Know, O Prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis….
I’m a big fan of Conan.
Robert E. Howard’s stories were some of the first fantasy tales I devoured in my discovery of the genre…I remember fondly the day when my father took me into Manhattan with him one day, and in addition to the scads of office supplies I got to scam from his office (the joy of gamers everywhere: notebooks, binders, graph paper!) he took me to a bookstore near his office where he got me my first copy of the Dungeon Masters Guide and the first of the Conan paperbacks from Ace.
Conan the Barbarian was my first R-rated film, and I spent years reading Marvel Comics series, from Conan to King Conan to Savage Sword of Conan.
Needless to say, I am looking forward to the new Conan RPG coming from Mongoose Publishing. I can’t wait to see what they’re going to do with it….and I have high hopes for the quality of the game, given the fact that Ian Sturrock (designer of their Slaine RPG, and one of my co-authors on Green Ronin’s Skull & Bones) has been tapped as the author.
However, if you, like me, can’t wait for it to come out, check out the following fan sites, where industrious gamers have produced their own versions of Conan for the D20 rules system:
Vincent N. Darlage’s Conan the Barbarian for Third Edition D&D site is great, concentrating especially on the portrayal of Conan in the original Howard stories.
The Hyborian Age d20 Campaign Site is another good one, concentrating on the setting as a campaign, rather than focusing on adaptation of Howard’s characters.
Very cool.