QUESTING BEASTS
A downloadable game
In Questing Beasts, you play as a band of would-be Arthurian Knights in a world that's moved on. Many of these knights have strange powers brought about by the disaster that ended the world as we know it- some are barely human in appearance at all- and so as they go out on their journeys they’ve earned a name from the corrupt nobles they fight and those they seek to help; the Questing Beasts.
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Fun concept tweaking a classic setting for inspiration! I appreciated the conversational tone. You know you’re headed in the right direction when the first potential “twist” to randomly determining an adventure acknowledges that there are sensible solutions and then there are, “Sure, we should probably talk this out, but I feel compelled to try punching that dragon in the face first, just in case that works.”
The new traits are all a lot of fun, as are many of the items that accompany them (e.g., a helmet you dramatically remove to scatter enemies with your hideous countenance). And the traits all provide as much of a roleplaying hook as they do a mechanical benefit, which is great.
For folks that prefer a lower lethality game, the rule for ransom (rather than death) is both on point thematically and a fun way to handle it while adding additional roleplaying opportunities for a once and future session.
Questing Beasts is a campaign framework for FIST that reskins the game as being about a bunch of noble Arthurian holdovers in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
The PDF is 10 pages, with a layout that's a little divided. The front half is stark black and white, with plenty of negative space, whereas the back half is more text dense and has some color in the illustrations.
Setting-wise, Questing Beasts is tasty. This isn't a rigorously documented worldbook, it's more about the vibe, but the vibe is the weirder parts of Arthurian legend crashing into a more modern post-apocalypse landscape, and this makes for a genuinely cool and fresh pulp setup.
Mechanics-wise, most of what Questing Beasts provides is new TRAITS. They're split into Merlin Type and Knight Type, giving a little variety to the sorts of characters people might play, and there's also a couple new Roles and rules to better mesh the FIST system with the changed setting.
Probably my favorite bit of the book is the Balin TRAIT, where once per session you can instinctively pick the wrong choice between two options---thus determining which one is wrong---but then your teammates have to stop you from making it.
Overall, if you like Arthurian stories, science-fantasy, and the kinds of pulp premises that could hold up a ten novel series in the 70s, definitely check this out.