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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Austin Conrad" data-source="post: 8220559" data-attributes="member: 6924711">Like any game, it varies from GM to GM. But you've summarized the general feel pretty well! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Most of what I've played has been combat-focused dungeon-delving, adapting AD&D modules to a prior edition. RQ works well for this style of play because its dangerous combat makes fights more exciting. I like to use the analogy "RQ is to D&D as Dark Souls is to Skyrim." They're all fun, but they create different game experiences.The setting is a mishmash of Bronze Age civilizations and mythology with intentional anachronisms (like coinage) and occasional bouts of 60's/70's "California" weirdness. (Not my descriptor, but one I see used - as someone who didn't live through that era, I'm more likely to say something like "hippie" weirdness.)The Indian Mahabharata, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the works of ancient Greece are all notable inspirations. I generalize to "ancient Greece" because I've seen the authors reference a variety of sources - from Homer's poetry, to the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, and later texts from the Hellenistic period. The current feel, IMO, is very "ancient Mesopotamia/India" because of a heavier focus on polytheism than we typically think of when talking about Greece. There's also reference to Mycenaean Greece and Minoan Crete, which are the historical periods which later inspired Homer and Hesiod's works. Don't feel that you need familiarity with any/all of this to be able to play! I'm mostly babbling about it because I think it's cool. One of the things I like about RQ is that I'm a history geek, and it engages with that part of me.Adventurers do get their magic, typically, from the religious cults to which they've initiated. There's a few corner cases, but newcomers shouldn't worry about those when starting. Magic tends to be more specific than in other fantasy games, like D&D. For example, in D&D a cleric can use pretty well anything on their spell list. In RQ, you're restricted to learning spells from your adventurer's cult. So, worshipers of Orlanth the Storm God can throw lightning and fly through the sky, worshipers of Odayla the Bear God can partially shapeshift, and worshipers of Issaries the Talking God can create magical marketplaces and trade spells with other cults. Some magic has strong parallels with other games, and other magic is really distinct. Most cults focus on doing one type of thing, but a few cults do have broader scope (for example, Ernalda the Earth Goddess has strong healing and supportive magic, but also has spells which support social intrigue and conflict).The effect, in my experience, is that cults feel a lot like your "class." There's still a lot of adventurer versatility in approaching your cult, but the coolest magics an adventurer can invoke generally typify the way they'll approach the game.</blockquote>

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