Alex Greene

I found myself looking at, and buying, Mythras from DriveThruRPG recently. It's got many things that Mongoose's Legend does not have, but more importantly - new material is being published for it.

I like what I see here, and I'm going to dust off some of the older articles I published here for that other d100 system, meticulously retool them to make full use of Mythras' rules, and relaunch them for Mythras. Possibly as Abbott & Greene articles on DriveThruRPG.

And then I think I'll have to start posting new material for Mythras in 2017.

If you have someone in your group who pretty much lives for combat, give him a cause to fight for, and something to care about. See if your combat jockey can develop a character if the local martial order asks him to begin coaching young 'uns in his favourite combat style, then having to lead them into a battle. If his subordinates have names, and your combat jockey is any kind of gamer, leadership may well prove to be a heavy burden for him indeed.

And if not leadership, then responsibility. I had my characters once delve into some ruins. Only, they were not ancient - the ruins were less than twenty five years old. And they had a personal meaning for one of the characters because the ruins were where his Dad died.

The team's combat jockey had a highly emotional game when he realised that he was actually tracking down his father's killer and bringing his Dad's murderer to justice. The flood of Improvement Rolls he and the rest of the team earned was welcome; but the combat jockey had a fantastic time actually playing a role and resolving something from his character's past, which suddenly turned his character into a living being, rather than a bunch of numbers on a page.

The plot of The Blood Path was similarly adult in tone - the Adventurers bump into a band of orcs who'd sworn an oath to track down a bad guy, whom I shall not name, who had murdered the orc party's village and kidnapped two orclings, the kin of the orc party leader. The Adventurers find that there is a lot more to it than that - but the story, for the orc band leader, is about avenging the dead and rescuing all that remains of his family.

Okay, examples of adult storylines for me.

- Adventurers investigate a string of robberies all over town. One of their own connections or relatives got robbed, and badly hurt. Local law enforcement are all volunteers; clueless. This place is centuries away from forming a government-backed police force. The Adventurers have to be the Law.

- Someone is taunting the Adventurers. They know how they think - they know their Passions, and exploit them cruelly without showing their face.

- The characters are given a special assignment - travel halfway across country, just to the border with the neighbouring country, to smuggle the Ambassador's wife into their country's Embassy, which is under siege. It's just to test to see how they can smuggle people in and out of the country next door clandestinely.

- A sculptor wants the country's most beautiful Lady of the Night to pose for him for a sculpture. She's already retired and now runs her own establishment. The Adventurers have to negotiate a price from her. What she asks for is to identify her sister's killer and end him, quietly, so the law thinks it's an accident. It turns out that the killer is the son of the Mayor, a right awful sort and a bit of a wannabe serial killer.

- The cultists of the Temple of the local Goddess of Love are being targeted by a bunch of moralists protesting their temple, even since the Love Goddess's temple facilities were converted into a free hospital round the back to help bring healing to night women and street people who need their services. Those sorts of services.

- There's a war on, but nothing can stop the show. Except maybe the disappearance of its lead actor. His lover is inconsolable with worry - he wants the Adventurers to find out where the actor's gone, and what's happened, and if they can, bring him back. And on the way to solving the case, they accidentally bring the war to an end.

- A sadistic murderer is targeting young lovers. It seems to be haunting a local area notorious for teens hanging out to make out. The Adventurers encounter something that would not look out of place in a Wes Craven movie. A local craftsman has been possessed by a murder spirit. They need a shaman to stop it ...

Those are, for me, adult adventures. Not this running around looting old tombs and killing orcs.

Legend is Mongoose's foray into D100 territory, but I was thinking that sometimes there is only so far one can go with the game before we come up against Mongoose Publishing's unwritten 12A age certificate. Makes me sometimes wonder if there are d100 adventures where the age certificate starts at 15 and goes up to Song of Ice and Fire and higher.

I don't even mean the kind of stuff that ends up on HBO. Just adventures where the Adventurers find themselves in some places and situations which are a lot more adult than dungeon crawling, looting treasure and fighting orcs.

What else is that Seduction skill there for?

Do you want me to write up something on Danzipa, the City of Trances? I have some experience with inducing trances, illusions and other such fun stuff.

I'll keep slogging on my Traveller stuff for now, and then if I start seeing movement on the Legend front I'll start putting together more new material for that, too.

But with High Guard 2e coming out very soon - possibly a matter of a day, singular - there might be more movement on the other books in that seemingly interminable queue, including Paranoia and Legend releases.

I'm hoping that the three supplements I sent to Mongoose will, one day, see the light of day. Their aim was to present a unified setting in which one could enjoy play.

The supplements were a new Arcania of Legend, a new City of Legend ... and an Adventure, set in that City of Legend.

We shall see, eh?

The other day, on the Mongoose Legend forum, Mongoose Matt hinted that the next Legend book could well be a new Arcania of Legend ...

Re: New Books, Please?

by msprange » 2016-03-09 1:30 pm

Currently talking to an editor for a new Arcania of Legend book...

Matthew Sprange

Mongoose Publishing

Of course, the whole point of high INT is to learn from your errors more rapidly. Slow-witted people commit the same errors and gaffes over and over and never advance; but the characters who fail, and often fail spectacularly, but who learn not to commit the same error twice, rise in capability like those Velociraptors in that dinosaur movie series.

I'd encourage the characters who invest in INT to learn from their missed rolls, and particularly from their fumbles - if they survive those fumbles. Don't nerf the smart ones. If their skill ratings race ahead of their less mentally-endowed peers, that's the price the others must pay for making INT their dump stat.

I'd like to point out that Legend has at least one Heroic Ability which increases the rate of learning a specific kind of skill class - Linguist, specialising in learning new languages with speed and ease, for the Dr Daniel Jackson fans. Also, Legend makes use of Improvement Rolls during down time, and the amount of Improvement Rolls a character can obtain depends on CHA, not INT - so high-CHA characters in Legend can also learn more rapidly by dint of having more connections around who are willing to train them.

Ditto.

I can't see it seeing nearly as much use as MoL I.

An amazingly accurate observation, even if one made in jest.

You've not read enough Moorcock, or GRR Martin or Glen Cook, or...

It's for that reason that I'd only allow it even to turn up in a story where everybody knows that mature themes are going to be touched upon - something that Legend allows with the inclusion of the Seduction skill, the Divine spell Aphrodisiac and, of course, everything in Arcania of Legend: Blood Magic. If Seduction skill is not suited for the campaign, Craft (Torturer) certainly won't be.

As a Games Master, I wouldn't allow Torturer to be either a Lore, Craft or Art. And even as a Craft, it would not be made available to player characters. Too many ethical issues, and there'd always be the one player who gets bored and stupid, and wants to try it out on random NPCs and the other player characters, like the player of a thief character who suddenly says "I backstab the team leader!" out of the blue when he thinks the focus of attention's shifted away from him for a moment.

Would anyone like me to release a new version of Reptilians of Legend? I'm looking at increased player character and Games Master options for our scaly friends, along with a few new surprises altogether.

I gave orcs a pretty good treatment in The Blood Path, and I hope I did them honour - I just want to give Saurians, Lizard Folk and Serpent People the same treatment.

Among other things I have lined up: Saurian deities and cults; Lizard Folk shamanism; Serpent People cults and orders. Typical spells, including sorcery spells I'm borrowing from my contribution to Spells of Legend and a few ideas I'm borrowing from Arcania of Legend: Blood Magic.

For all of them, more detailed information on cultural backgrounds, career options and so on.

And perhaps new stuff altogether, and maybe - with a little inspiration - a surprise or two.

Anyone interested in this?

The Blood Path, an adventure with orcs for Legend, finally went live on the DriveThruRPG site today! Go and find it here.

The Blood Path

Of all the enemies player characters love to engage in roleplaying games, no more popular enemy exists than orcs. A default enemy, an excuse to have the characters make use of their combat moves, orcs are a staple monster in many tabletop fantasy roleplaying games.

Modern MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft have begun to challenge this attitude, making orcs over as the honourable Klingons of fantasy roleplaying games; but the Monsters of Legend and Cities of Legend: Skarr, City of Orcs sourcebooks still cast them in the same old light – as monsters.

All that changes here.

A chance encounter by the roadside involves the adventurers with a party of orcs on The Blood Path, a sacred quest for vengeance. But things are never quite what they seem...

Will the orcs prove friend or foe?

Can the adventurers thwart an evil that if released has the potential to claim thousands of lives – orc and human alike?

Follow the Blood Path and forge your Legend.

A Legend compatible scenario, The Blood Path can be converted for use with most D100 game systems with very little effort.

And with my first post here on this forum, I'd like to say hello, and to say a bit about me.

If you frequent the Shadownessence World of Darkness forum, you'll already know me as Libra, a moderator on those boards. I am also a published freelancer.

I've had material published for White Wolf and Mongoose Publishing. My articles have appeared in Signs & Portents, and articles I've written have appeared in both Traveller Compendia published to date - the two-part "Medic!" article, "Old Flames," "The Flying Money Pit," "Balancing The Books" and, of course, The "Thing In The Pit" - my favourite S&P article.

All of those were, of course, for Mongoose Traveller.

Before that, I'd had articles published in White Wolf's World of Darkness: Dogs of War, the Hunter: the Vigil Core Rulebook and the Hunter: the Vigil supplement Night Stalkers.

So I'm not entirely unpublished.

I joined BRP Central because of the Downloads section, and the facility to allow me to upload and share documents of my own. And as of the time of this post, I currently have two articles available, both for Legend, on this very site.

I have made these articles entirely Open Content, so you can use them and enjoy them as you see fit.

Feedback would be appreciated, particularly on the Reptilians article which is open for revision. Enjoy, and I hope to enjoy hanging around on these fora.