I've often wondered why Universe wasn't written as a functional companion to Dragon Quest.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 11, 2022, 02:34:39 PM

Quote from: rhialto on February 11, 2022, 08:59:08 AM

Quote from: estar on February 11, 2022, 08:42:00 AM

Quote from: rhialto on February 11, 2022, 06:00:49 AM
This is referenced in 8.7, just like there are references to buying equipment and purchasing other skills with initial XP.

Thanks, and man that is a real "blink and you will miss it reference". So basically like with weapons ALL characters can pick a college of magic regardless of background and stats.

Of course if the relevant attributes suck you are not going to very good at casting spells.

Well, since you allocate your characteristic points where you want you can guarantee a good Magic Aptitude, if that's your priority. That leaves you fewer points for your other characteristics though, so making a "fighter-adept" was balanced that way. The randomness in characteristics comes in the form of the pool of points available and the highest a characteristic could be (with fewer points allowing higher max characteristics and more points a lower max).

Well, allowing for any adjustments for races that you might try for and not get, and always remembering that wearing metal interferes with magic ...

Indeed: there are constraints on & consequences for choosing to be an Adept.

Quote from: David Johansen on February 11, 2022, 02:02:30 PM
So, dare I ask what a fifth edition of Dragonquest would look like?

I always wonder if there's something I could do to make The Arcane Confabulation appeal to Dragonquest fans but case numbering and hex grids is about all I ever come up with

Was there a 4th edition? I'm familiar with 3rd edition, but not a 4th. Unless you're counting the various on-line versions keeping DQ alive?

Fifth gives us a little more room to move, I suppose.  Fourth we will assume had Rune Magic and Summoning Incantations and Black Magic in the core and a couple little tweaks.  Fifth should still be recognizable as Dragon Quest but modernized in some fashion I suppose.  Perhaps an expanded bestiary or rules for black powder weapons.  An SPI medieval naval wargame might be integrated and a hex and counter fantasy battle game.  Alternately it could use some form of "advantage" and use the modern "they" pronoun for everything and have a long discussion of the moral and philosophical implications of calculating a percentage range that represents a parry and thus allows a riposte.

It certainly did deserve a better fate.  I found it very hard to understand the rules as-written, and given another edition and rules-writing overhaul by a company that cared, it might have gone on to become pretty popular.  I had no problem with the rules for SPI's hex-and counter wargames (even at the age of fourteen, which is about the time I bought DQ) so I don't think it's just a matter of me being stupid.  But there was a great deal about Dragonquest that was excellent:  the magic system, the critical hits table based on the type of weapon used (crushing, cuttting, etc), and really just the whole feel of the thing.  I'd love to join a campaign run by someone who knew what he was doing; I could doubtless learn the system that way. 

   I missed out on Dragon Quest back in the day, was one of the many games i would have liked to get, but i don't recall ever seeing it for sale at the
game shops in my area back then, though i liked the adds i saw in Dragon, and i was a big fan of SPI's wargames, still am, for that matter.

   Have a PDF of the rules somewhere... maybe i ought to put it on the to-do list and read another set of rules for a game i'm sadly not ever likely to
play.  But one more of those hardly matters.

   

Quote from: Sanson on February 17, 2022, 09:44:35 PM
   I missed out on Dragon Quest back in the day, was one of the many games i would have liked to get, but i don't recall ever seeing it for sale at the
game shops in my area back then, though i liked the adds i saw in Dragon, and i was a big fan of SPI's wargames, still am, for that matter.

   Have a PDF of the rules somewhere... maybe i ought to put it on the to-do list and read another set of rules for a game i'm sadly not ever likely to
play.  But one more of those hardly matters.

I had a subscription to Ares magazine. So I was on SPI's radar when they announced DQ. Back then I bought Universe and DragonQuest through SPI. Not from any game store.

 
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I had a subscription to Ares magazine. So I was on SPI's radar when they announced DQ. Back then I bought Universe and DragonQuest through SPI. Not from any game store.
[/quote]

That was probably the right way to go too... back then my purchasing power was far less and i almost never ordered anything through the mail (only a
few bits from Avalon Hill back then).  It's 100% different now, as i've gone online to order any and all items to feed my hobbies of late, though i held out
for years going to local game shops.  Though with SPI's mail-order model for sales most likely it was never available in stores or in limited quantities at
best. 

Maybe it was just our group of teenage wargamers, but we all found it more sensible (and thus enjoyable) than D&D. Of course, we all read the rules, so it was a group effort.

Quote from: Sanson on February 18, 2022, 03:37:50 AM
That was probably the right way to go too... back then my purchasing power was far less and i almost never ordered anything through the mail (only a
few bits from Avalon Hill back then).  It's 100% different now, as i've gone online to order any and all items to feed my hobbies of late, though i held out
for years going to local game shops.  Though with SPI's mail-order model for sales most likely it was never available in stores or in limited quantities at
best.

I bought classic Traveller stuff from GDW until every store in town started selling books for it. Then I just rode my bike to the store each month to see what new Traveller books were there. I still had my subscription to JTAS through GDW though, because the stores were not selling those.