Got the S&S Spell Thing Covered!

I am actually in pain, across my back, from a day of painting. I have many more to look forward to, at least two more. Woe is me, indeed. Anyway, the good thing is that all of the other stuff that has been taking over my life has receded. Somewhat. Still another trip to Brantford to see my dad for Thanksgiving, then I’m back to work (parental leave over), and things should settle down.

Even though in pain, I have a moment, so—blog entry!

I’ve been thinking and dreaming about playing, rather than doing any. We haven’t got a third wheel for our regular group (The Ottawa Warband, and a sidenote, I really, really need to get more content up there, but as we aren’t playing, I don’t find myself motivated to edit and add it), so no gaming for this cat.

The thing I’ve been thinking and dreaming about playing . . . well, actually running, ’cause that’s what I tend to do, is either ancient Greece—specifically Mycenean, post Trojan War—or Roman style sword & sorcery. My biggest problem pulling off S&S is that my favoured system right now is True20, and the magic system, while less flash than D&D, is a little quick and uber for S&S. Savage Worlds is pretty much the same.

So I went through a few of my books, thinking there might be something I could use. BAM! Conan.

Now, I played Conan before, but we never really used the magic system. None of the players were spell-casters. Looking at the spells, though, and the rules governing spell-casting, this would totally work. Makes sense, given that Conan is really a pillar of S&S.

The sweet thing is that Conan was a d20/OGL product, that means I can slot it into True20 with minimal adjustment. I haven’t gone over the spell specifics, and I won’t unless there’s an actual chance I might be running this, but a quick look gives me hope.

I want the system to feel really gritty, and by that I mean dangerous. I would use a modified Toughness saving throw, with failures that run through the non-lethal and into the lethal, meaning that if the character misses by enough, casting spells could harm or even kill him. The Conan magic system uses power points. I figure I can use the power point cost as an adjustment to the Toughness save target number—so if a spell as a PP cost of 5, the Toughness save would be against 20 (15+5).

Man, I hope I get to use this. I want to see how it works in practice.

Oh when, when will I run a game again?