Ran my first Conan game this weekend, Pit of Kutallu

WOW! We had a great time! I even had a doubter at first, he said he read the quick start and thought that Doom/Momentum would be adversarial. Once we got rolling, the players really figured out how to drive momentum and use it to their benefit, A true strength I saw in this system first play was how it really drove disparate characters together and encouraged teamwork. The combats were a blast, and the PCs tore through bad guys left and right. Only thing that I need work on is keeping my Doom around for the end, I was plum out and was unable to get the PCs to do things to give me doom. there momentum was the gift that kept on giving. Also, I never felt as a GM that my NPCs or villains, could really hurt the characters. I will need to think on that on whether I did not have enough foes or maybe learn DOOM mechanic uses better. Any advice there?
Either way, we will be playing this again soon.

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If I have ever had a complaint as GM, this would probably be it. My bad guys die pretty quick. I don’t hurt them very often. What I can do, is scare them. I can put them in situations where they feel in trouble. Minions help with this a lot. They can give the bad guys a few rounds of banter and combat before the inevitable. There are LOTS of options and I know I am barely scratching the surface of stuff I have done as GM. I tend to try to pick a couple of got to momentum spends for a particular mob that feels appropriate and that gave me (and the players!) a pretty good sense of how effective things could be. One week it was “Break Guard” I had decided on. I don’t think anyone had used it prior to this. They broke into a cave of mutant black dwarflike creatures that were mining away. The PC in the lead entered the room and instead of letting the rest of the PC’s into the chamber, I “seized the initiative” with a couple of mobs. One attacked and broke her guard and the second jumped on top of her and grappled. They were worried!!!

I try to make combat exciting and I don’t really worry too much about the bad guys dying. It was probably inevitable anyway. :wink:

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Conan doesn’t die in a single Robert Howard story, he only occasionally gets hurt to any significant degree. There should be fights because fights are fun, but villains should be puzzles for the players to solve, not brawls.

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Judicious use of Mobs. That’s my advice. When the dice start piling up, your players will be worried, let me tell you! :grinning:

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