The mighty have fallen!
It’s been almost a decade since I launched hyboria.xoth.net, the roleplaying campaign website for Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age setting. The website still attracts thousands of unique visitors every month.
The Hyborian Age website was created because at the time, there was no officially supported role-playing game based on this setting. Then, in 2004, Mongoose Publishing released the Conan RPG. Over the years, they published a dozen sourcebooks for the Conan game.
Now, however, Mongoose has essentially ended the Conan line of products, due to licensing issues with the owner of the Conan intellectual properties.
So, until another major publishing company (Paizo, are you listening?!) picks up where Mongoose leaves off, it’s back to an existence powered only by fans like you and me for the Conan roleplaying game, and hyboria.xoth.net will continue to be the natural place to find game-related materials for the Hyborian Age setting.
That said, I also enjoy working on my own sword & sorcery campaign setting, called the World of Xoth (what else?!). A couple of years back, I set up Xoth.Net Publishing and released a 200-page book filled with background material and a big collection of adventures, called The Spider-God’s Bride and Other Tales of Sword and Sorcery. It’s available in print from Lulu, or as a PDF directly from me.
And in this age of social media and web 2.0, this blog will enable me to publish various snippets related to fantasy role-playing games and weird fiction in general, and sword and sorcery in particular.
Hey Thulsa!
Great idea, Mongoose just made the best Conan rpg ever… just to dumbly kill it in the idiot effort of adding more systems (bloody RQ e SW) IN THE LAST YEAR OF LICENSE!
What a dumb moment to make such a choice!
The Atlases would have been great, and Vincent was the right person to write them…but such an ambition only ended the Conan rpg line.
I’m sorry for Mongoose but I will never buy any other of their products.
Conan was my game.
I bought Mongoose products because of Conan., not the opposite.
I think that Mongoose people have both merits and faults, and I completely dislike RQ (a system which is not adapt to S&S).
Without mentioning how they destroyed Empires (a product which was ready to be published…) and that we will possibly never see in its wholeness in the S&P issues.
I hope somebody will listen to you!
D20 is just a great system!
Hail to Sword & Sorcery!
Hail to Conan d20!
I really love your new blog! Its good to see you still hard at work. Keep up the good work!
I really hope Paizo dont pick it up. I have a feeling, they would just “Bowdlerise” it like Conan The Adventure movie, and dumb it down with their crappy 4e art – or worst yet – make it a 4e game! Hell, I feel that the LLC would just give the licensing out to some joker who would just make some crappy-ass movie-tie-in game. I really hope Mongoose works things out, or that the license find its way into capable hands.