Wow, interest in Castles & Crusades and the new Conan game from Monolith is super-hot right now. Hits on all my C&C and Conan articles are exploding.
They are great games, I am not really surprised, but wow, we are at six times the average traffic right now.
Like DCC, C&C has a cult following hungry for news and content, and the Conan game does as well.
This video is from last year, but it relates to the Conan RPG I am interested in. Designer Matt John speaks with the official Conan the Barbarian channel about the game. Around 6:40, he says:
...I approach this as a 40-year-old gamer, I do not want a system that requires me to do a lot of homework because I'm busy and have a bunch of other things to do.
I love my rules-heavy systems, but I honestly only have time for one of them these days. GURPS will win over Rolemaster, 5E, and all the others. While 5E is a simple game, it has so many books that it can feel rules-heavy. Castles & Crusades will kill my interest in 5E, since I can "pick up and play" without needing a dozen hardcovers and over a thousand pages of rules to run a campaign.
Savage Worlds, Castles & Crusades, and many other rules-light but experience-driven games fill an important niche in the hobby. While many people love the 2d20 Conan game, it wasn't as approachable or quick to pick up as he wanted. People who play need to be taught how to play, and GM'ing the game requires a lot of knowledge just to get started.
Savage Worlds is in this genre and does pulp adventure well. I played a Conan-style game with Savage Worlds before, and it was a fun time. The benefit of a Conan game is the art, background, monsters, and adventures tailored to the setting and rules. You are not seeing "Orcs" in Conan, for example, and generic games tend to pull in a lot of non-canon elements that take the experience away from a more authentic one.
An official Conan game from a publisher is also an easier sell to new players than "let's use this generic game you may have never heard of to play this thing you know." This is the "GURPS problem" that all generic games have. While those of us who love generic games can make them do anything, new players like themed experiences and seeing a design deliver on a promise rather than a generic design and someone's interpretation of making it fit a concept it really wasn't designed to simulate.
I love GURPS, but getting someone new to gaming to play "X using GURPS or Savage Worlds" is two jumps I need to make with them (plus a translation layer for me), rather than just "playing X." For people without time, that is more time needed to spend before playing.
For Conan, people need to be able to jump in and play. This needs to be a game you can play at open tables at conventions, like Index Card RPG or Easy d6. The character sheet tells you what you can do, and you can be told what to roll by the referee, and you never need to open a book to sit in on a game and play.
People who have seen the movies should be able to play the game easily.
This is not designed for the hardcore rules simulation and 30-book collection crowd; this is targeted at new players and those who watch the movies and read the books. That feels like a solid choice, especially when competing with D&D and other games. A heavyweight game is a tough sell these days, since you are asking your audience to give up other games to make time for this one.
D&D is going in the wrong direction by increasing the size of their books and providing too many options in the core rulebooks. You get into the danger of "writing for the experts" and "losing the casual audience" with any game or new edition. D&D 2024 is written for the expert 5E players, not for new 5E players. Tales of the Valiant is a better "teaching game" for 5E than even 2014 or 2024, since it was designed to appeal to new players and its core options focus on successful paths rather than niche role choices.
The industry is moving towards smaller, more focused, easier-to-learn, and faster-playing games. This is sort of like D&D before Wizards of the Coast got its hands on it and turned it into a rules-heavy monolith to lock people into digital platforms. The OSR is popular since it is simple and fast, and this version of Conan is clearly OSR-influenced.
The 2005-2015 era monolith of overly complex systems is slowly dying as the new generation lacks the reading and mathematical comprehension to understand them. This means Wizards D&D, Pathfinder, GURPS, 2d20, and many other systems are long overdue for a change. Look at the education numbers and tell me 500+ page D&D books are a good way to design a game for the next generation of players.
You can't get them to put down a phone, let alone read and comprehend 10% of a book like that.
I like the design theories behind the new Conan game, and the more I learn about it, the more excited I am getting about diving in and playing. This has not happened in a while, and the promise of a thematic, instant-play, brutal combat, and "fast and fun" Conan game excites me.
I was looking at Monolith's new Conan RPG, and the book and rules look nice. They went rules-light with this system, and I like that approach. Getting people to even try a new game outside of 5E is impossible these days, so you need to go rules-light, 5E-like, or OSR, or forget it.
The system is a "roll a die and add a number" system, not a d20 system, so it is very easy to learn. There is also a stunt die rolled alongside checks, like a Savage Worlds wild die. Monsters are engineered to be easy to handle, with minions mostly going down in one or two blows. Record-keeping is minimized.
For Conan, this feels right.
I liked the 2d20 game, but the system was too heavy for me for sword and sorcery. The Modiphius Conan game is a memory, the license is done, and the company moved on. The new game may be a better fit; just grab some dice, quickly create characters, and go. Do I need a rule system hundreds of pages long for Conan, with talent trees? Deep character builds, and tons of rules support? Not really.
I liked that this attempted to do so and commend them; and many still enjoy this system. The art is also amazing. It just did not feel like "what Conan means to me." When I play a savage swords game, the rules should not be something that takes months to learn.
The entire genre is based around "action now, talking later," as Conan would say.
But I do like the cover of the 2d20 version of the game the best. Conan and a Frazetta heroine are front and center. The new game's cover isn't bad, and it has an "adventuring party" vibe more than a solo hero feeling.
It sucks when companies lose licenses, and we lose the ability to collect and purchase books.
We have games in this genre that do it well, including the excellent Hyperborea. This is a spiritual successor to one of the best Conan games of all time, the 3.5E version of Conan, and it still rocks hard today. This has evolved into a wider, genre-inspired entry in the savage gaming sphere, mixing Conan-inspired elements with science fantasy, and it holds up well.
I will exclude the "wannabe" Conan games that are "close, but no cigar," which include a fighter or barbarian option, and focus more on the traditional kitchen-sink fantasy options that all games deliver. Sure, you have Conan art for the barbarian. Still, you are not a Conan game with all those parrot people, frog people, fox people, and other Richard Scary cozy character races tromping around in the default assumed setting.
DCC is a borderline Conan game, taking inspiration from it and delivering on the genre's tropes, but at times I feel it's more of a throwback tribute to late-70s and early-80s RPGs, mixed with satire of the hobby and era. It is a fun game, but calling it Conan at this point feels like a bit of a reach, given how much more it delivers. DCC started in the swords & sorcery genre but found its own identity beyond it.
GURPS Conan is a lot of fun; if you are into GURPS, this is worth checking out. I love the GURPS realistic combat system, and the characters are incredible to design and play with. This one is worth a mention, and you can still get the PDFs for this, along with a few solo adventures.
Tales of Aragosa is also a strong contender for a modern Conan-style game, and its rules, classes, and vibe fit the genre. This is 5E-like and a successor to Low Fantasy Gaming, and it delivers a great, savage sorcery and blood-spattered battles feeling. There is no science fantasy in here, and it is all just gritty, steel and sorcery, blood-spattered battles, and crawling into the dark bowels of the Earth to battle ancient evils sort of gaming.
Aragosa goes as far as to rename the classes to fit the mood. You aren't a cleric; you are a cultist. I love this thematic rebranding of the concepts and the way it marries the savage mood to the game's language. If you are not theming your game's writing to its genre, making the language fit the mood, what are you doing writing games?
Gygax knew the art of language needed to match the art of the game.
Too many games deliver an AI-powered, business-language style that's quite boring, with everything sanitized and too clean. Even the word "barbarian" gets censored as "culturally insensitive," and we end up with role-playing games that sound like Microsoft wrote them for Fortune 500 companies using Copilot AI. If a game is supposed to inspire our imaginations and take us into new worlds, why are you writing this with business-neutral PowerPoint presentation language and boring the audience to sleep?
Today's games ship with evocative, beautiful art, but writing that bores me to tears.
Also, if you put the word Conan on your game, you'd better have some Frank Frazetta-like art on there and not censor it. Sorry, this is Conan. You don't get to deface greatness and insult a legend. Pay your dues and be brave; otherwise, cowards do not deserve to walk the field of battle with Conan.
I am following Monolith's new game and may check it out.
