the coming of CONAN

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

the next time you correct my spelling I"m killing myself.

anyway, basing your impressions of Conan on Arnold is a tragedy. It would be better, actually, to even base it on a reading of Cerebus.

[Slant]

Today I finished reading the Conan RPG, and lo, 'twas pretty freaking great!  Quite possibly the second best RPG on the market today.  It is based on D20, but the differences give it a very distinct flavor.  Combat is faster and more bone-crunching.  Magic plays in a much more realistic fashion than your standard D20 mainstay.  I could go on and on, but I will keep it brief.  Suffice it to say, the next game I run will prolly be a Conan one.  I am already putting together ideas in my mind: images of a long-abandoned iron city on an uncharted island, a temple to a religion declared heretical since the dawn of time, and a woman who's unearthly beauty has cursed her from ever leading a normal life.  Oh, and there will be man-apes.  LOTS of man-apes.  

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

It's the man-apes that always get to me. Somehow, it seems so Lovecraftian...

I've finished reading the mechanics myself, and I either need to re-read or I missed somethings. I don't see that combat is that much faster. If anything, it's more complicated, what with two defense values and then damage reduction that forces you to figure out how much damage your damage roll really did.

Also, sorcery has thrown me for a loop. OK, so you learn styles, but does that give you access to all the spells? Apparently not, because you can also learn greater spells. Which I don't see distinguished from regular spells. I mean, I like the feel of it, but there are some issues to work through.

[Slant]

The way I read it, sorcery works like this:  When you gain a potential sorcery feat you can either (1) learn a form of sorcery you don't already know and get the basic spell in that list, or (2) gain an advanced spell in a form of sorcery that you already know.  Since magic is so much more rare and dangerous in the Conan world, a sorcerer with 8-9 spells in a smattering of styles can really be a major threat.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

well, i have no objection at all to slow advancement, but I went through the Scholar class description AND the magic section again last night, and while your description seems like a logical explanation, it also appears to be a leap of logic. It never expressly says what spells you get (or don't get) when you gain a sorcery style. I praised Mongoose a lot for B5, and while I mostly like Conan, I'm going to have to hti them a couple times int he review in the category of too many races (all of them human, incidentally, which is a *cool* think about it at least) and not enough explanation on magic.

One thing I really liked was the blood on all the weapon illustrations