Complete Legend

[WoeRie]

Hi All,

My first post here, so sorry for the bad English (I'm German)

I'm a VERY old school player and I started a campaign with MRQ2 shortly before it was renamed to Legend and of course I bought all of the physical MRQ2 rule books.
After downloading the Errata and later the Legend PDF I was even happier with the game (though I play in 3rd Age Glorantha), but decided that the format of Legend would not satisfy my claims. I like to play with dim light on a great table... and as a GM I need a HUGE TOME to impress my players.
I also do not like that the Spirit Magic rules are removed (I really hate extra papers, as I never find them when I search them), so I decided to stick with my MRQ2 books and wait for RQ6. However after reading it and comparing the rules we decided that RQ6 adds a fine extra complexity to the game we do not want (though it has some very nice ideas). And so we are now 100% sure that we stay with Legend for quite a long time.

And so (finally) I come to my question (or beg):

PLLLLLLLLEEEEEAAAAASSSSSSEEEEEEE...... could you please release a "Legend Deluxe" ora "Complete Legend" or whatever you want to call it contaning:

a) Legend Core Book (obviously removing the monsters and equipment part)
b) Arms of Legend
c) Monsters of Legend
d) Spirit Magic PDF
e) A new and complete Index

…in one single very HUGE TOME in the appropriate size (around A4 or Letter), like you did for MRQ1.
Maybe you can release it as a limited Hardbound Edition, bound in black leather or velvet. I know that the book would be quite expensive as not too many people would be interested in it. But I think that there are quite some people like me, willing to pay you a nice pile of gold coins

What do you think? Any possibility for that in the near (or maybe not so near) future?

What do other gamers think about it, would this be interesting for you, too?

Cheers,
Woe

 

[Dan True]

I think it's a great idea. Depending on the price of course, I would pay for it.

-Dan

 

[strega]

It's easily done by you.

Buy all the books as PDFs and have them bound into one book by someone who does printing i.e your local copyshop.

It won't have the index but you'll have your massive tome.

On the other hand you could just have a nice binding an wrap it round a block of wood to impress the players. You play in a darkened room so they probably will not even notice.

Actually I'd rather have the books properly bookmarked and turned into EPUB books to use on a tablet.

I'll have just as much chance of that as you will in getting what you want.

I suspect that you wouldn't be paying the USD60 of RQ6 but more like USD150 to get a nicely bound version of the Legend material properly indexed.

 

[WoeRie]

Well 150$... hm... :? To be honest I think I would be willing to pay around 100$ for such a tome. If it really looks as great as I could think of (as leather bound) and would contain everything needed to play.

But yes, I assume my chance of getting it is quite small, at least if not another 100 people would pledge to buy it, so I have to stick with the MRQ2 books, which are nearly perfect (except of the errata).

However if I wouldn't have wishes, life would get boring and if you look at the Deluxe version of the old MRQ1, there Mongoose created something quite similar

 

[Dan True]

If you don't mind spending the time, it is not that hard to make yourself. Print all the books, make your own indexs. Go to a copy shop and have it bound with a textile back.

Then get some wood, attach it to the back and then attach pieces of leather to the piece of wood at the back.

I know this sounds daunting, but I am a complete idiot at handcrafting stuff, but in the last year I've begun blacksmithing and leatherworking, by simply trying it... and it's not that hard actually. It does take some time, but it will be worth it in the end.

And, you can do it while watching telly or something with the family. So you're basically using your "down-time" anyway.

- Dan

 

[Prime_Evil]

I've been extracting the Open Game Content from the various Legend books at they are released in order to build my own custom version of the game - this allows me to add my house rules directly into the rulebooks used by my players and to take the bits that I like out of Blood Magic and Pirates of Legend in order to integrate them into the core rules. This also allows me to reformat the rules according to my own aesthetic tastes - I don't like some of the fonts used in the "official" books. When I'm done, I plan to take the finished PDF to the local copy shop to get it printed up and bound...

 

[taxboy]

I've been extracting the Open Game Content from the various Legend books at they are released in order to build my own custom version of the game - this allows me to add my house rules directly into the rulebooks used by my players and to take the bits that I like out of Blood Magic and Pirates of Legend in order to integrate them into the core rules. This also allows me to reformat the rules according to my own aesthetic tastes - I don't like some of the fonts used in the "official" books. When I'm done, I plan to take the finished PDF to the local copy shop to get it printed up and bound...

That is a great idea - esp with a basic PDF editing programme.

I think I may do the same thing with RQ6 and paste in stuff i need / like from Legend etc.

THe RQ6 PDF is beautifully indexed and internally linked..runs well on my ipad..

 

[Bifford]

Don't forget to throw Blood Magic into the mix. I've not read or bought that one yet but it should be in there!

 

[WoeRie]

The idea with creating my own Rulebook out of the OGL sounds great!
Then I only need to find some good printing service and get it bound. Is Lulu.com doing single print runs for books?

But to be honest I would prefer a professionaly designed book


Blood Magic... I never checked that. I think that is setting related, isn't it? But adding additional stuff will bring the book over the magic limit of 500 pages!

 

[Prime_Evil]

Blood Magic... I never checked that. I think that is setting related, isn't it? But adding additional stuff will bring the book over the magic limit of 500 pages!

There's a lot of great stuff in Blood Magic, including rules for ceremonial rituals that create powerful magical effects (concert casting), summoning demons and otherworldly creatures, sacrificial magic, etc. It's highly recommended!

 

[Prime_Evil]

For anybody who's interested, I've uploaded an excerpt from my reformatted version of the rules to give you an idea of my approach - it's not as nice as the layout of the RQ 6 rulebook, but I prefer it to the layout of the current Mongoose books.

You can grab it here:

Player's Book Excerpt

It's still very much a work in progress

 

[WoeRie]

Wow, looks great! Are there anywhere Word, RTF or text files with the OGL or have you extracted it from the PDF?

 

[Prime_Evil]

Wow, looks great! Are there anywhere Word, RTF or text files with the OGL or have you extracted it from the PDF?

I've been extracting the OGL content into LibreOffice and cleaning it up as I go - the way that MS Office handles inline styles in large documents makes my head hurt!

At the moment, the whole thing is in Open Document format (.odt) but can easily be translated to other formats such as MS Word. The only fonts that I am using are Trajan Pro for the headings and Chapparal Pro for the body text. I've also messed about with an "old school" version that uses the classic 1st edition D&D fonts - Fritz Quadrata for major headings and Souvenir for sub-headings and body text. The effect was funny to say the least!

If I wasn't so lazy, I'd do everything in a proper desktop publishing app such as InDesign or Scribus, but I'm moving things around a lot as I go.

For example, I moved some of the rules from the Game System chapter of the core rulebook into a new chapter that I've entitled "Exploration & Environments" and added the sea travel rules from Arms of Legend / Pirates of Legend...along with a few other bits and pieces. This is partly because I'm keen to emphasize to players that the game should be as much about exploring the wilderlands as it is about combat. Ultimately, I'd also like to include rules for underwater and aerial adventures in this section.

I may also create a "Society & Culture" chapter that handles things such as Social Class, Reputation, etc at some point....

 

[GamerDude]

Actually I'd rather have the books properly bookmarked and turned into EPUB books to use on a tablet.

how did you turn the PDF into an eBook? (DEFINATELY would love this. have all the PDFs myself, use both the Nook and the Kindle software on my Android tablet).

 

[strega]

You can use Calibre to turn many formats into EPUB. Direct from PDF is a bit problematic at the moment but you can extract the text from a PDF (I use Foxit as my PDF reader of choice), format that in Word or Open Office/Libre Office to your preference and save as a RTF file. (Calibre prefers RTF files for turning into EPUBs.) Run Calibre and input the RTF file, convert it to EPUB then write it out into an appropriate folder for transfer to your eReader device.

I've used it to turn shorter PDFs with tables and two column text into EPUBs that reflow the text into a single column file, preserve the format of tables andd do a great job of output on Adobe's Digital Editions application on a PC. I haven't yet tried it on a tablet or iPad but there are options in Calibre specifically for various display devices if you need to optimise it for that device.

www.calibre-ebook.com

 

[Prime_Evil]

Calibre is a great program and I strongly recommend it - I've been using it to manage my extensive collection of ebooks and I'm very happy with it.

However, I still have reservations about choosing EPUB as the format for rulebooks. It's very hard to do certain types of formatting in EPUBs (such as nested tables) that frequently appear in RPG rulebooks.