Following are some selected comments that really made us feel good about ourselves. This feedback was originally posted in 2000, after 14 months of the game being freely available for beta testing. There were over 2,000 downloads, and I received about 1,900 emails from those who had downloaded and others who hadn't downloaded but had played with someone wh ohad.

"I kid you not, we spent an entire Saturday doing NOTHING except making magic spells. The Special Effects system is absolutely amazing! We never played that day, and on Sunday we spent another three hours or so making Powers for a superhero game we want to run. Now everyone in my group except one guy wants to GM an AQ! game. We have a D&D-style game, a superhero game, a Star Wars game (since West End died and the new system sucks), another D&D-type game in a different world, and an alternate history game that takes place now but the Nazis conquered the world in World War II."

"I was on all weekend watching for The Spyran System [now Astroscape Zero] as you promised... I was discouraged when they didn't show up... I talked to someone who had heard you'd had power problems because of bad weather in Bangor ... when I checked yesterday and found the first two sections had been posted that morning, I was ecstatic! I downloaded them and I LOVE the campaign setting! The only thing is that I'm a very fast reader and had been waiting for almost four months for TSS and now I'm all uptight waiting for the races to be posted."

"I would never have waited a year for source material, but AQ! is so good I did.  You guys have something going here... I can't wait to see it in print."

"I downloaded your core rules about a week ago... Since I live in Egypt, it doesn't surprise me just how hard it is to get ANY RPG stuff at all... Your system was, to start with, a substitution for AD&D so that I could somehow teach (and translate) some of my friends about real RPG'ing... Little did I know that something named as lamely as "Adventure Quest!" would turn out to be the best RPG system I have seen EVER! ...you wouldn't happen to have a copy of the core rules in Arabic, would ya? ...the potential of creating characters, worlds, weapons and the like are just so much more than I have seen in anything else that I just though this e-mail would be in order. Can't wait for the TSS campaign to come out in full."

"The 'G' Revision is excellent. I downloaded the 'F' Revision and was impressed with virtually everything, and when I heard you were doing a new version so quickly I figured it would just be little stuff, but it was a complete redo. Yet the game hadn't changed at all, it still played the same. You people really know what you're doing." (NOTE: The A and B revisions were in-house only. The C revision was the first allowed to playtesters outside my office. The D and E revisions were internal, and the F revision was the first made available to the public. The G revision was unplanned, but due to the enormous amount of emails received from playtesters around the world, we did the G so they could look at it based on the tweaking we did from their comments.)

"'G' is awesome! How come you guys aren't professional by now?"

"Just when I thought paper and pencil RPGs all sucked, and computer games were all anyone gave a shit about, our GM from our regular group emailed me and told me about this and I downloaded it. You've restored my faith! Keep it up!

"I'd buy this off the shelf in a heartbeat."

"Are you guys going to print this? The DL version is great and I can't believe you are letting the whole thing go for free, but I'd buy it in a minute... can't wait to see artwork from you guys..." (NOTE: I had always planned to print, but couldn't get the money together. Now, with POD being streamlined, printing and ordering will be easy.)

"Combat ROCKS! It's fast, believable, and you can still use lots of options for advanced players ... most systems are either detailed and clumsy or fast but not very complete ... good job finding the happy medium."

"Character creation works well with the two methods [Quick and Complex] ... a few of us [in his game group] like really detailed and complicated game systems but most don't ... everyone gets what they want and so far it works seamlessly."

"...I don't care what any of the other RPGs say, I LOVE lots of skills!!! And so does our whole gaming group."

"Just downloaded AQ! core rules, rolled some characters, played a couple of test games — great system, congrats to all involved! I have collected and evaluated "web-based" RPG systems for over three years — AQ! ranks high in production quality and system design... I have reviewed a number of web-based RPGs for various sites over the past three years ... I look forward to hearing from you and for more AQ!"

"The feature we love the most is the Special Effects system... it's very versatile and powerful from what we can see... our group has three mage characters and those players have been really using the magic and SFX system to its full potential, building mages whose magic is vastly different and based on different principles... and we really love the combat system too."

Big Ego Boosts

Here are some converts who surprised even us. Note that we are humbled and very respectful of those of you who have ditched published, popular RPG systems in favor of our own. Humbled and respectful to the degree that we can't put it into proper words. Read on:

"This is definitely the RPG system that all others will emulate and use as a guide to what a good system is. What a great way for the world of RPGs to open the 21st century... Your system makes true role-players realize they need to forget the 3D shooters and get back into some REAL role-playing."

"I talked to you in email about two months ago, and told you I preferred the Complex character system but that most of my group preferred easier stuff. But they were still feeling that the Quicker system took too long, they wanted to jump in now and play... you recommended I use the LARP rules in the Appendices to bang out characters in just a few minutes... It took us 15 minutes to get six people going and all of them were novice players... two months later and all have graduated to Quick and Complex characters as they have discovered what awesome control they can have when designing characters exactly the way they want them. You people, I don't know how you did it, but you clearly have THE masterpiece of all RPGs."

"Hands down, bar none, no exceptions, no ands, ifs, or buts... did I leave anything out? ... Adventure Quest! is the finest role-playing game that has EVER been produced."

"I have run three games continuously for as much as 12 years. One was an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game which began in 1989 with the Second Edition release. Another is a GURPS game focusing on dimension-hopping. A third is a Champions/Hero System game that has been going on forever ... I downloaded AQ! and at first I was like 'This is way too much stuff for just core rules,' but then I learned it and played a test game with some of my players ... those three games are now running on AQ! and it absolutely works better than all of the above games combined ... the options and possibilities are tremendous!!! ... I just started bringing my three game groups together with the dimension-hopping former GURPS game, since now I'm using one system and they integrate perfectly ... and we use about half Quick and half Complex characters, and it works fine."

"...we said we were NOT going to switch systems without everyone agreeing. And our regular group has fourteen people in it, sessions anywhere from three to eight at any given time, and we've played only AD&D for years. But after playing a few sessions, we've switched to AQ! for a lot of reasons, but the most popular one we all agree on is the kick-ass Special Effects system — we LOVE it!"

"We've played RoleMaster for years... AQ! is great! We've switched over and plan to use your system as long as you put it out!"

"Something finally topped D&D for rules and flexibility!!!!" (NOTE: This gamer obviously didn't play other systems often!)

"We'd used the Hero System forever in a superhero campaign that has changed characters and GMs, mostly cuz it was designed for superhero games and they did it well ... AQ! is an excellent set of core rules that actually does what you folks claim it does (unlike other universal systems), it works for anything."

"We've played Cyberpunk for five years or so and the AQ! core rules seem well-suited for that kind of game... will you be making the cybernetics rules available for download at all?!" (NOTE: In fact, I did: cybernetics, magic, miracles, powers, psionics, mutations, and more.)

"You guys kick ass over D&D!" (NOTE: I certainly hope so.)

"AQ! is way more fun than Magic: The Gathering." (NOTE: I REALLY hope so!)

"AQ! is the most versatile universal RPG ever created... far better than any other RPG of any type, period, and I've played them all... from original Dungeons & Dragons in the 70s and still today."

Bad Stuff

Well, not really bad stuff... but there are many oversights on our part. It wasn't all praise and screaming fans!

"I downloaded the game but all I got was a big Acrobat file. You didn't include the game in with the docs. Could you tell me how to find the game files? It must be a cool game to have that much of a manual, but I can't find it anywhere on your site."
Obviously, this person wasn't paying much attention or even reading — or can he read? I think he thought it was a video game. *sigh*

"One player wants to use the system for modern-day genres ... [do you have] any guidelines as to the damage values for modern weapons?"
The existing rules cover firearm generation, but at the time the firearms weren't developed with lots of sample weapons. Oddly, this was the only email of its kind that I received. I think everyone else was cool with the design rules, which work very well.

"You guys are wasting your time. Computer games are way better than stupid paper and pencil games. Get a life."
Nothing like a good biased opinion from the peanut gallery! We remind everyone that we aren't out there trying to convert FPS gamers over to RPGs. We're out there trying to make excellent paper and pencil games. If that isn't what you like, we encourage you to try them out anyway; but if you don't want to go that route, we respect that.

"this fucking site is shit, fucking give it up snd sitck it up you're ass becose nobody plays baby game like that anymore"
Actually cut and pasted in, with the slight obscenity editing that you see. Our response: your spelling, grammar, typing, and punctuation are shit, so go back to school and stick your ignorant commentary up your ass because a lot of people play RPGs and they aren't baby games by a long shot. They're for intellectual, creative individuals who can spell simple words like "because." It never ceases to amaze me how some morons will go WAY out of their way to write an email just to be ignorant and rude. Such is free speech and the Internet, I suppose. :-)

"Exactly how do Resistances work, specifically Magic Resistance?"
Oh, did I ever drop the ball on this one. I can't even say I didn't make it clear — we didn't even MAKE IT AT ALL. I left that entirely out and had to edit the revision to include it. All has been well with that for years, so no worries.

"Making Advanced Characters becomes time-consuming, even if you're doing a Quick Character."
Many RPG systems have options for generating more powerful characters, but this is often because those systems tend to generate beginning characters who aren't much in the way of hero-types. AQ! lets you use Advanced Characters as an option; however, you aren't helpless with regular starting characters at all. FYI, Advanced Characters are those where the GM gives you lots of extra Skill Points or Power Points. Most folks seem to like the process, but sometimes we all just want to get playing!

"There should be character classes."
A very loud and echoic NO on this one. Years of opinion polls and questioning gamers around the world have revealed many things to be powerfully evident, and one of those things is that a universal system without class limitations is far more preferred than class-based systems. We will be releasing Character Archetypes soon — basically, pre-done character classes where stats and Skills are already done so that, if you prefer, you can grab a pre-done character and start playing, eliminating creation entirely. However, even then, there will not be character class strictures or limitations, unless you choose to generate Drawbacks reflecting the rigors of a religion, thieves' guild, mage council, or that sort of thing.

"There should be character levels."
Another very loud and echoic NO. Levels are amazingly limiting and, as our polls and questions over the years have shown, systems that use point-based methods, or other similar ideas, are far more preferable. Players have more control on what their characters can do.

"Weapon design works well but there seem to be inconsistencies."
At the time, this was very true. That has all been ironed out—thanks to people pointing out those inconsistencies.

"Some of the data sheets, like character sheets, can be confusing."
Again, at the time, this was true. They kick ass now.

"The Character History Generator is very basic and sketchy. There are way too many unanswered questions. The results generated seem silly and unrelated."
Yes, and we expect it to be. As we stated in the opening pages of the CHG section, the results could seem disjointed. The CHG generates the very basic factors of the events in the character's life; it is up to the player to decide how to make sense of those factors and create the backfill that are those events. At the time we first posted the CHG, it was VERY sketchy and not nearly as streamlined as it is now. There's very little ambiguity, even when you have specifics to fill in. Try it; you'll like it.