What’s in OpenQuest Dungeons?
Here’s a breakdown, chapter by chapter, of what OpenQuest Dungeons contains.
Rules Articles
OpenQuest for Dungeoneers. For Players and Referees, a review of the OpenQuest rules focuses on features allowing them to enter the game from a familiar angle.
Stock Non-player characters. The twelve ready-made character concepts from the main OpenQuest rulebook (see pages 27 to 30) as full NPC profiles.
Tricks and Traps. This chapter contains a selection of traps described in OpenQuest game terms to drop into your creations. Each trap is fully illustrated with wonderful, evocative art from James Shields.
Underworld Deities. A collection of Gods and Goddesses ideal for worship by dungeon dwellers and those who explore them.
The Dungeons
Rather than write an article on how to create dungeons for OpenQuest, I’ve decided to present three dungeon-based Quests that show not tell, how to do it.
The Well. An introductory adventure featuring a small dungeon that takes a single session or evening to play.
Deep In the Hole. A Quest centred on Spearing, a safe haven for the characters to base themselves, where the characters quickly end up down a local dungeon beneath a ruined castle.
The Sorcerer Under the Mountain. In ancient times an evil Sorcerer made Terror Mountain his base and gathered an army of goblinoids. Using the power of the Ring of the Elements, he terrorised the surrounding Elven Forest Kingdom, until the Elven Magi crushed his armies and slew him in response. Now it is said the Sorcerer is back, and someone needs to venture into his dungeon beneath the mountain to determine if this is fact.
This book is currently undergoing proofreading and art requisition, which depending on how I get on it should have a release date in August/September.
OpenQuest Dungeons, cover by Jon Hodgson
OpenQuest Online 2023 Con Report
The original OQ Online idea exploded into my head one morning over coffee. With the anniversary of OpenQuest 3rd Edtion going on general release (July 2021 see the Great OpenQuest Mailout) and having run many successful online games and taking part in online conventions, it was an obvious one.
This year was a bit last minute – previous attempts to run it as a part 2 in 2022 were frustrated by my family situation. I ended up saying, damn it lets do it the same time as we did last year (ie July). Then the week before, when I should have been promoting it to get numbers up, I was away from the office and on a much needed family holiday.
Despite the low turn out, it was a fun thing to run.
Saturday
“In The Shadow of the Volcano”, Dr Mitch’s game, set in Ancient Rome, was rescheduled due to personal circumstances.
“What’s Going on with OpenQuest” roundtable went well on Saturday night, with Mitch and me chatting with Jane and Keith about what we are currently working on for OpenQuest. I didn’t record it, which meant I talked freely off the record about a few things, which was nice to get off my chest 😉 Overall, OpenQuest is doing well regarding continuing sales and reputation. OpenQuest is widely regarded as the most approachable of the big three fantasy D100 games (the others being RuneQuest: Glorantha and Mythras). My main focus for the rest of the year is not only getting the adventure/setting books Swords for the Savage North and The Feathers and the Fury out but also getting some other writers on board as well as helping @DrMitch with his Clockwork Palace adventure collection and Year of Four Emperors spin-off game.
Sunday
Sky Pirates of the Floating Realms. This is a D100-based game. Not OQ directly, but more a continuation of the ideas found in OQ. I produced a Zero Edition yonks ago, back in 2020, and I’m currently working on the first draft of the complete game. I devised a new introductory adventure called Sky Vault Island for this session. This is probably going to be the introductory adventure for the game and follows directly from the introductory story at the start of the book, where the character’s sky ship, the Flying Freedom, crash lands on the sky island that the step pyramid that houses the Great Vault is built on. The players really warmed to the light-hearted fantasy nature of the game without going full gonzo on me and were engaged enough to play out the adventure to its resolution, where it was revealed that “all that glitters is not gold”. A good game that has inspired me further to get this one done and out.
Maximum thanks to Dr Mitch (who co-hosted the talk with me) and the other participants.
Hopefully, the release of OpenQuest on Role VTT soon, will mean we will have more GMs for next year’s event. Also, more promo and notice wouldn’t go amiss 😀 So circle July 2024 for the next OQ online 🙂
OpenQuest Online 2023 July 8-9th now Open for Registration
After the success of last year’s online OpenQuest convention a year on, I’ve decided to do it again.
The schedule is being worked on and will be announced shortly, but register now to attend.
Things planned
- Games of SimpleQuest, our concise version of OpenQuest, optimised for convention games.
- Year of the Four Emperors, join Dr Mitch for another outing of his historical fantasy game.
- Skyraiders of the Floating Realms. Get your inner Sky Pirate on and take to the Infinite Sky in this swashbuckling standalone game, coming later this year.
- Saturday Night Roundtable. Join Dr Mitch and me in our room of Zoom for a catch-up on all things OpenQuest.
What OpenQuest Dungeons Sets Out to Do
The World’s Favourite Fantasy Roleplaying Game made the Dungeon famous. You and your players have played that game many, many times. It’s a safe, familiar option, but you are ready to try something a bit different and have picked up OpenQuest to broaden your and your player’s horizons.
It’s a path that many D100 fans, including myself, have taken. Those early games where we stuck to the template we already knew and created narrowly defined stereotypes the best we could using the unfamiliar character generation system. Then we threw our newly created characters into the first battle that came along, hoping to get a reward, ending up grievously wounded and with very little to show. Sensing the disappointment, the Referee, who had read the rulebook cover to cover, tried to guide the players.
“Did you know you could have talked to them, convinced them with your Influence skill and probably got what you wanted that way? Or even used your Deception skill, which everyone has, not just thieves, to sneak past them? Perhaps Ralph’s character, who he’s configured to be more of a magician, yet who can still wield a sword and wears chain mail from his days as a noble, could have cast Protection 3 on Carol’s character, a farmer turned warrior. Then with that Ringmail armour they wear, they would have been invulnerable to those goblin’s attacks? If you had talked to them, and I know some of you have Goblinoid as a Language skill, you would have learnt they are members of the Bloodied Fang cult and how they are related to the villainous Burning Horde, and that’s the real treasure of this encounter. It’s a shame you missed that since it opens up all sorts of possibilities.”
This approach may have mixed results. It may open up worlds of wonder and opportunities for more expansive play for some players. Others may be horrified by the perceived density of rules and tactics that they feel are necessary to master to play the game properly.
This book aims to ease both players and Referees into OpenQuest, by using that familiar setting of the Dungeon, starting small and with baby steps, gradually easing everyone into system mastery.
It doesn’t try to replicate the World’s Favourite Fantasy Roleplaying Game’s rules, assets, and feel. Instead, suppose the players want to start in familiar territory, such as creating a character who has casting magic as a focus. In that case, the book will explain how to do that and then point out where they go after they start naturally breaking out of the limitations of that approach. And that’s the aim of the OpenQuest rules to provide a vehicle that goes wherever the players want to take their character.
OpenQuest Dungeons cover by Jon Hodgson
OpenQuest is now Creative Commons and on its 2nd Printing
I received the 2nd Printing of OpenQuest this morning from the printers. This, as well as fixing a small number of typos and errors that have come to light since the initial release back in 2021, also sees the removal of the now redundant OGL. This finalises OpenQuest (via the Systems Resource Document) being released under the Creative Commons.
If you want to see what has changed here’s the change log.
Nearly there with OpenQuest Dungeons
Spending the weekend putting the final polish on the next book for OpenQuest, OpenQuest Dungeons.
This one has been done in bits and pieces over the last couple of years. It almost had conflicting design goals at time. On the one hand, it’s a book of advice on how to get D&D familiar players and GMs converted to the joys of D100. It’s a resource book of things to help the GM make this shift. Finally, it’s a set of three adventures that were initially unconnected but now have a common setting and form a mini-campaign.
Bringing those three things under control and in harmony with the overall theme of how to present Dungeons in OpenQuest, has been very tricky at times, despite the outputs appearing very simple and straightforward.
Once I reach 1st draft, I’ll be sending it to the Master of Dungeons, the high-tier backer from the OpenQuest Kickstarter, who effectively sponsored its creation. They get to see it first, and then hopefully we’ll have a chat about what I’ll record for The OpenQuester (my videocast on YouTube).
OpenQuest Dungeons, cover by Jon Hodgson
The Great SimpleQuest Mailout is about to begin!
Not as big as The Great OpenQuest Mailout of 2021, which was something like 200+ books, but ten boxes of the perfectly formed Signed and Sent version of SimpleQuest appeared a week early in my hallway last Friday.
Now girding my loins to send out all these books, to backers who have paid for their postage.
Which brings me to remind folks who backed it at Signed and Sent level, you now need to pay for postage.
OpenQuest and its Dervived Games
So SimpleQuest, my concise cut-down version of OpenQuest, is ready to go live at drivethrurpg.com as print-on-demand/pdf and is in the process of getting a nice proper shiny print version, with endpapers, ribbons, nicely sewn papers etc. Once backers have their copies, it goes out on general release.
As well as the milestone of getting the book published, it does two immediate things.
- It’s a reference for short campaigns and convention-style one-shots that I and others will run. It was designed as a very pick-up-and-play implementation of OQ. So I expect those sorts of games to flourish both at home, online and at conventions.
- For us at D101 Games, a base to add to for OpenQuest Dervied Games. Paul Mitchenter has already said he will use it as a base for his Year of the Four Emperors, an Ancient Roman game. I’ll be moving Skyraiders of the Floating Realms over to it rather than inflict yet another D100 system upon the world.
When I say “us at D101 Games”, I do this deliberately. SimpleQuest is not released under the Creative Commons (my preferred way of making OpenQuest available to others), so you can’t copy and paste great chunks of the book and put them in your product. If you want to do that, go to the OpenQuest SRD. Note there are a few alternative rules (Patrons and the way it handles Social Conflict) that aren’t in the OQ SRD, so don’t be use them. Also, the one magic system hasn’t been released under the CC, but is likely to be at some future point in time when I catch up with stuff. But this is the same as I’ve done in the past with OQ-derived games. Neither The Company (OQ-powered game of Modern Warfare) nor River of Heaven (our sci-fi magnum opus), which both use OpenQuest as a base, were ever released as Open Gaming Content.
In conclusion, the reason why this post is titled “OpenQuest and Derived Games” is I won’t be referring to games that use SQ as their starting points as SQ derived games. They are OpenQuest games. I gave SimpleQuest its own name to make it easier to reference, like its “Swords against the Savage North”, not “OpenQuest Swords and Sorcery”. There aren’t going to be separate OpenQuest, and SimpleQuest branches like there are for Fate Core and Fate Accelerated. It’s all OpenQuest 🙂
River of Heaven
Over on my Sci-fi games blog, To the Stars, I thought it time to mention our OpenQuest powered sci-fi game River of Heaven.
It’s available from our web store.
River of Heaven, cover by John Hodgson
End of the Duck Crusade
Advance warning the Duck Crusade will be retired on 31st January.
I’ve had a quacking good time with this title, but all the physical copies have now gone and the party is over.
While the mighty Crusader Ducks are going to feature in some form or another, in the upcoming Feathers and the Fury, this is the last chance to get the ‘zine where they make their first appearance. Their enemies, the insane cultists of Grogzilla, and their counter-quest, Duck Hunt, certainly won’t be making a reappearance as playable characters, anytime soon.
The Duck Crusade by Dan Barker
OpenQuest 3rd Edition
The OpenQuest Quickstart
OpenQuest Quickstart Cover © Jonny Gray
OpenQuest Companion
