Ready made Concepts give quick ideas for players who are struggling to decide which skills and magic to choose. They are not strict character templates where you must write down every skill and spell. In fact most Concepts have more spells listed than it is possible to select at character creation. Instead they are suggestions of skills and spells available to someone who has previously practised that occupation, before cutting loose to become an adventurer. Also the player is under no obligation to spend all his points on either the skills or the spells given for the packages.

Follow the Character generation process spending points on skills and magic from the suggestions in the package. Roll for money as normal, but write down all the suggested equipment on the character sheet instead of the normal default starting equipment given above.

Each Concept has the following components;

• A one sentence summary of the Concept.
• Skills
• Battle Magic
• Equipment

So here we go, ten ready made Concepts for players who are stuck for ideas.
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August 2007: How I started

The creation of OpenQuest was a happy accident. My original plan was to write a scenario under the MRQ RQ Logo license and then release it via RPGnow.com.  Hence Life and Death was written and originally planned as a MRQ scenario. However to make sure I complied with the terms of the RQ Logo license, which allow you to release products with the RQ logo on them as long as you only use stuff in the MRQ System Resource Document (SRD) I downloaded it and started reading through it.  More I looked at it more it dawned on me that with a bit of tweaking here and there I could recreate the game the way I like to play RQ these days.

So in my lunch hour at work back in Aug 07 work began on the very first version of the game, SimpleQuest v1.

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By Nathan Baron

There are many occasions in a role playing adventure that the adventurers will find themselves entering into a battle. This is a quick and simple way to determine mass battle situations without resulting to hours of needless and boring dice rolls. Only one dice roll is needed, and with the quick reference chart you can have the result of any mass battle within minutes. The generals on both sides roll against their Lore (Military Tactics) skill, add or subtract any modifiers, then compare their result against their opponents and consult the chart below. In the case of Non-player generals the Games Master rolls on their behalf.

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By Paul Mitchener

Mass combat involves the commanders’ skills of the two opposing sides, modified by the armies involved.  The command skills involved are Lore (Military Tactics), and either Influence or Performance.

The actual battle is resolved by opposed Lore (Military Tactics) checks made by the leaders.  A successful check means a force inflicts casualties equal half its size on the opposition.  Half of these casualties are deaths; the other half are injuries.  These numbers are doubled on a critical success.

Further, the commander of a losing side in a battle must make an Influence or Performance check to prevent a rout.  Routing troops either flee in panic, or surrender when they cannot flee.  A further 10% of an army’s numbers are lost in a rout.  Further a critical success on the Influence or Performance check is needed for a force to continue fighting rather than retreating in a more orderly manner.  If a force has nowhere to retreat to, it can continue to fight.

The Lore (Military Tactics) check is modified by various situational factors.

• Better equipped than enemy :+25% bonus
• Better trained than enemy: +25% bonus.
• Has special forces (eg: artillery, cavalry, combat mages) that the enemy lacks: +25% bonus for each.
• Outnumber enemy by two to one or more: +25%
• Enemy in defensive position: -25% penalty
• Enemy fortifications: -50% penalty.
• Player character heroics (eg: taking out significant enemy, capturing strategic position): +25% bonus.

Larger forces might split into several armies, each with their own commander.  The rules are still as above, but each army must pick another force to attack.

Editor’s Note

This is the first variant of Mass Combat rules that has been sent to me.

It needs more extensive playtesting.

In OpenQuest it is usually the Games Master who describes the situation the player characters find themselves in and the outcome of any skill test. This optional rule allows the player to take control of the narrative and change the direction that the story is going in by spending Hero Points;
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