Category: Game Design

New Alchemy Talent

A witch at a cauldron brewing a potion.

The revised QuestRex 1.2 is coming along nicely and one of the additions in it I’m proudest of is the new Alchemy talent for magic-users. This is still a draft but I’m pretty sure it will work like this: Alchemy Modifier: none Bonus: none Prerequisite: Wizardry 1 This talent allows a spellcaster to store the […]

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Core Rules v1.2: Class names

I’ve been honing and reworking a bunch of rules for the system and just about have v1.2 ready. I’m still trying to settle on class names and a few other bits. Originally I used fighters, priest, magic-users, and knaves. Now I’m wondering if I just should have used the more predictable fighters, priests, wizards, and […]

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The “Adult” Fantasy Role-Playing Game

**"*The Original* Adult Fantasy Role-Playing Game"**

“The Original Adult Fantasy Role-Playing Game” was a tagline TSR used for some early D&D products Boy, does that land different in 2025 compared to 1980! I imagine most people today would snickeringly insist that D&D was, in fact, NOT the original adult fantasy role-playing game. Unintentionally spicy marketing aside, what TSR was trying to […]

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Metamorphosis Alpha & D&D

Metamorphosis Alpha Orignial

Who else mixed a little Metamorphosis Alpha (MA) into their AD&D games? It was one of the first things we tried back in the day. Yeah, the systems didn’t mesh all that well—but since when did “rules” ever stop a bunch of 13-year-olds? MA was actually the first RPG I ever bought, and that photo […]

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The Wondrous Wonk Wheel

The Wondrous Wonk Wheel

In one of the earlier iterations of QuestRex I toyed around with a “universal table” (UTs) ala Marvel Superheroes and later versions of Gamma World. I built out the chart (below) and then came up with the idea for a nifty wheel players could used to zoom in on columns. I dubbed it the “Wondrous […]

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Movement Across D&D Versions

A medieval army marching

Movements rules have changed quite a bit in various versions of D&D over the years.Here’s a breakdown of some of them. Original D&D (OD&D) 1st Edition AD&D BECMI D&D 3rd Edition D&D 5th Edition D&D (5E) Comparison Table (Including BECMI and OD&D) Type OD&D 1st Edition 2nd Edition BECMI 3rd Edition 5th Edition Indoor 120′ […]

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AD&D Class Combat Progression Across Versions

THACO Advancement

It’s interesting how the four main classes progression in combat has changed over time. This table shows the first three editions in the format of percentage of level as attack bonus. So for 3E at 12th level a fighter would be +12, clerics & thieves +9, and magic-users +6. It should be noted that on […]

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Darksight, Infravision, & Ultravision

Darksight

I’m including this illustration in the next version to afford players a better sense of darksight’s low fidelity. Can you fight using it? Absolutely. But finer discernment like reading scrolls or noticing subtle details on the walls are right out. Older versions were a bit cagey on exactly what a character with infravision or ultravision […]

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Considering Classes

A bunch of characters in a tavern

One of biggest goals of QuestRex was to both simplify and expand the Dungeons & Dragons classes system. To offer players more options with fewer rules. Out of curiosity, I put together a list of every official Dungeons & Dragons character class from the original edition through Fifth Edition. I excluded most splat book classes […]

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