Newt

I'm quite excited about Guns because its John's return to the game/setting he wrote after many years of absense. Whether he will want to get it sorted out for publication is another matter

You're right it doesn't match what you are trying to do. I the way I've currently got it cast it to provide some sort of risk in running away. So you can try and run away, but if you get attacked and fail to dodge you not only potientially take damage from the successful attack (if your armour doesn't protect you) but your opponent still has you held in combat. You might want to run away, but your opponent wants to hold you there and beat the heck out of you Recasting the rule to be less mean, after all if the player is taking this option its probably because they want to get out of combat: Sprint: The character may move a distance up to twice their Movement Rate, forsaking their attack and only being able to dodge as a defensive reaction. If running away from combat at the end of the combat round they have now disengaged from combat.

OQ3 won't have Shamans as featured in RQ, where they are just a fantasy native-americian shaman. I'm loosely calling magicians who interact with with spirits, spirit contacters. and they will be quite a diverse group. I'm still putting the rules together on this one. You'll be able to build these Specialist spell casters out from the spell lists. Therefore you can have Mediums who speicalise in contacting spirits and sucessfully asking them questions. Exorcists who cast out bad spirits. Artists, who have a small selection of spells to help them create their masterpieces, and who rely upon a friendly spirit for inspiration. Also OQ3 won't have long drawn out spirit combat. Spirits who can possess humans will have a Possession spell, where the target gets a Persistance skill check to avoid either passive or dominant possession. And Spirit Contacters will have spells like Cast Out (possessing spirts must make a successfull Persistance test or leave the body they are possessing) or Imprison (which upon a failed Persistence roll sees the spirit trapped in an object specially prepared for the job). Right that's all I'm going to say for the time being

I'm organising Winter Con 2020 a one day con (10am - 6pm) at Fanboy 3 in Central Manchester UK to celebrate the 1st birthday of Go Play Manchester a monthly rpg meetup I run. Winter Con 2020 - more information and sign up. As part of this myself and John Ossoway are running the following games: The Guns of Olympus Mons System: River of Heaven GM: John Ossoway 2998. Mars has fallen to the Renouncers, who continue to wage their relentless holy war against intelligent machines and their allies. The Martian Space Tether is down, and as Renouncer war machines ravage the surface, a network of orbital kill-sats capable of destroying any ship approaching the red planet performs an effective orbital interdiction against Hegemony space assets. Olympus Mons is the site of an important node in the command and control infrastructure for the Mars Planetary Defence Network. It is also the location of a Visser Cube – a traversable wormhole paired with a twin in your home system of Alpha Centauri. Both of the Visser Cubes are currently offline. You are a squad of Hegemony Marines. Best of the best. Your mission profile is clear: Get to the surface. Penetrate the Olympus Mons Citadel. Take and hold the Visser Cube chamber Realign the wormholes, allowing the Hegemony to deploy troops to the surface of Mars directly from your homeworld. Easy. So check those suit seals, warm up your smart rifles and show me your war face. It’s game time. Return to the Savage North System: OpenQuest 3 GM: Newt Newport You are the Drakkar, proud people of the Ice Dragon. Who in ancient times liberated the Savage North from the Vampire Lords of the Outer Darkness at the end of the Blood Age. The Ice Dragon buried the Vampire Lord Throk in its temple, under several kilometres of ice. The best thing for this fiend. But now the Mad King of Sonderland wants you to enter the temple to find a magical mirror to settle a wager. Salara the Wise Woman says the only way down through the ice is using the steel Sword of Krum himself Problem is Krum cares not! [Yes, I'm revisiting The Savage North as part of OpenQuest 3rd edtion]

Current status, is that despite my bold timetable to get it out this year, I'm now currently having another pass of writing. There has been my own playtest games of the work in progress, a recent one at Grogmeet 2019 in my home city of Manchester, which have happily confirmed the route I'm taking OQ3. Couple of new developments: As a well as one magic system, with rules for specialist casters (so you can still have Priests, Sorcerers and Shamans), I currently plan (subject to successfull playtesting) to go Magic Pointless. Spirits and spirit combat is getting a review, with the aim of making this area very straightforward. Character generation has had another pass, and Culture & Careers are now in rather than the current free form jack of all trades approach. Its simpler more direct, familier to D100 players coming in from other D100 games, and makes setting up Settings for the game much easier. The magic chapter has had another pass and many many issues with the spell list has been fixed. It will have another since there's a raft of new spells I want to add in, and my latest pass identified a hand full of spells that need modifying or removed. The creatures chapter is going to be reorganised. As well as the tools to use the monster entries as templates to roll up npc/individuals, the average member of the species will be more detailed with spells so its more pick up and play. I'm going to have a final Playtest version of OQ 3 done by the Christmas holiday, and after a short internal playtest to find and fix any major show stoppers, I'll be posting the playest rules online for an open-playtest, with the aim of kickstarting the final rules - with lots of adventure stretch goals, by Early Summer 2020.

OpenQuest 2 Deluxe is long out of print. It was replaced by OpenQuest Refreshed back in June 2016, and OpenQuest 3 is coming along nicely for a release in 2020

Here's the missing rule about Fighting Retreats (its in OQ2 Deluxe but was missed out of the current version of Basics and the main rulebook, for some reason). Fighting Retreat: A character may move their full movement directly away from an enemy they are fighting. They may only defend, but at +25% to their close combat or unarmed combat (+50% with a Medium and Large shield). At the end of the round if they have successfully defended themselves, they may disengage from combat (see page xx). That covers your case a and c. Case b (running away is covered by) Sprint: The character may move a distance up to twice their Movement Rate, forsaking their attack and only being able to dodge as a defensive reaction. If running away from combat if they successfully dodge any incoming attack, at the end of the combat round they have disengaged from combat. I think for clarity's sake I should have the actual actions, together with the intial rules discussion (ie. the section on Disengaging from Melee). This is something I'll do in OQ3, which I'm currently putting together.

OK I'm now up to my ears doing OQ3, so I've stopped supporting the OQ2 SRD . If you want to use the OQ 2 ruleset all the main rule book and OQ basics are open gaming conent under the OGL. If you are after a free/low cost copy of the rules OpenQuest Basics is free in pdf via drivethurrpg.com

Looks like you've got an older version of OQ Basics. Pick up the latest version which has the file name OpenQuestBasics-Sept2017-ebook.pdf, and should have "Fourth Printing September 2017" on the title page of the book. From either drivethrurpg.com here https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/127007/OpenQuest-Basic-Edition or d101games.com here https://d101games.com/product/openquest-basic-pdf/ These are the current rules, which are greatly revised.

Yes and I sent you a reply

It looks like the ancient wordpress plugin that powered my free downloads page has finally given up on me. I need to fix it, it will probably go into the Free Downloads section of my web store, I'll post the link when its sorted.

Missed the Tales from Sorcerer Under Mountain Kickstarter in August because you were on holiday or having just too much fun outside away from the computer? Well until 1st November its all back (pledge rewards inc stretches, and add-ons) on Backerkit Tales of the Sorcerer Under the Mountain on Backerkit I mention it here and now, because although the main campaign was very D&D (OSR/5th ed), I used the addons as a way of doing a D101 Summer Sale. So you can pick up OpenQuest and all its adventures as a bundle at a deep discount, and now that its out River of Heaven/To the Stars which is discounted too, without having to even buy books that the Kickstarter is funding. You simply use Backerkit as a pre-order, selecting the sale items you want

OpenQuest's Sorcery Rules are a direct descendant, with simplification and streamlining, of RQ3 Sorcery. The idea behind this system being that Gloranthan Wizards would learn spells, that boost abilties and skills, and then cast them on their warrior counter-parts. Its never explciity stated and there's no restriction to enforce it, so most players cast it on their characters. I think of more martial-sorcery casters like this as being Chinese Style Chi Powered Martial artists This one of the reasons why I suggest that Sorcerers and Divine Magic users are advanced character types not available at character generation, since if you qualfied for Sorcery later your warrior friend would have at least established their niche in play. I'm aware that this is not a 100% solution, which is why for OpenQuest 3 I've given up on the three systems of magic and its one magic system now.

Just to be clear the fact All battle magic spells last 10 miniutes by default, its there in stated in the rule book on p90 under the heading of "Spell Traits & Descriptions". So this is not something I've implyed or hinted, or even missed out, its something I've boldly stated up front in a section which states the common traits of all battle magic spells. I conceed that there is a bit of disconnect that if you are refering to the spell description in play this isn't re-stated. The intent really is to say "all Battle Magic spells last the duration of the encounter/scene/battle", but I've found from experience that stating things in this sort of language in OpenQuest really confuses some people, because they care coming from older editions of RQ and expect things like this to be clearly stated in cold hard quanties. I still remember the threads we had because I didn't assign physical quanties to a point of SIZ Its been my experience in play that any of D100's magic missile spells on thier own with a chracter who has a half-decent ranged combat on their own are a real game changer. If you want a quick visual reference Hawkeye from the Avengers series of films comes to mind And the whole line of "this spell doesn't stack with the magic missile class spells" comes from previous editions so its a well playtested rule

My gut feeling on this one is to adapt and wing it - as so many fine folk on this thread have pointed out. However as the orginal author and as someone who is still getting his head round the intricriaces of RQ:G, I feel a session with open rulebooks and a notebook coming on one evening this week I'll let you know how it goes

Its on the BOW for the entire duration of the spell, which by default is 10 mins, which is more than the lengh of any reasonable battle (since combat rounds are roughly single enchange 5 second ). No need to house rule it that way because that's how it works by the book - with the exception that you are allowing Firearrow to stack with the either of the other spells. Which will be fun and expensive in terms of mp cost, but quite devestating - which is why the default is Firearrow can't stack with other missile magics

No need to be sorry, its your opinon. I could post a point by point answer to your critic but after all the work I've done on it recently it would come across a bit overly defensive. All I can say is the current edtition of River of Heaven is the author's John's best attempt to do a game that was overally ambitious in scope in retrospect. It does work as a game, but as you point there are some limitatoins which you have to acknowledge and work with..And yes that can be annoying. There is stuff I would do differently for a second edtion to varying degrees. I've made a copy of your post for reference if I ever do a second edition I'm kinda a fan of the layout, but I'm aware of its shortcomings. It was part and parcel of what I paid John to do for the game, and he is a professioal graphic designer in his day job, so I trusted him on this one. It however something that I would change for a second edtion simply because being a full colour background its a bugger to work with Drivethrurpg.com's print on demand service, which for colour sometimes feels like it is a beta quality work in progress with us publishers are being guinea pigs oh and I know you are joking here, but for the benefit of others please don't. River of Heaven (and The Company) is copyrighted material and you can't take the text and remix and release it.

Hi 1. Personally, I think there's a case for putting it under Practical (with the base of Int + Dex) , but the John the author has put it under Knowledge so I'm going to respect that. The PDF will get updated to remove the duplicate Pilot entry in. This will also get removed from the print version (which is still going through the proofing process). 2. There isn't anything in the rules, and I'd say its an area where the GMs common sense comes in. 3. Soon after publication I answered a set of questions/concerns about the subspecies over at rpg.net. I've cleaned this up and put it in the soon to be published To The Stars! The short of it is that Tweaks are massively overpowered compared with the other types of subspecies. They are a bit like Elves in D100 fantasy The article does point out the limitations and downsides of Tweaks, the're is a real danager that they can get to be a bit of a one trick pony. . If you want to have a level playing field for your player characters, have them all as Baseline Humans or Genies and reserve Bioroids and Tweaks as npcs. It I were to do a proper 2nd Edition, which Refereshed isn't, this is the approach I would take.

If its an OpenQuest related Kickstarter you are free to post about it in this forum.

Now that the River of Heaven has got its refresh (and is currently on 20% off preorder with the code BLASTOFF20 until the end of July) my thoughts turn to doing the Company -Refreshed. What this would entail on my part Another editorial/proof. A short article about how to use The Company for other campaign setups apart from the default presented in the book, eg. Conspiracy/Horror, Post-Apocalyse etc (see this post about the Making of The Company ) A short pull outbox that puts the game in historical context, that it's before the rise of ISIS. A colour version. At the time drivethrurpg.com colour printing POD was not up to the standard where I could happily release a version which had all the photos their original colour. I'm still not a 100% that a colour version that would be up to standard and be economical, but at least the pdf would be in colour. Incorporates the small rules changes that were made in OpenQuest Refreshed, ie. reorganisation of the Combat chapter. A POD version on drivethrurpg.com. Note this wouldn't be a full new edition. So that's my take on it. Is there anything else I've missed here? Eta would probably be around Oct/Nov of this year.

Yes there will be a POD version through drivethrurpg.com when it clears print proof, probably in early August.

Finally, the much-delayed River of Heaven Companion, To the Stars is now available from the D101 Games web store (d101games.com/store). This 88-page book contains rules for organisations, adventure seeds and quick start campaign outlines. It also includes two adventures by John Ossoway, The Last Witness and Message From Futhermost (which never been available in print before). Also, to go with along with the companion is an updated version of the main rule book, River of Heaven Refreshed, which as well as another editorial pass and updated combat chapter, now has the introductory adventure Reunion included in the book. It’s also now printed on heavier paper, so Peter Frain’s most excellent illustrations are better reflected. I’m expecting the final print books by the end of the month, so until then pre-order either book before then and you will get a 20% discount. Simply enter the code BLASTOFF20 at checkout. To the Stars at d101games.com/store River of Heaven Refreshed at d101games.com/store Note if you are a previously bought River of Heaven via the d101 games webstore or drivethrurpg.com (this includes Kickstarter backers) simply redownload the pdf to get River of Heaven refreshed.

Ha, ha my grand plan has been outed Sharper Adventures in Glorantha, came out long after I had finished GA 2 and it will be one of the things I'll be reviewing before I start my revision. Whether or not I follow what Robin says in that book is another matter and one I'll probably pontificate about (probably in public) later

It has been done I'm going to keep my trap shut for now since there's chunk of work that needs to be done before I can let slip any details, but expect some news on the HeroQuest Glorantha front from D101 soon

I recently revisited my Lunar adventure book Red Sun Rising, after @AndreasDavour sent me a personal message about some of its inconsistencies, and reflected on the fact that it was written in the early 2000s using the information (both setting and rules) that was emerging like a butterfly from a cocoon at the time. This then led me to muse about HeroQuest's development and the 20 odd years worth of official and fan effort. Remember Unspoken Word's excellent adventures/setting material as well as the stuff that came out in the first five issues of Hearts in Glorantha/Gloranthan Adventures. 20 YEARS OF STUFF!! Then it hit me I've only scratched the surface of the later HQ material, that I never ran a full game of HQ G, or brought the power of what the Guide presents to my table. That in many ways I've been too quick to run off to pastures new to experience the new shiny of RQ G/13th Age (both of which I've dabbled in by running convention scenarios). I totally respect Chaosium's decision to focus on RuneQuest as their vehicle for exploring Glorantha, from both a creative and financial point of view, but I question my own decision to jump ship and abandon HQ which is now a very stable and mature system/setting. I must turn this navel-gazing into action