TheRPGSite

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/ (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. :D 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&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?

Quote from: S'mon;832003For '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).

Actually in "real" Conan there are "real" gods. They just tend to do really nothing mutch at all aside from the occasional vision or whatever.

Quote from: dbm;831996It worked really well in play. We had a campaign that ran for about 6 months and was a blast. Good point included:

For me that was a laundry list of mostly un-impressing things, or even one or two kill points to get into it.

Quote from: Omega;831968Personally 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.

What book?  I would love to look into it.

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

No, and they weren't all that good tits either, however, the mechanics worked pretty well for what it did, I've had more fun than arguments with it, as opposed to the other 3.x stuff.

Quote from: Pete Nash;832046Limiting Magic Point recovery is core RQ6

Dammit, Nash! I was going to get kudos for that:rant:

Actually, the majority of my ideas and inspirations has come from a BRP-incarnation or another, not least RQ6.

I don't think the traditional D&D split between "divine" and "arcane" fits Hyboria.

There are examples of "divine" magic though.

Conan is visited by Epimetrius the Sage in "The Phoenix on the Sword". The sage has been dead for 1500 years and was a follower of Mitra. Epimetrius enchants Conan's sword so he can take on the demon Thoth Amon summons. Basically there is divine intervention.

Also Thoth Amon in only granted the use of magic through the serpent ring of Set. It could be argued the source of his power is divine magic granted by Set.

In the story "The Frost Giants Daughter", Atali is the daughter of Ymir (a god). When Conan finally catches her at the end of the story she asks for her father to save her. She vanishes in a flash of lightning.

I disagree that "divine" magic has no place in Hyboria. I also disagree that EVERY spell caster is evil/corrupt. The majority of the magic users Conan encounters are, but not all of them.

Quote from: Omega;832056For me that was a laundry list of mostly un-impressing things, or even one or two kill points to get into it.

The whole was greater than the sum of its parts for my group. We had great fun.

It encouraged really good roleplaying. A big chunk of that was the campaign rather than the rules, but considering most of the 3.5 games I've played in degenerated into rules trudges that was a big plus. The rules supported the feel of the campaign really well.

It's the only 3.x derivative I would consider playing today.

Quote from: dbm;832064It's the only 3.x derivative I would consider playing today.

It's the only one I'd run.

And I've played Pathfinder ONLY when a certain local DM does.  I refuse to play that game without him.

But Mongoose Conan, I'd be there with bells on.

Eh, it's far from certain there are "no gods" in Hyboria.  Phoenix on the Sword and Black Colossus give evidence to Mitra, Hour of the Dragon deals with Asura, and of course what is Set actually?

Whether or not there are "gods" as opposed to daemons, spirits, alien intelligences, whatever is a different question from whether or not they grant any power to priests in a manner different from sorcerers.  Here's where RQ6 gets it right, because Divine Magic is powerful, but Sorcery or even Mysticism could be the method of instruction for a "religion" with a god/demon/entity that does or does not exist.

As Pete said, all the S&S tropes of spellpower through sacrifice, dreams of the lotus, recovery at places of power are all options in RQ6.  The magic system is very Toolkit-ish.

Right now my "RQ6 Conan Magic Profile" looks like this:

• Sorcery - the primary means of magic for PCs, with Invocation sources usually based on tomes and scrolls.
• Animism - will be there for Picts, Nordheimr, etc... unsure yet how powerful it will be for things like discorporation.
• Mysticism - Probably NPC only and only from "The East", a Totemic type of warrior would be animist I'm thinking.
• Theism - Probably not.  Something akin to a Theist miracle may be possible, but it would be just that, a miracle, a special happening, not something you could recreate.
• Folk Magic - For the most part folded into Sorcery.  The least of the spells may still exist as Folk Magic, if so, each on will be its own skill.
  
• Summoning - Still deciding to what degree I want to bring in CoC spells, early Stormbringer summoning, MRQII Elric summoning, Magic World, etc...

For me, figuring out a magic system usually begins with the cosmology, once that's in place, all forms of magic tend to flow down logically once you get the building blocks of reality sorted out.  With Conan, it's difficult, because it's easy to get a very Conanish feeling game up and running without any PC magic at all, and there are some very important decision points to make.
1. Mitra vs. Set - Good/Evil dualism?  This question is really part of the broader question...
2. Lovecraft - Is the Lovecraftian "Mythos" (of course Howard would only have been exposed to LC himself, all the later Mythos creation was after Howard was dead) the sole "truth" of the universe, or are there "non-Mythos" (as we would call them) sources of magic.
For example, a purely Lovecraftian look at Hyboria could easily use the Deus Ex Nyarlathotep trope and have Mitra, Set, Asura all be cults set up by that entity for inscrutable purposes.

The high-level stuff you could certainly argue doesn't matter because the players will never know one way or another and while structure can help focus it also by definition limits.  I like to try and come up with as much "Truth" for myself as possible, even if I'm the only one who will ever know it.  :D

Quote from: dbm;832064The whole was greater than the sum of its parts for my group. We had great fun.

It encouraged really good roleplaying. A big chunk of that was the campaign rather than the rules, but considering most of the 3.5 games I've played in degenerated into rules trudges that was a big plus. The rules supported the feel of the campaign really well.

It's the only 3.x derivative I would consider playing today.

I moved away from Mongoose Conan mainly because of the Class system.  They did a great job of taking all the classes and putting them together in different ways making them culturally relevant as well as really removing the need for multi-classing.  The real problem was, as always for me and mine, the formula of "Level X means a hard cap of Y Skill points and Z Feat points".  A classed system of any kind means Primary Function, and a level system means What Kind of Things you Fight.  Once you fill in Skill Points and Feats to make sure that for any given Level X you can fulfill your Primary Function, that leaves very little for learning Old Stygian or whatever.  

As one of my players once put it "I can be a great warrior who men will follow, but have no ability to lead them, or I can be a great leader of men who can't actually stand in the battle line."

Perhaps if I had gone the route of coming up with a system of alternate experience or a way of learning skills/feats I would have stayed with it, but I heard about this new version of MRQ done by Loz and Pete...the rest was history as they say.

There's also Blood Magic for Legend, not sure what Pete thinks about the editing of the published version. It could well suit a Conan campaign, also has a fair bit on summoning and demons.

It's actually fairly simple to "explain away" Mitra by imagining Epimetreus as a sorcerer reaching through time to oppose the forces of darkness, and Ymir as a frost giant god-king rather than a literal god.

This is my own headcanon, anyways. You can work "gods" in the conventional and/or D&Desque sense into the Hyborian Age mythos, I just feel explaining them away is both less work and fitting with the Howardian ethos.

Quote from: Bilharzia;832070There's also Blood Magic for Legend, not sure what Pete thinks about the editing of the published version. It could well suit a Conan campaign, also has a fair bit on summoning and demons.

The demon summoning subsystem is nearly verbatim that from Mongoose Elric, IIRC. The bits on blood sacrifice are of obvious interest. I don't recall whether it includes the POW-pawning cult rules, which I feel would be the best way to handle eldricht pacts in a Conanesque milieu.

Quote from: The Butcher;832078The demon summoning subsystem is nearly verbatim that from Mongoose Elric, IIRC. The bits on blood sacrifice are of obvious interest. I don't recall whether it includes the POW-pawning cult rules, which I feel would be the best way to handle eldricht pacts in a Conanesque milieu.

I didn't realise that, interesting, and I suppose the RQ Mongoose Elric system is out of print now. I don't think there are any cult rules in Blood Magic.

Quote from: The Butcher;832077It's actually fairly simple to "explain away" Mitra by imagining Epimetreus as a sorcerer reaching through time to oppose the forces of darkness, and Ymir as a frost giant god-king rather than a literal god.

This is my own headcanon, anyways. You can work "gods" in the conventional and/or D&Desque sense into the Hyborian Age mythos, I just feel explaining them away is both less work and fitting with the Howardian ethos.

Yeah, the actual "literal god" thing I don't think is important, I mean what is your definition of a "literal god".  Does Ymir have power though, well, something does, because Frost-Giant King's Daughter ended with that gossamer shift in Conan's hands, and a group of Aesir to witness it.  Now you can explain that away by claiming it was a sorceress using her powers of illusion for everything, but Conan did grab her cloth, or you can explain away the Mitra statue in Black Colossus by claiming it was Epimetreus speaking through the statue, but at some point the explanations defy Occam's Razor.

If Epimetreus is just a powerful sorcerer, in essence just a different thinking/non-insane Xaltotun or Thoth-Amon, did he manufacture or harness an entire religion simply to fight Set? If there is no real Mitra, is there a real Set?  Sometimes the simplest answer is that yes, Ymir, Mitra, Set and Asura are real.  What they are, however, is always going to be conjectural from a canonical standpoint because Howard doesn't tell us.

Also, if Epimetreus is just another sorcerer, then how does he escape the insanity and corruption that almost every other sorcerer shows.  The only people who seem to have some magical aspect and not evil/insane/corrupted are those that have a religious aspect to them: Epimetreus, Hadrathus, Zelata, Kalanthes.  It starts to beg the question of possibly a different form of sorcery or power source.

Ymir a Frost Giant of incredible power, possibly some "elder race" going back to the Thurian Age or before, sure I can see it, with the Aesir and Vanir we know and love (Woden, Freya, etc) be warlords and shamans from the post-Hyborian Age the stories of which were kept alive through legend.

Quote from: The Butcher;832077It's actually fairly simple to "explain away" Mitra by imagining Epimetreus as a sorcerer reaching through time to oppose the forces of darkness, and Ymir as a frost giant god-king rather than a literal god.

This is my own headcanon, anyways. You can work "gods" in the conventional and/or D&Desque sense into the Hyborian Age mythos, I just feel explaining them away is both less work and fitting with the Howardian ethos.

The Xoth "Spider God's Bride" approach is that there are no real deities, all gods are some kind of monstrous creature or entity - extraterrestrial, demonic, undead, prehistoric. They can be worshipped and theres some benefit both ways, and people may think of them as gods but the truth is they are 'just' a powerful creature.

Quote from: CRKrueger;832086The only people who seem to have some magical aspect and not evil/insane/corrupted are those that have a religious aspect to them: Epimetreus, Hadrathus, Zelata, Kalanthes.  It starts to beg the question of possibly a different form of sorcery or power source.

Pelleas, from Hour of the Dragon, seemed sane enough too, and not religious.

In any case, when I ran my Hyborian Age games, I did not set off to simulate the Hyborian Age in full, hardcore depth; Howard, like Lovecraft, never aimed for consistency and continuity, so to ensure a lifelike game world, choices were made; and unlike the good people who wrote Call of Cthulhu, bless their hearts, and crammed in just about everything... I am a lazy bum, and felt it would be less work to mostly ignore the manifestations of Mitra and other supernatural patrons of not being a complete crazy douchebag. Not having any sorcerous PCs that weren't douchebags helped.

I just wanted cackling sorcerous madmen commanding armies of fanatics and summoning horrors from beyond. Having do-gooder gods of doing good sort of got on the way of the whole mighty-thewed men of action being the only thing standing between this world and eldricht annihilation.

Huh, it does look like the Mongoose Elric is OOP. They had a firesale on the PDF when they switched from RQ to Legend, but it's not available for sale anymore.

The book is still available through the secondary market at a reasonable price. (I doubt Loz would be at liberty to say but maybe it will resurface as an RQ6 module.)

Quote from: The Butcher;832102Pelleas, from Hour of the Dragon, seemed sane enough too, and not religious.

Having do-gooder gods of doing good sort of got on the way of the whole mighty-thewed men of action being the only thing standing between this world and eldricht annihilation.

Well, yeah there's definitely no "do-gooder" gods apparent.  Even if Mitra is a God, even if he's in fact a manifestation of the "Abrahamic Father", he's definitely not an interventionist deity with crusading paladins.  If he is aware of the mighty-thewed men of action standing in the way of Set's domination, he's moving things in mysterious ways if he's involved at all.

Pelias might not be of the corrupted and alien sort that Tsotha-Lanti and Xaltotun are, but since a giant snake runs from him because it can sense his soul, I think it's safe to say he might be a bit strange and his alliance with Conan is one of convenience and revenge. :D

Quote from: jedimastert;832063I disagree that "divine" magic has no place in Hyboria. I also disagree that EVERY spell caster is evil/corrupt. The majority of the magic users Conan encounters are, but not all of them.

Yep. People tend to assume incorrectly that common elements are universal truths about Conan. But an RPG IMO needs to accommodate for such possibilities rather than just exclude uncommon elements.

Quote from: Omega;832055Actually in "real" Conan there are "real" gods.

No there aren't. There's zero evidence in REH Conan of actual divine gods with personalities. Obviously magical stuff happens, and there are ghosts and monsters, but none of it needs real gods to explain it.
Offhand I can't recall anything that is clearly a real demon (in the Judeo-Christian sense), as opposed to an alien entity from the Outer Dark, either.

Marvel Conan certainly has real gods (and real demons). Marvel Conan departs a long way from REH Conan.

The Frost Giant Ymir, his sons and daughter, seem to be supernatural entities of some kind. They show no evidence of being gods. You could call them spirits. The story also comes across as a kind of fever-dream by a wounded man.

Quote from: CRKrueger;8320672. Lovecraft - Is the Lovecraftian "Mythos" (of course Howard would only have been exposed to LC himself, all the later Mythos creation was after Howard was dead) the sole "truth" of the universe, or are there "non-Mythos" (as we would call them) sources of magic.
For example, a purely Lovecraftian look at Hyboria could easily use the Deus Ex Nyarlathotep trope and have Mitra, Set, Asura all be cults set up by that entity for inscrutable purposes.

The high-level stuff you could certainly argue doesn't matter because the players will never know one way or another and while structure can help focus it also by definition limits.  I like to try and come up with as much "Truth" for myself as possible, even if I'm the only one who will ever know it.  :D

For myself I would definitely seek to AVOID answering this to myself for a Conan game. The agnosticism, the unknown and unknowable truth of Set, Asura, Mitra et al, is very much part of the Hyborean mythos. Crom on his mountain with 300hp really detracts from that.  

I would restrict explicit Great Old One cults to aberrant sorcerers, degenerate beastmen et al, just as Lovecraft did.

Quote from: CRKrueger;832086Ymir a Frost Giant of incredible power, possibly some "elder race" going back to the Thurian Age or before, sure I can see it, with the Aesir and Vanir we know and love (Woden, Freya, etc) be warlords and shamans from the post-Hyborian Age the stories of which were kept alive through legend.

That's how I would do it re Ymir & co.

I would suggest Epimetreus was a man of genuine religious faith, and that this faith protected him from the corruption that typically befalls sorcerers.

Quote from: Skywalker;832139Yep. People tend to assume incorrectly that common elements are universal truths about Conan. But an RPG IMO needs to accommodate for such possibilities rather than just exclude uncommon elements.

Agreed.  I think what Howard was showing in his stories is that power, whether sorcerous or aristocratic, tends to corrupt - not that the magic itself is corrupting.

From that perspective I don't believe any RPG necessarily needs rules for corruption. Give PCs the ability to collapse a cliff, manifest rolling balls of fire or summon a chthonic entity, and they will soon succumb to the same negative personality traits shown by Hyborian Age sorcerers.

Its a seductive and slippery slope as Loz and I found in practice with our Elric magic rules (pacts especially)... and in my own Monster Island campaign where newer PCs sought out and threw themselves into the most extreme cults they could find in exchange for any sort of magical power, no matter the dangers involved in casting it.

Quote from: Pete Nash;832155Agreed.  I think what Howard was showing in his stories is that power, whether sorcerous or aristocratic, tends to corrupt - not that the magic itself is corrupting.

Well said. Absolutely agree.

Quote from: Bilharzia;832070There's also Blood Magic for Legend, not sure what Pete thinks about the editing of the published version. It could well suit a Conan campaign, also has a fair bit on summoning and demons.

I was always driven to despair what happened behind the scenes to the manuscripts Loz and I wrote whilst working for Mongoose. However I have no opinion about what they did to Blood Magic as I never received a courtesy copy. So I've never seen the final book. All I know for sure is that they cut maybe a third of the material.

Quote from: Pete Nash;832159I was always driven to despair what happened behind the scenes to the manuscripts Loz and I wrote whilst working for Mongoose. However I have no opinion about what they did to Blood Magic as I never received a courtesy copy. So I've never seen the final book. All I know for sure is that they cut maybe a third of the material.

That's pretty ridiculous! I must say I liked Blood Magic, but it makes sense that it was heavily trimmed. It doesn't have the flow that your stuff usually has.

On another point, I think that the magic point economy is an absolutely crucial difference to make Conanesque play work in RQ6. it's right there in the rules but I'm not surprised at the idea being greeted with enthusiasm when mentioned in isolation as it was up thread. If there is NO natural recuperation of magic points, and only that gained from sacrifice, worship, places of power, or artifacts you immediately have sorcerers who have to play a long game, from the shadows. Add to that the chance of Bad Things happening unless you use ritual casting times, and perhaps a mechanic whereby there are penalties also unless the stars are right, or the moon is full, or whatever, and you need arcane and esoteric components, and magic becomes not really an option for use while adventuring and instead the whole focus of am adventure, either to disrupt a blasphemous ritual or to carry one out .... All of which feels like it really fits the source material. Note that I'm not quoting chapter and verse from Howard stories. I fully admit that I don't know them well enough, though I've read plenty. For me, there's a sort of gestalt that includes Clark Ashton Smith and other S&S that probably exists mainly in my mind .... But I think I share that idea of what fits the genre feel with many of you.

Quote from: baragei;832024Take 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

I'd actually take a slightly different approach, inspired by the Faith pool used by RQ6's divine magic.  MP regenerate slowly (1/day?  1/week?), but are useless until you use pacts/sacrifices/rituals to convert them into Spell (or whatever) points that can then actually be used magically.

For pacts specifically, I could go one of two ways.  Either the pact allows a small number of MP to convert automatically into usable SP as soon as they're recovered or, more likely, just use the divine magic mechanics for pacts.  Calling on a supernatural entity to use its power on your behalf is calling on a supernatural entity to use its power on your behalf, regardless of whether that entity is a proper "god" or not.

Quote from: The Butcher;832102Pelleas, from Hour of the Dragon, seemed sane enough too, and not religious.

.

I'd also toss Yag-Kosha (from Tower of the Elephant). as a non-divine, non-insane, non-evil sorcerer

Quote from: Doom;832218I'd also toss Yag-Kosha (from Tower of the Elephant). as a non-divine, non-insane, non-evil sorcerer

Who was also not human, he was one of those 'Alien' things, in which Magic was 'normal' for.

And the thing with Magic in a Conan setting is not so much that no hero can have it, it's that it's RARE, it's can corrupt (not corrupting, it CAN but if you have the will, it may not.  But some of the things the rituals needed are not very nice things, like people) and it's outright dangerous to anyone near it.

It also has very few outright combat magic, like Fireball in D&D.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;832250Who was also not human, he was one of those 'Alien' things, in which Magic was 'normal' for.

Hadrathus and Zelata also spring to mind, from Hour of the Dragon.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;832250It also has very few outright combat magic, like Fireball in D&D.

But those exist too, such as the exploding balls of flying mist in People of the Black Circle.

IMO magic in Conan is good in combat. Mast sorcerers that Conan faces are difficult to overcome with violence. The real difference is that as a sword stroke in Conan's world can kill pretty handily it makes magic seem less combat effective than its D&D equivalent.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;832250Who was also not human, he was one of those 'Alien' things, in which Magic was 'normal' for.

And the thing with Magic in a Conan setting is not so much that no hero can have it, it's that it's RARE, it's can corrupt (not corrupting, it CAN but if you have the will, it may not.  But some of the things the rituals needed are not very nice things, like people) and it's outright dangerous to anyone near it.

It also has very few outright combat magic, like Fireball in D&D.

Fair enough, Yag was certainly well away from human. But I don't know if I'd call his apprentice corrupt in the same way that Thoth-Amon was corrupt. T-A I could see destroying the world, while Yag's student clearly used his power for material, Earthly, gains with motivations little different than what you'd see in a warlord or whatever.

That said, you've got a point about magic being freakin' rare. I remember when I was at a demo for Age of Conan. I'd been lovingly following the game throughout it's development, but as soon as "and you can be a sorcerer as a class", my interest dropped like a stone.

You really want magic to be very, very, light, at least in the PC's hands, in a Conan game, otherwise you mise well play DnD.

Quote from: Skywalker;832255Hadrathus and Zelata also spring to mind, from Hour of the Dragon.

Out of how many characters/NPCs that show up in that book? Two do not an army make.

Quote from: Skywalker;832255But those exist too, such as the exploding balls of flying mist in People of the Black Circle.

The People of the Black Circle were not really classified as human, the Master might have been at one point.  Thing is, most spell casters in S&S are subtle, very rarely able to cast multiple attack spells in a given fight.  Spells are slow affairs, and often these self-same sorcerers often have protection in the form of minions, an artefact or other means that have already been cast by the time Conan meets them.

Quote from: Skywalker;832255IMO magic in Conan is good in combat. Mast sorcerers that Conan faces are difficult to overcome with violence. The real difference is that as a sword stroke in Conan's world can kill pretty handily it makes magic seem less combat effective than its D&D equivalent.

Your opinion doesn't seem to match any of the original REH short stories.  Maybe the pastiche, a lot of which are pretty bad and miss the whole point (Like Robert Jordan's attempts.)

The other issue with Sword and Sorcery is that the standard adventuring party of specialists or niches, do not exist.  First off, most S&S heroes are either solo, or get together in groups no larger than three.  Which form a broad group of skills and training.

I haven't read all the stories but I seem to remember one in which a sorcerer casts a paralysis spell on the spot. And in another ("Black Colossus"?), at the beginning of a big battle, the reawakened sorcerer warlord rides across the front lines creating a bunch of explosions.

Still I think you could get quite far in any system--not all the way there, but pretty far--by crossing off all spells that cause direct damage.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;832275Out of how many characters/NPCs that show up in that book? Two do not an army make.

I didn't say they did. But there do exist and they (amongst other characters) demonstrate that magic and evil are not to be equated in REH's work.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;832275The People of the Black Circle were not really classified as human, the Master might have been at one point.  Thing is, most spell casters in S&S are subtle, very rarely able to cast multiple attack spells in a given fight.  Spells are slow affairs, and often these self-same sorcerers often have protection in the form of minions, an artefact or other means that have already been cast by the time Conan meets them.

I disagree. Examples of magic in combat are rare in REH's work but they are effective when performed (well at least as effective as wielding a sword, which Conan uses for devastating effect too :)). Magic is frightening and that includes in a physical confrontation (more so IMO than the flashy stuff that appears in the pastiche material). I don't see how having one effective tool precludes the use of other protections like minions. But I do agree with you that some magic requires an artifact or preparation, but by no means all.

REH's books pretty much seemed to me to assume that it was taking place in the same universe as the Cthulhu mythos (which he also wrote extensively for).  So it would make sense that there were no 'real' gods.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;832275The People of the Black Circle were not really classified as human, the Master might have been at one point.  Thing is, most spell casters in S&S are subtle, very rarely able to cast multiple attack spells in a given fight.  Spells are slow affairs, and often these self-same sorcerers often have protection in the form of minions, an artefact or other means that have already been cast by the time Conan meets them.

There was a master, four beings bound to this plane by the master, and a bunch of apprentices.  In addition, the secondary (primary? original?) antagonist was also a sorcerer with numerous spells at his command (enough to defeat an entire village of the hillmen on his own).  Other than being a sorcerer, and extremely long lived, there doesn't seem to be any indication he is non-human.

The only non-humans in the bunch were the four beings bound to this plane.  The apprentices were definitely human.  They were also quite frail and had few spells at their disposal.

I just read this story two days ago, otherwise I probably wouldn't have remembered this, though.

Quote from: Bloodwolf;832948There was a master, four beings bound to this plane by the master, and a bunch of apprentices.  In addition, the secondary (primary? original?) antagonist was also a sorcerer with numerous spells at his command (enough to defeat an entire village of the hillmen on his own).  Other than being a sorcerer, and extremely long lived, there doesn't seem to be any indication he is non-human.

The only non-humans in the bunch were the four beings bound to this plane.  The apprentices were definitely human.  They were also quite frail and had few spells at their disposal.

I just read this story two days ago, otherwise I probably wouldn't have remembered this, though.

The first antagonist, who gets mulched by the human sorcerer was a Raksasha. They called him that several times.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;832951The first antagonist, who gets mulched by the human sorcerer was a Raksasha. They called him that several times.

Arrows of Indra does have a serious Sword & Sorcery feel to it when played right...

In the hyborian age campaign I would run, gods would primarily exist to be killed by PCs, or to eat PCs. Both works. Effectively there are two kinds of gods:
The first are monstrous entities that demand sacrifice (prefarably human, young and attractive) and which resides within or below a temple inhabited by a creepy cult; that temple of course also includes treasure.
The other kind of god is the self-proclaimed one, the charismatic cult leader whose delusions of grandeur has made him believe his own propaganda. This version is less likely to devour human sacrifices, but not less likely to demand them. Of course, this might also be a carreer choice for PCs, but generally speaking, deicide is more rewarding than apotheosis in this context.

All other gods are basically speculative; they might exist, they might not, and nobody is ever going to be prove or disprove their existence. Player characters can be as devout or as worldly as the player's like.

I found Pendragon worked well, both the original -- no system, magic being the gm's province -- and the later magic system. The latter involved long preparation (or long recovery, with hazard in delay), and auspicious times, places and materials. What could be accomplished was still up to the gm, rather than rigidly defined.

TSR's Conan game was similar but less detailed, and notably put a great onus on the player-magician to seek out spell formulas rather than being able to do much improvisation merely on the basis of general skills as in Pendragon. It did present examples of magic from the tales.

To me it seems appropriate that the emphasis should be on warrior-heroes like Conan, as it is in Howard's stories (and indeed most of modern heroic fantasy and its ancient/medieval progenitors).

I think the biggest argument against magic using PC's in a Hyborian campaign is a thematic one. In most of Howard's works Magicians are bad guys, and magic is an obstacle to be overcome.

Quote from: Arkansan;833432I think the biggest argument against magic using PC's in a Hyborian campaign is a thematic one. In most of Howard's works Magicians are bad guys, and magic is an obstacle to be overcome.

Doesn't this depend on seeing Conan as the good guy?

Quote from: RPGPundit;833768Doesn't this depend on seeing Conan as the good guy?

Seeing as he's written with as the main protagonist in most of the stories, and often seems like a pretty decent, if rough, kinda guy, I'd have to say, yes, most readers usually see him as a 'good guy'.

But most of the magicians are pretty rotten in their own right, I think.

Quote from: RPGPundit;833768Doesn't this depend on seeing Conan as the good guy?

I don't think so. You could see Conan as something other than the good guy and most of his magician foes still come across as some shade of "bad guy". I mean at the end of the day Conan is only really a hero by circumstance, not by morals. He may not be a bad guy, but he isn't out looking to save the world, he's typically looking to make a buck or save his own skin. So even though he is the protagonist of the stories he isn't necessarily a good guy. To me that is a defining feature of Sword and Sorcery literature, "heroes" who are more often than not just in it for themselves, any heroics are purely incidental.

Quote from: Arkansan;833432I think the biggest argument against magic using PC's in a Hyborian campaign is a thematic one. In most of Howard's works Magicians are bad guys, and magic is an obstacle to be overcome.

Generally true, but not always the case. I don't think a Conan RPG should enforce this absolutely though, and instead encourage it through the way magic works and what it achieves. Power generally has a corrupting effect, in and of itself IME

Quote from: Arkansan;833873I don't think so. You could see Conan as something other than the good guy and most of his magician foes still come across as some shade of "bad guy". I mean at the end of the day Conan is only really a hero by circumstance, not by morals. He may not be a bad guy, but he isn't out looking to save the world, he's typically looking to make a buck or save his own skin. So even though he is the protagonist of the stories he isn't necessarily a good guy. To me that is a defining feature of Sword and Sorcery literature, "heroes" who are more often than not just in it for themselves, any heroics are purely incidental.

There's one key element that defines his 'good/decent guy' status (remember the era it was written in, please) is that he's always rescuing the ladies, should they need it, and still wants to help them, when they don't.  Unless, of course, said ladies are truly evil (Salome.)

Quote from: Christopher Brady;833923There's one key element that defines his 'good/decent guy' status (remember the era it was written in, please) is that he's always rescuing the ladies, should they need it, and still wants to help them, when they don't.  Unless, of course, said ladies are truly evil (Salome.)

He'll massacre a whole African village (women & children presumably included) to get his hands on a white girl, so I'm not sure this marks him particularly as a good guy. In fact he seems pretty keen on killing absolutely anyone other than pretty white girls.

Quote from: S'mon;833950He'll massacre a whole African village (women & children presumably included) to get his hands on a white girl, so I'm not sure this marks him particularly as a good guy. In fact he seems pretty keen on killing absolutely anyone other than pretty white girls.

Again, the era it was written in.  Casual racism was common at all strata of life in the '30's.  And in his case, if you read more of REH's stuff, he starts to stop being completely racist to drinking his own Kool Aid and thinking that anything outside of Barbarianism is weak and pathetic.

In some of his non-Conan writings, like Solomon Kane, REH has a somewhat sympathetic Black/African Medicine Man as an ally to Kane.

I'm not excusing it, I'm just saying that due to societal perceptions of the time, and the fact that he always 'saved the girl' if he could, and she wasn't irredeemably evil, as per Salome (there was another woman who would have caused Conan issues, but she got eaten before he could do something about her) he was more or less a more 'heroic' type of figure.

And as people have pointed out, very few of REH's spell users were actually even moderately nice people.

Quote from: The Butcher;832007Runequest 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

I was actually going to post almost exactly this:D!
My suggestion was going to be RQ6 with MRQ Vikings, though. Elric might actually work better, though I've never read it, apart from reviews.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;834039Again, the era it was written in.  Casual racism was common at all strata of life in the '30's.  And in his case, if you read more of REH's stuff, he starts to stop being completely racist to drinking his own Kool Aid and thinking that anything outside of Barbarianism is weak and pathetic.

I don't really care about REH's personal views (which impression is seem highly variable - unlike HPL's, say - though HPL managed to be anti-Semitic while married to a Jewish woman, so I guess he was pretty complicated too). I doubt REH was all that keen IRL on murdering policemen/guards/sheriffs/judges et al either. Just talking about Conan the character.

Quote from: RPGPundit;833768Doesn't this depend on seeing Conan as the good guy?

Are there any good guys in Howard's Conan?  

Even the faceless minions (guards, tribesmen, sailors) are ready to kill at any given moment.  People are constantly scheming against one another, especially those they supposedly owe their loyalty to.  I have yet to come across a sorcerer who is not, at the very least, self serving.

I may very well be forgetting details (that's what I do), but I remember that even the good guys are surprisingly violent, but that being violent is more of a societal norm than a character flaw in Hyboria (or is it Hyperborea, damn you AS&SoH).

Quote from: Bloodwolf;834168Are there any good guys in Howard's Conan?  

Even the faceless minions (guards, tribesmen, sailors) are ready to kill at any given moment.  People are constantly scheming against one another, especially those they supposedly owe their loyalty to.  I have yet to come across a sorcerer who is not, at the very least, self serving.

I may very well be forgetting details (that's what I do), but I remember that even the good guys are surprisingly violent, but that being violent is more of a societal norm than a character flaw in Hyboria (or is it Hyperborea, damn you AS&SoH).

Let me get this straight. Do you mean that being violent prevents a character from being one of the good guys?
Even then I'd remember a few good people in the REH stories, but I'd need to check for names.

There are a few "good guys" in the Conan tales I think. For the most part though they seem to be good guys mostly in relation to the context of events.

Conan is shown as a guy who follows a set of mostly consistent, self defined, morals rather than being a guy who is universally recognized as "good". Still in certain situations he is objectively wrong, I mean lets call it like it is, in "The Frost Giants Daughter" he seems hell bent on committing a rape. In that situation he's a dick. In the "The Tower of the Elephant" he makes a kill out of apparently sincere mercy.

What I'm getting at is that speaking of "good guys" and moral objectivity is kind of missing the point in regard to the spirit of the stories. They aren't tales about men who are "Heroes" in character but rather who are of "Heroic" stature. There is sort of a frivolous humanity to it all, the characters, Conan in particular, are just men being the tumultuous creatures that they are.

Just about everything REH wrote is a Western. Chalk it up to a childhood in early 20th-century Texas, growing up to the sound of aging pioneers sharing how the West was built one yarn at a time.

Conan is the Man with the Gun, only his "gun" is being a Barbarian, made strong by the harsh lifestyle (plus racist "Aryan master race" shenanigans, but let's not go there for the purposes of this exercise), but rising up to defend Civilization from the Barbarians outside and, more often, from the decadence and corruption within. I imagine Howard's storytelling pioneers complaining a lot about how oil wealth and civilized comforts made people weak and corrupt, or something.

Being a Barbarian and inured to the cruelties of both men and nature, Conan is liable to act outside civilized morals. Even the rape thing can be excused by pointing to nature... not that I'd condone such an explanation, in fact even Howard derided his readership for enjoying Conan's aggressive sexuality in his correspondence. I believe "the common man is a brute and a rapist at heart" were his words -- shit, would that make REH a proto-feminist? :D

Contrast with Solomon Kane, who holds itself to the high moral standards of a Puritan and yet is said to have "something of the pagan" in his relentless pursuit and smiting of evil around the world.

Quote from: AsenRG;834172Let me get this straight. Do you mean that being violent prevents a character from being one of the good guys?

You can interpret it that way if you want.
That was not my intent, however.
Maybe use "murderous" instead of "violent"
Life is cheap in Conan's world, to the point of death being almost inconsequential.

I'm suggesting that there are no good guys, per se, in a world full of grey morality.  Well, black and grey morality, actually (what with there being evil people and, on the other side, everyone else (who are not evil)).  There are protagonists and antagonists.  The protagonists aren't the good guys, they just happen to be the star of the show.

Yes, I guess you could say Conan was a 'good guy' in the sense of what a mentally-disturbed Texan would think of as a 'good guy'.

Quote from: Bloodwolf;834191You can interpret it that way if you want.
That was not my intent, however.
Maybe use "murderous" instead of "violent"
Life is cheap in Conan's world, to the point of death being almost inconsequential.

I'm suggesting that there are no good guys, per se, in a world full of grey morality.  Well, black and grey morality, actually (what with there being evil people and, on the other side, everyone else (who are not evil)).  There are protagonists and antagonists.  The protagonists aren't the good guys, they just happen to be the star of the show.

Ahem, our world is full of grey morality. I posit that there are still good guys, and gals, around, including a vanishingly small number of those that have had to kill other people:).

Quote from: RPGPundit;834516Yes, I guess you could say Conan was a 'good guy' in the sense of what a mentally-disturbed Texan would think of as a 'good guy'.

Given who the author is, I'm inclined to say there could be no other criteria;).

Quote from: RPGPundit;834516Yes, I guess you could say Conan was a 'good guy' in the sense of what a mentally-disturbed Texan would think of as a 'good guy'.

Hehe, yeah, we saw what you did there. Conan's more of a protagonist than a hero, but that further reinforces the zeitgeist of the Hyborian Age. Conan's warts aren't nearly so large and festering as most of the characters' warts in the books, so he pretty much gets the "hero" title by default.