What does any of that got to do with what I just said?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;870371The thing is, what you're thinking is actually incorrect.

Really? You seem to be arguing some entirely different point than I am.
I'm only saying why I think licensed properties often don't work.... you seem to be going on about how an entire sub-genre doesn't fit with RPGs.

QuoteFirst, although D&D is based a lot on Conan's style of world creation (The Forgotten Realms Faerun is a great example, you have Ancient Egypt with Medieval England which is beside a Germanic Barbarian nation so on and so forth), the problem is that the S&S Hero archetype is not a specialist in any one field. They're broad generalists with a wide range of skills and aptitudes.

Do you feel you HAVE to use those settings?
I generally wouldn't use D&D to play a S&S type game anyway, and I certainly wouldn't use any of the 'official' settings... RQ6 or Magic World would be my game of choice. Dungeon Crawl Classics has an expansion, Tales From the Fallen Empire, that would probably be my choice if I went the D&D-ish route.

QuoteSecondly, Magic is always for the NPC's and almost always for the evil ones. But invariably, a lot of people allow Magic to be taken by the heroes because someone ALWAYS wants to play 'The Wizard'.

Call of Cthulhu and other games work fine with magic that PCs can use... but at great risk to themselves. If someone claims they're down for playing in a S&S game then I'd expect they'd be fine with the 'magic is evil' trope as well... or not... play how you want.

QuoteThirdly, most adventuring party style fantasy games, like Runequest, D&D, Palladium Fantasy, Dragon Warrior et al. deal in groups larger than 3 for best effects and frankly, that's part of the fun of them.

So? Same goes for most of the fantasy stuff in 'Appendix N'... and Lovecraft and... most any literature or film that RPGs draw inspiration from. Groups of adventurers seem generally less common than intrepid individuals or pairings. I don't get what the big deal is... that it's not adhering close enough to the sacred canon of 'pure' literary Sword & Sorcery?

QuoteSo how do reconcile that?

I don't feel a need to because I don't think the stuff you refer too is all that much of blockade to playing S&S games.

Quote from: Simlasa;870361There's no worry about who is going to play the Dr. or Buffy or Captain Kirk... there's no single iconic spaceship or location that HAS to feature in the game to convince Players of the setting. It can be set just about anywhere and anywhen you like. The 'canon' is wide open to interpretation.

Yep.

I recall vividly the time a local GM attempted a FASA Star Trek campaign.  The scenario involved our Federation starship and a Klingon vessel contending for a derelict vessel that turned out to be Space Battleship Yamato.  (Seriously.)  In any event, I was the Andorian chief of security who was sent off to be the prizemaster, and of course the Fed and Klingon ships started to spar at the same time a running battle between away teams was happening on Yamato.  And the Klingons are using disruptors on lethal settings, and we're doing that dumb White Hat stunning nonsense ...

And I said, "fuck this," or the equivalent, brought the Wave Motion Gun online, and vaporized the D7, with the GM sullenly muttering about prime directives in the background ...

Of course, that's what's supposed to happen when you send an Andorian Security Officer to secure a powerful battleship.  If the captain wanted someone who wouldn't vaporize Klingons, he made a bad choice.

Sounds like your GM was kinda trying to railroad you by artificially limiting options--I doubt there's evidence that Federation Rules of Engagement forbid use of lethal force in self-defense*--but at least was good enough not to get in the way of your decision. Were there consequences later? Either in the campaign...or am I correct in guessing that it killed the campaign? If so, too bad.

*I haven't played any Trek RPGs but while phasers on Stun seem just about as effective tactically as Kill (yes?), if someone's shooting at your ship, it seems irresponsible to reduce your chance of stopping them quickly by just going for a "disable". Also, this wouldn't be a Prime Directive issue, but maybe if the captain did have direct orders from Star Fleet to avoid escalation of conflict, the GM would have a case.

Quote from: Ravenswing;870254Both TSR and SJG did take swings at Conan.  Both, eventually, failed.  

Did they? They were both good games, people enjoyed them and played them.
Ditto the Mongoose version. People also hated them and quibbled, but they were largely fun and are still quite playable.

The key thing about licences, is that they *rarely* make sense to keep licensing once the initial sales rush has passed and the customers have all they want.. and the IPR holder comes back and asks for a new bag of gold.

This is IMHO, the real reason licensed properties tend to move from publisher to publisher, ask Margaret Weiss, she's made it very clear many times..

So, enjoy the game, or hate it, in ten years another will be along, but you can still play the one you own.

As I understand it, the Mongoose Conan license mainly* ended because when it came up for renewal, the price increased significantly due to the new Movie that was in the frame at the time.

YMMV on if that counts as a failure or not.


*The secondary issue is that the right's holder wanted to be able to assign the license per system, so Mongoose would have had to have paid again to do a Runequest version of the game, which was very much in the works.

Quote from: jadrax;870611*The secondary issue is that the right's holder wanted to be able to assign the license per system, so Mongoose would have had to have paid again to do a Runequest version of the game, which was very much in the works.

Kind of...

Mongoose announced an ambitious plan to do some sort of Encyclopedia Hyboria, a deluxe multi-volume gazeteer of all aspects of Conan's world. This was going to be mostly systemless, with the system info at the back or in a conversion volume (I can't remember which). This stepped outside their license in a major way (overlapping rights were held by another company), and the renewal negotiations went south when Mongoose openly discussed on their forums the state of their discussions with CPI.  

The cost increase, the unauthorized project, plus the disclosure, made the whole issue of the Savage Worlds and RuneQuest conversions minor factors in the loss of the license.

The best Conan RPG experience that I've had was using the Mongoose D20 system. A little customization made for a great two-year campaign. The main challenge, healing, was solved by an episodic approach to adventure generation. If played well characters could survive without reliance on much healing beyond the Heal skill, or a couple days of rest. This enhanced the realism of the game significantly.

We did nerf casters completely because they were poorly executed - and really not part of the Howard flavor. That said, when one of the players arrived set upon playing a fireball-casting wizard, and was subsequently told that caster classes weren't an option, he quite the group immediately in a huff.

*shrug*

Quote from: Jason D;870614...
The cost increase, the unauthorized project, plus the disclosure, made the whole issue of the Savage Worlds conversion a minor factor in the loss of the license.

Savage Worlds?  I thought the interest was in producing a RuneQuest 6 version.

Certainly RQ6 would be the perfect system for Conan!

Quote from: Akrasia;871057Savage Worlds?  I thought the interest was in producing a RuneQuest 6 version.

You're right... Vincent Darlage even started work on it. However, both were planned. Matthew Kaiser was one of the authors at work on the Savage Worlds version.  

Here's a thread about it: http://www.pegforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=24974&sid=f72d1c061d3e5d5fd69b2632434c0fc2