GURPS Conan Solo Adventures Impression
 

I played all 4 over a week and thought I'd give my general impressions. First off I didn't use the included character(s), but recreated my Age of Conan character and used him for all 4.

To play, you'll need the base GURPS rules and the adventures (of course).

You can pick up the 4th editon Gurps LITE rules free, between those and what's in the adventures you'll be able to create a character and run the solos no problem, so no need to buy the full Gurps system book if you don't want to. The Conan supplement isn't really needed, but might have been useful just to expand on stuff for a couple of points.

- Queen of the Black Coast: Not a lot of fighting, basically a search for treasure adventure but it lets you get used to the gurps concepts and the various saving rolls you have to do.

- Beyond Thunder River: I ran this 2 1/2 times and the use of Plot Words made all 3 different. While there are a couple of 'fixed' spots (the stuff you do in the fort and the Pict village), your choices drive the different outcomes. The most fun of the 3 as there's lots to do.

- Moon of Blood: This one's a little different than the others as it focuses more on you as an Army commander. While I didn't really like the mass combat rules, they did work.

Moon of Blood is the follow on sequel to Beyond Thunder River. While you can play it separately, they recommend playing them in order.

- Wyrmslayer: A bit of a plod as you search the ice cavern, but OK.

Over all a weeks worth of fun and adventure for not all that much money.

All 4 says that if you're creating your own character it needs to be a 300-400 pt character (a 'high level if you will) like the Conan one they included. I found my character was never really challenged and you could probably get away with a 200 pt character for more of a challenge.

Problems: Nothings perfect right? These haven't been offered for awhile and now that they're available again a good errata scrub would be nice. Beyond Thunder River has a good one you can download, but for the other 3 all you get is a one liner correcting some background information. The paragraph flows need a good check.

I ended up in a paragraph loop a couple of times; granted the Black Coast one was on me, but the book could have made it clearer on how to advance the plot. For Moon of Blood it's on them. If you get stuck you need to go back through the paragraphs you used (I recommend using a sheet and note down the paragraph number as you do them just for that purpose) and see if you made a mistake and if not, than to try another paragraph.

That's what I ended up having to do in Moon of Blood, go back and try the different paragraphs til I found one that advanced the plot even through it meant having to either use a plot word I didn't have or try the 'you failed your roll' paragraph even though you didn't.

Saving Rolls; The rules are really weak on listing what's what so you end up playing the solo's and see do a Vision roll, a Hearing roll, Will roll etc... except at first glance you won't find what those are very easily (hint they're just rolls against your IQ, why they don't say that I don't know) and waste time having to really read into the rules to find what you need to roll against. Beyond Thunder River was really bad for this, while the others would list 'do a Will roll (IQ -3)' thus telling you right there in the paragraph what you needed to do.

Nit picking. In the Lite rules and the Conan supplement it shows the weapons you can use and what damage they do, but some of the NPC's and enemies you fight list different damage done with those same weapons. I know you add ST in to get the final number, but even doing that, it doesn't balance out. Just kind of strange.

It would be nice if SJG or someone could do up each combat map on a single sheet (I wasn't able to do it) so you could use miniatures or counters representing the combatants. As it is you just have to use pencil or a marker if you've sleeved that page, to note positions and moves for a fight.

Good fun and there is replay value here. I'm going to set it aside and when I do play it again, I'll use one of the included pre-generated characters just for a different feel to the game.

Re: GURPS Conan Solo Adventures Impression
 

They don't just say "Do an IQ Roll" because even in the 3e rules these were written for they weren't just IQ rolls. If you had used the Conan write ups available he had Alertness and Strong Will which would have raised his roll higher than simple IQ. Even the Heimduhl character from Wyrmslayer had Acute Hearing which would have raised his roll for Hearing but not Vision.

A 4e Conan would have PER and Will higher than IQ. There are some significant differences in the rules for 3e and 4e and I don't have any particular familiarity with the 4e version of Lite (I am really _not_ the target audience) so I can't say if you got tripped up on them.

Re: GURPS Conan Solo Adventures Impression
 

That's not what I meant. You took the (example) out of context.

In Beyond Thunder River you'd see 'do a Vision roll or a Will roll' etc... And if you don't have the earlier gurps rule editions you default to the 4th edition rules and you'd find the vision, will, perception all default to an IQ roll. My (example) meant instead of using various terms, why not just call it an IQ roll, modified by whatever?

Now in the other 3 solo's you still see 'do a Vision or Will roll', BUT then it lists ''(IQ -4 or something) which is great as there's no question what you're suppose to roll against.

As to Alertness, Strong Will or Acute Hearing those are just adds to the IQ number, you're still rolling against your IQ, a modified IQ number yes, but the base is still the IQ number.

My main point is the Gurps rules / solo's could have been written a bit clearer.

Re: GURPS Conan Solo Adventures Impression
 

There was no question about what to roll against when it said "Vision Roll". The confusion comes in with the "IQ-4".

I don't know why that "IQ -4 " is there but it's not a normal Vision Roll. It might be a Skill Default listed after a call for a Skiil Roll and listing what you roll against if you don't have the Skill.

If the "-4" is the Task Difficulty Modifier it should have been behind the "Vision" and not the "IQ".

<shrug> All these books are 30 years or more old. Who knows what who got right or wrong.

Re: GURPS Conan Solo Adventures Impression
 

Because "vision, will, perception", etc are technically derived Attributes*. If you have an ability that adds to "IQ rolls" it doesn't add to vision, perception, hearing, will, etc, just IQ rolls.

Now if it "adds to IQ" as in to the attribute, that different.


* Yeah, I know, they just weren't explicitly split out in 3e.

Re: GURPS Conan Solo Adventures Impression
 

And beyond that, to a degree, we were flying without a net. GURPS Conan didn't see print until the next year, so it wouldn't surprise me that there were some discrepancies. There also wasn't a lot of prior solo material available; the only previous GURPS solo was the disastrous Up Harzburk!

Those were also the days where SJG was running with a razor tight schedule, two GURPS releases per month, every month. There's quite a tale behind me getting Queen of the Black Coast, but part of it was that a writer had dropped out at the last second, leaving a hole in that schedule, and I was promised a substantial bonus with the hard deadline that I delivered a final draft thirty days from that phone conversation.

Re: GURPS Conan Solo Adventures Impression
 

Ah, RGTraynor, first name "Robert". :)

This may be all the authorial input you get too. I don't believe I've ever seen W.G. Armintrout in these here parts and sadly, communicating with Curtis M. Scott who wrote the Conan book requires one of the higher quality copies of the iron-bound Book of Skelos.

Re: GURPS Conan Solo Adventures Impression
 

I have to say they all were very spot on as far as catching the Conan vibe. You know sometimes you play something and it's just in that IP's name only, but the 4 Conan solos caught the feel of R.E.H.'s work quite nicely.

I enjoyed them and am glad to have added them to my collection even at this late date.

Re: GURPS Conan Solo Adventures Impression
 

I just wish there was a push for a few 4e solo adventures. I mean 4e even dropped 'All in a Night's Work'.

Re: GURPS Conan Solo Adventures Impression
 

And eh, we ARE talking 35 years ago, Fred -- just on sheer demographics and all, folks would drop by the wayside. Probably aren't all that many 1980s writers left around, more's the pity.

At least as far as the Conan solos went, they didn't sell. At all. Steve Jackson sent me a large box of my solo, at the company's expense, because they'd rather do that than just shred them.

See, the ultimate issue was that they went out and got the Conan license based on strong responses from the survey reply cards that were in early GURPS releases. Problem was that they extrapolated some fervent "Sure, we'd buy anything Conan-related you print!" feedback to a much broader fan base than was actually out there. (That would, apparently, be a common motif to several of the RPG companies that went after the license, over the years.)

Re: GURPS Conan Solo Adventures Impression
 

I did a similar thing, but in a slightly different order that I think is closer to the intended order: Wyrmslayer, Queen, Thunder River, and Blood Moon. It was a little tricky since my barbarian didn't survive Wyrmslayer =(.

A surprisingly easy adventure for me, playing cautiously and taking obvious precautions. I recovered several million in treasure for minimal casualties and I'm not exactly sure how Conan did so poorly in the original story.

This can be really easy or really hard, and is counter-intuitively easier if you don't take companions to raid the Pict village. I do agree its probably the best of the 4.

I adapted this on the fly to the use the 4e Mass Combat rules. Which was fine, but going through 3 or 4 paragraph jumps for every step in the Mass Combat rules instead of just saying "fight out a mass combat battle" was kind of annoying. Predictably, nearly naked Picts armed with short bows did poorly against an armored phalanx backed up by longbowmen.

Wyrmslayer is weird. The best path to victory is to show up with an absurdly high Survival (Mountain) skill and just avoid the adventure. If you do decide to camp overnight, the girl inevitably dies, which is a downer. The climatic fight with the Wyrm can either be a mildly interest slugfest, or a series of impossible Will rolls with an accumulating penalty on success and death on failure. I'm not sure what was up with that, but I wasn't interested enough in the ice cavern search to figure out how to get the slugfest combat.

I dislike that if you play Conan, you get a 500+ CP character, but if you make your own, you get 100+ CP less to make your own. But a reasonably made character with Luck, reasonable combat skills, and ST 15+ will rip through the opposition in close combat.

I used a Google sheet spreadsheet, and wrote down each paragraph number and all the branch numbers. It was really helpful for noticing loops ("another empty cavern? okay, jump to 41 and skip the noise") and fixing mistakes.

I'm very used to gaming online, so I drew all the maps in a virtual tabletop and played them out with tokens. Very convenient.

Re: GURPS Conan Solo Adventures Impression
 

Thanks for writing Queen of the Black Coast. I'm sorry it sold poorly, but it was a good adventure and definitely entertaining.

Re: GURPS Conan Solo Adventures Impression
 

Conan never struck me as an individual who necessarily takes every precaution. If you know what I mean.

Re: GURPS Conan Solo Adventures Impression
 

<shrug> It was a story and not an rpg adventure.

This affects Wyrmslayer too. The girl is supposed to die tragically. That's why it's so hard to save her. It's why Conan even has a horse too. Horses aren't terribly useful going down a glacier trail (or in te Frozen North generally).

Again influenced by the original stories I did not care for the two "Pictish" stories and felt the same about the solos based on them.

Wyrmslayer interests me the most. It's the one I think I could adapt into an introductory group adventure to start a Gurps Conan campaign.

Re: GURPS Conan Solo Adventures Impression
 

I thought I'd mention that solo adventures might be making something of a comeback. David Pulver has done several for TFT and Gaming Ballistic. I also Kickstarted a couple for 5e mostly on a whim because the price looked good and I was having trouble finding stuff to read.

Re: GURPS Conan Solo Adventures Impression
 

The GURPS Conan solos work reasonably well for TFT with only a little tweaking.

Re: GURPS Conan Solo Adventures Impression
 

I am sorry to hear that, they are some of the few published adventures (solo or multiplayer) which I have enjoyed! Writing is a tough business.

Re: GURPS Conan Solo Adventures Impression
 

(nods) That's an ongoing riff of mine when people compare fictional works to RPGs. The former's under the complete narrative control of the author, and has (obviously) a predetermined outcome. With Queen of the Black Coast, Howard was writing a tragedy, and never mind stats or skills or any other consideration: he decided that it'd be an all-but-TPK, and that's the bottom line.

One comment about how the adventures spun out when using Conan himself: none of us had the writeup for Conan. That was added later by the Lambards in editing. All we knew is that he'd be north of 300 points, and for low-tech fantasy in BSII, 300 points was one whole hell of a lot. My original writeup for Belit didn't have her as high as 235; that was tweaked in editing. (By contrast, the stats for the crew are as I wrote them.) Then as now, I picture 500 pts as pretty much entering superhero country.

Re: GURPS Conan Solo Adventures Impression
 

Hi,

I bought Wyrmslayer, Thunder River, and Moon of Blood to create a campaign for two players. Any tips on using it as an adventure for a group?

Thanks!

Re: GURPS Conan Solo Adventures Impression
 

You're probably going to want to work through each of them a couple of times to get the paths.

Wyrmslayer has two major parts: the above-ground action and then the delve through the caves. The above-ground action has the fight against the great apes and then the rescue and death of the girl. I'd consolidate that into one action sequence and then figure out a way to motivate your players to descend into the caves. The caves start around paragraph #269 and it should be possible with some notes to decipher all the loops and twists, find the individual rooms, and recreate a single cave complex that hits all the interesting bits without forcing your players to traverse the same room sequence a half-dozen times.

Thunder River is more complicated. There's a lot of wandering about during the day to get information and allies and then the night raid across the river. I'd try to pull find the various day encounters and pick a couple that you like for your players, then work through the night raid. From my notes, I think paragraph #2 is a starting point for the night raid but I'm not sure.

Moon of Blood is a lot more complicated and I'm not sure how to break it down.

One thing I'd consider adjusting is the difficulty of the opponents. The Picts in Thunder River and Blood Moon have middling skills and no armor. A pair of reasonably built, 250+ point 4e adventurers will go through very quickly: Extra Attack into a Feint followed by a deceptive attack cutting attack will incapacitate a Pict per turn per character, and a Pict hitting with an axe for 1d+3 cu or whatever will bounce against heavy DR, should the Pict get lucky enough to get through the PC's defenses. If you want escapist fights, this is great, but if you want something more challenging, give the Pict some champions and leaders with better skills, weapons, and some armor.

Re: GURPS Conan Solo Adventures Impression
 

Honestly, I think Queen of the Black Coast would make a decent one-off adventure for a group. The very premise is that Conan's working with a crew of pirates, all of whom are trained warriors and none of whom are clowns. Replace the near-superhero with 4-6 entry-level characters, my gut instinct is that it'd work fairly well.

Re: GURPS Conan Solo Adventures Impression
 

The Conan supplements are high up on my list of favorite solo adventures.

On one of the adventures, I played Conan and failed. So I then played a much, much lower point character--who had modern day equipment. I blew everything away.

Tech Level makes a huge difference.

Re: GURPS Conan Solo Adventures Impression
 

Ooh, mixing genres in a solo adventure. That sounds entertaining!

Re: GURPS Conan Solo Adventures Impression
 

Mixing genres in any adventure can be fun. The reward for my fantasy players for putting them through a few months worth of Scarlet Pimpernel playtest was to let them take their fantasy characters to rampage through Revolutionary Paris, with the gloves off. They promptly went to Chauvelin's apartments, murdered his hirelings, and garrotted him. The merry band proceeded to hit the next session of the National Convention, turned the roof of theSalle des Machines to crystal with a non-standard spell, caved it in on the heads of the unsuspecting deputies, and then started pouring spell and archery fire down on the survivors. Damn near a T-NPC-K.