If you want a copy of the OpenQuest core rules in French, a team from the Le Scriptorum have made your wish come true!

• OpenQuest in French

My thanks go out to the following people involved:
Translation : Arasmo, Mugen, Kurgan
Layout : Etory

There’s also Alamander, which is a complete game with gorgeous art and layout based of OQ with bits of GORE and MRQ1 added.

• Alamander

• Found items

Out of interest heres some notes about the drafts (which where pretty much in Alpha/outline stage) along with the code names I gave each:

D100# (or D100 Sharp) – Take away Characteristics and add social combat, and a system where each character has personality traits, which add to skill rolls. Reduce skill rolls to pretty much a one roll determines success and result. For example in combat the sucess of the combat roll helps determine damage more than the equipment damage dice.  Developement stopped when I realised that I was effectively creating the HeroQuest/RuneQuest hybrid I never want to see.

OpenQuest 2 -  Build on OQ , with some of the systems rationalised and streamlined. The big change being the magic system, which would be folded up into one rules system with the existing three magic model being modelled with rules for ‘approach’. For example magicians using the Sorcery Approach can manipulate range, duration etc while those using the Divine Approach never spend any magic points as long as they are casting magic in accordance with their Deity’s creed. Problem with OQ2 is that there is a line where it would break backwards compatibility with old BRP/RQ and OQ1 itself. So this one was put to one side.

SimpleQuest – this is my latest tinkering with the OQ ruleset, reclaiming the name that OQ was originally written under. The idea here is to re-imagine RQ from the ground up to make a streamlined easy to play version of the game that newcomers can approach. It won’t be based off the MRQ OGL SRD or use any familiar RQ terms for licensing reasons (so no Bladesharp for example) and it breaks with tradition in that it uses a D20 for skill resolution rather than D100.  While I’m still fiddling about with this one, I feel that’s it a failed experiment because its very much a vanity project. OQ’s power is that it ties in directly to D100′s heritage and opens it up to non-brp fans (allot of the OSR crowd have said that its the first version of D100 that they feel they can approach). So I feel at this point  in a market already crowded with fantasy systems its fairly pointless to proceed to the publication stage.

If there’s any conclusions to be drawn from all this, is that I’m fairly content with OQ as it is, and that its best to throw my energy and love for Fantasy D100 behind that particular horse

Well here it is

• OpenQuest Reference Sheet -Pdf (140KB)

Written especially for GMs who are familiar with RQ/BRP so they understand the subtle differences.

These are largely untested rules that I developed the core of for the Robot Wasteland 3-shot game that I am working into a campaign to run in the near future. I cannot swear for balance or feasability, but I would appreciate constructive feedback from those who use these Psionics for OpenQuest.

Psionics Robot Wasteland-Pdf, 284KB

Editor’s note: As well as the Psionic’s rules Clint explains the house rules that he uses for the game.

Further information.

A quick write up of the 3-shot game which spawned the game can be found here.

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

If you have any feedback or questions about the rules you can email Clint about it.

• Contact Clint

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.

Savage and tough barbarian warrior

Skills
Athletics, Dodge, Healing, Natural Lore, Perception, Resilience, Ride, Language (Other), Close Combat

Battle Magic
Fanaticism, Heal, Coordination, Mobility, Protection, Speedart, Strength, Vigour, Weapon Enhance.

Equipment
Appropriate weapons, warm animal furs, water skin.

Flamboyant and daring travelling entertainer

Skills
Athletics, Dodge, Influence, Performance, Deception, Lore (Theatre), Streetwise.

Battle Magic
Befuddle, Coordination, Multimissile, Enhance skill (Influence) , Enhance Skill (Performance), Enhance Skill (Deception)

Equipment
Travelling clothes, appropriate costume for act, leather armour, any weapons that the character has skill in.

Priestly protector of the poor

Skills
Healing, Influence, Natural Lore, Perception, Persistence, Language (other), Religion(Own), Unarmed Combat

Battle Magic
Heal, Weapon Enhance, Dispel Magic, Protection, Second sight, or as taught by Cult

Equipment
Appropriate religious clothing, alms bowl, leather armour, staff, dagger or appropriate cult weapons

The default skills/magic of this package give a rough approximation to a wandering monk type of cleric for Game Masters who don’t want religion to feature heavily in their games, with an option to substitute specific cult skills/spells if they do.

Fast-riding nomadic raider from the steppes

Skills
Athletics, Dodge, Healing, Natural Lore, Perception, Resilience, Ride, Ranged Combat

Battle Magic
Clear Path, Mobility, Multimissile, Speedart, Vigour, Weapon Enhance

Equipment
Nomad bow, spear, dagger, leather armour, waterskin, warm animal pelt jacket and hat.

Widely-travelled sailor

Skills
Athletics, Dodge, Perception, Resilience, Engineering, Language (other), Natural Lore, Sailing, Ranged Combat.

Battle Magic
Weapon Enhance, Coordination, Extinguish, Firearrow , Water Breath

Equipment
Any weapon or shield the character possesses skill in. Leather armour. Peg leg or Eye Patch optional.

Adventurous and knowledge-hungry scholar

Skills
Athletics, Dodge, Perception, Persistence, Engineering, Language (other), Lore (Ancient Dead Civilisation),Lore (any)

Battle Magic
Detect X, Dispel Magic, Second Sight, Protection, Mindspeech, Mobility.

Equipment
Scholar’s robes over leather armour, Staff or dagger, Sling + stones.

Grizzled veteran of the imperial guard

Skills
Athletics, Dodge, Healing, Natural Lore, Perception, Resilience, Riding, Language (Other), Lore (Military Tactics), Engineering.

Battle Magic
Demoralise, Fireblade, Firearrow, Heal,Pierce, Protection, Strength, Weapon Enhance.

Equipment
1H Sword and Shield or 1H Spear and Shield or 1H Axe and Shield, plus Bow and Dagger, leather armour, water-skin, rations.

Downtrodden ex-sorcerer’s apprentice

Skills
Dodge, Perception, Persistence, Language (other), Sorcery, Streetwise, Drive

Battle Magic
Befuddle, Countermagic, Dispel Magic, Heal, Light, Mindspeech, Protection, Second Sight.

Equipment
Robes over leather armour, Staff or dagger, Sling + stones.

Note the magic of a Sorcerer’s apprentice is primarily Battle magic. Although their master’s have taught them the rudiments of Sorcery, via the Sorcery skill, they have been too lazy to actually teach them any sorcery spells!

Stealthy and sneaky thief

Skills
Athletics, Deception, Dodge, Healing,Perception, Language (other), Mechanisms, Streetwise.

Battle Magic
Befuddle, Coordination, Darkwall, Extinguish, Light, Mobility, Multimissile, Protection, Slow, Weapon Enhance.

Equipment
1H sword or 1H mace, dagger, five throwing daggers or Short bow, leather armour, hooded travelling cloak, set of lockpicks.

Opportunistic trader looking for new markets

Skills
Deception, Driving, Influence, Language ( Other ), Lore ( Specific Country’s culture ), Perception, Persistence, Ride, Streetwise, Trade.

Battle Magic
Befuddle, Clear Path, Countermagic, Detect X, Protection.

Equipment
Travelling clothes over leather armour, appropriate weapons, water skin, large back pack or mule.

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.

Here’s my original thoughts about and  aims  for the game posted on the D101 Development blog.

• So what is SimpleQuest?

Sept 2007: SimpleQuest version 1

So by September 07 I had produced a very basic first version as result of hacking the SRD, mainly the Core Rulebook and Companion SRD

The main differences from MRQ even at this stage were

1. Character gen was a points buy system, very much here’s 100 points to spend between skills.

2. Combat was more RQ3/Stormbringer 5th edition in nature. Gone were Hit Locations, back in where Total Hit Points and a Major Wound system, inspired by Stormbringer 5th. I also added a number of combat maneuvers to allow players to get out of the dreaded ‘Attack-Parry’ cycle that D100 combat sometimes gets into.

Then first games where played at the monthly meetings now defunct Go play Manchester and  Newtcon 1 (a all dayer round my gaff, which also saw the second outting of Wordplay) and seemed to go down well. I was quite confident that the game played well and got cracking with adding with writing the examples and descriptive text.

Aug 2008: SimpleQuest ZeroEdition

Inspired by the cheek of Chaosium releasing a Zero Edition of their  Basic Roleplaying I put together a free pdf Zero Edition of the game for Continuum, release of SQ Zero edition. We also played lots of games to happy players.

• SimpleQuest Zero Edition [Pdf, 578Kb]

Not much feedback came out the games, it was still all we had a good time, but since I released it via the ‘net that’s were I got some major feedback that was to really bring the game into the form it is today.

Sept 2008: Making the game less “RQ with the corners rounded off”

This thread over at Basic Roleplaying Central gave me lots of constructive feed back, which basically although people liked it they felt that it was ” RQ with corners rounded” and that I could go further in making it more streamlined and easier to play.

As a result of this and other feed back on SQ Zero I made the following  changes

• Simplify weapons. Tim Bancroft of Sceaptune games came up with a new weapons table, which reduced the sheer number of weapons in the MRQ to what I felt was a manageable amount.
• Simply skill lists, remove Advanced and Basic categories from MRQ and simplify and group skills to give a much smaller list of skills. Gone are the individual combat skills for each weapon, in their place skills three combat skills: Close, Unarmed, Ranged.
• Sorcery – Gone were all the manipulation skills and in their place a single Sorcery casting skill, that is the basis of Sorcery manipulation.

Oct 2008-June 2009: Staring into a black hole

There then followed a period of  quiet for a while. Needed to rework the game inc feedback from Zero Edition, add monsters (a big task) and write an introductory scenario and setting to make the game complete.

This took much longer than expected for a number of reasons;

• The sheer number of dependencies in the rules, which I was completely unprepared for. For example you take out Hit Locations you have to reflect it not only in obvious places such as the Combat and Damage rules but also in Magic and Monsters and Spot rules.
• I underestimated the amount of work needed on the Monsters chapter.
• Lots of last minute changes as a result of making the game more its own creature and less a simple rewrite of the MRQ SRD
• A big dose of sheer despondency “staring into a black hole” where the game never got finished.  I’m my own worst enemy for getting things done and I had a severe dose of self doubt in the last stages of developing OpenQuest, mainly due to the fact that I had spent a good two years solid working on it.
• Real life TM getting in the way, both on my part since I my wife was in the later part of her pregnancy with our second child and due to editors and contributors falling due to severe and unexpected changes in their circumstances.

July 2009: OpenQuest is here!

After a final name change that better reflected the nature of the game, OpenQuest was finally released via Lulu.com (an online print on demand company, who also provide you with simple online storefront in return for a small royalty on every copy sold via them).

I rushed release slightly to beat arrival of Newtlet #2 (Henry Brian Newport who arrived in early Sept), and editors disappearing due to Real Life TM issues meant it did ship with a few more typos and mistakes than expected but these were quickly spotted and feed back via the small but energetic group of people who gathered round the initial release of the game.

Initially I released the  fully laid out PDF for free,  a mistake that I don’t regret because it exposed the game to a huge number of people.  However I do need to make some money off it since I’m running D101 more a business these days (one of the big changes that happened as a result of the modest success of OQ). Charging even a low amount for the pdf means I can generate income to pay for future OQ projects. The game is still free in the sense that you can download the text only Developer’s kit.

To date just over 2000 people have downloaded the free version of the game, and sales although a tiny fraction of that they have already paid the costs of making the game. If you want to support future development of the game the best way to do this is buy either the print or pdf version   Saying that we’ve got three Setting/Adventure books in development and one self contained game based on OpenQuest, a Hard Sci-fi game called River of Heaven, in development, so we’re fired up and excited about OpenQuest for a good year or two

I’m glad I did get it done, OpenQuest has had a positive reviews and best of all I’ve had feedback that people are actually playing the game!  I’ve had a ton of fun both playtesting the game and playing it in its final form (I’m currently running the game playtesting the upcoming Savage North adventure book).  Best of all is all the lovely enthusiastic people who I’ve meet along the way

Not bad for something I started as as fiddling about in my lunch hour project.

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.

Mass Combat Modifiers

As with regular combat, Mass Combat can be affected by numerous factors which can grant bonuses and penalties. The table below gives any modifiers that will affect mass combat in certain situations. If necessary, the Games Master can create other modifiers to restrict combatants further. Only the highest modifier is taken into consideration.

BLOODY CONFLICT

Not all conflicts will bring a swift and deceive result. A bloody conflict represents both armies being locked in a bitter struggle with no overall winner. Left with a stalemate, both forces withdraw in order to regroup and gather reinforcements. When the two forces next engage, compare the results for the previous battle for both generals. Apply a +25% modifier to the general who had the higher level of success with their roll from the previous engagement.

Editor’s Note

This is the second varient of Mass Combat rules that has been sent to me.

It needs more extensive playtesting.

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.

I’ll be adding more material as the weeks go by, all free under the Open Gaming License.

As well as my own material the OQ Companion is open to contributions. Please contact me via newt@d101games.co.uk

Enjoy!

;O)Newt