OpenQuest Character Creation; Cashiered Ranger

Further utilizing the material found on the blog Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque I will create the next ill fated player character for OpenQuest Fantasy Adventure Campaign #2.

This character of country birth worked as a scout in the army, but has been recently let go. Missing a cleverly set ambush while out on patrol many soldiers died. Only your savage fight for survival against grim odds spared your court martial. Back here in the city far from any one you know you are beginning to desire the safety of the wilderness.

OpenQuest Fantasy Adventure Campaign #2 is predicated on a dark fantasy setting with players urged to use human characters. This character is designed with the ability to function well in the wilderness surrounding the campaign's starting point.

Significant points are invested in the Combat Skills as well as Perception and Riding. As a ranger you carry very few personal possessions. What you have is usually tied in the bedroll at your feet. What few points you have in craft are intended for the repair of your outdoor gear and weapons.

Taking advantage of OpenQuest's suggested rules for Background, Appearance and Personality I give this poor mercenary an intriguing map with unknown inscriptions. Maybe one of his more learned friends could aid you in deciphering it?

All starting OpenQuest player characters receive six points worth of Magic Magnitude. These six points allow you to further customize and design the PC you have in mind.

For the ranger I keep it simple; a small package of abilities I will name "Ranger Lore", abilities he picked up growing up in the untamed northern forests. Clear Path (4 magnitude) is the ability to move through dense undergrowth as if it was clear terrain. The points of magnitude of the spell determines how many people the ranger can effect within 10 meters. A Heal (2 magnitude) spell will be extremely useful when it comes to weathering the extremes of wilderness adventuring.

While I have incorporated OpenQuest's magic requirements into the character creation process, you can see how I have not necessarily given the ranger an overtly wizardly nature. While the initial expenditure of magic points may seem an awkward mechanic for innate class like skills, consider the adventure implications of devices, quests, etc. which would enable the player to acquire magic point stores or otherwise overcome the built in limitations.

OpenQuest Character Creation; Searching Sailor

My OpenQuest Fantasy Adventure #2 is a dark fantasy setting. Unlike Adventure #1 which has all the trappings of "classical" fantasy, #2 requires the players to create human characters in a world where life is cheap and integrity is a liability. Much in the spirit of the great gaming blog Tales of the Grotesque and the Dungeonesque or the horrible fantasy books The Game of Thrones, everyone is out for themselves.

I find these type of settings where the world is a swirl of grey instead of black and white suite good character development. In fact, rely on it. Since everyone is a turd what sort of polish can you bring?

OpenQuest is great for allowing a player to create a character quickly with much depth of character.

I also am not above providing pre-generated characters for a new group to chose from. Since I am still attempting to accomplish the blog's main goal of regularly playing role playing games with other people in the wilderness, immediate gaming with minimal prep is essential.

I also aim to give the players opportunities to organically foster group relations with "believable" hooks, themes, and plots. A well appointed list of character backgrounds with just enough detail to make the character interesting to play, fight and die can only help deliver a dynamic player group from the outset! This means you will want to offer your players many different character choices. Pick a system which allows you to generate characters quickly!

Starting the campaign in a city offers legitimate reasons for characters of diverse races and backgrounds to be found together, and with intriguing character descriptions it makes it even easier to start table dialogue.

One such character I can offer as an example is The Searching Sailor. Here are the background notes which were the springboard for quantifying the character's abilities;

Washed up on the shores as a child, superstitious peasants took you in as a gift from the sea gods. Much to their disappointment you only found happiness on the tips of the waves and the edge of the wind. Soon you left your poor village behind without a second glance and became a daring sailor on the open sea. Your quest to find your true origins has led to family secrets steeped in darkness. Do you pursue these tantalizing clues further? Or do leave them, like the miserable village of your childhood, in the misty fog of past days?

Any player with salt will have no trouble fashioning your traditional sailor skill set; navigation, swimming, cutlass and some other skills of personal preference will get the usual character creation work completed. Where OpenQuest aids in satisfying depth of character, your character concept, is the addition of the Battle Magic school of magic required to complete the character creation process.

My thoughts on Magic in OpenQuest for Non Magic Users comes into play here. For this sailor character I create an Enchanted Item and devise an Elemental Talent to spend the required magic points on.

I call the enchanted item the Brace of Burk, a leather embossed wrist guard. It can predict approaching storms two days out and detect land up to twenty miles away. Yes, I know the OpenQuest does not include these specific effects in any of the listed spells, but if you get anything from the OpenQuest it should be you can make it up. So, predicting weather and detecting land seem to be mundane powers in which Battle Magic would seem to thrive.

The elemental talent is restricted to the realm of Battle Magic if nothing else but to avoid taking on another school of magic such as Divine Magic or Sorcery. The character's latent elemental talent was first awakened when the brace was first donned as a piece of armor. So far it has given the Searching Sailor the ability to communicate with Air Elementals.

Puck the Wood Elf and Divine Magic in OpenQuest

Fitting out the triad of new characters for my traditional fantasy campaign using OpenQuest by Newt Newport is Puck the Wood Elf. As a warden of the Vlaymoor who worships the Lady of the Forest this gave me the chance to test the third school of magic found in OpenQuest; Divine Magic!

Unlike Jongo and Xvorgast, Puck is to be the "fighter" of the group. He will have good (53%) starting combat skills and better (49%) Natural Lore skill then the thieving gnome and magic using dwarf in the party.

But this does not mean we are going to neglect using the open nature of OpenQuest to craft the exact character we have in mind.


Some Battle Magic spells are too important to pass up for our deadly woodland guerrilla fighter. Enhanced Perception and Deception will be attributed to racial abilities while the Enhanced Close Combat, and Ranged Combat skills are part of the training each warden in the service of the Lady receives.

The true Divine magic spells, or "Gifts of the Lady", will be Call(animal) and Illusion. A warden is never considered more than an initiate until he is able to establish a relation with a "totem" animal. For most this is one of the great wolves which prowl the Vlaymoor. To be a wolf rider in the forest is to be a recognized as a fierce warrior and to be feared. The bond established between warden and totem animal is strong, and to willingly put such a gift from the Lady in careless jeopardy risks her wrath. The ability to call down the power of Illusion is directly tied into the wardens preference for surprise and subterfuge when confronting traditional enemies of the forest; goblins and men! Each one of these spells was taken at one point of magnitude so Puck has a total of six different magical abilities in which he needs some improvement at.

It also indicates in the rules, from one short example, that it is appropriate to give up to a +25 point bonus as it relates to the characters choice of deity. Perhaps to offset the implied restrictions which come from following ritualistic dogma over the free flowing manipulation found in straight Battle Magic and Sorcery? Therefore I bestow Puck with an additional 25 points to Natural Lore skill when withing the bounds of the Vlaymoor Forest. He may be young (225 years of age) for a warden, but it is his home!

Xvorgast the Mighty's Sorcery for OpenQuest

The second character I generated for my traditional fantasy campaign using OpenQuest is a dwarven sorcerer.

Like Jongo the Gnome, the choice of attribute scores, and skill package was fairly straight forward as pertains to creating a dwarf. After playing fantasy rpg's for many years I kind of know what to pack into a standard dwarf character.  Since I am creating a magic user I make sure Xvorgast has a decent Academic Lore skill. This should help lead him in the direction of obscure texts riddled with ancient spells of power!

This exercise in character creation is to test the "openness" of Newt Newport's OpenQuest system itself, and a typical fantasy trope as a magic wielding dwarf should be fairly easily created. And it was. With six points of spell magnitude to spend creating a starting magic user is incredibly easy with OpenQuest.

My character concept for Xvorgast the Mighty is a reclusive dwarf pouring over ancient tomes in attempt to tap into the old power of the dwarves long forbidden, neglected, and shunned. Xvorgast will have left the academic halls of established magic disgusted with the "theoretical" magical studies offered and return to the dark ruins of the Iron Flow Hills to brood upon the powers which once were...

So this means at least one point spent on the Battle Magic spell Read Language. This will be all the practical magic our dwarven wizard will have left the respected halls of learning with. Using this simple spell he has teased out the elemental lore hinted at in the standard texts. For after all, isn't the ancient power of the dwarves rooted in these primordial powers? Therefore I bestow on Xvorgast the Sorcery spell Wall of Fire at 2 points and Animate Substance(stone) the remaining 3.

This gives our young (113 years) dwarf magic user with three spells total. Xvorgast will have to get out and put that Read Language talent to the test if he wants to build on his elemental spell list!

OpenQuest Character Creation Point Total

I've spent some time creating characters with Newt Newton's great fantasy rpg rules OpenQuest, and I have to admit to the few house rules I've settled on.

If my addition is right, the overall points used in creating a character are 255. If you decide to have your character have the powers of Sorcery or Divine Magic they get +40 pts towards either their Sorcery or Divine Magic skill. There are some additional restrictions on how the points can be distributed amongst the characters abilities and skills, but it seems 295 is the uppermost point total for starting character creation.

As I've mentioned in other posts on my blog, I really dig the "Open" of OpenQuest. Therefore I've decided that players can spend the 295 points any way they want. The only restrictions I would be keen on enforcing is some max limits on attributes as they relate to the race so selected by the player, but that's about it!

There doesn't seem to be any reason to impose any more limits, unless the Game Master is not involving himself with the character creation process with his players.

But that, to me, is an rpg no no. I find GM involvement in new character creation important when beginning a new campaign.

Jongo the Thieving Gnome's Battle Magic

My OpenQuest Fantasy Adventure #1 is cast in a decidedly traditional fantasy setting where the main characters are creatures of fairy tales; elves, dwarfs, gnomes, pixies, centaurs, dragons, etc.

Here is the thoughts which went into the write up for Jongo's character as I followed the rules for character creation;

All abilities begin at 8, so I mold them into a picture of a typical gnome of the Vlaymoor Forest, the starting point of the campaign. Adjustments of note would be decreased SIZ and increased DEX, and POW.

Nothing fancy with the skill package. I do decide to forgo high combat skills. Jongo is a thief and prefers to go about his business unnoticed. I did sink many points into his Mechanism skill.

I divide his 6 magic points into inherent racial abilities and magical artifacts.

 For the gnomes racial abilities I choose Enhanced Deception (2), Enhanced Athletics (1), and Enhanced Influence (1). The last two points are spent on creating the two magical artifacts I want the character to posses. The first is called the Crystal Clock, a small time piece Jongo keeps on a chain in is pocket. It allows Jongo to Enhance Perception when searching for Faerie Folk, and other magical creatures friendly to the Fay. The other artifact is a willow wand embued with a spell known as Woodland Paths. Casting this spell from the wand allows Jongo to pass through dense thicket and other difficult terrain as if it were clear.

There you have it. Besides crunching the numbers to get your desired starting values this player character is ready to go.

Magic in OpenQuest for Non Magic Users

To fully enjoy OpenQuest d100 based RPG from d101 Games one must embrace the author's approach to magic for a fantasy role playing game.

There are three "schools" of magic in the core rules; Battle Magic, Divine Magic, and Sorcery. Unlike fantasy rpg's which limit the use of magic to a specific "class", OpenQuest allows any character at creation to be adapt in the magical arts. In fact every character at creation has to apply six points of magnitude towards the creation of spells whether they are interested in playing some type of magic wielding character or not.

Starting magic is selected by the expenditure of 6 points of magnitude. The player is free to spend them in any manner. A player may choose six individual spells all at 1 magnitude, or select one spell at magnitude 6. Or some variation in between. As stated above, selecting spells from the Divine Magic and Sorcery lists come with some restrictions. This is an attempt to simulate the commitment necessary to master these schools of magic by restricting the amount of character creation points allowed on other skills outside of magic.

But what if you are interested in playing a Barbarian, a Mercenary Knight, or even your traditional Thief? To leave those magic points on the table and not use them would make your starting character much weaker than other players who embrace the use of magic.How should the basic spell list found in Battle Magic be added?

This is where the aspect of "character concept" really shines for OpenQuest. For example I will use Jongo the thieving gnome. Through the character creation steps we've spent some points on attributes, many on the appropriate skills such as Athletics, Deception, Mechanisms, and Dodge. Now it is time to deal with those pesky magic points. Well, since we are playing a nonhuman race, one with a rich literary tradition of magical tricks and talents, it should not be too difficult. Probably the most useful Battle Magic spell for non spell users is Enhance Skill. What thieving gnome would not have an uncanny ability to disappear amongst the underbrush? Or surprising skill discovering hidden traps, or perhaps see normally invisible pixies and sprites?

This is an effective technique for giving your barbarian "berserker rage", or your martial artist a "killing strike". Want your archer to have an effective "called" shot, the enhanced skill spell is your ticket. Creating an elf warrior you may want to add the unusual ability to see in the infrared spectrum. Not a problem with the right application of Battle Magic.

Don't limit yourself to the initial skill list found in Newt's original rulebook. There is no reason why you can't come up with suitable spells which fit your character's concept. Any good Game Master will help you shape your ideas to fit well with the game. Anyone who has ever enjoyed Champions from Hero Games will be familiar with creating interesting effects and abilities from fairly general spell lists.

*OpenQuest uses the Mongoose Publishing RuneQuest System Resource Document.

Classic Fantasy vs OpenQuest

The short answer;

"Class" vs "Open"

The Long Answer (explained);

As Newt Newport mentions in his introduction to OpenQuest's rule set, the "Open" in OpenQuest refers to the ability to create fantasy settings and characters in a completely unrestricted manner. This is in distinct difference to Mr. Leary's approach to the genre with "Classic Fantasy", a Chaosium monogram. Classic Fantasy attempts to model Dungeons & Dragons directly to the Basic Role Playing D100 system.

Both authors accomplish their goals well and demonstrate how well Basic Role Playing (BRP) responds to "Homebrew" creation and game play.

Leary hews closely to the Dungeons & Dragons canon by first identifying the types of characters players are able to play. A characters "Class" is all enveloping in the world of Gygax, its game function mainly concerned with resolving the characters combat interactions and whether or not the character survives encounters. Each class has the requisite limitations which define these capabilities as compared to those of other classes. A players choice of race also carries the same net of limitations which further narrow the scope of capabilities, and therefore define the player character.

Newport's fantasy mash up, on the other hand, begins character creation with a brainstorming session, requesting each player to come up with a character concept. As the author explains; "A character concept is a one sentence summing up of what the character is all about." The rule set continues on as a guideline in how to translate the character concept into your fleshed out character sheet.

I love this type of game experience myself where the initial player character, while not all that powerful yet, is still a product of my imagination. This is the element I felt was always missing from D&D; the inability to play a character concept completely of ones own imaginings.

I was quickly able to come up with intriguing character concepts off the one sentence rule. It started to become a game of interest and brevity; Disturbed Wizard, Searching Sailor, Cashiered Ranger, Disgraced Warrior, Hunted Magician, Retired Gladiator, Etc... If you are manic about gaming all the best aspects of fantasy found in literature, or being open to new inspiration you can do this well with OpenQuest

But if you are looking to go Gygaxian, you should go with Classic Fantasy because, well, Leary has already gone through the trouble of converting the standard classes, races, and spells. A lot of hard work, I assure you. Unlike Dungeons & Dragons retro-clones, launching a D&D campaign with BRP's Classic Fantasy does allow much more in personal customization of your character class, mostly do to the use of a skills list, and the players characters are more robust overall. Running some friends through TSR's B10 Night's Dark Terror proved Classic Fantasy characters can chop through goblins and minor undead well. Proper tactics assure swift death to surprised opponents. True to BRP form, once these tables are turned on players, swift death can ensue. All in all, Classic Fantasy will give you a great D&D game without the garbage mechanics of Old School, retro or otherwise. Those who do not like a d100 system should not even bother.

And that is why I use OpenQuest. If you are looking for a great system for your own fantasy creations, classic or otherwise, OpenQuest gives you the tools to go right at it! It does put more weight on the Game Master. The GM will have to be invested in the brainstorming session during character creation with the players. Or the GM can offer pregenerated characters. Either way, it means more hands on time by the GM.

For me, this takes the form of ripping off literary sources, as well as available game aids to create classic "styled" fantasy adventures based off of what the players come up with characters. In case the players come up with character concepts which suggest other genres it is good to have several flavors of opening adventures to plug them into. Like I said, OpenQuest will demand a great GM if the group is role playing complete homebrew campaigns. Otherwise you will be practicing the time worn tradition of converting published adventures to your game :)

OpenQuest 2 now available for pre-order

Everyone should be well aware of D101 Games releasing OpenQuest 2 and you can pre-order the game at the company's web site here!

Get it, love it, play it!

Here is a link to a review of OpenQuest from way back in 2009.

OpenQuest and why I'm using it...

My first gaming years were spent under the magic and poor game mechanics of AD&D.  This led to the rest of the TSR line; Gamma World, Top Secret, Boot Hill, and GangBusters. While the different genres afforded great flights of fancy for my regular teen game group, there was always the nagging disappointment that I was unable to create a player character to my exact tastes.

This led first to Space Opera, Flashing Blades, and Pirates & Plunder. Then GURPS and Champions. The only thing which increased was complexity while game opportunities shrank and shrank. I eventually found my way to Chaosium and Elric! which introduced me to the D100 system for the first time. But by then it was too late. Gaming was now just an interesting shelf on my bookcase. Or instant death to dating if left out!

So this OSR is flaring up everywhere and my discriminating taste has landed on OpenQuest, from D101 Games.

This is the game which gets fantasy role playing right. It has won me over. It has resisted every attempt to tinker with the mechanics. When I mean resisted I mean after some reflection I would abandon the proposed fix which would pop into my opinionated GM head. Studying the rule set (as there is no one yet to play with) I could not help but feel I was being well cared for as a player. Hopefully this means the Game Master load should be very manageable, because I am positive I will have to shoulder this burden as I attempt to uncover RPG players in the rural Rockies.

It is an excellent introduction to role playing games for newcomers as well as the long dormant player. This is because of the simple entrance point provided by the insightful author by "Starting Character Generation with a Character concept. A character concept is a one sentence summing up of what the character is all about."

Anyone can do this!

The only issue I have yet to resolve is Literacy. A required eighty percent or higher is required to be literate in the specific language skill. This means many illiterate magicians with a maximum of 75% in any starting skill.

Otherwise I'm going with no House Rules!