One of the loves I share with most gamers my age is an affection for the character Conan the Barbarian, created and written about by Robert E. Howard and frequently depicted in the Lancer paperback cover art of Frank Frazetta. Robert E. Howard's Conan: Adventure in an Age Undreamed Of published last year by Modiphius is not the first FRPG treatment of the big Cimmerian, that distinction goes to TSR, nor is it the most widely ever played, that would probably be Mongoose's D20 Conan, but it is a faithful adaptation of Conan's Hyborian setting for heroic play using Modiphius Entertainment's 2D20 mechanic and seems to capture much of the feel of the original stories.
I have wanted to post about this game for a year now and have kept putting it off - until now when I think I have something worth saying. Modiphius's 2D20 mechanics take a little getting used to and seem to take center stage the first few games - all I have gotten to play in the year or so I have had this game. I thought I would wait until the mechanics of the game became more familiar and started to fade into the background, allowing the players to role-play rather than roll play, before I posted my reaction. That is how I prefer to assess a game, but that hasn't happened...yet.
I had a lengthy discussion about this over the past weekend with a friend who indicated he liked the game, especially the heroic nature of play, but that the Hyborian world is a mystery to him. He stated that he just doesn't know much about the setting and the game seems to assume players are familiar with the world. Now to be fair to Modiphius, a good many pages of this volume (50+) are devoted to describing Robert E. Howard's Hyborian world. My friend admits he hasn't read those sections and hasn't read the original Conan stories either. Asking around, I am discovering how few of my current gaming friends have read the work of Robert E. Howard.
The pulp fiction stories of the 1920's and 1930's, including the work of Robert E. Howard, gave birth to sword & sorcery as a genre. In turn, swords & sorcery was a heavy influence on the creation of the role playing game. But times have changed, tastes have altered and what was once popular and commonplace has become a niche interest (criticized by some for being sexist and racist). I am talking about the Conan stories of Robert E. Howard. Having read them all as a teen, way before I was introduced to White Box and the hobby of adventure gaming/role-playing, I approached my first experiences with White Box by viewing it as a game where one could play a character something like Conan the Barbarian and have adventures like he does in the stories. As a White Box referee, I drew upon my recollection of many of those stories for game plots and scenes as I described them to my players. I would not be far from accurate if I claimed every adventure game I have refereed these past forty years has drawn upon the works of Robert E. Howard in some way or another. I am also frequently the oldest person at the game table these days and I am increasingly aware that my background is not shared by a majority of today's players.
So I am asking myself, who is the target audience of this Conan game? Are we introducing a new generation of gamers to the world of Conan the Cimmerian, or is the game aimed at us older gamers who grew-up on the Conan paperbacks with those wonderfully engaging cover illustrations? How much play does this game get, I wonder? Browsing the offerings at this year's Origins and Gencon game fairs I don't see anything. I am having a hard time working up enough interest among the face-to-face players in the groups I game with for more than a one-off session. Is it me or is Conan himself slipping off into "An Age Undreamed Of"?
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