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

[S'mon]

OK, not strictly an indie game, but Mongoose's Conan RPG shows a strong Forge influence.  A d20 game, it advocates a vastly more Narrativist style than standard d20-Gamism.  While it doesn't suggest out-of-chronology stories, pretty much everything else you'd see in a full Nar game is there.  I've been having a blast running it so far - there's a Story Hour of the first session at:
http://www.randomlingshouse.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3110&sid=fdac2baaf45c160c394782e353221b7d
Anyone else tried it or played it?  How did you think it stood up as a Nar game?  Or is it just highly Drifted Gamism?  >:)

[Trevis Martin]

Just as a note, if you listen to Ron's interview with Thor the Barbarian Here

He mentions that he is freinds with the Conan D20 designer and that Sorcerer and Sword has had some influence on the design.

regards,

Trevis

[S'mon]

Just as a note, if you listen to Ron's interview with Thor the Barbarian Here

He mentions that he is freinds with the Conan D20 designer and that Sorcerer and Sword has had some influence on the design.

regards,

Trevis

Hi Trevis - yes, the influence is very clear in the game & Paul Tucker credits Ron and The Forge in the Dedications at the front.  :)
Personally I think the game is brilliant at easing Gamist D&Ders like me into a more Narrative mindset while remaining very accessible to a mass audience.  The use of fate points to drive the story is at just the right level, it gives players a degree of influence without the problems of an over-heavy mechanism like the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG's Drama Points, which do a good job of simulating the workings of a Buffy episode but are so ubiquitous and all-powerful that to me they seem to rob the game of dramatic tension.

[S'mon]

& just to be clear that this isn't fully off-topic, I definitely found that reading Sorcerer & Sword before running Conan enabled me to really 'get' the game and its aims, to really run it as all it could be rather than just a pale shadow of D&D with less 'stuff' (magic gizmos, monsters, prestige classes et al).  For a supplement to a game I don't own (other than the free intro download) S&S has to have been the most influential RPG tract I've ever read.  It gave me the confidence to do the kind of things Conan advocates - starting the PCs off defeated and stripped of their gear amongst the corpses of their friends; advancing the timeline 2 years between sessions, encouraging players to develop the narrative (by use of Fate Points mechanic), in accordance with their Destinies.  Even developing non-trivialised love interests for PCs.  Where D&D is very much about the PCs' acquisition of power & stuff (wealth & magic), the aim of players in Conan seems much more to have the PCs be able to look back on their lives and say:

"That was a good life."  

Not all my players have 'got it' yet - though the one I lent S&S to has - but we're getting there.  :)

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

This is great to read, and even makes up a teeny bit for my inexplicably referring to Paul Tucker as "Paul Simon" in the interview with Thor.

The shift from Gamism to Narrativism, as I often say, is both a tiny one and a major one. It's tiny because the two modes are represented by very similar procedures of play, and it's major because the system's main role in that shift 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 (I'd hoped to see it in Spycraft but, well, didn't).

Further, it seems to me that many different versions of the principle might be applied very easily without much trouble. In the Gamism essay, I mention that "naked D20" really isn't a role-playing game at all, because both character creation and the reward system are so vague. It's not even a matter of "customizing," it's a matter of literally writing those sections. Since I see all of play, most especially resolution of any kind, literally to be a bridge between character/setting creation and the reward system, that means that you have to write a game, period, in order to write a D20 game.

The Mongoose guys understood this better than anyone, I think, and part of that might be their extensive experiences in playing the games and supplements they wrote for D&D-fantasy style D20 products. They really did, too - played the hell out of them, and doped out just how they worked in terms a lot of us would recognize here at the Forge. So no surprise, when they wanted a game that could do something else, they flowed right into writing the relevant sections of it appropriately.

S'mon, if you could, tell us more about actual play. What decisions did you and the other people make, at the table? How were the Fate points applied? And ... I shudder, but forge on ... tell us about the characters!

Best,
Ron

[S'mon]

Hi there,

S'mon, if you could, tell us more about actual play. What decisions did you and the other people make, at the table? How were the Fate points applied? And ... I shudder, but forge on ... tell us about the characters!

Hi Ron - let's see now...

We have played two sessions so far.  Both of them used published adventures, altered as necessary.  

I'll start with #1:

The first was a free adventure, 'The Slaver's Caravan',  originally written for D&D rules but set in Hyboria, downloaded from the Conan fansite hyboria.xoth.net .  It focused primarily on a caravan trip from Shadizar to Arenjun, with 'random' & scheduled events in Arenjun, and a doublecross at the end of the scenario.  It suffered from the usual 'caravan' problem of appearing very linear - to start with, the PCs had to accept employment as caravan guards or there was no adventure.  It needed editing to remove (IMO) inappropriate Gorean and Netbook of Sex references that I felt detracted from the Hyborean feel (Conan neither gets VD nor engages in BDSM sessions with slavegirls AFAIAC)  >:)
but basically seemed a sound introduction to the setting.

The characters:

The primary character in The Slavers' Caravan was Jirrigan, created by StalkingBlue, the only player to have also read Sorcerer & Sword before the game started.  Unlike the players who entered with the second scenario Beacon Point, and attempted to deck their PCs out with optimised gear in standard dungeon-crawl style, Jirrigan chose to enter the first scenario equipped with loincloth, sword, stolen shirt - and nothing else.  This immediately gave her at least two reasons to join the caravan - she needed the work, and she needed to get out of Shadizar.  Here's StalkingBlue's description of Jirrigan during her days on the Western Ocean, 2 years later (written after 2nd session):

"Jirrigan the Cimmerian: female, 24, 5'9''. The Barbarian Jirrigan has the loose, athletic build and quick grace of a born warrior. She usually wears her black hair braided down the back of her head to spring free from the nape of her neck around her shoulders. She's currently tanned nut brown from sailing the Argossean Seas, and her light grey eyes can startle you in all that darkness: with an openness that borders on naiveté but thinly veils the gleam of inborn cunning and sense of danger.
Jirrigan loves a good laugh and a good drink and, well, a good man. A true Cimmerian, she tends to meet the world bluntly head-on and tread where demons might not, but has been known to stop a knife edge's width from death and bloodshed. If there's anything that truly terrifies her, she isn't letting on. "

I think Jirrigan is a particularly cool character because she epitomises the live-loving, non-tragic sword & sorcery heroine that is so vanishingly rare in the genre (and that S&S suggests we could do with seeing more of).  Very much a female Conan, albeit less psychopathically homicidal.  At the time of entering play she was 22, had recently left Cimmeria and had little knowledge of civilisation but a sensible wariness.   Her d20 stats were a good balance of physical and mental.

Jirrigan started off taking the caravan job, wandering Shadizar - trying & failing to steal some food from a booth - meeting the permanent caravan guards, getting very drunk on southern liquor from Jeros, a veteran NPC guard, and passing out in the midst of them - not, of course, a scripted event within the scenario.  This presented a problem - lone, unconscious, scantily clad female PC (with female player) in the most wicked city in Hyborea...  I decided that the NPC caravan guards were under orders to keep the new recruits unharmed until they were due to be enslaved (at the end of the scenario).  In retrospect I could have demanded a FP at this point.  This scene was good in that it established the beginning of a mutual comradeship and respect between Jeros & Jirrigan.  Jeros was an NPC created on the spur of the moment in response to a particular need.  The player took an immediate liking to my characterisation of him, which was handy as it meant that at the end of the scenario, rather than follow the scripted plot where the PCs save a nameless guard from a bear and the guard tells the PCs of their planned enslavement, I now had Jeros who had motivation to warn Jirrigan without the need for the bear.

The second player (who I've since dropped from my game group) arrived about an hour after the first.  He grudgingly accepted the employment-railroad.  The caravan set off.  That night, I decided to use the change of watches as an opportunity for a fun bit of character development....

TBC

[S'mon]

As well as the two PCs, there were two other new NPC guards, Unegen a fiery Hyrkanian warrior-woman, and Cillian, a Brythunian youth.  Jirrigan had got to know the two a little in Shadizar, and established that Unegen was of similar experience to herself, while Cillian was a nervous, inexperienced type.  At the changing of the watch, Jirrigan decided to kick Cillian awake (she'd been kicked awake for her own watch) - Cillian took it reasonably good naturedly.

The other PC, the Shemite, decided to follow Jirrigan's lead and kick Unegen awake.  He was still a stranger to Unegen, so on being awakened she (fairly good-naturedly) grabbed his ankle and tipped him over (succeeding on opposed rolls).  The player went crimson and yelled:

"Bitch!"

Unfortunately Unegen had the Barbarian Code of Honour.  Jirrigan & her player knew what would happen next.  A swift and bloody duel followed.  I was a bit reluctant to kill a PC within 10 minutes of his appearance, so I had her sunder his bow, which annoyed him further - he drew his scimitar and waded in.  After some bad die rolls the Shemite went down 'dead' - per the rules, a Fate Point was then spent so he'd be Left For Dead (the only FP that evening).

I looked to the Jirrigan player and, thinking Gamistly said:

"The Shemite appears to still be alive." - ie "Time to roll the Heal check".

Jirrigan's player, thinking Narrativistly, and somewhat annoyed by the Shemite's player, said:

"Unegen, he's still alive!  You better finish him off!"

The Shemite had his throat slit & body rolled in the nearest ravine, which event helped bond Jirrigan more closely with Unegen, Cillian, and Jeros (now awake).

The Shemite's player went upstairs and spent the next two hours bothering my wife.  In Gamist terms the kick-awake scene was a disaster.  In Narrativist terms though, it actually made a very cool little vignette that really brought alive the Hyborian spirit.

I guess that makes it a draw.  

Next: The 2nd session.

[S'mon]

Where the first game was based on an amateur scenario from the Internet, this one had a different origin.  A player - sunbsequently unable to play - had requested to play a Pirate, inspired by Pirates of the Caribbean, and clearly had a strong character concept.  So I looked for a suitable adventure, and in my archives found "Thief's Challenge 2: Beacon Point" - copyright 1996, TSR inc;  ie this was a product from The Bad Old Days.  

It also looked perfect to introduce my players to a little Conan-style Narrativism...

The characters:

1.  Jirrigan - two years after the previous adventure, Jirrigan, now an experienced warrior (well, 2nd level) and her (platonic?) companion Cillian, the youthful NPC guard from the first game, were now, I declared, marine guards on the merchant ship Dolphin, on the western ocean.

The new PCs (player of the Shemite from 1st game not attending):

2.  Belisarius, a Hyborean mercenary   Belisarius is played by a nervous ultra-Gamist player of the 'resource allocationist' type - in other games he loves counting his crossbow bolts, planning the perfect spell combinations, thinking of every possible angle to a problem (except maybe the obvious & correct one).  He spent considerable time using his starting cash to buy multiples of each of his weapons and every cheap item on the equipment lists.  He was in for a big culture shock.

3. Kerukai, a female Hyrkanian nomad.  Kerukai's player is a keen roleplayer but so-so min-maxer, who has seemed a bit intimidated previously in our hard-Gamist D&D campaign.  She took to the Conan game like a duck to water.

Belisarius & Kerukai were, I established, acting as bodyguards to Isobel of Messantia, an NPC noble created by me for this scenario, who was taking a ransom for her husband's release to Port Tortage in the Barachas.

4.  Connor, a classic Cimmerian barbarian, also a marine guard.  Connor's player is of the kind sometimes unfairly called 'munchkin' by 'role-wimps'.  Connor has STR 20 - the highest possible - and CHA 8 - the lowest possible.  He presumably looks like a meat freezer on legs.  He bought a Bardiche, the biggest-damage weapon in the game.  Connor's player would be a surprise.

BEGINNING:

The way the scenario was written, it began with the PC(s) on board the merchant ship - it was intended for a single Thief PC.  The first two pages were a boxed-text heavy railroad where the PC would meet and fall for a Charming, Perfect & Wonderful uber-NPC (9th level Thief), then there would be a boxed-text heavy railroad in which the ship would be attacked by pirates, the PC(s) would fight but be knocked unconscious, waking up after the fight was over.

I decided to skip to the chase.

[S'mon]

"I'm about to screw you over really badly.  Have a Fate Point."

That was a trick I learned from reading the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG.  Most of the players looked puzzled, but complied.

"The battle was long and hard.  Your comrades fought well, and died bravely.  But they still died.  You awake on the bloodsoaked deck of the Dolphin amidst the bodies of the slain.  Nearby, several others are also stirring..."

That scene had always been in this mid-90s TSR scenario, a product of those highly-drifted quasi-Sim-style days, from before WotC's Return to the Dungeon - ie, return to hardcore Gamism.  Hardcore D&D Gamism was what my group had been used to ever since we met.  Several of them looked stunned.  

Belisarius' player paled as I crossed item after item from his character sheet, taken by the pirates.  I felt a bit bad, but OTOH he'd just had the Conan RPG when he was generating the PC, complete with all its admonishments against an obsession with gear, its encouragements to the GM to do exactly what I was doing.  He trembled, but remained calm.

Connor's player was allowed to keep his Bardiche - the scenario describes the PC as being able to find a weapon on deck.  He was happy.

Kerukai's player opted to spend a Fate Point to be sure of finding her bow, it being very important to her.  Jirrigan's player was calm.

The adventure as written followed the "You wake up" textblock with a text block wherein the ship hits a submerged reef and breaks up, depositing PC in the sea, then still-in-block the PC grabs some piece of debris, floats off, falls unconscious and awakens next day on the beach of the isle of Beacon Point, where the adventure proper would start.

I had decided to follow this in essence but rather than simply do read-aloud, I'd present each section in terms of a choice - with skill rolls.

Belisarius' player had equipped his PC with the heaviest armour he could afford, that would make swimming almost impossible.  Rather than just have it stolen by the pirates, I stated that a pirate had clearly tried to steal it, cutting through several straps, the given up.  I described the PCs sliding down the lurching deck towards the ocean.  The player could keep wearing it, and probably drown, or give it up and go into the future unarmoured.  

Off it went.

[S'mon]

The adventure continued with the PCs struggling to help each other survive (swim rolls), then on the island, a mostly investigative scenario involving townsfolk, a wizard, non-hostile fishmen and the hidden pirate base.  The two female PCs & players took the lead, helped by their PCs' high CHA.  The PCs killed the pirate chief, found & rescued Cillian & Isobel in the pirate base.  No Fate Points needed to be spent, although after the session ended some possibilities were raised:

Jirrigan's player mentioned spending a FP to have Cillian fall in love with her.  I explained he already was.  Kerukai's player felt likewise about a handsome youth she'd met on the island, clearly smitten with her.

Connor's player had got into the swing of things, his mighty axe hacking pirates apart with joyful abandon.  He suggested taking over the pirates and their ship and becoming a pirate chief.  This with a second-level PC.  Unthinkable in D&D.

Belisarius' player was quiet, but he said he'd enjoyed the game.  :)

[S'mon]

Here's what I told the players about Fate Points after the game:

"Just a reminder re Fate Points, as well as being used directly to stay alive you can use them to help develop the narrative in accordance with your player & PC goals - eg Peter's PC might spend an FP to have his employer Lady Isobel fall in love with him, Lucy's PC Kerukai could spend a FP to hear a rumour that her father was still alive or word of the sorcerer hunting her, Kerstin's PC Jirrigan might spend an FP to have a surprise meeting with an old ally like Jeros the Kothian. Such FP uses have to be requested rather than just stated of course, but if they're reasonable the GM (me) will try to work them in ASAP."

I think in summary it'd be fair to say that we're still novices in a Narrativist style and the Conan game includes enough Gamist elements to make the change fairly painless.  

The first scenario, Slavers' Caravan, appeared quite linear, but it went off in several unexpected durations - the early death of an extraneous PC, the primary PC forging a friendship with an NPC who became her longtime companion ('little friend' in Xena-speak) :) and gaining of a spontaneously-created NPC as a likely future contact.  At this point I wasn't suggesting Fate Point uses other than staying alive.

The second scenario Beacon Point worked well - almost surprisingly well - in introducing a mix including some firmly Gamist D&Ders into a new style of play, and encouraging them to think of their PCs as protagonists rather than as a tactical fireteam (my regular D&D style).  Fate Point use was minimal without really being used for story development, but is likely to happen in the future.

In both cases there have been strong signs of players developing 'authorial' stance  rather than pawn or actor stance, I thought.
A lot of behaviour seemed guided by what would make the funnest story - eg Jirrigan's exploring a magic-technological lighthouse and hopping into bed with Antonus the elderly wizard lighthouse-keeper (purely to sleep!) didn't gain them any information or XP, but it was hilarious and really pointed out her unique worldview.

One thing I did notice though was that the Conan game still uses the tactical D&D battlegrid rules, which highly encourages a certain tactical mode of thought in combat that tends to creep into other elements.  It might have been better if Mongoose had discarded the grid for a more literary style.

[Ian Sturrock]

I certainly read both Sorcerer and S&S cover to cover before starting to write Conan -- I'd been meaning to pick up Sorcerer in any case, after its Diana Jones success, and so many people had spoken for so long about the usefulness of S&S as a Conan resource that it would have seemed mad not to read it.

I did toy with the idea of including something on non-linear gaming, but figured that was possibly a little too outre for the typical d20 market.  Hopefully though a few people will pick up S&S and use it to supplement the Conan RPG in exactly that way.

The idea of parting PCs from their kit isn't entirely a Sorcerer pickup, though; it was clear from the Conan stories that such a convention was entirely appropriate, and I'd seen it before in Dying Earth, Amber, and BESM.

I was really pleased with the work I did writing the Fate Points section though, and would hope to see something similar used by other d20 games. Again there's probably a bit of an Amber influence there.

[joshua neff]

Interestingly, back when Ron was first rewriting Sorcerer & Sword for non-PDF format, he told me about the whole "non-linear gaming" thing. I said, "You know what you could do that with? D&D & other d20 games." I had this idea that you could make a 1st level character, make the same character at 5th level, the same character at 10th level, & maybe at 20th level. And then play them out of order. Maybe your PC at 5th level has a magic sword, but doesn't have the sword at 10th level. What happened to it? That can be answered through play.

[S'mon]

Hi Ian - great game BTW! :)

From me & my group's perspective I think the choice not to advocate non-linear gaming was the right one; it was the one element in S&S I really struggled with, trying to see how it could work with any group of more than one player.  In short, I think it would require either, as one player suggested, a Moorcockian 'nomad of the time streams' campaign where different PCs did not inhabit the same linear time-stream, or else have one true-protagonist PC and the other players merely there to play sidekicks & foils.

Likewise, I think the Conan game's Fate Points struck exactly the right balance - not too few, not too many, neither too dominant (the usual failing) nor too weak.  As I mentioned above, I bought Eden's Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG, a game which appears Narrativist on first glance (all about choices), but IMO ends up being a hard-Sim of the tv show's plot processes, to (IMO) the severe detriment of any suspension of disbelief.  
It's fantastically well written by CJ Carella, it looks beautiful, but the Drama Points totally dominate the game as written.  In combat every 'mook' monster has a few, and victory is determined purely by who runs out of DPs first.  Yet the game requires DPs to allow heroic PCs like Buffy and 'normal' PCs like Xander to exist in the same party, so they can't easily be discarded.  Some of their uses, like spontaneous healing & self-resurrecting PCs, may emulate the show well but are too cheesy for me to stomach, either.
After seeing how the Conan game deals with the same issue so much better I'm planning to change the Buffy DPs so they function in the same manner as Conan FPs, which I think should change the game from unplayable (to me) to workable.

[Ian Sturrock]

Yeah, I think non-linear gaming would work very well for one-on-one play. I did write up a section on one-on-one, or one-on-two, play in Conan. It didn't make the finished game, for space reasons, but I believe it's been published in Signs & Portents. The idea is that for one-on-one play, the player takes on the role of someone Conan-like -- could be Conan himself, even. While no more powerful than other Conan characters, s/he would have a considerably wider range of skills -- Conan is never constrained in the stories by not knowing how to decipher an ancient manuscript or sail a pirate ship. One-on-two play takes a similar approach, but the second player's character changes depending on the adventure -- in effect, s/he plays the major NPC of that story, perhaps an ally of the 'protagonist', perhaps an enemy. Adding non-linear play to that would be a cinch, I think.

Your Actual Play posts look fun, BTW -- I'm hoping to actually get a chance to play or run the game myself over the next few months. Poor old Shemite player -- but then, as Mencken put it, "Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and begin slitting throats." I suspect the same applies to normal Cimmerian women, but more so.