I’ve always felt that not having a classic fantasy version of 2d20 was a missed opportunity. Even though I love old style fantasy adventures D&D and Pathfinder lost me years ago as they have destroyed the game with the bazillions of murderhobo “races” and “classes”. To the point where you simply cannot reasonably keep up. But there isn’t really a good replacement. I know I know people will trot out games like Savage Worlds and others, but they never really do classic dungeon delving or other fantasy well. Conan’s skill and combat system would be fantastic for that style setting. The missing piece would be a usable magic system with spell casting rather than dark demon stuff. Basically avoid the grim dark and bring the concept of heroism to a fantasy setting instead of the cookie cutter lone wolf/reformed demon/grim dark misunderstood loner template that has been rammed into most “fantasy” settings.
With D&D leaving to pursue online and $ instead of the TTRPG there will be a open niche.
The magic system of Achtung! Cthulhu / Cohors Cthulhu is as close as it gets to “typical plain-vanilla fantasy” stuff.
But due to the more narrative orientation of the 2d20 system, I would not expect the game play of any D&D-like fantasy game using 2d20 rules to be even remotely close to the typical D&D-like experience.
I don’t think I will like to run a battle heavy 2d20 game with rules as they are. You’ll need to make the combat system more fluid for an old school fantasy game.
I’d disagree what that. D&D style games have combat that is clunky as heck and largely boring. Various 2d20 system streamline it but it does take experience with the system to know how/when to use Momentum and Doom.
You can pretty easily cobble together a Heroic Fantasy style spell caster with the SRD rules, use the Magic Point Option, then provide a mechanic to use an Advance to increase the pool of points and Talents to decrease the cost of spells in a narrow field.
I’m with Grendel. The sword swinging battles I’ve played out using Conan are light years ahead of D&D or PF as far as smooth and fluid play. D&D hasn’t had a good “D&D experience” or “old school fantasy feel” since AD&D and PF just picked up from 3.5 when D&D 4th hit the streets. After GMing for over 40 years I am simply unable to take the splatt’ness that replaced a good fantasy adventure.
Port Conan over to a fantasy game and add in a magic system that is spell based and can operate during an encounter. Something that does not involve being some kind of demonic whatever.
One thing I really miss about the earlier games is they lacked a high degree of “baked in theme requirements”. We set our campaigns in everything from Tolkien’s Middle Earth to Burroughs Venus to Carters Callisto, The Green Star or Thongor.
Anyway, IMO Conan is a far more fluid game than D&D/PF in or out of combat. And the game is picked up far faster by new players than teaching D&D 5th or PF. I’d love to see a “generic” high fantasy version of 2d20. Something that caters to D&D/PF style settings.
Cohors Cthulhu is already quite close to “standard fantasy”, with the addition of different fantasy races (maybe designed after the many alien races in STA), so this could work.
But if the intention is to “be more like D&D” (the question is then, why, in the first place, not simply play D&D) then one could introduce experience levels like in Fallout 2d20. That and a class-based approach makes for a 2d20 game that is even closer to D&D.
For me, it is not clear what “be more like D&D or PF” means.
More like the rules mechanics: class-based, level-based, lots of player character races?
Or playing the D&D-like fantasy settings like Forgotten Realms, Golarion, Greyhawk etc.?
(And for the latter, my favorite D&D settings are Planescape and Dark Sun, both quite different from each other, but still D&D-like fantasy by their genre.)
Playing in D&D-like fantasy from the genre point of view, the 2d20 SRD, some ideas from Cohors Cthulhu and maybe from Mutant Chronicles “The Art” spells for magic, and that is all one would need.
Playing more in the D&D-like mechanical way, would mean classes and levels for niche protection of PC functions in a group and for challenge adjustment purposes.
I’ve always wondered whether Conan could be adapted for a 2d20 take on “classic” fantasy settings. Now, Cohors Cthulhu seems the natural source to look for a magic system and physical combat (swords!) to adapt. Furthermore, as always, I’d recommend Dune. Never had the possibility to play, but the ruleset looks super interesting and, if extended with a magic system, would allow to play with classic D&D settings from Planescape, over Dark Sun to even Birthright (one of my favourites I never had the possibility to really try ).
Over at DriveThru and licensed under the 2d20 World Builders programme, there’s “Ahris”, that seems to be (?) a classic fantasy setting/ruleset with 2d20. There’s a pay-what-you-want-preview and a full ruleset (I think? for about 5 $.
Didn’t read it myself, though, so I can neither recommend nor not recommend it.
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