State of Mongoose 2019, 2020 and in to 2021: Legend

Herne'sSon said:
So... we're pretty much at the "end of 2019"... Any news?

Still not forgotten, but we are absolutely buried at the moment - I'll go through things in detail in the forthcoming State of the Mongoose.
 
msprange said:
Herne'sSon said:
So... we're pretty much at the "end of 2019"... Any news?

Still not forgotten, but we are absolutely buried at the moment - I'll go through things in detail in the forthcoming State of the Mongoose.

Gotcha! Thanks for the quick response. I'll keep my eyes out for the SotM.

Thanks!
 
2020 State of Mongoose

Legend

Every year we talk about Legend, and every year we lack the resources to do it justice. I regret to say that 2020 will be no different in this regard – we simply have too much going on to give it anything more than a cursory glance. There are further issues too…

There have been quite a few changes in the D100 RPG market over the past year. Legend certainly still has a place, especially if it retains its Open nature (no plans to change anything there), but looking at things objectively, it could really use a) a second edition to tighten things up – it feels a little too ‘clunky’ for my liking – and b) its own setting.

This all provides food for thought, but I am afraid we will be unlikely to dine on this one in 2020.


I personally do not think Legend is "clunky", and I certainly do not think it needs a second edition.

It's own setting....well, yes, that is certainly something it needs, but at the same time Legend is all about the fact that it is a modular game you plug a setting in to. Like Historia Rodentia, or Pirates of Legend, Gladiators of Legend, Spider God's Bride/Sheoloth, Eternity Realms, Ancient Stones, etc etc. Shoe-horning just the one setting onto it limits it. However, releasing settings FOR it expands it! More settings like those mentioned above will breathe fresh new life into the game. So release new settings built with and around Legend.


As for "quite a few changes in the D100 RPG market" - I still see it being as strong as ever, especially with:
A. The new Runequest / Glorantha versions;
B. Call of Cthulhu 7th edition.

These are both front-runners in the RPG scene and it (quite frankly) pi**es me off that Legend isn't up there with them.


I know I need to pull my finger out and start to do work on my setting book for Ancient stones, but I am doing proofreading (which is itself taking too long) and honestly I have NO clue where to start with the whole thing. So who knows if 2020 will be the year I actually start work on it.....?
 
Legend
Every year we talk about Legend, and every year we lack the resources to do it justice. I regret to say that 2020 will be no different in this regard – we simply have too much going on to give it anything more than a cursory glance.

No surprises there.

There are further issues too…

There have been quite a few changes in the D100 RPG market over the past year. Legend certainly still has a place, especially if it retains its Open nature (no plans to change anything there), but looking at things objectively, it could really use a) a second edition to tighten things up – it feels a little too ‘clunky’ for my liking – and b) its own setting.

This all provides food for thought, but I am afraid we will be unlikely to dine on this one in 2020.

Well, I guess Legend's completely lost out to Mithras, Runequest Glorantha and Openquest. They offer various flavors of d100 gaming at different levels of crunch. Because Legend hasn't been supported *at all* since it appeared, its no wonder it's lost out. There's rumors now of some kind of BRP open license, and there's Openquest 3 on the way which is also OGL, so why would anyone bother with Legend? It's publisher doesn't care for it much, so why would anyone else?

Like Bifford I disagree that it's too clunky. I'd like to know how and it what ways. But okay, let's say it is and needs a new edition, what changes do you make? How do you change stuff so that it's still Legend and not another BRP clone, and still Legend, but different from Openquest and Mithras and the other games that have been cared for by their publishers? Yeah, a setting might help, but it's going to have kick some serious ass to get people to sit up and take notice. We had Wraith Recon, Deus Vult, the Rodentia thing... didn't make much difference from what I can see.

I consider Legend a dead system, which pains me because it shouldn't be. But I think the ship's sailed.
 
Carew said:
I consider Legend a dead system, which pains me because it shouldn't be. But I think the ship's sailed.

I agree. There has been no new Legend books in ca. five years, which means that Legend would need re-launch to generate some interest. Like msprange said D100 RPG market has moved forward, and it would be practically impossible to sell old rules without interesting campaign setting to new customers.

Personally I used Legend to run Elric of Melniboné campaign (supplemented with Chaosium's old Stormbringer source books). Unfortunately Elric and other campaign settings for MRQII/Legend (with the exception of Deus Vult) were discontinued. It is possible that I will use some other (actively supported) D100 system instead of Legend if I decide to return to the Young Kingdoms at some point in the future.
 
Have we had another State of Mongoose yet? They normally come out in January or February.

Presumably, it won't mention Legend, or might say that Legend is in the queue behind Traveller and other games that Mongoose actually care about.
 
Prime_Evil said:
Legend isn't dead. It's just pining for the fjords....

Maybe not. Let's hope that someone picks it up and runs with it. It deserves a good treatment and support.
 
soltakss said:
Maybe not. Let's hope that someone picks it up and runs with it. It deserves a good treatment and support.

I agree. I still think there is room in the market for a game with a complexity level between that of OpenQuest and that of Mythras. The new edition og Runequest: Adventures in Glorantha comes close, but is tightly integrated with a specific setting. So there is room for a contender in that mid-crunch space.

It might also make sense to focus the game on a specific sub-genre. The adaptation of the Spider God's Bride showed that Legend can do Swords and Sorcery very well. Yes, there were balance issues with some of the conversions because Legend is not D&D - being outnumbered is not uncommon in D&D, but it is lethal in Legend. Yet the flavour of the setting worked very well with Legend.

Another alternative might be to double down on the "Britishness" of the game in comparison to the American D100 variants. Give us a game of medieval grit with dark humour - a descendent of early Warhammer, Monty Python, Black Adder, Fighting Fantasy, and 2000AD.
 
Prime_Evil said:
soltakss said:
Maybe not. Let's hope that someone picks it up and runs with it. It deserves a good treatment and support.

I agree. I still think there is room in the market for a game with a complexity level between that of OpenQuest and that of Mythras. The new edition of Runequest: Adventures in Glorantha comes close, but is tightly integrated with a specific setting. So there is room for a contender in that mid-crunch space.


Last year I played in a quick game of Mythras and I am currently in a PbF game of RQ:Adventures in Glorantha atm on RPGGeek. I would *not* call it between those complexity levels. Mythras was still pretty simple. Roleplaying has added so many layers of complexity it's daft.

Critical Success + Special Success + Success + Failure + Fumble. That's an extra level of knowing numbers right there for Special Success. There's a fair bit of other changes too. But I'm enjoying my first actual trip into Glorantha.


I've got all the Spider God Bride books but havn't read/run them yet.

I have too many games I want to learn and run lol.

New Legend books would be great.
 
Given the unintentional publicity the Legend OGL has been getting this week, it would certainly seem to be a good time to get some books out there.
 
Vile said:
Given the unintentional publicity the Legend OGL has been getting this week, it would certainly seem to be a good time to get some books out there.

What unintentional publicity? (all I can think of is as a result of the Chaosium OGL paperwork release?)
 
Bifford said:
Vile said:
Given the unintentional publicity the Legend OGL has been getting this week, it would certainly seem to be a good time to get some books out there.
What unintentional publicity? (all I can think of is as a result of the Chaosium OGL paperwork release?)

I didn't want to be too specific, there are lots of other places talking about that.
 
Vile said:
Given the unintentional publicity the Legend OGL has been getting this week, it would certainly seem to be a good time to get some books out there.

Being watching the Chaosium SRD discussion at the BRP site and astounded at how evasive and dismissive the staffers there have been to simple, polite, direct questions. One of the staffers basically told anyone who disgrees with them to 'get lost' and that's not good from a professional company that's frequently ragged on Mongoose. They've borked the attempt at an open gaming license and the SRD is little more than a very barebones set of d100 rules that anyone attempting to use has a load of work to do to make them even remotely playable. There has been some comparison with Legend and Legend OGL, and the same staffers saying something like the Legend OGL has no legal standing or something. Its all very evasive, very defensive, and I don't get why they can't give anyone straight answers. I suspect its because if they do, they have to admit that there license is borked and they don't want to do that. It would also mean any admissions now, in a forum, would make it harder to walk back any decisions they make on prohibited content at some time in the future, like certain rules or npcs. So its not an open license at all, but some kind of lame attempt at trying to lure game design folks away from Legend OGL.

I also looked at OpenCthulhu too, which I didn't know about until all this. It uses Legend OGL and looks pretty good. I have not played Cthulhu before and had considered getting the Cthulhu quickstart from Chaosium, but after all this I won't. I'll read some Lovecraft and use OpenCthulhu instead.
 
soltakss said:
They have clarified that the Legend OGL is perfectly valid.

So what does Jeff of Chaosium mean when he said on 28 march on the BRP SRD thread: "If you think the Legend OGL is "cast-iron", then you are fooling yourself. Heck, on the face of it, the very license used is invalid."?
 
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