Crom! I love Conan, but even I may not venture into Savage Legends

A few of us were commenting about Batman: Gotham City Chronicles on another thread.
The game mechanics are an adaptation of the publisher's early effort; Conan.

I love Conan. Books. Movies. Comics. Soundtracks. Board Games.

S7 Games is now offering a new Conan game. Conan: Savage Legends. It's on Kickstarter with the biggest red flag of all (for me); "First created. 0 backed."

I don't know, but this is probably a bit too "light weight" for my tastes. I guess I'll keep an eye on it, though I've cooled off on Kickstarters.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/s7games/con...&term=conan%20savage

Is Conan in the public domain?

His original stories are. But Conan as a character may be licensed for particular use at various times, such as for games and comics (Marvel, Dark Horse, et al.) I'm not sure how that process works, but it may be similar to how Chaosium has a license on HP Lovecraft's characters/monsters for a particular use, which is why FFG's Arkham Horror games always have the "Call of Cthulhu" label on them.

The problem with Conan based stuff is that everyone just wants to be....Conan. While the world is moderately interesting it is mostly just unconnected adventures. He rarely has a consistent posse, everyone is just a fighter/rogue variant. It doesn't NEED a dedicated game system, or even a sourcebook, really.

Edit= Whoops, thought this was about a Savage WORLDS rpg. Still, the point stands. Even a Conan board game or tactical minis game has the same problem.

I don't know the specifics, so don't take this information as gospel.

Monolith Games let their license for Conan slip before they could reprint their game. I guess it was an unexpected development and it made them reprioritize their short - mid term business plans.
S7 Games picked up the rights.
Hence, no reprint of (Monolith's) Conan. Welcome Conan: Savage Legends.

I've held onto two Conan games. Age of Conan and (Monolith's Conan). I've only played it twice, but I'm still not sure about Age of Conan. It's a DoaM area control exercise, and notable because it's the successor to War of the Ring. Even with the expansion, I wish the map were... larger. I'm very fond of the production quality.

Monolith's Conan is ace. The rulebook(s) were a little less to be desired, and the maps' LOS are a bit wonky. And it's personal, but the dashboards and gems are not as easy to handle as they are in Batman: GCC. AND putting colored rings on gangs is a pain in the butt. But that's about it for my hyper critical assessment. The rest is very cool. Supposedly, the publisher worked closely with the Howard estate and had a "Conan continuity expert" to make certain everything jived. The scenarios are very clever (if unbalanced) in regards to paying homage to the source material.

For a nut of Howard's tales, it's unparalleled.

As far as characters are concerned; Sure. Playing Conan is fun. But the other characters are pretty darn flavorful too. It's an adventuring party, and different skill sets are what makes it a semi-cooperative affair. I don't think I'd enjoy the game with three barbarians. I want spells and stealth and spears to round out the sword play. Conan often had assistance in his adventures. It's just that his comrades often met Crom.

FYI - Red Sonja Is under the Marvel banner. So Monolith and S7 won't have her, unless it's a generic Valyrie warrior that happens to be illustrated with red hair (Monolith did this). I do find it interesting that S7 got the rights to recreate Arnold's likeness for a KS "stretch goal." Those proposed minis are probably the most exciting aspect for me, but I'm not paying $40 for them.

Age of Conan was out after WotR. The expansion felt pretty heavy the one time I played with everything but the KS-exclusive stuff in it, but it's a game I've always wanted to like more than I've liked it. I don't mind the Groo-ifying of Conan in AoC, where he just wanders around wreaking havoc and isn't a PC or under any one player's control, but I think people's first reaction to the game ("I can't play Conan?") was suggestive of the earlier point about the character being larger than the setting. As I've noted elsewhere, I've been thinking about wiping the dust off of the Monolith Conan, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet--and that's despite it being a good system.

So for much as I love a game that feels like an IP I dig, I’m not going to get excited about surface level stuff, nor am I going to let that surface level trick me into thinking some isn’t trash. Hell, it’s kind of a greater risk/greater reward for a game to adopt an IP when it comes to whether I’ll like it or not. If it’s good and does it justice, great! I’m that much more on board! But regardless of whether or not the game is good, if it doesn’t nail the IP, I’m going to knock it for that.

Don’t be surface level. It’s stupid. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

EDIT: I’m not directing this at any one person, just a general rant with where I’m at with “themes” in the post-Ameritrash hobby.

jason10mm wrote: The problem with Conan based stuff is that everyone just wants to be....Conan. While the world is moderately interesting it is mostly just unconnected adventures. He rarely has a consistent posse, everyone is just a fighter/rogue variant. It doesn't NEED a dedicated game system, or even a sourcebook, really.

This. I consider it a thematic failure every time someone designs a Conan game that isn't a solitaire game. I realize that nobody here respects Steve Jackson anymore, but he had the right idea when he published several solo GURPS Conan adventures. I've played a couple of them, and they were decent solitaire adventures aside from the heavy combat rules for GURPS.

I spaced out.
War of the Ring was in 2004.
Age of Conan was 2009.

I totally agree with Josh on his IP assessment in regards to Savage Legends. Under closer inspection, it looks like a Leader focused skirmish using Conan's greatest hits. That seems pretty shallow.

I quickly wrote this one off as it seems kind of ugly. None of the promo shots really show minis on a board, which doesn't help.

I just learned from Monolith that they did NOT lose their rights to Conan. I guess it was non-exclusive. Monolith has new Conan content planned.

In other words; I know nothing.

But I 'think' I know; Conan Savage Legends won't reach its funding goal.