Well as Arminus pointed out...

Quote from: Arminius;831780What do you need for Conan, after all, if you exclude metagame mechanics and start with your favorite game as the kernel? NPC and creature stats, encounter tables? Maybe a "tag" system like Sine Nomine provides in his games? Above all--a magic system. So what has been, or would be, a good Conan magic system to adapt to your game?

...there are many systems that could be used for Conan, but most come with a default setting assumption where magic (and clerics) are concerned that is much more common and less dark and corrupting as in the Conan stories.

So, pick your system of choice and tell us how you would deal with sorcerors and priestly magic (if any).

First of all, I will add to the discussion in mentioning this website (for those who don't know it yet): http://hyboria.xoth.net/

Other than that, I would easily run a game set in Conan's world using my own game system (FH&W, see below), but excluding the friar-mystic-templar. Most everything else could fit, especially as I am not into "purist genres". Cult leaders of dark gods would probably be of the warlock class.

I would choose Atlantis, which is a pretty close fit to Conan IMO

Small magic, often not what would be considered magic, is common. Significant magic is risky, requires considerable effort, but is possible. Dark magic is powerful, very dangerous, tempting and rewards the use of rituals and sacrifice.

Divine magic is more subtle and yet capable of great feats beyond even magic. However, it is unwieldy (worship requires time, votives, and devotees) and focussed due to the deity's strictures and demands.

Personally TSR's Conan RPG is still the best of the lot Ive seen so far.

Crazy as it may sound. I would not recommend my own Conan parody book as it was done to the comics which were substantially higher in magic tone than the source overall.

5e could handle the setting easily by just trimming down the casters dramatically or if you want the magic only in the hands of the villains and NPCs then remove it totally from PC access other than the rare magic item.

I was totally unimpressed with the d20 Conan book. Tits on every other page does not a better game make.

Quote from: Omega;831968I was totally unimpressed with the d20 Conan book. Tits on every other page does not a better game make.

It worked really well in play. We had a campaign that ran for about 6 months and was a blast. Good point included:

• A good system of multi-classing which rewarded rather than punished (as core 3.x did)
• You could spend bonus skill points from Int on any skills, rounding out characters and further supporting multi-classing
• A range of character classes focussed on non-magic and giving variety to a group that would just be 'fighters' and 'rogues' in vanilla D&D
• A range of additional combat manoeuvres which didn't require Feats for access, just a certain level of skill or ability
• Armour as damage reduction
• Parry and Dodge stats (based on Str and Dex respectively) with nuanced differences in play and based on your character class
• Mental attack and defence stats based on class and level
• A punishing Massive Damage rule which keeps combat short and deadly whatever level you are
• A thematically designed magic system that fits the genre and emphasises non-flashy combat effects. In fact, as a sorcerer your best bet in combat is still a sword, clouding your opponent mind or (if you are going for it) sending a demon in your stead...

For 'real' Conan, there's no Divine magic since there are no 'real' gods. The OGL Conan's magic system looked decent if you remove Defensive Blast from the edition I own (1st).

For Marvel Comics Conan, 4e D&D looks good to me. Lots of Warlock NPCs. Conan's friend Jubal seems to use magic ok w/out corruption so I wouldn't worry about that for PCs.

Runequest 6 with the magic system from Mongoose Elric, or at least the demon summoning and eldricht pacts; I might retain some or all of the "runes" (spells, really) as rituals.

/thread

D&D would require, at very least, doing away with divine magic and repurposing arcane magic as mostly ritual casting, with greater emphasis in summoning and binding otherworldly horrors, and introducing spell failure and corruption and/or insanity mechanics; DCC is halfway there and in fact I'm looking forward to the DCC Lankhmar RPG, which sounds exactly like what I'd want.

Last but not least, when I ran a Savage Worlds-powered Hyborian Age game, I allowed Sorcery as the sole Arcane Background, with PC casters getting a very restricted list of Powers, and used the Ritual rules from the old Horror Toolkit.

Barbarians of Lemuria captures the feel and flavor of a Conan setting, though the magic system is somewhat hand-wavy. It's sister setting, Legends of Steel is a helpful add on.

Call of Cthulhu presents the best mix of horror, evil and ickiness for a Conan magic system. It also has the great advantage of being a BRP game, and thus fully compatible with various editions of Runequest (which I think most interested people would say is the ideal core system for this setting). Tacking on Stormbringer's demon summoning also makes plenty of sense.

Quote from: Larsdangly;832016Call of Cthulhu presents the best mix of horror, evil and ickiness for a Conan magic system. It also has the great advantage of being a BRP game, and thus fully compatible with various editions of Runequest (which I think most interested people would say is the ideal core system for this setting). Tacking on Stormbringer's demon summoning also makes plenty of sense.

Actually, that's a fantastic idea too. My Cthulhu Dark Ages games did feel very Howardian.

Quote from: Larsdangly;832016Call of Cthulhu presents the best mix of horror, evil and ickiness for a Conan magic system. It also has the great advantage of being a BRP game, and thus fully compatible with various editions of Runequest (which I think most interested people would say is the ideal core system for this setting). Tacking on Stormbringer's demon summoning also makes plenty of sense.

Given the Howard - Lovecraft connection this makes sense.

I'm with Butcher and Lars here. Take RQ's sorcery (because priests don't cast spells because they channel divine power, they cast spells because they're learned), chuck out MP-regeneration and let wizards gather their juice by pacts,  sacrifices and the stars are right-rituals, extrapolate with CoC and Elric/Stormbringer.

Quote from: baragei;832024chuck out MP-regeneration

Thank you, I feel like this provides a key piece of the puzzle for my S&S-flavored needs. I had already been looking at rituals as requirements and/or base-chance-boosters for spells, but this is a nice addition. Did you get it from somewhere else?

Quote from: Arminius;832043Thank you, I feel like this provides a key piece of the puzzle for my S&S-flavored needs. I had already been looking at rituals as requirements and/or base-chance-boosters for spells, but this is a nice addition. Did you get it from somewhere else?

Limiting Magic Point recovery is core RQ6. I incorporated something similar for Monster Island, along with a lot of bad stuff which happens if you try to cast magic without taking it slow and careful.

Add me to the others. I too would use RQ for the base game, RQ6 specifically for the combat and magic framework... but take a lot of CoC's creatures and spells to cover most of Howard's otherworldly aspects.

Seems like there was an od&d hack floating around that did a pretty good job of Conan. I think it used Chainmail rules to give a little depth to various sizes of combat.

Anyway I think the big things to get any Conan game right are;

- No divine magic
- Weird and dangerous sorcery
- Combat that lets players be heroic while still being gritty
- excellent rules for carousing

Just about any edition of D&D could, I think, be hacked into a decent Conan game. I like the idea of Runequest 6 for it as well, though I think I would prefer something a little faster paced.

You know thinking on the whole thing of divinity in Conan games, what about The Frost Giants Daughter? Wasn't she implied to be some sort of goddess?