CONAN Role-Playing Game TSR Inc

'Crom's Teeth', muttered Conan, 'they've had me doing some daft things in my life: Barbarian, Reaver, Slayer, Conqueror, Comic Book, AD&D Module, and now a Role-Playing Game. Mayhap 'tis something to help Arnie Schwarzenegger with his acting.' In far off, serpent infested Stygia, Thoth Amon looked up from his crystal ball and smiled malevolently: this time he'd ruin the Cimmerian's reputation for good. Verily,'tis true,from the mystic shores of Lake Geneva comes another TM'd RPG. Conan, I suppose, is a big enough name to deserve his own game despite the fact that TSR already produce the biggest selling fantasy RPG. Besides, it gives them a chance to get things right this time. To start with it is simple. Taking a leaf out of Marvel Super Heroes it has just about everything boiled down to a single, colour-coded Resolution Table. If there is anything that isn't covered then the GM is encouraged to wing it. What rules there are encourage role-playing and atmosphere; for example, it is impossible to become any good as a sorcererwithout acquiring all of the unpleasant habits for which Hyborian magicians were known and feared. And the rulebooks actively promote roleplaying wherever possible, encouraging the players to see their characters' lives as a story and providing a fair wealth of background for a Hyborian campaign. Just about everything that, in my view, is wrong with AD&D has been put right for Conan. But.. . The editing is absolutely appalling. The game looks as if it was flung together in two days flat. Not, I hasten to point out, because of the quality of materials which, with one exception, is up to the usual high TSR standard, but because of the vast number of simple errors that even a few hours proofreading could have caught and put right. There is a table on page 13 where the typesetting errors leap off the page and grab you by the throat. On page 2 the section telling you how to roll dice is wrong. I get the impression that there were quite a few bugs in the systems as well because there is a 4 page 'Reference Sheet' included which makes several significant changes to the rules. 'Last minute errata sheet' might have been more appropriate. We can add to this sorry tale some errors of presentation. The rules are very badly set out and explained. They start talking about modifiers to combat damage three pages before they tell you how damage is calculated in the first place. You don't find out that you have to roll Luck Points for your character until the Experience section, 18 pages after the end of Character Generation. Also someone thought it might be nice to present the Hyborian background material as a set of long lost academic notes, so the neatly typed information is covered in spidery, handwritten comments, ink smudges and poor line drawings. It is quitethe most ugly thing TSR haveever produced. It's a great shame. With a bit of care it could have been a very good product. Most of the errors are essentially cosmetic and even with them I still prefer it to AD&D. Hopefully TSR will produce a second edition -after they've tightened up on their quality control.

Complexity: 4
Value: 6
Ease of Use: 4
Production: 7
Overall: 7

Pete Tamlyn

stratochamp wrote in Conan Role Playing Game:In 1986 for the RPGA Skip Williams & Penny Petticord wrote the Red Sonja Unconquered! convention adventure.