Legend Unveiled

[master of reality]

Please hire artists who produce art similar to what Angus McBride did for Osprey or to what Mariusz Kozik is doing.

Wow! Very impressive! I wish this guy had done the cover.

For my own two cents, I don't care for the new Legend cover either.

 

[Lord Kruge]

constructive critism

Fair enough. In order to be as constructive as possible, it helps to know what the concept and focus of the art direction was.

It *seems* from the cover art, that Legend is being marketed to bring in a younger demographic, particularly a "post-MMO" gaming audience. Is that the case? If so, the sexualization of the teenage looking girls on the cover might not be the best way to go.

Also the "cartoonish", crossing into Anime style, art doesn't seem to mesh well with Legend's content as a very gritty and realistic game. As someone who is very familiar with the content inside the book, there seems to be a disconnect between cover and content.

If I had to decide from the cover art, what game supplement I was looking at, I would guess a MMO (probably Lineage 2 or WoW) supplement for Savage Worlds.

If that was the intent of the art direction, then you are succeeding. If you intended something else, then you should let us know what you were thinking, so we can let you know, as customers, whether we think you are succeeding in that goal.

Unless, of course the forum-goers are such a small section of your customer base, and not a very representative one, that you don't really care too much what we think.(which is a 100% valid point, btw.)

 

[Piperdog]

So I look over the new site and go to the Legend section. First, I see a sale on the RQII hardcovers, which is cool, but I also see you the new Legend book, with the black cover being the official cover and the not so popular cover now is being offered as the alternative cover. I am so glad I can get the black cover book, you have no idea. I will definitely buy a few at that price point as well.

I wonder about the book being for sale right now though...it has to be a preorder right? It doesn't say so and you can add it to your cart and pay for it right now. I am thinking this is an oversight with the new site going up. It would be cool if it was ready to go earlier than scheduled though.

 

[Redcrow]

Art is subjective and there is a difference between poor art and art that is not to your tastes.

You're right. That was a bad choice of words on my part and I would like to apologize to the artist for that. The artwork is much better than anything I could produce.

What I should have said was that it was a poor choice of art for the cover. Not because the art isn't good, but because it isn't (IMO) very evocative of the game contained between the covers. It also doesn't grab me in a way that would make me want to pick up the book and flip through it to learn more about the game.

Even if the goal of that cover was to appeal to a younger audience, I'm still not convinced its the best choice. IMO, a better balance could be found that would appeal to both younger and older potential customers.

 

[Jujitsudave]

medievaladventures wrote:

Please hire artists who produce art similar to what Angus McBride did for Osprey or to what Mariusz Kozik is doing.


Wow! Very impressive! I wish this guy had done the cover.

I whole heartedly agree. Pic 51 made my heart skip a beat.

 

[hanszurcher]

I'm a middle aged guy and I like the cover art just fine. But I do like my warriors to be shirtless and well oiled.

What's the interior art look like?

 

[Mongoose_Will]

My thought process behind the cover was to help bring in a new audience.

If we were only looking at appealing to the current fan base then we might aswell of kept the RQ name and just released a digest edition of RQ2...

Part of the point of Legend was to bring more people into the hobby aswell as introducing them to an excellent system at affordable prices.

One main complaint is that the characters are not relevent to a gritty, realistic setting. The relevence is abstract and pretty basic, it comes from 3 fantasy based characters, these guys are Legends, you can become one too. You might not think their poses, clothes or expressions are indictive of a Legend and thats fine, but some (hopefully many) people will think 'cool' and they are the younger audience that dont know whats inside (they might not be roleplayers) and who i'm trying to bring onboard.

It might seem juvenile... maybe because everyone who had something negative to say is a fan, has played or is aware of RuneQuest 2 in its current iteration and has an idea of a way it should look and maybe this 'Legend' isnt it, but that does'nt mean it is not going to get people into the hobby, into this game or that your losing anything. The alternative cover aswell as the tweaked system and interior direction should hopefully be enough for you all to still enjoy the game.

The interiors will be simple and elegent (no big borders) with work by four Artists - Sendol Studios (who did the cover images), Nick Egberts, Javier Charro and Carlos Nunez de Castro Torres. Feel free to look them up.

I understand if you disagree with me but this is the direction I have taken and I am very happy with the outcome.

Also just to point out that this was my own view on the situation and is not indictive of Mongoose as a whole, i have felt personally obliged to explain the Art Direction and hope it has anwsered some questions.

 

[Richard]

Thanks for the clear explanation of your thinking Will. The cover's not to my tastes (Although to be honest I'm an ancient hard core gaming dinosaur who's more interested in the effectiveness of anyrules tweaks and how the RQ6 team handle this...) but I appreciate your line of thought and sincerely hope you're proved right!

 

[Lord Kruge]

Thanks for the response, Will. I was wondering, with the parchment and blue logo, were you (or maybe the artists) trying to evoke the feel of the WoW iconic character photos?

 

[Jujitsudave]

Thanks at least, for giving us some insight into your ideas for the art direction as well as taking the honorable stance of ownership and responsibility for the decision of the artwork.

 

[hanszurcher]

...
The interiors will be simple and elegent (no big borders) ....

Great. Those big decorative boarders and backgrounds eat into my toner budget. Much as I love my new shiny Elric PDF...every time a print another chapter I just cringe inside when I see those big useless swaths of black on top and bottom.

I'm hoping the PDF will be printer friendly?

What will be the exact dimensions of the book?

 

[Da Boss]

The alternative cover aswell as the tweaked system and interior direction should hopefully be enough for you all to still enjoy the game.

Vert interested in what exactly has been tweeked for the new version...........

 

[Piperdog]

I can honestly say I love the black cover. I will be buying multiple hard copies and a pdf of the core rules, and at least one print/pdf combo of everything else.

I would love to see that in hardcover leatherette with silver foil lettering/detailing.....I can dream can't I? But the digest size and price point makes it easy to stow away in a backpack and cheap enough to buy copies for the game table. Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition was a digest book, and the price point was the deciding factor for me to check it out. Hopefully this will be the same case for Legend. 8)

 

[Jujitsudave]

Ultimately It doesn't matter to me since I use PDF.

 

[Deleriad]

At the risk of resurrecting this particular dead horse. A neat little tumblr on "women in reasonable armour." There are varying styles but if you wanted iconic female as well as male characters on a cover, you could do worse than pick some of these.
http://womenfighters.tumblr.com/

 

[alex_greene]

Mongoose have a perfect opportunity to redefine the fantasy RPG, in much the same way as White Wolf's Exalted line has tried to for many years.

Seriously, they need to steer away from bog standard, cliche-ridden Tolkien / Warhammer tropes, archetypes and general faux mediaeval ambience, because all the other fantasy RPG publishers out there will look at what Mongoose is producing and, if it looks and feels and smells the same as theirs, or worse like D&D, they'll just laugh and shrug Mongoose off as just more of the same. Join the club, churning out pretty workmanlike stuff by comparison, but nothing to take to the ENNies about.

Legend needs to be able to focus on what makes a fantasy; what makes a legend; and what will make this game, in particular, a Legend - both to run and to referee.

You don't want to bog this game down, from its beginnings, in just plain old cookie-cutter identikit generic "fighters and clerics and mages and spells that read like a list of Spandex superpowers with no idea of how magic really works and poncy elves and stumpy beardy Viking dwarves with horned helmets that work down mines, oh, and here are stats for zombies and dragons."

You really don't.

 

[Prime_Evil]

Mongoose have a perfect opportunity to redefine the fantasy RPG, in much the same way as White Wolf's Exalted line has tried to for many years.

Although there's some truth to what you saying, remember that the RPG industry is smaller and less influential than it used to be. In the popular imagination, the fantasy genre is conditioned by World of Warcraft and the LoTR movies. I suspect that Mongoose is not in a position to change that. Exalted was released at a time when the RPG industry was much larger and has had time to find an audience base - I don't think that Legend has that luxury. It needs to appeal to a broad range of gamers as quickly as possible.

Seriously, they need to steer away from bog standard, cliche-ridden Tolkien / Warhammer tropes, archetypes and general faux mediaeval ambience, because all the other fantasy RPG publishers out there will look at what Mongoose is producing and, if it looks and feels and smells the same as theirs, or worse like D&D, they'll just laugh and shrug Mongoose off as just more of the same. Join the club, churning out pretty workmanlike stuff by comparison, but nothing to take to the ENNies about..

There are many possible interpretations of the fantasy genre that don't depend upon the influence of Tolkein and Warhammer. Personally I would like to see a version of the system that slants towards Swords & Sorcery pulp fiction rather than Tolkeinesque High Fantasy or Anime-inspired adventure - I think that the gritty feel of the game system lends itself particularly well to that subgenre.

However, at the end of the day, I suspect that Mongoose will make Legend into a generic toolkit that can be customised for specific subgenres (such as historical fantasy or high fantasy) in later sourcebooks. This makes perfect sense both from a commercial and an artistic viewpoint. There will be plenty of opportunities to present unique interpretations of the fantasy genre down the track in sourcebooks such as Age of Treason that do not carry the expectations of the entire product line on their back.

The Legend game system has a LOT of potential, but I get the feeling that the sales performance of RQ II has been a bit underwhelming so far. One reason for this has been that the Runequest name is closely associated with the Glorantha setting in the minds of many gamers. And Glorantha is an acquired taste that doesn't appeal to everybody - the one thing that every gamer seems to know about the setting is that it has sentient ducks! To be truthful, I can see Mongoose attempting to broaden the appeal of Legend with the reboot.

You don't want to bog this game down, from its beginnings, in just plain old cookie-cutter identikit generic "fighters and clerics and mages and spells that read like a list of Spandex superpowers with no idea of how magic really works and poncy elves and stumpy beardy Viking dwarves with horned helmets that work down mines, oh, and here are stats for zombies and dragons."

You really don't.

I don't think that Legend does this. It's not a class-based system and doesn't enforce strong genre-based character archetypes on the players. The magic systems allow for a lot of diversity. Indeed, the game actively encourages multiple interpretations of how magic works. The flexibility of the system compared to games such as D&D and Pathfinder should be a major selling point.

I don't know that the depictions of mythological creatures will stray too far from the source material as doing so runs the risk of alienating a large portion of your potential audience - the danger is that you end up with something like Skyrealms of Jorune or M.A.R. Barker's Tekumel that is fascinating but does not appeal to the majority of gamers who have been brought up with Western mythological tropes.

 

[alex_greene]

fascinating but does not appeal to the majority of gamers who have been brought up with Western mythological tropes.

Western mythological tropes as established in historical texts of cultural significance to the real nations of the West, or simply the frighteningly narrow cultural tropes established and, to some extent, invented, by the last two centuries' fantasy authors particularly Tolkien, CS Lewis and the Inklings?

There's more to fantasy than Epic Winnie the Pooh!

 

[Prime_Evil]

Western mythological tropes as established in historical texts of cultural significance to the real nations of the West, or simply the frighteningly narrow cultural tropes established and, to some extent, invented, by the last two centuries' fantasy authors particularly Tolkien, CS Lewis and the Inklings?

There's more to fantasy than Epic Winnie the Pooh!

The Inklings were not the first modern authors to deal with medieval fantasy settings and their work represent merely one strand in the development of fantasy fiction - albeit one that has become dominant since the commercialisation of fantasy from the 1980s onwards. There were a number of earlier British fantasy authors who offer very different styles - William Morris, E.R. Eddison, and Lord Dunsany to name the three most important practitioners.

In addition, the American pulp fantasy tradition developed largely independently of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis until the late 1960's. Authors such as Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith had minimal contact with the British fantasy tropes and offer an alternative tradition (although Lovecraft did admire the works of Dunsany and there are indications that Tolkien may have been introduced to Robert E. Howard's work AFTER the publication of LoTR). Later pulp authors such as Fritz Leiber, C.L. Moore, Ray Bradbury, Fletcher Pratt, Gardener Fox et al wrote fantasy in a very different style to Tolkien and Lewis well into the 1960s.

It is startling to note that Poul Anderson's outstanding novel "The Broken Sword" was published in the same year as "Lord of the Rings" and makes very different use of Scandinavian mythology than Tolkien did in LotR.

Do you assert that works such as Jack Vance's Dying Earth are cut from the same cloth as C.S. Lewis' Narnia stories?

And then there's the whole Sword & Planet genre that developed independently in America under the influence of Edgar Rice Burroughs. From the 1930s through to the 1950's there were a whole string of genre authors mining this vein (of whom the best was undoubtably the sadly neglected Leigh Brackett). Plus there was the "Lost World" genre represented by authors such as Abraham Merritt (The Moon Pools, Dwellers in the Mirage, The Face in the Abyss, et al).

Some of the authors mentioned above did work with "Western mythological tropes as established in historical texts of cultural significance" - for example, Lovecraft was writing in the Gothic tradition that grew out of the 19th Romantic movement and was heavily influenced by Poe, Clark Ashton Smith was heavily influenced by the French decadents (particularly Baudelaire), and Robert E. Howard stole from any source that didn't run away fast enough (although a lot of his history was borrowed from the stories of Harold Lamb). And then there is the whole influence of Orientalism on early American fantasy - William Beckford's Vathek and Richard Francis Burton's translation of A Thousand and One Nights cast a long shadow over the development of American fantasy.

The assertion that Tolkien and C.S. Lewis wrote Epic versions of Winnie the Pooh is derived from Michael Moorcock's essay later republished in his non-fiction book "Wizardry and Wild Romance". In my opinion, Moorcock makes some good points, but wildly over-states his case for rhetorical purposes. To be honest, I think Richard Morgan's recent critique of Tolkien is stronger and more objective in many ways.

Tolkien and Lewis were not the only authors who that influenced the tropes of fantasy RPGS. Gary Gygax consistently downplayed the influence of Tolkien on his own work, indicating that he preferred authors such as Robert E. Howard, Abraham Merrit, Fritz Leiber, and L. Sprague De Camp. If you look at Appendix N in the 1st Edition Dungeon Master's Guide, you will see that Tolkein was only one author amongst many - and not one that Gygax singled out as a strong influence on the development of the game. The normative influence of Tolkien came later, with the advent of Fantasy as a publishing category.

There are very few books in the product line for Legend announced so far that scream generic Tolkien-influenced fantasy at me - there are a couple of historical fantasy sourcebooks on the horizon....and the Spider God's Bride adventure seems to channel the older American pulp fantasy tradition.

 

[Mixster]

I don't think that Legend does this. It's not a class-based system and doesn't enforce strong genre-based character archetypes on the players. The magic systems allow for a lot of diversity. Indeed, the game actively encourages multiple interpretations of how magic works. The flexibility of the system compared to games such as D&D and Pathfinder should be a major selling point.

I think the front page very much does this. There's a bloke in armour, a chick waving around fire (why is she even wasting he magic points animating fire posing for a picture, where's the magic is a secret type of idea that seems pretty common in RQ). And another loosely armoured girl. With a standard eastern european look. Why are they portrayed in this standard way one might ask? It surely is to lure in new customers, which is a good idea.
But IMO the cover of legend is a very standard fantasy cover (as in WoW based). And I don't think this is a sound selling strategy as people who want to play table-top WoW already have a splendid game for it.