In the mid-1980s, TSR published a number of games that made use of a color-coded chart to resolve character actions. The best known of these is of course Marvel Superheroes, but the chart also turned up in the third edition of Gamma World among others. One of those others was Conan, a game that many consider an underappreciated gem: compact, fast-moving, easy and fun. In the spirit of the d20 SRD, these pages were created to make the Conan rules, stripped of their franchise-related elements (ownership of which has long since passed to Mongoose Publishing) available for play once again.

The rules were written by Dave "Zeb" Cook, so these rules are collectively referred to in this document as Zeb's Fantasy Roleplaying System, or ZeFRS.

Got questions, comments, complaints, or a bright idea? Head over to the ZeFRS Discussion Boards or contact me directly.

Some pages have a few transcriber's notes on them, which appear as grey boxes at the bottom of the page. Those won't appear on paper if you choose to print the page.

Table of Contents

The Original Rules

• Characters
• Talents and Weaknesses
• Combat
• Movement
• Hazards
• Magic
• Life in a Sword-and-Sorcery World
• Improvement and Ultimate Goals
• ZeFRS Rule Book (PDF)

New Material

• NEW! Get a perfect-bound print copy of the combined rules and companion from Lulu.com!
• ZeFRS combined rules - a coverless PDF of the original core rules, plus the Companion, with a few clarificiations and executive decisions
• ZeFRS Rule Book - complete rules, chart and character folio in one PDF file, courtesy of The Grey Elf
• The ZeFRS Companion
• The Resolution Chart (also available in a PDF version)
• A Rogues' Gallery
• Character Folio (special thanks to Max from RPG.net)
• GM Screen by Adam Leisemann
• ZeFRS Discussion Boards

Spread the Word

Care to let other people know about ZeFRS? Here are a few quick links to let you make note of it on various social and content-aggregating sites.

• Facebook
• MySpace
• Mixx
• Digg
• Reddit
• del.icio.us
• Furl
• Ma.gnolia
• Sphere
• StumbleUpon

For Do-It-Yourselfers

Want to change the layout, trim out sections you don't want to use, or use the ZeFRS ruleset as a basis for your own homebrew? Feel free. Here are RTF (Rich Text File) versions of:

• the ZeFRS Core Rules and
• the ZeFRS Companion

Props

Special thanks go to everyone on RPG.net who showed and is showing such enthusiasm for this effort, especially:

• Drake2000, for getting the ball rolling with his tale of how much he and his wife enjoyed an ad lib game using the original boxed set
• E.T. Smith, for generously sending copies of the two published adventures for this system, and for reliably spotting when my mind has been wandering
• The Grey Elf, for advice on how not to end up doing time for copyright infringement, plus a masterful conversion of these web pages to a handy PDF document
• The Evil DM, for encouragement and for setting up the ZeFRS discussion boards.
• Max, for preparing the character folio
• Münch, artikid, Marius, and a select group of long-dead artists for illustrations
• hive_mind, Harmast, Insect King, blu_sponge, DMAndrew, MountZionRyan, Äkräs, hatheg-kla, Harmast, Vagabond, Christopher V. Brady, and others for their interest and eagerness to chip in and expand the system to the whole canon of Sword-and-Sorcery literature
• Spinachcat, whose hat of charts know no limit, for spurring the search for an alternate success formula

A special, agog fanboy thanks goes out to the man himself, Dave Cook, who gave this project his blessing.