Age of Conan Pamphlets New Revision

[thegreyelf]

Hi, everyone,

Since I've played Age of Conan OD&D for quite awhile now and have learned a lot from using my rules, I am going through a new revision of the pamphlets, which I hope to post today.

Major revisions:

• The Sorcerer now requires five points of corruption to drop a level in alignment and suffer corruption save penalties, rather than one.
  
• Clarified the use of rituals in spellcasting
  
• Many clarifications in the Chainmail combat system, particularly when to use Troop Type combat (or more accurately, when not to), plus a recommendation to aldarron's pamphlet.
  
• The inclusion of optional Fate Points and backgrounds in Secrets of Acheron.
  

There may be others as I work through, but those are the additions for now. I'll post again when the pamphlets are live.

Eventually, I would love to put together a set of rules that directly translate all of the Mongoose Conan stuff (spells and monsters in particular) to OD&D. That's a ways off, though.

[thegreyelf]

Okay, the core pamphlet is updated and uploaded. The URL is as always:

www.grey-elf.com/dnd/

[thegreyelf]

...and Secrets of Acheron is now updated as well. Let me know if you find any discrepancies or issues that need to be corrected.

[arcadayn]

Excellent timing! Thanks again for your awesome work Jason!

[thegreyelf]

Since the new premium OD&D boxed set no longer includes the Hyborian Age I'm considering adding that information as an appendix to the Age of Conan PDFs.

[hareton]

I'm curious how this compares to similiar project - Crypts & Things.

[thegreyelf]

Jan 14, 2014 13:06:49 GMT -6 hareton said:

I'm curious how this compares to similiar project - Crypts & Things.

I've never heard of Crypts & Things. I've had my age of Conan booklets up since round about 2009 or so. I've also been running a long-standing campaign using them since then. Check out the older entries on my blog wastedlandsfantasy.blogspot.com/ for info on the campaign. My D&D website, www.grey-elf.com/ has the booklets.

[EDIT]This is not to put forth any sort of challenge to C&T, btw. I'm just saying I put these up long ago as an expansion of the Hyborian Age stuff in the original Gods, Demi-Gods, & Heroes when I was looking for a good system to run a Conan game, as I found the Mongoose game, though top of the heap insofar as source material goes, to be too tactical and crunchy for a fast-paced pulpy game. I found OD&D using Chainmail as the combat system to be a perfect match (which incidentally is also how my own Spellcraft & Swordplay RPG came about).

I prefer not to compare my stuff to other games or supplements--I prefer it to stand on its own merits, and my AoC books have done so, having held up strongly in play for over four years running, now.

[stevemitchell]

There's really not a comparison to be made to Crypts & Things. Jason's project adapts OD&D for Conan and the Hyborian Age; Newt's game is a swords & sorcery variant of the Swords & Wizardry rules, with its own specific setting. Both are good things, in my opinion, but they aim in somewhat different directions.

[thegreyelf]

Also, I do apologize if my previous post came off in any way harsh. I didn't intend it to, but going back and reading it could come off as argumentative, which is the opposite of what I was trying to do.

[hareton]

They are similiar. Crypts & Things as commercial product just can't use Conan names. Instead it is based on Zothique, similiar sword&sorcery setting but easier to emulate than Hyboria. The main thing with these supplements is how they face the challange of removing that pesky priest class from the game, something for what no one presented definite method despite 40 years of trying. C&T goes really far in boosting survival options, far more than necessary in respect of making up for no healing class, but such imbalance can be used for good, because it removes the need for henchmen and makes PCs more like sword&sorcery heroes. From what I've seen Age of Conan OD&D goes at completely opposite way, lack of potions and cure wound spells makes combats even more deadly than in original, healing is available only beyond combat (bard class). I didn't play these games so I can't speak how balanced each option would prove in game.

[thegreyelf]

I believe I have enhanced healing rules in Secrets of Acheron.

In the end, it doesn't matter. Like I said, I've no desire to compare myself to other product. I made those books so I could run a game set in the Hyborian Age with OD&D. I put them online because I thought people would like them. I'm not in competition with anyone.

[hareton]

No one tells you to go into competition. I was responding to what stevemitchell wrote.

[thegreyelf]

I have updated the first Age of Conan supplement to include the original Hyborian Age OD&D stats. I've made edits where necessary to correct typos and glaring errors, but otherwise they're as they originally appeared. As always, the download can be found at www.grey-elf.com/

As a side note, for some reason firefox keeps telling me that the file is damaged when previewing in the browser, but it seems to both preview okay after I click "OK", and function fine as a download.

[thegreyelf]

Just made a few more corrections--I noticed the pagination was wrong (as was the attribution in the table of contents), so I fixed that. I also fixed a few more typos, added an indication that the Heart of Ahriman can be used to restore the dead, and changed the Book of Skelos so that it no longer adds the Manual of Puissant Skill at Arms, and grants the Book of Vile Darkness instead of the Book of Exalted Deeds.

I have NOT updated statistics to the altered system (ie. Conan's thief skills are still expressed in percentages, etc.) for the sake of keeping it as authentic as possible, but it should be a drop in the bucket to translate said skills to the Chainmail/d6 style system.

I realize that the section would perhaps be properly placed as part of the Monsters & Treasure section of the book rather than an Appendix, and considered doing so. I decided, in the end, to keep it as Appendix 2 so that it's clear that this came from an original D&D source.

[thegreyelf]

Sorry, as always the pamphlet can be found at www.grey-elf.com .

Also, the latest upload SEEMS to have fixed the document error issue.

[Finarvyn]

Jason, you da man! Nice work here!

[Koren n'Rhys]

Jason, considering how you've integrated much of the chainmail combat info into the booklet by way of your Forgotren Lore supplement, would it make sense to include a section on the Chainmail style spellcasting? Have the table in there and a bit more info on using it? Seems as if you could pull much of that from S&S, couldn't you?

Just a thought. I haven't actually played this, but I LOVE the way you put it all together. Its the model for how I want to present my cyberpunk game too. Fantastic stuff.

[thegreyelf]

I could, but I'm trying to avoid reprinting things from game properties I don't own as much as possible. I only included the Conan pages because it's a Conan supplement, and the currently in-print version of OD&D doesn't include those pages. Reprinting the Chainmail fantasy supplement would seem somehow disingenuous. These aren't designed to be a complete game unto themselves. They're designed as a supplement to OD&D, which already includes the assumption of familiarity with Chainmail. Hope that makes sense.

In essence, the closer I get to making this a complete game, the closer I get to violating Fair Use and stepping on licensing toes. I very much don't want to do that, or the supplements will go away.

As for pulling info from S&S, for obvious reasons, I'm not inclined to give away Spellcraft & Swordplay (though the Basic Game is available for free and would give you the table for up to level 2 spells, at least). It's true that those who have S&S could easily adapt the Age of Conan Pamphlets to use S&S instead of OD&D if they chose to do so.

NOW, if it's only the table you're interested in, it's included in the 3-panel DM screen I have on my site.

[thegreyelf]

Jan 26, 2014 4:14:17 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

Jason, you da man! Nice work here!

Thanks!

[Koren n'Rhys]

Jan 26, 2014 13:04:53 GMT -6 thegreyelf said:

These aren't designed to be a complete game unto themselves. They're designed as a supplement to OD&D, which already includes the assumption of familiarity with Chainmail. Hope that makes sense.

In essence, the closer I get to making this a complete game, the closer I get to violating Fair Use and stepping on licensing toes. I very much don't want to do that, or the supplements will go away.

NOW, if it's only the table you're interested in, it's included in the 3-panel DM screen I have on my site.

I can understand the reasoning there completely, Jason, and no arguments here. It was just a thought I had, and wanted to throw out there. If you've already decided that it falls too close to the line, then so be it. That said, I didn't realize you had put the table on the DM screen. Having looked more closely, that does seem to have all the tables and info you'd need, so problem solved.

Thanks for taking the time to respond!