Friday, December 2, 2022

Modiphius' Conan RPG Rights End 12/31/22


I'm a huge Conan the Barbarian fan and, by extension, a Robert E. Howard fan and in fact, Cross Planes is a play on Two-Gun Bob's hometown of Cross Plains, TX. My first exposure to Conan were 3 Comic Packs at our local Zayre store and in many ways Roy Thomas and John Buscema's work for Marvel is my definitive experience. I backed the Modiphius Kickstarter for their Conan RPG and they have produced a very cool game line for my favorite Cimmerian. 

They announced today that their license is coming to an end on December 31, 2022 and Monolith announced they will be brining another Conan RPG to make maybe as soon as next year.

I'm a fan of Modiphius' 2d20 house system, which looked a bit too fiddly for my current gaming tastes, but it's one of those systems that plays much better than it reads. In fact, within about 30 minutes, my group and I had mastered it and you'd have thought we'd have been playing it for years. 

I wish Monolith luck, but announcing a new Conan RPG in the same press release that we learn Modiphius is moving on (or being moved on) felt tacky to me. My further concern is that I expect this new edition to use a variation on the DnD 5E system and I have two problems with that: One, 5E will be old news in 2024 and two, and not all 5E games are created equal. Cubicle 7's Adventures of Middle-Earth wasn't a great version of 5E and time and again I've seen licensed RPGs just kludge some poorly thought out ideas into an existing system, often merely copy and pasted, and just push out as a money grab.

I hope Monolith doesn't do this, but I am concerned. If it were up to me I think I'd like to see a Savage Worlds version but I don't need an official product to pull that off.

I will check out Monolith's Conan RPG and maybe 30 minutes in it will feel like we've been playing it for years and years.

1 comment:

David Baymiller said...

I agree with your points about 5th edition. I also wonder how many people are willing to invest a good amount of money into a new Conan game every few years. I guess we'll see.

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