The Openquest 3rd Edition Kickstarter is in its last 40 hours. The PDF + POD coupon level is super cheap, at around 12.85 USD at current exchange rates. If you haven't tried Openquest before, I would suggest picking it up while you get the chance (I am not being paid or otherwise compensated for this post; I don't have an "affiliate link" or something to click on; I think I mainly bring grief rather than pleasure to the creator's life; I am doing this because I like the game and want to encourage others to discover it).
Openquest has always seemed to be criminally underrated and ignored as a game despite being one of the most mechanically straightforward versions of the Basic Roleplaying (BRP) system that runs Call of Cthulhu, Mythras, Runequest and other games. It's been around for over a decade now, and I'm really amazed more traditional players disgruntled with D&D & Pathfinder's moves towards superheroism haven't converged on Openquest.
I think Openquest sits at a really sweet spot between the possibilities of "trad" and "OSR" styles of play, and I've used it for both successfully. Because of the variety of options for magic, it's considerably easier to "tune" it to run either high magic fantasy and low magic fantasy settings that diverge from D&D's baseline. The lack of exploding hit points means that even very weak enemies remain potential threats for much longer than in D&D. The focus on skills and the lack of classes means that a wider variety of character concepts are playable than in stock D&D. It's also humanocentric by default, which I tend to prefer in my fantasy games.
Anyhow, if you haven't previously checked out Openquest, I strongly recommend you do, and this Kickstarter is a good chance to do so very cheaply.
"I think I mainly bring grief rather than pleasure to the creator's life" actually once I stoped arguing the toss with you, I kinda like the whole Your OpenQuest May Vary vibe :) Its given me great insight on how I should be less prickly with folk tinkering with the ruleset, although folk telling me I'm wrong and then suggesting rules fixes to make it more like RQ/BRP straight is a good way of making me roll my eyes :D
ReplyDeleteI certainly thought of you when it came to deciding whether Engineering stayed in the OpenQuest 3 skill list :)