Any player who read the Howard story before playing the scenario and tipped off on the situation can be a character attribute of having a dream or visions of upcoming events in the game, which the GM can address in later plays.
That's really a cool little module, although I don't think that my players would even manage to get back to the bridge in three hours. Hell... They would be out hunting deer for 3 sessions straight.
Thanks. Once it was done, we decided to do a bit of a palate cleanse with something totally different. So we opted for Conan. The plan is to do 3 Conan scenarios, not counting this one since it was more of a practice run, a couple CoC 1-shots, and then we'll dive into Cthulhu Invictus for a bit.
Beyond the Black River is one of my favorite Conan tales. Very cool there is an adventure based on it! Also sometimes a combat heavy session is great following a previous one that consisted of a lot of RP.
Great to see some Conan 2d20 coming! At first I confused this scenario with "The Ghost Of Thunder River" in the Jeweled Thrones Of The Earth book. They have somewhat similar setups, but I think 'Ghost' gets more interesting along with some of the others in that collection. I never checked out "To Race The Thunder" but it does sound like a short intro to get everyone acquainted with the combat basics. I think the 2d20 system needs printed aids for the players, especially since the full Conan version has not only the Momentum spend menus/suggestions which is a must, but also the 'Displays Of Might And Power' for mental attacks (I mean.. being able to display a severed enemy's head to his buddies & throw it at them for an AoE mental fear-type attack is brilliant), and each spell having a modular spell-crafting type of menu for customizing effects of each cast. Great stuff, but I'd go your player folio route with some of those essential tables printed off from the core book for them. If you haven't planned on it yet.
Oh yeah, I got the Cheat Sheets all printed up. Definitions of all the Weapon Qualities was essential. Eventually, we'll know them by heart, but at first, it'll save us a lot of time to all have a copy easily accessible instead of having to stop every few minutes to consult the book.
Was just wondering earlier today when you’ll make some more videos on the Conan games! Have been looking to play it for the past few days ever since I saw the Pit of Kutalu video you made. Excited for the system review! Thanks for getting me into more TTRPGs, I love DND 5e and broadening my horizons past it has made me appreciate table top gaming as a whole so much more.
Happy to be of service. Our games have really improved by trying out different systems and really seeing the full potential of what TTRPGs can offer. I'll say this about Conan. It's a cool system. It has some amazing potential and a lot of great ideas. But there are a few weird things I don't care for. Zones is a big one. Mostly that can be ignored or will smooth out as we get used to it. But the rulebook is so wonkily laid out, I can't even fully describe it. It's like it was written for someone who already knows the rules, rather than trying to teach the rules to a new player. All of us are pretty excited to play (first full game will be this weekend) but all of us have mentioned how difficult the book is to use. There is a lot of page-flipping.
Good review, you've almost convinced me to try this, rather than run Conan adventures with other systems. And I think I'm even more excited by the news you've finished your Pulp Cthulhu campaign -- I'm anxious to see how it ended!
Yea Conan, and Congrats on finishing your campaign Seth, I'm a big fan I hope you get to do more on this. To tell the truth Conan was the one that got me interested in Playing a Barbarian in D&D........
I really enjoyed this video, it was entertaining and comprehensive. I'm a first-time Conan GM and considering running this for my players to give the game a try, so this review helped me a lot.
So I'm a player who is going to learn to DM and because I was a big Conan fan/desperate for some variety to just 5ed I bought the Conan system. I've never dm'd more than a couple of 5ed one shot sessions so I'm really looking forward to advice from your videos
Notes from a NG human Fighter: As much as i like Robert E.Howard's Conan stuff(i read the Marvel Comic all the time as a kid),i'm Honestly more of a Tarzan/Flash Gordon reader.Nothing against Howard's work,it's just a little too dry for my taste.That being said,i'm definitely planning on buying Modiphius' Conan books.... May the Pantheons ever favor you, Baron Trevelyan of Restenford
New video from Seth and the day is better :-D Btw can you please make a vid about time passage management in rpg? I have a problem with stories like Derelict or Hotel Hell. If investigators search rooms or try to get something repaired... Any tips on that? Sorry if I don't exppain it clear enough but I hope you understand what I mean. How do you make passage of time organic and engaging and not like arbitrary?
I am really excited about Conan, I got the core book some time ago but never got the chance to really delve into it. But my excitement has been fired back up. I would love to see a foray back into it on this channel-but I think I recall it didn’t capture the group so was not going to be further explored. 😕
Actually I'd love if you did a video/series/gm toolbox episode that was about advice to new/learning GM's in general - what to do, what not to do. etc.
Loving Conan. The book is not the easiest to read or reference but the game is great once you understand it. One note, I wouldn't bother with the Players Guide. It seems to have been finalised before some of the rules tweaks in the finished version of the corebook. Caused some confusion in my group about exact rulings.
Yeah the book is laid out terribly. I've never seen anything quite like it from an established publisher before. It's like it was written to someone who already knows the rules instead of trying to teach the rules to someone unfamiliar to them. It also likes to spend 500 words telling you something that could have been done with 50. Its weird as hell because I'm loving the game, but not the book, and that's never happened to me before. The character creation chapter is great with good examples and is clear to follow. Then you get to Combat and they instead opted for 1 big example, half of that being fluff story, and it barely scratches any of the rules on combat. The art and world details are simply top-notch (except for the lack of Gods information. I'd hoped to find that in the Book of Skelos, but it's not there either) Good to know about the Player's Guide. Thanks.
@@SSkorkowsky the gods information is in Nameless Cults which isn't available in print yet. Most of the books are pretty good (don't think Skelos is) and Nameless Cults does a really good job. G+ is currently the best place to get game info.
I'm excited as always to hear about these adventures. Do you think you'll ever cover the masks of nyarlathotep campaign for CoC as I'm starting our group with edge of darkness Saturday
Masks takes a year or more to run, and we have a long list of things to play first, so I wouldn't hold my breath for a review on it any time soon. Have fun with Edge of Darkness. I love that scenario.
I'd add that the Picts were Medieval Scottish warriors not Native Americans. If you do a google search on them and imagery you can see how they looked. Dyed blue skin, full body tatoos, little armor (or clothes for that matter). The shaman would probably be a druid.
Interesting I heard about the 2D20 but never tried it out. Once I see your Conan series I'll see if it is something I'll give a try. I knew about CoC but didn't want to play it because I didn't like the sanity rules. After seeing your walk through of it changed my mind. Do you have a list of your favorite systems? Like I'll generally play anything but I have a bunch that I love more than others. 2nd AD&D because that was my first system will always be up there. I also really enjoy GURPS, Battletech, Gamma World, Dead Reign, ect...
7e Call of Cthulhu is my favorite system at the moment. But tastes change and no system is best at every type of game. Cyberpunk has my favorite gun rules and was what converted me to the camp of Skill-Based games over Level-Based. I was always really partial to Mechwarrior. And while I'm sure there's better systems out there in the 30 years since it was made, the old Star Frontiers Knight Hawks game was freakin awesome for space battles. We spent many rainy Sundays blasting each other's fleets to hell with it. I'm with you on AD&D. I started with 1e and we played a 1e and 2e hybrid for years, but it was so house-ruled up that most people would probably find it unrecognizable. It's my favorite D&D version due to familiarity and nostalgia, but I think 5e is by far the smoothest and easiest to understand. They did a fantastic job with it.
Haha yeah I know the feeling of having heaps of house rules for AD&D. I think this would be an interesting video for you to do a list of systems you enjoy and what applications they work for. I know a lot of people who just want to use D&D for every setting. I'm glad your channel is growing. I really enjoy the content. There are a lot of 1e quests I wouldn't have thought of using for my campaigns. I'll have to check out Star Frontiers Knight Hawks always wanted to do like a space opera type game. Glad to have a fellow Texan doing well.
In the other video you said that range zones weren't explained at all. Now you've read the real rules, do you know why they were left out of the quickstart guide, and how good were your guesses for how it worked?
I'll have to explain this better when I give a full system review, but the short of it is no, they don't explain them any better in the full book. They have a thing where they just don't like to give distance in any unit of measure, so they never really explain how big a Zone should be. They mention Zone borders being physical features, like terrain, which sounds cool in theory, and works for melee combat, but quickly falls apart when a bow or other ranged weapon is involved. After all, a bow doesn't care that there's a gorge between it and the target. We've worked through it and it's no longer an issue with us, but among my chief complaints of the system (and I have a list) is that some aspects, like Zones, feel like the game designers were too focused on making it different than other games instead of better.
This being said. My players are loving the game. Seriously loving it. Even with its faults (which there are plenty) they're excited to keep playing it. Essentially, I think the issue is that Conan has great mechanics, but a terrible method of explaining them.
@@SSkorkowsky Love your videos. I think the abstract Zones of 2d20 (or Fate, which does something very similar) is "better" rather than "different for the sake of different", but only because I think they're trying to appeal to a different sort of GM or player (me). You clearly enjoy knowing the specific map layout of an encounter in greater detail, whereas I really, really don't. I already think of it abstractly in my head, and needing to nail it down to specific real-world units gets pretty tedious and slows down a part of the game that I don't care to focus on already. So the abstract zone part of 2d20 (or Fate) rules is a huge plus for me, and one of many reasons I like playing and running those systems. Different play styles, etc. I will say that I think the more hand-waving aspect of it is a better fit to Star Trek Adventures (our main 2d20 game), which de-emphasizes combat relative to Howard's work.
Howardian Picts are a mixture of tribal Picts and stone age native americans. Likely with other stone age tribal influences, too. Many of his Hyborian nations were mixtures of various cultures blended together and given his own twist. In his lore, the Picts would eventually come to dominate Hyboria and become it's "modern man".
They are the ancestors to both peoples. The Picts living in the islands to the west eventually become the Americas and the ones on the mainland become the Picts we know of living in western Europe. In the stories they are described very similarly to amerindians
Skraelings may have been a much more apt name than Picts. Skraeling means 'barbarian' in Old Norse, and referred to the Inuit peoples of Greenland and North America. However the Howard versions were very primitive and almost sub-human, perhaps Cro-Magnum, a bit like Tolkien's Orcs. Howard should of created his own name for them, that way it would not be offensive to both Amerindians or Picts.
I know this is an old comment but I was wondering the same thing. Like, for all the imagination Howard had, he used the name of a real European tribe for this?
PC: The fort is overrun with savages!
Commander NPC: Picts, or it didn't happen.
Boooo! (nice one👏)
Any player who read the Howard story before playing the scenario and tipped off on the situation can be a character attribute of having a dream or visions of upcoming events in the game, which the GM can address in later plays.
Love the barge idea. It was really inspired.
That's really a cool little module, although I don't think that my players would even manage to get back to the bridge in three hours.
Hell... They would be out hunting deer for 3 sessions straight.
That's always a serious risk.
The band The Sword had a song called Beyond The Black River .I had no idea it was about this story until just now
Interesting. I can't wait to see more Conan and congrats on finishing your pulp Cthulhu campaign :)
Thanks. Once it was done, we decided to do a bit of a palate cleanse with something totally different. So we opted for Conan. The plan is to do 3 Conan scenarios, not counting this one since it was more of a practice run, a couple CoC 1-shots, and then we'll dive into Cthulhu Invictus for a bit.
Beyond the Black River is one of my favorite Conan tales. Very cool there is an adventure based on it! Also sometimes a combat heavy session is great following a previous one that consisted of a lot of RP.
Cool! Beyond the Black River is one of my two favorite Conan stories (just behind Red Nails).
That's my ranking as well. Red Nails was awesome. Hour of the Dragon I ranked at 3rd.
Great to see some Conan 2d20 coming!
At first I confused this scenario with "The Ghost Of Thunder River" in the Jeweled Thrones Of The Earth book. They have somewhat similar setups, but I think 'Ghost' gets more interesting along with some of the others in that collection. I never checked out "To Race The Thunder" but it does sound like a short intro to get everyone acquainted with the combat basics.
I think the 2d20 system needs printed aids for the players, especially since the full Conan version has not only the Momentum spend menus/suggestions which is a must, but also the 'Displays Of Might And Power' for mental attacks (I mean.. being able to display a severed enemy's head to his buddies & throw it at them for an AoE mental fear-type attack is brilliant), and each spell having a modular spell-crafting type of menu for customizing effects of each cast.
Great stuff, but I'd go your player folio route with some of those essential tables printed off from the core book for them. If you haven't planned on it yet.
Oh yeah, I got the Cheat Sheets all printed up. Definitions of all the Weapon Qualities was essential. Eventually, we'll know them by heart, but at first, it'll save us a lot of time to all have a copy easily accessible instead of having to stop every few minutes to consult the book.
"What is Best in Life?" "To listen to Conan videos hear their stories explained before us""
“And hear the lamentation of Jack the NPC!”
The barge scene you mentioned adding reminds me of the scene in the movie, "The Outlaw Jose Wales".
Love the T-Shirt, great video.
Seth, I love your work. Down to earth and classic Game Master input.
Thanks for the review. Looking forward to more Conan!
Was just wondering earlier today when you’ll make some more videos on the Conan games! Have been looking to play it for the past few days ever since I saw the Pit of Kutalu video you made. Excited for the system review!
Thanks for getting me into more TTRPGs, I love DND 5e and broadening my horizons past it has made me appreciate table top gaming as a whole so much more.
Happy to be of service. Our games have really improved by trying out different systems and really seeing the full potential of what TTRPGs can offer.
I'll say this about Conan. It's a cool system. It has some amazing potential and a lot of great ideas. But there are a few weird things I don't care for. Zones is a big one. Mostly that can be ignored or will smooth out as we get used to it. But the rulebook is so wonkily laid out, I can't even fully describe it. It's like it was written for someone who already knows the rules, rather than trying to teach the rules to a new player. All of us are pretty excited to play (first full game will be this weekend) but all of us have mentioned how difficult the book is to use. There is a lot of page-flipping.
Perfect Conan material. Thanks for the GM tips!
Good review, you've almost convinced me to try this, rather than run Conan adventures with other systems. And I think I'm even more excited by the news you've finished your Pulp Cthulhu campaign -- I'm anxious to see how it ended!
Yea Conan, and Congrats on finishing your campaign Seth, I'm a big fan I hope you get to do more on this.
To tell the truth Conan was the one that got me interested in Playing a Barbarian in D&D........
I really enjoyed this video, it was entertaining and comprehensive. I'm a first-time Conan GM and considering running this for my players to give the game a try, so this review helped me a lot.
So I'm a player who is going to learn to DM and because I was a big Conan fan/desperate for some variety to just 5ed I bought the Conan system. I've never dm'd more than a couple of 5ed one shot sessions so I'm really looking forward to advice from your videos
Notes from a NG human Fighter:
As much as i like Robert E.Howard's Conan stuff(i read the Marvel Comic all the time as a kid),i'm Honestly more of a Tarzan/Flash Gordon reader.Nothing against Howard's work,it's just a little too dry for my taste.That being said,i'm definitely planning on buying Modiphius' Conan books....
May the Pantheons ever favor you,
Baron Trevelyan of Restenford
Looking forward to the full Conan review.
New video from Seth and the day is better :-D Btw can you please make a vid about time passage management in rpg? I have a problem with stories like Derelict or Hotel Hell. If investigators search rooms or try to get something repaired... Any tips on that? Sorry if I don't exppain it clear enough but I hope you understand what I mean. How do you make passage of time organic and engaging and not like arbitrary?
I am really excited about Conan, I got the core book some time ago but never got the chance to really delve into it. But my excitement has been fired back up. I would love to see a foray back into it on this channel-but I think I recall it didn’t capture the group so was not going to be further explored. 😕
Actually I'd love if you did a video/series/gm toolbox episode that was about advice to new/learning GM's in general - what to do, what not to do. etc.
Love the shirt.
You should run the equivalent scenario in mongoose beyond the thunder river book. It's amazing stuff.
Great video, Dad! Ever played any world of darkness game? I'd love to see you take on some adventures for these games.
I played a tiny bit of WoD back in the 90's but no pre-written adventures.
Loving Conan. The book is not the easiest to read or reference but the game is great once you understand it.
One note, I wouldn't bother with the Players Guide. It seems to have been finalised before some of the rules tweaks in the finished version of the corebook. Caused some confusion in my group about exact rulings.
Yeah the book is laid out terribly. I've never seen anything quite like it from an established publisher before. It's like it was written to someone who already knows the rules instead of trying to teach the rules to someone unfamiliar to them. It also likes to spend 500 words telling you something that could have been done with 50. Its weird as hell because I'm loving the game, but not the book, and that's never happened to me before. The character creation chapter is great with good examples and is clear to follow. Then you get to Combat and they instead opted for 1 big example, half of that being fluff story, and it barely scratches any of the rules on combat.
The art and world details are simply top-notch (except for the lack of Gods information. I'd hoped to find that in the Book of Skelos, but it's not there either)
Good to know about the Player's Guide. Thanks.
@@SSkorkowsky the gods information is in Nameless Cults which isn't available in print yet. Most of the books are pretty good (don't think Skelos is) and Nameless Cults does a really good job. G+ is currently the best place to get game info.
I'm excited as always to hear about these adventures. Do you think you'll ever cover the masks of nyarlathotep campaign for CoC as I'm starting our group with edge of darkness Saturday
Masks takes a year or more to run, and we have a long list of things to play first, so I wouldn't hold my breath for a review on it any time soon.
Have fun with Edge of Darkness. I love that scenario.
Oh man you should totally do something on Deadlands either classic or reloaded
I'd add that the Picts were Medieval Scottish warriors not Native Americans. If you do a google search on them and imagery you can see how they looked. Dyed blue skin, full body tatoos, little armor (or clothes for that matter). The shaman would probably be a druid.
Hey Seth, have you ever played the Amber Family module? Would you mind doing a review of it? I'm thinking about running it for my players
Sorry. Never played it.
9:25 how about a wheel of pain and slaves? It is Conan...
Interesting I heard about the 2D20 but never tried it out. Once I see your Conan series I'll see if it is something I'll give a try. I knew about CoC but didn't want to play it because I didn't like the sanity rules. After seeing your walk through of it changed my mind. Do you have a list of your favorite systems? Like I'll generally play anything but I have a bunch that I love more than others. 2nd AD&D because that was my first system will always be up there. I also really enjoy GURPS, Battletech, Gamma World, Dead Reign, ect...
7e Call of Cthulhu is my favorite system at the moment. But tastes change and no system is best at every type of game. Cyberpunk has my favorite gun rules and was what converted me to the camp of Skill-Based games over Level-Based. I was always really partial to Mechwarrior. And while I'm sure there's better systems out there in the 30 years since it was made, the old Star Frontiers Knight Hawks game was freakin awesome for space battles. We spent many rainy Sundays blasting each other's fleets to hell with it.
I'm with you on AD&D. I started with 1e and we played a 1e and 2e hybrid for years, but it was so house-ruled up that most people would probably find it unrecognizable. It's my favorite D&D version due to familiarity and nostalgia, but I think 5e is by far the smoothest and easiest to understand. They did a fantastic job with it.
Haha yeah I know the feeling of having heaps of house rules for AD&D. I think this would be an interesting video for you to do a list of systems you enjoy and what applications they work for. I know a lot of people who just want to use D&D for every setting. I'm glad your channel is growing. I really enjoy the content. There are a lot of 1e quests I wouldn't have thought of using for my campaigns. I'll have to check out Star Frontiers Knight Hawks always wanted to do like a space opera type game. Glad to have a fellow Texan doing well.
In the other video you said that range zones weren't explained at all. Now you've read the real rules, do you know why they were left out of the quickstart guide, and how good were your guesses for how it worked?
I'll have to explain this better when I give a full system review, but the short of it is no, they don't explain them any better in the full book. They have a thing where they just don't like to give distance in any unit of measure, so they never really explain how big a Zone should be. They mention Zone borders being physical features, like terrain, which sounds cool in theory, and works for melee combat, but quickly falls apart when a bow or other ranged weapon is involved. After all, a bow doesn't care that there's a gorge between it and the target. We've worked through it and it's no longer an issue with us, but among my chief complaints of the system (and I have a list) is that some aspects, like Zones, feel like the game designers were too focused on making it different than other games instead of better.
This being said. My players are loving the game. Seriously loving it. Even with its faults (which there are plenty) they're excited to keep playing it. Essentially, I think the issue is that Conan has great mechanics, but a terrible method of explaining them.
@@SSkorkowsky Love your videos.
I think the abstract Zones of 2d20 (or Fate, which does something very similar) is "better" rather than "different for the sake of different", but only because I think they're trying to appeal to a different sort of GM or player (me). You clearly enjoy knowing the specific map layout of an encounter in greater detail, whereas I really, really don't. I already think of it abstractly in my head, and needing to nail it down to specific real-world units gets pretty tedious and slows down a part of the game that I don't care to focus on already. So the abstract zone part of 2d20 (or Fate) rules is a huge plus for me, and one of many reasons I like playing and running those systems. Different play styles, etc.
I will say that I think the more hand-waving aspect of it is a better fit to Star Trek Adventures (our main 2d20 game), which de-emphasizes combat relative to Howard's work.
Great vid, but I won't be playing Conan anytime soon
That... *twitch* Shirt...*twitch* Why *twitch* Seth?! *twitch twitch*
The bottom of it reads, "By Grabthar's hammer, no power in the verse can stop me."
Pretty sure it was for exactly that reaction...
Base! 😂😂😂
#1 Star Trek fan
*shows a picture of an x-wing*
That's the joke.
why are the picts in this depicted like native americans? were howard's picts not analogous to the real people?
Howard's Picts were more primitive. I think he likely based his version of them more on Native Americans than historical Picts.
Howardian Picts are a mixture of tribal Picts and stone age native americans. Likely with other stone age tribal influences, too.
Many of his Hyborian nations were mixtures of various cultures blended together and given his own twist. In his lore, the Picts would eventually come to dominate Hyboria and become it's "modern man".
They are the ancestors to both peoples. The Picts living in the islands to the west eventually become the Americas and the ones on the mainland become the Picts we know of living in western Europe. In the stories they are described very similarly to amerindians
Skraelings may have been a much more apt name than Picts. Skraeling means 'barbarian' in Old Norse, and referred to the Inuit peoples of Greenland and North America. However the Howard versions were very primitive and almost sub-human, perhaps Cro-Magnum, a bit like Tolkien's Orcs. Howard should of created his own name for them, that way it would not be offensive to both Amerindians or Picts.
I know this is an old comment but I was wondering the same thing. Like, for all the imagination Howard had, he used the name of a real European tribe for this?