DOTAR SOJAT! John Carter of Mars RPG by Modiphius!

On Thursday my pledge for John Carter of Mars RPG arrived. Pretty exciting! I first wrote about this back in January 2018 when Modiphius announced this would be a thing. Since then those of us who are backers have watched this come together, seeing initial pdfs and pictures of miniatures. For me a good kickstarter maintains excitement for the product even after the kickstarter is complete. Modiphius has done a pretty good job with this with Conan and continues this with John Carter(JCoM), being plugged into the community and sending regular updates.

I did not get an all in pledge, but I did get what I thought was a pretty good approximation of that, DOTAR SOJAT, gave me all the books, miniatures, dice etc. Pretty much everything. Basically I got everything except for the fancy leather bound versions of the book, notebook and the dice bag; nice to haves, but not necessities.

This is the first of two shipments for my pledge. As you can see on the right, the expected delivery was July 2018, and it is now Feb 2019. The pledge fulfillment is late, but it's not several years late, certainly well within my expectations on hitting delivery date targets. The second shipment is supposed to ship late 2019, but mid 2020 would be more likely in my experience. Only time will tell! I also ordered a set of the airship tiles so I could play with miniatures but use less crafted terrain, and well.....Airships....

I am almost sure most of you are here to look at pictures and hear my thoughts on the physical products. To that end I took a lot of pictures and have spent some time with the physical products, although I have not assembled the miniatures.

	The Packaging. We will start with what I see when I open the box. Lots of packaging, not as cool as what I got with Monolith's Claustrophobia, but it appears sufficient to get the product shipped to my door in one piece, after looking through it all, I would say it was successful.
In the Box. After removing the air packs we can see all of the goodies a little more clearly. Well the dice and miniatures anyhow, there is so many of these the books remain unseen, hidden, below the horde of Barsoom!
	Dice. Lots and lots of dice. 15 d20s and 18 combat dice that will assuredly be pressed into service for Conan as well! The dice are clean and easy to read with the combat dice eliminating having numbers on them as well to clarify what is damage and what is not. I approve. D6s are the most common dice out there, we really don't need to press our special dice into service to roll as a d6.
Blister Packs. The resin miniatures are all packed in sealed blister packs. A few are in blister packs that are not sealed, but they were secure for me and had not popped open in transit. Inside the figures are all in small ziploc bags preventing them from moving around freely within the blister.
	Miniatures. Resin figures are a little new to me so I wanted to check them out when I got them. The casts look nice, although there is a little flashing. I think I might actually prefer big obvious flashing like this to a tiny small occasional amount I generally miss till I am painting. The material is grey and has a little flex in it, not something like Bones, but not rigid either. They will look bad ass painted.
White Ape. Another shot of one of the miniatures showing the detail of the figures.
	Notebook. Next up are a few photos from the notebook. It has a great cover, elastic closure and integrated cloth bookmark. It's actually pretty similar in size and function to what I currently use. It does have a few JCoM specific pages though.
Notebook Cont. A shot of the interior of the book showing it's integrated character sheet.
	Notebook Cont. My quick look showed most of the other pages to be blank lined pages with a few grid pages in there as well.
Toolkit A shot of the interior of the book showing it's integrated character sheet.
	Toolkit Cont. The Conan Toolkit was a great resource and I expect nothing less from this, although I've not had time to go over it in detail..
Screen Second half of the toolkit package. I am not a big user of screens, but this one looks like a great selection of reference materials, that I of course didn't take a photo of.
	Slipcase A lovely, robust, slipcase to hold the core book and the campign book with your more conventionally formatted books.
Clipcase cont. The two books inside the slipcase.
	Core Book Quick shot inside the core book. The pages in these books feel thinner and more glossy than what we see in the Conan books. Hopefully that doesn't translate into page tears in the future.
Campaign Book Easily my favorite of the two covers. Love it.
	Campaign Book Interior shot of some of the bad guys. I would have preferred cool art for these, but I don't hate the miniature images either.
Campaign Book Double interior cover map of Barsoom. Pretty cool interior art.
	Ship Tiles I wasn't sure what to expect here. I have heard the Star Trek tiles are scaled a little small, and I didn't get any of the Conan tiles. In the end size and art wise these turned out pretty excellent.
Ship Tile Warpage The only down side is once removed from their shrink wrap they immediately took a slight warp. I live in a dry climate and it's the middle of winter and a cold snap. Slightly dissapointing, but I doubt it will be a long term issue.

Overall it is a cool set of books and accessories from a loved and formative work of Sci-fi. The format isn't even as bad as many people, myself included, feared. As I mentioned above I do have a few concerns, but overall the books and such look excellent and well put together.

It is something I will love having on my shelf and enjoy playing. Who doesn't want to play some good old fashioned sci-fi set on the old ideas of what Mars might have been?

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Friday's Forgotten Fiends: The Hyborian Fossa

Welcome back to another installment of Friday's Forgotten Fiends! Custom monsters for your RPG table feature stat blocks for Conan 2d20 and Dungeons and Dragons 5e as well as paper 28mm miniatures and VTT tokens!

The group of men moved deeper into the jungle, a short while earlier they had spotted the first signs of the ruined city. Now they searched deeper into the jungles of the Black Kingdom seeking an entrance to this mythical place. Ruined stones emerged from the emerald colored foliage, serving as a kind of marker for the party of Stygians. Finally they stood on ancient flagstones, a road, leading between two ruined pillars and into the jungle. Following this ancient road they came to a small clearing in the jungle and beyond lay an intact marble building, all but invisible in the dense foliage. The largest man of the group excitedly pointed at the low structure, "Come! The treasure awaits!", and move carelessly into the clearing before the building. Before anyone could react the jungle around the clearing moved and in an instant several large, long, sleek, almost feline beasts sprang into the opening, their eyes and teeth flashing at what they clearly saw as prey. The big man, slowly drew his sword slowly, not making any sudden moves. As the blade barely cleared it's sheath the first of the beasts pounced, as if sensing the intent of the man. It's teeth and claws flashed in the sunlight as the sword as brought up barely fending off the first of these creatures, as the second one leaped onto his back sinking its teeth into his shoulder.......

You will have to bear with me for a moment as I discuss something pretty non-Hyborian age. Many years ago I watched a little movie called Madagascar. In it the bad guys are the FOSSA, something I had never heard of. I just assumed I was supposed to know about what they were trying to represent. As it turns out Madagascar is just a place with animals that don't exist elsewhere, it is something called "megadiverse", and I had no idea what these creatures were.

70% of species that inhabit these islands are totally unique in the world. Its great richness of biodiversity goes from lemurs, mongoose, chameleons, bats, foxes... Additionally, during the last decade 40 mammals, 69 amphibians, 61 reptiles, 42 invertebrates and 385 new plants were discovered within its territory. -https://www.activesustainability.com/environment/top-10-countries-in-biodiversity/#4

Fast forward to now and I am looking for new and interesting creatures that once populated our world to be thrown in as savage beasts of the Hyborian Age. The fossa as depicted in that fun romp of a movie is fairly small at about 2.5 feet long and 20lbs, and so interesting but maybe not exactly what I am looking for. Now the Cryptoprocta Spelea is more what we are looking for, or at least more evidence for larger animals. This Giant Fossa is closer to 3.5 feet long, weighing in at twice that of it's smaller relative at about 40lbs.

Despite the depictions in the movie the modern fossa is generally thought of as solitary, although they have been observed to cooperate and share kills, which would make them a *LOT* more interesting. Going along with that our new species will be even larger, more like cougar sized and they will hunt in packs, so don't set these individually on your players!

These cat like predators are potentially awesome foes for your sword and sorcery game, realistic and less well known than other creatures such as sabertooth tigers.

Ok enough preamble and talk of children's cartoons.......Welcome to an Age Undreamed Of......

Cryptoprocta Hyborius. The Hyborian Fossa.

Conan 2d20

D&D 5e

VTT Tokens

Paper Minis!

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Savage Sword of Conan: Issue #2 (2019)

Savage Sword #2! The first comic sparked a little bit of a firestorm on the internet, so I am understandably curious how this story will continue to feed that fire, or extinguish it a little.

Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Ron Garney
Colorist: Richard Isanove
Letterer: VC's Travis Lanham
Cover Artist: Alex Ross

Much like the first issue of Conan the Barbarian, our map of the world was laid out, but where we are was left blank. Also like Conan the Barbarian, the second issues reveals our location, but not with blood like CtB, with the map scratched out.

Overall this issue is probably more Conan. It reveals more Conan tropes and what he is finally up to. I can't fault the story too much as I have used similar story lines in my own adventures in the Conan 2d20 RPG. There are definitely a few things I liked less or struck at my enjoyment, but as I think about it, I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. Without dropping spoilers I can't speak to specifics directly.

The art overall is good, much as issue 1, a raw, loose, savage style with what I think is an excellent depiction of our barbarian hero in general.

Lets get down to where I place it in terms of the skulls of my enemies.

Art:
Story:
Cover:
Sword & Sorcery:

I will drink from 4.5 out of 5 Skulls of my Enemies for this issue.


I still like the art, the lines the color, all of it. High marks from me here again.
Story is also high here as well, great Conan stuff going on, only a few missteps that stuck out at me. If I compared this story directly to what happened in issue 1, I would most likely rate issue 1 a little lower. I also saw no guns, but I admit to not going over every frame with a fine tooth comb, so maybe I just missed them?
The cover is the weakest part of the issue, and it's not that it's bad. It is a great image of Conan, but that is all it is. So hats off to Ross for a cool image, I just wish there was more.
Its general sword and sorceryness is also remaining turned right up and we have what is in my opinion a solid second issue to the series.

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Conan 2d20: Playing the Investigation

Most of my articles have been about how to GM certain aspect of Conan 2d20 RPG, or at most overviews of how the basic mechanics work. I haven't played as a player, but my group has run for a couple of years, playing once a month or so, and I have noticed a few things.

As I have mentioned numerous times, I really like the idea of succeeding by a measure of success vs a simply black & white success metric of many RPGs, especially d20 based systems. Unfortunately I think this idea gets forgotten outside of combat by players as there is no real chart of spends to use your momentum on when you succeed in an amazing way. As you may have guessed from the title we are going to look at how players can get the most out of an investigation.

Generally, as I have outlined in my investigation post players should be able to simply say, "I search the area" or something similar to gain the most basic clue about where they should go next.

GM: Your party enters the room to find the dead body of your contact sprawled on the floor. Furniture and belongings are strewn about as though there was a struggle. GM: What do you do?

As the player you decide you want to search the body.

Player: I would like to search the body GM: Ok. This will be a D1 Observation test? Player: I roll 2d20 and gain 2 successes! GM: Alright, you gain a point of momentum. GM: As you search the body you find, clutched in his hand, the emblem of the royal guard, apparently torn from his attacker during the struggle.

As a player from a more traditional system with a pass/fail mechanic you will be tempted to think that is that and try and find who the emblem was torn from, but this is Conan2d20 and it contains a measure of success, you as the player rolled 2 successes, you received a point of momentum. Not only did you succeed, but you succeeded well. You could certainly drop the momentum into the group pool for the next player to use, or you could spend it right away.

Page 103-104 of the core rulebook discusses basic types of momentum spends, some of these are broken out into a series of momentum spends. For example: Improve Quality of Success is described as a an often repeatable spend that may cause extra damage, and Increase Scope of Success is described as being able to affect more targets, or increase areas of effects. Both of these we see as combat spends as well, but we shouldn't limit these to the arena of combat.

So you have searched the body but gained momentum in doing so. Why don't we use that to "Increase the Quality of Success"

Player: With my point of momentum I would like to see if there is anything else interesting about the body GM: As your search is especially thorough, you move the body slightly and discover, scrawled in blood, the name, "Cromlach". The name was previously hidden by the way the body was laying suggesting your contact was left for dead.

Now you have even more to go on, which can be nothing but beneficial. Keep this in mind as you choose how many d20s to roll. It may well be beneficial to roll 5d20 as well as assistance dice from your party to search that body and generate as much momentum as possible so you can be sure to find every last detail you can about it.

This can also be helpful if you don't actually know what you are looking for yet. This past weekend my players did a cursory search of a room and succeeded. They found a shipping manifest for supplies that came out of a nearby city. They didn't know it was relevant and so it was glossed over and largely ignored for several hours as they tried to workout their next move.

As a player use everything in your power to let the GM help you along to the next point in the investigation or story and remember they are not at odds to you, they want you to learn what is next, they want you to continue and be successful, but they also don't want to simply hand it to you on a silver platter or railroad you down a given path.

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Firearms in the Hyborian Age? (and some 2d20 stats)

In Marvel's first issue of SAVAGE SWORD, some keen eyed fans spotted what looked quite a LOT like a pistol on one of the pirates that had captured Conan. Unsurprisingly this set off a bit of a firestorm, culminating in some people calling the book trash without ever having read it.

Truly Robert E Howard has no firearms in his Conan tales, but The Black Stranger definitely has pirates, and I don't mean Queen of the Black Coast pirates, I mean Pirates of the Caribbean Pirates. Conan himself gets outfitted in pirate gear, and the interesting part is the gear he finds and uses, this quintessential pirate gear is old...

A man as big as himself was striding toward him over the sands, making no attempt at stealth; and the pirate's eyes widened as he stared at the close-fitting silk breeches, high flaring-topped boots, wide-skirted coat and head-gear of a hundred years ago. There was a broad cutlass in the stranger's hand and unmistakable purpose in his approach. Black Stranger -Robert E Howard.

Even in a more conventional story Howard describes the Barachan Pirates much like we might see in a more traditional pirate setting.

As he came into the waist the crew thronged about him: Zingarans, all of them, half naked, their gaudy silk garments splashed with tar, jewels glinting in ear-rings and dagger hilts. Pool of the Black One -Robert E Howard.

With characters in his stories that are clearly quite late in the medieval sphere of things, some might even say PAST medieval and into renaissance age. Looking again to The Black Stranger we see armor that 100% post-dates the introduction of fire-arms into Europe.

The taller stranger removed his morion and made a sweeping bow. His companions halted, drawing their wide cloaks about them, and behind them the sailors leaned on their oars and stared at the flag floating over the palisade. Black Stranger -Robert E Howard.

The Morion is a distinctive Spanish helmet, so Zingaran in the Hyborian Age, and certainly it we shouldn't use our world as an exact mirror to the Hyborian Age, but the fact remains that Howard took what he liked to make his stories cool, to make his stories sell. If there was ever a place and time where the rule of cool holds true it is the Hyborian Age and the world of Conan.

Moving away from pirates and armor technology for a moment I want to move towards alchemy in the Hyborian Age.

The horde had halted. From the extreme wing rushed a chariot, the naked charioteer lashing the steeds like a madman; the other occupant was a tall figure whose robe floated spectrally on the wind. He held in his arms a great vessel of gold and from it poured a thin stream that sparkled in the sunlight. Across the whole front of the desert horde the chariot swept, and behind its thundering wheels was left, like the wake behind a ship, a long thin powdery line that glittered in the sands like the phosphorescent track of a serpent. "That's Natohk!" swore Amalric. "What hellish seed is he sowing?" The charging knights had not checked their headlong pace. Another fifty paces and they would crash into the uneven Kushite ranks, which stood motionless, spears lifted. Now the foremost knights had reached the thin line that glittered across the sands. They did not heed that crawling menace. But as the steel-shod hoofs of the horses struck it, it was as when steel strikes flint—but with more terrible result. A terrific explosion rocked the desert, which seemed to split apart along the strewn line with an awful burst of white flame. Black Colussus -Robert E Howard.

And again in Hour of the Dragon we have this,

His hand dipped into his robe and came out with something shining – a glistening sphere. This he threw suddenly at Conan. The Cimmerian contemptuously struck it aside with his sword—at the instant of contact there was a sharp explosion, a flare of white, blinding flame, and Conan pitched senseless to the ground. Hour of the Dragon -Robert E Howard.

Clearly the Hyborian Age has the ability to produce explosive powders and the like. In both of these examples it is used by the hands of ancient Sorcerers, so I am not suggesting you can roll into your Aquilonian corner store and buy it, but I am suggesting such things existed to men who knew about it.

So now we have a pretty strong case for technology in the Hyborian Age higher than what was in use when firearms were introduced into Europe. We can simply take this as proof that Howard would gladly pull what was cool and within setting for his stories, if we go that way we need to go no further and realize simple firearms and pirates are pretty common place, and it's probably not that big a stretch to imagine Howard employing it.

Alternatively we can try and explain it via what we see in the Hyborian Age. They had the metal working technology to build 17th century armor, surely they could make a basic gun barrel. We also have proof of explosive and burning powders in the stories. Without any direct evidence of firearms, it's really not a great leap to believe something like a simple matchlock pistol might have existed.

In either scenario we really need to ask ourselves, "Are simple firearms really a complete impossibility in the Hyborian Age?"

Some of you will categorically deny this as a possibility, and that is fine. For those of you I can convinced that these things might exist in fairly small quantities as an interesting weapon, I give to you....

THE MATCHLOCK PISTOL

A ranged weapon for the Conan 2d20 RPG by Modiphius

Name	Range	Damage	Size	Qualities	Availability	Cost	Encumbrance
Matchlock Pistol	C	6cd	2H	Piercing 2 Fearsome 2, Intense, Slow	5	15	3

Slow: This weapon requires the player to remain stationary and use a minor action to load before firing.

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