Conan the Cimmerian in Roleplaying Games Part II: The OGL Years

Greetings Adventurers! Today we will be continuing my peek into Conan Roleplaying history. We return to our tale that takes us into the early millennium. In 2000 Wizards of the Coast released version 1.0 of the Open Gaming License and changed the RPG industry forever. This allowed third party publishers to produce compatible material for Dungeons and Dragons without an individual licensing agreement. Onwards to 2004 where our hero Conan again was able “…to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet” with the release of Mongoose Publishing’s Conan: The Roleplaying Game (2004).

 This version used the OGL to allow players to adventure in the Hyborian Age using the current and extremely popular d20 Dungeons and Dragons rules set (with some interesting modifications which I will talk about later). The initial release of the core book was followed by dozens of supplemental hard and soft cover books detailing the world of Conan, not just Robert E. Howard’s Conan but all iterations of our hero from the various books, movies, comics, graphic novels, and media. Releases also included many adventures both original and chances to walk in Conan's shoes such as the excellent Conan and The Tower of the Elephant. Fun Fact: A few 5x8 pocket sized editions were created for this line! 

It was a hit and such so that a second printing of the first edition called “The Atlantean Edition” came out in August of 2004. I enjoyed this line of products very much. The sourcebooks were fantastic and filled with Hyborean goodness. During its publication run I managed to pick up nearly everything available for the first edition, except for the pocket sized books and 2nd edition books, more on that later. By the time the second edition came out in 2007 I had socked several hundreds of dollars into the system and did not wish to depart with any more cash for what I could tell were “jazzed up reprints” (my words).

I do like, no love, Mongoose Publishing and continue to give them my hard-earned money with their Traveller system to this day. I just think, at the time, it was a bit of a cash grab. The success and rapid rate of publishing (over a score of books by 2006) was not without controversy. In 2006 the boxed set Shadizar – City of Wickedness (of which I own an original copy) was printed with a map provided by the cartographer that was plagiarized (read nearly directly lifted) from a free map offered by Wizards of the Coast. This went unnoticed and was included in the production. Many patrons were very upset by this, including myself. Several, again including myself, found out about this late in the publishing game and would not have the opportunity to get a replacement map (which had been provided by Mongoose if you requested it) other than the free download provided by Mongoose. The second edition of the game did not do well and many of the publications were re-dos of existing sourcebooks such as Return to the Road of Kings.

I enjoyed the Mongoose d20 version but felt it suffered from the same thing that D&D 3.0 and 3.5 suffered from: rules bloat. For example: in the second edition players guide there are three pages of  just tables dedicated to the listing of minor and variant character races and variant/prestige and multi-classes with how to FIND the sourcebook that contains them. Combined there are over 100 entries! These charts do not include ANYTHING other than the name of race/class and the name of the sourcebook where you have to dig out all the information, requirements, abilities, feats etc. of that race/class. Talk about rules bloat! Remember these are NOT even just the basic character classes. There are nine of those. There were rules and feats for everything. Another example: The players guide for 2e also boasts 4 pages of charts with the same type listing of just feats and where to find them. Again, no info on the requirements of the feat, what it does, or the game effect- just the name of the other book where you can find that information. Because of this character write ups were sometimes horrendously long with some monsters nearly a half of a page long. The rules included alterations to the d20 armor system that was clunky, to say the least, and added yet another layer to the already complex 3.x system. The magic system was a hodgepodge of D&D spells mixed with alternative tweaks to fit the Hyborean flavor. In my opinion, this system suffered a bit from the same splattering of including ALL of the Hyborean mythos. However, I will say the adventures were good and many of the sourcebooks have excellent reference material and beautiful artwork and maps. There are quite a few typos and errors and I think these were simply overlooked by overworked editors trying to meet print deadlines for all of these products. Even though many of these books have become quite rare and are selling for some high prices on eBay I would not part with my copies of them. I still find myself, to this day, grabbing The Free Companies, Tito's Trading Post, The Road of Kings, or The Scrolls of Skelos amid others for assistance in my Conan creations. I truly think I will use the city boxed sets (yes, even the bad map one) when it comes time for my heroes to tread upon those streets in one of my Conan games. These books have a lot of flavor and contain many highly detailed descriptions of locations and NPCs that no other Conan RPG ever (to this date) has done.  

Mongoose Publishing dropped the license in 2010 and cancelled the line as sales for the “new” edition books dwindled. This, coupled with “disagreement between ourselves and the license holders” about producing more material and the migration to a new system ended Mongoose d20 Conan. It would only be a short five year hiatus before we would see another Conan RPG and that RPG would be earth shattering in many ways. I leave that tale for another day.