I actually read this quite some time before Feng Shui but I've just rolled up a character using the Modiphius webapp and skimmed the action mechanics again to write this up now.
This is the Modiphius Conan game from 2017 using their '2d20 system', with the unwieldy subtitle 'Adventures in an age undreamed of' (which always makes me think of a Chris Morris bit from the IT Crowd). It is a beautifully illustrated book, with just over 400 pages providing the rules and plenty of resources for adventuring in Robert E Howard's Hyborea, including a starter adventure.
Character creation is detailed and evocative with each stage of the process involving assigning or modifying stats as the result of some background story consequence.
You start by picking your homeland, then your basic attributes (Strength, Awareness, Brawn, Coordination, Intelligence, Personality & Willpower), modify these according to ‘Aspects’ (Fast & Fit, Eagle-eyed, Socially Adept etc), then roll or pick Caste (social class) and so on. The system can clearly produce a really varied range of characters with interesting details including story hooks in the form of Events with Traits which double as a device for the player to regain Fortune Points.
Most characters start each session with 2 Fortune Points, these can be spent on bonus dice for skill tests, gaining additional actions in combat or influencing the story in some way. The GM awards Fortune Points to the players throughout a session as rewards for achieving aims, good role playing etc.
The character I rolled up was from the Priesthood caste and got the 'A place in need of Guidance' event resulting in the ‘Shrine Guardian’ trait.
I could potentially invoke this trait in play by having members of my scattered congregation appear looking for help, or make the noble nemesis of my faith be the friend of some NPC we are bargaining with, and thus have the GM replenish my Fortune Points as a result. Note there is not much guidance on the specifics so its very much reliant on player creativity and GM ruling.
For me the standout game mechanic is Momentum.
Skill tests are a little like the White Wolf Storyteller system of rolling dice against a target number and counting the number of successes. The difficulty of a task dictates how many successes are required, and in the default situation the character gets 2d20 to try to achieve that. A success is any die roll under the sum of the relevant attribute and skill values.
For every success more than the quantity required for the task the player gets a point of momentum. This can be used immediately or stored in the party pool for later (to a maximum of 6). Momentum can be spent by anyone to gain extra dice for a skill test, extra damage dice, inhibit an enemy action, glean more detailed information from some inquiry roll, or increase the quality or scope of an action.
This sounds like a lot of fun to me and judging by Seth Skorkowsky's review it facilitates team play and is conducive to the heroic action outcomes you'd find in the source material (as you can boost your actions up to cut heads clean off etc).
The GM has their own version of Momentum - Doom Points. In general the game is rigged in the players' favour; they always win initiative, weak enemies are downed in one blow etc. Doom points provide the GM with a systematized method for overriding this on dramatically appropriate occasions. They start with as many as the sum of all the players' Fortune Points and more are added as a result of player actions or circumstantial effects. Like momentum, doom is represented by a pool of physical tokens on the table, likely contributing tension as the pool builds.
I'm sure there are a load more interesting rules in Conan, but without rereading that whole big book I'll need to leave them for now. Overall it looks like a fun game with plenty of interesting systems for emulating the Conan stories, although I don't remember playing any rpgs back in the day with such meta-gaming systems at their core, so I have no real idea of what that would be like.
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