I just wrote a 12-part series providing background for how we got from QAGS 1st Edition to QAGS 2nd Edition and why it\u2019s taken us over 20 years to get around to QAGS 3E. Today, I\u2019m going to go into detail about why I feel like QAGS needs a new edition. Some of the problems here are of our own creation, some are things we noticed relatively early and found workarounds for, and some are things that casual players might not even notice. One thing about running and playing the same game for 20+ years is that you start to notice every single flaw, and they don\u2019t get any less annoying with time. So here, in no particular order, are the problems with QAGS 2E.<\/p>\n
Early on, the fact that QAGS was funny was one of our major selling points. Back then, there weren\u2019t a lot of games that were funny to read, much less games that included \u201cadult\u201d humor (I think Hol<\/em>\u00a0was the only one that did both). It didn\u2019t take long for the humor to become a problem. While there were a few grown-ass adults who got offended by the bad language, their opinion didn\u2019t particularly matter to us. The problem came when we started realizing that QAGS was a really good introductory system for younger gamers, but we\u2019d filled it with a lot of material that wasn\u2019t suitable for younger gamers. Hell, even the name of the game has the word \u201cAss\u201d in it. While the much-discussed \u201cQAGS for Kids\u201d never actually happened, we were able to sort of get around this problem by stripping out most of the jokes when we put together the Qik-Start Rules.<\/p>\n The humor got to be even more of a problem later on in what we can only classify as \u201cit was a different time.\u201d We wrote QAGS during the heyday of things like Maxim<\/em> Magazine and The Man Show<\/em>. Furthermore, we were guys in our mid-20s who\u2019d recently spent 4 years at a small, political correctness obsessed, private college. As Leighton said somewhere, \u201cwe were rebelling against\u2026something,\u201d and we tried to do that by being edgy and intentionally offensive. Many of the jokes haven\u2019t aged well, and some are downright embarrassing today.<\/p>\n How We\u2019re Fixing It:<\/strong>\u00a0While I\u2019m not avoiding humor in the new edition, I\u2019m currently not going out of my way to make things funny. When we wrote QAGS 1E, the jokes were filler to make the book long enough to sell. When we wrote QAGS 2E, we considered the jokes to be one of the major selling points. This time around, we\u2019re focusing on writing a game system, not a funny book. There might be a run-through to punch up the text and make it more entertaining later, but if so we won\u2019t be going for shock value. We\u2019ll also keep the cursing and dick jokes to a minimum.<\/p>\n When we wrote QAGS, the 2nd Edition Dungeons & Dragon non-weapon proficiency rules were the only place most people had encountered a roll-under system (at least with a d20–most percentile systems are technically roll-under). This created an immediate problem, since in that system a low roll is better (you want the difference between the roll and your attribute score to be as high as possible), so everyone assumed that was how QAGS work. It is not: the highest successful roll wins. Realizing that comparing rolling to The Price Is Right (\u201croll as high as you can without going over\u201d) helped, but I\u2019ve got a feeling that familiarity with The Price Is Right is slipping away as we become less and less\u00a0 of a monoculture.<\/p>\n Adding things like Difficulty Numbers (now you have to roll higher than the DN but lower than your score) and skills (which add to the number you\u2019re rolling against, and therefore don\u2019t make much of a difference due to the flat distribution) just made things more complicated. Adding the skill to the roll after determining success would have made a lot more sense, which is good because I\u2019ve met a lot of people who just assumed that was how it worked even though we weren\u2019t that smart when we made the rules (at this point I often use that rule, to the point that Josh had to remind me how it works in a recent game of Million-Colored Sun).<\/p>\n Even if you get past the failings of the roll-under system from a game design perspective, they\u2019re still a huge pain in the ass when it comes to writing a game. It takes a lot of awkward phrasing to describe, it gets confusing whether +1 means a penalty or a bonus, and it just annoys the shit out of me every time I have to write a rules paragraph.<\/p>\n And don\u2019t even get me started about how we set up Weakness rolls to work in reverse–so players actually want to fail the roll–which forced us to invent the phrase \u201cif the Weakness takes effect\u201d because \u201cif the Weakness roll succeeds\/fails\u201d is unclear and confusing.<\/p>\n How We\u2019re Fixing It: <\/strong>Every roll has a Difficulty Number and you want to roll as high as possible. Bonuses add, penalties subtract. The player always wants their rolls to succeed (we\u2019re cutting out Weakness rolls entirely). Bigger is better, because this is America, motherfucker!<\/p>\n When you\u2019re rolling a single die, you have the exact same chance of rolling any number. For example, every single result on a d20 has a 5% chance of coming up. That doesn\u2019t seem like a problem, since having a higher number increases the number of results that are considered successes–if you\u2019re trying to roll 10 or less, you have a 50% chance of success compared to a 25% chance of succeeding on a 5 or less. Unfortunately, you\u2019re only rolling one of those numbers, and it\u2019s just as likely to be a 1 as a 10. The PC with the stat of 10 is more likely to succeed than the PC with a stat of 5, but their likelihood of rolling higher is entirely a function of what the other person rolled.<\/p>\n When rolling multiple dice, the probability of any given result depends on the number of combinations that can generate that result. If you\u2019re rolling 2d6, there\u2019s only 1 combination of rolls that will give you a 2 or a 12, but there are 3 combinations (1+6, 2+5, and 3+4) that will give you a 7. If Gygax had used a d20 instead of 3d6 for D&D stats, there would be a lot of characters walking around with a 20 Strength, 1 Intelligence, and 7 Wisdom. Using 3d6 creates a nice bell curve that typically generates numbers somewhere in the middle, with only occasional outliers on the extreme ends.<\/p>\n How We\u2019re Fixing It:<\/strong>\u00a0The fix for this one might be the biggest departure from the first two editions of QAGS. Instead of making d20 do all the work, we\u2019re retooling the core rolling mechanic. Instead of a single d20, you\u2019ll now roll at least two dice (Hero Factor and Attribute) and if your Calling\/Job doesn\u2019t apply, you\u2019ll add a third die (Luck) to the roll. While this doesn\u2019t always result in an evenly distributed bell curve, it does generate some kind of curve, which means that the rolls will group more toward the average of the dice being rolled. In addition to succeeding more often, characters with larger dice will generally roll better because their rolls will group toward their higher average. There\u2019s still enough swing for the occasional outlier, but a lot less swing than the \u201croll a d20\u201d mechanic of Q2E.<\/p>\n In QAGS, the difference between the winning roll and the losing roll is called the Success Degree. We use that number to determine damage in combat (which makes the combat system a bit too deadly for most games), but that\u2019s about it. The number range is simply too large to translate easily into other game mechanics, especially when the losing roll fails and is treated as a zero. We patched this problem in a few supplements by dividing the success degree by 4 or 5 to determine a modifier or something, but division always makes things seem more complicated.<\/p>\n How We\u2019re Fixing It:<\/strong> This is one of the things I took directly from Million-Colored Sun<\/em>. We included a rule there that if you were attacking Rabble (cannon fodder enemies), you get to kill an extra mook for every 5 points of your success degree. In Q3E, we\u2019re not using the full success degree. Instead, you get 1 FX for every 5 points by which you beat the target number. If your opponent rolls a 5 and you roll an 8, you succeed with no FX. If you roll an 11, you get 1 FX. Rolling a 20 would give you 3 FX. FX can be thought of sort of like temporary Yum Yums–they let you make the action that you rolled for cooler or more effective in some ways. For example, spending an FX on a combat roll will allow you to roll an additional damage die. Even though we\u2019re effectively still dividing the difference of the rolls by 4, stating it as \u201c1 FX for every 5 points above the target number\u201d makes it seem less complicated somehow. It allows for a version of giving the player power-ups for successes, which is the main thing I liked about the dice pool versions of Cinemechanix (for those of you who have followed the various versions of that system, FX work a lot like Fu).<\/p>\n Since Body\/Brain\/Nerve, Job, Gimmick, and (to a lesser extent) Weakness are all stats built for characters to roll against, deciding which stat to roll against can get confusing when there\u2019s overlap. Even worse, sometimes using the stat that\u2019s more mechanically appropriate can actually put the character at a disadvantage. While this allowed us to include a joke about an obscure late 80s Fox show starring Matthew Perry, it wasn\u2019t very good game design.<\/p>\nThe Roll-Under System<\/strong><\/h3>\n
The Flat Distribution<\/strong><\/h3>\n
The Useless Number Range For Effects<\/strong><\/h3>\n
The Overlapping Traits<\/strong><\/h3>\n