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Why Legend?


DreadDomain

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Guys,

Participating to the bundle made me wonder about Legend and its appeal to the fans. Given that RQ6 and now Mythras is Pete and Loz direct refinement of their work on MRQII and Legend, what makes you choose Legend over RQ6/Mythras?

Price (1$) might be a reason, or familiarity (already satisfied with Legend and didn't bother to switch) but I am more interested to know where you believe Legend is better than RQ6 from a rule perspectice?

Thanks!

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I don't think Legend is better than RQ6/Mythras, but the price sure is.

However you might find that many people buy Legend for it's supplements and play them with the RQ6/Mythras rules.

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" Sure it's fun, but it is also well known that a D20 roll and an AC is no match against a hefty swing of a D100% and a D20 Hit Location Table!"

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51 minutes ago, Mankcam said:

However you might find that many people buy Legend for it's supplements and play them with the RQ6/Mythras rules.

Yeah, I've bought several of the Legend books... but the intent was to mine them for stuff I could use in Magic World. Same with some of the Openquest books. Nothing against those systems though.

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Of course! Crosspollination from the broad BRP family is another good reason that I should have mentioned. What are Legend supplements that you consider a top notch resource for Legend or any BRP tupe game? Are the Xoth supplement worth it?

From a rule perspective, do you believe Heroic Abilities are a definite plus compare to Mythras?

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From a player/GM point of view, Legend is a bit simpler that Mythras but there isn't much difference between them. Of course, The Design Mechanism will disagree with me here! :)

However, from a publishing point of view there is a big difference. Legend is OGL and Mythras isn't. That means that someone could publish a Legend supplement without asking permission from, or signing contracts with, Mongoose Publishing. This gives a lot of flexibility for people wanting to write supplements.

The fact that legend can be used with Mythras very easily means that Mythras players and GMs benefit from Legend supplements, more so than BRP or OpenQuest supplements. 

I tend to use whatever supplement with whatever system I am using anyway, so they are all the same to me.

 

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Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

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2 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

Of course! Crosspollination from the broad BRP family is another good reason that I should have mentioned. What are Legend supplements that you consider a top notch resource for Legend or any BRP tupe game? Are the Xoth supplement worth it?

I wrote Land of Ice and Stone, Legend's Ice Age supplement, so I would say that is worth it for the survival rules alone. 

Vikings and Samurai of Legend are well worth buying. 

The Xoth supplements are OK, but I am not particularly interested in the setting.

 

2 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

From a rule perspective, do you believe Heroic Abilities are a definite plus compare to Mythras?

Yes. It was a shame that they were dropped for RQ6/Mythras. I understand why they were dropped, but they filled a niche. The way they are gained in Legend is better than in MRQI, so they have evolved a bit.

 

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Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here

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I personally don't really like the idea of Heroic Abilities for most settings, they are too much like D&D Feats - you can just cover that with skills I think. However they do have a role in pulpy/cinematic settings, like Pulp Era Adventure 1930s, but not really in a gritty ancient/medieval setting. However how they can sometimes be used in a Fantasy setting as special abilities/gifts awarded from the Cults or Deities etc, or if playing a Mythic Mycenaean Age setting for instance (where heroes often had special abilities), so all in all they are okay if used in particular settings.

I really liked some of the MRQ2 books such as Vikings, Samurai, and Pirates, which were reprinted in Legend. Also there have been some cool settings for Legend that I like, such as Deus Vult and Mercenary Breed. Also the Xoth books are reasonably good if you want to play a Hyborian Age style game. The Stone Age one that Simon did is on my wish list to get, solely because I have not seen any game portray a stone age setting before.

I think the flexibility of publishing Legend may keep it around for a little while

 

Edited by Mankcam

" Sure it's fun, but it is also well known that a D20 roll and an AC is no match against a hefty swing of a D100% and a D20 Hit Location Table!"

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4 hours ago, Mankcam said:

However you might find that many people buy Legend for it's supplements and play them with the RQ6/Mythras rules.

The same here. For example, I very much like Land of Ice and Stone, but I also prefer RQ6/Mythras to Legend.

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One thing I will say is that Legend is not cheaper than Mythras/RQ6. The Legend core rulebook may be £1 but Mythras Imperative is free and the RQ6 core fantasy book covers the content in Legend, Monsters of Legend, The spirit magic supplement and a whole lot more besides for the cheaper than buying the Legend content. (Prices all via PDF from Drivethru. RQ6 is even cheaper if you stick to printed products.)

Legend's supplements are horribly over-priced. For example Book of Quests (RQ6) and Spider God's Bride (Legend) are both S&S campaigns with similar page counts. BoQ is £6, SGB is £15. 

System wise. Mythras/RQ6 is a refined and smoother and has a lot more depth out of the core book. For Legend you have to buy multiple supplements to get the same depth but then have to stitch them together: something that is already done for you in Mythras.

About the only advantage to Legend is that the core book is less intimidating than the RQ6 core book. However with Mythras Imperative you have a good simple core book that is ideal for players who don't want to spend ages learning a system. 

Really, at this point, I don't even see why anyone would spend even £1 for the Legend core book. The exception being that you want to self-publish Legend products using the OGL. 

 

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4 hours ago, Mankcam said:

I personally don't really like the idea of Heroic Abilities for most settings, they are too much like D&D Feats - you can just cover that with skills I think. However they do have a role in pulpy/cinematic settings, like Pulp Era Adventure 1930s, but not really in a gritty ancient/medieval setting. However how they can sometimes be used in a Fantasy setting as special abilities/gifts awarded from the Cults or Deities etc, or if playing a Mythic Mycenaean Age setting for instance (where heroes often had special abilities), so all in all they are okay if used in particular settings.

I really liked some of the MRQ2 books such as Vikings, Samurai, and Pirates, which were reprinted in Legend. Also there have been some cool settings for Legend that I like, such as Deus Vult and Mercenary Breed. Also the Xoth books are reasonably good if you want to play a Hyborian Age style game. The Stone Age one that Simon did is on my wish list to get, solely because I have not seen any game portray a stone age setting before.

I think the flexibility of publishing Legend may keep it around for a little while

 

 Going to have to disagree with you a little here.

  I use heroic abilities in my Glorantha but not as intended. I use them instead as rewards for performing a  Heroquest. Save me the trouble of Ok you performed this Heroquest what reward do I give the players. But outside of doing a Heroquest, You cannot get Heroic abilities.

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I think the main benefit of both Legend  and OpenQuest is the ease of which the supplements can be used.

Personally if someone is interested in the MRQ D100 line of games, then I would recommend OpenQuest Basic or Mythras Imperative as rule sets, but advise them that  Legend resources can be pretty much used with relative ease by both of these rule sets.

If they like what they see and want a more hefty set of rules, then there is not much point looking at the Legend rule set, I would just upgrade to the full Mythras book in that case.

Edited by Mankcam
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" Sure it's fun, but it is also well known that a D20 roll and an AC is no match against a hefty swing of a D100% and a D20 Hit Location Table!"

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9 hours ago, TRose said:

 Going to have to disagree with you a little here.

  I use heroic abilities in my Glorantha but not as intended. I use them instead as rewards for performing a  Heroquest. Save me the trouble of Ok you performed this Heroquest what reward do I give the players. But outside of doing a Heroquest, You cannot get Heroic abilities.

In fact there's no disagreement. I just didn't use Glorantha in my example, but that is exactly how I have decided to use Heroic Ablities in Glorantha if I play it with R6. I think it's a great way to portray Mythic Abilities gained through HeroQuesing.

I just never got around to running it in practice, but that's exactly how I decided to use them. I may even port them over into CRQ4 for that same purpose if there aren't any rules written for abilities gained through HeroQuesting.

" Sure it's fun, but it is also well known that a D20 roll and an AC is no match against a hefty swing of a D100% and a D20 Hit Location Table!"

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I use lenegnd, suplaments with my Mythras champagnes, also OpenQuests suplaments for me the big advantage of d100 is how easy it is to use suplaments of other systems. I pretty much only GM with Mythras but maybe do more to my laziness, as I don't take the time to learn the other system well enough to GM them.

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From a player/GM point of view, Legend is a bit simpler that Mythras but there isn't much difference between them. Of course, The Design Mechanism will disagree with me here! :)

Actually, we don't! Legend is slightly simpler than Mythras, but I think it also includes a few elements that while simpler, clunk a bit. Its part of the reason why we always viewed Mythras as an opportunity to fine tune the engine.

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The Design Mechanism: Publishers of Mythras

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On Heroic Abilities

We left them out of Mythras for a number of reasons. First, I don't especially like them, but that wasn't the main reason for their omission. One of the issues people had with Heroic Abilities was the whole Hero Point economy, and why you had to spend your heroism to earn a feat. As we did away with Hero Points and introduced Luck Points (which work in a fundamentally different way), we'd have had to introduce yet another point tally if Heroic Abilities were to be retained - and we didn't want to do that. Thirdly, we introduced Mysticism, which we think does a far more elegant job of the kind of heroics the HAs set out to achieve. Fourthly, about half the Heroic Abilities are combat-focused, and we wanted to try to get away from the notion that combat is the be-all and end-all of the system. Fifthly, Pete didn't like 'em either.

That said, if HAs suit your style of play, they're a doddle to add to Mythras, as long as you find a way of awarding them without a reliance on Hero Points. I like the HeroQuest reward idea mentioned earlier - a good way of providing an individual reward to something that should be a life changing event.

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The Design Mechanism: Publishers of Mythras

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On July 16, 2016 at 1:25 AM, DreadDomain said:

What are Legend supplements that you consider a top notch resource for Legend or any BRP tupe game?

I like Blood Magic quite a bit... I know Mongoose gimped it, it's missing some stuff its own intro claims it presents... but its still well done and has lots of flavorful ideas. I bought it to implement something like DCC's 'spellburn' in my Magic World game... and add a bit of horror.

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22 hours ago, lawrence.whitaker said:

One of the issues people had with Heroic Abilities was the whole Hero Point economy, and why you had to spend your heroism to earn a feat. As we did away with Hero Points and introduced Luck Points (which work in a fundamentally different way), we'd have had to introduce yet another point tally if Heroic Abilities were to be retained - and we didn't want to do that. Thirdly, we introduced Mysticism, which we think does a far more elegant job of the kind of heroics the HAs set out to achieve. Fourthly, about half the Heroic Abilities are combat-focused, and we wanted to try to get away from the notion that combat is the be-all and end-all of the system.

 

All of which are valid reasons!

I've been playing around with a tweak where Hero Points are replaced by something closer to the Doubloon system from Pirates & Dragons and can be spent on the fly to perform cool stunts similar to those represented by Heroic Abilities. It's a bit freeform at the moment, but seems to work reasonably well in practice. It also gets away from purely combat-focused abilities as I only allow players to perform a couple of stunts per scene - which makes it difficult for characters to hoard all of their points for use in combat.

I do rather like the Mysticism system in RQ 6 / Mythras though.

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On 16/07/2016 at 8:29 PM, soltakss said:

However, from a publishing point of view there is a big difference. Legend is OGL and Mythras isn't. That means that someone could publish a Legend supplement without asking permission from, or signing contracts with, Mongoose Publishing. This gives a lot of flexibility for people wanting to write supplements.

The fact that legend can be used with Mythras very easily means that Mythras players and GMs benefit from Legend supplements, more so than BRP or OpenQuest supplements.

These are the key selling points for me, even though I'm increasingly running a weird hybrid of several d100 games.

Out of curiosity, will Design Mechanism be offering anything similar to the RQ Gateway License for Mythras to allow third-party publishers to produce compatible material? And if so, has anything been revealed about the terms and conditions yet?

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Out of curiosity, will Design Mechanism be offering anything similar to the RQ Gateway License for Mythras to allow third-party publishers to produce compatible material? And if so, has anything been revealed about the terms and conditions yet?

Yes - it's available right now. PM me with your email address for a copy.

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