Newt

Good stuff.

The whole sheilds section was a mess when I started working with MRQ 1 as my base.  My intial attempt was simply to say that on a successful parry they added their AP (in the early days of OpenQuest development Shields and weapons had AP like old RQ) to the character's overall Armour. Then we dropped AP for parrying weapons and well you can see things got muddled from there.

The whole Shields section could do with rewriting (as you've twigged) with it being spilt into subheadings, Using Shields in Close Combat, Using Shields in Ranged Combat, and probably Using Shields in Unarmed Combat. 

Grappling is one of those aquward bits of rules that I inherited from MRQ1, possibly tinkered with a bit during intial development for the first version of OQ and then haven't really touched since because it never turns up in my games, which tend to be Medieval/Dark Aged based and my players come armed to teeth with melee weapons or stay out of the way and pick off enemies with missiles or spells.

It could probably need a good looking at some point.

Stock Clearance Sale update......

Short version: 5 out of 13 books in the sale are now out of stock in my web store, with the rest running low!

Wow! I'm overwhelmed by the response to this. All my Gloranthan backstock has gone, so its DriveThruRPG.com/Lulu.com if you want to get hold of it, along with OpenQuest Crucible of Dragons and the main OQ rulebook.

I'm down to my last River of Heaven Hardback, and the stock of River of Heaven in Softcover is going down steadily. 

The remaining stock is down to single figures, so if you want a copy of OpenQuest Adventures, The Savage North, Last Witness or Renunion at 50% off you are going to have to move fast.

If you bought something in the sale and are wondering were it is, I've had such a deluge of orders that I've had to order extra packing material and set aside some dedicated time, rather than send them out individually. I'm going to start going though the orders to day , from earliest to most recent, and hope to get them all in the post today. 

Maximum thanks to anyone who has bought something in the sale. 

Stewart Stansfield did a cracking piece about prostitution in the Lunar Army as part of his "Three Legs of Vice" article which is part of Hearts in Glorantha 1-5 Collected. 

Placing an order is the best bet, because there are multiple shipping options.

It might be on balance you get a better deal buying from DriveThruRpg.com, because they are shipping from their Us centre.

Just to let you know some items are running low on stock (Crucible of Dragons is down to three copies for example). 

Also I've just added OpenQuest Adventures to the sale. 

Thanks to everyone who has bought something via the sale so far. The money raised is going back into D101 to pay for development work on new titles!

Hi all

To make some room at D101 HQ for the titles I'm going to be publishing in 2017, I'm having a stock clearance over at the D101 Webstore.

All titles 50% off and postage free for UK orders.

In the sale: River of Heaven, Reunion, The Last Witness, Life and Death, The Savage North, Cruicible of Dragons, OpenQuest Adventures, Hunters of Alexandria, Hearts in Glorantha 1-5 Collected, Gloranthan Adventures 1, Gloranthan Adventures 2.

• Stock Clearance Sale at the D101 Web Store.

Nope.

We fixed a ton of errata doing OQ2 and I think since the time its been out there's only been one or two (at most) real errata. The rest has been folk arguing why shouldn't rule X work like I want it to. To which the answer is "in your game of OQ it can :)".

This is a hard one to answer for me without overthinking, because I played HeroQuest for a good ten years before drifting off to play other things....because after 10 years obessively playing it it was time for a break

So the short answer is: Completely redefined how I play and look at RPGs. 

Long involved answer

My path through RPGs is broadly speaking was: D&D (80s) then RuneQuest (90s) and then HeroWars/HeroQuest late 90s through the 2000s. This decade its been a mix of stuff, strangely revisiting the previous decades in many respects.

Noteable influences over the years: Paranioa in the 80s (taught me I don't need to be a slave to the rules as writen), Feng-Shui in the 90s (most of the emerging storytelling games stuff left me cold, but Feng-shui hit the spot esepcially the GM guidance for NO MORE BORING COMBATS AGAIN EVER!!!) and Burning Wheel in the 2000s (which generally reinvograted my interest in running and playing rpgs at at time when I was getting too grown up to be dealing with passive players and boring plots that go nowhere - quite simply Burning Wheel showed me how to get players  and myself co-creating adventures that were meaningful and memorable).

Specific things HeroQuest did for me:

Provide an easily manageable rules system for Glorantha. No more stating out Monsters of the Week, long stat blocks for monsters/characters, definining new magic spells for newly encountered Cults. How and why things work the way they do could be worked out between me and the players during play. Which in turn led to...

Allowed for greater exploration of Glorantha than ever before. Using HQ I broke out of my decade long Ralios RQ setting, and ran games in Loskalm, Kralora, the Oceans of Glorantha, the Lunar Empire (see Gloranthan Adventures 2 for part of the game I ran there) as well as Kingdom of Sartar (via a series of newcommer friendly scenarios I ran at cons published in Gloranthan Adventures 1). Also with a bit of structure (nicked from Burning Wheel/Buring Empires) I ran one of my best campaigns ever an epic from teens to rulers game in Black Horse Country

Outside of Glorantha, I ran games of Dungeon Bashing and Cthulhu. The later game really put proved for me the flexibitly of the system, if the Narrator has a handle on what it can do.

Provided the holy grail of roleplaying - ONE UNIFIED SYSTEM TO RULE THEM ALL!! Which led to...

A change of my design paradigm. Instead of rules systems and modifications to meet the situation, I now think in terms of what Story Objects I need to set up and how the rules should simply interact with them. Be it Keywords (HQ), Aspects (FATE) or Professions (D100) as well as the more traditional equipment lists (which even in the trad games I now treat much more lightly), monsters and thrilling locations.

Lasting Influence: Even though I'm currently not running HeroQuest at the moment, its been an influence on pretty much every thing I've done as D101 Games. It helped me grok Fate alot quicker because I was already used to thinking in Story Terms and the unified system idea had a huge influence on Monkey.

Publish my own supplements for the game. This one is important to me personally. Without HereQuest , and its Gateway Lisence for non-Gloranthan settings and 'special commerical' fan publication license for Glorantha, I wouldn't have published Hearts in Glorantha, Gloranthan Adventures, Book of Glorious Joy, Empires Rising (very briefly before the author decided to go down the self-publishing route) and Ye Little Book of HeroQuest Fantasy.  The Gloranthan Adventures stuff covers alot of ground, and if I had to have put in stat blocks and provide floorplan style maps I doubt it would have happened.

Were now just over halfway through the 30 day funding period:

• Basic Goal Main Rulebook FUNDED!
• Stretch Goal 1: Quick Start booklet/extra adventure in the rule book FUNDED!
• Stretch Goal 2: Defenders of the Dragon Empire. Additional chapter which details mortal Wuxia heroes FUNDED!
• Stretch Goal 3: Ministry of Thunder, five adventure book FUNDED!

Currently funding Stretch Goal 4 The Monkey Companion - a book of short standalone adventures and articles, which is about 40% funded at time of writing.

The artists have started work on he art - See Dan's Tripitaka in the post above , While Peter Frain has done this version of the classic Chinese Vampire

Quick update, we funded within 16 hours, two stretch goals funded within the first week and now well on the way to a book of adventures called the Ministry of Thunder

Oh and for old time Glorantha fans who remember his work on Tales of the Reaching Moon especially, Dan Barker is one of the artists involved.

Here's the piece he turned in depticting the monk Tripitaka

I'm kickstarting the 2nd Incarnation of Monkey, The Roleplaying Game of the Journey to the West until February 10th.

Monkey the Roleplaying Game of the Journey to the West on Kickstarter

Monkey is a Tabletop Roleplaying game based upon the Chinese Classic Novel  “The Journey to the West” or “Monkey” as it is commonly known in the West.

This is a story-telling game set in a mythical China, where out of grace Immortals seek redemption by escorting a vulnerable, mortal Monk to distant India. Braving many dangers along the way, to recover scrolls of Buddhist scripture, that are missing from the Chinese canon.The road through the wilderness is dangerous since all of Demon-kind has resolved to stop the pilgrims and the eat the Monk's flesh!

The game's simple rules, which use standard playing cards, allow for any sort of action that you can imagine, from fast paced kung-fu to heated debates.   

The main rule book contains all that you need to play, except two packs of standard playing cards (one for the players and one for the referee) and your imagination.

If you want to learn more about the game and what's different in this 2nd version, i did a series of 23 posts over 23 Days of Monkey over on the game's blog:

Read 23 Days of Monkey, previews, rules explanations and art examples and loads of Monkey fun!

I bought an empty splipcase for my Kickstarter bought Guide. Soon it will have the same level of protection as my 7th Ed CoC, which in my mad house of cats, children and clutter is a goooood thing

Cheers Chaosium chaps for making this happen

River of Heaven in pdf is DriveThruRpg.com’s Deal of the Day and is 60% , which makes it currently £4.81/$6.00.  This offer lasts until Saturday 18th Dec 4pm GMT.

If you want to get a similar discount on the Printed version visit D101’s web store (d101games.com)

Prices are currently.

Softcover + pdf £10/$12.50 (usually £15/$19)
Hardcover + pdf £13/$16 (usually £20/$25)

This sale price is on offer until Sunday 12pm GMT and remember UK residents get free postage.

Look out for news of new River of Heaven releases in the New Year in our State of D101 Address on New Years Day.

Regards

;O) Newt

Well don't put any money on it being anytime within the next 9 months

I'm toying with the idea of doing OQ Horror, which would not feature Cthulhu and his kin (before you ask/demand etc) at the moment. Its mainly stuff floating round my head.

As for OQ Supers, again I've ideas of how I would do this but given I was raised on Brit Comics (2000 AD and the fine stable of writters who came out of that publication, Alan Moore, Pat Mills, Garth Ennis, Grant Morrison etc) it has the working title of "Dark Heroes"

Also while I'm giving them the generic name of OQ Horror/OQ Supers, if I was to do them they would have thier own identity and built in setting in the same way that The Company (OQ Modern) and River of Heaven (OQ Sci-fi) do.

2016 has been a rewarding but challenging year for me. There's only been so many hours in the day, and its been a source of constant frustration that I've not had time do much with OQ this year - Bundle of Holding with two small new titles (Message for Furthermost/ The Clockwork Palace ) has been about it.

But its also given me a welcome break where I've had time and space to think about what OpenQuest should be, epecialially in light of the upcoming Chaosium Runequest, the re-released version of RQ2 and the refreshed and rebranded Mythras. Good news I still think that there's room for a rules light easy to play version of D100 and I now have a plan for Mega Gaming Fun products to support that vision

In short more stuff is coming for OpenQuest, just not in 2016.

The OpenQuest Companion has fallen off the production scedule, because of the behemoth that Crypts & Things turned into.

There will be a fuller annoucement of what i'm doing with OpenQuest in the new year when I make my State of D101 Games address for 2017.

Right there are two possiblities here (I didn't write these rules, I merely oversaw their addition to the rules - so take full responsbilty for their ambigituy)

1. its a Typo. POW should read MP and the Fetch is eating the MP to regain its own MP lost during the Spirit Combat. This what I would favour and say is the official OQ way.

2. Its correct and contray to the ruling just above it (that "The Fetch increases its POW when the Shaman’s increases.") it adds it to its own POW (and if the GM rules that Character POW & Fetch POW are linked the Shaman's too). This is really nasty, and is more in keeping with RQ2 (hence the idea that its a Typo). Its the sort of thing that gives Shamans a bad name

Does that help?

The 'perfect BRP version' is the one you make for your self

As for what I was talking about being a new version of OpenQuest, no Its own thing (it has the working title of D100#). If I was to do a new version of OQ it would be more tweaks and streamlining, rather than one of those new editions were the changes make it in effect a new game (like the change from AD&D to D&D 3rd).

From 4pm GMT/10am Central US today (Thursday 20th October) to same time tomorrow OpenQuest 2 Deluxe is on 50% off both  on the D101 Web store (print/pdf bundle) and on DriveThruRPG.com (pdf only) where its deal of the day.

• Pdf Only DriveThruRPG.com
• Print/Pdf Bundle via D101 Web store

Note: Free Postage for UK orders - so you can snag a hardcover OQ2 for just £10 free P&P

Yup it can be increased. The whole POW x 3 thing is a nod to Battle Magic Casting from OQ2 , since Augs are very much the Battle Magic/Powers of River of Heaven

I'm busy preparing a con-scenario for next weekend and I've just gone through the Aug's chapter - and while I love the compact functionality of it - I shall definitely be creating some new Augs for the upcoming River of Heaven Companion.

Long time D101 Games collaborator and writer Dr Mitch has his meaning full lifetime birthday* today.

To celebrate I’m doing a flash sale of 25% off for one day (until 12 noon GMT tomorrow) of Hunters of Alexandria (which he wrote) and Crucible of Dragons (which he co-wrote) via the D101 Games.com Web Store. Remember if you are in the UK postage is free!

*Douglas Adams/Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy fans will be able to work out his age from this.

Not yet. DriveThru changed their requirements for covers and so the cover failed the approval, which was annoying since it had passed before.

So fingers xed end of this week

Yup that "one" is use only