Review: Legend (Mongoose)

Are you looking for a 100% OGL percentile fantasy system? Are you looking for one where the PDF only costs $1? Do you like the percentile system in games like Runequest or Call of Cthulhu?

Then Legend is worth your time.

It is a remarkable little gem of a game that gives you the best of a Runequest II style rule-set in an OGL package. You can write your own game using these rules if you would like, or come out with a game based on them. The books are digest-sized, which instantly gives them a Traveller sort of feel to me, and the rules are not all that complicated at all.

This sort of OGL effort is what will make our games last forever, and will plant the seeds for generations to come so that they may enjoy the games we did. Like Labyrinth Lord, Basic Fantasy, Mutant Future, and many others, these games will keep delivering enjoyment forever and will also be opportunities for others to share the creations of their dreams and visions. In an age where companies lock things up and where sharing is rare, having a commitment to OGL at launch is highly laudable and worthy of praise. Mongoose is doing the right thing here.

So what do you get?

You get a basic set of rules covering character creation, combat, spells, and skills all in a tight little package that puts many of today's bloated encyclopedia games to shame. Role-playing does not need to be complicated, and we have a concise set of core rules here that proves it can be done. What do we lose? Options, such as page after page of spell lists and volumes of magic items. I am sure someone in the community has made these by now, and if they haven't, I am free to do this myself and sell them to the community or share them for free. I don't need approval, I just add an OGL on my work and it is legit and ready to distribute.

How soon we forget about the OGL and how cool it was.

I know there is a setting-neutral Runquest 6th Edition out there and I have yet to check that out, but that one is 450+ pages and this one is the smaller of the two. In my feeling, if you are going to go a couple of hundred pages with the Runequest name, I want some world and setting info along with the generic game. Plus I am taking a break from the huge book collection hobby for a while past D&D 5 and Pathfinder's latest releases.

Is it worth playing over D&D 5 or Pathfinder? You will be running straight into that "new game" smell with D&D 5, and Pathfinder is entrenched with its players with a huge buy-in and support. If you have players that like trying new things out, and want a more realistic and gritty combat system with hit locations and fun wounding rules, this is a good place to start. I liked the combat rules here, and they feel realistic without abstract concepts like hit points and armor class. They aren't that difficult either. They may be a little roll and counter happy, but the rolls and calculations are straightforward and on the character sheet.

Legend does gritty fantasy really well. If you are looking for a Game of Thrones style feel where someone can get their lightly-armored leg stuck with a spear and hobble around while making a heroic stand against multiple foes, I feel you will get much better results with Legend than you will either of the D&D style games out there today.

There's no level or class either, and character grow naturally into their roles. This is a plus, as you can be a sword-swinging whoosit for a while, discover an ancient order of sorcerers, and join to start learning magic and become a castit for a while without losing your sword-swinging whoosit abilities. You don't have to suffer with multi-classing or worrying that taking a couple levels of wizard will screw up your final character build. You learn as you go, and your character grows in a natural and organic-feeling way. I like character progression in this game very much.

Legend also does a way better job at tying your character to a background, society, and even family within your game world than other games. This is critical for games where family and faction relations matter. These are instant adventure hooks, and there are plenty of fun rules in this book for cults, factions, and other groups that can either aid or harm the characters (or even join, if you choose). I prefer Legend's more world, occupation, faction, and family based method of story seeding than I do D&D 5's random trait table based method by far.

Monsters are an add-on book, as are some other subject you may want to check out. I kind of like not having an official set of monsters to trow around, or an official set of magic items. In my Legend worlds, players won't know what to expect. The monsters book does have some great "Chaos creature" tables and a list of monster traits that will be useful should you roll your own, so I recommend at least getting that book as well if you are playing more traditional fantasy.

There are add-on books for equipment and pirates (ship combat), and two available for different magic systems. To be fair, once you start buying, the price does go up for all of them, but the basic book is playable enough. Since most every book is OGL the information should be available somewhere in reference format. This reminds me a lot of the way the original Traveller was written, a basic set with everything, and add-on books going into more depth should you want (or need) the material.

Legend also scales well. With a little work, you could use these rules for modern or sci-fi settings without too much work (maybe add a couple skills and pieces of gear). Creating a new game from these rules would not be hard, and guess what? There's a door open to publishing it.

This game is also mostly cross compatible with other Runequest II, BRP, Call of Cthulhu, and any other system developed for a similar system. This is much like the D&D 3.5 OGL, and it is nice to see many games flourishing under a separate but equal banner and similar rule set.

The question to ask yourself is this: can your group play without D&D 5 or Pathfinder? In my experience, it is hard to get a group interested in something that isn't new or popular, so knowing your players and getting them to try something new will be important. Both of the big fantasy games have the advantage of those 'instant familiarity' tropes common to fantasy gaming, and thus are more accessible. If you want to look deeper and have background and character matter more than the same-old class-level-loot combo, then other games are worthy of your attention, including Legend.