GURPS Conan Solo Adventures Impression

[Nebless]

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.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Nebless

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)e.

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.

[Nebless]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

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.

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.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Nebless

T

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.

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.

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by Nebless

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?

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.

[RGTraynor]

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.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

A There's quite a tale behind me getting Queen of the Black Coast,.

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.

[Nebless]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

And beyond that, to a degree, we were flying without a net.

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.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by Nebless

I played all 4 over a week and thought I'd give my general impressions.

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 =(.

- Queen of the Black Coast: Not a lot of fighting, basically a search for treasure adventure

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.

- 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.

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.

- 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

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.

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