List of games based on Conan the Barbarian

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The Conan the Barbarian saga has appeared in a variety of forms in the gaming community from simple boardgames to high tech multiplayer online games. The intention of all these games is to immerse the player in the sword and sorcery world of Hyboria. Robert E. Howard created the original Conan story but he had no hand in creating various games other than they were based on his works.

Contents

Board games

Collectible card game

Hyborian Gates is a collectible trading card game.

Board games

Role-playing games

Earliest Appearances

Conan's first appearance in Dungeons & Dragons with game statistics was in Supplement IV: Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes (TSR, 1976), in a section of the book devoted to ROBERT E. HOWARD'S HYBOREA.

Conan was defined by Gary Gygax for the first time for Dungeons & Dragons in his article "Conan!", an installment of Gygax's regular "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" column, in The Dragon Magazine #36 (April 1980).

Conan (D&D supplements)

Capitalizing on the release of the Conan movies, TSR created two licensed Conan adventures for their Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game in 1984. The line sold very poorly and in time was discontinued; the adventures (called "modules" in the Dungeons & Dragons community) often found their way to the bargain bin in most hobby shops but are now often prized by collectors.

Conan Role-Playing Game

The Conan Role-Playing Game was published by TSR, Inc. in 1985. This boxed game was designed for players age 10 and up contained a full-color map, a 32-page will book, a 16-page reference guide and a 48-page notebook about the land of Hyboria plus two 10 sided dice. The series was very short-lived producing only three adventures each based on novels from the Conan series.

Supplements:

GURPS Conan

GURPS Conan for the GURPS roleplaying system was produced in 1989 by Steve Jackson Games. The other GURPS Conan books were GURPS solo adventures and started a year before, with GURPS Conan: Beyond Thunder River

Supplements:

Conan: The Roleplaying Game

Conan: The Roleplaying Game , by Mongoose Publishing, was published under the Open Game License using a custom adaptation of the d20 System. The game comprises a 352-page rulebook (a second edition was expanded to 424 pages) and various add-on adventures and sourcebooks for both the first and second editions.

Supplements:

Robert E. Howard's Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of

Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of , by Modiphius Entertainment, is the role-playing game currently officially licensed from Conan Properties Inc. The main game consists of a 368-page full colour hardcover book using their 2d20 system. The game was launched in 2017 through a hugely successful Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign, and since then, a number of supplements have been published in book form:

Miniatures and strategy games

Royal Armies of the Hyborean Age is a wargame published by Fantasy Games Unlimited in 1975. Designed by Scott Bizar and Lin Carter. See the Board Game Geek entry for more details. [1]

Hyborian War is a play-by-mail strategy game published by Reality Simulations as of 1985. The game gives players strategic control of a Hyborian nation. [2]

There is also an Age of Conan Strategy Board Game published by Nexus Editrice. [3]

Video games

Conan: Hall of Volta

Conan: Hall of Volta was released for the Apple II series, Atari 8-bit family, and Commodore 64 in 1984.

Conan: The Cimmerian

This version was released for MS-DOS and Amiga in 1991 by Virgin Games, Inc.

Conan: The Mysteries of Time

A version of the game Myth: History in the Making programmed by System 3 was rebranded as Conan: The Mysteries of Time and released for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Published by Mindscape in 1990, this was a side scrolling game reminiscent of Castlevania.

Conan (2004)

Conan (2004) is a third-person perspective action adventure developed by Cauldron Software and published by TDK in 2004, "Conan - The Dark Axe" was a lengthy tale that saw Conan visit and fight in nearly all parts of the Hyborian world. The game was based primarily on R. E. Howard's stories but also paid homage to John Milius's movie, as well as to some of the Conan tales written by Lin Carter and Lion Sprague de Camp.

Conan (2007)

For the Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3. It was released in the US on October 23, 2007. Conan (2007) is a single player, third-person perspective videogame. The game combines a range of traditional video game challenges with a focus on particularly brutal game-play featuring decapitations and dismemberment. The game also features the voice-acting of Ron Perlman as Conan.

Age of Conan: Unchained

Age of Conan: Unchained is an MMORPG created by Funcom. In addition to typical MMO gameplay, it features PvP siege gameplay where players build and attack each other's cities.

Conan: Tower of the Elephant

Conan: Tower of the Elephant is a game made for the iOS by Chillingo Ltd. [4]

Conan Exiles

Conan Exiles is an open-world survival game made for the PC, PS4 and Xbox One made by Funcom. [5] The playable character is a player created character who is rescued by Conan. [6]

Age of Hyboria

Age of Hyboria is a strategy videogame based on the world of Conan the barbarian for PC. It is currently being developed and there is a playable demo. [7]

Conan Unconquered

Conan Unconquered is a real-time survival strategy game set in the barbaric world of Conan the Barbarian where you must build your stronghold and assemble an unconquerable army to survive the savage hordes of Hyboria. Conan Unconquered was released on 29 May 2019. [8]

Conan Chop Chop

Conan Chop Chop is an action-adventure rogue-like game, released on March 1, 2022. [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Conan the Barbarian</span> Fictional character created by Robert E. Howard

Conan the Barbarian is a fictional sword and sorcery hero who originated in pulp magazines and has since been adapted to books, comics, films, television programs, video games, and role-playing games. Robert E. Howard created the character in 1932 for a series of fantasy stories published in Weird Tales magazine.

Conan may refer to:

<i>Age of Conan</i> 2008 fantasy-themed MMORPG

Age of Conan: Unchained is a fantasy-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by Funcom and published by Eidos Interactive for Microsoft Windows in 2008. Age of Conan is the first installment in the planned Age of Conan series. Age of Conan takes place within the continent of the Hyborian kingdoms, a year after the events depicted in Robert E. Howard's Conan novel The Hour of the Dragon.

The flexibility of the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) game rules means that Dungeon Masters (DM) are free to create their own fantasy campaign settings. For those who wanted a pre-packaged setting in which to play, TSR, Wizards of the Coast (WotC), and other publishers have created many settings in which D&D games can be based; of these, the Forgotten Realms, an epic fantasy world, has been one of the most successful and critically acclaimed settings. Many campaign settings include standard sword and sorcery environments, while others borrow Asian, Central American, swashbuckling, horror and even space-travel themes.

Mongoose Publishing is a British manufacturer of role-playing games, miniatures, and card games, publishing material since 2001. Its licenses include products based on the science fiction properties Traveller, Judge Dredd, and Paranoia, as well as fantasy titles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bêlit</span> Fictional character created by Robert E. Howard

Bêlit is a character appearing in the fictional universe of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian. She is a pirate queen who has a romantic relationship with Conan. She appears in Howard's Conan novelette Queen of the Black Coast, first published in Weird Tales #23. She is the first substantial female character to appear in Howard's Conan stories. Partly thanks to her substantial appearance in the Marvel Comics' Conan series, the character is recognized as being Conan's "true love".

The Conan books are sword and sorcery fantasies featuring the character of Conan the Cimmerian originally created by Robert E. Howard. Written by numerous authors and issued by numerous publishers, they include both novels and short stories, the latter assembled in various combinations over the years by the several publishers. The character has proven durably popular, resulting in Conan stories being produced after Howard's death by such later writers as Poul Anderson, Leonard Carpenter, Lin Carter, L. Sprague de Camp, Roland J. Green, John C. Hocking, Robert Jordan, Sean A. Moore, Björn Nyberg, Andrew J. Offutt, Steve Perry, John Maddox Roberts, Harry Turtledove, and Karl Edward Wagner. Some of these writers finished incomplete Conan manuscripts by Howard, or rewrote Howard stories which originally featured different characters. Most post-Howard Conan stories, however, are completely original works. In total, more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories featuring the Conan character have been written by authors other than Howard. This article describes and discusses notable book editions of the Conan stories.

<i>Pathfinder</i> (periodicals) Several related series of roleplaying game books

Pathfinder is a line of roleplaying game supplements published by Paizo Publishing since 2007. Originally designed for use with the revised 3rd edition of Dungeons & Dragons, they transitioned to the first edition of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game in 2009, then to the second edition of Pathfinder in 2019.

<i>Conan Unchained!</i> Dungeons & Dragons adventure module

Conan Unchained! is a 1984 adventure module for the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game that centers on an adventure of the fictional hero Conan the Barbarian and his companions.

<i>Conan Against Darkness!</i> Dungeons & Dragons adventure module

Conan Against Darkness! is a 1984 adventure module for the first edition of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons fantasy roleplaying game, set in the Hyborian universe of Robert E. Howard's character Conan the Barbarian. It is designed for four player characters at character level 10-14 and uses some minor rule variations in an attempt to recreate the setting's atmosphere. It was publicized as containing a "journey of epic proportions".

<i>Red Sonja Unconquered</i> Dungeons & Dragons adventure module

Red Sonja Unconquered (ISBN 0-88038-324-0) is a 1986 adventure module for the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game based on the barbarian heroine, Red Sonja. Its module code is RS1 and its TSR product code is TSR 9183. Like the similar barbarian-hero inspired Conan modules, this module was not very popular.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adaptations of works by Robert E. Howard</span> Aspect of history

The works of Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) have been adapted into multiple media, the most famous being the Conan films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. In addition to the Conan films, other adaptations have included Kull the Conqueror (1997) and Solomon Kane (2009). In television, the anthology series Thriller (1961) led the adaptations with an episode based on the short story "Pigeons from Hell." The bulk of the adaptations have, however, been based on Conan with two animated and one live action series. Multiple audio dramas have been adapted, from professional audio books and plays to LibriVox recordings of works in the public domain. Computer games have focussed on Conan, beginning with Conan: Hall of Volta (1984) and continuing on to the MMO Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (2008). The first table-top roleplaying game based on Howard's works was TSR's "Conan Unchained!" (1984) for their game Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. The first comic book adaptation was in the Mexican Cuentos de abuelito - La reina de la Costa Negra #8 (1952). Howard-related comic books continued to be published to the present day. Howard is an ongoing inspiration for and influence on heavy metal music. Several bands have adapted Howard's works to tracks or entire albums. The British metal band Bal-Sagoth is named after Howard's story "The Gods of Bal-Sagoth."

Free RPG Day is an annual promotional event by the Tabletop role-playing game industry. The event rules are fairly simple: participating publishers provide special free copies of games to participating game stores; the game store agrees to provide one free game to any person who requests a free game on Free RPG Day.

<i>GURPS Conan</i>

GURPS Conan is a sourcebook and a series of solo adventures for GURPS.

<i>Conan Role-Playing Game</i> Tabletop fantasy role-playing game

The Conan Role-Playing Game is a fantasy role-playing game published by TSR, Inc. in 1985 that is based on the Conan the Barbarian stories by Robert E. Howard, Lin Carter, Andrew J. Offutt. and Robert Jordan.

<i>Conan: The Roleplaying Game</i>

Conan: The Roleplaying Game is a sword and sorcery British role-playing game based on the D20 System first published in January 2004 by Mongoose Publishing, mainly designed by Ian Sturrock and set in the fictional Hyborian Age of Conan the Barbarian, created by Robert E. Howard in the 1930s.

<i>Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of</i> Pen-and-paper role-playing game

Robert E. Howard's Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of is a sword and sorcery pen-and-paper role-playing game set in the world of Conan the Barbarian, the fictional Hyborian Age. Both the character and the setting were first imagined by author Robert E. Howard. Howard's original literary work has since spawned a vast franchise of novels, comic books, films, video games, board games, role-playing games, etc. Following this tradition, Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of is the third officially licensed Conan role-playing game. The two precedent games were Conan Role-Playing Game (1985-1988) and Conan: The Roleplaying Game (2004-2010), although there also had been supplements for independent generic systems, like GURPS Conan (1988-1989).

References

  1. https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/23572/royal-armies-hyborean-age - Retrieved on 11 June 2021
  2. http://www.reality.com/hwpcont.htm - Retrieved on 2012-09-17
  3. Nexus Editrice to publish the strategy board game - August 8, 2006 - retrieved on February 18, 2007
  4. Conan: Tower of the Elephant's official site
  5. Official Site for Conan Exiles
  6. Developer Diary #1 - An Introduction to Conan Exiles - January 29th, 2016 - retrieved on March 16th, 2016
  7. "Game Jolt - Games for the love of it".
  8. https://www.conanunconquered.com
  9. "Conan Chop Chop". Conan Chop Chop. Retrieved 2022-02-20.