Open Quest Redux, and GURPS

Open Quest has put Mythras in storage. This is just the more accessible and complete game, especially compared to Classic Fantasy Imperative and the base Mythras book (still too small type to read easily). I want Mythras to rock, but as they convert to the ORC license and get material reprinted and cleaned up, it does not feel like either Mythras or Classic Fantasy is there.

Open Quest stands out for its simplicity and directness, a design choice that sets it apart from other games. Its most intriguing aspect is the absence of traditional classes, which paves the way for a unique gaming experience. This is akin to the fun and diverse play options offered by GURPS, where the lack of classes opens up a plethora of exciting possibilities.

The one thing that keeps me from using 5E for many stories is classes. I will have a more social or story-based campaign, and a character that should not be "becoming more and more of a killer" is suddenly becoming one and not improving social and story skills. I like the concept of a character "falling behind" in fighting power because they aren't getting into fights and having to go back and train to compensate for the lack of combat ability.

All of this is slowly pushing me back into GURPS. Open Quest is a great game, one of the best BRP-style dungeon games on the market. But for how I play, it would still fall short. It would be better than 5E for me, but GURPS is the king of character builders. GURPS also lets you design a 1,000-point historian with zero combat power; in that element, they would be the best in the world.

I get it; 5e is fun from a "structured play" aspect.

But when I tell stories, they are never structured. Do you mean to tell me that if my mage spends six sessions in social situations, talking, solving problems, and not casting a spell - the XP will be enough for them to get a level and be a better killer and user of magic?

I didn't even use one spell!

Now I know more?

What is even dumber is that I have zero social skills and problem-solving abilities. Here is some killing power! Thank you for being social and solving all those problems!

I have a game in which I am doing X, Y, and Z, which gives me more power to do A, B, and C.

That sort of "no reward play" leads me to quit. I will never get rewarded for XYZ (social and problem solving), never do ABC (combat and killing), and at every level, it gets worse. Nothing helps me do XYZ, and I get worse at it as my combat power goes up like some JRPG character on a preset, hardcoded into the ROM progression track. They will never be good at anything other than making a damage number go higher and higher.

Some classes force you into killing. My fighter isn't given many social skills since the game has a built-in death bias towards some classes. This bias is lame and has been the fatal flaw in D&D and class-based games for 50 years.

This is why we left D&D in the 1980s for GURPS.

If the king sends my character to stop two warring tribes, I can approach it however I want. I could get history books, spend character points on specialized history skills for each tribe, and come at them knowing everything they are about. Your tribe did this 300 years ago, but this tribe still holds your sacred hunting ground; let's make a swap and figure this out peacefully.

Or I could go combat, get tactics and battle leadership skills, pick a side, and wipe the other out.

I could go stealthy and subterfuge.

I could go 100% diplomatic.

I could use history against them.

Anyway, there is a skill that can support my problem-solving.

You get a typical 5E module, and it is either an OSR-like "dungeon atlas" to kill through, or all of the above solutions have to be "thought of" by the writer of the adventure and put in there as options they choose for you - since 5E characters kill first and think later. 5E Adventures presents killing as the first solution and has to go out of its way to show a few non-violent options (if they do at all, since combat is "fun," just like a video game).

Open Quest would do this style of play nicely in a d100 BRP-style framework. You control your advances. Thus, you control the areas in which your character improves.

GURPS is still the master of this style of play. It has everything Open Quest doesn't, but in some ways, doesn't need. However, I still like being able to design characters down to the point, buy advantages and disadvantages, and specialize in skills most games would dismiss as "needless, pointless detail."

If I am playing a game where needing to know specialized things matters?

It matters a whole lot.

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.

Off the Shelf: Open Quest (3rd Edition)

I found this one at the bottom of one of my storage boxes and forgot I had it. With all my interest in BRP and Runequest, it seems appropriate to take another look at this game.

First off, why?

I have BRP and Runequest. I have Mythras.

Why another d100 BRP-style fantasy game?

Open Quest aims to be easier to play and dramatically simplifies the d100 rules. This is on the same rules lineage as Legend, M-Space, and Mythras. From the rulebook explaining the differences:

So, like a Basic Fantasy or other "simple" implementation of a B/X system, this is the d100 answer for the "quick and easy" BRP-style system. This game is better for new players starting with d100 instead of 5E or B/X. It is definitely easier than Mythras, Runequest, or BRP. Also, some are tired of all the minutiae and simulation in BRP games, so stripping out all the cruft and boiling this game down to the base elements makes the game more approachable.

That is a good thing, and the new BRP book tries to do that, strip off the excess, and present a simple core engine; Open Quest takes it a step further and rewrites the game in a one-book format. Is it a "full game experience" like the complete Runequest or Mythras rules? No, and it isn't supposed to be. Sometimes, a simple dungeon-focused game without a world is all you want a game to be.

This is still on the old OGL license, and I hope it gets updated to ORC, using BRP as a base. The Mythras team is busy with new open-gaming licenses and a few new titles in their "Imperative" line. It is past time that the rest of the industry broke from Wizards; it's Wall Street garbage, which controls communities by fear, and players should follow suit and walk.

Also, OQ is more Runequest than B/X; it still keeps the concept of "personal magic" that everyone can use. So, this game still has a different feeling than a B/X-style game with magic haves and have-nots. Everyone using magic doesn't make the game more complex; it just unifies the "special power system" seen in 5E subclasses and lets people pull from a pool. It is actually a simplification over 5E subclass "gimmie" powers.

For example, Weapon Enhance is a spell that adds hit and damage to melee weapons. A fighter-type may want to learn that and use that to enhance attacks. Personal magic replaces subclass features, and it is a more straightforward and more democratic system of "special powers." Could a rogue-type character learn that? Why not? No need to take a level in fighter here; just learn the spell you want.

Open Quest is a worthy game. It is an excellent introduction to BRP-style games and a gateway to games like Call of Cthulhu, Mythras, and Runequest. For some, this is all the complexity and game you will ever need in one book.