Open Quest (Update)

I stand corrected. 

In March 2023, Open Quest became Creative Commons and is now off the OGL. They printed a new edition, but nothing in the book changed other than a few small rewordings of rules.

Very nice! It is good to see the hobby dump the outdated and legal-threat-filled OGL and move on to better things. The divorce of Wizards from the hobby is continuing, but it is healthy since small indies are now being forced to decide how to open license their works so they genuinely belong to a community.

Also, it is better for D&D since that IP is its own thing. There are far fewer questions about whose toys are who's today, and Wizards is free to make D&D-branded t-shirts and sneakers and do their own thing. I wish them well in their lifestyle brand choices. Still, I ask them to refrain from using sweatshops, pay workers a fair wage, use environmentally responsible manufacturers, and not use unfair labor practices in making those lifestyle brand items. Taking progressive in the books while acting corporate behind the scenes is a huge mistake.

But this break is crucial because nothing should threaten the free flow of ideas, the sharing of content, and the games the community can play. You are seeing the war play out now in Warhammer. To control the IP and "idea" of the game, the rights-holders must turn to even more and more authoritarian tactics, and we are in the same place that Wizards tried with the OGL now, "If we don't control the license, then toxic people will take over the game!"

A year after the OGL mess, toxic people have not taken over the communities that steward these games, and open-license games are doing just fine. In fact, community-moderated games are often better moderated than corporate ones. Wall Street does not trust the community to steer its ship on the right course, and these finance and paid media people are wrong. When you finally realize how the world works, you learn that anything with fake anger around it is usually a cash-grab grift by social media wannabes.

Roleplaying is a hobby, not an industry.

Open Quest is growing on me. This feels like the Old School Essentials of the d100 BRP and Runequest World. Mythras is the Pathfinder, Runequest is the D&D, Open Quest is the OSE version of BRP that says "less is more" and "we don't need all this layered complexity." Where Runequest does layered strike ranks and Mythras does fantastic combat options - Open Quest sticks to the basics.

The "BRP planes of existence" are a fascinating place. They are a parallel world to the d20 cosmology that does its own thing and has its own outlook and model of the universe. The Call of Cthulhu part keeps resetting itself as the investigators there fail to save the world from destruction time after time.

I played the classic Arkham Horror with all the expansion boards, so I know what this world is like. The chaos part of BRP reality is constantly resetting itself like Groundhog Day.

You have the overall BRP rules that control every reality, from cave people to Star Federation-style starships. You have the open BRP  games and their places like Mythras, M-Space, and others. Runequest is the fantasy showcase world. And over there, you have Open Quest, a more traditional dungeon-crawling fantasy game with Middle Ages technology (plate mail and crossbows are present), and it does its own thing.

Open Quest, having traditional dungeon-crawling gear, weapons, and armor, plays to its benefit. People are familiar with plate mail, chain mail, and crossbows and associate them with "dungeon fantasy gaming." There are ways to build paladin and cleric "concepts" in the game, along with a mage concept, so you can start like a beginning adventurer of any type that would be familiar in other games.

They let Runequest be Bronze Age while keeping the game simple, taking the Middle Ages and pre-Renaissance route and embracing dungeons, sword and sorcery, and overland adventures. They even have the concept of exclusivity between divine and sorcery powers (in the premade concepts), where knowing one precludes the other.

Open Quest is brilliant in the choices they make. While you can use Basic Roleplaying or Runequest to do this genre, every choice here focuses on and supports the dungeon-crawling Late Middle Ages genre. Direct support of a narrowly defined genre wins every time. They give a sample campaign setting, but in the true spirit of old-school gaming, the setting is "any world" of fantasy dungeon crawling with the traditional races and professions.

The classics are here, too. Instead of the plant-people elves of Runequest (which I retcon anyway because I am an RQ 3 player), we get real elves and all the great standard fantasy races. You can even play as monsters with group approval, and all the best old-school monsters are here.

Open Quest is easily dismissed as "another indie game," but once you take a moment to read it and realize what they put together here, it becomes an awe-inspiring package with a clear design goal and the ability to deliver the classic dungeon experience.

This is worth playing over BRP or Runequest, especially if classic dungeon crawling is your thing.

Highly recommended.