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FOREWORD
Questers of the Middle Realms (QMR) is a fantasy game designed by Tim Gray and powered by the Prose Descriptive Qualities (PDQ) system, the engine created by Chad Underkoffler for his own games, like Truth & Justice (T&J), which I reviewed. I was impressed with the super-hero goodness of T&J and decided to take a look at this new implementation of the PDQ system. Usually, I write playtest reviews, but unfortunately this time I didn't manage to get my friends together. I apologize for that, but I will try to use the experience from my T&J playtest review to provide contrast.
APPEARANCE
QMR is 9.6-MB PDF 74 pages long. The text is displayed in a two-column layout with a regular-sized font and is pleasant to read, with a good balance between providing information and keeping the tone of the game. I could find no typos, except for an arithmetical mistake on page 23, 'Using multiple Qualities together', example 2, where it states that 4 and 6 add up to 14. The art pieces, all black and white, are interspersed along the text, usually one per page. Their quality ranges from 'not so good' to 'OK'. The ones that depict cities and villages are interesting, but it seems they were originally sketches. If they were inked and colored, they would probably be more striking and increase the product value of the game. Here you will also find the cartoony feel I described in T&J, which reinforces the feeling that PDQ is a humorous system (more on that later). The cover is in full color and does a good job of presenting the feel of their game. It reminded me of the Shrek movies.
INTRODUCTION
Here, Gray describes QMR as a tongue-in-cheek game that reworks some of the common fantasy roleplaying tropes, especially those of Dungeons & Dragons. I respect the author's desire to write a humorous game, but I think this could have been an excellent opportunity to expand the genres covered by the PDQ system and expose it as a generic system suitable to several settings. QMR does that, obviously -- the rules are there, one has just to play the game without the humor (there is a box called 'Ways to play' that explains this). However, by presenting the game as tongue-in-cheek, the idea that Chad's engine is more suited to this kind of approach is reinforced. The art doesn't help either. Eventually, PDQ may get pidgeonholed as a humorous system, like Risus.
RULES
This chapter starts with a description of the PDQ system. I explained them in detail in my T&J review, so I will just summarize them here. There are no attributes or skills in this engine, everything is contained in Qualities that can represent anything: professions, physical or personality traits etc. They range from Poor to Master and have a modifier (MOD) associated with them, -2 to +6, respectively. When a check must be made, the player rolls 2d6 and add the MOD of the appropriate Qualities. For example, if the character is trying to shoot a criminal with a bow and has Good [+2] Town Guard, he would add 2. If he also had Expert [+4] Archer, then the final MOD would be 6. Qualities also represent hit points and absorb damage taken by reducing their ranks. So, suppose the criminal from the example above had Good [+2] Thug and took two damage ranks to it. Now, his Thug Quality is Poor [-2]. As in T&J, certain Qualities, if appropiate, can be downshifted to ignore all the damage taken in one action. For example, a knight could reduce Good [+2] Plate Armor to Average [0] to avoid the rather devastating blow of 8 ranks from a dragon.
This first part addresses gear as well, which is divided in Shadow, Character and Prop items. The first are objects that the character are assumed to have to practice their Qualities, like a lockpick if he has Pick Locks. These have no mechanical effect save for preventing one from using their abilities if they are missing. Character items are those that are Qualities, like an Expert [+4] Sword. Since they were bought with the character's Quality ranks, they are a part of him and can never be truly destroyed, although they can be lost for a while.
Finally, Props are objects that are not part of the character, but can be used by her and provide mechanical benefits. They can't take damage for the character, can be taken away permanently and once depleted, don't recover. Props also have their subcategories: Bonus, One-shot, Plot Point and Slow Burn. Bonus Props are items with one or more useful Qualities, like a Fast [+2] Horse. One-shots use their MOD once and are gone, like Healing Potions. Plot Point items can be used once per session and usually have magical properties (in the form of Arcane abilities, which I discuss below). Slow Burn props can be depleted gradually: each upshift they provide in a roll, decreases their Quality rank. When the character spends the Poor [-2] rank, the object becomes useless. An example would be a Good [+2] Bag of Coins that can be used for upshifts when buying or trading. Props can also be sacrificed to avoid damage by using their Target Number (TN) instead of MOD in the character's defense. This destroys the item. Though it would be easy to extrapolate these rules from the PDQ system, it is nice to have them codified for you and neatly arranged in the categories.
Character Creation follows the same pattern as T&J's, but in order to simulate the low power of the questers (QMR's adventurers) -- their first level -- players only get five Quality ranks to spend (contrast that to T&J's 10 ranks). And even then, Qualities that are learned or acquired through training should only receive one rank, becoming Good [+2]. On the other hand, characters get two Good [+2] Qualities for free, one for their Homeland and another for the Organization they belong. These represent knowledge and social standing, but can also absorb damage. Players must also choose a Virtue and Vice, personality hooks like Brave, Honest, Cowardly etc. that can help a character to gain Fortune Points (QMR's version of Hero Points).
A QMR character also has a race, a simultaneous Quality and Weakness rated at Good [+2] and Poor [-2], respectively, that confers positive and negative effects. These are divided in MOD, Downshift and Innate abilities. MOD ones add the modifier to rolls when appropriate, Downshift effects decrease the Racial Quality level to grant a specific benefit and Innate abilities are things the character can do that others can't. For example, elves add their MOD to maintaining their appearance and composure, can return from the dead and pull off feats of impressive skill by downshifting the Quality, and possess Night Vision. The elven Weakness subtracts MOD from rolls to resist experimenting new sensations and to convince others of their moral and integrity, and limits their Fortune Pool (the maximum number of Fortune Points a character can have, usually 10) to 5. I'm not a mechanics guy, but it seems to me some races have it better than others, with more abilities or simply more effective benefits. Though there is a box talking about halfbreeds, I could find no advice on statting up new races. Even though you can try to eyeball it from the ones described in the book, some guidance would have been nice.
QMR lists as racial options humans, elves, dwarves, orcs and hoblings. Humans, who here follow the usual nondescript nature of their counterparts in other fantasy games, do not follow the Quality/Weakness system and instead receive a free personality-based Quality at Good [+2]. Elves are immortal and haunted by ennui, like Tolkien's, but unlike the latter, do not have a squeaky clean reputation, morally speaking. QMR dwarves are carved from rock that turn into living flesh when the sculpture is finished -- that's why there are no female dwarves. Orcs were originally created by the gods to cull the increasing numbers of the immortal elves, but now that the problem is solved, they are trying to create their own civilization. Hoblings are rodents who were divinely evolved into humanoids and are known for their great appetites.
Character advancement happens when she levels up, meaning she gets two Quality ranks to spend every "two moderately extensive and challenging adventures". The ranks can increase existing Qualities or create new ones at Good [+2], as long as the character belongs to the appropiate Organization -- no increasing Swordmanship when you are a member of the Order of Bookish Conjurers. Of course, the GM can allow increases outside Organizations. My first impression about this system is that characters will become quite powerful really quick. When they reach third level, they will have more Qualities than T&J characters, who are super-heroes. One could say that two long adventures is enough time between level-ups, but if QMR is trying to emulate D&D and company, leaving the characters without ability increases for a long time is sure to frustrate players. Anyway, it should be easy to import the MAX and Tick system from T&J, but it should be adjusted to QMR's low Fortune Point award rate.
Fortune Points, as stated above, are QMR's Hero points. Characters start with 1 and can gain others by following their Virtue and Vice; succeeding at a formidable challenge; getting screwed, gamewise, by the GM; and by having an impressive player. Overall, I would say there are less chances to win these points than in T&J. On the other hand, effects are cheaper. While in T&J you needed to spend two Hero points to get an upshift, in QMR you only need to give one away. Curiously, the Fate Smiles use, which allow you to reroll using 1d6+6 (average roll of 9.5) instead of 2d6 (average roll of 7), seems to void the upshift one. Why would a player waste a Fortune Point with an upshift before rolling when he could spend the exact same amount after the roll and get a greater effect (+2.5 instead of +2)? The only instance for that is if you are upshifting a Quality above Master [+2], because then you get +1d6 (average roll of 3.5).
Wealth and commercial transactions get a page of detail. It presents a rank-based wealth scale and rules for buying and selling, as well as how to assign value to items. This, like everything else, relies on Qualities and is a simple system, but even so I would have liked to see an example of a transaction.
Magic in QMR is divided into miracles (divine), thaumaturgy (wizardry) and mysticism (monk stuff). They all rely on the same basic system of Arcane Qualities -- the miracles, spells and powers of the three magical areas. Like other Qualities, Arcane ones, which are identified by an asterisk, cover a certain field of knowledge or ability, which the rules state should not be too broad (Control All Elements*) or too limited, unless it's something really useful, like Smite Monster*. Most people can probably identify when a given Quality falls outside these limits, but the rest might have a hard time. A list of examples would have come in handy and is sorely missing from the rules.
When a character wants to cast a spell/perform a miracle/use a power, he determines the stregth of the effect in the Magical Effects Table (based on the T&J Effects Table). Then he rolls using his Arcane Quality to beat the TN of the effect. If you beat it, you suceed and must roll for fatigue, using your Arcane Quality against the TN of the rank you used to cast the spell -- double 1s are always a failure. So, if you have Good [+2] Fire Tricks and used its full MOD to cast a fireball, you would roll for fatigue against the TN of the Good rank, or 9. If you fail the fatigue roll, you take a Failure rank (equal to a Damage rank, but only lasts for a scene). Certain non-Arcane Qualities can help in the casting and fatigue checks. For wizards, Intelligence-based ones help casting and Endurance-related ones, resisting fatigue. For mystics, Qualities reflecting inner strength, calm and willpower help on both rolls.
Priests don't use their Arcane Quality for fatigue rolls, they use Favor, a measure of your standing with a particular god. It can vary from -10 to +10, with negative values indicating disfavor and positive ones, favor. After successfully asking for a miracle, a priest will use her Favor rating with her deity as a MOD for the roll. If she fails, her Favor drops by one. Note that all characters have Favor. In fact, a character will usually have different Favor ratings with distinct gods. Anyone with a positive Favor can ask for a limited magical effect, a Blessing. This uses social-type Qualities for the "casting" roll and Favor for fatigue. If granted, a Blessing results in a Fortune Point that must be spent immediately. The idea behind Favor (together with the Roll of the Heavens, explained below) is that eventually the characters will be caught in a web of divine intrigue. When they do something to please a god, they incur disfavor from another until a point where they are trapped by the conflicting desires of these divine beings. I'm not sure a regular campaign would survive that, but the idea of characters as pawn of fickle deities might power an interesting set of adventures.
This section on magic also includes rules for under and overcasting, wild magic, familiars and arcane items, which are similar to the Prop ones.
SETTING
In-game, the Roll of the Heavens is a self-updating scroll that lists all of the world's deities. Out-of-game, it's a nice mechanic for getting the players to contribute with the creation of the setting by bribing them. Once per session, each player can create, through his character, a named lesser god and earn a Fortune Point, as well as saddling the entire party with a positive or negative point of Favor with that particular deity. For example, after successfully dispatching a group of man-bats, the warrior might say: "This will surely make Waynius, Lord of Bats, furious!" Everybody records Waynius in their Roll of the Heavens, plus -1 Favor, and the warrior gets a Fortune Point. The creating player also has to describe in one or two lines the new god's personality and interests. Besides being a fun way to participate in the game, this mechanic helps offsetting the scarcity of Fortune Point awards. However, as the book alerts, if the players use this every session, the campaign will be swimming in new divine beings by the third session. Perhaps, a way to avoid that is to extend this rule to other instances. A player could get a Fortune Point when he invented an interesting bit of background for the world, be it a city, a historical period, a famous person etc.
This sections also talks about organisations, giving some guidelines on creating new ones, and lists a few examples that can be used by the characters, like Draymar's Dregs, a mercenary company composed of outcasts, and the Phlogistonic Symposium, a thaumaturgic college that specializes in magic. Other organisations can be found in the Places section, which describes the continent of Ludor, in the world of Median, also known by its inhabitants as the Middle Realms. Ludor is as diverse as any other fantasy RPG setting, containing icy mountains filled with nordic barbarians and southern jungles populated by dark-skinned people, eastern lands that can host oriental-style adventures and western kingdoms home to knights and mythical heraldic beasts, among other more strange locations, such as the League of Groth, in which any number of Vampire games could be set. Of course, given the tone of the book, all of these have comical elements weaved into them, but making the world more serious shouldn't be much trouble. Each place description also lists an organization native to that land.
After that section, there are five sample characters, three of which have Arcane Qualities. This helps filling the void of examples from the magic section. Then, the book lists rules for designing creatures, including the effect of Size and Type (grazer, scavenger, predator) Qualities, as well as other power-related traits. The sample creature list includes such familiar faces as demon, dragon, goblin and gnome, and more weird things like jelly corsairs and squrtle, among others.
QMR concludes with a section on Game Master's Notes and an adventure, The Little Shrine of Doom, a mini-dungeon crawl.
CONCLUSION
QMR is a solid fantasy implementation of the PDQ system. I believe it didn't need a tongue-in-cheek tone, but I don't think it hurts it too much, since ignoring it in favor of a more serious one is easy enough. However, PDQ runs the risk of becoming known as an engine for comical games only. The new rules introduced are interesting, but could use a few more examples, especially in the races and magic sections. All in all, I think QMR is a good addition to the PDQ family and helps expand the system's potential. If you want to read examples of QMR in play, I suggest the two play-by-forum games Oriong ran here, World's Largest Dungeon Crawl and Questing Fools.
STYLE: 3
Layout: 3
Art: 2
Coolness: 3
Readability: 4
SUBSTANCE: 4
Content: 4
Text: 4
Fun: 4
Workmanship: 4
