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.
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