2024 Character Creation Challenge Day 15: Conan: Adventures In An Age Undreamed Of

We are half way through the month and half way through the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge. Today I will be using Conan: Adventures In An Age Undreamed Of by Modiphius. This is part of their 2d20 system. I’ve created characters under this system for Star Trek Adventures Core Rulebook, Star Trek Adventures Klingon Core Rulebook, Dune Adventures in the Imperium, John Carter of Mars and earlier this month, Fallout. So it will be interesting to see how the character creation process stacks up. Conan came out before Star Trek Adventures. So we will see.

There isn’t any availability for this game other than the physical books through Ebay. Modiphius gave up the license after they decided that they had completed the line. I’ve heard that another company will be picking up the Conan line, but I don’t think it will be using the same system. Just before the Modiphius license expired last year, they had a massive sale for all of the PDF books at a very good price. So I had to pick it up to use in the Character Creation Challenge.

The PDF of the core rulebook has 440 pages and contains bookmarks. The character creation process starts in chapter 2 on page 13. The character sheet is three pages long with the last page reserved for spells.

There are ten steps in the process. The first step is to select a homeland. The RAW states to roll 2d20 and check the chart. A roll of 21 resulted in the character being from Brythunia (and it gives a page number for more information). This gives us the Talent of Cosmopolitan and the language of Brythunian. The Cosmopolitan talent allows you to talk with other characters who also posses this talent.

Step two is the attributes. These are Agility, Awareness, Brawn, Coordination, Intelligence, Personality and Willpower and range from 6-12 when the process is completed. All of these attributes start with a value of 7. Now I am instructed to roll a d20 twice to determine the character’s two attribute aspects. These resulted in “Wise and Friendly” and “Socially Adept”. These both came with two mandatory attribute increases and I can pick one of two optional attribute increases. I adjusted my notes after making my choices.

The Caste is step three in the process. This is the social class that the character came out of. The caste will give the character two talents, one skill and a story. From the chart I rolled a Farmer. I wrote down the skills, effects and social standing and moved onto step four, the story.

A story has the background elements of the character and is rolled on a chart for the caste determined in step three. I found the Farmer stories and rolled a four “Ample for Winter”. For some reason there was a second line for caste on the character sheet, but none for story. So I assumed this was a mistake and wrote my story information there. No skills or other adjustments were provided here that I could see.

Here in step five we get to roll (or choose) an Archetype. This sounds like a class. I looked over the descriptions and decided to let the dice roll. If I didn’t like it, the example stated that I could just pick one. The d20 clacks on the table resulting in 11, a Pirate. Pirates are kewl, but how would a Farmer become a Pirate? Yea, I’m making the choice that this guy will be a Mercenary. More of a land based guy since he was once a farmer. Not only are there several skills obtained, but the first equipment items that I wrote down.

Next on step six, Nature we roll for what the character does or act in a certain way. Sticking with the randomness of the dice I rolled a 13: Sneaky. I looked up what is gained from this. +1 to a single attribute (awareness) and some more skills and my first talent (at least the first that I can see, the example had two listed for them by now, but they were on a different path so??)

Education is step seven. The dice rolled a 15 “On Your Own Terms”. More mandatory and elective skills were adjusted or added. Another talent was selected (perhaps I was just impatient). No new equipment however.

The War Story is step eight. I’m suddenly having to stop myself from saying “There I was…” It was a previous experience of some sort that happened to your character before the campaign started. I know that Star Trek Adventures has something similar to this. While STA has two of these events, Conan characters only get one. And for this guy I rolled a 19 which is “Survived witchcraft or sorcery”. This gave me a +1 Expertise and Focus to Discipline and Sorcery. Interesting.

On step nine we have some finishing touches. I can add +2 to one attribute or +1 to two attributes. I selected the later and decided to bump up my two lowest scores. I can then add several scores of Expertise and Focus to any skills (including skills that the character doesn’t have yet). I made my choices and altered the character sheet. It also explained that while expertise and focus were raised together during the creation process, during game play these would be increased separately. I was starting to wonder about this. I am also instructed to pick one additional talent as long as I can meet the prerequisite. I should also select a second language. The starting character gets three fortune points (i.e. luck points). For personal belongings, I get to roll twice on a table.

Step ten is the remaining aspects of the character. These include Vigor, Resolve and starting gold. It talks about courage and armor soak. It states that his persistent soak for courage is the sum of all soak bonuses bestowed by talents? But I don’t see any. Yea, I’d be asking a GM to clarify the soak stuff so I’ll leave this blank for now. Name, Age, Personality and Appearance discussions are here as well. I was thankful for the name examples.

I think I’m done because the book goes into some alternate character creation options. I know that the weapons and animals don’t have stats, but I’m sure I could look them up. I didn’t scan the third page since Braga (name selected from the homeland list) has no spells.

Afterthoughts:

I liked the fact that this core rulebook got straight into the explanation of RPGs (standard in most books) and character creation process. Several of the other Modiphiuis books for different media franchises had contained a long explanation of the world. As a gamer, I just wanted the rules. This was very much appreciated.

Not bad for a character creation process. No annoying pop ups with sides of information. I did have to re-read a few sections to make sure I understood what they were trying to say. If I did anything wrong, please let me know. But after the annoying character creation process of the last two nights, this was a blessed change.

This game sounds more combaty than Star Trek Adventures and Dune. I wonder how it would play at a table. Hopefully someone would run it at a convention. I don’t think I’ll ever get a chance to participate in a campaign for Conan. But I’d love to see how it runs at the table.

Additional Notes:

I had quite a reaction to my Ninjas & Superspies entry yesterday. On Mastodon, I had several readers tell me that they had the same level of frustration with the system including an attempt at making TMNT characters. One poster on the RPGPub message board told me that the stick figure drawing on the character made them laugh. They could see my frustration in that quick one-second drawing. I don’t know why this person’s laughing made me laugh out loud as well, but I did. And I needed a laugh.

Coming Up Next:

Boot Hill 3rd Edition

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