Its spring bank holiday this weekend here in the UK, and the long weekend affords me time to sit in my Ivory Tower of Doom and finally nail what I’m including in OpenQuest 2.
Over the last week or so I’ve been working on Battle Magic. I’ve already got 50 or so new spells + another batch from Nathan Baron ( author of the upcoming Empires Rising ) + spells from the Legend SRD which aren’t already in OQ. That’s before I even start looking at ‘classic’ RQ sources for inspiration. My overall objective with the magic system is to make it less ‘whiffy’ and more fun. My players have picked up on the fact that there’s spells in there like Fanaticism that don’t do a great deal, and are in fact superseded by their Divine/Sorcery counterparts (Berserk in this example). This isn’t new to OQ, in the previous example the players said “magic has always been a bit crap in RQ”. In OQ1 I did a partial job of ‘fixing’ the magic system, but I was sensitive that I wanted backwards compatibility. This time round I’m less concerned. Sorcery and Divine are getting similar overhauls and extra spells.
As well as finally making my mind up on the contents/scope of OQ2, which I’ll post here when I’m done, I’ll also be considering whether or not I do a IndieGoGo preorder. Would that be something folks would be into?
Yep. Even though you’ve promised me a copy already I’d be in for another! And it seemed to work well for C&T.
I’ve decided to go for it 🙂 Details to go up soon 🙂
One suggestion for OQ2: perhaps include some rules for games in which all characters are *not* assumed to have some starting battle magic? (I have in mind settings with comparatively rare magic, in which only priests and/or sorcerers would cast spells.)
Sure it’s easy to tweak OQ for such settings, but it would be nice to have some ‘official’ guidelines for this in the core rulebook.
Just a suggestion. Looking forward to seeing OQ2! 🙂
Yup that’s on the cards, if we reach the 1st goal for the IndieGoGo.com campaign that should be kicking off this week.
Another suggestion for OQII – introducing the Serious Wound/Grave Wound distinction from Clockwork and Chivalry would make the combat system a little more survivable. And I also like their re-introduction of the ‘roll over skill to advance’ system, with smaller increments for rolling under.
Nah, not happening.
My ears are completely deaf to any requests of “Hey why don’t you port this over from MRQ2/C&C/etc”
If you want it in your game just simply bring it in.
Yeah, those suggestions are kinda, ‘why don’t you throw out the central design principle of OpenQuest – simplicity’.
I agree that OpenQuest should remain its own thing. Personally, I’d love to see OpenQuest extended to become a multi-genre universal system, even though this would bring it into direct competition with BRP. However, I don’t expect that to happen any time soon – although whenever I’m feeling crazy I get tempted to take a crack at doing it myself!