A few additional suggestions...

[thegoodassyrian]

Speaking as someone who just wandered into Zefrs without any reference to the original Conan RPG, it might be helpful to provide some examples of play and a sample character to help show how the system works. I know that the first priority was just getting the rules stripped down from the setting stuff and getting them formatted for posting online, but it might be time to think about making it more friendly to the gamer approaching the game for the first time through this project. Once I get my feet wet I would be happy to help with this.


The Good Assyrian

[markkrawec]

Hi Assyrian

I'm planning on posting the characters who appear in the examples at some point, but if you've got some ready to go by all means let's see them. I could make them available as examples on the ZeFRS site.

[thegoodassyrian]

No problem! I'll whip up some this weekend and send them to you. It will give me a chance to work through the system as well. I may try to throw a Zefrs game together for some friends on Saturday. I am still kinda in the dark on how to set up proper enemies and foes, but I scored a copy of the Conan RPG (yay me!) and it is in the mail from Canada, and it may arrive today. Here's hoping.


TGA

[markkrawec]

A word of warning - any of the NPCs or creatures in the gazeteer will wipe the floor with beginning PCs, and I do mean any of them.

There's a sample solo adventure in the boxed set. It's Tower of the Elephant & the player is supposed to use the sample Conan writeup. Thing is, Conan as written is built on 235 points.

A starting character is supposed to be built on 35.

Of course, if all the characters need to do is fight something you can get by with nothing but three values - a Fighting rating, a Movement rating & a Damage rating. Eyeball those to be roughly equivalent to the PCs' values & you ought to get a fair fight.

[thegoodassyrian]

Thanks for the advice! I think that is exactly the kind of thing that should be in the online rules. If I can get a game together this weekend I'll let you know how it went.


TGA

[thegoodassyrian]

An update - I got together with 3 friends on Sunday evening and made characters using only the Zefrs website (my copy of the Conan still hasn't arrived in the mail...drat), so it was a pretty good test of how the game currently works "in the wild". None of us had ever seen the Conan RPG before, although one or two of us had some experience with the old Marvel Superheroes game.

The character generation went well with four fairly different characters being produced. Pirate swordsman, thief, two-weapon dueler, and a wrestler/brawler. There were a few small issues, like one of the talents - shadowing - is listed in the explanation of talent pools, but didn't show up on the detailed list. It was generally assumed that all starting characters should start with a weapon talent at 5, Damage talent at 5, and Movement talent at 5. Is this pretty standard wisdom?

In the end we didn't get much of a chance to test the actual combat system because we didn't have much to go on in generating baddies for a fight. Once again, this is the single biggest problem that I see with Zefrs currently and a section with some sample enemies and foes would be *very* helpful for the beginning player. Artikid has kindly PMed me his beastiary and it is exactly the kind of thing that is needed in the online rules. I don't think that it should wait for the Scrolls, but that is just my $.02.

We did try a couple of rounds of combat between the pirate swordsman and the two-weapon duelist. A couple of questions came up, the biggest of which was do you always hit the body section you are aiming for in melee? There is a chart for hitting different target zones for missile combat, but we couldn't find any reference to it in melee besides the fact that you pick a target zone. It was late, so we very well may have missed it, but if you always hit the zone you aim for we thought that it would make armor pretty much useless as you would simply strike the least protected areas of your opponent. Any clarification on this would be much appreciated!


TGA

[markkrawec]

TGA

It's incredibly gratifying to hear that you're getting some use out of this!

thegoodassyrian said:

There were a few small issues, like one of the talents - shadowing - is listed in the explanation of talent pools, but didn't show up on the detailed list.

It's not listed individually in the detailed list, but rather as an application of the Observation Talent. (There's no Engineering Talent either - maybe they meant Siegecraft?) Maybe it was originally intended as a separate Talent but got rolled into the other & the text didn't get corrected before it went to press.

It was generally assumed that all starting characters should start with a weapon talent at 5, Damage talent at 5, and Movement talent at 5. Is this pretty standard wisdom?

Standard or not it sounds like a good idea.

We did try a couple of rounds of combat between the pirate swordsman and the two-weapon duelist. A couple of questions came up, the biggest of which was do you always hit the body section you are aiming for in melee? There is a chart for hitting different target zones for missile combat, but we couldn't find any reference to it in melee besides the fact that you pick a target zone. It was late, so we very well may have missed it, but if you always hit the zone you aim for we thought that it would make armor pretty much useless as you would simply strike the least protected areas of your opponent. Any clarification on this would be much appreciated!

You've got it right - according to the rules as written, in melee you pick an aiming point & if you roll a success, you hit it. (Which may be why Conan always makes a point of hitting people in the head - most severe specific wound!)

What do you think about applying a penalty of one or two columns to attacks against the head & limbs?

[artikid]

Thanks for the kind words on my bestiary thegoodassiryan

Mark:
I think the idea of column shifts for aiming particular areas of the body is a good one.
Maybe - 1cs for the limbs and -2 for the head?
However the rules already have details on "called shots": we could eliminate the difference between melee and missile combat when determining the hit location.
Just my 2 cents
Best Regards
Artikid

[thegoodassyrian]

No problem, Artikid! You were nice enough to share it and although I didn't have it for our first session I'll use it for our second one, perhaps next week. And thanks Mark for putting this whole thing on the web for our enjoyment! ;D

On the aiming rules, I agree with Artikid that maybe the simplest solution is to use the body area table and aiming rules in the missile combat section. It would make headshots hard, but Conan-level characters could pull it off against enemy-class opponents without too much trouble...it would definitely make armor more viable in melee.

I was also thinking about tinkering with the chargen rules a bit. My initial idea is to give each beginning character *one* talent that could be bought up to 10. For all others the current limitation of 5 would still be in effect. This means that in one particular area the beginning character could be pretty effective. How does that sound to you folks?

As an aside I finally got my copy of the original Conan RPG in the mail. It is a fun read, and I think that you are right about the NPCs being too butch for the beginning characters as written to handle, Mark! Even the drunk that Conan guts with some ease in the Maul during the beginning of "The Tower of the Elephant' is pretty butch...

TGA

P.S. I was also pleasantly surprised to find a copy of the old Marvel "Guide to the Conan Universe" in the box along with the game. Neat!

[markkrawec]

thegoodassyrian said:

On the aiming rules, I agree with Artikid that maybe the simplest solution is to use the body area table and aiming rules in the missile combat section. It would make headshots hard, but Conan-level characters could pull it off against enemy-class opponents without too much trouble...it would definitely make armor more viable in melee.

Your chance of getting a red/heroic result against an enemy isn't any greater than against a foe; it's just that an enemy will always suffer a specific wound. But you're right, a Conan-level fighter will be dishing out specific wounds about 14% of the time - none too shabby. I'm partial to the negative column shift though, because it lets the fighter choose whether to go for the easier target or take a more difficult shot at the big prize. Plus you avoid strange results like a guy on foot with a dagger putting it in a horseman's head.

The one Talent at 10 idea sounds good.

P.S. I was also pleasantly surprised to find a copy of the old Marvel "Guide to the Conan Universe" in the box along with the game. Neat!

Lucky sod!

[thegoodassyrian]

Mark: I agree with you that you could go either way with handling aimed shots in melee. I am planning to run another session soon, so I'll try it both ways and let you know how it goes.

Another quick question. It seems like the two-weapon talent is pretty butch. Am I correct that if you just have a single level of this talent, then you get the benefits of having two actions? If so, this seems a little unbalancing. I could see people giving all characters they make just a single level to get the benefits and there would be no incentive to take any additional levels in the talent. Perhaps another way to approach it is that a character with this talent defends or attacks first as written, and then has to make a successful check to make the attack at the end of the round. This will make having a good level in the talent important for its usefulness.

Also, as an aside, is there any clarification on how multiple actions work with the two-weapon talent? Does someone with this talent get to make another two actions if they succeed in performing an additional action under the multiple action rules?


TGA

[markkrawec]

thegoodassyrian said:

It seems like the two-weapon talent is pretty butch. Am I correct that if you just have a single level of this talent, then you get the benefits of having two actions? If so, this seems a little unbalancing. I could see people giving all characters they make just a single level to get the benefits and there would be no incentive to take any additional levels in the talent. Perhaps another way to approach it is that a character with this talent defends or attacks first as written, and then has to make a successful check to make the attack at the end of the round. This will make having a good level in the talent important for its usefulness.

Also, as an aside, is there any clarification on how multiple actions work with the two-weapon talent? Does someone with this talent get to make another two actions if they succeed in performing an additional action under the multiple action rules?

It's not clear from the rules. I assumed that when fighting with two weapons, each weapon was wielded using the two-weapon talent rating instead of its own. (Yeah, yeah, that leads to other, equally ridiculous results - a guy who's got a rating of 1 in sword and dagger but has a two-weapon rating of 10 is a schmuck when he's only got one but becomes hell on wheels when he's got one in each hand.) Your idea - make a two-weapon resolution check to get the opportunity to use the second weapon - sounds better.

It does say that when using two weapons the standard multiple action rules don't apply. It would make sense that you can't use the multiple action rules plus two-weapon fighting to act like a human Moulinex.

[rabindranath72]

In the errata in the boxed set, the word "engineering" is used in the talent "Siegecraft/engineering", so I guess they are interchangeable.

Cheers,
Antonio