Prime Evil

My homebrew variant of Legend replaces the text about starting Divine Magic for Priests on p35 of the Legend rulebook with the following: If you are playing Legend and using the Piety skill from Arcania of Legend: Blood Magic rather than the core rules for Divine Magic, this might be a viable approach. I get the feeling that Pete's rules for Divine Magic in Blood Magic mark a stepping stone between the approach pioneered in MRQII and the way that the Devotion skill works for theism in RQ6.

Got mine. Very nice indeed!

Nice preview - I'm really looking forward to this now! I recently bought the PDF of the old Chivalry & Sorcery Swords & Sorcerors supplement and was thinking how great the Mongol section is - even though the scholarship it is based on is a bit dated. Now I really need to add some steppe nomads to my homebrew campaign setting, so this may be very useful to me...

Cheers. I sent you a PM via the Alphetar Games site. Also, it can be tough being an Aussie

OK...I didn't even know that this product was coming, but sprang for the preorder as soon as I saw this thread. Two questions: Does the free shipping offer count for international orders as I'm in Australia? If not, I'm happy to cover the difference, but I'm keen for a good treatment of the steppe nomads. Also, when I paid for my order via PayPal I wasn't asked to specify a delivery address. Unfortunately the one that they have on file is out of date and that is the one that appears on the receipt. Is there a way to specify an alternate delivery address?

Are we there yet?

Interestingly, I was considering a variant where powerful Heroic Abilities are powered by the expenditure of Hero Points - I don't really like the way that Heroic Abilities are handled in Legend, but thought that the concept could be tweaked to simulate wuxia-style cinematic powers. The problem that I hit was that Hero Points are fairly rare in Legend and making them more common dramatically changes the tone of the game. Recently I re-read the rules for Doubloons from Cakebread & Walton's Pirates and Dragons and I'm considering adapting them for use in Legend as an alternative to Hero Points. I'll probably have to change the name from Doubloons though....

Lol....we can't have a setting without pre-human serpent men....

Here's an interesting article on the influence of the Boskop people on Robert E Howard and H.P. Lovecraft that surveys the history of the concept in archaeology and anthropology: http://rehtwogunraconteur.com/?p=25278

I'm really hoping that this is successful enough to allow for a couple of follow up sourcebooks. One question - how are you handling magic in the Ice Age era?

This does sound like a truly awesome adventure!

It's certainly true that Mongoose seem to be concentrating more on their successful Traveller product line than on Legend at the moment, but it remains to be seen whether this is a short-term development while they revamp that product line or whether they have decided to get out of the d100 system altogether. Mongoose does have a history of abandoned and discontinued product lines, so I fear that the system may face a slow death. It's a pity in one respect, because it was selling very well for them for a while. However, they have already performed a huge service for the community by releasing the core system under the Open Game Licence for third party publishers to make use of. Even if Mongoose never release another Legend book, I suspect that third-party publishers will use some of the material that they gave already released as OGC in the way that Cakebread & Walton used elements from Pirates of Legend with their own Pirates & Dragons campaign setting. Between OGL releases using Legend / OpenQuest / Renaissance as a base and official releases from Moon Design and Chaosium, the long-term future for the system is still very bright.

Keep in mind that all of the games in the extended d100 family are quite rules-light compared to many other systems, so even where there are minor differences it's possible to convert stuff on the fly. You don't need to spend hours of prep time converting back and forth from one rule system to another. In the case of the Renaissance system, it is based upon the OpenQuest rule system - which is a slimmed-down version of the Mongoose Runequest rule system. This rule system also formed the basis of Legend when the Runequest licence went to Moon Design. This means that all of these games - Mongoose Runequest, Legend, OpenQuest, Renaissance, and the superb Runequest 6 - are closely related and transferring material between them is not a problem. Personally, I use the simplified combat system from OpenQuest / Renaissance with Legend and Runequest for minor incidental fights sometimes. I find that breaking out the combat manouevres can be overkill when a group of heavily armed thugs (errr...adventurers) are facing down a pair of giant rats - it's all a matter of taste... Also, Renaissance focuses more on the early modern period, whereas Legend seems to be aiming for a generic medieval fantasy feel and Runequest 6 seems to be concentrating more on a classic pulp fantasy feel.

Nice work - I can see several new rules elements that I could use for my own games. The new rules for familiars look solid. The conversions of classic d20 monsters look nice, although some of them are overpowered for a typical Renaissance / d100 game.... They might work very well as otherworldly horrors in a Solomon Kane style setting though.

Nice work - but I concur that you should convert it to a PDF and make it available through the downloads section of this site. Note that if you do this, you should add a copy of the Open Game Licence referencing the Legend rulebook to the end to make it nice and legal...

That's great! Now I'm really looking forward to the Bestiary - there's always room for more creatures.

Unfortunately I missed the kickstarter, but I finally picked this up and have been quite impressed by it. Forgive my ignorance, but are there plans for more supporting material or adventures?

Hell, yeah!

Dammit...now I'm going to need to fork out some money too. Right in the middle of buying a new house. I don't know how I'll explain this to my wife.

Wow...you just made my day. The thought of a new version of CF containing OGC usable with it's own built-in rule system or material from any of the d100 variants is too cool for words!

If Legend was simply a reprint of the MRQ II rules with the Glorantha-related material removed, then RQ 6 is a revised and (much) expanded version of MRQ II. The rules ve been tweaked in many places based on feedback from players since the publication of MRQ II. In addition, there is a lot more space to describe the philosophy behind the design. Rules elements such as Combat Styles now get a few pages of description. In particular, there's an introductory chapter to the Magic section that really should have been in MRQ II. Also, the explanation of Spirit Magic is much improved. On top of this, there's a whole new magic system (mysticism) to play with that makes it possible to simulate a number of things that MRQ II / Legend don't do particularly well - such as wuxia action. A few elements of MRQ II / Legend have been removed - notably the rules for Hero Points and Heroic Abilities. The visual design and layout of the RQ 6 rulebook are superior to those of Legend, but this is a subjective thing and you do pay more for RQ 6 so it may not be a fair comparison. (Personally, I appreciate the fact that RQ 6 is mercifully free of the cheesecake art that appeared in some of the older Mongoose titles). The two games are broadly compatible with very little conversion required to use material from one with the other - in most cases you can do conversion on the fly. I certainly intend to use my Legend books with RQ 6 and vice versa. Switching to RQ 6 mid-campaign, shouldn't be difficult, although it might be easier in some respects to run a hybrid game. One advantage of Legend is that it's released under the OGL, but this may only be relevant if you intend to publish your house rules. In short, you really should pick up a copy of RQ 6 - it's obviously a labour of love from cover to cover. The quality of the writing really shines through on every page.

I just finished listening to this - it's an excellent interview and does a very good job of explaining the design philosophy behind RQ 6. Pete also comes across as a very decent guy. However, I'd love to hear more!

We can hope so! This is the first time that the D100 system has been so well supported for almost twenty years - multiple publishers are producing cool stuff right now and this is reflected in the reappearance of RQ and its derivatives in the sales charts after a looooooong absence. I've also noticed that there's a real hunger out there right now for a fully-featured fantasy game that does the swords & sorcery genre well and is less crunch-heavy than the various D&D derivatives. Maybe this time around the stars are right!

It's now #1 on Drivethru! And Legend is #2! When was the last time that *any* d100 games have dominated the sales charts like this? It's awesome to see one of my favorite games getting some real love at last! Hopefully a few newcomers will try out one system or the other and decide that they like the d100 system. My hope is that people who don't know much about the system will be sucked in by Legend because of the low price point and then "graduate" to RQ 6 when they are ready for it. The long publication history of Runequest is a bit of a double-edged sword amongst gamers - those who enjoy= the older editions know what to expect, but many younger gamers have only heard of RQ by (distorted) reputation only. Because Legend comes with no baggage, it can serve as a "gateway drug" to induct newcomers into the RQ system. But after a while, I'm hoping that the *quality* of RQ 6 will win at least some of these newcomers over. And the cool thing is that we can then point people in the direction of BRP when they want to move beyond the fantasy genre! We have an real opportunity to increase the size of the d100 family in a way that hasn't happened for more than a decade - let's avoid "edition wars" as much as possible and focus on welcoming new gamers into the community. All of the percentile systems are "rules light" in comparison to modern iterations of D&D (including Pathfinder), so its worth emphasizing that there is a high degree of cross-compatibility between them. Sure, if you're a publisher you need to be aware of the fact that Legend is released under the OGL while RQ 6 uses the RuneQuest Gateway license....but if you're an ordinary gamer, there's absolutely no reason that you can't use the dinosaurs from Monsters of Legend in your RQ 6 game or the RQ 6 mysticism rules in your Legend game.

Wow...it looks like the PDF version of RQ 6 is now available via RPGNow! And I get paid today!