Strategic Roleplaying Quests (SRQ) Inc was founded in 1983 by disaffected former employees of Arthurian Games and Tactician Strategy Roles, as well as the former assistant editor of The Dragoness magazine, an early hobbyist publication that had supported tabletop roleplaying games as well as wargaming. SRQ’s first products, which debuted that same year, were the Ruins & Rogues and Sorcerers & Sabers roleplaying systems, each of which received a series of guidebooks that first year:

Ruins & Rogues Adventurer’s Guidebook
Ruins & Rogues Creature Compendium
Ruins & Rogues Interverse Guide
Sorcerers & Sabers Adventurer’s Guidebook
Sorcerers & Sabers Creature Compendium
Sorcerers & Sabers Interverse Guide

Ruins & Rogues was designed as a serious fantasy TTRPG in the same space as other major players at the time including Dungeons & Dragons and Powers & Perils. Sorcerers & Sabers,, on the other hand, was designed to be simpler and more picaresque, with an emphasis on capers and some subtle comedy. Both used the same underlying mechanics, the in-house MAW system in which characters had only three vital statistics (Might, Acumen, and Wits) and all other statistics were either derived from them or modified by skills.

While both Ruins & Rogues and Sorcerers & Sabers proved popular and maintain a niche following to this day, a variety of disastrous side ventures marked by poor sales led to SRQ declaring Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 1994, causing its various assets to be sold off piecemeal.