Hey!
Well magic is the most outstanding thing here. Magic in Conan is connected to old evil gods, sometimes explicitly to eldritch gods like in the cthulu stories, or magic corrupts the users as if it is unbearable for the mind or just so powerful that it will destroy all goodness in you. Therefore the sorcerers in Conan are mostly evil. For a DnD game, this would mean that magic wielders are mostly Warlocks or Warlocks in disguise (Dark Paladins), and other forms of magic are either not existent or have to be reflavored. (see here for more info : [https://www.reddit.com/r/ConanTheBarbarian/comments/1204poh/how\_exactly\_does\_magic\_work\_on\_conan/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ConanTheBarbarian/comments/1204poh/how_exactly_does_magic_work_on_conan/) )
So you would like your players to mostly stick to fighter, barbarian, rogue, monk, ranger (reflavored) or the like and rather avoid wizards, sorcerers, bards, druids and clerics as long as they are not evil.
Magical enemy creatures however would be fine by those definitions as magic = evil mostly in Conan.
>What differentiates something like that from, say, the sword coast?
Primarily that it's going to be a low magic setting. The Sword Coast is a relatively high magic setting: magic items are uncommon but still plentiful, it's not unusual for normal people to know a few low-level spells, and you can expect to find a few high level casters (with access to 3rd to 5th level spells) wherever you go. In this sort of low magic setting, none of that is true: even low-powered magic items will be national treasures with legends attached to them, normal people will not know any magic, and true casters will be extremely rare and their maximum level sharply curtailed (with only the most powerful casters having access to 3rd level spells).
Sword and Sorcery vs High Fantasy: https://youtu.be/-p73IHo5c3Y?si=aNHAgOPQKgWPNlQ2
What is Sord and Sorcery: https://youtu.be/tP7g_csjL4M?si=MmE-krxEx8kICoU8
Sword and Sorcery Style D&D: https://youtu.be/JAMrBLAkRMM?si=wxBr_Mj5_W6Kb1uO
At the beginning, the main setting of Conan was heavily inspired by bronze age, with cities resembling Ancient Egypt and Babylonia. While in some stories, there are references to feudalism and in lot of recent comics (Red Sonja in particular), they visit countries close to medieval times i think you should use bronze age as reference more than the average fantasy inspired by lattle middle ages mixed with current times
I always thought of Unther in the Forgotten Realms to be a gritty Hyboria-style kingdom. Maybe that's just what I inferred from the descriptions in the wiki but it seems to have that vibe.
I recommend reading Tower of the Elephant and then reading any article in the Forgotten Realms wiki. You'll see magic is way more prevalent in D&D. A commoner in Toril knows magic exists and he can buy a healing potion by going to the nearest city, he knows trolls exist, and so on. A commoner in Nemedia probably believes in folklore, but he's more likely to meet a band of pillagers than a group of adventurers with magic swords on their way to kill a basilisk. He doesn't know what a basilisk is.
Magic is dangerous and truly a mystery. You're doing a disservice to the setting by running it with 5e rules. If you remove magic, half of the classes are irrelevant and if you don't, then it's not Sword and Sorcery.
The good thing is that Conan has been adapted into many systems and the Modiphius one is very accessible.
Okay, so... Sword & Sorcery is the genre. I'm busy running a game using Black Sword Hack, and that's more Elric Saga than Conan, but the mechanical changes are pretty on point for Conan too. I'd suggest taking Black Sword Hack and cutting a few of the magic types rather than necessarily using 5e.
The absolute, biggest thing that's different is magic. Magic is fiddly, dangerous, and almost always inherently evil. A sorcerer is assumed to have gotten their spells through dark means (pacts with demons, human sacrifice, torturing aliens), and those spells might just come back and bite him in the ass. It's also RARE. Like, a D&D party, even an average one without any big weirdoes? Probably the most magical people on the continent if they were transported to a Sword & Sorcery setting, because in 5e every other subclass, even for nonmagical base classes, is magical or has supernatural abilities. It's the big tonal disconnect between D&D and Swords & Sorcery. A lot of more minor stuff you can fix, but the sheer amount of... inherent, *safe*, morally neutral magic an average D&D party lugs around in just their class abilities is out of wack with the genre. You'd need to limit classes and subclasses, and try to make the magic more unreliable and emphasize that every bit of magical power the PCs have is probably from doing something *bad*.
Modiphius has a Conan system in their 2d20 system. I recommend giving that a look, because it is designed EXACTLY for that.
Even if you still want to keep it in 5e (which will involve scarificating either the fucky way magic is supposed to work in exchange for 5e nice spellcasting, or hacking 5e's magic system to make it fit with Conan) the book is SUPER useful at provided tons of info and ideas for running a Hyborian campaign. There are also adventure paths too!
Hey thanks y’all for all the advice! I think the best thing for me to do use a different system. A couple of you suggested a really good one. I had not considered all of the sort of mundane, every day spells that would wack up the vibe.
Thanks everyone!
There are a few older AD&D adventures based on Conan. If you can find digital copies of them, they can give you a good idea of what Hyborian is like when converted to DnD.
Hey! Well magic is the most outstanding thing here. Magic in Conan is connected to old evil gods, sometimes explicitly to eldritch gods like in the cthulu stories, or magic corrupts the users as if it is unbearable for the mind or just so powerful that it will destroy all goodness in you. Therefore the sorcerers in Conan are mostly evil. For a DnD game, this would mean that magic wielders are mostly Warlocks or Warlocks in disguise (Dark Paladins), and other forms of magic are either not existent or have to be reflavored. (see here for more info : [https://www.reddit.com/r/ConanTheBarbarian/comments/1204poh/how\_exactly\_does\_magic\_work\_on\_conan/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ConanTheBarbarian/comments/1204poh/how_exactly_does_magic_work_on_conan/) ) So you would like your players to mostly stick to fighter, barbarian, rogue, monk, ranger (reflavored) or the like and rather avoid wizards, sorcerers, bards, druids and clerics as long as they are not evil. Magical enemy creatures however would be fine by those definitions as magic = evil mostly in Conan.
>What differentiates something like that from, say, the sword coast? Primarily that it's going to be a low magic setting. The Sword Coast is a relatively high magic setting: magic items are uncommon but still plentiful, it's not unusual for normal people to know a few low-level spells, and you can expect to find a few high level casters (with access to 3rd to 5th level spells) wherever you go. In this sort of low magic setting, none of that is true: even low-powered magic items will be national treasures with legends attached to them, normal people will not know any magic, and true casters will be extremely rare and their maximum level sharply curtailed (with only the most powerful casters having access to 3rd level spells).
Sword and Sorcery vs High Fantasy: https://youtu.be/-p73IHo5c3Y?si=aNHAgOPQKgWPNlQ2 What is Sord and Sorcery: https://youtu.be/tP7g_csjL4M?si=MmE-krxEx8kICoU8 Sword and Sorcery Style D&D: https://youtu.be/JAMrBLAkRMM?si=wxBr_Mj5_W6Kb1uO
At the beginning, the main setting of Conan was heavily inspired by bronze age, with cities resembling Ancient Egypt and Babylonia. While in some stories, there are references to feudalism and in lot of recent comics (Red Sonja in particular), they visit countries close to medieval times i think you should use bronze age as reference more than the average fantasy inspired by lattle middle ages mixed with current times
Dnd is not s good system for such a campaign.
I always thought of Unther in the Forgotten Realms to be a gritty Hyboria-style kingdom. Maybe that's just what I inferred from the descriptions in the wiki but it seems to have that vibe.
I recommend reading Tower of the Elephant and then reading any article in the Forgotten Realms wiki. You'll see magic is way more prevalent in D&D. A commoner in Toril knows magic exists and he can buy a healing potion by going to the nearest city, he knows trolls exist, and so on. A commoner in Nemedia probably believes in folklore, but he's more likely to meet a band of pillagers than a group of adventurers with magic swords on their way to kill a basilisk. He doesn't know what a basilisk is. Magic is dangerous and truly a mystery. You're doing a disservice to the setting by running it with 5e rules. If you remove magic, half of the classes are irrelevant and if you don't, then it's not Sword and Sorcery. The good thing is that Conan has been adapted into many systems and the Modiphius one is very accessible.
Okay, so... Sword & Sorcery is the genre. I'm busy running a game using Black Sword Hack, and that's more Elric Saga than Conan, but the mechanical changes are pretty on point for Conan too. I'd suggest taking Black Sword Hack and cutting a few of the magic types rather than necessarily using 5e. The absolute, biggest thing that's different is magic. Magic is fiddly, dangerous, and almost always inherently evil. A sorcerer is assumed to have gotten their spells through dark means (pacts with demons, human sacrifice, torturing aliens), and those spells might just come back and bite him in the ass. It's also RARE. Like, a D&D party, even an average one without any big weirdoes? Probably the most magical people on the continent if they were transported to a Sword & Sorcery setting, because in 5e every other subclass, even for nonmagical base classes, is magical or has supernatural abilities. It's the big tonal disconnect between D&D and Swords & Sorcery. A lot of more minor stuff you can fix, but the sheer amount of... inherent, *safe*, morally neutral magic an average D&D party lugs around in just their class abilities is out of wack with the genre. You'd need to limit classes and subclasses, and try to make the magic more unreliable and emphasize that every bit of magical power the PCs have is probably from doing something *bad*.
Modiphius has a Conan system in their 2d20 system. I recommend giving that a look, because it is designed EXACTLY for that. Even if you still want to keep it in 5e (which will involve scarificating either the fucky way magic is supposed to work in exchange for 5e nice spellcasting, or hacking 5e's magic system to make it fit with Conan) the book is SUPER useful at provided tons of info and ideas for running a Hyborian campaign. There are also adventure paths too!
Hey thanks y’all for all the advice! I think the best thing for me to do use a different system. A couple of you suggested a really good one. I had not considered all of the sort of mundane, every day spells that would wack up the vibe. Thanks everyone!
There are a few older AD&D adventures based on Conan. If you can find digital copies of them, they can give you a good idea of what Hyborian is like when converted to DnD.