State of the Mongoose

[Bifford]

In case people have not seen it, the "State of the Mongoose" is finally out:

http://blog.mongoosepublishing.co.uk/?p=738

Though legend is barely even mentioned, apart from a decent chunk regarding Darren and Sheoloth (Well done Darren, you are holding the fort nicely for us Legend fans!)

 

[The Wolf]

You're welcome, and thanks

 

[Prime_Evil]

There are a couple of other freelancers working on Legend releases, but we're not sure where they will fit into the schedule yet...

But Darren definitely deserves kudos for carrying the torch

 

[The Wolf]

Jim's been doing some great job on the Elemental side of things, really impressed with his work. I opened the door, if someone else can walk through it into the world of Mongoose freelancing on Legend - awesome

 

[DamonJynx]

Jim's been doing some great job on the Elemental side of things, really impressed with his work. I opened the door, if someone else can walk through it into the world of Mongoose freelancing on Legend - awesome

Cheers, Darren for the kind words. Your work ain't half bad either :lol:

I'm working on Cities of Legend: Stormhaven at the moment and I'm aiming to have it finished by the end of the month. April was a terrible month for me due to too many commitments and not enough free time but I'll be getting stuck into this project over the next few weeks. I've already started work on converting a lot of the 'typical' NPC's, guards and such like with pretty much just the named ones left and about 2/3 of the body text to edit/convert.

 

[warlock1971]

Really looking forward to seeing Stormhaven once it is released, I have been waiting on it since I first read of the project some months back.

What type of genre does it fall under Damon? Is it High Fantasy, low magic, Sword & Sorcery?

 

[DamonJynx]

Really looking forward to seeing Stormhaven once it is released, I have been waiting on it since I first read of the project some months back.

What type of genre does it fall under Damon? Is it High Fantasy, low magic, Sword & Sorcery?

Definitely High Fantasy. It would be an ideal location to house a chapter of the Order of the Four Elemental Ways :wink:

I can't make any promises but if word count permits and Matt agrees, I'd like to add a short scenario/scenario seed to draw players to Stormhaven with a side bar for using the scenario with Havenites.

 

[The Wolf]

I'm all for that!

 

[warlock1971]

That would definitely be first prize.

 

[Olaus Petrus]

2013 was most disappointing year for Legend, there were only few Legend books which interested me. Especially disappointing was cancellation of Talons of Winter, because it was supposed to be the conclusion of a campaign which started in excellent Secrets of the Steppes (2012) sourcebook.

Only thing which has prevented me from switching to RuneQuest 6 is that it has even less supplements than the current version of MRQ/Legend and the fact that I would have to convert MRQII Elric stuff to it's new mechanics (which isn't actually that difficult, but takes some time).

EDIT: I might sound bit grumpy and I don't mean to offend those who still carry the torch, but when we compare the amount of interesting campaign settings (for example Glorantha, Elric, Hawkmoon and Lankhmar) and other supplements which were published to MRQI and MRQII and compare it to the amount published Legend products, things don't look too bright.

 

[The Wolf]

It's a good job some of us do carry the torch, or there'd be no Legend releases. Myself and Damon have worked our backsides off to try and get books out, myself against odds that would have crippled a lot of people.

 

[Olaus Petrus]

It's a good job some of us do carry the torch, or there'd be no Legend releases. Myself and Damon have worked our backsides off to try and get books out, myself against odds that would have crippled a lot of people.

I didn't want to sound too negative, but recently Legend lost all of it's campaign settings besides Deus Vult, which I always personally did find the least interesting setting (although it's nicely done). And while we got new Sheoloth setting, which I'm certain is nice, but unfortunately Dark Elves really aren't my cup of tea. I respect your efforts, but each day it feels like the Legend has less to offer for me. And I admit that cancellation of Elric line still hurts. Spider God's Bride sounds interesting, but if I understand correctly it's just an adventure book and not fully fleshed campaign setting.

For over 20 years Glorantha and Eternal Champion have been my favourite RQ/BRP settings and while it's impossible to replace them, I've been hoping to see something with similar atmosphere. I don't mean that I wish to see exact carbon copy of either setting, but something which can generate equal amount of emotions and a strong feel of uniqueness of the campaign setting.

 

[The Wolf]

Spider God's Bride is part adventure and part campaign setting, probably one of the better iterations of Sword and Sorcery I've seen for a while. Sheoloth, is I admit, something I am not really enjoying as much as I did Spider God's Bride but I'm commited to that particular project and Matthew has a lot of faith in it.

Creating a new setting from scratch is a mammoth undertaking, something which I don't think a lot of people truly know just how much work is involved in something like that.

I've worked, for the last year and a bit with Tim Brown on the spiritual successor to Dark Sun and Dragon Kings is a phenomenal amount of setting information. It's presented as a world book that's completely system-agnostic and that was an incredible experience to see evolve.

Glorantha had a team of people working on it, and now that setting is elsewhere with Moon Design iirc, who have handled the HeroQuest iteration of it for ages and ages. Having done the Glorantha Guide and so on.

I'm not sure what happened with Elric, because I've never really been into the books beyond Michael Moorcock's original works - never got into the RPGs that followed.

So making a fresh brand-new Legend setting would require a bigger writer pool than we have now, or more hours in the day than Damon and myself could comfortably dedicate beyond the projects we already have.

In the end though, as much as I would like to see something unique and interesting to Legend the person that people need to convince is Matthew.

 

[Olaus Petrus]

Spider God's Bride is part adventure and part campaign setting, probably one of the better iterations of Sword and Sorcery I've seen for a while. Sheoloth, is I admit, something I am not really enjoying as much as I did Spider God's Bride but I'm commited to that particular project and Matthew has a lot of faith in it.

Creating a new setting from scratch is a mammoth undertaking, something which I don't think a lot of people truly know just how much work is involved in something like that.

I've worked, for the last year and a bit with Tim Brown on the spiritual successor to Dark Sun and Dragon Kings is a phenomenal amount of setting information. It's presented as a world book that's completely system-agnostic and that was an incredible experience to see evolve.

Glorantha had a team of people working on it, and now that setting is elsewhere with Moon Design iirc, who have handled the HeroQuest iteration of it for ages and ages. Having done the Glorantha Guide and so on.

I'm not sure what happened with Elric, because I've never really been into the books beyond Michael Moorcock's original works - never got into the RPGs that followed.

So making a fresh brand-new Legend setting would require a bigger writer pool than we have now, or more hours in the day than Damon and myself could comfortably dedicate beyond the projects we already have.

In the end though, as much as I would like to see something unique and interesting to Legend the person that people need to convince is Matthew.

I know that creating new setting isn't easy, which is the reason why I find it sad that Legend has lost most of the previous settings and in many cases you can't even buy the .pdf versions of those books anymore. Luckily some brick and mortar stores might still have few copies of those books left.

And I didn't say that the new setting must be created from the scratch. Already existing settings works equally well and there are many already existing settings from which to choose, if Mongoose manages to get the license (just like they had license for Glorantha, Lankhmar and other settings). In fact already famous setting could generate more interest to Legend system, which in turn could increase demand for other books and settings as well.

 

[The Wolf]

That's the trick, it probably costs more to get the license for an IP and keep it, than to make something from scratch that you own and can write content for without approval.

I've been doing this for 13 years, working on various IPs including things like Doctor Who. The amount of money involved for some of the licenses can be astronomical.

I agree with you though, the right famous setting could be a veritable goldmine of custom and content.

 

[DamonJynx]

Mongoose already have a setting that can be used (and that has been mentioned in other threads), Nuera from the MRQ11 Wraith Recon books. As is, the setting is great for High Fantasy - remember your players DON'T HAVE to be a Wraith Recon team, they can be allies or enemies of Dandarrick! If you remove the WR element, the setting is a blank canvas allowing for many different styles of games - it just depends on how you want to use it.

True, it isn't as well fleshed out as say, The Young Kingdoms or Glorantha or, dare I mention them, WoTC's Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk and Eberron or the Pathfinder setting but is still very usable with sufficient details on the various factions/nations to make it interesting.

 

[Prime_Evil]

I don't know - Nuera was originally designed for D&D 4e and has a feel derived from that game system even in its MRQII incarnation.

The sad thing for me is that Mongoose came very close to having licensed campaign settings for the three most important Swords & Sorcery authors available for MRQII / Legend - Moorcock's Elric, Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser (although sales were apparently poor), and Robert E. Howard's Conan. I'd love to see somebody do an RPG adaptation of some of Clark Ashton Smith or Leigh Brackett's settings, but I don't know if there is a market for this kind of thing any more.

It seems that in the latter half of 2013, the attentions of Mongoose moved away from RPGs for a while partly because they were focusing on miniature games and partly because they had distribution problems that needed to be solved. It looks like things are slowly moving again, although at this stage Traveller is getting most of the attention...

 

[The Wolf]

The irony (is it ironic?) is that I actually have a setting or two that I haven't done anything with that'd fit quite nicely with Legend. It's much easier to create reams of things for something that you truly love, compared to something that you're either not familiar with or have little interest in.

With Sheoloth, I have taken a lot of my pet peeves out of the dark elves but I'd have really liked to introduce my own full take on a lot of this.

I really wanted to do a world book pn Spider God's Bride. But hey, Dragon Kings is coming and that's (as I said before) system-agnostic. I'll be converting it to 13th Age as part of my work on the project, so a Legend option for that might be a possible direction.

It's not just Dark Sun 2.0 either, so people should expect some pretty diverse and interesting races.

 

[warlock1971]

I would like to see more setting - neutral adventures that I can slot in to my existing campaign. I have been running games set in Greyhawk since the mid 80s and I feel comfortable with the setting.

I had had no exposure to creating modules for RQ/Legend before I moved from D&D and i felt somewhat hamstrung by that. I know that there is a large following of GMs across the D100 stable yet for newer GMs an introductory adventure or three could really help illustrate the strengths and subtleties of the system. This could even kick off a setting if developed with that in mind.

I think Mongoose could benefit from a setting developed on the Legend system, especially with new converts to the system.

@ The Wolf Why don't you release your setting to us, Darren?

 

[Prime_Evil]

I would like to see more setting - neutral adventures that I can slot in to my existing campaign. I have been running games set in Greyhawk since the mid 80s and I feel comfortable with the setting.

One of the strengths of Greyhawk was that it supported a broad range of different campaign styles within a coherent framework. This fell out of fashion with the rise of focused campaign settings in the 2E era - Ravenloft, Birthright, Dark Sun, et al. Interestingly, Paizo have reverted to Greyhawk approach with their campaign world of Golarion. People often forget that Erik Mona was an important figure in the Greyhawk revival during the wilderness years of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

I recommend that any 'official' Legend campaign setting should support a range of campaign styles. However, keep in mind that the d100 game family have always been particularly good at slightly gritty realism informed by real-world history.

I had had no exposure to creating modules for RQ/Legend before I moved from D&D and i felt somewhat hamstrung by that. I know that there is a large following of GMs across the D100 stable yet for newer GMs an introductory adventure or three could really help illustrate the strengths and subtleties of the system. This could even kick off a setting if developed with that in mind.

Agreed - a couple more adventures could help to show newcomers what the system is good at. I know that the conventional wisdom is that adventures don't sell, but they do have an important role in building an audience and setting expectations for the game.

I think Mongoose could benefit from a setting developed on the Legend system, especially with new converts to the system.

The problem is that launching a new campaign setting with sufficient support to draw people in is that this can be a risky proposition from a business perspective. There are a lot of campaign settings out there and unless you publish something compelling or closely linked to an existing intellectual property your investment of time and resources can simply sink without a trace.

@ The Wolf Why don't you release your setting to us, Darren?

Given that Legend is published under the OGL, this is feasible. Maybe a Kickstarter would work?

On a different note, I wonder if it might be desirable to release a campaign setting under the OGL for third-party publishers and the community to develop - so far as I'm aware, no RPG company has done this yet...