Steve Perrin's Quest Rules
Steve Perrin's Quest Rules, or SPQR for short, is a role-playing game system created and sold by Steve Perrin.
History
SPQR rules are based on those Perrin created for the role-playing game called RuneQuest, first published in 1978 by Chaosium and set in Greg Stafford's fantasy world, Glorantha. Stafford and Lynn Willis (one of his Chaosium employees) simplified the rules (eliminating such things as Strike Ranks and Hit Locations) in order to publish a generic role-playing game system called Basic Role-Playing (BRP). First released in 1980, BRP was independent from all the successive RuneQuest editions (even if its rules booklet was first only included in other games' boxes such as RuneQuest's) and served as a basic system of rules for almost all incoming role-playing games edited by Chaosium, like Call of Cthulhu (1981), Stormbringer (1981) or Pendragon (1985). One of those games, Superworld (1983), represented a commercial failure and resulted in the departure of Perrin from Chaosium. He began then to work as a game designer for companies like Interplay Productions, Maxis or Spectrum Holobyte. He has also worked freelance for many of the major players in the games industry including TSR, Inc., FASA Corporation, Hero Games, West End Games, and Iron Crown Enterprises. Only years later, in 2002, he decided to pick up again in business with his former game system, which he calls now Steve Perrin's Quest Rules (SPQR).
Game system
As it was the case for BRP since 1980, SPQR is both a simplified version of RuneQuest and a generic role-playing game system. For example Strike Ranks and Resistance Table are now discarded from SPQR rules because one clutters up combat and the other is not a percentile system, and as Perrin said in an interview given to the September 2008 RPG review magazine, the game does not need two separate systems for resolving situations.[1]
Chaos Limited
Apparently, purchasing the game is only possible through the Chaos Limited link in Steve Perrin's website.[2] Chaos Limited is the company created by Perrin in order to sell his games and products. The use of the word "Chaos" to name his company possibly refers to the original Greg Stafford's company's name, Chaosium.
References
- ↑ RPG Review, September 2008, Interview With Steve Perrin, p. 30
- ↑ SPQR in Steve Perrin's personal website