Going forward with OpenQuest in 2016

[Newt]

Just to let you know that after the last six months of wobbling about OQ I’ve made a firm and positive decision about its future.

Recent interactions with the fans on G+ have shown me that there is still a great love and more importantly from a publisher point of view, demand for new OQ books. Thanks if you had any input on calling me on this one. All I can say I was in a very low place and you prevented me from throwing away 8 years of work, both personal and collaborative.

Taking step back and looking at it that 8 years of work is very strong and something to be proud of. OQ in one form or another has been a consistent  steady seller, with a few peaks . So I think we have a market for it

So my plan in 2016 is to quietly get on with OQ.  Monkey and Crypts & Things are my priority, but there’s room for the odd bit of OQ in the pipeline

First off there will be no OQ3. I may be adding a bit of art to OpenQuest Basics – so its more appealing for direct sales at say UK Games Expo – but that’s as far as tinkering with the main books goes.

I ran two polls over on the G+ D101 community and over at BRP Central and the two clear winners for what people wanted to see were an OQ Companion and new adventure/setting books.

OpenQuest Companion – I’ve got a striped down “One Magic System” I wrote for my abortive OQ3 (I had some spare time at the day job before Christmas) and a few other house rules that came out of those writing sessions, which I’ll polish up as start for this book. This will be a slow burner of a book, which I’ll invite contributions to. Its focus will be alternative rules and extra bits of gamey stuff.

I’ll be writing and commissioning new OpenQuest Adventures, both the adventure/setting books and shorter standalone adventures (anything from 10 to 40 pages long).
On a personal note I’ve got lots of little fragments in notebooks of OQ adventures and setting ideas so I’ll be working on pulling those together as a break from Monkey/C&T (which are my MUST do things this coming year).

I’ve also got tentative plans to do a simple OpenQuest Living Campaign for Conventions/Online play – but that’s still formative in my head at the moment.

On the OpenQuest related games front, we’re currently working on a River of Heaven Companion and The Company is coming back into print

So in summary:

• No new edition in 2016
• New Adventures/Settings
• OpenQuest Companion

So I’m reinvigorated on this one. D100 is in my blood

If you have any ideas for books, get in touch (newt@d101games.com)

OQ is GO!

[Sunwolfe]

This is great to hear, Newt! Power on, brother, with what you know and love--the absolute best advice in the world to keep back to the darkness. Long live OQ!

[Sean_RDP]

6 hours ago, Newt said:

I’ve also got tentative plans to do a simple OpenQuest Living Campaign for Conventions/Online play – but that’s still formative in my head at the moment.

That would be fantastic. My advice for that is to set expectations and stick to them and get volunteers to help you. Maybe even hit various people up here to write some of the adventures for you within certain guidelines. Living Campaigns are a great way to get interest from people, but players do get invested.

[clarence]

This is good to hear! 

[Mankcam]

This is great news Newt! 

What you have packaged in OQ is brilliant. The system itself is a very simple playable version of the MRQ D100 SRD with a touch of the old school flavour I like; and it's also an ideal system to tinker with as a GM.

The settings published for it so far are very good, but the OQ series is also an immense resource in the fact that many of it's facets can be plugged into other D100 games (ie: If we want Cybernetics, look no further than River Of Heaven for instance. We may need a quick way to measure Contacts - there it is in the OQ core rules under Relationships. All very good add-ons to whichever D100 games we are running).

The other thing is that it is a source of scenarios, which is a great thing. The sword & sorcery scenarios produced so far are pretty good, regardless of whether played in the setting as written, or re-trapped for a pre-existing setting. The stat block can be easily adapted on-the-fly if we are running one of the other D100 games, which makes it very useful to me as a GM.

(Just some shameless requests - I love what you are doing with Crypt & Things, and perhaps some of that flavour can also spill over into OQ with a proliferation of old school fantasy scenarios designed for both systems? Hits two birds with one stone. Just an idea. Also I was wondering if an OQ version of Monkey would take off? The setting is pretty good, but having a D100 rules set would ice the cake for me - okay, shameless requests done )

OQ has established a foothold within the BRP community, and I'm pretty happy you've decided to continue with it mate

Edited January 2, 2016 by Mankcam

[10baseT]

Great news indeed. I really loved Openquest Adventures and look forward to much more Openquest items.

[Baulderstone]

I just ordered a hardcopy of Crucible of the Dragons this weekend, and have been looking through the PDF while I wait for it to show up. It's good enough that I am having a hard time not picking up the rest of your OpenQuest supplements right away. It manages to both be something that can be dropped into any classical-era campaign with ease, while also being usable as a solid place to stage an entire campaign. 

 

I'm very glad to hear that you will be putting out more. 

[Mankcam]

Yes, its good to see that this line will continue!

Edited January 6, 2016 by Mankcam

[jux]

On 1/2/2016 at 10:53 AM, Newt said:

OpenQuest Companion – I’ve got a striped down “One Magic System” I wrote for my abortive OQ3 (I had some spare time at the day job before Christmas) and a few other house rules that came out of those writing sessions, which I’ll polish up as start for this book. This will be a slow burner of a book, which I’ll invite contributions to. Its focus will be alternative rules and extra bits of gamey stuff.

Any news to about how the Companion project is going? What will it include?

My humble suggestion would be:

• Sanity/fair effects (perhaps from Renaissance)
• Critis/fumble tables for combat
• Fumbles or curses for magic backlash
• Optional combat enhancements (simple take on hit-locations, combat effects) - I had an idea of a variant for Mythras.  May be this can be something to get ideas from:

[Jakob]

My wish list with regards to the companion:

I'd love a passions/traits system. I'm not quite happy with the one from River of Heaven, since it requires another roll on a passion to see if it modifies a skill - better go with a system that just allows for a bonus when applicable (like in Mythras).

And what I would also love is putting the hit locations system from Renaissance in as an option - I'm sure the guys over at Cakebread and Walton wouldn't object, and it's the simplest and most elegant combination of major wounds and hit locations I have seen yet in a BRP game. Also, maybe add the Renaissance Rules about being able to go down to negative HP before dying as a less deadly option.

And yes, some combat options would be cool, but definitely nothing as heavyweight as Mythras. Maybe just a short list of possible bonus effects to chose from when you do a crit.

[Newt]

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.

[Jakob]

Hope it's still on for some time in the future. On the other hand, there's no dire need, since with BRP, it's always easy to mix and match - pretty much everything I need is already out there. It would just be nice to get some new OQ stuff.

[Jakob]

Hope it's still on for some time in the future. On the other hand, there's no dire need, since with BRP, it's always easy to mix and match - pretty much everything I need is already out there. It would just be nice to get some new OQ stuff.

 

EDIT: Sorry for the double post ...

Edited November 22, 2016 by Jakob

[Newt]

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.

[Jakob]

Sounds very good! I have great fun at the moment mixing and matching from Mythras, Renaissance, OpenQuest and Revolution d100 - not for gaming (yet), but simply to see which elements I like in theory and which ones I can do without; And OpenQuest ist the baseline I keep coming back to, since it can accomodate most of the elements from other BRP games.

[g33k]

RoH is on my "to buy" list, and I'm inclined to think The Company may be, too.

Is The Company a simple re-print, or is it getting extra work?

[Archivist]

Also make a superpowers or supernaturals supplement for it. Otherwise, I'll have to home brew it and it will suck.

[Newt]

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.

[Jakob]

Wow, a horror game that is not related to the Cthulhu Mythos! That would be truly awesome - I mean, I love the Lovecraftian stuff, and I just ordered a copy of "Lovecraftesque" on drivethru, but it feels that four in five horror (and indeed, science fiction) rpg settings feature elements from the Cthulhu Mythos... with a few exceptions, this has really gotten stale. Notably, the excellent looking "Lovecraftesque" explicitly does not use anything from the Cthulhu Mythos, but instead strives for a Lovecraftian atmosphere. And another of the few positive examples: I really like Pelgrane Press' Esoterrorists for going not only for a different aesthetics, but also a concept of horror that is diametrically opposite from Lovecraft's cosmic horror.

Hope OQ Horror materializes at some point, and I hope it comes with an interesting and not-too-generic setting. You wouldn't maybe think about licensing Laird Barrons fiction ...? That's an awesome horror mythology right there.

[Vexthug]

The campaign i'm working on now for OQ is an Urban fantasy with some horror elements. I am going to use the rules as is only with modern tech. My inspiration is the Dresden files and Hell Boy. And I plan to steal alot from Deus Vult. So something like this OQ Horror would be very welcome.

Miles

[Newt]

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

[Simlasa]

I agree with the sentiment of trying to forge something new and not rehashing Lovecraft's Mythos (much as I love his stories and CoC).
But it does seem to me that a horror game needs a cohesive cosmology/mythology/setting... rather than just a mishmash of random 'monster hunting'/monster-of-the-week. Games like Kult and Nephilim and The Whispering Vault are decent examples of having something like 'unified field theory' of magic and the supernatural... even if it's mostly veiled from the PCs understanding, at least at the start of the campaign. So I think it would be best to have a compelling kernel of that stuff in place before proceeding. Otherwise it's just as well served by collections of monster stats we already have access to.

[jux]

OQ horror - interesting! Sanity rules from Renaissance pls

No, I don't think cohesive horror cosmology would be needed. There are many CoC scenarios that have done away with Cthulhu mythos. I would be very happy with a game like Fear Itself with OQ system. Regular folk encountering ghosts and other supernatural. It should be mostly about survival and perhaps defeating the horror - like in "Cabin in the Woods".

Again, about OQ horror, we have new Delta Green out there, which is quite similar to some of the OQ mechanics. Make sure not to have any overlap there.

[Jakob]

11 hours ago, jux said:

OQ horror - interesting! Sanity rules from Renaissance pls

No, I don't think cohesive horror cosmology would be needed. There are many CoC scenarios that have done away with Cthulhu mythos. I would be very happy with a game like Fear Itself with OQ system. Regular folk encountering ghosts and other supernatural. It should be mostly about survival and perhaps defeating the horror - like in "Cabin in the Woods".

Well, Fear Itself actually has a horror cosmology in the background, and also a certain aesthetic to what kind of horrors can be encountered (no run-of-the-mill vampires or werewolves, for example ...). If I'm playing a horror campaign, it is actually pretty important to me that these things don't feel too random - mystery is usually a big part of horror, and when I feel that there is no actual mystery, just a random bunch of scary creatures, I tend to loose interest. That's one reason while I'm totally not amused when, in a CoC adventure with Cthulhu Mythos background, suddenly a werewolf appears, which is simply a creature that doesn't make any sense in the Lovecraft cosmology ...

On the other hand, you're certainly right that it is maybe not so important that a horror game actually provides a cosmology - it can also present scenarios that hint at different creatures, mysteries and cosmologies and leave it to the GM to combine things that work together and leave the stuff out that would seem out of place. But still on the other hand, there's so much more horror BRP material out there that I feel I don't need more of it. So what would make it interesting for me would be an original and new horror cosmology.

[jux]

Probably on a same page here. I didn't mean you have an adventure like literary "Cabin in the Woods" - every monster in existence and all at once

The cosmology would be needed for a campaign game, indeed. I have never played any horror campaign though. Only few session adventures which usually end badly or very badly for the characters.