Conan Role-playing Game
David "Zeb" Cook
It can be purchased from EBay, for about $300 according to a 15 second search I just did.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
The Conan RPG is a box set by TSR which came out in 1985. I didn't know about it until probably 1992, when I saw it in a mall toy store in Virginia. I bought it and it is one of the few games that I purchased in the 1990s and have kept.
The box includes a 32 page rulebook, a 48 page World of Hyboria (the setting) book, a beautiful folded map of the setting, three blank character folios, one folio filled in with Conan's stats, a reference booklet and the master reference sheets.
Before I get started on the review, let me show y'all the map. It is gorgeous!
Granted, having a full-sized map would be awesome, but I really love having Conan facing off against a couple of beasties. What will he do with that treasure? Build a castle? Donate it to an orphanage? Hell no! My man is going to blow it on wenches and wine, in true barbarian fashion!
The Conan RPG was written in the time when TSR turned their energy into color chart games. Marvel Superheroes, Gamma World 3rd edition, even my beloved Star Frontiers got the treatment in Zebulon's Guide. I will go over it a bit more later on but the short-short version is "roll d100, compare result to a column on the chart, and the color shows result".
I have been on record for a couple of decades, stating that ALL of the rules of a game should be included in a 32 page book. THIS game is the reason why I decided to make that claim online in the early 2000's, on dragonsfoot.org. This game, for its faults, and there are some, epitomizes game design for me. It is clear(ish), concise, and the author doesn't vomit useless information all over the game.
The rulebook begins with the traditional "what is role playing?" in the first column on the first page, the second column is "what is in the box", and then the third column begins the rules. This is on the FIRST PAGE! How awesome is that? No God awful fanfic, no long, drawn out lists of people thanked, none of that. Just game.
An unique thing to Conan (at any rate, this is the only game which I have seen it work this way), is that what are ability scores in other games are determined by character skills, and not the other way around. Conan is a skill-based game. Characters pick a list of individual Talents (a mix of abilities, skills, and knowledge in the game). The Talent Pool score is determined from the talents in the pool. The talent pools are: prowess, fighting, endurance, knowledge, perception, and insight. The general Talent Score is figured by adding up all of the talent scores in the pool and dividing by 10 and rounding down. It is counterintuitive to people who've been gaming for over 40 years but it works well in practice.
I will use our main barbarian man, Conan, as an example.
- He has the following Fighting talents (Sword-10, Brawling-7, and Wrestling-5). Adding these three talents together nets us 22, rounded down to 2. Conan's Fighting Pool is 2.
- He has Blacksmith-3 as his only Knowledge talent. His Knowledge Pool is 0
If you can wrap your head around this concept, and then later on wrap your head around the color chart, this game is a piece of cake.
Creating a character consists of filling out a short form that gives the character a small backstory, which included physical description, dad and mom, dad's profession, and a couple of the character's talents.
Choosing talents is simple and the character must spend some points on his father's trade, must choose at least one talent from each pool, and cannot spend more than 5 points in any one talent. One thing to consider when generating a character is that what are hit points in other games ("Damage" in this game) is a talent. This means that no more than 5 points can be applied to it at character creation. This isn't that big of an issue since the average blow landed will do 1-2 points of damage. The issue is that every player is going to drop 5 points here by default. When I ran this game in the early 90s, this is what happened. It is something that the players feel they must do to keep the character alive during the first adventure. The game works perfectly well as written. I think that if I ever run this again, I might have character start with an extra five points, knowing that they will put 5 in Damage. I don't know, maybe I would keep it as is.
The entire character generation chapter is four pages long, and on one page, two of the colums are filled with some bad ass warrior drawn by Easley. Characters can choose to take a weakness, which has differing effects. For instance, "fear of animals" as a weakness means that the character can't take the animal handling talent. Taking a talent gives your character another 5 points to spend on talents. Each character gets a selection of three items of equipment. Since column 1 has only one item - Any weapon, the character realistically picks just two pieces of additional equipment. There is an amusing typo on this page and "& bridle" shows up with the "100' rope and grapple" selection and not on the "horse, saddle" selection.
Pages 6 through 11 are combat. Combat is combat in most RPGs, you roll to hit, you do some damage, and some chump might die. Here are some specifics for the Conan RPG.
- Initiative is 1d10 plus highest of animal reflexes, movement, or general prowess pool. Rules are included for both individual initiative and group initiative.
- Attacker attacks with a specific weapon talent or the general fighting pool. Attacker rolls d100 on the column for his talent. The result is either the color white (miss), or green, yellow, orange, or red (usually damage from 1 to 4, one point per color).
- Defender rolls his defense with whatever weapon he is using. White result means no damage deflected, green is 1 point, up to red blocking 4 points.
- A successful hit with damage left over from the parry is applied to the armor worn first. When that is gone, it does meat damage (lose points from the Damage talent).
- Armor is specific to coverage of certain body parts and dice are rolled to determine where the blow lands. The exception is a red attack result, which gives the attacker the option to land a specific blow. Armor is also heavy and restricting. Your movement will suffer, and hence your initiative will suffer, by layering on the armor. Depending on the location of the specific, red-result wound, other problems might occur. Hint - if your opponent is not wearing a helmet, aiming at the head and getting a red result is the best way to kill a foe.
- When the Damage talent drops to 0 or below, the player rolls to stay alive and/or conscious. White means death, Red means alive and conscious, other colors mean unconscious.
The next two pages cover movement in the game. This is followed by two pages of dangers such as poison, falling, fire, and drowning.
The magic chapter is also two pages long. Theoretically any character can learn magic but there are hindrances when doing so. Social ostracization is one role-playing hindrance, the others are more mechanical - characters will have to start selecting magical weaknesses as time goes on and the character will suffer from Obsession (the desire for more magical power that your current magical power has brought you). I really like the way this game uses these. It matches up with the Conan lore quite well. There are several magical talents (alchemy, mind control, natural laws, etc.) and spells fall under one talent. There is no list of spells! The referee is expected to come up with a specific spell if necessary. Each talent lists what can be done with that talent, broken down by how difficult it is.
To create an example, let us look to D&D for a minute. The 2nd level cleric spell "speak with animals" is a moderate Natural Magic spell in Conan. If the player wants his player to know a spell to do the same thing, he and the referee will come up with a cool-sounding name, any ingredients required, and what happens when the spell is cast. Don't forget that you will be gaining magical weaknesses when you learn magic!
The witchdoctors of Jhebbal Sag have taught your character the signs to make and tokens needed to speak with wild beasts. You must speak the words of power while sprinkling ground elk's horn over your head while making the sign of the God with your other hand.
Next follows two and a half pages of Living in Hyboria. Prices for basic goods are included here, as well as a good ol' reaction table.
The next two pages cover character improvement. Improvement includes Fame (a score which determines how well your character is known, Expertise, and Excitement. Every swinging you know what in ancient Greece knew Xena (according to the tv show) but how many knew of Joxer the Mighty? You start as a Joxer and if you gather fame, you will be the next Xena, known far and wide. This is Fame. Expertise is traditional mechanical advancement, points into talents, etc. Excitement sorta ties in mechanically. Each character has a number of luck points that only the referee knows about. Good roleplaying, humor, helping other players to have fun, etc. can add to your pool of luck points. Luck points are spent do reroll dice or to lower the severity of damage. Having the referee be the only one who knows the character's total is pretty cool. I think it would force players to roleplay well in order to keep the pool up. If the player knows he has only one luck point left, he may not take chances, and how sword & sorcery is that?! Not very!
The book next has two pages of how to run Hyborian adventures, followed by two pages of creating adventures.
The book ends with an included adventure (remember folks, this is a 32 page rulebook!) The adventure is the Tower of the Elephant (the Howard story).
The back cover of the book has a decent index on the inside and the color chart on the back. Excuse me, the Conan Resolution Table.
I'm going to cover the Reference Guide and Reference sheets together, since to some bad editing or planning, the former flows into the latter.
The Reference Guide includes desctriptions and examples, when needed, of the various talent pools and weaknesses. This is the first 10 pages. Note that someone did an oopsie and forgot some talent info, which was stuck into the Reference sheets. After talents, there is a page of combat modifiers and the hit location chart, followed by a black & white copy of the color chart, then two pages of weapons and armor. Again someone flubbed it at this point, and the descriptions of armor and weapons were moved to the Reference sheets. Some of the weapons will be familiar to most gamers but some (cinequesda, holy water sprinkler, and francisca, for example) really need to be defined. There is a page which includes specific wounds, gems and values, and languages. The last page of the Reference guide is a list of available talents. Don't worry folks, they left off quite a few, just to keep life exciting!
In addition to including information left out of the Reference Guide, the Reference Sheets include reaction modifiers, a simple list of what happens when color chart rolls are made, based on what was rolled (combat, falling, poison, etc.) If you look at the DMs screen for any game, the information normally on them is included on the reference sheets.
The World of Hyboria book is the setting information. It was written from the hand of one Professor Ervin H. Roberts (EHR, rather than REH). Well, it is written by this fictitious person after the first couple of pages of introduction, which includes a B&W map of the Hyborian lands and a listing of the Conan stories published in the 1960s and 70s.
The majority of this book in an alphabetical list of people, places, and things in the setting. There is the occasional doodle, as if done by the esteemed Prof. Roberts. Twelve pages of bestiarity follows. It is again written by the fictional professor. There are 25 creatures included, none of which are real life animals. These critters are right from the Howard stories. After the critters, we get two pages of Hyborian deities, followed by two pages of NPCs from the stories. My namesake appears in this book! If you are curious about your not-so-humble blog host, I am an absolute bad ass! The last four pages include a small amount of information on cults and magical items.
Whew, that is all out of the way. So what are the thoughts of Thoth Amon, the greatest sorcerer of the Hyborian Age? I love it. The game suffers with a bit of complexity in regards the color chart that TSR was trying to foist on everything in the mid-late 80s. I don't like color charts, in general, but the one in Conan is superior to the one in Gamma World 3e. Once you get the hang of the color chart, it goes quite easy since modifiers move on which column you roll rather than the d100 roll. This makes it easier.
I should probably drop in an example of this. Let us say that Conan does not have the Poison Resistance talent but his Endurance pool is 3. When some Brythunian doxy stabs him with a poisoned needle, he rolls on the 3 column on the chart. If the poison is old and less potent, maybe it gives a +3 column shift bonus on the check. Conan's player now rolls on the 6 column of the chart.
I wish the team spent more time and were able to get a complete list of talents in one location, rather than some here, some there, some way over there. This is my biggest gripe.
Note. TSR released three published modules for this game. I have all three and have read all three but it's been over 20 years. I don't recall any of the modules being great. I should reread them.
⇒ GRIT: ★★★★★: Five stars. As I said, this game piles the entire game system rules (barring two equipment lists, and barring descriptions of the talents) into one 32-page book, which includes art and an adventure. If Zeb could do that, why can't other game designers? I'm looking at you, AD&D and new versions with your three "core" books. If you include every piece of paper in the box into one book, the total would be less than 100 pages. In my opinion, learning the way the color chart / resolution table is the only real learning curve to get into this game, once your character is generated. Honestly, though, after the first game session, everyone should know how the chart works.
⇒ VIGOR: ★★★★☆: The game gives a decent amount of information on the Hyborian Age setting. Between the sample adventure, the referee advice, and the World of Hyboria book, I think the game group should be set for a while. I would have liked a list of talent scores for normal and giant sized animals. Lions are included in the sample adventure. I think a one or two page list of animal and giant animal stat blocks would give referees a good idea on which to base homemade monsters. A gray ape has Claws-20 and Damage-30. If we knew what a regular old silverback had for scores, we could create a new ape and know that if we want it halfway between real life ape and gray ape, we have a basis on which to determine talents and pools.
⇒ GRACE: ★★★☆☆: The box isn't ugly. The poster map is quite lovely. The books fall somewhere in between. The reference sheets and reference guide are purely to hold regularly accessed game information that would normally be on a screen. I don't fault the authors for what they did here. I do fault them for not getting Talents in one place and correct. The World of Hyboria book is written to resemble a professor's notes, so it's not super sexy but I like how it looks. It looks the way it is supposed to look. The rulebook is three columns with only a little white space. Fortunately, the book has lines between the columns to make it easier to keep your eyes in the right column. A cat named Jeff Butler did the cover and I like it. Jeff Easley did the interior art so you know it's great! Headings are bold and organization is good. It's not as pretty as a 2020s game like OSE or ShadowDark but the rulebook is pure gold by 1985 standards.
