No Spirit Magic in Legend?

TGryph

Mongoose
Just got through reading the Preview and RQII update for Legend and saw no rules for Spirit Magic. Has this been removed from the game? And if so, are there any plans to add it back in at some later date in some form or fashion?

TGryph
 
Interesting. I hope that Table of Contents in the preview is not a final version. :shock:

The RQ-Legend changes document does not say they removed the Spirit Magic chapter. It mentions shamanic cults in the Advanced Characters Table on page 4 and in the Comparative Ranks Table on page 13. The Sorcery rules were listed as Chapter 9 and the Cults, Factions and Guilds is chapter 11. I had taken that to mean Spirit Magic was chapter 10 and it had no changes since that would have been listed. (Right?)

Mongoose has promised full backwards compatibilty with RQ2 which would not be true if they didn't include Spirit Magic. Their product page says:
"Great pains have been taken to ensure full backwards compatibility with RuneQuest II. All RuneQuest II books and expansions remain compatible with Legendand, indeed, material presented in earlier editions has become the foundation for the new game."

That would not be true without the Spirit Magic rules, since those are important and referenced in many of the RQII books.
Age of Treason is a Legend book, and it refers back to the spirit magic rules in the Legend Core Rulebook.

So, I hope they are still included and that I am just being paranoid.
(Will we see an entire chapter as errata? Or maybe just the Table of Contents? That would not be an auspicious start for their new product. :roll: )
 
I just had a look and presumably the table of contents is wrong but the page count does imply that the chapter has been omitted. I would be really surprised if the chapter has really gone without Mongoose mentioning it.They do have a track record of incorrect contents pages in previews so I suspect that the chapter hasn't been discorporated. We'll soon find out.
 
Deleriad said:
I just had a look and presumably the table of contents is wrong but the page count does imply that the chapter has been omitted. I would be really surprised if the chapter has really gone without Mongoose mentioning it.They do have a track record of incorrect contents pages in previews so I suspect that the chapter hasn't been discorporated. We'll soon find out.
Yes, we've seen a wrong table of contents in the preview before. Unfortunately, the wrong table of contents was in the printed version too. :cry:

I'm hoping it's a bad preview. If not, I'm not sure which I'd prefer: wrong table of contents but spirit magic is in, or correct table of contents and spirit magic is not in.

Steve
 
Cyporiean said:
Mytholder said:
Spirit Magic is gone from the corebook; it'll show up in a supplement.

Odd that that wasn't included in the Changes doc...

Strange indeed.

Admittedly the Spirit Magic chapter in MRQ2 is a little bit sparse and leaves a lot to GM's fiat. I found the two articles in S&P on Spirit Magic very useful to give it all shape in my head. Maybe they're expanding on that to make for more complete Spirit Magic rules? I guess we'll see soon enough.
 
I'm actually glad that they aren't trying to cram Spirit Magic into the Core Rules and hopefully wherever/whenever it does appear it will be well explained and given the attention to detail it deserves.
 
RangerDan said:
Cyporiean said:
Mytholder said:
Spirit Magic is gone from the corebook; it'll show up in a supplement.

Odd that that wasn't included in the Changes doc...

Strange indeed.

Admittedly the Spirit Magic chapter in MRQ2 is a little bit sparse and leaves a lot to GM's fiat. I found the two articles in S&P on Spirit Magic very useful to give it all shape in my head. Maybe they're expanding on that to make for more complete Spirit Magic rules? I guess we'll see soon enough.

I don't really think there is a lot left up to the GMs fiat except what spirits you can start with, and even that is governed by the rules for nature spirits.
I think it's very powerful since you can apparently control your spirit, which can be a predator spirit that can discorporate other targets. There's even rules for how you assign the stats to it.
Basically the only thing really left to DM fiat is acquiring more spirits.
 
With the exception of discorporate for spirit combat, I do like the MRQ2 spirit magic. I was planning on changing that aspect of spirit combat and was saved from coming up with my own house rule by adopting the changes to spectral combat in Age of Treason.

If spirit magic really isn't included in the Legend Core Rulebook, that seems like a really .... strange decision on Mongoose's part. There are a number of the previously published books that have references to the spirit magic rules in the core rulebook and if a person bought the Legend Core Rulebook expecting it to have the rules referenced, they'd be out of luck.

But the strangest thing to me is that they have published only ONE, count it, ONE book so far under the Legend name, and it isn't fully supported. Age of Treason has a spirit magic chapter that refers the reader to the spirit rules in the Legend Core Rulebook. Its extensive, introductory adventure features spirit magics prominently.

Strange....

I am glad I bought MRQ2 rule books and not Legend to give as Christmas presents for some of my friends. They will be needing the spirit magic rules.
 
I'm a little nonplussed myself, as I have not been informed that Spirit Magic is dropped from the Legend core rulebook - have dropped a note to Matt on this. If the Spirit Magic chapter is held over to Magic of Legend, it at best means there is are errata in the AoT book, because it refers to the Legend Core Rulebook when it should refer to ...I presume the Magic of Legend book... and it is not fully supported until MoL comes out, unless you own the MRQII rules, in which case it is all fine and dandy.
 
So it has been discorporated. That is a bit surprising to say the least. There is no reference to any magic of legend or Blood magic on the Legend release schedule so I guess it'll be quite a long time before we see it published.
 
Deleriad said:
There is no reference to any magic of legend or Blood magic on the Legend release schedule so I guess it'll be quite a long time before we see it published.

The release schedule they posted on Planet Mongoose in August lists Blood Magic as an April 2012 release. The release schedule page only goes on to February so that could be the reason. Of course, that old post could just as easily be completely wrong by now.
 
LOL. I was actually thinking of buying the Legend book in the hope that Mongoose was starting over with a new focus on quality etc. However they seem to have fallen into old habits quickly. I'll not be jumping on this wagon for a while in case the wheels fall off.
 
ryhopewood said:
LOL. I was actually thinking of buying the Legend book in the hope that Mongoose was starting over with a new focus on quality etc. However they seem to have fallen into old habits quickly. I'll not be jumping on this wagon for a while in case the wheels fall off.

If the preview is representative of the final product, then either Spirit Magic has been cut or the table of contents is wrong. If spirit magic has been cut entirely, backward compatibility with MRQ II suffers badly. Alternatively, if the table of contents is wrong then you have to question the quality of the final product.

The booklet outlining the changes from RuneQuest to Legend contains repeated references to "shamans in sharmanic cults" and "spirit cults", so I wonder if Spirit Magic has simply been transformed into a shamanic version of Divine Magic?

Also, the comparative rank titles table seems to suggest a direct correlation between ranks in a Divine Cult and ranks in a Spirit Cult. However, this may simply be a holdover from the MRQ II rulebook. And there are a couple of references to "hostile spirits" and "spirit combat" in the conversion booklet that make me hope that rules for spirit combat are in there somewhere.

I dunno. It's a confusing situation. It would be helpful if somebody from Mongoose could clarify the situation for us...
 
Prime_Evil said:
I dunno. It's a confusing situation. It would be helpful if somebody from Mongoose could clarify the situation for us...

The author of Legend ("Mongoose Gar" above) does say that Spirit Magic has been cut. This will also mean that spirit combat is not defined and the same for spirits.
 
Deleriad said:
The author of Legend ("Mongoose Gar" above) does say that Spirit Magic has been cut. This will also mean that spirit combat is not defined and the same for spirits.

That makes the fact that they have retained some references to the rules that were cut even more bizarre. Now I'm worried that Mongoose may have done a very sloppy job on their edit of the core rulebook.

From the perspective of the OGL, there is probably enough in the original MRQ system reference document to reverse engineer the Spirit Magic rules - perhaps with a bit of help from Open Quest. However, the current situation is disappointing - we were promised full backwards compatibility between Legend and MRQ II and we are starting to get hints that at least one chapter of the rulebook has been cut. Furthermore, this change is not reflected in the document listing the changes between the editions. Hopefully Mongoose will release the lost Spirit Magic chapter as a free PDF download or something similar...
 
Prime_Evil said:
From the perspective of the OGL, there is probably enough in the original MRQ system reference document to reverse engineer the Spirit Magic rules - perhaps with a bit of help from Open Quest.

Unfortunately not. Spirit Magic in RQII was a brand new version. In fact I don't think any form of spirit magic made it into the MRQ1 core books and spirit combat plus spirit definitions were massively overhauled in RQII. I guess the easiest thing to do would be to buy RQII while it's still available and cheap if you need the rules desperately. Technically, by not being in legend, RQII spirit magic is not OGL as RQII wasn't OGL.
 
My guess is that hey decided that Spirit Magic as released in MRQII was not as desirable as what was in MRQII+S&P. So they probably want to take Spirit Magic, rewrite it with the S&P content included and publish it in the magic book.

Understandable, yet extremely disappointing as not only does this violate their promise that Legend would be backwards compatible (now it obviously is NOT), but frankly, the S&P Spirit Magic additions should have been included in Legend proper.
 
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