Search the Community

Hello there, While I've been reading the OpenQuest 3rd Edition core book, I've encountered a really interesting approach on page 220 about the sacred cows of D100 Gaming. In my opinion that's the right approach in order to revolutionise the D100 systems for breadth of audience. Some of the D100 systems remind me of GURPS when it comes to the number of skills a person might not have any incentive to touch (whether the referee or the player). What do you think about the constantly recurring Driving, Riding and Sailing skills? They do seem kind of redundant to me, as despite the fact that there are differences between various transports, I don't think they're a particularly frequent choice of many players around - to the point that my players even frown at the idea of these three skills being separate, thus personally I have merged them into one single Drive skill that handles all kinds of mounts and vehicles akin to how Vampire the Masquerade or some other systems already handle it. A lot of beautiful work has been done on uniting the skills within OpenQuest to avoid having so many smaller skills that practically nobody is decent at. I think rather than being present by default, at most these skills should have been an option to choose, as not every setting might feature ships, or even vehicles, or mounts - for example a setting that's based on floating islands might not find much use for the sailing skill, thus the optionality of the aforementioned three skills in particular, contrasting to the many other generally much more useful ones.

An alternative to The Primitive Voice from the Core Rulebook. The Land is a place of beauty. The Land gives, and The Land takes, and Sky looks over us all. In The Sky are the Moon Sisters. There were three of them, but then Father Sky cast one down to make an island over by Long Finger Lake, in the place where we rest over the summer. Foraging in the Summer Place with Long Finger Lake and Moon Island is good, and we go there to the Place of Mothering, where the women can stay to have the new sons and daughters. The women celebrate the Mourning Sister and chant for her other Sisters to let them know that they are still three - that Mourning Sister is still down here and alive and loving them, and wondering why Sky Father cast her out. The women then tell Mourning Sister the story that Sky Father gave Mourning Sister to Great Mother, The Land, so that Mother could have one child with her. Mourning Sister suckles from Great Mother, and is happy, and so we have fruitful summers on Moon Island and good fishing in Long Finger Lake and the Summer Place. Great Mother gives life; she also reclaims it. Once, my mother's mother got very tired and very thin, and she lay down and closed her eyes and stopped moving and got cold. My mother and her sisters and I mourned, because Grandmother was the wisest of us all; and we took her to the Cave of Great Mother, to the place of burial, where we left Grandmother in Great Mother's arms with the things that she cherished - the ochre stick that she used to mark the path of the migratory herd beasts each year in the Cave of Hunting, the amber beads which she traded with the other tribes, and the gold collar which the Great Chief of All Tribes made for her. We buried her six moons ago, and we all still miss Grandmother. My mother uses what she learned from Grandmother, and she tells us that she will become wise like Grandmother some day, and it is soon because she gets hot and has stopped having children and the woman pains no longer come for her. I may be the youngest girl, and my sisters and brother are wiser than I, but I still see the spirits that they do not, and I see the changes to people's bodies, like when my brother became hairy and joined the men in the sweatlodge to drink the Man's Fire Drink for the first time, and I see the changes happening to my body and I know that soon the woman pains will come for me too. Great Mother tells me that this is the pain of Mourning Sister when she was torn from her dance in the heavens, and that as all women are sisters of Mourning Sister we must share her pain so that the burden of her pain is not hers alone to bear. We bear the pain, in order that there be joy in the world; and because of Mourning Sister and Great Mother, we make The Land a place of beauty for all of us, and for our children, and for our children's children.