In April 2020 we presented two offers — one all-new, one resurrected — featuring Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of, the 2d20-based sword-and-sorcery FRPG from Modiphius Entertainment. The revived July 2019 Conan Essentials had the core rulebook and early supplements. And the all-new companion offer, Conan Careers, added recent sourcebooks and scenarios, including The Exiles and Waves Stained Crimson.
Among the foundational works of sword-and-sorcery fantasy, Howard’s Conan stories are set in a time lost to history: the Hyborian Age, a colorful era of antiquity and renewal, beauty and brutality. Kingdoms rise amid the remains of bygone lands swept away in cataclysmic upheaval. Forgotten magic lurks in the ruins of lost cities, to be conjured by the daring or the unwary at the price of their souls. Gods have flourished and been forgotten, but in the outer dark lurk cosmic horrors, evil beyond comprehension. Humanity has crawled back from savagery time and again, only to sweep away its effete civilizations in tides of blood — for barbarism is the natural state of mankind. In this decadent and violent world, adventurers seek fortune on blood-soaked battlefields and sail untamed seas to lands where no human has walked. They fight for the fate of civilization — or barbarism — on a savage frontier.
Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of was funded in a February 2016 Kickstarter, the most popular Modiphius campaign to date (4,352 backers, £436,755). It’s based entirely on Howard’s canonical stories, vetted by respected Howard authorities, and illustrated by renowned Conan artists. Conan uses the Modiphius 2d20 system (Mutant Chronicles 3E, Infinity, John Carter Warlord of Mars, Star Trek Adventures). In task resolution you roll two d20s, aiming to roll as low as possible on each die; low rolls score successes. Tasks require a specified number of successes, and extra successes become Momentum, which you can spend for advantageous effects. Characters can push their luck, rolling extra d20s to boost their chances of success and the Momentum they generate. However, each extra d20 comes from the character’s resources, such as stocks of arrows — or it adds to a pool of Doom that represents all the things that can go wrong in an adventure. The GM can spend Doom to complicate adventures and make the characters’ lives interesting.
CONAN ESSENTIALS [July 2019]
Revived from July 2019, Conan Essentials presented the core rulebooks and key supplements. As before, there were three titles in this revived offer’s Starter Collection (retail value $38) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the complete Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of core rulebook (retail price $25), the Conan GM Screen and Gamemaster Toolkit, and the Conan Map Bundle.
Those who paid more than this offer’s threshold (average) price also got this offer’s entire Bonus Collection with four more sourcebooks worth an additional $58, including the location guide Ancient Ruins & Cursed Cities; the sorcerous treatise The Book of Skelos; the Horrors of the Hyborian Age bestiary; and Nameless Cults.
CONAN CAREERS [all-new]
This all-new Conan Careers companion offer let you explore firsthand the Exiled Lands of the Conan Exiles online multiplayer survival game — sail the Hyborian seas with the five-scenario campaign Waves Stained Crimson — retrace Conan’s footsteps as a wanderer, adventurer, scout, and ultimately a king — and take a side trip 2,000 years earlier to the Atlantean kingdoms in the Thurian Age, the time of Kull of Valusia.
There were three titles in this offer’s Starter Collection (retail value $45), including the complete Conan the Adventurer, Conan the Wanderer, and The Art of Conan.
This offer’s Bonus Collection added five more titles worth an additional $75, including The Exiles Sourcebook, Waves Stained Crimson, Conan the King, Conan the Scout, Kull of Atlantis.
Ten percent of each payment (after gateway fees) for these two Conan offers went to the not-for-profit initiative recently co-founded by Modiphius publisher Chris Birch, RollVsEvil. RollVsEvil lets gaming communities do what they love (play games) while supporting frontline charitable efforts working directly toward verifiable immediate results. Tabletop game companies helping to spread the word include Modiphius, Steve Jackson Games, GAMA, Cubicle 7, Roll20, UK Games Expo, R Talsorian Games, Chaosium, Titan Forge, Paizo, Magpie Games, Green Ronin, and others.
CONAN: WHAT’S NEW?
Of 15 titles in these two Conan offers, eight were new to the Bundle of Holding (everything in Conan Careers), of which two (The Exiles Sourcebook and Waves Stained Crimson) had never before appeared in any bundle anywhere. In its original July 2019 run, Conan Essentials had a different companion offer, Hyborian Ways, which wasn’t revived this time around; that companion included the campaign and location sourcebooks Conan the Barbarian, Brigand, Mercenary, Pirate, and Thief, plus the scenario collection Jeweled Thrones of the Earth.
In November 2020 Modiphius presented a large “Conan by Modiphius” offer through Humble Bundle (which, as we always have to say, doesn’t own and isn’t associated with the Bundle of Holding). The 15 titles in that Humble offer overlapped greatly with the three Bundle of Holding offers. If you bought that Humble offer, you still lacked six titles included here: The Book of Skelos, Horrors of the Hyborian Age, Nameless Cults, the Map Pack, The Exiles Sourcebook, and Waves Stained Crimson.
