Eris Needs Cheese

[kingyak]

Did you know that there's a game about a fantasy world that was created by Eris? Did you know that the Goddess's entire reason for creating the world was that she wanted some good cheese? It's true. The game is called Qerth, and it's available at all the usual PDF sites (or in print through www.hexgames.com). Here's a picture of the cover. See that cheese? Doesn't it look delicious?



Looking for fantasy gaming with a sense of panache? Or do you just want to slay the evil Panache and loot its corpse? Welcome to Qerth, (rhymes with "worth") where you can have your panache and slay it, too! Qerth is a magical place full of mysterious creatures, ancient wizards, haughty elves, surly dwarves, dimwitted soldiers, sneaky pickpockets, and humble cheese makers. You and your friends will take the part of a roving band of adventurers who kill things and take their stuff. This isn't simple armed robbery, but rather Grand, Epic Adventure! Boldly foray into the unknown with your trusty blade and your hearty comrades. A whole world of wonder is yours for the slaying and looting!

Please note that I co-wrote this game, so please recognize this for the shameless whoring that it is.

[Cramulus]

cool! Welcome aboard dude. We've got a couple game design nerds around here, always nice to see others to talk shop with.

Qerth sounds interesting... what makes it stand out against the background of other tabletop fantasy RPGs? Why would I play Quert as opposed to, say, D&D?

[kingyak]

The short answer: because it's funny.

The (probably very) long answer:
Qerth was actually the first supplement we started writing after we released QAGS (the Quick Ass Game System, our core rulebook) back in 1998. The idea was to do a parody of D&D. We had two basic goals at that point: (1)To make fun of some of the stupid tropes of D&D/Fantasy Gaming; (2) To include a "Cheese Maker" class (this originated from, I think, the D&D2E Complete Humanoids' Handbook, which included "Cheese Making" as a non-weapon proficiency. My co-writer saw that and immediately wanted to run a game in which all the characters started out as lowly cheese makers (unfortunately, the game never happened).

We wrote a big chunk of really stupid level advancement tables (complete with dumb level titles) and ran it at a few conventions, but at some point we decided that Qerth would be too big for us to print (the original QAGS book was a 64 page digest-sized b&w book printed at a local "one step above Kinko's" print shop) and there probably wasn't much of a market for a D&D parody, so we turned our attention to other stuff. A few years later, Hackmaster came out and we figured Qerth was dead. After all, if we released it now, we'd look like we were just copying Hackmaster.

Several years later, we played a Qerth one-shot and remembered how much fun it was. We also realized that Qerth was fundamentally different from Hackmaster. Whereas Hackmaster is sort of a loving tribute to old-school D&D, Qerth is a brutal satire of it. Hackmaster says "here's a game just like old D&D, only funny." Qerth says "when you think about it, old-school D&D was really fucking stupid." So we started talking about it again and came up with a few more ideas.

One breakthrough was when we realized that the most efficient way to point out how stupid some of the cliches of D&D were was to construct elaborate game world justifications for them. For example, the reason Magic Men forget all their spells every day is that at a 11:23 every night, the mystical equivalent of an electro-magnetic pulse hits the world, frying the magic out of their brains. Every morning, wizards have to completely re-learn every spell they've ever known from scratch (fortunately as they get more experience, they learn mnemonics, rhymes, and other tricks to re-learn things faster, which gives them more spells).

We'd always toyed with the idea that dungeons on Qerth were all part of some kind of elaborate set-up (players would stumble on secret passages leading to employee breakrooms with orcs taking coffee breaks and such), which led pretty naturally to the idea that there had to be some reason that all these big holes in the ground full of monsters and treasure existed and, considering the number of adventurers in the world, there had to be someone restocking them, resetting the traps, etc., because otherwise they'd all be cleared and empties by now. Since we'd already established the ancient saying/prophecy "And Lo, There Shall Come A Cheese Maker," it was obvious that *someone* wanted some cheese. The obvious choice was Eris. She sits sits in a giant dungeon in the middle of Qerth (which happens to be apple-shaped) waiting for the cheese maker who will bring her the cheese she needs. The non-cheese makers only exist to help the chosen cheese maker fight his way through the dungeon to give it to her.

This also helped explain Knomes. Until Dragonlance, Gnomes never really had a coherent racial identity in D&D, so in the initial version of the rules, most descriptions of knomes ended in something like "who cares? Nobody really wants to play a knome." We realized that this was actually because Knomes were not originally intended to be PCs (Potential Cheesebringers)--they were created as the Tacticians of the Subterrainean Realms, and their job was to help The Old Man With The Eyepatch (who hangs out at The Tavern handing out rumors and treasure maps) keep the dungeons running. Then one day some adventurers got the dungeon early and found them and they were like "uh, we're Knomes. Yeah, that's it! Knomes!" To uphold the ruse, The Old Man had to set up some Knomish settlements on the surface. Knome PCs start out ignorant of their real role in the world, but at some point their brought in on the truth and used as insider agents.

Also, you can play a Rabbi, and monsters include the Flesh-Eating Caruso and the Disco Cat.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

OK, this sounds like fun.

[Icey]

Interesting.

[kingyak]

The concept's a lot of fun, but I highly recommend against actually trying to use all the rules (especially the stuff from Chapter 8: Incredibly Boring Minutia) all the time. In fact, the main reason I rarely run it at conventions anymore is that it takes so damned long to make a character (I'm used to being able to have the rules part of character creation out of the way in 15 minutes, tops). I've been meaning to put together a "lite" version of the Qerth rules (basically just regular QAGS with a few tweaks) called "Qerth For Pussies," but haven't gotten around to it yet.

Here's the map (if you look closely, you can see the iota, sigma, and part of the tau of "Kalliste")

If you want to see it without the scrolling, it's here

[kingyak]

If anyone wants to learn more, you can see a preview of the PDF/book at Drivethru.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I always found the "making the character" part way more fun than anything else. I wish I could remember the name of my first character, who was a half-orc cleric.

[Cramulus]

dude, this looks pretty cool! You're a witty writer. I like all the little jabs and parody and RPG self-awareness.

In Qerth, it's just
a shitty character. Therefore, if your
character's Numbers are too low,
you should declare him "hopeless"
and roll again. How low is too low?
Well, that's really up to you. After
all, it's not like you need a character
with incredibly high Numbers to
compensate for your own
shortcomings or anything.

[kingyak]

Thanks!

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

Looks Interesting

[Danjanon]

This looks like a lot of fun. Since you're a writer for this game, is hexgames the best way to get you the most profit for a print version?

[kingyak]

We don't have to give anyone else (except PayPal) a cut for sales on the Hex site, so we make a little more that way. At the moment, our site is the only place the print version of Qerth is available (unless you happen to live near one of the handful of stores that buys stuff directly from us--we did traditional distribution for a couple of years, but our products are so niche that it was more trouble than it was worth for us). Eventually I plan to get all of our books that are long enough for a print version converted over to the format that DriveThruRPG's POD printer uses so we can offer them there, but writing new stuff takes priority so I'm not sure when that will happen (so far we've only got 3 print books for sale there--All-Stars, Fratboys Vs., and Roller Girls Vs.).