Robert E. Howard

One could wonder at times why the Conan RPG line was requiring specialists about Robert E. Howard like Jeffrey Shanks, who supervizes the whole project, Mark Finn or Patrice Louinet. After all, you could take all references from the Conan story and fill the gaps with "extended universe" material or entirely made-up things. But that's not the goal the RPG makers are after. Here are two statements made by Jeffrey Shanks in the Kickstarter comments that clarifies this goal, and it's quite ambitious: "So how does What Would Howard Do?... [Lire la suite]

After a wait of many months, the Kickstarter of the Conan roleplaying game by Modiphius Games was on since February the 17th of 2016. It got financed in a few hours at 45,000£, and finished at 436,755£ (that's the fourth roleplaying game which earned the most on Kickstarter. For those in the know, it beat Numenera and Call of Cthulhu 7th edition)! Were unlocked during the campaign: - The core book, 368 color pages, harback with a cover illustrated by Brom. Are also already unlocked more illustrations. - A first supplement,... [Lire la suite]

The Conan roleplaying game to be published by Modiphius Games keeps on adding great people to its roster. Thus Vincent Darlage, awesome writer on Mongoose Publishing's Conan rpg, has joined the team, as well as the illustrators Ken Kelly (cover artist) and Tomas Giorello (comic book artist). The faithfulness to Robert E. Howard's writings is assured by Jeffrey Shanks, Mark Finn and Patrice Louinet, who already acted in this capacity for the Conan boardgame made by Monolith. No information yet about what the base game will... [Lire la suite]

The in-house roleplaying game system of Modiphius Games, future publisher of the Conan rpg, seems to have the following characteristics, according to the informations I wa able to gather thus far: - The characters have 8 attributes: Agility, Awareness, Co-ordination, Intelligence, Mental Strength, Personality, Physique, Strength - Under each attribute are the skills, défined by 2 numbers, Expertise and Focus. - The system works as follow: we roll 2 twenty-sided dice. We have to get a result under a... [Lire la suite]

At the time I'm writing these words, the Conan Kickstarter campaign is over, and it broke all kind of records in the "boardgame" category, owned until then by Zombicide season 3 with 2,849,000$ raised, when Conan gathered more than 3,300,000$. For Frédéric Henry, Adrian Smith and all their Monolith colleagues, it's a worthy reward for an exemplary campaign, and for a lot of hard work which began a very long time before the official launch of the project. The ending of the campaign leaves me somewhat baffled, and tired, with this... [Lire la suite]

http://www.modiphius.com/conan.html Here we are, we already knew for a little that an American publisher had bought the roleplaying game for Conan, and it's ultimately Modiphius Games (Achtung Cthulhu, the new Mutants Chronicles edition), who's up to the task, basic book planned this fall, and a Kickstarter for this summer to finance campaigns and supplements. We're promised a game faithful to Robert E. Howard's spirit, with a "cinematic" system, the 2D20, already in use for Mutants Chronicles. The will have a... [Lire la suite]

How did I learn about the Conan character, said to be The barbarian? Probably through the ads published in the French LUG editions comic-book magazines featuring Marvel superheroes. Lug was publishing giant-sized softcovers of the Barbarian’s adventures, even if I don’t remember buying one at that time period.  In fact I really fell in love with Conan’s world through the novels, released by the trade paperbacks “J’ai Lu” editions, the first being simply called “Conan”, with a magnificent cover by Frank Frazetta. I bought... [Lire la suite]

It’s sometimes difficult to realize what will finally be in a Kickstarter game box, with all the stretch goals unlocked. I will update this message during the campaign: Here is what you will have in the base box, for 90$+shipping cost (some 15-20$) (pledge “Barbarian”), which will be sold at 100$ in retail:   74 figures : 4 heroes and their character sheets (Conan, Shevatas (Black Colossus), Hadrathus (The Hour of the Dragon), Bêlit (The Queen of the Black Coast)) 6 allies (5 pirates under Bêlit’s orders, a princess) 5... [Lire la suite]

One of the advantages of the Kickstarter development is economy of scale. For many months now has been announced a boardgame with the famous Conan, said to be The Barbarian, as a hero. The content is already huge, for 135 dollars. If I counted correctly, and we're only at the beginning of the Kickstarter campaign, it's no less than 137 figures that will be included in the "deluxe" version of the game (the standard version will cost 90 dollars, and will include the basic game and many stretch goals unblocked by... [Lire la suite]

A surprising movie, that I didn't expect to see for a long time, since when I searched for it, it was only available in Zone 1 DVDs and was not released in Zone 2. The Whole Wide World is a 1996 movie which is about the rocky relationship between the writer Robert Erwin Howard, creator among other characters of Conan the Barbarian, and Novalyn Price, professor and wannabe writer also, between 1933, the date they first met, and 1936, when Robert commited suicide. The story comes from the REH... [Lire la suite]