Ares Games acquires Age of Conan, will KS expansion

When was the last time you heard some Age of Conan news? Ares Games got the license to publish the game, and apparently they're going to Kickstart an expansion—called Adventures in Hyboria—focusing on the Conan character and making each kingdom different from each other.

Read about it here; www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=5089

This is the perfect game for Kickstarter. It's a game that if reprinted without Kickstarter might sell a few copies but probably wouldn't be able to justify a full print run for an expansion. With Kickstarter, people will buy in thanks to the baked in marketing of the platform and give the game a shot that otherwise wouldn't.

I've always shied away from Kickstarter because I'm not particularly interested in dumping money into something that may or may not appear. I've done it for Columbia Games (not KS, but their "if we get enough orders, we'll print") because they have a built-in audience and produce. Ares is similar, in that people know their games, so I'm thinking about this. The other side of it is that I really liked Age of Conan, largely because I've read all of Howard's stories (in the famous Carter/Sprague de Camp collections) and so I could pick out all the little details that the game was loaded with, even if the mechanics were kind of subpar in a lot of ways. I'm intrigued by the idea of Ares solving the main gripe that a lot of people had with the game, which is the sidebar nature of Conan himself. This might be cool.

I'm in the severe minority of people that didn't hate the game, so I'm on board, FWIW.

charlest wrote: This is the perfect game for Kickstarter. It's a game that if reprinted without Kickstarter might sell a few copies but probably wouldn't be able to justify a full print run for an expansion. With Kickstarter, people will buy in thanks to the baked in marketing of the platform and give the game a shot that otherwise wouldn't.

Quoted for amusement.

Jackwraith wrote: I've always shied away from Kickstarter because I'm not particularly interested in dumping money into something that may or may not appear. I've done it for Columbia Games (not KS, but their "if we get enough orders, we'll print") because they have a built-in audience and produce. Ares is similar, in that people know their games, so I'm thinking about this. The other side of it is that I really liked Age of Conan, largely because I've read all of Howard's stories (in the famous Carter/Sprague de Camp collections) and so I could pick out all the little details that the game was loaded with, even if the mechanics were kind of subpar in a lot of ways. I'm intrigued by the idea of Ares solving the main gripe that a lot of people had with the game, which is the sidebar nature of Conan himself. This might be cool.

I don't see how anybody can solve that problem. Everybody who wants to play a Conan game will want to play Conan, so the only enjoyable Conan game would be a solo game. That's why it was smart for Steve Jackson Games to publish solitaire adventures for Gurps Conan instead of standard group rpg adventures.

I'm not entirely sure how they're going to do it, either. I appreciated Age of Conan mostly because it brought out the flavor of Hyboria and what an actual DoaM story would have looked like and which Howard's stories frequently touched on (expansionist Turan, etc.) In that respect, I guess I was prepared that not everyone was going to be Conan because you can't make a multi-player game out of that. I think the key is to make Conan's presence have more of a direct impact on the path of the game, rather than just as a better way to gain VPs.

This is a bit funny because I was just looking at FFG's site yesterday and surprised to still find Age of Conan on it. Anyway, good for Ares. This is a very aesthetically pleasing game that should do reasonably on KS, especially with the expansion in. I may have been wrong about this game, as I played it with not, in retrospect, the most receptive crowd for it, but I will probably stay away.

Applejack wrote: and making each kingdom different from each other.

As opposed to the current state of the game, where each kingdom is already different from each other.

I suppose they'll just add more different cards to each stack.

I also enjoyed the game, although we haven't pulled it out in quite a while. I might KS the expansion or wait for it to hit the shelves.