Legend: Tabletop Gaming For a Good Cause

danaris writes "On Friday, Rule of Cool gaming released Legend, a d20-derived tabletop roleplaying game system designed to be easy to learn, easy to play, and just really fun. As the names suggest, they recognize that people in an RPG frequently want to be playing epic characters with cool abilities, so they provide that — while making sure all such characters are reasonably well balanced against characters and monsters of the same level. For a nice overview of the system, there's a review up on RPG.net by one of the playtesters, and another review by a moderator from Reddit's RPG section. The game is initially being distributed as a pay-what-you-want benefit to the Child's Play charity, with all proceeds (not just all profits) going to the charity."

Comments

The Truth

[Anonymous Coward]

If you care about this you are a nigger, a fat pasty lard-ass, or both. Beware: it is the fucking truth.

Re:The Truth

[Anonymous Coward]

You're pretty accurate. Pay .25 for it and go on with your life, tabletop gaming that doesn't come in a box is as dead as Gygax

Re:The Truth

[VAElynx]

Hmm, given that I play in a DnD 3.5 game and GM another one, i'd say it went undead at the very least.
Given how awesome it is, i'd say the undead species is Demilich

Re:The Truth

[Miseph]

I disagree vehemently that tabletop RPGs are dead.

I currently play in 5 tabletops (3 of which are supposedly LARPs, but play more like traditional ttRPGs with a large number of players and pvp action), GMing another, and I am in the process of writing a system and content for a high fantasy tabletop game. I realize it isn't a tremendously popular activity (though I regularly game with about 30 individuals and know of many gamers in my locale with whom I do not play), but it never really was all that popular.

I've even seen something of a resurgence in the activity, as MMO gamers branch out from behind their keyboards to engage in a more social and flexible experience with drastically fewer limitations on what they can do.

Re:The Truth

[X0563511]

Speaking of this, how does one exactly break into this hobby?

Re:The Truth

[Fjandr]

I didn't realize Gygax was as alive and well as he's ever been...

Re:The Truth

[Anonymous Coward]

Look for a nearby hobby shop, they tend to have people who know local gaming groups.

Re:The Truth

[ShakaUVM]

>>Speaking of this, how does one exactly break into this hobby?

If you're in a major city, look up your local RPGA club or gaming convention. If you're into 4th Edition, D&D, that is, which grognards like me sort of poo-poo, but it's easy to get into. The D&D website has a tool to look up local game stores that are running D&D Encounters, which are short, 1-hour adventures that run once per week at local game stores.

If you want to play 3rd Edition D&D, which this product is a variation on, Paizo has been carrying the torch on this with it's Pathfinder system. The Pathfinder Society (http://paizo.com/pathfinderSociety) is their organized play branch, which means that you don't need to have an established game group to play... just show up at a Pathfinder Society game day, say you're new, and they'll help you out.

FWIW, Pathfinder (and quite possibly Legend, too, though I've only started digging into the meat of it) and 3.5 in general are better systems than 4th Edition D&D, but it's probably easier to find a friendly local game store running D&D Encounters every Wednesday night.

Re:The Truth

[Anonymous Coward]

I got into it because I could find some friends who were willing to try it. This was around the time 4th edition D&D was released, so we use that. We still play.

Re:The Truth

[blackicye]

Speaking of this, how does one exactly break into this hobby?

The easiest way is to have friends who are into it, or friends that you can sucker into it...

Re:The Truth

[Bacon Bits]

FWIW, Pathfinder (and quite possibly Legend, too, though I've only started digging into the meat of it) and 3.5 in general are better systems than 4th Edition D&D

I would disagree with you there, fairly vehemently. 4E certainly has it's flaws, but I think those in d20 are far more severe.

Problems with 4E largely stem from two areas: 1) overemphasis on combat, and 2) vastly increased demands on players to master the system. Both of these two situations can be boiled down into one basic fact: there are too many powers to choose from and characters have too many powers overall. A lot of players liked the simplicity of earlier editions for, well, any non-spellcasting class. 4E forces that to change, but it gives too many options. There are too many races, too many classes, and too many powers. They should have started simpler, and tried to keep the number of classes as low as possible rather than maximizing choice and trying to instantly make 4E comparable to 3E. The Paradox of Choice means that every time you level up, every time it's your turn in combat you must re-examine all your choices and make a new decision. I think the martial classes in particular could benefit from having far fewer powers at each level. One at-will, one encounter, one daily, class powers, and that's it. Combat simply takes too long in 4E to be enjoyable, and while you can do some things to speed it up, if you focus on speeding up the game too much you sap all the enjoyment out of it. It feels like work.

There are some minor issues as well. Skill Challenges is the obvious one, which are cool in concept but simply doesn't work well in execution outside of very few situations (tracking over long distances, opening a complex lock) and completely fail for skills which involve interaction. It also has the side effect of making your players want roleplaying encounters to just be more dice rolling, and that's not very fun. Lack of compelling magic outside of combat; making all rituals cost money made them feel useless. Solo encounter monsters are designed badly. The monsters are supposed to represent 5 individual monsters, but can easily be crowd controlled. They should be immune to stuns and most cc, and able to deal out damage in ways which really threaten the party. As it is now, solo encounters are about 5 rounds of terror and 10-20 rounds of cutting through all that HP while not really threatened because the buffs and debuffs are in place. 4E also seems significantly more delicately balanced. A simple +1 to some die rolls can be game breaking simply because those die rolls happen so often. I don't think that would ever happen in previous editions.

Things 4E does right or improves on: basic class progression, skills, character creation, feats (barring bad ones like Expertise), hit points. Minions. Emphasis on making the DM's life easier. Emphasis on position and movement in combat, and the ability to actually tank enemies. Working to make sure PCs get treasure they want rather than using random tables. Better healing system. Better balance between classes. The character generator was absolutely amazing. Overall I consider 4E to be a very good first edition of a new RPG system. I haven't kept up with the more recent books which introduce different class styles as my play group had abandoned 4E by the time it came out. We played it for a year and were tired of two encounter nights.

Problems with 3.5, on the other hand, are IMO far more severe and fair more inherent to the system. Class balance is and always will be a huge problem as long as Vancian casters are present. Prestige classes and the lack of multiclassing restrictions completely defeat the purpose of having classes. Lack of good heavier armors. Difficulty in healing. Difficulty in identifying magic treasure. The arbitrary alignment system. The skill system is completely ridiculous (Search, Spot and Listen... but most classes only get about 4 skills per level after modifiers). I think there a

Re:The Truth

[SirGarlon]

Funny, I met my wife at a tabletop RPG, but no one has ever gotten laid by trolling on Slashdot.

Re:The Truth

[daid303]

I got "into" this about half a year ago. With friends, we all hadn't played before, only 1 person had played DnD 2nd edition once. And we wanted to play DnD 3.5E.

The biggest challenge is a DM. The Dungeon Master defines the game. The Dungeon Master needs to know the rules. We didn't go look for a DM, I just became DM. Starting by reading the player handbook, understand the key parts of combat and stats. And then just go play. Figure out the rest as you go. With a new group nobody will complain if you make a mistake.

The first game we did was with 3 people, me as DM and 2 players. Just to get a feeling for the rules. We didn't have any dice or miniatures. Filling in the character sheets took about a hour. We only used melee/ranged character, no spellcasting. We used paper to draw out the maps and crosses and lines as characters and enemies. And an Android app to roll dice. It was a blast, and I killed one of my players near the end (just to show that I could).
As we progressed with more games, we added more players, dice, miniatures (combination of old board games, and new warhammer miniatures) until we had a full DnD game. We also noticed we had used a few rules wrong. Which is no problem really, it's all about the fun, and we fixed those.

Finding a paper copy of the 3.5 DnD edition is pretty hard because they are no longer sold, but your favorite torrent site should have them in PDF form. However, on http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:System_Reference_Document you have the "DnD 3.5 SRD" which is almost all the rules (except for EXP/level up rules) in a free form. With monsters and everything. Once you get the basic rules the SRD is all you really need, if you want to play D&D 3.5. (We just skip anything "epic" and "psionic", to keep it a bit simpler)

I took a look at Legend, and it looks quite a bit like 3.5 in my eyes. But I miss monsters. With the 3.5 SRD I have a whole huge list of monsters to use, for free.

If you have a group of friends willing to play, then it's just as simple as "go for it" really.

Re:The Truth

[TheCRAIGGERS]

IMHO, combat only drags on too long because people are being munchkins instead of role playing. You shouldn't be asking yourself "which one of these 40 combat skills would kill the most goblins". Instead, you should be asking yourself "what would my berserk warrior with an INT of 8 do?"

Yes, this is a generalization, and isn't true in all cases. But it's true more times than not in my experience.

Re:The Truth

[Anonymous Coward]

I met *my* wife trolling on Slashdot.

Or am I trolling?

Re:The Truth

[Jiro]

The answer to that is likely to be "my berserk warrior wants to kill as many goblins as he can". Then you need to translate it into game terms, which still means figuring out which of the 40 skills kills the most goblins.

It seems to me that while some skills are being selected by the character (such as spells), some are not. The player is more like a writer--some things the writer writes are 'what would the character do" but others are "what would I want to happen to the character". When the player chooses to have the character use a powerful move, that's the writer deciding that the character should be striking a mighty blow at this exact moment. In-character, the character is always trying his best to strike mighty blows and is not making decisions at all.

Re:The Truth

[Anonymous Coward]

I met *my* wife trolling on Slashdot.

Or am I trolling?

If you met *his* wife than you would be trolling.

Re:The Truth

[Larryish]

AD&D 1st Edition FTW!

Everything else is sloppy seconds.

Re:The Truth

[Larryish]

I want to see "Wesnoth: The Tabletop Game"

Re:The Truth

[danaris]

I took a look at Legend, and it looks quite a bit like 3.5 in my eyes. But I miss monsters. With the 3.5 SRD I have a whole huge list of monsters to use, for free.

There is a monster book on the way, but it will not be free. (It is, in fact, how the Rule of Cool folks are planning to recoup some of their costs for the core book's release, so they don't have to eat quite so much ramen.)

Dan Aris

Re:The Truth

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that your Berserker doesn't have 5 minutes and a calculator.

Re:The Truth

[magisterx]

As others have said, the best option is to find a local gaming or comic shop and ask around or join their Encounters session if you like D&D.

But if, like me, you have a hard time finding large blocks of time to play with friends, you could consider Play-By-Email (PBEM). It goes much slower than a face to face game, but you can play in small chunks of time at your convenience. I average around 10-15 minutes per day at the time most convenient for me instead of trying to coordinate schedules. If you are upfront with the gm/moderator that you are new many will go far out of their way to help you. Many PBEM games emphasize the role playing and downplay or streamline combat just to help keep things moving, whether or not that is a good thing depends ont he style you like.

Re:The Truth

[ShakaUVM]

4th Edition has a lot of powers, as you say. It also has a lot of feats and magic items.

"Fortunately", most of them are utterly terrible. Of the 3000 feats in the game, there's maybe 300 that are good. So that's 90% dross that's utterly wasting the time of the players and space in the source books (which they hardly print any more anyway). A similar ratio exists for powers and magic items.

The reason for this was that, unlike with 3e, the 4e PHB1 set the power bar very very low, and they've been (admirably or not) trying to do a good job keeping the power curve fairly flat. So if you have a "+1 to damage" feat at 1st level, and they're not going to release anything better than that, then it leaves you with a pretty boring field of options. They've even done a second pass over most of the overpowered options, to bludgeon the power curve back down.

While this is a refreshing change over the power creep model most RPGs use (Rifts, I'm looking at you), because they set the power bar very low to begin with, most people who get into the system realize how, well, boring it is. You end up filling up all your feat slots with the "feat tax" feats which fix the broken math that's been part of 4e since the beginning (they took out stat boosting items at the last minute, which leads to a scaling decrease in power between PCs and the monster defenses they try to hit), so it's not like you don't have some competition for your feat slots, but the original criticism still remains: 4e is boring.

I'm an active member of the 4e character optimization forums, which spend their time trying to find twinkish things to exploit in the game system, and, better or worse, there's just a lot less to work with in 4e than 3e. Which is both good and bad. It's good in that it takes a lot less to balance 4e vs. 3e (though it WAS possible, unlike what you claim - I did it in the Living Planar campaign), but the downside is that, again, 4e is boring. Character building is one of the most fun parts of a roleplaying game for a lot of players, and 4e takes the power away from the players they had in 3e, and just hands them a premade character sheet, essentially. And it's getting worse - 4e Essentials is just a bunch of premade classes that you get to slap a character name on.

As you say, Skill Challenges are an abomination, and should be taken out back behind the barn and shot like Old Yeller.

Re:The Truth

[ShakaUVM]

Sorry, I didn't answer everything I realized.

Things 4E does right or improves on: basic class progression, skills, character creation, feats (barring bad ones like Expertise), hit points. Minions. Emphasis on making the DM's life easier. Emphasis on position and movement in combat, and the ability to actually tank enemies. Working to make sure PCs get treasure they want rather than using random tables. Better healing system. Better balance between classes. The character generator was absolutely amazing. Overall I consider 4E to be a very good first edition of a new RPG system. I haven't kept up with the more recent books which introduce different class styles as my play group had abandoned 4E by the time it came out. We played it for a year and were tired of two encounter nights.

Agreed mostly on:
Fighters finally being able to tank monsters (though the way they did it wasn't especially elegant - there's both opportunity attacks and immediate interrupts that a fighter can trigger, and they're not the same)
Minions (though they're kind of broken in a bad way - far too easy to sweep off a battlefield)
The character generator. (though they pitched it into the bin and released a horrendous online version - thank goodness for CBLoader)
Making the DM's life easier (premade monsters is good, but having monsters be completely different from PCs, rule mechanics-wise, is bad)

Disagree on:
Class progression (some higher levels have powers that are worse than ALL of the lower levels' powers, and some levels are just dead levels)
Treasure (the wishlist is awkward, magic item creation is awkward, and random treasure generation is wonky in 4e)
Healing system (healing surges are a pathetic mechanic for a variety of reasons, but if you completely ignore them, yeah healing works better in 4e)
Recent books (there aren't any - they're down to just a couple books a year now. =)

Problems with 3.5, on the other hand, are IMO far more severe and fair more inherent to the system. Class balance is and always will be a huge problem as long as Vancian casters are present.

I fixed the balance problems in 3.5 in Living Planar. Essentially, there's two major problems with spellcasters in 3e/3.5:
1) Broken spells
2) Metamagic

Things like Divine Power, Gate, Polymorph/Shapechange, etc., are broken spells. They blow the power curve so far out of the water, that it didn't make any sense in 3e (from a powergaming perspective) to ever play a fighter, since you could just be a cleric and run around with a persistent Divine Power up all day and be like a fighter, but with 9th level spells.

I'm a pretty good powergamer, and in Living Greyhawk I ended up making a pretty powerful fighter-type, but he still needed a spellcasting buddy to give him his Greater Magic Weapons and Magic Vestments to take him into the extreme zone. Off the top of my head, he was a fighter/barbarian/ex-monk/ranger/tribal protector/holy liberator/templar/exotic weapons master that got a huge number of attacks per round (10? Maybe? Something like that.) took no damage from spells (his saves were really high, and he had both evasion and mettle), and was immune to all mind-affecting magic. But that took a LOT of work to put together, and while he was better than most spellcasters, as I said, he still really needed a buddy to GMW his spiked chain, feet, and armor spikes.

So in Living Planar we removed or drastically toned down all the broken spells in the system. Shapechange provided a size bonus to physical stats instead of replacing them, for example, so you couldn't be a spellcaster with an 8 Str and run around as a 40 Str monster all day long.

Free and Reduced Metamagic was the other reason spellcasters were so broken... free metamagic meant tossing an Empower or Maximize onto a spell for free, and reduced meant you could empower spells for 1 spell level instead of 2, for example. So when stacked together, they created a quadratic e

Re:The Truth

[mlush]

It can be hard to break into (but well worth it) alas I can only provide a UK perspective but I suspect its valid elsewhere

The main problem is finding people to game with options include

• finding a (physical) games shop and seeing it it has a players wanted board
• googling for phrases like 'games day' 'games fest' 'games convention' 'games club|soc|society'
• if there is a local university, collage or similar see if they have a games soc.

one really radical solution is to start your own games day!! I go to one that was started by a guy who wanted to play games but didn't have any so he advertised a games day. For the first few meets you need somewhere free but with luck you have an entry fee and hire a hall.

The main thing to remember is that you may need to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your perfect group. There are a lot of styles of play from the hyper stimulationist where they endlessly discuss agrarian economics and the effects that low level magic usage would have on it, to group that likes to hang out and crack poor quality jokes

try reading GM of the Rings and Darths and Droids to get a idea of different play styles (I'd give my eye teeth to be in the Darths and Droids group!!!)

Re:The Truth

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many, many, many game systems out there that are better-written than 1st edition.

One such is Moldvay's B/X version of D&D.

Re:The Truth

[Bacon Bits]

That's just it.

In 3.x, a 10th level Fighter realistically has the choice of the following:
1) Move & attack
2) Attack & move
3) Full attack
4) Double move

In 4E, a 10th level Fighter has the choice of:
1) 2 at-will powers
2) Racial power
3) 3 encounter powers
4) 3 daily powers
5) 3 utility powers
6) Class powers (depending on build)
7) Movement (where to move to best utilize your class power)

And the 4E character has to make the same decision each round. The simplest character in 4E (which, granted, the Fighter is not due to the importance of movement and position) has more choices than your average Druid or Cleric in 3.x (that edition's champions of possessing a large number of possible actions). Of the 7 members of my D&D group, only about 3 of us ever got to the stage of mastery this system requires in order to play at an acceptable pace. Most other people consistently forgot they had anything other than at-will powers. One poor player who I witnessed at a D&D Encounters session never used anything other than a Melee Basic Attack. The game is simply too complicated and requires too much thinking for most people. It's just not fun for them, and why play a game if it isn't fun?

Re:The Truth

[Anonymous Coward]

Alternatively, for getting into the hobby, jump onto G+ and check out things like RPG+ (https://plus.google.com/116151006662155954175) or MeetUp where you can find plenty of players in your area (or playing online) who are interested in just about any game you might want to play. G+ is especially good if you are not located near a city with a game store...

Re:The Truth

[Miseph]

If you live near any colleges or universities, there is a decent chance that a gaming club exists. Often they are lumped together with the sci-fi/fantasy club, anime club, or various other "nerd" clubs. Depending on the school, your age/gender and the specific group's dynamic, it may be more or less difficult to get into the social circle. I actually do most of my gaming with a club at a nearby women's college, despite the fact that I am (slightly) older than a typical college student, never attended the college, and never can or will attend (being male and all). All of the games they run/sponsor are open to the general public, advertised on their publicly available website, and have online forums: in theory, anyone could find them, if they were so inclined.

who gets to write off the donation?

[MichaelKristopeit330]

if Rule of Cool is accepting the money, and then donating in their own name, then they are also benefitting their tax return.

Re:who gets to write off the donation?

[MichaelKristopeit332]

from the paypal money transfer page:

Contribution to Child's Play! by Rule Of Cool (jake.kurzer@ruleofcool.com)

+1 tax avoidance

Re:who gets to write off the donation?

[Anonymous Coward]

from the paypal money transfer page:

Contribution to Child's Play! by Rule Of Cool (jake.kurzer@ruleofcool.com)

+1 tax avoidance

All proceeds (not just profit, as the summary points out) are going to child's play, and you're concerned about his taxes?

Re:who gets to write off the donation?

[jpatters]

The money collected would have to count as income, so it would be a wash at best.

Re:who gets to write off the donation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, we never touch the money. It goes straight to CP, so it's never income. I did consider rolling an NGO to dodge taxes with it, I won't lie, but it seemed like it was mean-spirited.

Re:who gets to write off the donation?

[MichaelKristopeit332]

i'm concerned about the motivations behind anyone that feels it necessary to define what the word "proceeds" means before they tell me about what they are going to do with their proceeds.

Re:who gets to write off the donation?

[MichaelKristopeit333]

who is "we"?

you are exactly what you've claimed to be: NOTHING.

paypal says that jake kurzer touches the money.

cower in my shadow some more, feeb.

you're completely pathetic.

Re:who gets to write off the donation?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you're not, you're just a troll.

Re:who gets to write off the donation?

[MichaelKristopeit334]

ur mum's face're just a troll.

cower in my shadow some more, feeb.

you're completely pathetic.

Re:who gets to write off the donation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Check the paypal address, please.

Re:who gets to write off the donation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone can have a smokin' hot mom, like you.

Re:who gets to write off the donation?

[MichaelKristopeit334]

cower in my shadow some more, feeb.

you're completely pathetic.

Re:who gets to write off the donation?

[MichaelKristopeit335]

i already did, thank you... it goes to jake kurzer... like i already said.

you're an idiot.

Re:who gets to write off the donation?

[MichaelKristopeit335]

the money is received by jake.kurzer@ruleofcool.com... that is not a CP account... that is a rule of cool account. if you touch it, it's income.

Why is this /. worthy ?

[gearloos]

I mean, cmon, I'm all for the charitable aspect of the gaming but is this really /. worthy? Slow news day? ok.. just saying..

Re:Why is this /. worthy ?

[Anonymous Coward]

An article about a d20 RPG is news for nerds? I think not.

Re:Why is this /. worthy ?

[flimflammer]

Are you sure you're on the right website? What exactly do you consider worthy "news for nerds" in games.slashdot.org if not this?

People are really starting to stretch the whole "slashdot worthy" cliche these days. Before you know it, articles about Apple won't fit into the Apple category anymore!

Re:Why is this /. worthy ?

[MichaelKristopeit337]

slashdot = stagnated

Check Child's Play for that

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not collecting money, it goes into a ChipIn straight to Child's Play.

Non-flash link to the donation page please?

[Anonymous Coward]

No flash here. Can someone post a non-flash link to the donation page please?

The Rule Of Cool site uses a flash link only.

Can't wait to rule!

Re:Non-flash link to the donation page please?

[thesh0ck]

Welcome to the internet.. get flash.

Re:Non-flash link to the donation page please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Donation page: http://www.chipin.com/contribute/id/9a1cf435b81867b5

damn back to real life

[spokenoise]

Legend like down, most likely /.ed. Back to my dreary life....

Re:damn back to real life

[Anonymous Coward]

Should be back. Hit it again, and let me know.

Jake.kurzer@ruleofcool.com

Site's back up

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like it's working again.

Looks fun!

[werepants]

I started playing D&D not too long ago after hearing about it for ages, and it is a lot of fun, but the complexity of the system can be daunting to say the least. The games I've played also burn an inordinate amount of time on checking rules and spell behavior and keeping track of all sorts of mindless minutia. This system looks to retain much of the good but do it in a simpler and more streamlined way, which should make for fun gameplay.

If I can convince some of my D&D buddies to chip in as well, might have to pick it up. The biggest problem with tabletop games (especially obscure or new ones) is that it can be hard to track down people to actually play with.

Re:Looks fun!

[SirGarlon]

The biggest problem with tabletop games (especially obscure or new ones) is that it can be hard to track down people to actually play with.

The solution to this problem is to learn to be a Dungeon Master. Once a DM sets aside time to plan and run a game, all he has to do is get the word out and people show up.

Re:Looks fun!

[vlm]

The biggest problem with tabletop games (especially obscure or new ones) is that it can be hard to track down people to actually play with.

Let me summarize my university years experience with DnD for you:

"Wanna come over and play DnD? Uh, I gotta study for a test, or do laundry or trim my ear hairs or something"

vs

"Wanna drink a couple cases of beer, eat some pizza, and play DnD? F yeah, can I come over and start right now?"

The downside is the DM needs to be at least somewhat sober, which makes the DM really pissed off when the players are falling down drunk.

Hint Hint, almost exactly one month from right now, too old to party types like myself, are going to be looking for something to do on new years eve... I suspect there will be a lot of google hangouts and skype and even IRC DnD games out there that night. If you don't want to be an alt.drunken.bastard there is not much else to do that night.

Re:Looks fun!

[geminidomino]

The downside being is that you have to DM a game.

5x the work, 1/10 the fun.

Re:Looks fun!

[SirGarlon]

If you stick with it a while it grows on you. I think being a DM is more fun than being a player. I guess it depends on how creative you are and maybe how much you like being the center of attention. :-)

Re:Looks fun!

[geminidomino]

Have to disagree there. I've easily spent three times as much gaming time as DM as I have actually getting to play. Maybe it just comes from being "The Roleplayer" archetype, but I think it's more that people who actually enjoy DMing more than playing are a rarity, kind of like real women on dating sites.

Re:Looks fun!

[Abstrackt]

I DMed for a while and really enjoyed the "me versus everyone else" aspect of it. It was a constant cat and mouse game of me trying to keep a band of yahoos on track and them doing everything in their power to derail every part of my campaign. Some stuff the players did was just inspired (all but one person jumping into a bag of holding so the last person could carry them across a rickety bridge) and some was just plain stupid (casting fireball while trapped in a giant spider's web. It torched half the party...) but never knowing what was going to happen next was what made it so fun.

Re:Looks fun!

[daid303]

At least your party tries new things. Mine stood 10 minutes on a floor in a half destroyed building, we me telling them the crunch sounds ever got louder. Finally I had to collapse the building on them.

Re:Looks fun!

[Maxo-Texas]

I have enjoyed playing more than I enjoy DMing but....I've been a DM since 1978.

I currently have two active campaigns.

I enjoy my games because...
I set up a wide but shallow environment and let the players drive the direction of the campaign.
I develop in depth as they focus on an area.
I have secret cards that the players draw at the start of play. Only the individual player knows what is on their card. The cards let them break the rules, automatically succeed, etc. It produces a "movie" feel with unexpected twists and turns.
I use my own material but based on stereotypes as a guide. (Someday they'll figure out that the goblins in the plane of earth are all Carol Channing).
I have unique aspects in the world that the players struggle with, then accept, then internalize, and then the magic happens as they become immersed in the world and make logical decisions based on alien worldsets. This is a very cool aspects. Their fear and awe of "the makers" took years to build up.

The games scale to level 36 and we have a metric of 2 levels per year if they are pushing reasonably hard and taking risks. There are a lot of rules on top of the old Cyclopedia D&D. I hit on some concepts years before they were added to D&D or appeared in MMorgs (like continuing hit dice all the way up). I set up this huge spreadsheet way back at the beginning and calculated damage vs hit points all the way up so it's all balanced.

One group is currently wandering around the plane of earth.

The other group is in the sky tree Jisturel in Elthilil, the city of the sleeping king in the plan of Leveroan. It's an adventure they have been at for over 3 years. They are about 60% of the way through. It was supposed to be "this is too tough- and too boring to ever finish-- all those who came before you got to about a fifth of the way up the tree and gave up". For some reason, they took this as a challenge.

Each has a host of NPC's associated with them- relatives, minor enemies, friends. They keep getting harrassed by this old turtle like wizard who wants their help but isn't permitted to say exactly how they can help him.

I like the legends concept of a simpler character and less equipment. I have some complicated rules systems for the gearheads but simpler players can get 95% of the same thing in a simple version of each rules type.

I like being a GM tho.

Which Legend?

[deniable]

So Mongoose says they'll put out a game called Wayfarer using RuneQuest rules. Someone points out that there's a game called Wayfarers. So they changed the name to... Legend. Now we have two Legends. Maybe they should rename one to Firebird.

Re:Which Legend?

[Kirth]

And besides of all that babbling how slick and consistent this D20-Legend is, RuneQuest (1977) will most probably still beat this hands down in terms of consistency and balance.

So I'd be going with that Legend

Re:Which Legend?

[Anonymous Coward]

We've reached out to Mongoose about this. If they want to press the issue, that's a conversation I'll be happy to have.

After all, it's not like I'm making money on this fool's errand.

Re:Which Legend?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wondered if someone was going to point out Mongoose Legend. Great system! This one? Eh... I'm SO SICK of d20.

Re:Which Legend?

[danaris]

If you're sick of d20, then please take a look at Legend—it's not like it'll cost you anything but a bit of time. This system is designed to address many of the flaws in vanilla d20, and make it much more fun to play.

Dan Aris

Re:Which Legend?

[Toonol]

Absolutely. Runequest may be the most elegant RPG system ever made (I prefer the 3rd edition). It is both simpler and more realistic than any of the editions of D&D. You can download the core rules free from a number of sites... take a look, everybody, if you're interested in RPGs.

A lot of people might be familiar with the system without realizing it, because Chaosium uses a simplified version of it for many of their games, including Call of Cthulhu.

Hobby shops

[SirGarlon]

Unfortunately local hobby shops (at least the ones that carry tabletop RPGs) are dying out. Too many people prefer to buy from Amazon rather than support local businesses, and the neighborhood game store can't survive the contraction of the customer base.

My 10-minute-overview-review

[Rogerborg]

Another combat-feat paper implementation of WOW. Mostly just different flavoured ways of dealing damage.

OK, Basic and 1st Edition Advanced was much the same, but extensive non-combat spells, thief abilities and milieu helpers in the DM's guide at least gave a grounding for something beyond chipping away at hit points.

Eh, I'm probably just jaded. This'll fly well with WOWers and geezers looking to get back to basics, and you can't argue with the price.

Re:My 10-minute-overview-review

[sgt scrub]

Another combat-feat paper implementation of WOW.

Nothing personal towards you but I find it ironic to see a PnP game being seen as a dup of computer game that is a dup of PnP games.

Re:My 10-minute-overview-review

[SirGarlon]

If WOW is trying to be a dup of PnP games then WOW did it wrong.

Re:My 10-minute-overview-review

[Millennium]

Which makes the subsequent WoW-ization of many popular PnP games even more troubling. They're feeding off of each other in a viscious cycle of fail.

Re:My 10-minute-overview-review

[Anonymous Coward]

Likely caused by the most vocal people is a minority that can't stop comparing e-peens...

I have seen more then one pnp game forum taken over by number crunchers and rules lawyers since MMOs became "fashionable", displacing the concept and setting explorers that used to bring interesting color and viewpoints to the talk. The latter seems to have reacted by creating their own set of games that claim to still be RPG but reads more like rock-paper-scissors tag-team storytelling.

I stopped reading the review at...

[pdangel]

"Legend has removed half-breeds like half-elves and half-orcs citing the impossibility or unlikelihood of inter–species breeding. I mean, horses and donkeys may look similar, but they can’t interbreed. What would you even call them? Dorses? Honkeys?" --http://www.oldschool.geek.nz

I can not take anyone seriously that can not be bothered with fact checking before open their mouths first.

Its called a MULE, you jackass.

Look it up.

Re:I stopped reading the review at...

[SirGarlon]

Its called a MULE, you jackass.

Whoosh. And for a second whoosh, look up "jackass."

Re:I stopped reading the review at...

[pdangel]

Whoosh and sputter. That was a bad pun. Maybe not even a pun, just plain old name calling.

But thanks for not making a point.

Re:I stopped reading the review at...

[Anonymous Coward]

Woosh

Seriously, look up "jackass".

Re:I stopped reading the review at...

[spir0]

It's called taking the piss.

Re:I stopped reading the review at...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you finnished the review and read the note at the bottom you would see that knows its called a mule. Maybe you failed to notice asterisk next to the sentence, or are just to much of jackass to know what it means.

Re:I stopped reading the review at...

[SirGarlon]

Oops. I earned that. The taste of this foot is ... strangely familiar.

Older versions of D&D are far more rules-lite

[KatchooNJ]

I still play (A)D&D with friends from time to time, but we play the way old versions of the game. We played Basic D&D (the "Moldvay" version that came out in 1981 with the magenta box) for a couple years, since it is extremely simple and easy to run for the DM. (There was also an Expert book for when characters went above 3rd level) Recently, we jumped to the first edition of AD&D, which many of us in the group have experience with, so it isn't a tricky change for us. AD&D is definitely more involved (more rules for everything you can think of), but it doesn't have to be. The older versions of the game were almost modular... you could choose to use rules you liked and ditch the ones you didn't. (It is almost like a make-your-own-RPG kit.) You can obviously do this with newer versions, but the older versions are a bit more "rules-lite" and are easier to do this with. In fact, our DM just recently decided that he wanted to start using some of the rules (basically for combat) from the Basic/Expert game in the AD&D game to make things easier on him. Nobody complained at all. I always felt that the game is the DM's to run and he/she can do what they want.

In fact, I recommend running the game and if you don't know a rule for something, if you don't know where it is in the books and can't look it up inside of a minute, just wing-it and make something up that makes sense to keep the game flowing. Being a DM is definitely an art. I think a by-the-book rules-happy DM that is always pausing the game to leaf through books drags the game's momentum down.

All in all, I recommend the older versions to people that are daunted by the heaviness of the rules for most versions of D&D. You can get the older books from used book stores or off of eBay for quite cheap. I originally learned from the Molvay (1981) magenta boxed set, and I heavily recommend that book to newbies, since it is easy enough for a child to learn and play. :-) Once you know it well, you can always move up to more advanced rules systems, if you choose to.

btw... I recently bought a couple extra (reading) copies of the Moldvay basic rulebooks from eBay for like $3 each, so it definitely doesn't have to be a big investment, unless you want to get minty copies still in the box... with the original dice included, etc...