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XX) The Red Wolf Conspiracy: ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kriz1818 loaned this one to me a couple of weeks back. I've had this long standing ida of running a fantasy game set entirely on a huge sailing ship, so the idea of the book - political events on a huge sailing ship - had some appeal. Alas, I walked away from it two thirds of the way through as the central character suddenly became unforgivably stupid*. It's my first unfinished book all year, so I'm not counting it as having been read, but I still wanted to comment on it here.
51) Conan, the role playing game: That's todrcpunk I have a copy of this and BY CROM it is good! It wholeheartedly and unapologietically embraces the dark, corrupt world of Conan. There's a bare-breasted slave girl drawn into the page boundaries, and no warning to the reader that the world can be a little seamy and little racist. The rulebook make all of the races of man equally valid for play - the Picts, the people of the Black Kingdoms and the other non-Hyborian (i.e. not white) races of Conan's world areall presented as fair game - and since no culture comes off looking particularly good Conan's personal distaste for some of the races (which I remember being a touchy subject in the introductions of my 1970's reprints of the Conan tales) is washed away. The rules themselves are a very nice rendition fo the d20 mechanic designed for lots of fighting men, with sorcerery being (relatively) slow, powerful and corrupting, but with rules that make Sorcerer a valid class choice.
Some things that stand out in the rules?
* Not entirely true - the central character suddenly became a PC whose player couldn't realize that his actions had consequences. After spending three years as a tarboy (apprentice sailor) on the ships of the country which conquered his homeland, our hero ha clearly been circumspect and deferential enough in complaining about how his people were treated to not be stabbed and thrown overboard. As we move through the novel, he continues to act in this fashion, until he is face to face with a *really important person* who, while he was instrumental in the conquest of ou hero's country, could have him killed without a moment's hesitation. So our hero mouths off to him. Everyone is shocked, and all the NPCs explain to him in various degrees of patience that this just isn't done, that the *really important person* is in a position to do our hero an enormous amount of good, that our hero has other reasons for needing to stay on board, and that he took his life in his hands doing that. Our hero nods. The *really important person* talks to him again, taking a placating tone that is very much out of character, and our hero MOUTHS OFF TO HIM AGAIN. And gets flogged, stripped of his status as a bondsman (meaning he can get grabbed by slavers) and thrown off the ship. Once in port he follows the advice of someone who has always wished him ill and gets himself captured by slavers. At this point he is offically too stupid for me to care about, and I don't want to see the polt deformations required to get him back on board the ship. I have no idea why Robert V.S. Reddick decided to take this little side treck - just to show us the scary slavers he'd been aluding to earlier - but it was enough to jolt me out of the book.
kriz1818 loaned this one to me a couple of weeks back. I've had this long standing ida of running a fantasy game set entirely on a huge sailing ship, so the idea of the book - political events on a huge sailing ship - had some appeal. Alas, I walked away from it two thirds of the way through as the central character suddenly became unforgivably stupid*. It's my first unfinished book all year, so I'm not counting it as having been read, but I still wanted to comment on it here. 51) Conan, the role playing game: That's to
drcpunk I have a copy of this and BY CROM it is good! It wholeheartedly and unapologietically embraces the dark, corrupt world of Conan. There's a bare-breasted slave girl drawn into the page boundaries, and no warning to the reader that the world can be a little seamy and little racist. The rulebook make all of the races of man equally valid for play - the Picts, the people of the Black Kingdoms and the other non-Hyborian (i.e. not white) races of Conan's world areall presented as fair game - and since no culture comes off looking particularly good Conan's personal distaste for some of the races (which I remember being a touchy subject in the introductions of my 1970's reprints of the Conan tales) is washed away. The rules themselves are a very nice rendition fo the d20 mechanic designed for lots of fighting men, with sorcerery being (relatively) slow, powerful and corrupting, but with rules that make Sorcerer a valid class choice. Some things that stand out in the rules?
- a nice breakout of parrying AC vs dodging AC, with an armor-absorbs-damage game mechanic that isn't too intrusive.
- rules for money that state that anyone with more than 50 sp immediately squanders half of it on high living every week. Once a month you are able to ue that squandering as a circumstance bonus on some sort of research, but otherwise you're heroically pissing your money away, just as Hyborian Age heroes should.
- lots of combat related feats and combat moves that anyone can try ripped straight from the Conan stories. I'm usually a rules light GM when it comes to "can I try this" but I know many players need to have a list of their options laid out for them, and to my mind this system gives them just enough.
* Not entirely true - the central character suddenly became a PC whose player couldn't realize that his actions had consequences. After spending three years as a tarboy (apprentice sailor) on the ships of the country which conquered his homeland, our hero ha clearly been circumspect and deferential enough in complaining about how his people were treated to not be stabbed and thrown overboard. As we move through the novel, he continues to act in this fashion, until he is face to face with a *really important person* who, while he was instrumental in the conquest of ou hero's country, could have him killed without a moment's hesitation. So our hero mouths off to him. Everyone is shocked, and all the NPCs explain to him in various degrees of patience that this just isn't done, that the *really important person* is in a position to do our hero an enormous amount of good, that our hero has other reasons for needing to stay on board, and that he took his life in his hands doing that. Our hero nods. The *really important person* talks to him again, taking a placating tone that is very much out of character, and our hero MOUTHS OFF TO HIM AGAIN. And gets flogged, stripped of his status as a bondsman (meaning he can get grabbed by slavers) and thrown off the ship. Once in port he follows the advice of someone who has always wished him ill and gets himself captured by slavers. At this point he is offically too stupid for me to care about, and I don't want to see the polt deformations required to get him back on board the ship. I have no idea why Robert V.S. Reddick decided to take this little side treck - just to show us the scary slavers he'd been aluding to earlier - but it was enough to jolt me out of the book.
