# QuestWorlds tags: #game/rpg/questworlds ![[QuestWorlds (cover).jpg|600]] QuestWorlds is what **Hero Wars** and **HeroQuest** grew up into once the engine stopped being Glorantha's exclusive property and its name had to move on — Robin Laws and Greg Stafford's argument that a good RPG doesn't resolve each individual sword-swing, it resolves the whole dramatic scene in a single contested roll. Chaosium re-released it under its own name as a generic, rules-light storytelling engine under the ORC license, so anyone can bolt a genre pack onto it without so much as a handshake. The SRD in hand is that free license; the full core rulebook shipped a few years later to teach the same engine at book length. ## Setting There is no single world to describe, because the whole point is that QuestWorlds is setting-agnostic. The fiction arrives via "genre packs" — Chaosium's Worlds of Wonder line and whatever creators build — and the engine is deliberately silent about which you pick. What the rules do supply is a philosophy: QuestWorlds *emulates the techniques of fictional storytelling* rather than simulating reality, and the book is blunt about the difference. The GM picks how hard a challenge is from dramatic needs, then back-fills the physical details to sell it — the gap between rooftop and hovercraft looks wide enough to feel exciting, but not so wide you can't believe the jump. The players are genre protagonists — pulp heroes, comic-book types, larger-than-life operatives in a world tuned for cinematic stakes. They pursue a **prize** past a **story obstacle**, or dig for the answer to a **story question**, and the whole campaign's temperament is "play to tell, not play to win." If defeat makes for a better scene, the system is happy to oblige; there's no death-by-one-roll ambush built in. ## Mechanics ### Contests The contest is the heart of the game. You and the GM **frame** it first: agree on the prize, the story obstacle or story question, and your **tactic** — how you plan to overcome it — which must pass a *credibility test* in the genre. Then you roll a d20 against your **target number** while the GM rolls a d20 against a **resistance** (base 10, adjusted up for harder obstacles and down for easier). Read each roll against its TN: - **Big success** — roll *equal to* the TN: two successes. - **Success** — roll *under* the TN: one success. - **Failure** — roll *over* the TN: zero successes. Compare the success counts. More successes than the resistance is a **victory** and you take the prize; fewer is a **defeat**. Tied counts go to the higher roll, or a standoff if you tie on the roll itself. The difference in successes is the **degree** of victory or defeat — the GM's guide to how convincing the win was. One contest resolves the *whole* story obstacle: you don't roll to sneak past the guards, pick the locks, and crack the safe one by one. The contest *is* the heist. ### Abilities, Keywords, and Masteries Characters are defined by **abilities** — anything that could credibly solve a problem — rather than a fixed attribute list. **Keywords** are the broad ones (occupation, heritage, a belief, membership in a community) with **breakouts** beneath them for specializations. Ratings run 1–20; past 20 the game switches to **masteries** (written as `7M`, then `4M2`), and each mastery grants an extra success on the roll. It's the mechanism that lets numbers keep scaling past the d20's ceiling without pretending a d20 can roll a 26. ### Failure, Flaws, and Risk Flaws are things you *invite* the GM to use against you — an addiction, a pacifist code, a wheelchair, a blackmailing aunt — and having one triggered earns you experience points. **Stretches** penalize implausible uses of an ability (−5 or −10); situational modifiers handle clever or foolish tactics; **augments** let another ability, another PC, or a community resource back your main one for a bonus. Defeat may bring **consequences**, victory bestow **benefits**, and a zero-degree result can be flavored as *victory at a price* or *defeat with a boon* instead of a clean either/or. ### Sequences When the drama of the *how* matters more than the *whether*, the game drills down from a contest to a **sequence** — a chain of contests played out in rounds. It offers three recording styles: a **scored sequence** (first to five resolution points loses), a **wagered sequence** (you bid advantage points against the opponent — riskier actions wager more, and running out of AP costs you the fight), and a **chained sequence** (track resolve, and once it hits zero you quit, or trade resolve losses for consequences). The book itself warns against sequencing every fight — most of the time a single contest is plenty, and this exists for the set-pieces. ### Character Creation Two routes, and the GM picks one. **As-You-Go**: settle on a concept — a keyword plus a distinguishing characteristic, *Haughty Priestess*, *Hotshot Lawyer*, *Slothful Vampire* — then spend the twelve ability slots and up to three flaws, making up new abilities on the spot when you need them. **Prose Method**: write about a hundred words of character as if it were fiction, then underline the abilities and flaws lurking in the sentences and turn them onto the sheet. Both aim at characters that read like *fiction characters*, not stat blocks. ### Story Points, Experience, and Relationships A group **story point** pool (one per PC) refreshes each session; burn points for an extra success or a **plot edit**, which bends the setting in your favor — from a marginal tweak ("the guard owes me a favor") to a major deus ex machina ("the vampire failed to notice the sunrise"). You earn **experience points** for defeat and for letting flaws bite — a self-correction that quietly dares the GM to raise the stakes; 10 XP buys an advance, or the GM can switch to milestone advancement if nobody wants to count beans. **Relationships** are abilities too: allies, patrons, contacts, followers (sidekicks and retainers), and relationship-flaws like dependents and adversaries. An optional **community resources** subsystem tracks a settlement's Wealth, Diplomacy, and Morale (plus Military, Magic, or Technology where the setting calls for them), letting the group spend its home base down and then work to build it back up. ## Editions - **Hero Wars** (2000) — the original, Glorantha-set, still carrying a little of the old grit. - **HeroQuest** (2003) — the first reissue under the HeroQuest name, the rules sharpened. - **HeroQuest: Core Rules** (2009) — HeroQuest 2e, the engine goes generic for the first time. - **HeroQuest Glorantha** (2015) — HeroQuest 2.1e, the same rules pointed back at Glorantha. - **QuestWorlds** (2020) — QuestWorlds 1e, the HeroQuest 2.2e rules made generic again and licensed under ORC. *In the library* (the SRD v0.97). - **QuestWorlds: Core RuleBook** (2025, Chaosium) — the full hardcover/PDF rulebook, and easily the best version yet at teaching the engine. *Not in the library.* ## Genre Packs and the Worlds of Wonder Line QuestWorlds is open under the ORC license, so its wider ecosystem is third-party-driven while Chaosium's own **Worlds of Wonder** line — the brand under which it plans to publish official genre packs — stays announced-but-empty for now: the official storefront currently lists only the Core RuleBook. What has actually shipped are "indy" packs from other creators: - **SPEC-OPS MAGICA CRISIS** (2025) — Lee Brimmicombe-Wood's eighty-page anime magic-school setting of mecha, kaiju, and eldritch horrors; the first "indy" genre pack, on itch.io. - **Humakt e.V. genre packs** — a kung-fu adventure, a fantasy tale of honour and feuding, a witch hunt, a museum adventure, and a space opera. A community-maintained [list of current QuestWorlds genre packs on BRP Central](https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/25868-current-qw-genre-packs/) tracks new packs as they arrive. ## References - [QuestWorlds: Core RuleBook (hardcover) - Chaosium](https://www.chaosium.com/questworlds-core-rulebook-hardcover/) - [QuestWorlds: Core RuleBook (PDF) - Chaosium](https://www.chaosium.com/questworlds-core-rulebook-pdf) - [QuestWorlds - DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/509287/questworlds) - [QuestWorlds - Official site & version history, Chaosium](https://questworlds.chaosium.com/) - [QuestWorlds System Reference Document (full text in Markdown) - GitHub](https://github.com/ChaosiumInc/QuestWorlds) - [What is QuestWorlds? (review) - RPG.net](https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/19/19251.phtml)