Using the Conan Rules in Homebrew World (2024)

What do you all think? I've been looking at trying some different systems beyond vanilla D&D and someone pointed at Conan. I've had a look at the samples supplied and I like the looks of it. What I'm curious about is how well it would migrate to a setting that was my own. It looks, from what I've seen anyway, that I could do it, but I would like the opinions of some people who have actually used the system.

Thanks in advance

Well, the game itself is very highly tuned towards roleplay in REH's Hyborian age. The races obviously are designed to mimic the peoples of Hyboria but there is plenty of other setting-specific material in the game. So you will either need to be willing to "file off the serial numbers" to make it fit into your homebrew or else be prepared to do some work to rip out the setting material and replace with your homebrew.

That being said... it is a great ruleset for running a low magic swords 'n sorcery game. If your homebrew is the type of setting where you would not only see a character like Conan being appropriate but see it as a setting where Conan would feel right at home then I imagine you will have an easier time converting this game to your homebrew than you would with many other systems.

Hope that helps.

Aelric said:

Well it seemed to work for me.I wanted to low magic setting for my world and conan gave me what I wanted.

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What things did you change/adjust, and to what degree?

I can say authoratively that the Conan system is awesome for more than just Hyboria/Howard. Besides using the system for Hyborian games (which is what I do most frequently), I've also run a game set in a low-magic, high fantasy world (Elves, Dwarves, giants, dragons, etc), and three quasi-historical and historical-fantasy settings (12th century Crusades, 2nd Century Rome, 15th century War of the Roses).

Generally, there isn't much that needs to be changed. Most things work as-written. All you have to do is drop the flavour text and change it for your own. The races, for instance, are simply a collection of stats. Change Cimmerian to Gaul or Aquilonian to German and the game still works perfectly.

Sorcery, in my games, has always stayed and is relegated to the same role it serves in most of my Conan games -- where very few people are actually spellcasting scholars, and even fewer are PCs.

The biggest changes for me have always been in the equipment section. My Crusades and Roman games required a lot of tweaking to the available weapons and armour to fit the period. Even so, I didn't have to do much of anything to make it work, besides drop a few items that shouldn't be available (like plate armour and such).

If you're running a homebrew setting where the equipment section wouldn't need any changes, you'll likely find that almost nothing, rule-wise, needs to be changed, unless you have vastly different ideas on how spellcraft should work in your setting. I like the way it works in Conan, and that's how I use it in homebrew settings, so that's never been an issue for me.

That reminds me (off-topic comment forthcoming):

Even though I don't always run Hyboria as the setting, I do try to keep the feel of the Conan game -- hard, fast, bloody. My players are totally in the spirit of it, bless 'em.

So, the players, during a game set around the end of the 12th century in Southern Italy, are on a ship to England. Storms hit, the ship is going to be consumed by massive waves. That was intended to be the end of that night's session, as we were way too tired to go on. So, knowing the session is over for the night, one of my players stays in character and says "I grit my teeth, bare my steel, and face down the wave."

Me: "Huh?"
Player: "I attack the wave."
Me: "What?!"
Player #2: "Me too, I free an arrow from my quiver and attack the wave."
Me: "Okay guys, wait, hold on. . . ."
Player #3: "Totally, my axe cuts the air in deadly arcs as I advance on the coming wave."

Me: "Okay! You guys cannot attack a freakin' wave. It's water. W-A-T-E-R"

Player #2: "This is Conan. We can attack anything that can attack us."

I found it hard to argue.

They still lost.

Damien said:

Me: "Okay! You guys cannot attack a freakin' wave. It's water. W-A-T-E-R"

Player #2: "This is Conan. We can attack anything that can attack us."

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Oh yeah, thats about twelve different kinds of aswome right there!

Damien said:

"I grit my teeth, bare my steel, and face down the wave."

Me: "Huh?"
Player: "I attack the wave."
Me: "What?!"
Player #2: "Me too, I free an arrow from my quiver and attack the wave."
Me: "Okay guys, wait, hold on. . . ."
Player #3: "Totally, my axe cuts the air in deadly arcs as I advance on the coming wave."

Me: "Okay! You guys cannot attack a freakin' wave. It's water. W-A-T-E-R"

Player #2: "This is Conan. We can attack anything that can attack us."

I found it hard to argue.

They still lost.

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Sounds like your party is on a post-300 trip! "Harooh! Harooh! Harooh!"

"A thousand nations of the Persian empire descend upon you. Our arrows will blot out the sun."
"Then we will fight in the shade."

"They look thirsty!"
"Well let's give them something to drink!"
"To the cliffs!"

I took the Conan rules as my core rules foundation. Since the campaign-in-progress was set in the Kingdoms of Kalamar, I had to include standard D&D races.

I combined the Conan rules with a few of the classes from Green Ronin's Thieves' World books. Basically, I needed to add PV & DV values to the TW classes I wanted to use.

I also replaced the scholar with TW classes and used the TW magic system. This gave me the low(er)-magic feel I wanted but didn't go quite as extreme as out-of-the-book Conan sorcery.

Works like a dream.

Conan IS my core rules set now. Swords-n-sorcery goodness without the D&D baggage!

Azgulor

Conan IS my core rules set now. Swords-n-sorcery goodness without the D&D baggage!

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Amen to that.

After I started playing Conan, I dropped D&D entirely from my gaming rotation. Now virtually any type of game I want to play uses Conan as the core system, with any adjustments necessary. Flat out, unless you want to play uber-magic games where your character is entirely dependant on glowing gear, and is pretty useless without said gear, Conan is absolutely a better base system to use.

Next game I run is actually going to combine Relics & Rituals: Excalibur with Conan. Should be fun.

Yup, I'll chime in.

Conan RPG is Grrrrrreat for low-magic (compared to D&D) grim-and-gritty settings. (Kudos for Mongoose for the outstanding job they did!) I do the same, I chose Conan as system for my homebrew world. It required very little tweaking, much less than if I wanted to adapt D&D to my needs. Actually I got rid of my D&D stuff since I don't think I'll need it ever again. ^^

The only thing that can be problematic is the races, provided the classes are find for your intended setting. I recommend one of two approaches to handle races in a homebrew game:
- treat all characters as Hyborian,
or
- allow players to choose a Conan race for the crunch, and apply the template to a race fitting for your homebrew world (i.e., new fluff).

I would not recommend writing up all new races because they may end up unbalancing the game (too weak or too strong).
You might also allow classid D&D core races, but in that case better not allow Conan races, as these are more powerful.

So as you see, it's not really such a big issue to adapt the game.
Other changes I made to the system are not setting-specific, and are essentially some minor combat refinements.