Upon returning to town Siorc and Kyleasia returned to their hotel room and promptly
had their room upgraded to the nicest suite in town. They bought all the fanciest food
and blew a ton of money gambling. We hired "entertainers" to come to our room and
provide us with music and dancing. We both bought tons of new clothes and went shopping
to refill my medicine bag. Upon returning to the hotel room we were set upon by thieves and robbed
of all of the rest of our gold. Luckily I had some hidden in a hole in the wall so we have
money for food and drink

Those of you that use Google Docs to update your characters please link me here to your newest updated character sheet and I will update the webpage accordingly.

Thanks!

I apologize I was confused about Google Docs. I thought you meant you had your own Google Docs account. I forgot that I had posted your characters on my Google Docs account so you can easily update it whenever we need to. My bad.

I am getting ready to upload your new character sheet to the website now.

Also, can each of you please post a summary of what changes, if any, you have made to your characters after spending any Advancement Points you have chosen to spend?

Thanks!

Spent 2 points to buy off 'taciturn' (that got tiring quick, hah). Spent 2 points to buy horsemanship.

Remember: To upgrade any characteristic (combat abilities, careers, attributes), you must spend your original score with the new score. For example, to upgrade your strength from 1 to 2, you must spend the original 1 score, plus the new score of 2. So, you must spend 3 points to upgrade your strength to 2.

Also, you can't upgrade more then one step at once. So, to to upgrading from 1 to 3 costs 8 points (1+2 = 3, 2+3=5, and 5+3= 8 points total), and not 4 points (it's NOT just 1+3=4).

I was perusing the BRP Central forums today and a guy was looking to use BRP to play a Conan campaign. There was a post in that very thread that explained the tropes and themes of the sword & sorcery genre that was really thorough and I thought I'd copy it here so we all can roleplay and GM as effectively/loyal to the source material as possible.

"Conan is less a matter of rules, more a matter of attitude. Since all your magicians are going to be bad guy NPCs, you don't really need to dope out a magic system. Just have spells take a long time to cast. Their effects are powerful, but they have such a long start-up time a guy with a sword and some moxie (your player-characters) can usually clobber the caster before a spell goes off.

Here's some thoughts on sword-and-sorcery in general to guide your campaign:

Sword and sorcery is a pulp fantasy sub-genre created virtually single-handedly by writer Robert E. Howard, who filled popular magazines of the 1930s with tales of anti-heroes such as Conan the Barbarian, King Kull of Atlantis, and Bran Mac Morn, the Dark Man of the Picts. But he was quickly joined by others, and the genre remains popular today. What set the so-called sword-and-sorcery yarns apart from other fantasy stories was the post-World War I cynicism and world-weariness that also informed the hard-boiled detective stories of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett or the grim sea and wilderness adventures of Jack London. If you sat Conan, Wolf Larsen, and Philip Marlowe down together at the same table, they’d understand one another (assuming they didn’t kill each other first). This new attitude led to certain genre conventions that were expanded by those who followed in Howard’s footsteps.

Civilization is ancient, evil, and decadent. Advanced societies (some not human) have been around for an unbearably long time, and that’s not a good thing. Civilization weakens a sentient being’s body and morals; a society’s inhabitants invariably become more and more corrupt as it becomes more powerful, until it ultimately collapses and starts the cycle of rise and decay all over again.

By extension, city-dwellers are effete, money-grubbing snobs who will betray you as soon as they finish cheating you. It is better to be a barbarian raider who steals honestly than one of those urbane hypocrites.

Magic is powerful but subtle and corrupting (like all book learning). Its study and use slowly poisons and twists a practitioner’s soul and mind until he becomes a monster, morally or physically or both. Sorcery usually involves summoning a nasty supernatural or other-dimensional creature to do one’s dirty work.

A good broadsword beats a good spell. Magic can’t be performed without long, complicated rituals. Usually in a toe-to-toe fight, a warrior can chop a magician in half before he finishes chanting his incantation. Smart spell-slingers have a brawny henchman (or three) handy at all times to prevent this.

There are no sterling heroes. Previously, fantasy literature had its noble outlaws and tricksters, but the protagonist in a sword-and-sorcery story tends to be an outsider who rejects the dominant society’s mores entirely. While he may have a personal code of conduct he adheres to, it’s a dirty world and you have to look out for Number One. If he must commit a crime or stab a colleague in the back to survive, or to follow his personal code, so be it.

Virtue, valor, and honor do not guarantee survival. Not everyone is a selfish jerk. A number of folks encountered by the protagonist are decent, hard-working, courageous people who really are trying to do the right thing. However, virtue is truly its own (and sometimes only) reward. The loyal guardsman who stays by his king’s side when all others have fallen and the stalwart farmer-settler who defends his wife and children are just as likely to die from a surprise raid or ravening monster as the slimy ex-sidekick who sold the protagonist out. Fate has no favorites.

Man is dominant. The protagonist’s foes are almost always humans whose goals conflict with his own. Typical opponents include ruthless monarchs, scheming nobles, sinister high priests, greedy bandit chieftains, and power-hungry sorcerers. All of these folks are attempting to use the protagonist to further their own agendas. They’ll promise him wealth and power while planning to discard him as soon as he finishes the task they’ve hired him to perform. Such employers will rarely be forthcoming about the true purpose of the hero’s mission.

We who were once men. A theme of degeneracy runs through many sword-and sorcery stories. Members of previous great but forgotten civilizations sometimes survive into the current era, corrupted and changed until their humanity has been lost. Non-human races are extremely rare and always hostile. They may have been men once, but that was eons ago. Any trace of mercy or compassion or compunctions against cannibalism has long since been bred out of them. Frequently, they’ve lost even the physical characteristics of mankind, becoming animalistic in form as well as behavior.

Gods and monsters, on the other hand, are as common as the ruined temples and lost cities that house them. Gods are not sympathetic, beneficent beings but harsh taskmasters anxious for the blood and flesh of their would-be worshipers. Even though it would be wiser to resort to flight rather than fight when confronted by them, these otherworldly beings can be driven off or even slain by a determined, clever human (such as the protagonist), particularly if he’s equipped with an heirloom magical artifact or weapon. Such useful tools can often be found in the being’s own temple treasury.

Easy come, easy go. The protagonist routinely acquires important jobs, magical artifacts, and treasure only to lose, pawn, break or spend them just as quickly. Live for today. Your investment banker (assuming you can find one) would only embezzle the funds anyway!

On the road again. The protagonist’s adventures and crimes force him to be constantly on the move. He’s not so much questing as escaping from the authorities, a former boss, a former wife, or the merchant prince he cheated at the bazaar.

Any woman worth looking at is worth seeing nude. Nubile temptresses are forever having their raiment removed by evil priests or shredded by hungry monsters. The adventurous life is hard on clothing, which is why the protagonist frequently wears only a loincloth.

You can’t change the world. A protagonist can improve his personal fortunes, vanquish his enemies, even win kingdoms, but he can’t effect permanent, positive change upon the world. Human nature is what it is, and the cycle of progress and decay is unstoppable. Even should the protagonist build a vast enlightened empire, all his noble achievements will be wiped out by the next Great Collapse.

Up by his bootstraps. Given the mobile nature of his lifestyle, the protagonist changes careers constantly, usually gaining slightly greater opportunities and responsibility with each new job. He typically begins as a penniless wanderer or slave, graduates to assorted types of thievery, takes over the leadership of a bandit group he’s been working with, then joins a military company sent to destroy the outlaws and eventually becomes an officer. Career advancement isn’t guaranteed, treachery and bad luck can easily send him back to the dungeon, but if he’s tough and ruthless enough, the protagonist just might make something of himself.

Historical verisimilitude. The hero frequently (but not always) undertake his adventures in a world composed of recognizable, if fictionalized, ancient cultures and countries. Whether they’re drawn from Europe, Central Asia, or Africa, the cultures presented are typically pre-Christian and pre-gunpowder, with polytheistic faiths the norm and Iron Age technology the highest available. The cultures involved need not be from the same historical era; the fantasy element glosses over anachronisms. (Howard began this trend by adding fantasy elements to straight historical adventures that hadn’t sold.)"

There is a thread up at RPG.net where a guy is asking what system to use to run a Conan Hyborian Age game. I chimed in about our game and BoL in general. If you all want to give your thoughts about our campaign and/or BoL you can do so at: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?575300-Conan-what-system-best-captures-the-Hyborian-Age&p=13894359#post13894359

Is there any way we can start the game a bit earlier tomorrow? I have to be somewhere at midnight my time tomorrow and we usually play a tad past that time. Maybe we could start at 8pm est instead of 9? Would that work?

I'm fine for 8 pm.

Here is a link to Khazim's google page: https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AYNt ... MmQz&hl=en

I upped Strength to 1, added Assassin at 0, and upped Thief to 2.

As far as tomorrow night you would probably have to NPC Khazim for a bit as I work out with my daughter until just about 9pm. So if you are OK with doing that then I will get there as soon as I am able. BTW, did Daedalus get in touch with you about his interest in the game?