How do you set a difficulty for a trap?

 

Hey all!

I often get asked this question a lot, and I have spent a long time searching, asking and trying to figure out a good answer. 

The question..

"How do you set the difficulty to detect a trap with out telling a person that a trap is actually there?"

As in most cases, in 2D20 Conan. A difficulty number needs to be assigned before a player can roll, as they need to know just how hard its going to be to roll. The problem being, if a GM sets the difficulty high, and the player fails his roll. He may just say.. "well that was a hard check, there must be something there." 

Now, the big problem is that the Core rulebook does not really tell you anything about detecting traps, it just says you use the thief skill to do it with. And I am fine with that, and for the longest time. Me, like many others set a hidden Momentum Spend number that a player would need to get on a D(1) roll. 

And for a long time, I was OK with that.. Now, personally although I was OK with that method for a long time. I always felt it was the wrong way to do it, but it was the best I thought we could do. 

Well, while running our current ongoing Thieves campaign for Conan, one of the players took a talent that I have not seen much, and that talent breaks our current way of checking for traps. That talent is the observation talent "Its a trap." It reads..

"You can spot covered pits, pressure plates, fulcrums, and other constructions designed to keep thieves out of burial chambers and treasure rooms. With a successful Challenging (D2) Observation test, you can detect any nearby traps as a Minor Action....." 

Here, it clearly tells us what we need to roll to check for traps. So with this talent now in play I had to re adjust my way of thinking. 

I am a person who HATES having to come up with homebrew house rules for games. I hate having to do it, but now seeing this talent in play. I have come up with a solution while in my games. And I think it works, and it does not break any core rules. Its simple, I tell my players that in my game there are 3 fixed difficulties for checking for traps. And seeing the GM gets to set these difficulties anyways, I am not adding anything new to the rules. 

So my solution is simple. (I think so anyways) 

• First thing is my golden rule. When the difficulty is declared, there is no going back. If a player wants to do a check, when they are ready to hear how difficult it is going to be, they are locked in. If I say its a D3, they can not say.. meh.. not going to roll. When they decide to hear the check, they are locked in. 
• Checking for traps will always be a Difficulty 4 if you do not have the "Thief" talent or "Its a Trap" talent. 
• Having the "Thief" talent will make any check for traps a D3. 
• And then of course if you have the observation talent "Its a Trap" it will be a D2. (As per rules)

By telling the players this information up front will cause a few things to happen. 

1. The moment a player hears of a high difficulty level, they will not instantly know it is trapped. They will just know that to find out if it is trapped for sure, they will need to beat that number. So they will not instantly avoid it or just instantly flood the doom pit or the momentum pool to get a as many dice as possible. Cause there may be no trap at all, and why burn your momentum or give the GM that loves to use DOOM against the players, the 3 doom only to find out there is nothing there anyways?
2. It allows for a better rounded character development, and forces players to buy talents that better suit the way the character is portrayed. If a player always knows that to check for traps will be a set number, he then can decide to buy a talent that helps reduce it. (Thats the way I look at it)

And the good news is.. if there is a trap and a player rolls a complication.. Well they found the trap, they triggered it. And if there was no trap to begin with and they rolled enough complications, heck buy the trap with a doom spend. (Thats how I roll.. lol) 

So yeah.. That's my take.. 

Crom has spoken.

Traveling in the world of Hyboria. Suggested Rules for dealing with Travel in 2D20 Conan.

 

Travel rules in 2D20 Conan RPG are fairly arbitrary in my own opinion and are left to the machinations of the GM.  I am OK with that. But sometimes, I like to have a little randomness to it. I wanted some rules to follow, but I wanted to keep the rules in line with the mechanics of the game and simple to use. I am pretty confident that others may have developed similar ideas to what mine is like. But what ever. So I sat down and decided to see if I could write up something that I could use.

After writing these, I realized that something similar can be used for other situations that are not travel, IE, Investigations, Searching for something, or what ever. So feel free to experiment with this. 

The basic idea, is you roll your skill vs the difficulty of the travel. For each success and momentum you get, you move your travel token from its starting point (0) to its completion point (10) If after any roll that you are not on the completion point (10) you will roll on the encounter table based on the encounter level you had set.

31 Days of Christmas Conan, Day 27 - Natara

 On the 27th Day of Christmas Conan, I present to you Natara. Daughter of the Shadows

31 Days of Christmas Conan. Day 25. Mirra

Merry Christmas everyone. I hope, Crom was good to you all this year, and you did not receive any DOOM from him this year! Today, I introduce Mirra.

31 Days of Christmas Conan, Day 24. Nicolas - Crafter in the North

 On the 24th day of Christmas Conan, I introduce you to Nicolas, Crafter in the North

31 Days of Christmas Conan Day 23 - Brath

 On the 23rd Day of Christmas Conan I give to you, Brath, the Son of Braun. 

31 Days of Christmas Conan Day 15 - N'Komo

 On the 15th day of Conan Christmas, I present

N'Komo

31 Days of Christmas Conan. Day 14 Enanga The Wicked

 On the 14th day of Conan Christmas, I bring to you.

Enanga The Wicked.

31 Days of Christmas Conan Day 12. Jian

 On the 12th day of Conan Christmas, Ole Jolly gave to thee...

Jian

31 Days of Christmas Conan, Day 11. Larellis

 On the 11th day of Christams, Ole Jolly gives to thee..

Larellis the Fence

31 Days of Christmas Conan. Day 10 - Erza

 On the 10th day of Christmas Conan, Jolly gave you ....

Erza.

31 Days of Christmas Conan. Day 9 - Darius the Duke

 On the ninth day of Christmas, good ole Jolly gave to thee..

Darius.

31 Days of Christmas Conan: Day 8 Thorgrim

 On the 8th day of Conan Christmas.. Thorgrim

31 Days of Christmas Conan: Day 6 Semer-Teph

 On the sixth day of Christmas, ole Jolly gave to thee.. Semer-Teph

The 31 Days of Christmas Conan: Day 4 Ntuli

 On the 4th day of Conan Christmas, Ole' Jolly gave to ye.. 

The 31 Days of Christmas Conan: Day 1

So recently, in an obvious attempt to up my visibility on social media and gain some attention to my blog. I voluntarily agreed to create and post 1 character a day for 31 days, along side an already established persona in the TTRPG gaming community whose blog is known as agameraday.blogspot.com and also affectionately named The Swamp on Twitter. 

So did I agreed to throw my name into this fun, 31 day challenge with another tabletop gamer on the internet.. No! 

I agreed to do this challenge against a pro! You see, I did not know that this person was a bonified active, published creator over on DTRPG when I decided to throw my creative hat into the ring. So, the pressure is on me now! ;) 

Now the deal was, that if they were to create a character a day for 31 days, then I would do the same.  I have choosen to make my characters with Modiphius's 2D20 System, Conan. That no surprise for anyone that follows me. 

Besides.. What's Christmas with out Crom?

So, today is December 1st, Day 1. I will also share the entire character sheet for you to download, and maybe use in your own games. Enjoy

If I was to play 2D20 Conan: Calacorm

Hi all,

Growing up, I am sure all of us "Gamers" had a character that they always played, a character that they always envisioned as they wanted to be like in real life.

I was no different. In fact, I am sure, like many others. That I was not the only who would write up full stories and backgrounds about this one particular hero. No matter what game they played, as long as the setting matched the background of that character, they made the character based on that vision.

In fact, even today I find myself tempted to create that character in the various rules and settings that are more then abundant today then it was back when I was a teen.

So I decided to sit down and make the hero that I created way back in the 80s, and pop him into Modiphius's 2D20 Conan ruleset. Given that the Conan character creation mechanic places a large focus on story telling, I was able to use this system to get what I think is an accurate creation of how Calacorm would play out as in this world.

The concept of Calacorm was that he was never a "super" hero type or someone who would be able to handle everything that was thrown at him. But more of a character who would persevere through hardships, someone who was flawed and failed things on the first try. But would succeed at things in the long run, by being smart, disciplined, a healthy dose of daring and being a team player. The last thing I wanted was to have a character who could always succeed at anything he did.

More resolute then strong.

Hence where the idea of Calacorm was born. So with out further adue, I would like to introduce to you. Calacorm Udrathed.

As an added touch of nostalgia, I searched for the Ken Kelly image that I used on my cover, when I wrote my first story about him and submitted it in my school's short story competition.

HOMELAND	Nemedia
ATTRIBUTE ASPECTS	Dexterous & Strong and Resolute
CASTE	Born Soldier
ARCHETYPE	Veteran
NATURE	Professional
EDUCATION	Educated on the Battlefield
STORY	The Promotion of the Fool
TRAIT	Realist
WAR STORY	Stranded in the Wastelands
SOCIAL STANDING	1
GOLD	9
FORTUNE POINTS	3
VIGOR	10
RESOLVE	13

AGILITY	10
ACROBATICS	1	1
MELEE	3	3
STEALTH	1	1

AWARENESS	8
INSIGHT	1	1
OBSERVATION	2	2
SURVIVAL	1	1
THIEVERY	1	1

BRAWN	8
ATHLETICS	1	1
RESISTANCE	2	2

COORDINATION	10
PARRY	1	1
RANGED WEAPONS	1	1
SAILING	0	0

INTELLIGENCE	8
ALCHEMY	0	0
CRAFT	0	0
HEALING	1	1
LINGUISTICS	1	1
LORE	0	0
WARFARE	1	1

PERSONALITY	7
ANIMAL HANDLING	0	0
COMMAND	1	1
COUNSEL	0	0
PERSUADE	1	1
SOCIETY	2	2

WILLPOWER	11
DISCIPLINE	2	2
SORCERY	0	0

TALENTS

Cosmopolitan Sentry Vagabond Veteran No Mercy Bind Wounds Sixth Sense

EQUIPMENT

Brigandine jacket (Armor 2: Torso/Arms) Cheap riding horse Cheap clothes with military insigna of dubious origin Mace Broadsword Battlefield Honor Shortsword A magnificent drinking horn with metal cup A brilliant scarlet cloak, made in the dreaming west Large Shield , a gift from a fallen dog-brother.

LANGUAGES

Nemedian Ophirean Aquilonian

Life, and a little bit of perspective.

Hey everyone,

Its been a while since I really posted any real new content on my blog, other then updates to my 2D20 Conan extension. And I wanted to keep this site active, as it seems in the last several months my viewership has increased, both on Twitch and on Twitter. With those numbers going up steadily, I want to make sure there is something here of note for my readers to follow.

The other thing, is dealing with the shutdown of the Google Plus pages. I have been struggling with the loss of G+, as I thought it fit my style of social media perfectly.  I recently moved my social media needs to MeWe, which is an OK site, but it doesn't quiet feel right, not yet anyways. I have been so busy with life in the last 6 months, to fully explore MeWe has been something I have not really had the chance to do. So I plan on getting back on track with that.

Life Status.

The end of 2018, ended on a real sad note for me in my personal life. Since my accident in 2016, I have been dealing with my recuperation of a totally shattered ankle, one large metal plate and a dozen or more surgical screws. Which effectively put my main hobby of Hiking/Climbing in a semi permanent state of hold. When one door closes, other doors open, so I spent a lot of my time focusing on my other Hobby, running RPGs.

2017 and 2018 saw a steady growth in my gaming. Starting with trimming the fat down in my online associations. When I had this done, I started to slowly build up a network of people who had actual similar interests in gaming, and gaming alone. Along the way I developed a really good friendship, with a person who I could count on for real solid advice, support and someone, who more importantly I could trust. Thanks @ionfarmer! I mean it! You are a real talent in the RPG world, and having you as a friend has been awesome!

Then in 2018 my gaming ramped up in a way I never could have thought was possible. Being a person, who can only game every 3 weeks due to my work, I was flooded with games in my time off. With 2 or 3 games every weekend, and asked to host other games through out the week. It was total madness and I loved it. I reveled in it! I put every ounce of my creative processes into it and I was telling more stories then I ever thought possible.

Overtime, and with some investments into online streaming, software, and other hardware in late 2018 I was about to really make a move into a whole other realm of  gaming. I was in my prime when it came to roleplaying. Everything had lined up perfectly.

And then disaster struck.

Late November, my wife's health which has been marginal since 2007 after a very serious car accident, took a turn for the worse. In mid - late December my best friend of 16 years, Jack, collapsed suddenly and passed away in my arms when he was brought low by a degenerative heart condition. For those who do not know, Jack was not a person, he was much more. He was my Dog. Jack was my outdoor companion, he hiked with me, he hunted with me, he went with me on rock climbing trips. Jack and I were inseparable. Jack was by my side, for more then 3 months as I recovered from my fall. Having him suddenly ripped away from my life, and the impact that had on myself and my already ailing wife was more then anyone of us have ever dealt with before.

So I shut down. Emergency re-set required. Cancelled all my remaining games for my time off, put away all my books, stopped writing. Just one total full stop!

When I got back from from work Mid January I decided it was time for my wife and I to take a short break away from it all. To get away from the pain and memories of the last several years. We decided to go on a trip.. in total, 13 days! Seeing I am only ever home for 21 days, this was a large chunk of my time. It was great. Warm waters, hot sands, and bright sun! It gave me a chance just to re adjust to the way things were going to be going forward. It allowed me to put things into perspective.

I got home from the trip with just 3 days to spare before having to head back to work for another 3 weeks, I am totally exhausted. By the time I do actually get a chance to run a game again it will be roughly 10 weeks since I last played anything. But I am excited about it.

I may have lost some momentum with a campaign I was running that was just short of a year in length when December struck. But that is OK, I am sure I will slowly build it up again.

Two systems this year I am really hyped with. 2D20 Conan and Coriolis. Man, I love those settings and I love those systems.

This year, I am going to be focusing on Coriolis a little bit more. And maybe run a campaign game for it. As the mechanics of the system is super slick, fast and very fun. Furious even! (A little dig towards you Savage's out there)

I am going to keep running the 2D20 Conan. But I am going to run it more on a game by game basis, which will allow me to run more Conan One Shot games and let me be more flexible in allowing players to jump in and out of the game.

My twitch channel is slowly getting more exposure too. Even with this recent setback of missing several weeks of gaming momentum. I am confident I will be able to get that back on track.  Having managed to receive some tips and advice from a real life audio studio recording professional, I am eager to put my new found skills to use and produce for everyone some super gaming content over the next year.

So stay tune, subscribe and buckle up for some great fun, original content and raucous behavior.

Best regards.

Jolly!

2D20 Conan Extension Updated! V3.5

Hey guys, great news.. you can now download the latest updated version of the Conan Extension
HERE You can also download the Doom Pit Tracker and Tokens as well. Below is how I set up the NPC and Character sheets.

2D20 Conan: Dreams of Darkness Update

Hey all!!

I am very happy to say that my current 2D20 Conan Game has been going successfully for over 6 months now.

I have been very fortunate to piece together a real good group of players for this campaign and it has allowed me to really hone in on my writing.  But more importantly my GM'ing style. But having a regular group of 6+ players in a given session has been awesome. And the fact that they are willing to be apart of it with my work schedule, such as it is. Gives me the drive to write up good adventures that they can enjoy!

I had some minor issues with my setup for streaming during my sessions, so the last several were not that appealing to watch. But I think I am finally starting to come to grips with what works best for my particular style. So only going to get better from here.

But I wanted post a quick recap on the campaign, so let me start it!

Session 1:
The group arrive in the capitol city of Argos, in hopes to meet a contact named Remauldo (A dealer in all things rare) to help them track down some stolen artifacts.

Session 2:
After rescuing the contact in the first session from a band of thugs, they are asked to break out a (in)famous sea captain named Alexander from prison. Who has been banished to the lowest level of the kings dungeon. Years earlier, he stole the Kings flagship and vanished. Only to be found several months ago adrift in a small boat stark raving mad.

Session 3:
While tracking down information, more artifacts were stolen but members of the local temple of Mitra have gone missing. Upon investigation they discovered that someone or something has unleashed an ancient evil from beneath the temple.

Session 4: Recovering from the ancient temple horrors, the group let their guard down with a night of drinking, only to wake to find assassins trying to kill them while they slept. During the battle, they discover that Remauldo was killed and his "collection" of rare items ransacked!

Session 5: Trying to recover from the loss of their friend, the group decides to use Remauldo's business as a front, keeping on with the investigation of the missing artifacts. The group decide to head to the local market, only to witness a public execution. One of which was a suspect on the missing artifacts and a girl/love interest of one of the players. Turns out, the love interest was actually a twin of  his love interest. The evil twin betrayed her sister and the suspect, making away with the missing artifacts. Needless to say, the public rescue attempt did not go as planed and the suspect was killed in the escape attempt! (of course they did how ever save the girl.)

Session 6: After jumping on a departing ship, the crew sail the coasts and discover stranded ship adrift. Its crews missing, but a cargo hold full of slaves left on board. The players decide to rescue the slaves by taking the stranded ship and sailing it back to shore. Only to discover that the ship was a lure in a trap to capture sacrifices for the great god under the sea!

Session 7: The players, with a new ship and a crew set sail looking to track down a lead on a fleeing vessel rumored to contain the stolen artifacts. Following the last known heading the crew arrive at a island, but in need of food supplies they head ashore. Only to stumble upon a fearsome group of crazed warriors.

Session 8: In a desperate battle, the party manages to survive the assault but many of them take serious wounds!

Session 9: After escaping the crazed warriors, the group are lead to a small hidden village, where they discover an Argosian sailor, Cirrio. He explains how he sailed with a man named Alexander, who was sent to this very island to search for something. Alexander then killed his crew, leaving this one sailor left for dead. The party is then asked to help the native king with a problem of more missing people, in return he will resupply their ship. The crew set out to a deep underground temple.. and begin their search.

Session 10: Will be September 15th!!