LEGEND

[rust]

The argument being that Piety is really the Passion Love: Diety.

In my view this is a questionable interpretation, the reason for a high Pious trait

could just as well be Fear: Deity.

[SDLeary]

In my view this is a questionable interpretation, the reason for a high Pious trait

could just as well be Fear: Deity.

Your right! My bad... actually his reinterpretation of the issue was to make the traits Otherworldly/Worldly, which actually fits better with the Fae scenario listed above. Piety becomes a Passion that REPLACES Love: Diety

The write-up is here. This came about from discussion on the Pendragon forums.

SDLeary

[frogspawner]

In the system I suggest, characters only have the two or so traits most relevant to them. That's enough for roleplay, and doesn't ensnare you in tracking a dozen different traits, most of which are irrelevant.

Pious can be interpreted as Spiritual anyway. The definitions aren't precise, so no need to worry about fiddly details like that.

[dmccoy1693]

The one big advantage that Legend has over RQ 6 is the OGL

Couldn't be further from the truth. Legend has a number of advantages that RQ6 does not and vice versa. Here's a few of them:

• The Mongoose Name: The same game being published by Mongoose means the book will sell better. Mongoose has a distribution system in place that reaches world wide and distributors order directly from them. Game stores know that Mongoose produces on a regular schedule. They know supplements will come out for it on a regular schedule and they know they can expect to sell X number of copies. That level of reliability is attractive to a game store. Compare that to an unknown game company, with an unknown record of printing quantities, distribution, ability to reach a fan base, etc the same game looks less attractive. Despite the fact that they're literally the same game. Don't think distribution makes much of a difference these days? Check out Evil Hat's sales numbers for Q3 of this year. DFRPG:YS is the Dresden Files core rule book. 77% of all Dresden Files books (print or PDF) were sold through retail stores last quarter, a good 15 months after its launch. And this is Evil Hat, the biggest name in Indy RPGs. Compare that to their 14% of all books being sold being PDFs sold from any retailer. Now adjust those number for a mainstream company like Mongoose. While I don't have their exact numbers, we do know that Mongoose knows how to keep distributors happy.
  
  
• Cash Reserves: This one may sound weird but is highly significant to a game company's long term health. Mongoose has cash reserves behind them so if a game is a runaway success (i.e. Legend), they can do a quick reprint and have it available to reordering with little delay. So if they print 250 and 1000 orders come in, they can print that remaining 750 before the money for the 250 come back. A new company (like my own) can't do that. I had this happen twice in the past year. Both times, the 2nd printing was as large as the first and was within a month of the initial launch. That 2nd print run put a serious strain on my operating budget until I got paid 3-5 months later. Had I had another book ready to be printed, I would have had to delay it until I had enough money to do so. That delay would have cost me some reputation (and ultimately future sales) with game store owners.
  
  
• Printing Quantity: If you print to much of a book, your company could sink. That is wise knowledge in the RPG industry. But what constitutes a small print run for a core book. Something like a Pathfinder Compatible product is (relatively) easy. If you're a new company, its how many are your fellow compatible publishers printing and do half and as new books come out, you can slowly increase that number. A core book ... that's alot tricker. Say MRQ2 sold 1000 copies. (The guys at TDM would probably know the number, I don't, so I'm using a nice round number.) So they print 500, using the same logic of printing half. But game stores only order 250 because they're an unknown company. That's good night for that venture.
  
  
• Supplements: RPGs sell better when supplements are readily available. Mongoose has the monster book out right away and Age is Treason is out (I think). Others are in near future. The OGL will help with this but not in the next 3-5 months. It could make a difference tomorrow in the PDF market but not the print market. Will TDM have a supplement out right away, I don't know. Considering these guys worked at Mongoose, I'd expect they'd have supplement 1 within a month or two, but I don't know for sure.
  

Ok, so enough with Mongoose's advantages. What are some of TDM's advantages.

• Runequest Name: The RQ name is their biggest advantage IMO. Its something that a retail store or a gamer can latch onto and say, "I remember that game, I'll buy it." They should milk that for all they can.
  
  
• The Authors are Known for Quality Work. This will help with their fan base more than game store owners. Most game store owners (unless they personally love RuneQuest) will not be familiar with them. But it will help them in that their existing fans can goto their local game store and say, "Order me this book and all supplements for it." Game store owners pay close attention when a customer says that. Unfortunately, most customers don't do that these days so its not much of an advantage, but its better than nothing.
  

You'll notice that Mongoose's advantages make game stores happy while TDM make loyal fans happy. In the end, TDM could "win out" but I do not believe this will happen in the short term.

Having said all that, I'm moving forward with a Legend supplement and I've talked with Loz about RQ6. I'd suspect that both will have a sizable enough of a customer base that both will be happy in the end and "winning" won't be important.

Mind you, I am not familiar with the inner workings of TDM so I cannot say how some of these apply to them. They are, however, my best guess as a print publisher.

Edited December 15, 2011 by dmccoy1693

[rust]

Couldn't be further from the truth. Legend has a number of advantages that RQ6 does not and vice versa. Here's a few of them:

[*]The Mongoose Name: The same game being published by Mongoose means the book will sell better.

I really doubt that. At least over here Mongoose has a rather tarnished reputation, and

their last editing trainwreck - selling the hardback of the Secrets of the Ancients cam-

paign with the main chapter missing from the book - did not improve that reputation. As

far as I can tell, a majority of people over here would perhaps buy a book they want des-

pite the Mongoose Name, but certainly not because of it.

[RosenMcStern]

dmccoy,

I do not want to speculate about the correctness of what Rust said (the bad reputation of Mongoose), but your analysis is absolutely misled. The point is that all that you mentioned may be true for other game companies, but not for The Design Mechanism. The reason is very simple: they will not handle printing, marketing and distribution themselves, but they will rely on another, well-establish company. TDM does the production job, others handle marketing and distro.

And rest assured that all the troubles you mentioned will simply not happen for RQ6. I can tell you precisely, since I have been working with the exact same partners for more than one year, and we had no trouble whatsoever for those reasons.

Mongoose has one great advantage: the head start. And they managed to use that advantage to the greatest possible extent by offering the PDF for a more-than-bargain price. In the end, this is another signal that competition is good for end users. And luckily, there is some sound competition in the d100 market at the moment.

[dmccoy1693]

your analysis is absolutely misled.

I did qualify my post by saying that it was my best guess and I am not familiar with the inner workings with TDM.

[RosenMcStern]

Yeah, I tried to convey the idea of "based on false assumptions", not of "total b******t". Sorry if anyone read it that way

Anyway, all this sounds even less fact-based than the previous attempts at statting Prime Ministers, so we should just wait and see what happens. The only fact-based point is that round 1 goes to Mongoose, as everyone is talking about Legend at the moment.

[Thalaba]

Well, I thought it was an interesting analysis - it pointed at several things I wouldn't normally think about, so thanks for that. I'm not sure I would come to the same conclusions, but that's me.

I have much the same impression as Rust regarding Mongoose's quality, and I'm not likely to buy another book from them, unless things change dramatically. But that said, I've come to the conclusion that the broader RPG community is no more fussed about quality than the movie-going community, who tend to give mediocre films all their money while the critically acclaimed films languor at the bottom of the heap. Any there probably is something to what you say about the FLGS, too. The biggest game shop around here just sticks with the big guns, as far as what they put on their shelves. They've got a lot of mongoose and cubicle 7 books, but you'd be hard pressed to find much from Moon Design and you certainly won't find anything indie.

Having said all that, I'm moving forward with a Legend supplement and I've talked with Loz about RQ6. I'd suspect that both will have a sizable enough of a customer base that both will be happy in the end and "winning" won't be important.

As I suspect that the two communities overlap by something like 80%, I'm not sure how to predict a winner, either. I like to think that quality over quantitiy should win every time, but that just isn't the case, is it? There are just too many unknowns at this point, starting with how RQ6 will be received when it's released. Will Mongoose stay the course with Legend? How soon before they release another edition? Will either company release a setting book that takes the community by storm? Will Legend become the gateway drug for RQ6?

There are also competing systems to factor into this equation - many of them - that will be released, including Aeon, D100Rules, Parpuzio - or which are already avaiable, such as Gore, OpenQuest, and the older RQ editions which still remain popular. They are all very compatible and the existing fan base knows this, so I suspect that 'best system' will not be the deciding factor, but rather access to the broader 'unplugged' community who don't practice on-line punditry, and in making setting/supplementary material that people want to play and talk about.

If I could sort it all out and pick a winner - well, I'd be better off applying those talents to the stock market, wouldn't I?

[General Panic]

For my part I will be interested to see whether the massive sell-through of Legend at a zero barrier to entry price point will knock on the supplements. My Age of Treason book went on sale in late August and did OK. I noticed today it is now a "copper seller" on drivethru, but I have no idea what that means in numbers - 1 or 100? It's hardback and is not at digest price.

[RosenMcStern]

Copper seller in 4 months is not bad for a supplement. It means about 100 copies in electronic format. But you can do better than that. I think Age of Treason is not (yet) linked to Legend in the "collective imagination" of the d100 public, so it is not benefitting so much from the Legend burst. But things could change in the future, especially because now Legend lacks a good fantasy setting - so AoT is the only non-historical setting out there on the shelves.

By the way, the "Parpuzio Game System" is currently on hold. Maybe I will resume work on it, maybe not. The reasons should become clear soon.

[d10tavern]

And they managed to use that advantage to the greatest possible extent by offering the PDF for a more-than-bargain price. In the end, this is another signal that competition is good for end users.

+1

I have much the same impression as Rust regarding Mongoose's quality, and I'm not likely to buy another book from them, unless things change dramatically.

I currently have three Mongoose books: Traveller, Paranoia, and MRQI. I've heard people express concerns in the past about the quality of Mongoose books, but I have to say the three books I have are excellent quality. I remember there being concerns about MRQI specifically to which Mongoose said, if I'm remembering correctly, that the problem was with the company they chose to do the printing and so they switched printing companies. In the thread I was reading about all this in they said if someone had a problem with one of their books they would be happy to replace it, and other people in the thread acknowledged that Mongoose replaced their books without any problems, so that gave me a favorable impression.

I can understand people that have had negative experiences with their books in the past not wanting to do business with them again, but based on my own experience with them, I'm happy to buy a Mongoose book, as long as the price is right.

As I suspect that the two communities overlap by something like 80%, I'm not sure how to predict a winner, either.

I believe the real winner here will be BRP. We'll have all these books and all these supplements that are mostly compatible with each other, with BRP being the common element. I believe after a while people will say, "Which one should I get?" and a lot of times the answer will be, "Just get BRP, then you can use all the supplements from all the different games." So I think BRP is the real winner.

[Prime Evil]

AS I've said before, I think the best outcome for everybody would be some degree of synergy between the two systems. Obviously there will be some degree of commercial competition, but the benefits of emphasizing the compatibility of the systems far outweigh the disadvantages. As fans, we have an important role to play in this. There are a lot of people new to the d100 systems who have picked up a cheap copy of Legend and are wondering what else is out there. We can help everyone by pointing them in the direction of BRP and RQ 6, emphasizing the similarities between the systems rather than the differences. Once newcomers abandon the impression that they need to choose one system over another, they will hopefully support all three systems - and probably pick up OpenQuest and Aeon too...

I currently have three Mongoose books: Traveller, Paranoia, and MRQI. I've heard people express concerns in the past about the quality of Mongoose books, but I have to say the three books I have are excellent quality. I remember there being concerns about MRQI specifically to which Mongoose said, if I'm remembering correctly, that the problem was with the company they chose to do the printing and so they switched printing companies. In the thread I was reading about all this in they said if someone had a problem with one of their books they would be happy to replace it, and other people in the thread acknowledged that Mongoose replaced their books without any problems, so that gave me a favorable impression.

The quality of Mongoose books can vary greatly. Some of their books are superb, while others have issues with either editing or (more rarely) physical production quality. Mongoose has slowly been getting better at producing high-quality material, but things like the mess over the Secrets of the Ancients hardcover are still hurting their reputation. Just when you think that they have sorted things out, something like this comes along. I know a couple of gamers who won't touch anything by Mongoose on principal due to some bad experiences in the past.

In defense of Mongoose, I will point out that they have a punishing production schedule that few other outfits in the hobby can match. This is one reason that they are still going strong while many other gaming companies have fallen by the wayside. It doesn't hurt that they have also diversified into miniatures gaming around the time that there has been a resurgence of interest in that aspect of the hobby...

I believe the real winner here will be BRP. We'll have all these books and all these supplements that are mostly compatible with each other, with BRP being the common element. I believe after a while people will say, "Which one should I get?" and a lot of times the answer will be, "Just get BRP, then you can use all the supplements from all the different games." So I think BRP is the real winner.

I really hope that you are right about this. Chaosium deserve a big hit for their work in nurturing BRP through the long lean years - plus they remain one of my favourite gaming companies of all time.

[d10tavern]

It doesn't hurt that they have also diversified into miniatures gaming around the time that there has been a resurgence of interest in that aspect of the hobby.

Miniatures also tend to be a bigger money maker than RPGs. I was in my FLGS a couple days ago and I was talking to the owner and I asked him if he sold more RPGs or miniatures. He said he sells more miniatures because with RPGs once you buy the book you have the book, and what else do you need, but with miniatures, there's always a new army coming out, or a new set of figures coming out.

[Newt]

My take on all of this proliferation of RQ-like systems

Crisis of multiple Runequests

Edited December 17, 2011 by Newt

[rust]

I believe the real winner here will be BRP. We'll have all these books and all these supplements that are mostly compatible with each other, with BRP being the common element. I believe after a while people will say, "Which one should I get?" and a lot of times the answer will be, "Just get BRP, then you can use all the supplements from all the different games." So I think BRP is the real winner.

I am not so sure. Right now it seems that BRP could well be the most expensive

of the d100 games, and for many people the price is important. Besides, BRP is

more of a toolbox for the design of a system than a system which is ready to be

played, and I have the impression that many players prefer a less complex sys-

tem where the design decisions (choice of options, etc.) have already been ma-

de.

[Mankcam]

Re: AoT

It's hardback and is not at digest price.

I think that's a plus, not a negative, at least for me. Your book is great, I love the big hardcover, and the internal art and overall presentation is very good. I think it would be lacking to produce it in digest-format actually. I don't mind the LEGEND core rules in digest format for ease at the gaming table, although an expanded core rules would be nice as a hardcover. Settings and sourcebooks need not be the same format, as they won't be referenced as much during a session. Also AoT is the same size as the MRQ2 products, so it's nice to sit next to them in a bookcase - this will cheese me off if all the LEGEND supplements beyond game mechanics end up being digest size...

[RosenMcStern]

My take on all of this proliferation of RQ-like systems

Crisis of multiple Runequests

Yeah, really. OpenQuest has carved its own niche in the d100 ecosystem, and it will continue to thrive within it.

I am not so sure. Right now it seems that BRP could well be the most expensive

of the d100 games, and for many people the price is important. Besides, BRP is

more of a toolbox for the design of a system than a system which is ready to be

played, and I have the impression that many players prefer a less complex sys-

tem where the design decisions (choice of options, etc.) have already been ma-

de.

Some people prefer that the designers make all the choices for them (but is this true? how much do the guys who say "hey, I prefer a game without those many options" actually houserurle in their games?). Others prefer to craft their own variant, and BRP is the perfect tool for it. Besides, you usually do not play "BRP", but rather "Classic Fantasy" or "The Laundry" (an exception because it has the base rules in it) or "Mythic Iceland" or "Dragon Lines" or whatever. And all these have many of the options already ruled in or out by the designers.

Edited December 17, 2011 by RosenMcStern

[Prime Evil]

My take on all of this proliferation of RQ-like systems

Crisis of multiple Runequests

Hmmm....a very thoughtful analysis. I strongly agree that D100 is a shared gaming language and feel that there is room for multiple interpretations. The D100 system is not GURPS - it doesn't need a single unified set of rules that are authoritative in all cases. I also think that the different D100 versions are not competing against each other as much as they are against the D&D / Pathfinder juggernaut that dominates the hobby. In this instance I think there is an opportunity for a rising tide lift to lift all boats by offering a meaningful alternative. And pretty much every d100 implementation is rules-light in comparison to D&D 4e or Pathfinder....

Speaking personally, I must confess that I don't play a "pure" version of any D100 system -I tend to mix and match the bits that I like from the different implementations. It's easy enough to do this on the fly in most cases (although one day I'll sit down and document my house rules properly!). I suspent that many other gamers feel do much the same thing and treat the different d100 sourcebooks as resources to be plundered for ideas rather than holy writ handed down from on high....

[Prime Evil]

Some people prefer that the designers make all the choices for them (but is this true? how much do the guys who say "hey, I prefer a game without those many options" actually houserurle in their games?). Others prefer to craft their own variant, and BRP is the perfect tool for it. Besides, you usually do not play "BRP", but rather "Classic Fantasy" or "The Laundry" (an exception because it has the base rules in it) or "Mythic Iceland" or "Dragon Lines" or whatever. And all these have many of the options already ruled in or out by the designers.

I think that this is very true - BRP is less of a coherent universal system and more of a toolkit that you can use to assemble the type of campaign that you want to play. From this perspective, the monograph-based support model adopted by Chaosium makes perfect sense. It's not like the HERO system or GURPS where you get sourcebooks intended to provide a definitive treatment of a particular literary genre or historical period -its more like a smorgasboard from which you get to choose from amongst competing dishes to find a mix that satisfies your personal tastes. And having multiple d100 systems on the market at the same time merely increases the range of exotic dishes that are on offer!

[rust]

Besides, you usually do not play "BRP", but rather "Classic Fantasy" or "The Laundry" (an exception because it has the base rules in it) or "Mythic Iceland" or "Dragon Lines" or whatever.

With the exception of The Laundry one still has to buy the system BRP in

order to play the setting Classic Fantasy, Mythic Iceland or whatever, and

I think that this makes the combination of system plus setting comparative-

ly expensive and thereby works against BRP becoming the "winner" of the

current wave of d100 publications.

[GianniVacca]

My take on all of this proliferation of RQ-like systems

Crisis of multiple Runequests

Definitely not a 'crisis' IMHO. The more the merrier. The proliferation of D&D retro-clones has definitely created momentum for the OSR movement rather than its opposite.

[frogspawner]

With the exception of The Laundry one still has to buy the system BRP in order to play the setting Classic Fantasy, Mythic Iceland or whatever, and I think that this makes the combination of system plus setting comparatively expensive and thereby works against BRP becoming the "winner" of the current wave of d100 publications.

Is the free BRP QuickStart not enough with those settings?

[rust]

Is the free BRP QuickStart not enough with those settings?

Most of the settings can be played with either BRP QuickStart or with one

of the various "light" d100 systems and a little bit of improvisation, but for

understandable reasons both Chaosium and most game shops prefer to mar-

ket them with the BRP core rules instead of telling their customers that the-

re is a less expensive alternative.

[frogspawner]

Most of the settings can be played with either BRP QuickStart...

Then we'd better mention the BRP QuickStart is available free and legally right here.