So, for the past several months, I've been hosting [Quest](https://www.adventure.game/) for some of the homies in Barquq's ~~guildedRIP~~ discord and it's been fun! But, I think that's the group. Like, these are (mostly) people who I hung out with before we started playing and we all hang in Barquq's discord, doing art nights and various events. It's a good time and I'm super happy I met Barquq! Sorry, getting sentimental, back to the task at hand. So, Quest is a tabletop game that does away with modifiers, difficulty classes, all that shit. Instead, in their words, "You roll the dice in Quest to let fate decide what happens next." So, how are things resolved? On the d20, you compare your results, it goes like this | Number | Result | | ------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | 20 | Triumph, unmitigated success and probably something cool happens | | 11-19 | Success, you do the thing you wanna do | | 6-10 | Tough choice, you do the thing you want, but there's a cost and you decide if it's worth that cost | | 2-5 | Failure, you don't do it and something bad probably happens | | 1 | Catastrophe, you fail. Big time. Won't go well for you. | And that's it! Simple as can be, right? Exactly. So, here's the problem: all resolution works that way. All of it. Now, Rose, you say, isn't that great? It's simple and easy to remember! Sure, it absolutely is. But, let's say you're a skilled warrior, you've been a soldier for years. You *know* how to swing a sword. Your buddy, the goofball who makes the wind magically blow their hair when they're bored? They can barely be trusted with a knife. But, in Quest, you two have the exact same chances of hitting something! Think about that for a minute. Barquq is a better fighting game player than I am. He's been playing seriously for longer than I have and practices more than I do. So, can I grab a set from him? Yeah. I can, sometimes. But, most of the time, I cannot. Barquq is better and more experienced at fighting games. Sometimes, I get lucky or my gambits pay off. In Quest, that doesn't matter. The above example is pulled directly from the game I'm hosting! The Fighter did very little in combat because he couldn't roll high enough. THAT SUCKS! If you're a Magic player and you've ever been mana screwed, you know the exact feeling. It's not fun or interesting to lose because you can't play cards or die because you can't hit the enemy in front of you. Where Quest shines, in a sense, is in everything else. Because of the above rolling system, just about anything is possible when you wanna try and do something. You wanna do the Breath of the Wild shield surf and then jump across a chasm to get across it? Roll the die! a 20! Let's fucking go! You fly across like a majestic heron! Everyone cheers! Or maybe you don't wanna leave it to chance? That's fine, you're a Wizard, you grabbed the Blink power. So, spend an ability point and effectively teleport across the chasm. That's also cool as hell! The Powers in Quest, which form the basis of the Roles (read: classes) in the game are interesting and creative! Like everything else, they're a little freeform and so you can kind of get away with a lot! The wording is vague, so you can go a little nuts! But, Rose, every player misses a hit every now and again, in any game, you say. And you're right. But, over time, your characters progress. They get stronger, better at the things they do. They can take more hits and deal more damage. In Quest, that's not the case. Your *only* sense of progression in Quest is the number of Powers you have. Your HP does not increase. Numbers don't go up. The sort of double-edged sword of this is that anything can be a threat. I threw 7 random soldiers at my party and they were struggling. Because it was primarily a whiff-fest. My party barely hit. My soldiers hit a bunch. And don't get me wrong, the action economy means more bad guys = more difficult. Sure. But, at the same time, these are people who can *theoretically* do a whole lot of cool shit. Except swing a fucking sword, apparently. I've wanted to play Quest for a while and I am having fun. But, I'm having fun because I'm doing me and my players are doing them and we get a pot of goofy, fun bullshit. It rules. But, we could do it in any system, realistically. And we have! I don't really know how to end this, but that's where we're at. We will likely finish this campaign in Quest because I don't have another system to jettison to. And that's fine. I think that some of what I'm planning will actually work nicely in Quest. But, it is a little disappointing. It does feel like I have the worst luck with choosing systems for this group (one day, i'll do that avatop write-up, i say, like a liar.) It's also funny because Quest did something no other game has done for me: it made me miss the numbers. Without even that bit of crunch, it's like eating a huge stake of pancakes. Sure, it's fun at first, but over time, you get tired of the same texture.