Conan: Vultures of Shem - RPG Review
Vložit
- čas přidán 31. 12. 2018
- Review and Game Master tips for the Conan adventure Vultures of Shem, the introductory scenario in the Conan corebook from Modiphius Entertainment.
Find the PDF on DriveThru RPG: www.drivethrurpg.com/product/...
Find the Hardback here: amzn.to/2GRw0oV
If you want to support my channel, or just want some kickass fiction about modern-day monster hunters, you can find my novels and audio books here: amzn.to/2GNY3oU
Guest Starring Jack the NPC
These videos are visual comfort food.
I could 100% see these being episodes of a public television show that airs at 1am.
You can tell Seth is someone with a lot of experience in TTRPGs & he has great presentation.
Having the players be the last survivors of an army is a pretty good introduction, probably works as a nice alternative to starting in a tavern
I know Warhammer Fantasy 2nd ed starter scenario is similar like that; it cuts the whole ''How come the PCs know and trust each other'' question out of the loop. sure make starting easier.
Several original Conan stories start off with him having fled from a destroyed army as a mercenary. Good reason to explain why the characters are out in the middle of nowhere and why they want to work together
I've seen suggestions for a twist on the classic tavern opening: you all wake up in the tavern and everyone else is dead because [plot hook here].
Weirdly I ended up using that as the start for the sample campaign in my homebrew RPG system.
From what I’ve heard, a good number of Conan stories started with him coming out of a brothel. You want to talk about how the players know each other, that is sure one heck of a different way for it to happen.
Jack the NPC is overdressed for the Conan RPG! :) Flaunt those abs! Oil those muscles!
Trust me, you REALLY don't want to see that. Also, Jack's pure white skin would cause the video camera to completely wash out.
@@SSkorkowsky There truly are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know!
That’s one SAN check I don’t need...
Not really. Hyboria is not what you see in comics and movies.
@@SSkorkowsky standing in the conan sun is like forks in a microwave... just sparks and a lot of pain.
Damnit, Jack! You missed the Opportunity to call the new Horse "Patches 2.0"!
This... this is true. Damn. I shall now contemplate this on the Tree of Woe.
Why start the adventure in a tavern when you can begin on a battlefield surrounded by corpses? 😈
Why not start in a tavern surrounded by corpses? It'll be like barbarian hangover!
Brabbel93 Beowulf intensifies lol
I actually tried starting a campaign off like this, it was an attack by terrorist robots
it... didn't go to well and made me feel like a horrible GM
@@nicholasstoll4457 sometimes it happens, don't worry, we all make mistakes, even Seth does!
Conan is so metal.
This twin princess switcheroo/undead army assault was the plot of a Conan story "A Witch Shall be Born"
Did Howard write it?
@@sullyb23511...yes.
@@michaelmclaughlin261 In his defense, it is kind of a legit question. Awful lot of people have gotten their grubby hands on Conan since REH died, for better or (mostly) worse.
Your channel is such gold
A great video again, always something relaxing to watch here :)
Great review as always!
Fantastic video Seth. Your reviews always inspire me right after watching them to run to my computer and begin writing a new adventure for my players.
On a completely unrelated note, there's a Chinese film I watched a while ago and loved ever since that you might get a kick out of. It's called Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe and can be found on Netflix. It's a fun movie with just the right level of cheese, and the first 40ish minutes are pulp cthulhu gold. I highly recommend it as it gave me great inspiration for a Pulp Cthulhu game I'm working on. Anyways, sorry for the long comment and thanks again for making such great content.
If you are going to talk Chinese cinema you need to see,
“A Chinese Ghost Story”
Interesting fact:
Mongoose, who previously had the license to Conan prior to Modiphius had planned to release a Legends (very BRP) version of this game (their was talk of a Savage Worlds copy also), it was financially planned to have a real leather cover of this game as standard (not a limited edition, the copy everyone would have had) but...Paradox, who owned the license to Conan (around the same time of the up coming Conan movie) wanted a larger piece of the pie (no doubt confident that the movie would increase sales) grabby greedy Paradox outraged Mongoose Matt, (Matthew Sprange) to the point while paradox still made money on the Mongoose Conan (at that time a d20 version) he decided to pull the entire Conan line, cancelling the shiny new leather bound copy (that had already been paid for at the printers, this later became the leather cover version of Mongoose Runequest,) but also the d20 version, now paradox were not making any money from the Mongoose Conan at all, until the lapse of the license, and it returned to paradox,
Shame, imagine a version of Conan compatible with Call of Cthulhu’s BRP (that’s what I had planned to do with it, only make sense, Conan and Cthulhu, the writers were friends, and Howard shared some of Lovecraft’s mythos in Conan)
and the entire line of that version being leather bound,
I own a lot of Conan (ironically I snapped up a ton on Mongoose Matt’s ebays firesale of all the Conan line, Cheers Matt) but also the Gurps stuff, and the TSR boxset etc,
I was like >< that close to getting the limited edition of Conan >< that close!
But the system put me off,
(And the rebuild would have been far to extensive to warrant purchase, 🙁)
But the Modiphius limited edition of Conan looks amazing,
And I have bought many of their lines, (just don’t buy the physical copy via Modiphius, their wrapping is sub par, it’s Russian Roulette wether the item arrives at your door intact) I also buy their associated lines, Mutant, Coriolis, Symbaroum, and Forbidden Lands (which I’m kinda thrilled I had a tiny little impact on that game, the part in the rule that covers the Artifact dice, the naming convention came from me, lol kinda shocked they ran with that idea)
Btw I’m not trying to attack Modiphius, it’s great to see a British company do well in this arena, but their 2d20 is not “the one ring to rule them all”
At least the d20 version was easier to convert to BRP,
I'm using Modiphius to make my own Gurps Conan game and may convert the whole thing to BRP after a few more years.
Great Review as always Seth, Makes me wish that I had a consistent group to run these with.
Also I don't know if you knew or not but R.Talsorian released a new RPG based on the Witcher using a Modified version of the Cyberpunk ruleset, some of the changes you might recognize from how you actually play.
Just thought you might be interested once you've gone through the inns and outs of Conan.
I just started reading (or re-reading) Howard's Conan stories, from the beginning of the anthology. This book looks great for the maps and the art alone!!!! I look forward to the full system review. PS - Yes, you definitely need snakes in Conan RPGs.
I feel like I was just on a Hyborian adventure. Great video!!!
I’ve “run” this one. Was kind a train-wreck. I had trouble adjusting to the dice system. Also, my players ignored the roleplay opportunity when they met Neferet, they had horses and one just rode in and snatcthed her after the other snapped of a long-range bow shot and wounded the guy man-handling her. It threw me off a bit...
best intro is "The Red Pit", start in the middle, can only go outwards. It's perfect for a start to learn the system in a variety of tests.
The dice system is tricky. But it offers so many good elements, once you learn to use it.
Well, it's been a while and it's part because I simply forgot to give you guys an update:
However I ran the module with my group and we had a blast :D
It took us three sessions and the heros opted for running, when the big bad demon crawled out of the bottomles pit. (But that was one expected option and we had quite fun fleeing the crumbling pyramide)
The adventure starting amidst the action without any pretext is great, it throws you right into the game and you simply don't have time to plan - you have to DO. Which is great, and I will use this technique again.
So all in all your tips are pure gold - all of them. And there's only one thing I wanted to add:
It's about motivation: YOU as DM know why the characters should rescue the prince - however given the game starts with little pretext, don't. To counter this, I made a series of really small scene I gave the players as text. All of them played the day / evening bevor the army began its march.
One might have learned from some old veteran, that there might be valuables amidst the black rocks in the desert, another one might have been personally commended by the prince for their blacksmith skills - such things. I also included for my two mercenary characters a scene with a big parade, with the Prince inspecting his troops, giving a rousing speech (yes, I blatantly stole the scene from the Atreides arrival on Arrakis).
This helped greatly to give the *players* a reason why their characters would follow this guy and not just bugger off the first chance they get.
But besides this addition: Great adventure and I must say I just love the rules. I love the whole doom/fortune/momentum mechanic so much, as it allows things to JUST WORK (or come crushing down) despite the dice rolled. And sometimes you need this for a good story.
I’ve got a fever...and the only remedy... is more Conan!
Hey Seth, I finally ran the Cabin Fever Cyberpunk module in DND 5e. You were right that it was a bit of a harsh conversion. To compensate for the tech needs I ran it in a mostly Eberron inspired setting with a clock, sending stone radio, sending stone cell phones, arcane CB radio, and broomstick flying reporters. Then I had to adjust the plot a bit. Instead of the chem companies it was 2 Merc companies and one was doing illegal magical research on a small island and the other rigged the arcane runes to output necrotic gas to frame them. So beyond a few undead just for fun, the rest of it ran very similarly. Oh, and I used an APC style vehicle for the escape, and instead of a laster bridge, it was an enclosed wind wall spell. Thanks for the review or I'd never have so much fun with such a unique module!
This right here is a perfect example for when I say that almost any module can be converted or stolen from to fit your game. Glad to hear you had fun.
Very cool. Thanks for sharing. I expected Jack to find Patches at the well.
Next adventure should be a trip into stygia where it is ultimately discovered that the princess is actually evil and part of some plot where they clone their evil ruler and marry them off for political advantages.
They aren't really twins but actually clones of their mother the empress of stygia, a stygian human with almost as much destructive force under her control as the tentacled god.
Make one encounter where the players have to fight off 30 clones of the person they were trying to save in the last adventure.
Hey Seth! I recently started learning Call of Cthulhu's system and purchased the Starter Edition. Didn't see anyone mention it to you below, but apparently Chaosium heard your critique of the handouts booklet because they are all single page handouts now. No more spoilers or copy making needed!
How convenient for the ghouls, that the princes they require just so stumbles into their forgotten city. Ugh!
All the elements of the adventure seem great and useful, but not in that order, not in a single adventure.
The ghoul city, the double princess love triangle, treasonous allies and a battle of armies, all of those could be individual adventures in a longer campaign.
Here they are all crammed into one thing, half of it probably rushed or skipped by the adventurers anyway.
But, as always, a great review! ;)
The Ghoul thing I can easily accept (this is based off pulp stories, after all) but you're right about it being super-busy. The love-triangle was the killer for me. Mostly because it's so random and comes out as pure exposition for characters we only just met. If there was foreshadowing then that'd work.
Maybe if a PC's backstory included them being a spy trying to dig up dirt on the prince and they'd been sent to join the mercenary army to get close to them. Or maybe once of the Prince's own advisors hired the PC because his own court suspects the princess might be an impostor and they're worried for him and unaware of the twin sister. Then the player could figure it out and have the choice to either tell their employer or keep the secret. All of that would require pretty much a full game's lead-in before ti adventure even starts.
@@SSkorkowsky realy needed a few minor fights and role play encounters before the big slaughter at the start to avoid to big of an info dump. something like a night at camp to gather rumors, a minor skirmish with enemy troops to foreshadow that all is not right, possibly a chance for the princess and the handmaiden to show off their serpent charming skills with fending off a giant snake. just needs a few more small encounters to spread out all the info dumps in the beginning.
RIP Patches. #HorseLivesMatter
Patches' own adventure is out there, waiting to be written. #PatchesLives
I hear violins...
Did Someone say Patches!?
My second dog was named Patches. My parents told us they found a farm somewhere that would take him. But they lied...
I ran this adventure as well and thankfully I wrote down all my enemy and npc stats separately so I didn't have to keep bouncing back and forth. Although, in general I have to do a lot of that to run the game anyways, so I'm not sure how much time I actually saved.
Very Cool!
Could it be, that you can't post comments with links? Tried it two times and the comments seem to disappear.
Now anyways - just wanted to say I am going at long last to GM this adventure tonight and I am just re-checking one last time to get me up to speed :D Thanks for the video Seth.
The link would have been to some paper-minis I made - but as said, I don't try to post it again.
Thanks for the review! How long did it take you and your group to play through this adventure? I would like to run Conan at a private convention and I have an 8-hour timeslot to GM an adventure for 5 players.
Awesome!
Our home group is about to start Conan 2d20 for the first time and I'll be running this as our first scenario. Was a great video to watch for prep. Also while watching this I noticed an error with the Eastern Shem map they provided with the scenario. It lists Shumir to the SE and Khoraja to the NE, but they have Akbitana listed as being in the NW. This is impossible when compared with the main word map. Akbitana and Khoraha should be in the NE if Shumir is to the SE. Unless I'm missing something? An easy photoshop fix. Just move Akbitana to the NE. Or if you prefer, move Shumir to the SW.
TEN QUID!!! YOU'RE KIDDING? Reminds me of Skyrim where you join the stormcloaks or Imperials. Neither side offers any motivation or pay and you can earn more from Bleak Falls Barrow buy selling everything you've taken than you can for reteiving the dragon's claw
Digging your vids! I think the whole affair could just be about a Stygian royal wedding. Stygia is the well known "bad guy" so working for them is all the scandal you could need. It even makes sense for a new cult to start in Stygia as an evil v. evil sorta thing. New cult just wants old cult royals for their big feast. Maybe the beast even requires "blood of the snake" or "blood of the king cobra". It needs to pay like working for the bad guys though. Double gold,plus a master craft weapon of each player's choice.
Funny story about this module. I was running this game for three players. All of which had horses. I decided instead of killing the horses they fled instead.
The players headed to the oasis and one of them noticed that their horses were present. The horses were separated from the Shemite horses.
After sneaking up they noticed that their horses were in fact well fed and watered.
The players leap onto their horses and made appropriate checks. All of them got zero successes and one complication.
Thinking quickly I had one of players realized that their horses were in fact over fed and watered...to prevent them from wandering too far away...a common tactic that Shemites use when capturing horses (a tactic i had promply made up on the fly due to the crappy rolls).
I ended the session with the players panicking as the Shemites began to charge to their position.
In the intro they suggest that the players themselves create their backstories & motives for being there. That could probably just be wrapped into character creation.
Seth I really like your review style! And you got me into Call of Cthulhu, are there any modules you recommend that you haven't got round to reviewing yet? Peace and love from England!
More of a campaign, but
shadows of yog-sothoth
“What is best in life?”
To meme your enemies to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their non binary otherkin.
No matter what point in time it is Jack gotta be Jack'ing!
Seth have you seen encounter roleplay they have several COC campaign's finished. Its what i watch in between your vids. They dont seem to know the rules as well as you though it doesn't really affect the game so much and they get to be pretty funny at times.
I'd modify this scenario a little. What, is the ghoul king and his minions just hanging out in the ruins hoping for a member of some royal family to fall into their clutches? Doesn't make sense. It's like "Oh we found a princess, great, we can finally do the sacrifice." I would much rather have the Shemite forces in secret league with a cult that have infiltrated their way close to the prince and perhaps even convinced him to join this doomed war, and while at the ruins (which they have pre-arranged for a sacrifice to summon their God as payment from the Shemites their assistance) they've conjured ghouls. Then cut to Neferet's big-boobed sister, scantily clad and struggling in the grasp of these nefarious demon priests, preparing to throw her into the pit!
The love triangle makes things interesting. It may be that the twins and the Prince came to an agreement... the Prince marries the Princess, but the twin lives with them secretly while the other Princes gets whatever lovers on the side she wants. (Why it isn't known there are twins, I don't know, but I doubt Stygia just let both twins walk away when they could marry both off or something So that is Stygia's loss. Or maybe it is all some elaborate plot to spy on the Prince or something.) So both Princesses can be living the life, as long as only one comes out of the palace at a time.
It opens the possibility for one of the PCs to become a lover of the Princess, with all the complications and benefits that might bring. Being a Conan story, that would be in genre. It also opens the possibility that they might call on the PCs at a later date, since the PCs already know the secret, and they have shown they can be trusted to be discreet. Or the PCs were NOT discreet, and that brings problems, too. All good plot hooks.
Seth, as usual, i loved the review. Im looking foward to get this game for myself, but it seems quite dificult to get a phisical copy of the book in my country. Oh well...
Hey, after you're done reviewing this game's system, would you consider giving the quickstar rules for RuneQuest a look? I mean... It's a Chaosium product, and that's kinda your alley.
Can't wait for the next video. See you soon bro, i hope.
When we finished up Two-Headed Serpent we decided to try some fantasy out. The choice came down to Runequest or Conan. We decided Conan because it was so drastically different than we were used to. Once we're done, we'll be moving toward Cthulhu Invictus.
I got a copy of the Runequest Quickstart for Free RPG Day, but something abut the runes just isn't clicking with me. It might be better in the full rulebook since quckstarts have to shorten everything so much, but I just wasn't getting it.
Seth Skorkowsky well good to know at least. I'll be looling foward for the chtulhu invictus videos and your final opinipn on conan.
I can totally relate to getting attached to horses. _Every_ D&D character I've ever had...
7:20 Negotiate? With a battle axe! 10:40 snake charmer...wink wink.
Adam
I know a lot of people say that Seth and Jack are the same person, but I would have to disagree as Seth clearly wears glass and Jack does not.
There is a running joke in my group that ANYTIME i start a campaign with transport it doesn't survive the first sessions.
I feel like an obvious twist is missing where the Princess will want the PCs to locate the Prince and her sister so she can eliminate the latter. Indeed, I'd go full Taramis/Salome. Make the "Handmaid" claiming to be the Princess actually the Handmaid and she intends to move up the ranks by killing her sister so her father has to have her married to the Prince instead. She can try to do the assasination while all hell is breaking loose or guarantee her sister dies during the rescue.
I'd also have the tentacled horror need to be PACIFIED by a sacrifice of royal blood. Have the ghoul king having kidnapped her to avoid being thrown in himself. Its like a "if you're the king, you get to rule and live well for 100 years but in the pit you go after."
I feel like both of your suggestions punch up the story by giving the NPC's motivations and become actors rather than just reactors.
Seth, your chanel is, hands down, the best tabletop gaming related channel on the CZcams. Just curious, apropos of absolutely nothing, are you a fan of Doctor Who?
I've never gotten into Doctor Who (Though Blink was one of the most brilliant things I've ever seen and deserves all the praise that was mounted on it). Most of my friends are, and a few of them help run the annual WhoFest in Dalllas, but for whatever reason it's not my thing.
Doctor Who has a vibe of Cthulhuian mythos about it,
It’s really horror dressed as adventure,
It is a quirky British show though, an acquired taste,
I think Netflix still has it,
I was a playtester for the Cubical 7 Doctor Who rpg,
(I was honoured to be invited)
Hi Seth - do you guys still play Conan? It looks great but I’ve been trying to get a read on whether 2D20 boosts PCs too much to make a challenge for them down the road. Seems to be a thing but some folks have pointed out some tips to pump the brakes.
We don't. I just never got 100% comfortable with the system. One of my players keeps threatening to start running a side-game of Conan, but he's been saying that for 2 years now and still no game.
"An arm's length of gold" is that meant to be a length of gold chain? A stack of gold coins as long as the princess' arm?
Don't play Conan RPG, just love Seth's reviews !
You should give it a hot. It's really good.
My group has no interest in CoC or Conan 2d20 so your videos are the closest I get to them.
"My players had a ton of fun looting the dead."
I'd describe the princess as incredibly short hence 1 arm length equalling epus
You meet the beautiful princess. She extends one of her tiny T-Rex arms and allows you to kiss her bejeweled fingers.
@@SSkorkowsky 😂😂😂
I was more thinking the prince is 16 and the princesses short for 14... Political marriages ya know
You know, I think it would've been better if the princess just kept her identity a secret to her guards, that way as a Handmaiden she could convince the Players to chase after the prince and her sister.
Edit:
8:01. We’ll shit, shows how much I was paying attention. 😂. Took me 3 Years before I spotted this.
"WHAT?!? I rolled that horse in character creation, I named him Patches!"
I know this is a 3 year-old video, and I know Seth's a good enough GM to come up with something like this on his own, but... y'aknow you could just say, "Well, I decided to start this without horses, but since you rolled one at chargen, I'll tell you what: you don't have one right now, but as soon as the rest of the party has a chance to get horses, you get one for free, a pretty good one, without really doing anything. You'll find a horse named Patches that just automatically likes you. You'll have a spare carrot hanging out of your back pocket or something!"
Most good players would jump at a deal like that and accept it as fair. On with the game!
"Ya'know, maybe in the magic or religion book, there's a Mitran fertility summoning ritual called "Summon Patches," and the offering for it is a large, freshly-peeled carrot!" :D
You know you should use that armor to cover your throat. It would be a bit more believable, although less cinematic.
More poor organization and lack of treasure in what is otherwise great material. Weird.
Crom is not related to Valhalla!!
Hey man, he was like eight when he was enslaved. Cut the guy some slack on some religious inconsistencies.
I'll be that guy. Crom doesn't reign over Valhalla.
Tell me you haven't seen Conan the Barbarian without telling me you've never seen Conan the Barbarian
After listening to several of your adventure modules from different game books, it becomes obvious to me that the creators of these adventures, do not play test their material or have very poor team communications and are apparently just dumb as nails.
@11:06 I just happened to pause it here to write this, even, when I noticed the map picture at this point of your video and am bewildered by the map scale indicator of 1 mile for the entire map, which is an angled view of the terrain. You can not scale an angled map view like this. The lower that you go on the map, the scale of travel decreases. The scale of the map will change, the higher that you travel. The scale indicator is in the sky, so you can't say that this is scaled at the point from which it is on the map. The sky has no distance and can not be used as a reference point for scaling. Trying to say that this is 1 mile on the map is absolutely fruitless and pointless. And to think that this must have passed by several game devs and no one realized this, is astonishing and tells me the lack of intelligence that some of these adventure creators have.
The lack of observation skills is bewildering.
Am I losing my mind or does Seth have a smaller nose superimposed on his nose?
Like I don't think this module is supposed to be any kind of racist thing, but "Shemite" is a variant spelling of "Semite" (as in "anti-semitic") and having the badguys constantly referred to as "shemites" is just offputting.