Conan: The Roleplaying Game, 2nd Edition

by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan

'Know, o prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars - Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyberborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west. Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet.' The Second Edition of the wildly sucessful Conan roleplaying game revises and clarifies the existing rules, bringing in the best innovations and optional rules from the supplements, and offering new combat and tactical options for games masters and players, as well as crossover rules for the new Age of Conan wargame!

Genres: Role Playing Games, Fantasy, Pulp

420 pages, Hardcover

First published September 26, 2007

Reviews

[Krzysztof · Rating 3 out of 5]

Skimmed it, mostly breezing through mechanics and paying more attention to the setting info.

Good, comprehensive basic book which covers a lot of stuff that would often be left out of RPG corebooks and spread over expansions... however, basing it in d20 is doing it a terrible disservice. As much as the mechanic may be more at place here than in other settings (*cough* Star Wars: Saga edition *cough*), it still pretty much sucks. It offers an incredible amount of combat options which differ in minute details, all the while not really giving much space for non-combat solutions... but given the nature of the source material that is understandable, which is why I'm letting it slide.

Still, this will require some reworking on my part to make it less densely packed with circumstantial modifiers for every imaginable situation and concepts forcefully shoe-horned into the rigid, overdone, antiquated mechanic.

[Periklis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really liked this RPG. Nice combat system, well-written adaptation of Howard's material, but the printing on this edition (B&W) is horrible. Apart from the HC binding, the book reads & feels like a cheap Print on Demand copy. It's a pity Moongoose lost the license to this. It could be great.

[Tim Bisaillon]

Not a bad edition