Quote from: Enlightened;880065I don't doubt that it will feel like Conan.

q.e.d.

Well, the why is pretty simple ... they're a business...they have an own house-system...they want to make that known/popular... and done.

Sure, they could have licensed an existing system or used one of the open ones...but to be honest, i would not have either, if i were a game company with an in-house system.

As a roleplayer, i agree with you though. I would have loved a Conan game for RQ6...no better fitting system out there...not now nor ever Oh well...

QuoteWhat are you hoping to get here? Maybe you should post more precise questions so that people who know 2d20 can reply? Or are you just looking for someone to tell you "yeah, it is awesome...it rocks on toast!!!" ?

Right, good question?  I just want to know what the momentum and doom point meta-mechanics are supposed to represent.  Why were they chosen to represent, emulate or simulate REH's stories in the Hyborian Age?  

A lot of mechanics (like HP, saving throws, or pass/fail skills, for example) are just intuitive.  Others, like Sanity for CoC, or passions for Pendragon are bolt-ons that make sense for the genre/setting.  I don't see the function of momentum or doom in this game/setting except that they might be nifty for there own sake - so I assumed I might be missing something.

Even still, I wouldn't normally have a problem with that, but there are some implications of these mechanics that are causing dissonance in my brain and with my group.  I'll explain:

First, PCs create and use momentum to do cinematic and super-human things.  I personally don't see REH's Conan stories as all that cinematic. The comics and movies maybe, but not the original stories.  Perhaps that's just my subjective interpretation so anyway...

Second, you have this weird group dynamic with momentum.  PC A rolls 3 successes sneaking or riding a horse or something, and then PC B can use PC A successes to swing a sword better, etc.  So in my demo with quickstart last night there was this weird situation where  players were, out of character, plotting their resource expenditure cooperation:  "Cool I got 3 successes, now you can use my extra successes to get the hell out of there."  That wasn't so horrible as a game, but I felt it was decidedly not sword and sorcery or REH Conan where every man survives by his strength and wits and forges his own destiny.

Third, the PCs built momentum by giving me doom points (which I could use against them) which created this atmosphere of some kind of cosmic balance or karma: "I can do really cool stuff any time I want but then universe will build up to some cosmic backlash." -  Am I wrong or is that antithetical to REH Conan?  In REH, there is no balance in nature.  The universe doesn't care! Conan is about man carving his own destiny out of an uncaring and immoral universe.  Isn't it?  Or is it a world where you tempt fate by doing super human and cinematic stuff?  That latter is what the mechanics imply?

Furthermore (at the risk of making this sound like a rant), I don't get doom points.  I mean, aren't they redundant?  The GM is already omnipotent within the game world.  Why does he need to accumulate points to make the NPC's tougher or whatever?  Can't I already do that?  Why empower the omnipotent? 1 plus infinity is still infinity.  All it does is force me to screw with the players when I am perfectly capable of making that decision myself.  

All of that is fine, but I don't understand the design decision.  How do any of these mechanics make for a more authentically REH Hyborian Age RPG?  System implies setting, and looking at this game, I either don't get Howard or I don't get how these mechanics imply Howard's creation.  As I said, I want to love this game, but I would like someone to explain to me the thought process behind how these mechanics interact with the setting.  Hopefully, a light bulb will go on and the dissonance will evaporate.

QuoteI mean, the damage system is kind of out there. Roll a pool of d6s and count the 1s, 2s, 5s, and 6s... Wut?

The damage system is a little wonky and counter-intuitive but its not a deal breaker for me.  My players grocked it pretty quickly, though they said the exact same thing you did, "1s, 2s, 5s, and 6s... Wut?"  

Its not too bad, I just wonder why the mechanics are so opaque, like they're clever just to be clever.

Quote from: Madprofessor;880088Right, good question?  I just want to know what the momentum and doom point meta-mechanics are supposed to represent.  Why were they chosen to represent, emulate or simulate REH's stories in the Hyborian Age?  

A lot of mechanics (like HP, saving throws, or pass/fail skills, for example) are just intuitive.  Others, like Sanity for CoC, or passions for Pendragon are bolt-ons that make sense for the genre/setting.  I don't see the function of momentum or doom in this game/setting except that they might be nifty for there own sake - so I assumed I might be missing something.

Even still, I wouldn't normally have a problem with that, but there are some implications of these mechanics that are causing dissonance in my brain and with my group.  I'll explain:

First, PCs create and use momentum to do cinematic and super-human things.  I personally don't see REH's Conan stories as all that cinematic. The comics and movies maybe, but not the original stories.  Perhaps that's just my subjective interpretation so anyway...

Second, you have this weird group dynamic with momentum.  PC A rolls 3 successes sneaking or riding a horse or something, and then PC B can use PC A successes to swing a sword better, etc.  So in my demo with quickstart last night there was this weird situation where  players were, out of character, plotting their resource expenditure cooperation:  "Cool I got 3 successes, now you can use my extra successes to get the hell out of there."  That wasn't so horrible as a game, but I felt it was decidedly not sword and sorcery or REH Conan where every man survives by his strength and wits and forges his own destiny.

Third, the PCs built momentum by giving me doom points (which I could use against them) which created this atmosphere of some kind of cosmic balance or karma: "I can do really cool stuff any time I want but then universe will build up to some cosmic backlash." -  Am I wrong or is that antithetical to REH Conan?  In REH, there is no balance in nature.  The universe doesn't care! Conan is about man carving his own destiny out of an uncaring and immoral universe.  Isn't it?  Or is it a world where you tempt fate by doing super human and cinematic stuff?  That latter is what the mechanics imply?

Furthermore (at the risk of making this sound like a rant), I don't get doom points.  I mean, aren't they redundant?  The GM is already omnipotent within the game world.  Why does he need to accumulate points to make the NPC's tougher or whatever?  Can't I already do that?  Why empower the omnipotent? 1 plus infinity is still infinity.  All it does is force me to screw with the players when I am perfectly capable of making that decision myself.  

All of that is fine, but I don't understand the design decision.  How do any of these mechanics make for a more authentically REH Hyborian Age RPG?  System implies setting, and looking at this game, I either don't get Howard or I don't get how these mechanics imply Howard's creation.  As I said, I want to love this game, but I would like someone to explain to me the thought process behind how these mechanics interact with the setting.  Hopefully, a light bulb will go on and the dissonance will evaporate.

Hmmmmm...they're using the setting to hawk a system maybe?  Think I'm with you. That doesn't seem "Conan-ish" at all.

QuoteHmmmmm...they're using the setting to hawk a system maybe? Think I'm with you. That doesn't seem "Conan-ish" at all.

I guess.  I dunno.  

Its hard for me to believe that such great people like Jason and Jeff are just trying to hawk a system.  That almost makes less sense than the mechanics.  I'm confused so don't take my word for it. I'm not trying to shoot down the system or discourage people, I just want a rational before I plop down 500 bones.

Quote from: Madprofessor;880091The damage system is a little wonky and counter-intuitive but its not a deal breaker for me.  My players grocked it pretty quickly, though they said the exact same thing you did, "1s, 2s, 5s, and 6s... Wut?"  

Its not too bad, I just wonder why the mechanics are so opaque, like they're clever just to be clever.

Welcome to the world of Jay Little, the guy that invents a new symbol-based die mechanic for every game he makes.

The answer MadProfessor is that the Doom/Fortune/Momentum out of character metagame pools you keep track of have absolutely nothing to do with Conan/Hyboria/Howard.  They are not genre mechanics.  They are narrative mechanics.  One of the designers (Jay Little) is a dyed-in-the-wool Ron Edwards disciple, another one (Nathan Dowdell) had a "road to Damascus" moment playing Smallville and is a "mechanics to push story" convert.

As a result, the whole Doom Pool is there to push drama and story.  You want to act awesome like Conan in his most powerful moments, you can, by choosing to get extra dice to roll, but every die you roll adds to the GM's Doom Pool so he gets to make things more deadly.  The more you act like Conan, the more your enemies act like Thoth-Amon.

Momentum, simply put is "success breeds success".  As you roll really well (more than you need to) you gain Momentum which you can use to increase the success level of what you attempted, or you can choose to "bank" it so that the party can use it.  So yeah, your awesome sword strike can actually help the guy behind you pick the lock he's working on.

It's got nothing specifically to do with Conan, it's a way of looking at roleplaying (namely roleplaying with a huge amount of storytelling).

It's not "Roleplaying in the Hyborian World".
It's "Roleplaying in our own Howardian Short Story."

Yeah, they are specifically following MWP's Cortex model, which basically is:
1. Have one system we own.
2. Buy a bunch of IPs and have them all use variations of that same system.

However, that's not Jason's fault, all that was chosen before he came onboard I believe.

BTW I opened another thread for questions for Jason, maybe we can keep the arguments over here, and leave that thread for questions.

Thanks CRKrueger, that pretty well answers my questions.

I do realize that these are story mechanics, but I thought they might be specifically genre targeted story mechanics and I just wasn't getting it.  As a GM of 30 or so years I've never needed mechanics, let alone a game outside the game, to push my stories along, but I am trying to stay away from narrative vs traditional game arguments and just understand how the system serves the setting/genre.  Perhaps as a traditional (non--narrative game) type GM, I'm not the best qualified to judge.

I'd be happier I think if the meta-game could be easily extricated, but it seems deeply woven into the fabric of the whole system.

QuoteIt's not "Roleplaying in the Hyborian World".
It's "Roleplaying in our own Howardian Short Story."

That's an angle I hadn't really considered, and I am not yet sure that I buy it, but I am keeping an open mind.

QuoteWelcome to the world of Jay Little, the guy that invents a new symbol-based die mechanic for every game he makes.

I know a little about Jay Little from WFRP3 - I am not a fan - especially as WFRP 1 was awesome and WFRP 2 was a near perfect piece of game design IMHO, but that's all subjective.

QuoteHowever, that's not Jason's fault, all that was chosen before he came onboard I believe.

I don't blame Jason in the least.  In fact, the quality people on this project are why I am considering giving these narrative mechanics a second chance (I say while cringing at my own words).

It does seem though that perhaps the game system is a bit of a square peg that's being forced by a business model.

I'll move my questions over to the other thread.

Cheers

Well you can cut Momentum down, and limit it only to the thing you are currently doing, making it kind of a special effects/stunt whatever.  Then remove the group Momentum Pool so no more banking Momentum.

Dooms you can remove entirely, but players without any bonus dice can only get 4 successes, so you'll have to remember that for assigning difficulty.

If you leave Fortunes as minor Luck, Fate, Bennies whatever and remove the world-editing power, then players could still reach an Epic difficulty by adding Fortune Dice.

I think a *lot* of the special abilities and capabilities, and events in adventures though are going to be tied to Dooms.  Constraining the GM and forcing tactical decisions through the Pool like the players have to make is one goal of at least one of the designers.  They like and want that Doom minigame, so removing it means you're going to have fill in some things yourself.  For example,

• PCs always go first unless the GM spends a Doom.
• PCs will surprise the guards unless the GM spends a Doom.
• The pirates will take three rounds to sabotage the mainsail unless the GM spends a Doom.
• etc.

A lot of traditional opposed task resolution is handled with those Doom spends, so it will alter the flow of the game, especially if there aren't any actual rules to replace the Doom spend with.

So you get rid of Dooms and Fortunes and cut Momentum down to size, now you have another problem, distances being in narrative Zones instead of...distances.  The whole point behind that was to have rules attached to the zones that could be invoked via Doom or Momentum like you can do in Fate.

So, once you start de-narratifying the game, there's no reason at all to keep the awkward Zones, but we don't know if the game will give us optional ranges and distances for things.

It's a very focused (almost ideologically so) narrative system.  Why you would buy one of the largest fantasy IPs in history and purposely develop a game you know would put off a good chunk of your audience- well actually I know why, if they took all the money they are putting into this Conan RPG and sunk it into marketing for the 2d20 system, it wouldn't be a quarter as useful.

Quote from: Omega;879909CPI or someone else TMed Red Sonja. Which is also in dispute as the character is a fabrication of Marvel and has nothing to do with Red Sonya of Rogatino other than both being fighting women and redheads.

She's a creation of two former Marvel writers, her adventures take place in the same world as Conan's and thus has no affiliation with Red Sonya of Rogantino, which is set in a more realistic world setting.

As for CPI, the only reason that no one challenges them over the Conan license is due to the fact that they can out lawyer anyone, and they happily will.  There is no truly legal way for them to keep it but everyone else is too afraid to fight them for it.

According to what I know of copyright law, the entire Howard estate became public domain about 1.5 to 2 years before the revision of the laws in the 60's.

Quote from: Jason D;879970I think what you're describing (if I grasp it) has merit, doesn't to my mind mesh very well with the whole "adventurer group" framework that most popular fantasy roleplaying games emphasize and support.

Problem is:  Neither does Sword and Sorcery.  It's often about a lone protagonist, maybe up to a trio, whose wide array of skills allows them to overcome whatever challenges are before them.

I love me some S&S, but let's face it, as a construct for adventuring with a group, you'd best stick to D&D or something similar.

Quote from: Madprofessor;880031This should be the ultimate Hyborian Age RPG, and as an REH disciple who has run many Hyborian Age campaigns using different systems - I should be all over this. However, despite the massive talent behind the project I cannot get myself to pull the trigger on the kickstarter.

The art, writing, production, and source material should be nothing short of brilliant, but after downloading the quickstart I simply cannot fathom the purpose of the momentum and doom mechanics that are woven into the fabric of this game system (I have no problem with the basic 2d20 short dice pool mechanic, it's actually kinda slick).

If someone could explain to me how the game-within-a-game of momentum pools and doom points have anything to do with invoking the style, feel, or concepts in REH's stories then I am all in.  Maybe it is just a lack of transparency and I can't see what these are supposed to represent or do.  I want to love this game, but what the heck are all of these meta-mechanics about, and how are they supposed to contribute to my "100% pure REH" experience?

No disrespect intended, I just don't get it

On the Conan.com forum, before it was shut down, I spent thousands of words explaining the system, the goals, and how we felt it worked, to only get a "nah, still don't like it."

Which is fine. Not all games are for all players, and it's not a lot of use trying to convince people to like things they don't like.

However, I've heard similar concerns from players before getting into the system, and once it begins, they immediately grasp the concepts and have a great time.

All of the demo games have been enthusiastically met by the players, and more than once I've heard "I was skeptical, but this really works well."

So it just might be one of those games that's not for you, but works as intended.

Quote from: CRKrueger;880114The more you act like Conan, the more your enemies act like Thoth-Amon.

Momentum, simply put is "success breeds success".  

As REH put it in People of the Black Circle, "Sorcery thrives on success, not on failure."

The game's mechanics re-enforce that with swordsmanship and other heroic activities.

There seems to be a problem with the Momentum/Doom system and I've posted a query about it on the Modiphius forums, but thought I'd post it here in case the RPG luminaries on theRPGsite have any insights (they'll certainly have comments).

Looking at the Quickstarter rules I've noticed something that looks unbalanced to me (not that I'm obsessed with game balance like some precious snowflake). Let me explain (I hope I've understood the rules correctly);

When PCs gain Momentum they must spend it or bank it, but they loose some of the banked Momentum, "At the end of each scene, and at the end of each round during an action scene, the group loses a single point of saved Momentum from their shared pool."

Firstly, I'm assuming the loss comes off the pool weather the group earned any Momentum during that scene round or not. Is that correct?

That sounds fine. Whittling away at their Momentum stops the group form accumulating a huge amount of Momentum and unbalancing the game.

NPCs also get Momentum.

One aside. The mechanics around NPCs only makes sense if they are antagonists not allies. I think this should made explicit in the rules when referring to these NPCs, that they are foes, not ally NPCs, otherwise it might get confused with the NPC members of the party.

In any case. The rules for NPC Momentum are; "Similarly, the gamemaster does not need to keep track of any Momentum earned by non-player characters. Instead, any unspent Momentum from non-player character skill tests are added to the Doom pool, and can be spent by the gamemaster as Doom."

That means, when the foe NPC gets Momentum, they can do bad things to the PCs immediately. But if they don't spend it, they don't pay any penalty like the PCs have to. Instead all that earned Momentum gets converted into Doom, which can also be used against the PCs. In addition, that Doom is not whittled away like Momentum is for the PCs. I think I'm reading the rules correctly here.

This seems unfair/unbalanced as it gives the foe NPCs an significant advantage over the PCs in the Momentum economy. It feels too GM vs players (at least for my tastes).

Quote from: Jason D;880169On the Conan.com forum, before it was shut down, I spent thousands of words explaining the system, the goals, and how we felt it worked, to only get a "nah, still don't like it."

Which is fine. Not all games are for all players, and it's not a lot of use trying to convince people to like things they don't like.

However, I've heard similar concerns from players before getting into the system, and once it begins, they immediately grasp the concepts and have a great time.

All of the demo games have been enthusiastically met by the players, and more than once I've heard "I was skeptical, but this really works well."

So it just might be one of those games that's not for you, but works as intended.

If the intention is to kill off my interest in several cool IP's, I'd say you hit bullseye. Chris & Co almost managed to turn me away from the new Mutant Chronicles, and that feat requires both significant talent and effort.

Quote from: baragei;880182If the intention is to kill off my interest in several cool IP's, I'd say you hit bullseye. Chris & Co almost managed to turn me away from the new Mutant Chronicles, and that feat requires both significant talent and effort.

Hey, snap. I've long since reconciled myself to the fact that any IP i hold an interest in will never get an RPG that i'm happy with.