The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Danger Quest

Pulp Adventures in the 24th Century

Danger Quest has kind of an odd setting, but at its heart it's trying to simulate the pulp action genre, with two-fisted heroism and derring-do.

It's set in the 24th century, but that's really just an excuse to have tidbits of high technology hanging around a heavily distorted version of the earth. Basically, in the late 21st century, a huge asteroid storm was heading towards earth. They built a huge, computer-controlled network of satellites to destroy the asteroids as they approached, but a renegade group of terrorist-hackers called 0r10n crashed the system before disaster could be averted (yes, the l33t destroyed civilization). The apocalypse wiped out most of civilization; three centuries later, the earth has undergone a lot of changes, making it more suitable for pulp-action adventure.

So you've got scattered bits of high tech (most all of the cars are hover-vehicles, because they're cooler), but most of the world is probably at the 1940s to modern day level. Some parts have fallen completely into savagery, while others are prospering.

But before I really discuss the setting, I should mention character creation. Because character creation was so amusing, that I made everyone in our gaming group roll up characters just for the amusement value.

See, the system has a highly randomized (it's not purely random, but it does involve a bunch of percentile charts) character creation system that's designed to crank out pulp heroes. It works like this:

First, you generate your basic attributes. Brawn, Moves, Brains, Charm, Nerve, Sense (perception), Reflexes, Marks (short for marksmanship), and Fight. This is fairly straightforward; everything is rated on a percentage scale. Skills default to particular stats (so if you have a Moves of 35% and you take the Sneak skill, it'll start at 35% too). If you don't have the skill, you'll either roll 1/2 of the normal starting rating, or you won't be able to roll at all, depending on the skill.

In addition to the normal stats, you have some special ones: Actions (how many you get per combat round), Defense (innate armor), Dash (running speed), Grit (how much damage you can take before it becomes serious), Wounds (how much serious damage you can take before dying), Stamina (how quickly you recover from exhaustion), Luck (how many luck points you get), Miracles (how many miracles you can count on before being toast), and Class (your social class and personal wealth).

That's the boring part. Then you start rolling on the charts. These can be hilarious, and really do tend to spit out pulp action heroes.

First you roll for your Innate Ability, which could be something like Natural Born Athlete ( 10% Moves) or Charmed Life ( d6 Luck). Next you determine your Childhood Tale, to determine whether you were raised by animals (Wild Child), raised by a military family (Military Brat), suffered great cruelty under an evil master (Enslaved!), etc. There are a lot of options on each chart. All of the results adjust your stats appropriately.

After that, you need your character's Motivation. You might be a born Protector, or a Thrillseeker, a Good Thief, or a Crime Fighter. You might even just have Something To Prove.

Don't forget about your character's dark Secret, either. You might have a secret identity, or a criminal record. Perhaps your parents were aliens, or you might have a prophetic birthmark that will bring you a lot of trouble. Whatever it is, your character will be trying to keep anyone else from finding it out. Every PC gets one. I particularly like Evil Twin.

You'll also need to roll to determine your character's hidden Weakness. Your achilles heel. Are you Desperately in Love? Do you suffer from berserk rages? Are you a compulsive Goody-Goody? Or perhaps you are just stuck in a wheelchair due to a physical handicap.

Even your character's daily Vocation is determined randomly, although they suggest letting people roll twice and take their favorite. You might be an Ingenious Sleuth, a Costumed Vigilante, or a Soldier of Fortune. These will determine your starting skills and gear, and might have other effects. Psychic Detective, for example, will let you start with a couple of "Transcendant Powers", which are basically the magical abilities of the setting. And there is a "Create Your Own Vocation" entry, with guidelines for how to do it.

Once you've determined that your character is a particularly superstitious Daredevil Flying Ace who has Uncanny Intuition, grew up in a circus, fights evil because it's a patriotic thing to do and is determined to keep anyone from learning his secret shame, well... you're about ready to go. Picking your additional skills and personal contacts should be easy. Unless you're a brilliant inventor, though, in which case you might want to spend points on some special gadgets.

The system is fairly simple (although you have a lot of different stats). Trying to perform an action requires rolling percentile dice and comparing it to the relevant stat for that skill (1/2 of the stat if you don't have the skill at all). Improving skills doesn't directly raise your base chance of success... instead, each level in a skill gives you an extra d10 that you can add to your skill or subtract from an opposing roll instead, once per round.

So if you have a dodge of 45% (skill 4) then your base chance to dodge something is 45%. Let's say that a thug tries to attack you and rolls a 22. You decide to blow a combat action and roll dodge- you get a 64. That would normally be a miss, but you have these 4d10 to allocate... so you roll one and get a 10. That reduces your roll to 54. You roll another and get a 2. That gives you a 52. You could roll a third (any result of 7 or better would turn your failure into a success), or you could suck it up and save your remaining d10s in case you need to dodge again this round.

In certain circumstances, you can spend those d10s to worsen enemy rolls. Allocating these dice mostly apply to combat skills (if you're rolling to repair a car, I can't see why you wouldn't just spend all of your bonus dice on each roll each time), but you can use them defensively when someone is trying to interfere with what you're doing. For example, if you have the Riding skill at 3, and someone tries to shoot you while you're riding away, you can roll those 3d10 to subtract from his attack skill. With combat skills, you can also use those dice to increase damage rolls by 1 per d10 used.

You score a Smashing Success! when your unmodified roll is 1/10 of what you needed or less, and you Bungle! when you roll 96-00.

So that's all pretty simple. But they add some more nifty things to make stuff more pulpish.

For example, you have a Luck rating... that's how many Luck Points you get to spend each game session. You can spend 1 Luck point to modify a roll by 10% (up or down, whichever you prefer). You can modify it by 20%, but that costs 3 Luck points instead. If Luck can't save you... well, you'll start with a handful of Miracles (which can save you from pretty much any doom), but you should only spend them when you have to, because you don't get them back... you have to earn new ones, instead.

Tricks are special manuevers that you can purchase with your "hero points". These are relatively powerful, and can only be used once per adventure. They're cool, though. For example, there's "Domino Shot", which lets you hit up to 3 targets standing in a row with a single bullet. "Impossible Shot" lets you automatically roll a success on any single possible shot. "Thrown Weapon" lets you hurl a melee weapon like it were a missile weapon, inflicting bonus damage in the process. "Perfect Defense" lets you automatically parry every melee attack made against you that round, but only if you don't launch any attacks. "Impossible Leap" lets you make a double distance leap; you still have to make a Moves test, but if you fail the only result is that you "don't quite make it" and are hanging on by your fingernails. "Hang On" lets you grab hold of something automatically when you take a nasty fall. "Rocket Jockey" lets a pilot crashland while automatically sparing everyone on board from any damage. Etc.

I particularly like "Lucky Guess", where once per adventure the hero can automatically make the right choice in a multiple-choice situation... "Which wire do I cut?" "I've no idea, just cut one!"

So the Tricks let PCs pull some really impressive trademark stunts... but only once per adventure, which kind of limits the abuse. PCs are limited to 4 Tricks, max, so you'll want to choose yours carefully... if you get any at all.

Another cute bit is the section on Resources. There are 8 suggested types, consisting of Contacts, Gadgets, Headquarters (a fancy base), Heroic Vehicle (specially modified, natch), Influence (powerful friends or a political position), Loyal Pet, Patrons, Sidekick, or plain old Wealth.

There's a small section for each kind of resource, describing what you can get and how many Hero Points it'll cost ya. I like the fact that Heroic Vehicles won't normally cost you any points for the base vehicle (so long as you're already rich enough to own one); instead, you pay for the heroic add-ons that make it cooler than the norm.

The Patron section even lists some example Patrons (mostly large organizations), like "The Feds", "New World News", or the mystical secret society known as "The Infinity Hoop".

Their combat section seems pretty thorough. PCs have Grit ratings, which absorb damage first. If you run out of Grit, not only are you badly winded, you start to take Wounds, instead. Wounds are a bad thing; you'll suffer skill penalties, and it'll be harder to recover. If you run out of Wounds, you'll die without medical aid. Luckily, after every fight heroes get to recover 1d6 plus their Stamina rating (usually Brawn/10) points of Grit. So Grit goes away first, but it comes back rapidly.

Combat has rules for all of the standard things, like burst fire from automatic weapons, explosions, or unarmed combat. You can even attempt to KO someone by hitting them with surprise, but you may need to spend Luck points to pull it off.

In the interests of representing their genre properly, there's even a chapter on handing vehicle chases. This seems fairly reasonable and detailed, and even has a table of "Thrilling Chase Terrain", where you can roll to see what sort of sudden complication you run into (things like bad weather or a sudden obstacle). There are 3 categories in the table, so it's different if your chase is occuring by land, air or sea.

"The High Life" is the chapter that covers social class, how much money it gets you (oddly, they've gone back to the gold standard, rather than "dollars", each bill represents "nuggets"), and what sort of basic equipment is available. There are some nice illustrations of all of their standard firearms. Interestingly, all of the weapons do 1d6 plus some flat damage bonus. So the pistols range from the pocket-sized hold out pistol (damage plus 2) to the blue-fire blaster (damage plus 6, and 50 shots to boot, but hey- it is 16 times as expensive as the next cheaper handgun). Probably to discourage PCs from bothering with it, armor isn't that useful... the best armor available only stops 3 points of damage, and then only from a particular kind of attack. A cute touch in the equipment tables is that they list example brand names for a lot of the more common items. This section also covers example vehicles, ranging from old wheeled cars to floating Bluefire cars, to boats and planes. It even has an entry for a typical tank, the "N-11 Victory" model.

The "Nuts & Bolts" chapter lets you figure out the price for all sorts of technological gadgets (you can generally buy them with either cash or experience points). It even lists the skills required to install them. Want to attach scythe blades to your car? You need the Smith and Mechanic skills, and you should add 10n to the cost of the weapon you want attached. This section seems surprisingly thorough, and has entries for things like add ejector seats or making your vehicle into a submersible. James Bond would have liked these guys.

Their magic chapter is kind of light on detail, but that's probably to be expected. This is a pulp setting, not a high magic one, so "wizards" aren't really part of it. But mysterious trenchcoat-clad do-gooders who can "cloud the minds of weakwilled men" definitely are. They classify the powers as "Divine", "Body Mastery", "Domination", "Magical" or "Psychic", and certain powers are only available to practicioners of the right mystical path. The path does have some game effects, such as Magical practicioners must always speak and gesture to use their powers, whereas Psychic powers normally require the practicioner to be able to see his target. Powers cost Mana to use, and tend to be fairly expensive. Unless you're particularly skilled with a power, you'll have to roll an appropriate skill test each time that you want to use it (ie- all Domination powers use the Mesmerism skill). For example, the traditional "Cloak of Invisibility" power costs 3 mana to turn on, and an additional mana per round to maintain. It's available to the Divine, Domination, Magical and Psychic paths and you'll be at -10% to all other actions while maintaining it.

Particularly troublesome magical powers are marked as "Optional" since your GM may not want you taking abilities like Clairvoyance, Contact Mystical Power, Mindwipe or Possession. There's even a little paragraph on estimating the costs of new powers, should you want to steal ideas from some other game.

The GM and Player sections are separated by 16 pages of full-color illustrations. Most of these are example character types (like "Ace Reporter" or "Costumed Vigilante") but there are some nice ones showing what the more popular vehicles look like, as well as a world map and a map of Newmerica. Yes, the setting is full of location-name puns. For example, the islands that used to be California are referred to as "Hollywet", while South America is mostly controlled by the country of Aztexica. Even Australia is here, but it's now just known as "The Mysterious Continent". The biggest city in the Arivada Desert is the aptly named Vice Vegas, home of many gangsters.

The GM section covers a lot of subjects, such as running a good game (particularly in a pulp style). Unlike most settings, in Danger Quest the GM is encouraged to use unlikely coincidences to keep the plot flowing ("Wait... that limo at the club. Isn't that the same one we saw at the CReeP warehouse?"). I do like the GM advice section. It's got a lot of small suggestions, like example scenes (splashy openings, chase scenes, death traps, etc) and reminders to always include lots of props in your descriptions of areas. Heroes love props. Since you get multiple actions per turn, but only one can be an actual attack, there's plenty of encouragement to use the others to interact with the environment. They also suggest giving bonuses freely- for example, if a player grabs a chair during a bar-brawl and then hits someone with it, they suggest a 10% bonus to hit. They also have nice suggestions, like always giving a player a second chance when making life-or-death skill tests. So if you fail that balance check and fall off of the airplane, you should get a chance to try and grab a wheel rather than plunging to your doom. If you fail that, well... it may take a Miracle to save you. I hope you still have a Miracle left unspent... that could be the difference between landing on a haystack or going splat! Okay, now I finally want to cover the setting in a little more detail. There are a lot of nations here, but not so many that you couldn't memorize them all. Basically, there's at least one nation for each kind of adventure you might want to run...

The biggest and nastiest baddies of the 24th century live in Uberland (formerly Switzerland), where the clone rebellion put the Cloned Race Party (generally known as the CReePs) into power. Once created as second-class citizens and household servants, the clones, now led by their leader Adam Einman, plot to subjugate all of normal humanity. These are the Nazis of the setting, with Herr Einman leading his genetically engineered supermen to conquer other countries. Right now they're still fighting in Europe, but Newmerica will almost certainly be pulled into the fight sooner or later. Amusingly, most of the CReeP castes (they grow different types of clones for different jobs) are physically tough, but unusually vulnerable to bluffs, tricks and disguises. They're grown in vats and creative thought is discouraged in most castes.

Another good source of villains are the South American Aztexicans. These cunning necromancers have enslaved the entire populace, and turn anyone who questions their rule into a zombie soldier in their dread army. They attempted to conquer Newmerica not too long ago, but were turned back at Fort Alamo. Their forces are low-tech, but well supported by magical spells and hordes of fearless undead.

Canada is under the brutal thumb of a dictator called Le Monstre, who has assembled a huge army of misfits, anarchists, backstabbers and cheats to control the "Liberated" Acadian Confederacy. He regularly sends agents into Newmerica to stir up trouble and search for some weakpoint or advantage that he could use to invade. Yes, his minions are called LACkeys.

Anyway, there are a lot of countries described, in varying detail. The Nile Kingdom is ruled by a Pharoah, Japan has become the Dragon Isle (home to warring ninja clans), Africa has become the Tanglelands, with a note that rumor has it that there is a mysterious hidden valley somewhere in the depths of her teeming jungles. There's room for almost any sort of pulp adventure you'd want to run.

In fact, there's even a complete adventure in the book, which I have to say is very, very pulpish. There's a heroine in peril, a kidnapped scientist and a jungle island with very unpleasant natives. It has cute little details, like a suggestion that after a particular villain is defeated, as soon as the PCs get distracted he will regain consciousness and go for a hidden gun. There's even an NPC who really serves little purpose in the adventure except to demonstrate a hidden danger on the island by getting killed. He'll only live long enough to ask a PC to deliver something to his brother back home... and thus lead into more adventures. The adventure looks cute enough that I'm tempted to try running it, despite how packed my gaming schedule is currently. In a world where most back-of-the-manual adventures really suck, I consider this one a gem. Oh, it's cliched in places... but it's supposed to be.

Let's see... what haven't I covered yet. There are two chapters full of stats for NPCs, animals, and example monsters. This includes stats for the various kinds of clone soldiers of the CReePs, stats for various kinds of Aztexican soldiers, etc., covering all of the major groups of baddies. It also has nice examples of "generic" foes, like stats for the Big Tough Pugilist, the Mad Scientist, or the Murky Monster from Below. There are a few typos here... I'm pretty sure that the poison bite entry for tarantulas got mixed up with the entry for the dread Dire Spider, but there aren't too many that really mess up the entries.

There are a lot of typos, and I've seen several "see page XX" entries. Basically, the editing isn't perfect, but I haven't found any really major screwups. There is an index, and it seems decent enough, although being only 2 pages long it obviously isn't really thorough. The interior art is all black and white except for the color plates in the middle and back of the book. The art quality varies, but it's mostly quite good, and fits the genre perfectly. The heroes tend to be smooth-shaven, square jawed manly-men, whose chins could stop small caliber bullets.

There are scattered flavor text boxes throughout the book, and these really go all out in trying to evoke the proper atmosphere. Ooo... here's the one at the start of the combat section. I think it kind of sums it up.

"Crashing through the window, Fed agent Nathanial Havoc rained hot lead down on the startled Vice Vegas gangsters, his shower of silver shells jingling the sweet tune of justice he loved so much."

When you can say something like that with a straight face, you're ready for Danger Quest.

So all in all, I do like this game. It's in a genre I'd normally never bother with (preferring gritty, low-fantasy stuff myself), but it does it well enough that I'd happily play, and could even be persuaded to run it myself. I don't know how well it would work for a long-term campaign, but... well, no. I do know. It would work fabulously, because there are untold thousands of pulp novel sequels out there whose plots you could steal wholesale for your game. The only limit would be how long you could run it without getting sick of the whole genre.

My only qualms about the system are that it kind of looks like starting PCs may be pretty incompetent... often you'll have ratings of 35% to 45% or so, and with each skill point only adding (on average) 5% to your rolls, that means that you'll get a lot of failures unless you're highly skilled. The GM may well want to give a lot of bonuses and award "partial" successes for near-misses. Still, I'd have to run a playtest to see for sure.

I give Danger Quest a 4 for substance and a 5 for style. It's got lots of style.