As a young gamer, Steve "Dollar Sign" Johnson had an unhealthy fascination with hex grid paper. It gets complicated from there. At any rate, the story ends with Steve helping found a game company with "Hex" in the name.

That’s our mascot.  We call him Happy D20.  The reason he’s so happy is simple: he’s being used to play QAGS.  Many d20s suffer from depression because they are used for games that, let’s face, aren’t all that fun.  Happy D20 knows that, by being a part of QAGS games, he’s making people happy.  And that makes him happy.  He’s a good guy.  The Happy D20 is also your sign that the product you’re looking at is 100% certified, Grade-A Hex Games entertainment.

When we first launched the Hex Games website, back in 1998, we thought it would be fun to create fictional staff members.  We created biographies for them, and wrote articles under their names, and spread rumors about them.  It seemed like a harmless joke but now, years later, we can't remember who's real and who isn't.  We know that Steve and Leighton are real.  We're pretty sure Josh exists, but it seems likely that Ian is imaginary, as well as at least one of the Dales.  On the other hand, we're pretty sure we saw Ian at a party the other weekend, so you never know.

Certainly. Just email us with your request. If you're an independent reviewer, include links to some of your previous reviews. If you're requesting review copies for a "review pool" for a web site or magazine, please include a link to your site or a sample issue. Once you've convinced us that you're not scamming us and have a basic grasp of the English language, we'll send you a PDF.

Yes, we do!  You can find more information here.

If it's a whole new game, with its own set of mechanics, then no, we won't publish it.  We wish you the best of luck, but we only publish QAGS-based games.  If you have an idea for a QAGS supplement, though, we might be interested.

If you're familiar with QAGS Second Edition, and have an idea for a QAGS-based product, you should read our writers' guidelines. If you're willing to work for the "nickels and glory" pay that we offer, e-mail your pitch to the creative department.  The pitch should be no longer than a page.  It should explain your idea and give a general overview of what the finished product will look like.  Most importantly, you need to demonstrate what makes your idea special.  If the creative director is interested, he will contact you.

First off, take a look at our artists' guidelines. If you're still interested, send the creative department a few samples of your work or, even better, a link to your online portfolio.  He will look over your work and let you know if he thinks you are right for any upcoming projects.  Keep in mind that Hex Games is a small company, so if you are looking to make big money, you are better off looking elsewhere.

We certainly do, and we're always happy to meet our fans, especially if they bring us beer. We like beer. Look in the events section to see a listing of upcoming conventions.

If you're legitimate, he we'll be more than happy to hook you up with some prizes. Visit the Convention Support page for more information.

We're sure your con is great, and we'd love to check it out, but we're pretty busy.  The Hex staff generally only attends 4 or 5 conventions a year, and we plan those trips well in advance.  Still, we are always looking for new cons to add to the list, so be sure to contact  convention support.  If you run a mid-sized, gaming-friendly convention, and are willing to offer us some perks, we will definitely consider attending.  If your con looks promising, and no Hex staff members are available, we will encourage local Knomes to attend.

Knomes are volunteers who help promote Hex Games.  They should not be confused with "gnomes," which are garden decorations.  The Knomes are a demo team, united by their love of QAGS, available to run games at your local store or convention.  We're always looking for new Knomes—do you have what it takes? You can learn more about Knomes here.

Go to your profile page and mouse over the "Edit" button and a menu will magically appear. If you choose "Update my image," you'll be given the option to upload a picture or choose one of the ones we've kindly provided.

It depends. If your site is gaming-related, we very well might (if you're selling Viagra, we definitely won't). Just send your URL and a brief description of your site to our webmaster. If we think your site is something our fans would be interested in, we'll add the link. We don't require that you link our page in return, but we would certainly appreciate it.

Stock some of our products. If you order them from us, we'll add you to the list. If you've purchased our products through a distributor, just send us a photo showing Hex products on your store's shelves.

Wrong. While the QAGS Second Edition rulebook is written in a light and often-humorous tone, it is not in fact a comedy game. We here at Hex don't like games that read like engineering textbooks. Instead, we feel that the friendly, conversational tone of QAGS makes it easier for readers to learn and comprehend the game. While you certainly can use QAGS to run comedy games, QAGS works wonderfully for serious games.

Sure, "Yum Yums" might not sound as serious as "Bennies" or "Fate Chips" but we have found that if you say "Yum Yums" enough times and with enough conviction, the name no longer sounds dumb. After about 30 minutes of playing QAGS and throwing candy to the GM to find a vital clue or help a character survive a shotgun blast to the head, most players don't seem to find Yum Yums quite so silly.

If it really is an issue for you, just call Yum Yums "Karma Points" and substitute glass beads for candy and go about your business. It works just as well, except you can't eat glass beads... not safely, anyway.

Damn straight you can. Our team of broad-visioned Game Masters and designers have used QAGS to run everything from paranormal teenagers to post-apocalyptic super-heroes to fantasy sailing adventure to gun-toting monster hunters to hard-core luchadore action to Regency romance to 80’s cartoons to deep space rescue to Shakespeare meets Tarantino to damned souls storming heaven. Seems pretty broadly applicable to us!

Not without our permission. We don’t have an open license that allows the general public to publish QAGS material. We are, however, happy to work with people on a case-by-case basis. So if you want to publish a QAGS supplement, e-mail the creative department. If you look like you know what you’re doing, we can probably work something out.

Qerth (rhymes with “worth”) is the Hex Games world of hack ‘n’ slash fantasy adventure, a world of surly dwarves, pompous elves, and kindly cheese makers.  You can learn all about it in Qerth: Apprentice Level Rules, available in print and in PDF.

Qerth: Apprentice Level Rules uses a (heavily) modified version of the QAGS Second Edition rules.  You need the QAGS rules in order to play Qerth, but if you don’t have a copy of QAGS Second Edition, the free Qik Start rules work fine (the Qerth: ALR PDF includes the QAGS Qik Start rules.)  Basically Qerth adds in rules that recreate the experience of an overly-complicated fantasy role-playing game from the late 70's or early 80's, while still retaining that QAGS flair.

Nope.  Steve Johnson and Leighton Connor first had the idea for Qerth back in 1998 or so.  They started work on it, got about a quarter of the way through writing the rules, and then put it aside.  They thought there probably wasn’t a market for a satirical take on sword-and-sorcery games.  This is the kind of intuitive grasp of the RPG market that has made Hex Games such a giant in the RPG industry.  Anyway, Steve and Leighton worked on Qerth on and off over the next decade, and by the time they finished it, Hackmaster had been around for years.  Which means that people can’t help but compare the two, which is unfair to both games.  If you actually read the games, they’re very different.  While Hackmaster is a loving tribute to old-fashioned gaming, Qerth is a vicious satire.  The two games have different goals, appeal to different audiences, and offer significantly different gaming experiences.  Plus, Qerth has the Disco Cat.

We’ve already released the Dungeon of Moderate Annoyance (Not Nearly as Bad as the Dungeon of Infinite Pain), so that’s one down.  How many more of those supplements we release depends on how much demand there is.  The more people buy, the more we’ll write.  Right now we are working on finishing up the Journeyman Level Rules, which we will release in the near future.  After that, we are committed to releasing the Master Level Rules and God Level Rules.  In short, we’ll release some of the supplements on that list, hopefully many of them, but definitely not all of them.

Lots of dumb tables.

Yes, we published M-Force in 2002.  Like many of our early products–such as the first edition of QAGS, Paradise, and Mars and Venus at War–it is out of print.  We sold all our copies and don’t plan to reprint any of those books, at least not without serious revision.  We’re currently working on a second edition of M-Force.  As with QAGS Second Edition, we see this as a great opportunity to fix the problems that crept into the first edition and offer our audience a fresh take on the premise.  We’ll let you know more as we get closer to publication

We aren't. "Ficton" is a word coined by science fiction juggernaut Robert A. Heinlein (the "A" stands for "awesome") that means "fictional universe." A ficton combines genre conventions with setting details to create a set of "rules" about how things work in that universe. The "Hex Ficton" is the "universe" where Fort High, M-Force, and many other Hex Games take place.

There's already some information in the Hex Wiki, and we'll be adding more as we get time. Even better, you can add your own ideas into the mix. The Death Cookie also runs Ficton-related articles from time to time.

Most of our "modern day" settings are assumed to take place in the Hex Ficton. As of May 2008, the list (including out of print products) includes: Mars & Venus at War, Terror at Camp Waka'Naka,  M-Force (and related supplements), most of the specific organizations in Spooky, some of the games from the Q2E Genre Guides section, Colin Thomas Presents Rasslin', and Weird Times at Charles Fort High. Other products are tangentially related to the Ficton. For example, The Adventures of Sindbad could be considered a "historical" Ficton setting, but could just as easily be set in a different universe entirely.

Absolutely not. Each of our game lines is designed to stand on its own. Whether or not you want to include characters, places, items, or whatever from other supplements is entirely up to you. We're not trying to sell you an "official" world of any kind, and have no plans to make you buy our entire product line to run a game. We also have no plans to use the Hex Ficton to sell you any big "Event" or "Official Plot" products. Use what you want, ignore the rest.

All of it and none of it. Each gaming group decides what parts of the world they want to use. Think of it in tems of comic book super-heroes: Clark Kent in "Smallville" is different from Clark Kent in the DC Universe, and neither of those is exactly the same as the Clark in Superman Returns. They have a lot in common, but there are also some substantial differences. By the same token, M-Force may have a major role in Leighton's Weird Times at Charles Fort High game, but may not even exist in the Fort High game that Carter's running.