The Quickenings - Conan: The Pit of Kutallu
Quickstarts! You know about them, right? Small, usually free products that package up game rules, pregen characters and a short scenario to run at a convention or the like?
I have like 80 of these things, and have run approximately zero of them. But it's time to change that - yesterday I took one out for a spin, and I plan to run more in 2023.
So with that agenda, and in the general spirit of blogging about literally all my gaming, even if nobody cares, here's a short roundup/review of that quickstart that also sets up a framework of how I'll (probably) write about them in the future.
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THE QUICKSTART: Conan: The Pit of Kutallu
THE SYSTEM: A moderately crunchy implementation of Modiphius' 2d20 house system. It didn't take too much time to explain the basics and get started, though we needed occasional (but short) breaks to explain new elements. The strongest aspect was the back-and-forth trade of meta-currency that encouraged players to make interesting decisions; the weakest was the need to keep referring to tables to work out how to spend those currencies.
THE SCENARIO: A straightforward action-adventure piece, as you'd expect - some barbarian heroes escape from slavery, explore a swamp and rescue a noblewoman from Cthul... sorry, Kutallu. Very much a 5 Room Dungeon structure, which is a good model for this sort of thing. The strongest bit was the escape-from-slavers montage scene, which encouraged player creativity; the weakest was the over-reliance on fight scenes. It also took me a bit of work to scale things down for a small (2-person) play group.
THE CHARACTERS: The quickstart comes with four PCs, and there's a PDF with two more. The characters are probably the weakest part of the package; they're fine but a little bland, without distinct schticks. Some are better integrated with the rules than others - 2d20 ties special effects to weapons, but several PCs have weapons with no effects, making them less interesting/effective in play.
THE PRODUCT: A 32 page booklet, free in PDF, probably costs something in hardcopy. It's attractive enough, and looks good at first glance, but it was harder to find rules and information in play than I expected. The Conan RPG books I've skimmed all seem a bit overwritten, and this was no different; another couple of editing passes, and some thoughts about instructional design, would have improved it a fair bit.
NUMERICAL RATING: yeah nah those are bullshit, we're not doing that
NON-NUMERICAL ASSESSMENT: Pretty good overall, and a fun way to spend an afternoon, but it hasn't really fired me up to run/play Conan again.
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Tune in again in... I dunno, maybe a month? for more of this sort of thing.
