[Conan] anyone else playing Conan with Sorcerer & Sword?

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I am so boggled by that dialogue that I don't even know what to say.

Except ...

1. Character, Situation, Setting, System, and Color are not narrative elements, although they can be. They are imaginative elements. I treat the term "narrative" much more narrowly than a lot of people seem to; it is more specific than "chain of fictional events" and literally requires Premise.

2. Simulationism as I define it is rabidly concerned with internal (imaginary) cause. It is predicated on focusing on that cause to the Nth degree. I wrote a whole essay about nothing else; its most important section is called "Internal cause is king." John, I can't imagine what you must be thinking to suggest otherwise.

So I'm throwing up my hands. Screw it and think what you like. But S'mon? Don't get hornswoggled by this noise.

Best,
Ron

[Alan]

... leaves some room for cinematic descriptions of actions and with the Fate Points, limited player influence on the outcome of certain scenes and (if the GM allows and you haven't burnt your Fate Points on gamist stuff) on bits of Plot input.

I think you're actually drifting the text as written toward a gamist interpretation.  On page 68, the rules provide four ways to use Fate points: Left for Dead, Mighty Blow, Repentance, and Destiny.

Left for Dead by itself doesn't seem to support any particular agenda.  

Of the four uses, only Mighty Blow has great gamist potential.  I suppose you could igore the four other options - which the game text clearly emphasizes - and only use FP for Mighty Blows.  That might be gamist drift.  In fact, reading the text, I think Mighty Blow is intended to allow players a dramatic end to a dramatic fight - an element that approachs (but is not specifically) a narrativist supporting mechanic.

Repentance is phrased in terms of a character's moral decision.  It reduces Corruption points - which a sorcerer, in particular, will gain as a result of narrativist decisions about how he gains power.  

Finally, Destiny isn't about manupulating a challenge so you can win.  It's about giving the player power to add to the game.  Sure, a stingy GM can disallow destiny requests and hold to his or her illusionist or gamist style of play - but again, the game text supports liberal allowance of players Fate Points - after all, they don't get that many.

Finally, consider the reward system.  The creative agenda that gets rewarded is the one that sees the most play.  In other words, the reward system leads players to choose one agenda over another, allowing the concerns of the unrewarded agendas to take a back seat (not to eliminate them, only to hold them less important.)

In the Conan RPG, the recommended rewards are Fate points.  XP, the traidtional reward of a d20 game are still present, but they are played down by simply awarding the same number to every character with no regard for achievement or behavior in play.

This leaves Fate points as the primary reward of play.  Look at where Fate points come from: achieving goals.  Again, this might be "meet the challenge" kind of goals, but the text encourages broader, more dramatic goals - those that allow players to explore premise.  Again I think this is supported by the game text.

----------------

I do have to agree that the Conan RPG authors didn't present their Fate mechanic in clear, unequivocal terms - just as The Riddle of Steel Spiritual Attributes seem tentative in some ways.  On the other hand, evidence such as all the supporting text and gm text, and the fact that the game authors cite Ron Edwards (Sword and Sorcerer) and Jake Norwood (The Riddle of Steel_ as influences, points to an intent to put player choices about a thematic question as high on the priority as possible.  

No of course, you can take any ambiguity, or any lone mechanic and emphasize their gamist possiblities, but I assert that that is clearly not the intent of the authors.

[S'mon]

I think you're actually drifting the text as written toward a gamist interpretation...  

Alan, I think your analysis is a good one - the intent of the text seems primarily Narrativist (as I understand it) but remains open to a largely Gamist interpretation by primarily-Gamist players (like me, StalkingBlue, and most d20 players I think) - you can see this on some threads on the Conan forum.  I think this may have been intentional, to support easing d20 Gamists into Narrativism as a kind of 'gateway drug' :) - Certainly when I've discussed introducing Narrativist elements to people's games on the Conan forum the response has been very enthusiastic.

Ron, many thanks for your input - what you say makes sense to me (albeit still hard to get my head around).

I've been using GNS in discussions (eg with StalkingBlue) primarily as the following:

Gamist - emphasis on the Challenge for the players ('step on up')
Simulationist - emphasis on Simulation (of setting, story, genre)
Narrativist - emphasis on the dramatic Narrative ('story now')

Obviously these elements are not mutually exclusive and may not conform to current use here, although it seems close to what I got from reading Sorcerer & Sword.  Breaking it down like that has enabled us to get a better feel for what games designers intended when they created particular games and sub-games, and has enabled us to get a better feel for what we want out of a particular game, which may not conform to what the designers intended.

Eg: StalkingBlue GMs the 'Midnight' D&D setting - a Gamist d20 base, but the designer's intent seems confused & unclear.  It most resembles the 'Sim-drifted' 2e AD&D stuff; this confusion comes out both in the written Midnight rules, GMing stuff in the book, and online discussions by the designers.  Some Midnight GMs have embraced it wholeheartedly as a Sim-style game and have proposed ways to cut down on the Gamist elements, it seems to us.  SB has been able to identify the problem from our perspective, and has worked to alter the emphasis of the Midnight game away from Sim and back towards the Gamism we decided we want from the setting.  GNS theory, even our incomplete understanding of it, made this possible and IMO has had a very positive impact on our game.

[Bifi]

Bifi - Conan RPG is Gamist with Narr tendencies, definitely not Sim I'd say.  

...

Overall, d20, derived from DnD, in its turn derived from wargaming, is a Gamist system.

...

So when the Conan designers opted for d20 rules, they essentially elected to make a Gamist game.

I am coming to think of D20 as a kind of High Concept (Simulationist - Bifi) chassis, a very new and interesting development in RPG design.

I'm sorry I haven't read the Conan RPG text to be able to actively enter this discussion. What the second quote means, however, is that d20 isn't purely a Gamist system (what especially cannot be told about all other d20 games, in my view especially those heavy on Setting).

But from the previous posts it seems Conan is a Gamist -> Nar game.

[S'mon]

I am coming to think of D20 as a kind of High Concept (Simulationist - Bifi) chassis, a very new and interesting development in RPG design.

I'm sorry I haven't read the Conan RPG text to be able to actively enter this discussion. What the second quote means, however, is that d20 isn't purely a Gamist system (what especially cannot be told about all other d20 games, in my view especially those heavy on Setting).

I definitely don't see d20 as a 'Simulationist Chassis'  :) - GURPs, maybe, could be classified as such, but core d20 (the base of 3e D&D) exhibits an almost visceral hostility to Simulationist concerns.  In conflicts between
1) realism/plausibility/suspension of disbelief and
2) Making a good/'Balanced' Game

The design consistently opts for (2).  All d20 forum discussions on rules matters immediately hit this conflict - between design-as-modelling-something an design-as-making-good-game.  an example we're currently discussing is the 5' step rule - according to d20 rules an archer in melee combat with a swordsman can 5' step away from him and shoot 6 second's worth of arrows into him (which could be 5-6 arrows at higher level) without provoking 'attacks of opportunity'.  In Sim terms it's ridiculous, but in practice it helps keep D&D archers 'balanced' with melee fighters in the close-quarters dungeon environment, ie it arguably makes for a 'good game'.

Where I'd agree with Ron's point is that the d20 rules as such don't really tell you what you're supposed to do with the game - what the goal is; although I guess 'garnering XP' is the usual answer, which is normally supported by Gamist beat challenge-get XP link.  And d20 rules have certainly been used as the basis for non-Gamist games by third-party and other designers - lots of Sim-style games, and now (with Conan) Nar-style, too.  But IMO the intent of the creators of d20 was clearly not to create a good ruleset for Sim-style games.  They created a good ruleset for a Gamist game - 3e Dungeons & Dragons - and then allowed it to be applied to other sorts of games.

[Alan]

I am coming to think of D20 as a kind of High Concept (Simulationist - Bifi) chassis, a very new and interesting development in RPG design.

I'm sorry I haven't read the Conan RPG text to be able to actively enter this discussion.  ...
[omissions]
But from the previous posts it seems Conan is a Gamist -> Nar game.

Ah, but in this very thread, Ron commented:

... "naked D20" really isn't a role-playing game at all, because both character creation and the reward system are so vague. ... it's a matter of literally writing those sections. ... that means that you have to write a game, period, in order to write a D20 game.

and:

... the system's main role in [the shift from Gamism to Narrativism] is always the reward system. What Paul & Co. did with the Conan game represents, to me, the first fully applied version of this principle to D20 ...

It sounds like he's saying that the Conan RPG implimentation of d20 was designed to support narrativist play.

[Ron Edwards]

Alan's nailed it. I strongly recommend that no one ever refer to d20 as a this-or-that "game" in terms of GNS - not because it's omni-GNS or whatever, but because d20 per se is not actually a system. It has to be built further in order to be used, in each individual case.

Therefore we could compare Conan d20 vs. Mutants & Masterminds vs. Sorcerer, but not "naked d20" vs. (say) TROS or GURPS.

Best,
Ron

[Scripty]

I agree with Ron and, although I snapped up the Conan d20 RPG and read it all from front to back, I'm not sure that this incarnation of d20 really does much more to clarify the system.

First off, as regards rewards:

Experience Points are (pardon the pun) pointless. Not only can PCs run games out of chronological order but there's no real way, in the game, to get Experience Points by *doing* anything. That's what Fate Points are for (kind of). But, then again, Fate Points seemed to me like Buffy's Drama Points with the serial numbers filed off. Don't get me wrong, I like Buffy's Drama Point system. I used to use something similar in my own d20 games. But I'm not sure the addition of Fate Points, on their own, significantly shifted the d20 system to the point where it can easily facilitate narrativist play.

The addition of things like Corruption, Codes of Honor and even a spliced together "relationships" bonus (as memory serves) seem more along the lines of exploring premise, etc. But these are all add-ons to what is, at its heart, the d20 system.

I liked the Conan game. I think it's hands down the best representation of Hyboria in an rpg. But, when all was said and done, I realized it was still just d20. Sure, I *could* run a narrativist style game with Conan. But I could just as easily run it Sim or Gamist. IMO, d20's reward system is so foggy that it could be run in anyway that someone might want... with some work...

But some of the hurdles that I see facing Narrativist play with Conan d20 are:

1 - Feats, feats and more feats: I liked the spells stuff. That seemed to gel with the setting and all. But, IMO, feats are just way too much. IMO, either have attributes or have feats. My beef with feats is that, more often than not, they get in the way of a good story. IME, they encourage min-maxing. They encourage rules-lawyering. Overall, they don't add to the story as much as they distract from it. And not in a HeroQuest-counting-up-your-auto-augments kind of way either. IME, feats pull a story to a screeching halt because players have to stop, open up the book and review what it is a feat does exactly and in no uncertain terms. Learning rules is one thing. But trying to milk one's feat for an advantage in the story is not narrativist play, IMO. Neither is building one's character from the beginning to be the biggest feat monster imaginable. IMO, that just encourages people to focus on things other than premise and conflict. Premise becomes something *outside* of the game and removed from its reward systems. Character advancement, or rather the management of that advancement, becomes the focus, IME. Everything "in game" is predominantly just an engine to further the game of "character advancement". Conan, IMO, expanded on this.

2 - d20's pass/fail mechanics: IMO, pass/fail mechanics and narrativist play just don't mix. Win/lose, Hit/miss, do it/don't really don't leave a lot of room in which to manuever. I've tried playing d20 with a narr bent. It was hard. Real hard. There really isn't a gauge of success, although one could easily be extrapolated, but try explaining that to the d20 vet.

3 - The ubiquity of d20: IMO, one of the things biting any d20 game in the backside is the fact that the majority of players out there already think they know how to play it. So their play styles and expectations carry over, usually from D&D which is where the majority of d20 players first learned how to play d20. This is a real problem in trying to play d20 in any way outside of what these players already know, IME. Believe me, I've tried. I've tried a LOT of things. Drama Points. Changing the pass/fail mechanics. Changing the reward system. But, at the end of the day, I was left with a game that was only nominally d20. It had some similarities, but (after 50 or so pages of house rules) it really wasn't d20 anymore. And I was still wrestling with players who were playing it as if it were.

4 - The primacy of combat: Sure, Conan stories have lots of combat in it. He whoops up on pirates, picts and giant pythons. Don't forget evil sorcerers either! But the Conan d20 rpg follows in D&D's footsteps by making combat resolution its 800-pound flagship. Try to keep the focus on premise when you're measuring out 5-foot steps. It's an act of will, let me tell you! Sure, you can take out AoOs. But then you screw the benefit of reach weapons and, worse, you lose a lot of the kewl feats that give the character classes their distinctive feel. I looked into ignoring AoOs in Conan but it wasn't worth it, IMO. d20 is anything but modular. Conan d20 is no different. In the end, it's d20 and you'll have to jump through hoops to make the non-important bar fight last only 15 minutes when the players break out the battleboard. Sure, you can tweak it to run however you want, but I thought the point of games like Sorcerer, My Life with Master, etc., is that you wouldn't have to *tweak* them to explore premise. You wouldn't have to ignore (or rewrite) the rules to play 'Story Now'. In this arena, IMO, Conan d20 suffers from the same problem as every other d20 game out there.

5 - The system's bipolar rewards: It's arguable whether or not d20, on its own, even has a reward system. In D&D, you get points from killing monsters. But you could also get points for using diplomacy, if the GM likes the way you used it. But what exactly does d20 reward?? Advancement is gauged in experience points and, if you're getting a set number of experience points per game (or a set percentage of whatever the party as a whole received), where does the reward system kick in, exactly?? Other systems, like Mutants & Masterminds and Conan, have introduced outside elements that *could* serve as a reward system but, IMO, these add-ons just don't cut it. And why have experience points at all if Fate Points are your reward system??

Don't mistake me. Conan d20 is a well-written (though poorly edited) game. I think it kicks some serious Hyborean butt. I'd love to play it, but I would never run it. I started putting stuff together for a game of it but then I realized, in the end, it was still just d20. d20 with some shiny, dragon-inlay, 22 inch rims... but still d20. And d20 doesn't *do* anything. It's the silly putty of RPGs. It seems to flirt with all the different styles of play but settles down with no one style in particular. Not that this is a requirement of mine, mind you. Just that I was all hyped that I was going to finally do Narr play with d20 after reading Conan and then I introduced it to a few friends of mine, heard their reactions, and realized I'd been here before.

For my money, I'd say that the Unknown Armies system or something like Sorcerer would go farther towards the goal of Narr play in Hyborea. Perhaps we could use Conan d20 to start a new categorization:

GNS heartbreakers.

But I would like to thank Ian for a beautiful and wonderfully well-researched sourcebook on Conan's world. Too bad we couldn't have dual-statted them with Sorcerer & Sword...

[S'mon]

Scripty - while I obviously don't share your hostility to d20 and I don't see d20 as amorphous or undefined - to me, it's clearly a Gamist system (and it is a system, even if the SRD lacks XP-award or advancement rules in order for WoTC to sell more PHBs) at heart, and I think your criticisms of eg the Feat system supports this, I generally agree with your opinion, especially as regards the d20 battlemat combat system.  It's about as un-Narrativist as you can possibly get.  d20's pass/fail mechanic hurts Nar play too, I think, though this can be abrogated a little by a flexible GM.

[Scripty]

Scripty - while I obviously don't share your hostility to d20 and I don't see d20 as amorphous or undefined ...  It's about as un-Narrativist as you can possibly get.  d20's pass/fail mechanic hurts Nar play too, I think, though this can be abrogated a little by a flexible GM.

I'm sorry. I've given you the wrong impression. I'm not "hostile" to d20. Compared to AD&D, IMO, d20 is a vast improvement on prior incarnations of, well, D&D. If I'm hostile towards anything, it's the notion that d20 is a panacea for all systems. It's not, IMO. d20 does a few things pretty well. I'm not sure exactly what it's designed to do on the whole, other than make character advancement a serious part of the game's entertainment factor. But, much like Ron, I don't see it as particularly suited towards Gamist play or particularly suited towards Sim.

I'm one of those weirdoes who thinks that system does matter. I've actually tested that theory to a good degree and found that, in most cases, it holds true. For example, I split a superhero adventure in half once and played the first half with Mutants & Masterminds and the last half with an extremely simplified and modified MURPG system with all the narrative dials cranked to 11. The result? The Mutants & Masterminds game played out like a high-powered D&D game. The MURPG game played out like a comic book penned by Ron Edwards himself. IMO, system does matter. If you want to encourage Narr play in Conan's world, IMO, there are much more direct paths to take than winding through d20.

I'm also one of those weirdoes that pushes a system's limits, cranks its dials and tweaks it past the point of breaking. I like to see what a system is *really* good at. IMO, d20 is really good at making the mundane routine of combat interesting IF COMBAT IS RUN CORRECTLY. d20 gives lots of options during combat; fighting defensively, feats, etc. IMO, however, this detracts from whatever story elements happen to be in play at the time. Nobody much cares who killed the Duke's brother or is banging his wife when they're looking up their feats and trying to figure out if they have enough gumption to Move-By Attack the sucker. So, IMO, d20 takes what used to be a very boring and rote "roll to hit, roll damage" routine and spices it up. For that, I applaud it.

But just like I wouldn't try to run Call of Cthulhu with MURPG and expect the same outcome, I wouldn't run Nicotine Girls with d20 and expect the experience to even come close. One system, IMO, cannot be all things. I've run some whacky combos in the past but, mostly, that's to see at where a system's limitations are. IME, MURPG (with a good deal of glossing over the incoherent bits of the system) is great for supers and pulp action. IME, HeroQuest is great for soapy drama, drama in general and, yep, supers too. Unknown Armies is good for making people fear for their lives. And d20 is good for dungeon crawls. I wouldn't run a dungeon crawl with HeroQuest, at least not a run-of-the-mill dungeon crawl. Now, if I had some set up with conflicts and so-and-so's clan was in danger and needed such-and-such from Cavern X, that would be different, but I wouldn't run it room-by-room. IME, it just wouldn't fly. Then again, I wouldn't run a pulpy-action game like Star Wars with the Unknown Armies system. One lucky stormtrooper roll and (oops!) Luke's dead!

Do I have a hostility towards HeroQuest?! Lord no. Do I have a hostility toward UA or MURPG? Nope. Just like I don't have a hostility toward d20. IME, it does dungeon crawls and games based around similar activities very well. But, you know what? That's what it was designed to do with D&D3e, IMO.

I don't see it as hostility as much as I see it as a realism of a game's efficiencies. IME, d20 is efficient at making drawn out combats tactically interesting and making characters interesting over long periods of play by means of its character advancement system. I don't see d20 as particularly efficient at making social interaction or roleplaying an integral part of the gaming experience. It just doesn't support it that much and pretty well leaves it out there as something tangential to the game of character advancement and combat resolution, IME. That doesn't mean that a group couldn't have hours and hours of fun playing d20 in a Narr style. Certainly not. It just means, IME, that a group will have to work harder to do this and make it interesting for them than it would with a game like Sorcerer, which has premise practically hard-wired into its system, or HeroQuest, which has relationships, etc., hard-wired into its system. And I do think it takes a *group* to run d20 Narr. Based on my own experience, a GM is not enough in this category and, also BoME, will constantly be fighting against players' existing expectations of how d20 is *supposed* to be played, no matter how erroneous those expectations may be. Hence I note that the baggage other gamers bring to a d20 game is just as big of a hurdle as the primacy of combat in the system or the pass/fail system. All those can be easily attenuated if you have the right group. But, IMO, it would take the whole group to sign on and I mean really sign on with this.

In the same manner, however, I think it would take a good deal of work to make your average "here's a dungeon, let's go loot it" fun for the same group using a game of HeroQuest. There's only so many Extended Contests you can use before the point gets a little crispy. d20, IMO, is geared more towards this type of situation. But that's not a bad thing.

How does this fit in with Conan?

IMO, it fits in great if you want to run Thing in the Crypt or Tower of the Elephant. But, along the same lines, I think it would require more work if you're wanting some epic tale of loves lost and empires won. IMO, packaging Conan d20 as a game that promotes Narr style play is misleading. Sure, you can play it narr. Heck, you could play Rolemaster narr if you wanted. But pitching any d20 game as facilitating narr is denying, IMO, the fact that the system at its core does not facilitate narr play any more than Marvel Super Heroes does. Adding Fate Points, Corruption, etc. etc., IME, are nice. They're steps in a direction, IMO. But that direction is set aside when the meat of d20 comes floating to the surface. No matter how you cut it, IME, 'Story Now' becomes 'Story Later' the very second that the DM says: "Roll initiative." Other people's experience may not mirror mine. That's good and healthy. But I own and read the Conan game. It's beautiful and I'm thankful I have it. But I don't think it would be any easier to run a Narr game with its ruleset than it would be to run a Narr game with AD&D. If I were looking to run a Narr game in the Conan setting, I'd look elsewhere personally. But the Conan book is still a gem for the setting/background info if nothing else, IMO.

That's just my experience speaking through my opinion.

[Bifi]

Scripty,

I actually have exactly the same experience with d20. You put it well, especially with the 'Story Later' part.

Bifi

[John Kim]

IME, d20 is efficient at making drawn out combats tactically interesting and making characters interesting over long periods of play by means of its character advancement system. I don't see d20 as particularly efficient at making social interaction or roleplaying an integral part of the gaming experience. It just doesn't support it that much and pretty well leaves it out there as something tangential to the game of character advancement and combat resolution, IME.  

How does this fit in with Conan?

IMO, it fits in great if you want to run Thing in the Crypt or Tower of the Elephant. But, along the same lines, I think it would require more work if you're wanting some epic tale of loves lost and empires won.
...
No matter how you cut it, IME, 'Story Now' becomes 'Story Later' the very second that the DM says: "Roll initiative." Other people's experience may not mirror mine. That's good and healthy. But I own and read the Conan game.  

Well, I don't know -- that's why I'll be trying it out at KublaCon.  I intend my game to be heavy on the action and combat, and "Tower of the Elephant" is certainly the sort of great story I'd be trying to emulate.  Though I'd put "Red Nails" as my true ideal, since I want some sex in it.  Anyhow, I want combats to be central to the story, and especially combat against monsters.  

My goal is the opposite of what you say...  I want combats to be centerpieces of the story, and I'll be very carefully considering them as such.  I'll definitely be drawing on my Champions experience here.  Something that people often miss, I think, is how superheroic and fantasy fights are symbolic, whether intended or not.  The powers function as  externalizations of the inner issues.  I hope to do something similar in Conan.  

I'm not sure how it will work out in practice -- I'll definitely post here afterwards.  Personally, I tried a few months of D&D3 when it came out, then dropped it as I found it uninteresting.  I considered d20 as a system for my Vinland campaign, but then soon dropped the idea as a poor fit.  But offhand I don't think that it is a terrible fit for Conan.

[S'mon]

While my gut feeling was also that square-counting d20 combat was unsuited to a Nar game, I have to say I haven't really noticed a problem so far.    Just thinking narrativistly as a GM re what the NPCs (can) do, rather than thinking of it as a skirmish wargame, seemed to help a lot.  Being very flexible re what Fate Points could do helped too - eg in the last session the PCs were trying to escape the pirate base, one Cimmerian barbarian PC was incapacitated early but I let him spend his FPs to act normally and hold off hordes of pirates from the jetty while the other PCs grabbed a ship and set off.  The Cimmerian even survived that battle by a last minute break for freedom, but at 0 FP, ie pretty much 'marked for death'.  When later ambushed by the villagers in league with the pirates he was knocked down & had his throat slit, but again that gave his two companions a chance to escape.
As long as GM & players are in a Narrativist mood it seemed to me that the d20 combat system was not nearly as intrusive as I'd have expected beforehand.

[Kerstin Schmidt]

... leaves some room for cinematic descriptions of actions and with the Fate Points, limited player influence on the outcome of certain scenes and (if the GM allows and you haven't burnt your Fate Points on gamist stuff) on bits of Plot input.

I think you're actually drifting the text as written toward a gamist interpretation.  On page 68, the rules provide ...

I wasn't analysing the rules text, I was reporting my experience with actual play.  Authors' intent matters little IME if it doesn't carry through into the actual game - my point above was that if someone doesn't enjoy the d20 system, they're unlikely to get Narr enjoyment out of the Conan RPG.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I think this thread has moved well past its original topic. It's time to close it and to take its various new topics into separate threads.

Best,
Ron