is the natural home of the thief, and also because they are on major trade routes which the cities’ thieves can prey upon. However, Brythunia is different, suggesting that the fractiousness between its four kingdoms can be scaled down to the village level, and using ‘Brythunian Village Design’ table, to create a rural campaign which might build into something more political.

If the gazetteer explores the cultures and places where thievery is rife, ‘Events’ goes into the types of occurrences that might beset the Thief or that the Thief might instigate. These include Personal, City and Town, and Kingdom-level events, so go from Rivalries, Framed or Set, and Debt, to Wars and Rumours of War, Steal the Heir, and Plague and Other Such Chaos via Gang War, Watch Crackdown, and The Prince of Thieves is Dead! These joined by Unnatural Events like Just Another Snake Cult or Obtainer of Rare Antiquities, and there are notes on combining them too. Effectively all of them work as potential story hooks.

‘Myth & Magic’ discusses the myth of the thief and thievery, in particular, the myth that all thieves hold to, and that is ‘Honour Among Thieves’. It quickly dispels the notion that it is actually practised, thieves typically owing loyalty and friendship, but being fundamentally selfish. It makes clear that thieves do not necessarily worship a thief deity, but rather their local gods, although several gods of thievery and darkness are given, including Bel, the God of Thieves, and the Cult of the Spider God. Potential boons are given for worshipping both, for example, Bel grants a thief who takes him a patron an extra Talent, but expects the thief to leave stolen goods somewhere where they may be easily stolen on a regular basis, whilst the Cult of the Spider God gifts its followers tokens that will poison any non-believer who touches it, a ghastly object used as a means of assassination. There suggestions here too, for the purposes to which the body parts of thief can be put once he is dead, like the Hand of Glory or rope woven from the hair of dead women. A few examples would have been useful here.

‘Encounters’ details a good mix of generic NPCs, like the assassin or the watchman, and named individuals. Several of these come from Howard’s stories as you would expect, thus Yara from ‘The Tower of the Elephant’ or Demetrio, the Chief of the Inquisitorial Council of Numalia from ‘The God in the Bowl’. There are a lot of nemeses here. They are joined by fearsome creatures like the Giant Rat and the Giant Skeleton Warrior, and worse, Yag-Kosha, from ‘The Tower of the Elephant’. These again enable the Game Master to have her Player Characters encounter them if running her campaign before the events of Conan’s stories.

Rounding out Conan the Thief is ‘Hither Came Conan…’ which places our titular hero in the context of the supplement and provides a playable version of him early in his long career. Thieving and criminal campaigns are explored in ‘The Way of Thieves’, which examines how campaigns built around thieves will be different to other campaigns for Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of. It notes that Conan himself was a thief for just two or three years, that thief campaigns should avoid descending into farce as thieving is serious business, and whether the city authorities or the head of the guild, there will be checks and balances on the activities of any Player Character thief. There is solid advice here and it is supported by guidelines and rules for joining and running a thieves’ guild, along with descriptions of the guilds of note in the cities described earlier in the supplement. The ‘Heists’ chapter presents a chapter of tables with which the Game Master can generate potential jobs and targets and then develop to run for her players and their characters. It comes with a fully worked example. Lastly, ‘Heroes of the Age’ add a trio of potential Player Characters NPCs developed by backers for the Kickstarter campaign for Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of. Of the three, ‘Jamil the Thieftaker’ is a great addition to any campaign set in Zamora, whilst the boastful ‘Inarus’ feels out of place, being more pirate than thief.

Physically, Conan the Thief is a slim hardback, presented in full colour, illustrated with an excellent range of fully painted artwork. It is well written, is accessible, and comes with a reasonable index.

Conan the Thief switches in emphasis and feel from Conan the Barbarian, exploring thievery and civilisation at the heart of the Hyperborean Age in lands which though often rich—for some, at least—are in decline. Both depict worlds of cruelty, one of the rough, frontier lands, the other of inequality and poverty in great cities. The advice for running a thief-based campaign is excellent, though perhaps a campaign outline for taking a band of thieves from their lives on the street into the guilds and onwards, encompassing a similar two or three-year period to that spent by Conan himself, would have been useful. Similarly, the advice on adapting the stories which the supplement directly draws upon, such as ‘The Tower of the Elephant’, could have been stronger and done with an outline or something similar to help the Game Master, especially given how pivotal these stories are in the Conan oeuvre.

Conan the Thief opens up whole new possibilities for running and playing Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of. It expands upon the options in the core rules for the player who wants to create a Thief character, and thus also for the Game Master to create interesting NPCs  for the Player Characters to encounter in a city, perhaps if they are just passing through on the way to somewhere else, However, what the content of Conan the Thief really lends itself to is entirely city-based campaigns built around thieves and thieving, where the Player Characters can all be different types of thieves and have different roles in the campaign. Such that a whole Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of campaign could almost be run without ever leaving that city or even going anywhere near the background and information presented in its other supplements. It is actually a pity that such a campaign does not exist for the roleplaying game.

Conan the Thief is a solid supplement for Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of, which really comes alive as a campaign supplement. In fact, Conan the Thief would make a good supplement for any Game Master wanting to run a Swords & Thievery style campaign. It is an excellent sourcebook.

—oOo—

Modiphius Entertainment will be at UK Games Expo which takes place from Friday, June 3rd to Sunday, June 5th, 2022.

The Barbaric North

Conan the Barbarian is a supplement for Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of published by Modiphius Entertainment. It is the first in the ‘Conan the…’ series of supplements which focus on and take their inspiration from Conan himself at various stages of his life and what he was doing. Over this series, the supplements will track our titular character’s growth and progress as he gains in skills and abilities and talents. Thus this first supplement looks at Conan as a young man and his life among the people of his homeland, at the beginning of his career which will take him from barbarian to king, essentially the equivalent of a starting player character. Yet whilst the stats for Conan himself at this stage of his life do appear in the pages of Conan the Barbarian, they are more a side note than a feature, for the supplement is an examination of the countries of the north in the Hyperborean Age—Asgard, Cimmeria, Hyperborea, and Vanaheim. It includes new archetypes, talents, backgrounds, and equipment to help players create more varied barbarian characters and Game Masters more varied barbarian NPCs; a gazetteer and guide to the bleak lands of the north, either shrouded in fog or smothered in snow and; an array of detailed NPCs and monsters, including unique nemeses; and mechanics to help bring barbarian activities and attitudes to your game, including raids, contests, battle tactics, and more.

Conan the Barbarian opens with four new Barbarian castes and some changes to the castes given in the core rulebook for Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of. The latter are minor in nature, mostly name changes and slight adjustments in terms of Social Standing, whereas the five new castes are Barbaric, Law-speaker, Renegade, and Skald, each supported by new Talents, such as Savage Dignity and Uncivilised for the Barbaric caste, followed by Stories for each of the new castes enabling the creation of backstories for the characters of said castes. These are followed by four archetypes—Bard, Hunter, Raider, and Slaver. In addition, there are Barbarian Natures and Educations, and Talents, the latter the Skald and the Bard. Along with a small selection of equipment, including sun stones used as navigation aids and several sorcerous items, these options combine with those of the core rulebook to provide greater choice in creating characters from the barbaric north. This can be simply to create and play something different from the core rulebook, but it could also provide the diversity needed to create a party of barbarians from the north, whether for a campaign set there or looking to escape the frozen north…

Supporting these new character options is a gazetteer of the north. Beginning with the coming of the barbarians it looks in turn at the peoples, way of life, geography, and places of note in Cimmeria, Nordheim, and Hyperborea, with Nordheim being rent into two by great rivalry between Asgard and Vanaheim. Although other nations may look at the north as being wholly barbaric, the gazetteer begins to separate the four peoples and so emphasise their differences. So the Cimmerians live in clans belonging to four tribes and mainly live in independent villages dotted across the dreary Cimmerian Marches, their inhabitants only coming together when invaders, like the Aquilonnians, attempt to capture or colonise what the Cimmerians regard as their territory. The inhabitants of southern Nordheim recognise kings, queen, jarls, and more, whereas those of the north band together in nomadic tribes, constantly moving across the icy reaches of the north. Vanaheim also has a coast, enabling its inhabitants to build boats and fish and raid—their raiding ships with their carved figureheads being known as the ‘dragons of the sea’, whereas Asgard does not. To the East, the land of Hyperborea is known for its fortified cities and its participation in the slave trade. Again, there is a lot here to brought into a game, whether it is rolling on the Cimmerian village generator or nomad camp features table, or visiting the charm-bedecked Witch-Oak in Cimmeria said to be home to a witch, a crone to some, matronly to others, capable of lifting and bestowing curses.

If the gazetteer explores the cultures and places of the north, ‘Events’ describes the regular doings of the north. First and foremost is the ‘Thing’, a combined festival, council, and reunion, held by kings as much by lesser nobles. Here disputes and other matters are settled, to which the Game Master can add events from the accompanying table. Equally dramatic is the decision of a Nordheim tribe to migrate its camp across the snowy wastes or the members of Vanaheim village deciding to build a ship and conduct raids further along the coast. These are raids akin to those of the Vikings, rather than piracy, which will of course be covered in more detailed in Conan the Pirate, including ship-to-ship combat. There is a lot here to make all of these exciting and involving. 

The often dreary and unforgiving nature of life in the north is reflected in the discussion of its peoples’ gods and legends in ‘Myth & Magic’. None more so than the Cimmerian afterlife, which is even more dismal and dreary than their actual lives! Vahalla, the Hall of the Mighty is a more inviting prospect amongst the valorous of Nordheim. As well gods and legends, it presents rules for using geases and taboos, and Runes and inscribing them onto objects for one-off or even permanent benefits and the first Nemesis NPC in Conan the Barbarian. This is Atali, the Frost Giant’s Daughter, who plagues and plays with the lives of mortals. The following chapter, ‘Encounters’, includes even more Nemesis NPCs, from the generic Chieftain and Witch to the Lindorm, a two-legged serpent, a solitary hunter through the snow, and Bragi the Unloved, a seasoned chieftain who usurped his predecessor and who rules with an iron first, his ambition driving him to declare on his neighbours. This is in addition to the other thirty or so NPCs and creatures of varying capability. Not just Snow Apes, Boars, and Mammoths, but also Banshees, Draugrs, Were-Bears, and Wyrms. 

Rounding out Conan the Barbarian is ‘Hither Came Conan…’ which places our titular hero in the context of the supplement and provides a playable version of him early in his long career, rough equal to that of a beginning character. Running campaigns set in the north are explored in ‘The Barbarian Way’, discussing campaign set-ups—warbands and raiding parties in the main, whether the player characters part of or leading them, plus missionary and colonisation expeditions into the north; barbaric rites and traditions, and war and carousing, the latter including a lengthy table of carousing events. Lastly, Ali is a presented as a ‘Hero of the Age’, a female hero born to chattel slavery, a potential player character or an NPC, developed by a backer for the Kickstarter campaign for Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of.

Physically, Conan the Barbarian is a slim hardback, presented in full colour, illustrated with an excellent range of fully painted artwork. It is well written, although it needs to be edited in places. Otherwise, it is accessible and comes with a reasonable index.

As is, there is not really anything missing in Conan the Barbarian. There are plenty of ideas, places, NPCs, and monsters in its pages to spur a Game Master’s imagination, but perhaps for the neophyte Game Master, new to running Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of, some scenario hooks or adventure seeds would have been useful. Nevertheless, it is clear from Conan the Barbarian that its author has delved deep into Hyperborean lore and presented much of it in what is a multifaceted supplement. Although based on Conan’s early life, it goes beyond that to bring the world around him not just to life, but also to make it accessible and playable. Whether that is as Conan himself, using the provided write-up, or more obviously, as player characters. For the player who wants to create a barbarian character from the north, Conan the Barbarian offers welcome options, but for the Game Master wanting to run or take her Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of in or to the frozen, savage north, Conan the Barbarian is an excellent sourcebook.

Conan III's First Seven

Conan: Jeweled Thrones of the Earth is an anthology of seven adventures for use with Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of, the swords & sorcery roleplaying game published by Modiphius Entertainment. Reflecting the nature of Robert E. Howard’s novels, these adventures are designed to be played episodically, as and when, rather than as a campaign. One of the suggestions is for the Game Master to run them as flashbacks, the idea being that player characters are referring back to them when they are travelling or carousing between other adventures. This gives the Game Master free reign when to run this septet, although the anthology includes advice to help her decide if and when. ‘Where’ is another matter, the scenarios being set across the known world, from beyond Stygia in the far south to the Bossonian Marches and Pictish territory in the west, from deserts to stormy seas, and deep into the past.

The anthology opens with ‘Devils Under Green Stars’ which finds the adventurers far to the south beyond Stygia where they come across the last outpost of Zukundu, a long long, long forgotten civilisation which occupies an entire island. Although it looks abandoned, the adventurers find it home to not one tribe, but three! Each has devolved to one degree or another. The scenario is quite linear in structure, the adventurers being led around on something of wild monster chase which turns into a tour of Zukundu’s best and worst features. What this means is that the scenario is really set up to tell the one tale, but possibly a more experienced Game Master might be able to provide an alternative, perhaps more open approach the given set-up of three warring and each oddly different tribes. In the meantime, the Game Master gets to chew the scenery with some vile NPCs and the adventurers might get away with a sack full of gold.

‘The Pact of Xiabalba’ is the second scenario and begins with the player characters at sea aboard a ship as a mysterious storm shipwrecks them ashore a strange island. To survive they need water and to find water, they need to explore the ruins on the island and it is here that things turn a little strange. Suddenly they find themselves amidst a city just as it falls to an assault by a barbarian horde. Not in the present though, but in the distant past where their mission is to change time as otherwise they are not coming back and the campaign goes in a whole new direction. Advice is given as to what might happen if the adventurers fail, but again, this is a fairly linear and straightforward scenario. There are a couple of decent NPCs for the Game Master to portray, but ‘The Pact of Xiabalba’ is really all combat and action.

‘The Caves of the Dero’ feels like a traditional fantasy adventure, but its set-up is easy and it can be located just about anywhere. A treasure map leads the adventurers to a long abandoned villa below which they find a mine full of Morlock-like degenerates in search of treasure for their master. The villa ruins feel nicely creepy and the dungeon has suitably weird feel to it. The adventure does push the adventurers onwards with a cave-in—not the only time this device will be used in Conan: Jeweled Thrones of the Earth—and as decently written as it is, the promised, but missing map of the dungeon complex would have been useful.

‘The Ghost of Thunder River’ sends the player characters to the Bossonian Marches, the frontier territory which serves as a buffer between Aquilonia and lands of the Picts. The player characters find themselves in the frontier fortress-town of  Velitrium as part of the militia just as the garrison learns of Picts actively raiding across the river and taking prisoners. If the player characters are to act, they will have to do it in secret or persuade a very reluctant garrison commander to let them, but once they do, they will soon be able to discover what is behind the rash of Pictish raids. Not for the first time though! The scenario actually starts with a prelude in which the players roleplay a band of Pictish hunters who come across some strange ruins and in exploring them set everything in motion. Once this background has been set, play switches back to the immediate present and the player characters can act. This is a nice device and provides the players and their characters with some foreshadowing of events to come.

A MacGuffin pulls the adventurers into the dread clutches of a criminal mastermind in the urban adventure, ‘The Thousand Eyes of Aumag-Bel’. It opens with their carousing and enjoying the fruits of their looting when all of a sudden, armoured thugs rush in, demanding that they hand over said MacGuffin. Failure to comply leads to a fight and probable ostracisation by the inhabitants of the city where Aumag-Bel holds horrible sway. Like the first scenario, ‘Devils Under Green Stars’, this another linear, straightforward affair, a combination of social pressure and a chase after a gang of young pickpockets drive the adventurers forward into a confrontation with Aumag-Bel in his sordid base of operations.

The penultimate entry in Conan: Jeweled Thrones of the Earth is a scenario rather than an adventure, essentially a setting and set-up rather a fully rounded series of events that the player characters can play out. In ‘The Red Pit’, the player characters find themselves enslaved and being worked to death in a stone quarry when they have a chance to escape. The rest of the scenario involves their climbing to the top and overcoming their brutal guards to eventually escape. Rather than an adventure, this is a highly detailed set-up and extended battle, one that works as memorable set-scene which can used to showcase how a group of disparate individuals—that is, the player characters—came to be together.

The last adventure is ‘The Seethers in Darkness’ and is perhaps is the most Lovecraftian of the seven in the anthology. The adventurers are hired as guards to provide protection to a scholar who wants to search for lost ruins that many say do not exist in the desert southwest of Zamboula. When he gets lost in a sand storm, they are bound to follow him deep underground into a weird tomb complex and Hyborea’s past in what feels just a little like a dungeon bash. Fortunately, it does not feel quite as linear as other adventures in the collection even though it is.

The last chapter in the anthology is ‘Seeds of Glory’. Although Conan: Jeweled Thrones of the Earth is not designed to be run as a campaign, one of the things that the advice for the Game Master in this chapter does, is actually suggest how it can be run as a campaign. One of the suggested campaign outlines starts off with the characters not so much on the bottom rung of the ladder, so much as not yet on that ladder, as slaves in ‘The Red Pit’ and then takes the Game Master through the other parts of campaign as the player characters gain gain fame and fortune. The advice suggests how Conan himself—using the stats for him included in Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of—Conan: Jeweled Thrones of the Earth can be brought into the adventures, but without him sidelining the player characters. Rounding out the chapter is a good collection of scenario seeds that the Game Master can develop and bring into his game.

Physically, Conan: Jeweled Thrones of the Earth is a slim and attractive hardback. It is illustrated throughout and both the artwork and the cartography—when the latter is not missing—is decent enough. The writing needs editing in places, primarily because of the occasional piece of missing text, but also because the events in the scenarios are quite detailed as they play out.

The seven scenarios in Conan: Jeweled Thrones of the Earth are each quite short, offering a session or two’s worth of action and combat-orientated play. They each work better as occasional episodes or diversions rather than a campaign, since they are geographically diverse and too many tell the tale of an ancient evil discovered—either a civilisation or an act of sorcery—which needs to be thwarted by the player characters. This is where the flashback device of adventures and times remembered comes into its own, giving the Game Master more options in how she uses these often thematically similar adventures. Overall, Conan: Jeweled Thrones of the Earth is a solid collection of adventures that nicely takes the player characters back and forth across Hyboria and down memory lane.

Conan III

Given their influence over the hobby with the publication of Dungeons & Dragons in 1974, it is no surprise that over the last thirty-five years, there have been some five roleplaying games—or supplements and scenarios—based upon the stories of Robert E. Howard. From CB1 Conan Unchained! published by TSR. Inc. in 1984 for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition to the latest from Modiphius Entertainment, Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of, published in 2017, many are held in high regard, others less so. What they share in common is that they draw upon the life of Conan the Barbarian, the eponymous larger than life character whose adventures would take him across the ancient lands of the Hyborian Age would take him from uncivilised warrior to king. Except in CB1 Conan Unchained! and its sequels, CB2 Conan Against Darkness! and RS1 Red Sonja Unconquered, players do not take the roles of Conan and his companions, but create archers, barbarians, knights, mercenaries, nobles, nomads, priests, pirates, scholars, scoundrels, shamans, witches, and more, who will explore the lands of Hyborea in the long years following the fall of Atlantis. They will fight mighty battles, delve into dark ruins, put a sword to dire sorcery, and more.

Now where previous roleplaying works based upon the Conan stories have drawn from the wider canon, Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of draws specifically upon the works of Robert E. Howard only. Published following a successful Kickstarter campaign, the roleplaying game uses the 2d20 System, first seen in Mutant Chronicles: Techno Fantasy Roleplaying Game. This is a relatively straightforward set of mechanics which here allow for ‘larger-than-life’ characters and heroic action with an emphasis on that action. Its genre is soundly ‘swords & Sorcery’, but with an emphasis on the swords versus the sorcery. This is because sorcery in the Hyborian Age ultimately involves pacts with dark and evil gods and demons and its practitioners being cursed. In Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of it is possible to play a sorcerer, but it takes a great deal of effort and great promises made to often malign intelligences upon the part of the wouldbe sorcerer in his search of power and knowledge.

A character in Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of is defined by seven attributes—Agility, Awareness, Brawn, Coordination, Intelligence, Mental Strength, Personality, and Willpower. They typically range between six and twelve with higher values being better, but it is possible to have an attribute as high as fourteen. This indicates that a character is a member of an Ancient Bloodline and thus descended from the sunken isles of Atlantis or ruined empires of Acheron. It also marks him out as a potential exemplar—of excellence or depravity. He will also have any number of skills, each defined by two factors, Expertise and Focus. Expertise represents general training, whilst Focus is the disciplined practice necessary to get the most out of a skill. At the end of character generation, skills can have a maximum Expertise and Focus of five each. In addition, every skill has a set of associated Talents, each set arranged in a mini-talent tree. There also are several Talent Trees which are not attached to particular skills. For example, the first Talent in the Melee Talent tree is ‘No Mercy’, which allows a player to reroll damage dice equal to the number of Melee Talents his character has. After ‘No Mercy’, the Melee Talents branch into three options—‘Deft Blade’, ‘Grappler’, and ‘Blood on Steel’—each of which has a Talent after that which a character can eventually have. In some cases, Talents have ranks can be selected multiple times.

To create a character in Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of, a player takes his character through a lifepath of ten steps, at each step either rolling randomly for or choosing attributes, skills, and Talents. The ten steps are Homeland, Attributes, Caste, Story, Archetype, Nature, Education, War Story, Finishing Touches, and Final Calculations. From his Homeland, a character gets his first language and talent from the choice of thirty available, whilst his Attributes are set at a base of seven, which can then be adjusted according to rolls which determine those which are mandatory or optional. From these a player pick his character’s best or worst attributes. Caste, from Crafter and Escaped serf/Slave to Priest and Warrior, determines a character’s social background, whilst Story—there are six of these for each Caste—starts building a character’s history. Archetype—Archer, Barbarian, Mercenary, Noble Warrior, Nomad, Pirate, Priest/Priestess, Scholar, Scoundrel, and Witch/Shaman—is the nearest that Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of gets to the concept of Class a la Dungeons & Dragons, but really are just character types. Nature indicates a character’s personality, Education continues a character’s history, as does the War Story. Finishing Touches enables a player to make some small adjustments, whilst Final Calculations determine various derived values. Throughout, each stage provides various bonuses—Attribute, Expertise, and Focus adjustments as well as Talents—with a player being free to roll for a random result at each stage, choose freely, or mix the two. Of course, most of the stages give a player options to choose from, so the process is not entirely random.

The process is of a moderate complexity, but it allows players to create characters which fit particular archetypes or are a mix of skills and talents, that are skilled and capable, and can take action. Advice and suggestions are included though on how to create player characters not quite so over the top and how to bring a diverse group of characters together. This is further supported in the Game Master’s section which examines keeping the player characters together as various group types, like troops or pirates.

Our sample character is Sigrid Sharp-Eyed, a Nordheimer whose family was outcast for reasons her parents never told her and whose childhood was one near brush with death after another. Conscripted into one army and mercenary company after another, Sigrid survived battle after battle because she had any skill, but because she had an unnatural awareness of where the safest place on the battlefield might be. After one last bloody one-sided battle, she fled south and has found where she can—thief, thug, guard, and lookout. She has a reputation for being eagle-eyed and a known hatred of authority and military leaders.

Name: Sigrid Sharp-Eyed
Homeland: Nordheim (Vanaheim)
Languages: Nordheimer, Cimmerian
Class: Outcast Social Standing: 0
Story: One of the Rabble (Betrayed)
Archetype: Barbarian
Nature: Practical
Education: Family Footsteps
War Story: Survived a Massacre
Fortune Points: 2

Attribute Aspects
Acute and Aware, Warrior-Born

Attributes
Agility 9 Awareness 13 Brawn 10 Coordination 10
Intelligence 7 Personality 8 Willpower 6

Vigor 11 Resolve 8 
Melee Damage Bonus 2
Ranged Damage Bonus 3
Mental Damage Bonus 0

Talents
Winter-born, Ancient Bloodline, Embittered, Survivor, No Mercy, Thief, Sharp Senses

Skills
Acrobatics (Expertise 2, Focus 2), Animal Handling (Expertise 3, Focus 3), Athletics (Expertise 1, Focus 1), Craft (Expertise 1, Focus 1), Discipline (Expertise 2, Focus 2), Healing (Expertise 1, Focus 1), Melee (Expertise 3, Focus 3), Observation (Expertise 2, Focus 2), Resistance (Expertise 1, Focus 1), Stealth (Expertise 2, Focus 2), Survival (Expertise 3, Focus 3), Thievery (Expertise 2, Focus 2)

Equipment
Furs & Pelts, Ragged Furs (Heavy), Spear decorated with polished stones, Axe, Family Heirloom, 8 Gold, Ring of Semi-Precious Stone

Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of uses the 2d20 System, also used in several of Modiphius Entertainment’s other self-developed roleplaying games, such as Star Trek Adventures and Mutant Chronicles, plus the forthcoming John Carter of Mars and Dune. Simply each time a character wants to take an action, his player rolls two twenty-sided dice, aiming to roll low. This roll is made against an Attribute or against an Attribute plus the Expertise value of a skill. Each roll under this value generates a success. Further successes can be generated if the roll is also under the Focus value of a skill. The number of successes are measured against the Difficulty Rating of the task, one being average. Any successes generated above the Difficulty Rating are counted as Momentum and these can be spent for various effects. These include ‘Create Opportunity’, to provide a bonus die for a subsequent skill test; ‘Create Obstacle’ to increase the difficulty of an opponent’s skill test; ‘Obtain Information’ at a rate of one question per point of Momentum; ‘Improve Quality of Success’ and so more more stylishly; ‘Increase Scope of Success’ to increase the number of targets or area of effect the action affects; and ‘Reduce Time Required’. In combat, Momentum can be spent to gain another action, gain bonus damage, make a called shot, recover from damage, and so on from quite a list of possible actions.

When rolled, Momentum need not be spent, but can be saved into a communal pot that any player can dip into. The pot size is limited though, and goes down by one at the end of each scene. So there is an incentive to spend it or lose it. In addition, each character has several Fortune Points. These can be spent to gain automatic successes, additional actions, to overcome Stress or Weakness, or to influence the story. Fortune Points are refreshed at the start of each session, but can be regained for good play, clever plans, teamwork, overcoming challenges, and so on.

For example, Sigrid Sharp-Eyed has eventually drifted south where her reputation has found her work in Zamora the Accursed, the city of thieves. She is employed as a guard on the night watch at the fortified villa of Tolmos Gem-Fingered. Of course, she is casing the joint in readiness for a heist of her own, but in the meantime another thief has broken into Tolmos’ vault and is making his escape attempt past near where Sigrid is patrolling. The Game Master asks Sigrid’s player to make a Difficulty 2 Observation test, the difficulty of the task reflecting the skill of the thief. Sigrid has an Awareness of 13 and an Observation of Expertise 2, Focus 2. This means that her player only needs to roll under 15 to gain a Success. Her player rolls a 4 and a 16, giving Sigrid only one Success. Fortunately, Sigrid has the ‘sharp Senses’ Talent, which allows her player to re-roll a die on an Observation test. Her re-rolls the 16 and rolls a 2. This is under Sigrid’s Focus for Observation and so gains her two Successes, for a total of three. Having succeeded at the test, the Gamemaster tells Sigrid’s player that she sees someone slip out of Tolmos’ villa and across an adjacent roof. For the moment, Sigrid’s player decides to keep the Momentum and puts it into the communal pot.

Now where the players have Momentum to spend, the Game Master has Doom. She begins each session with her own pot of them, but can gain them through player character actions. These include a player purchasing extra dice to roll on a test, rolling a natural twenty and so adding two Doom (instead of the usual Complication), attempting a Reaction in combat, and voluntarily failing and gaining a Fortune Point in return. ‘Threatening Circumstances’ of the situation and any unspent Momentum rolled by an NPC. In return, the Gamemaster can spend it on minor inconveniences, complications, and serious complications to inflict upon the player characters, as well as triggering NPC special abilities, having NPCs seize the initiative, and bringing the environment dramatically into play. 

What the Doom and Momentum mechanics do is set up a pair of parallel economies with Doom being fed in part by Momentum, but Momentum in the main being used to overcome the complications and circumstances which the expenditure of Doom can bring into play. The primary use of Doom though, is to ratchet up the tension and the challenge, whereas the primary use of Momentum is to enable the player characters to overcome this challenge and in action, be larger than life.

In addition to the standard twenty-sided dice, Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of uses Combat dice. These are six-sided dice where only the rolls of one, two, five or six count. In general, they are used as effect dice, for example, in the included scenario, ‘Vultures of Shem’, for every Success rolled for an Observation test when looking for loot on the battlefield, a player gets to roll a Combat die. Primarily though, they are used to roll damage in combat, which can be physical, mental, or social, with characters suffering damage to their Vigour or their Resolve. Here rolls of one and two represent extra damage and rolls of five and six—marked with an eagle—trigger special Effects. So for example, a Farming Flail has four Combat dice for damage and the Qualities, Improvised, Knockdown, and Piercing 1. Improvised means that it does no damage when Effects—or fives and sixes—are rolled, the Effects still count; Knockdown means that a opponent is knocked down if Effects are rolled; and Piercing 1 means that any damage ignore s an opponent’s Soak.

Continuing the example above, Sigrid has spotted a dark swathed figure leaving her employer’s villa and making off across the roofs of Zamora the Accursed, the city of thieves. She assumes that the figure is a thief and gives chase, managing to catch up within a moment or two, her aim being to capture the miscreant. As a player character, Sigrid has the Initiative—the Game Master could spend a point of Doom to seize the Initiative, but decides not to—and her player declares that her attack will be to subdue as Sigrid wants to capture the thief. This will cost one Momentum from the group pot. Sigrid’s player declares that he wants her to succeed and in return for adding two Doom to the Game Master’s pot, will roll two more twenty-sided dice. He will be rolling against Sigrid’s Agility and Melee (Expertise 3, Focus 3) skill for a target of 12. The Thief will attempt to Parry using his Coordination and Parry (Expertise 1, Focus 1) skill for a target of 10. This turns it into a struggle.

Sigurd’s player rolls 1, 3, 6, and 20! This counts as a total of five Successes, but the 20 adds a Complication (…more of that in a bit!). The Game Master rolls just two dice and only gets 10 and 18, for one Success. Clearly, the thief has failed to parry Sigrid’s strike with her spear and her player spends two Momentum to disarm the thief, knocking his knife from his hand. The other three Momentum are saved to add to the damage roll. Sigurd’s player rolls four Combat dice for the spear’s damage, for a result of 2, 3, 5, and 6. The 2 gives one damage, the 3 does not, and both the 5 and the 6 add further damage as well as two Effects, which with the Piercing Quality of the spear means that the blow will ignore the Soak of the armour worn by the thief. Even if the thief was wearing armour, this would negate its effect and so the thief takes 4 damage plus another 3 from the extra Momentum, which translates as Harms. The 7 Harms are enough to inflict a Wound to the thief—5 Harms are enough—and since Sigrid’s player has had her disarm the thief, the Game Master declares that it is to the thief’s right arm rather than roll for it…

Lastly, there is the 20 that Sigrid’s player rolled! The Game Master could simply add two Doom to the Doom pool, but decides that the roof that the fight is on is weak. So as Sigrid and the thief manoeuvre, the roof under their feet shifts and suddenly collapses under their feet and they find themselves falling into the building below amidst a shower of tiles and wooden beams…

Sorcery covers various traditions, such as Eastern Sorcery, Shamanism, and Witchcraft, but only gives thirteen spells, from Astral Wanderings and Atavistic Voyage to Summon Horror and Venom on the Wind. For the most part, these are not the ‘fire and forget’ dweomers of other fantasy roleplaying games. They take time and effort and great study as well as pledging oneself to a patron. The difficulty of casting spells and the fact that sorcerers are not necessarily immune to the spells they cast means that they turn to other means to build their magical reputations, notably alchemy and animal handling. The first to create petty enchantments such as exploding or blinding powers, talismans, and so on, the second to befriend beasts to aid a sorcerer rather than actually summon one. Overall, Sorcery in Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of is challenging and dangerous, but still playable.

Our sample sorcerer is a priest of Mitra from Koth, accepted into the priesthood from childhood despite being born under an ill omen. He has been pushed and trained under a rigorous regime, but ostracised and mistrusted. In response, Maurus trusts few people and sought out forbidden areas of research and alternate knowledge. He does not know if this is in response to the poor portents of his birth or fulfilling them. 

Name: Maurus
Homeland: Koth
Languages: Kothic, Aquilonian
Class: Priesthood Social Standing: 2
Story: Ill Omens (Cursed)
Archetype: Priestess
Nature: Learned
Education: Elder Mentor
War Story: Survived Sorcery
Fortune Points: 3

Attribute Aspects
Charismatic

Attributes
Agility 6 Awareness 8 Brawn 6 Coordination 7
Intelligence 11 Personality 11 Willpower 13

Vigor 6 Resolve 15
Melee Damage Bonus 0
Ranged Damage Bonus 0
Mental Damage Bonus 2

Talents
Cosmopolitan, Courageous, Patron, Priest, Quiet Wisdom, Scribe, Subject

Skills
Alchemy (Expertise 3, Focus 3), Animal Handling (Expertise 2, Focus 2), Counsel (Expertise 3, Focus 3), Craft (Expertise 1, Focus 1), Discipline (Expertise 2, Focus 2), Insight (Expertise 1, Focus 1), Lore (Expertise 4, Focus 4), Observation (Expertise 2, Focus 2), Persuade (Expertise 3, Focus 3), Society (Expertise 1, Focus 1), Sorcery (Expertise 2, Focus 2)

Petty Enchantments
Atavistic Voyage

Equipment
Staff, Scroll of Mitra’s Teachings, Oils, Herbs, Religious accoutrements, alchemical kit, Sorcery kit, Personal library

In terms of background, Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of provides an introductory gazetteer of the Hyborian World. This is written as if taken from the academic papers that Howard based his stories upon, and as much it introduces the setting, it sets up each of the setting and character supplements to come, so that the section on the lands of the north will be explored in the supplement, Conan the Barbarian, which also explore in detail campaigns built around the barbarian archetype. Altogether, some nine regions and thus some nine supplements and campaign types are prefigured here. A lovely touch is the inclusion of a boxed section of ‘Hyborian Shorthand’, which suggests the historical influences on Howard’s Conan stories. These very simply allow the Game Master and her players get a handle on what each of the various nations in the setting are like.

These boxed sections continue throughout the ‘Gamemastering’ chapter, which make the connection between writings of Howard and the writings of H.P. Lovecraft as well as constantly ask what would Howard do if writing a Conan story as much as running Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of. From handling the rules to telling stories, player character motivation to environments, elements of Conan adventures to life between adventures—with a particular focus on carousing, the advice impressively thorough and helpful. It is supported by a good range of encounters or mortal foes, wild beasts, monstrous foes, and otherworldly horrors for the Game Master to use in her campaign, plus write-ups of some of the major characters from Howard’s Conan stories including the eponymous protagonist himself. The encounters are categorised as minions, toughened foes, nemeses, and horrors, and should provide plenty of opposition for a Game Master in the initial stages of her campaign. As should a sample set of NPCs, though they can also work as allies or even sample player characters. Rounding out the roleplaying game is the adventure is ‘Vultures of Shem’, which starts with the player characters standing in the middle of a battlefield after their side has been defeated and goes from there. It is a good set-up, gets the characters and their players involved quickly and should provide a couple of good sessions worth of play.

Physically, Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of is a sturdy hardback, liberally illustrated throughout with scenes from Conan’s adventures and the Hyborian Age. For the most part, it is very well written, the section on gamer mastering in particular, being very good. There are sections in the gazetteer which feel horridly overwritten and there is nothing to really ground either player or Game Master in the setting after the introduction before the writers start on character generation and the rules.

At its heart, Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of is quite a simple game, the 2d20 System being relatively straightforward and easy to understand. Unfortunately, with the addition of the rules for Momentum and Doom, the complexity of the rules ramps up. The problem with this is adjusting to and learning just what the Momentum mechanics can deliver and enable the larger than life style of play which Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of is designed to deliver as a roleplaying game. The learning curve feels greater than it really should be and that may be off-putting for some players. There is a focus upon combat in these rules, particularly for Momentum and Doom, but that is to be expected for what is to be designed to deliver a larger than life, pulpy, action-orientated roleplaying experience. Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of promises lurid sensationalism, exotic locations, bold adventure, weird menace, fearless action, and more. It certainly delivers on that promise and the 2d20 System certainly feels suited to the stories of Robert E. Howard’s Conan.