Unexpected Conan: Fallout 2 Restoration Project

Fallout is obviously not sword-and-sorcery, but if you install Fallout 2's Restoration Project mod, you might get to meet a character who bears a striking resemblance to a famous pulp hero. 

Among the content that was cut from the original release of the game but restored by the mod is a primitive tribe living on the California coastline in Fallout's post-nuclear setting. The hero of Fallout 2, the Chosen One, can meet a member of this tribe named Sulik while exploring the settlement of Klamath. Sulik is a "tribal" who comes from the Umbra Tribe and after recruiting him as a companion, you can travel to their small village. After arriving, you can meet the tribe's head warrior, a fellow named Krom.

The game's description of Krom: "This sun-bronzed giant looks as if his corded muscles were carved out of granite. Beneath a mane of black hair, his smoldering blue eyes pierce into you." Krom goes on to ask you about who you are and what your purpose is. Krom is well-spoken and supportive of your quest to find the Garden of Eden Creation Kit to save your village, although he scoffs at the concept of the GECK itself in favor of man toiling against the earth with his own natural gifts. He also makes it clear that he's well-travelled and the village is just a temporary home for him before he decides to move on and see what else the world holds for him. You can continue to interact with him while staying with the tribe and he'll put you to work on solving some simple tasks the village could help with.

So Krom is an expy of Conan himself, transplanted cleanly into Fallout's world. It goes to show in a very minor way that despite the differences, post-apocalyptic fiction and S&S are cousins of sorts, both genres about people battling strange forces and hostile environments as much to just survive as to vanquish some great evil.

MODS: Mount & Blade: The Hyborian Age (2018)

 

In 2008 the Turkish developer TaleWorlds released Mount & Blade, a medieval combat sandbox game. The game is set in an alternate version of Europe and Asia Minor called Calradia. You create a character whose background and starting abilities you can set, but whatever you settle on the game will start you in the same place: as a lone adventurer who needs to learn how to fight better, take jobs to earn money, and use that money to gradually upgrade your equipment and hire mercenaries who can help you take even bigger jobs. You can pledge yourself as a vassal to one of the Calradian lords who are always fighting each other, be totally independent as a mercenary captain, or even just run around entirely on your own. You can even just be a dull trader of goods, stocking up cheaply from one town and hauling somewhere else where prices are high, if you don't feel like fighting. There is no ultimate object and you just make whatever fun and story you feel like making. It's similar to the classic Pirates! game by Sid Meier, except you're controlling a landbound horseman instead of a ship captain. One thing you can't do is, unlike Conan, you can't become so big that you seize a crown for yourself.

Like Pirates, it's a very compulsively playable game, one of those "Oh man, it's 3 a.m.!" games where you lose track of things because it's so easy to run just one more mission, visit one more town, fight one more battle, over and over. Although it's quite Howardian, it's not a sword and sorcery game because there isn't any sorcery in it...but it is a very moddable game and some fans have introduced fantasy elements on their own. There's a mod that allows you to fight the War of the Ring from Lord of the Rings, there are mods like Prophecy of Pendor that are set in original fantasy universes, and there's a mod called the Hyborian Age that attempts to rework the game's map and factions to resemble those found in Howard's Conan stories.

As it is, the Hyborian Age mod doesn't really change the game very much. It's still fundamentally the same game, but there's an option to make your new character a sorcerer/sorceress who begins with a spellbook and the ability to throw some fireballs. Otherwise, character progression is mostly similar.

The map as said renames the areas to better match Howard's stories, with places like Cimmeria, Nemedia, and Shem represented, although one could quibble a bit with the arrangement; e.g., the game's version of Cimmeria is probably a bit too far north and snowy compared to how Howard described it. The most dramatic change might be that the southern regions are peppered with undead armies instead of regular bandits.

The arena/tournaments also use more of a classical gladiator vibe than the base game and there are some changes to how equipment looks. 

It's a nice bit of work and could serve players who really want some Conan flavor in an already relatively Howardian game, although not necessarily a must-play considering the age of the mod and the base game itself at this point, and there seem to be later attempts to do Hyborian Age-inspired mods for the Warband expansion and also Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. Mount & Blade is a good game regardless of how it's modded and it got better as it was expanded on.