[Legend] Is Legend... Dead?

[Larkas]

So, I need to ask. Is Legend... Dead? It's such a promising system, it makes me sad to see it go mid-development. Really, with the promised Monster Manual and a couple of mini-campaign settings, that thing would really shine!

[Psyren]

My understanding is that most of its intended audience found what they were looking for (or something close to it) in 5e, so it quietly faded away.

[Urpriest]

My understanding is that most of its intended audience found what they were looking for (or something close to it) in 5e, so it quietly faded away.

...how? 5e has lazier and shoddier monster rules than 4e! Legend's monster system was its biggest draw!

Obviously everyone chooses systems for the monster rules, right?

[noob]

Yes it is why I like 3.5 monsters can do everything(especially if they are wizard)
I remember of a bug allowing monsters to have a level of wizard superior to their fp.

[Psyren]

...how? 5e has lazier and shoddier monster rules than 4e! Legend's monster system was its biggest draw!

Obviously everyone chooses systems for the monster rules, right?

Are you being tongue-in-cheek? Monsters were Legend's biggest flaw - the track system is great for PCs, but one of the tenets of monster design even in fiction is just being able to give your monster the abilities it needs to have to be threatening, and Legend's design hamstrung that. Legend treated vampires much like 4e did, making them almost like a class instead of a monster.

[Larkas]

Are you being tongue-in-cheek? Monsters were Legend's biggest flaw - the track system is great for PCs, but one of the tenets of monster design even in fiction is just being able to give your monster the abilities it needs to have to be threatening, and Legend's design hamstrung that. Legend treated vampires much like 4e did, making them almost like a class instead of a monster.

That's not in and of itself bad. A base track with regular tracks for intended abilities isn't terrible if played right. But seeing that we never got a MM, newbies can't really build from examples, can they?

[Firechanter]

We have just started a Legend campaign a couple of weeks ago. Parallel to our 5E game, mind you. Legend and 5E convey an entirely different gaming experience. 5E is very down to earth, almost austere where you celebrate when some of your values go up by one per five levels (what someone on the net described as "pathetic aesthetic"). Legend is much more freaky and lavish with wicked abilities, and customization opportunity til the knob comes off.
Both games have their merits, but they are so ragingly different that I can hardly imagine 5E being the reason for the admittedly dormant state of Legend.

I checked out the Rule of Cool forums and considered registering there, but in the last 6 months it had activity in like 2 threads, so yeah, I'd kinda feel like joining the party after everybody went home.

And I wish there was a Legend bestiary, too.

[Psyren]

That's not in and of itself bad. A base track with regular tracks for intended abilities isn't terrible if played right. But seeing that we never got a MM, newbies can't really build from examples, can they?

It can be done well, sure, but it also makes bringing existing monsters into Legend (particularly when it comes to transforming into them, another fantasy staple) quite difficult. What would the tracks look like for, say, a mindflayer, or a gelatinous cube, or a planetar, or a shadow?

Both games have their merits, but they are so ragingly different that I can hardly imagine 5E being the reason for the admittedly dormant state of Legend.

I meant more in balance than in feel. The folks that were fed up with 3.P's wide disparity but also found 4e's homogeneity stifling would have been happy with either 5e or Legend's approach - but 5e dropped first, and of course had much bigger name recognition, mopping said folks up.

[Mcdt2]

To quote a post from the ruleofcool forum roughly 2 months ago:

For those of you still holding out hope, let me lay down a bit of information for you. I may put this up in a new topic later.

There are two things you need to know:

• Legend is not dead
Of the few dev team members who are still operational, VertigoCharades continues to lead a determined effort to completely nail down the core rules and keep Legend on life support. Dedicated fans still play the game and hope to keep it alive and kicking.

• Legend is dead
The collapse of the dev team due to a huge flood of Real Life, coupled with the greatly diminished influx of fan activity and the difficulty in marketing the game due to the nonexistent Monster Guide and fluff-null core book (not to mention a stack of promises by the former head of Legend), have basically brought development and support of Legend to a standstill. Sadly, everything that I warned the former head about has basically come to pass, and while the core rules might eventually be (re-)completed, I can't say reasonably that any other Legend product will be forthcoming.

That said, what I'd like to organize this summer is a cleanup and release of planned Monster Guide material; essentially taking what should already be available to our fans and moving it out there. I can't make guarantees, since that would involve speaking for other people, but we're still here and the IRC channel is still active.

For what it's worth, I'd love to run or join a Legend campaign, if anyone wants to play one. I'd prefer to use Roll20, but I could be convinced to use basically any VTT or even Play By Post, at this point.

[Lord_Gareth]

Legend's problems - and dormancy - happened well before 5e and frankly laying its death at the feet of that travesty is insulting to the quality of work performed by Rule of Cool.

[Alea]

I meant more in balance than in feel. The folks that were fed up with 3.P's wide disparity but also found 4e's homogeneity stifling would have been happy with either 5e or Legend's approach - but 5e dropped first, and of course had much bigger name recognition, mopping said folks up.

I don't think Legend was ever seriously trying to compete with 5e; that'd be preposterous. No way a new indy developer was going to swing with the established names (Wizards, or even Paizo, which at least had an existing company with publishing and advertising experience). Also, really, 5e doesn't hit most of the things I think of when I think of what Legend was trying to accomplish; Legend is far closer to 4e in goals and methods than it is to 5e.

[gkathellar]

The quote from afroakuma has the right of it. Those of us on the Dev Team are still around to provide clarifications and guidance, but the reality is that the game, at least as it was, is unlikely to (read: not going to) see future additions. We're still happy to support the game, we still hang around on the IRC channel, and we're pleased to see that some people still play it. But working on Legend-that-was comprised a particular phase of our lives, and that phase of our lives is honestly past.

Perhaps Legend will see a future reincarnation (not a resurrection), or perhaps we'll move on to other projects. For the moment, we just want to get the existing thing into ship shape before casting it off to sea.

My understanding is that most of its intended audience found what they were looking for (or something close to it) in 5e, so it quietly faded away.

I'm ... I'm legitimately baffled by this statement. I think you're actually insulting 5E and Legend, by way of conflating two totally different beasts that really don't have any desire to resemble each other.

[Kip Shades]

Pretty sure the only real thing that 5e has in common with Legend is the d20 mechanic and a lack of a magic item economy and limited attunement slots. Hell, 5e is closer to d20 Modern than it is to Legend. Plus, Legend 1.1 and the decline in development happened before 5e. If anything, 5e borrowed the lack of a magic item economy from Legend (though that's likely more of a "strange minds think alike" scenario)

But yeah. The devs are still active on IRC (You can find the chatroom on their forums or through gkathellar's signature) for discussion of rules and affairs, and have mentioned a few things they want to accomplish with 1.2 (Revising Earth Elemental's capstone, among other things) before putting out the Monster Manual and working on stuff for outsourcing development to the community.

[Psyren]

Legend's problems - and dormancy - happened well before 5e and frankly laying its death at the feet of that travesty is insulting to the quality of work performed by Rule of Cool.

And yet, I can't help but feel that if 5e hadn't happened, there'd be more clamoring for Legend and its advertised role as the golden mean between the extremes of 3e wide imbalance and 4e's laserlike focus on balance to the exclusion of other aspects of the game - and with that clamor, more impetus to get it over the finish line.

But it's just my opinion, and definitely not intended to insult anyone or anything at all.

I don't think Legend was ever seriously trying to compete with 5e; that'd be preposterous.

Indeed, which is why I didn't say that.

[afroakuma]

And yet, I can't help but feel that if 5e hadn't happened, there'd be more clamoring for Legend and its advertised role as the golden mean between the extremes of 3e wide imbalance and 4e's laserlike focus on balance to the exclusion of other aspects of the game - and with that clamor, more impetus to get it over the finish line.

Clamor wouldn't have translated into impetus, I promise you. Legend stalled out well before 5E was approaching, poisoned by the head designer leaving the project and then literally every other team member both moving and starting a new phase in their lives at the same time. One got married (yay!), one was failing in school and had to step back to work on grades (boo), most others were simply coping with new or intensified responsibilities. For all that there remained devs with a desire to see Legend progress, the manpower simply did not exist and continues not to. The previous head designer squandered too much early momentum and the results... well. I think we know those.

To say 5E had anything to do with Legend's current state is incorrect. Whatever justification you'd like to use to advance the argument - I'd recommend you don't bother. I have the inside perspective, I know where the bodies are buried, I know where the body is that should have been buried but got away, I know the names, the dates and the personal details of everything behind the curtain. This was not a problem of lack of fans, lack of gamer interest, lack of clamor, lack of impetus - it was and remains a problem of lack of people, which coupled with the inherent issues with Legend's core paradigm made it next to impossible to get things to the next stage. Any criticism that could be leveled at the game, I assure you, I can sympathize with - but no, any idea that it would have been a success but for 5E puts too much credit on that game and... to be honest, too much credit on Legend in the state it was at the time things stalled out on it.

[Psyren]

Clamor wouldn't have translated into impetus, I promise you. Legend stalled out well before 5E was approaching, poisoned by the head designer leaving the project and then literally every other team member both moving and starting a new phase in their lives at the same time. One got married (yay!), one was failing in school and had to step back to work on grades (boo), most others were simply coping with new or intensified responsibilities. For all that there remained devs with a desire to see Legend progress, the manpower simply did not exist and continues not to. The previous head designer squandered too much early momentum and the results... well. I think we know those.

To say 5E had anything to do with Legend's current state is incorrect. Whatever justification you'd like to use to advance the argument - I'd recommend you don't bother. I have the inside perspective, I know where the bodies are buried, I know where the body is that should have been buried but got away, I know the names, the dates and the personal details of everything behind the curtain. This was not a problem of lack of fans, lack of gamer interest, lack of clamor, lack of impetus - it was and remains a problem of lack of people, which coupled with the inherent issues with Legend's core paradigm made it next to impossible to get things to the next stage. Any criticism that could be leveled at the game, I assure you, I can sympathize with - but no, any idea that it would have been a success but for 5E puts too much credit on that game and... to be honest, too much credit on Legend in the state it was at the time things stalled out on it.

I thank you at least for not accusing me of trying to "insult" anyone. Very well then.

[Larkas]

Thank you for all the answers, specially those from the project's team members. While it's sad to see such an interesting system go, specially at the stage it did, it's still better than see it put on permanent hiatus. At least we don't need to hang on to fruitless hope. And, well, short-lived though it was, it was still a kickass of a system. Congratulations to all that took part in the development.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I still play it at my gaming table. One of the major advantages it has versus 3.5 is the ease of character creation and, more importantly, ease of levelling up. You can level up right at the gaming table and just keep going, which is pretty unique among gaming systems. Notate the skill bumps, the magic item slot, the ability unlock, and the various other numerical bumps. Takes maybe five minutes, particularly if you already have the entire tracks laid out ahead of time so you just select which one just went 'live'. I actually had to rule that you can't level up in the middle of a scene because it is just that easy.

I've never had any particular difficulty in making enemies for my players to face. Mooks and Myriads fill out the roster, with an occasional ability tacked on for customization purposes. For example, a 'displacer beast' might have that ability from the Acrobatics track that gives you the ability to negate an attack with a reflex save once per encounter, but otherwise statted out as a Mook. Only sentient beings actually got the opportunity to have one (or more) tracks appended, as per rules for more advanced Mooks. Dispelling became much more important when the wave of mooks ended up with one in the middle that had Bastion that the one in the far back with Shaman casting hit with a targeted buff. Two mooks with a single track each, the rest just base mooks. Then the players understood that hitting the buff with a dispel drops it for ALL the mooks and their grumbles died down rapidly and they quickly realized how important having a source of Dispelling can be. Then I used that same tactic against the party, once they had figured it out. Meanwhile, popcorn, chips, and dice flew across the table at various periods of time, and fun was had by all.

For those who have not, I strongly urge you to download the PhB and play around with it. Sure, it's not perfect. But it is, in my personal opinion, what 4e should have been.

[Urpriest]

Are you being tongue-in-cheek? Monsters were Legend's biggest flaw - the track system is great for PCs, but one of the tenets of monster design even in fiction is just being able to give your monster the abilities it needs to have to be threatening, and Legend's design hamstrung that. Legend treated vampires much like 4e did, making them almost like a class instead of a monster.

If that were true of monsters, it would also be true of PCs.

[Segev]

Afrokuma had an interesting comment in his post that I would like elaboration on: What in Legend's "core paradigm" made it so difficult to get it to "the next stage?" I can guess that the "core paradigm" is that tracks system, but please correct me if I'm wrong. I am unsure what "the next stage" was nor why the core paradigm got in the way of it.

(I fully understand the lack of manpower issues, as well as...other...issues which can crop up in a group of unpaid developers working together on a mutually-shared, but not necessarily unified, dream.)

[Psyren]

If that were true of monsters, it would also be true of PCs.

Nah - PCs are designed to get their abilities on an even, balanced track because that's how they progress relative to the game and to one another. But monsters have given abilities for a variety of reasons, with balance being only one component - others include folklore, ease of conversion/compatibility with other games, baselining for future monster design, being silver-bullet answers to very specific defenses etc. Designing monsters is equal parts art and science, and being able to simply give them a certain ability without being chained to a "track" design is a key component of that.

[Urpriest]

Nah - PCs are designed to get their abilities on an even, balanced track because that's how they progress relative to the game and to one another. But monsters have given abilities for a variety of reasons, with balance being only one component - others include folklore, ease of conversion/compatibility with other games, baselining for future monster design, being silver-bullet answers to very specific defenses etc. Designing monsters is equal parts art and science, and being able to simply give them a certain ability without being chained to a "track" design is a key component of that.

Folklore is enormously relevant for PC abilities. Think about how often people blame the fact that the Wizard class was trying to encompass everything every mythological Wizard was capable of for how unbalanced it is.

Conversion/compatibility isn't really relevant. Either you think of games as standing alone and it never comes up, or you're the kind of person who tries to bring in things from other games/editions and your players do too and are all trying to play Naruto characters or something. Either way it's symmetrical.

Baselining is either meaningless in a Legend-like system, because you're using the same ingredients, or you're baselining for new monster features, in which case the same argument applies to class features.

Silver-bullet monsters are bad design in any CR-based system, since their CR is only correct if their silver-bullet target is present. The times when you want a silver bullet, you need to balance it in the same way you balance one-trick-pony PCs in order to make it able to contribute in situations where its silver bullet is irrelevant.

The only reason you think of designing monsters as more "artistic" than designing PCs is because you're used to using a class-based system. In plenty of rules-light to rules-moderate systems, players design their own abilities rather than picking them from a menu. It's certainly viable, but it's not really the kind of system D&D is. When monsters are just a spell away from PC access, they need to be structured like other PC options, which means that if you're balancing PCs based on a finite list of choices you need to do the same for monsters.

[stack]

I'll miss Legend (though I do have a Legend game going on this board still), but at least with various 3rd party additions to PF I can get effective martials and reasonable casters with strong, thematic, at-will abilities. Akashic mysteries, path of war, spheres of power, pact magic, etc make all the difference.

[Necroticplague]

Like the system, and it at least seems finished mechanically, just regret I can never seem to find games for it.

[Urpriest]

I'll miss Legend (though I do have a Legend game going on this board still), but at least with various 3rd party additions to PF I can get effective martials and reasonable casters with strong, thematic, at-will abilities. Akashic mysteries, path of war, spheres of power, pact magic, etc make all the difference.

Do you know if anyone has homebrewed class-based monster systems for PF yet? That's the part I care about.

[icefractal]

When monsters are just a spell away from PC access, they need to be structured like other PC options, which means that if you're balancing PCs based on a finite list of choices you need to do the same for monsters.

Does Legend even have open-ended Polymorph though? I thought it didn't.

Speaking as someone who does like customizing and optimizing PCs, and who thinks the track system is an elegant way to do things, I still don't want to do it for monsters. Too much work, too little benefit. Optimizing monsters has no pay-off over simply using a tougher monster to begin with, and hand-crafting every foe was simply not workable for a weekly game. Which would have been greatly ameliorated with the planned bestiary, I realize.

"Wow, that fight was ok, but the fact that the monster was technically only 9th level, but it seemed as strong as a 12th level one ... that was what made things amazing!" - said by no player I've ever met.

[Dusk Eclipse]

Do you know if anyone has homebrewed class-based monster systems for PF yet? That's the part I care about.

Not that I know off but a) their way to treat monster as PC's is actually quite good and b) I've heard that Spheres of Powers is versatile enough you can play quite as a few types of monsters (most notably shapeshifters like Werewolfs) without much problem.

[Psyren]

Folklore is enormously relevant for PC abilities. Think about how often people blame the fact that the Wizard class was trying to encompass everything every mythological Wizard was capable of for how unbalanced it is.

Right, but you can still put that on a track because it's a class, and that implies being able to start off fairly weak and get better at something over time. It's what you do (a profession) rather than what you are. After all, no one is going to eyeball Pug, or First-year Harry (or Neville!), and expect them to be equal to Milamber, Dumbledore, or Merlin.

Compare to a monster - there are certain things you expect ALL vampires to be able to do, or ALL hydras, or ALL balors and solars. There is no progression there, and thus no need for a track. About the only monster you could reliably place on a track are Dragons, and even that would be based on age rather than levels. And even if you do place them on a track - like the monster class rules attempted to do, for some monsters - you're going to end up with an incomplete list (because designing those things is intensive) and the abilities they get at each rung end up being arbitrary points of contention, with it being far too easy for said monster to be too weak or two strong at each rung, and even to vacillate between both extremes as they climb.

Conversion/compatibility isn't really relevant.

In theory/a perfect world, perhaps it shouldn't be, and every system should stand on its own. But as a practical matter, it absolutely is. How easy it is for GMs to convert their favorite villains, modules and adventure paths is a key factor in how readily they will adopt a system. That compatibility was one of the lynchpins of Pathfinder's runaway success, and furthermore it was far easier to convert your 3.5 adventures to PF than to 4e. Not saying that was the only factor in PF's success, but it certainly was one of many.

Silver-bullet monsters are bad design in any CR-based system, since their CR is only correct if their silver-bullet target is present. The times when you want a silver bullet, you need to balance it in the same way you balance one-trick-pony PCs in order to make it able to contribute in situations where its silver bullet is irrelevant.

But that's the beauty of them - if the target isn't present, you have lots of other options to choose from. If nobody in your PC's party has access to break enchantment/flesh to stone, just leave the Medusa at home, or consider it more of a challenge. The CR system is meant to be mutable after all, what with the "favorable circumstances for the PCs" and "unfavorable circumstances for the PCs" considerations. The GM is not intended to be a robot who simply picks numbers from the MM or rolls on tables to design encounters without an iota of critical thought.

The only reason you think of designing monsters as more "artistic" than designing PCs is because you're used to using a class-based system. In plenty of rules-light to rules-moderate systems, players design their own abilities rather than picking them from a menu. It's certainly viable, but it's not really the kind of system D&D is. When monsters are just a spell away from PC access, they need to be structured like other PC options, which means that if you're balancing PCs based on a finite list of choices you need to do the same for monsters.

Or, you know, modify the "one spell that gives the PC access" so that they are not getting everything that monster has to offer, nor are they getting every single monster regardless of suitability for PC use. 3.5 did this with summoning spells, and PF went a step further with the shapeshifting ones, as it should have been.

[Segev]

If I ever do design a class/level-based RPG, I definitely will take the step that AD&D took from OD&D and expand on it. In OD&D, "elf" and "dwarf" and other things we know of as races were classes. The job-based classes were humans. Every elf was the same class, "elf."

AD&D made class and race separate things. AD&D 1e and 2e tried to have races of varying powers paid for by EXP penalties.

3e used LA and ECL to try to sacrifice levels for more powerful races.

I'd approach it differently: everybody would have a race and class, and both would level up. It's akin to Savage Species monster progressions, but gestalting them with your class, and every race having them. So a level 20 dwarf would be more iconically and powerfully dwarven than a level 1 dwarf, regardless of their classes. And, ideally, level 20 dwarf and level 20 dragon would be similarly potent.

[Urpriest]

Right, but you can still put that on a track because it's a class, and that implies being able to start off fairly weak and get better at something over time. It's what you do (a profession) rather than what you are. After all, no one is going to eyeball Pug, or First-year Harry (or Neville!), and expect them to be equal to Milamber, Dumbledore, or Merlin.

Compare to a monster - there are certain things you expect ALL vampires to be able to do, or ALL hydras, or ALL balors and solars. There is no progression there, and thus no need for a track. About the only monster you could reliably place on a track are Dragons, and even that would be based on age rather than levels.

Here's the thing, though: Prestige Classes.

There are plenty of things PCs can be that have this same sort of trait: there are things you expect ALL PCs of a certain archetype to be able to do. All Assassins should know how to use poisons and kill people quickly. All members of the Wayfarer's Guild should know how to teleport. Characters can't start out with this at first level, but they don't need to, because you can make the ability require a certain level to obtain.

Similarly, if there's something that ALL vampires can do that isn't appropriate to a first level character, then that means that ALL vampires are higher than first level. That's not really all that bizarre: if you're building monsters anyway, they don't need to have leveled up from first level to their current situation.

And even if you do place them on a track - like the monster class rules attempted to do, for some monsters - you're going to end up with an incomplete list (because designing those things is intensive) and the abilities they get at each rung end up being arbitrary points of contention, with it being far too easy for said monster to be too weak or two strong at each rung, and even to vacillate between both extremes as they climb.

Think about how broad the PC options for 3.5 are, though. Heck, most of the time when someone comes on this forum wanting to play an underpowered monster, we don't direct them to the homebrew monster classes, we tell them how to do it using PC classes! Legend was a young system. Imagine a system with the depth of 3.5's character building resources, but for monsters!

In theory/a perfect world, perhaps it shouldn't be, and every system should stand on its own. But as a practical matter, it absolutely is. How easy it is for GMs to convert their favorite villains, modules and adventure paths is a key factor in how readily they will adopt a system. That compatibility was one of the lynchpins of Pathfinder's runaway success, and furthermore it was far easier to convert your 3.5 adventures to PF than to 4e. Not saying that was the only factor in PF's success, but it certainly was one of many.

And as I explained, all of these concerns are equally relevant for PCs, as evidenced by the constant "how do I make this ridiculous League of Legends thing into a D&D character" threads.

But that's the beauty of them - if the target isn't present, you have lots of other options to choose from. If nobody in your PC's party has access to break enchantment/flesh to stone, just leave the Medusa at home, or consider it more of a challenge. The CR system is meant to be mutable after all, what with the "favorable circumstances for the PCs" and "unfavorable circumstances for the PCs" considerations. The GM is not intended to be a robot who simply picks numbers from the MM or rolls on tables to design encounters without an iota of critical thought.

Sure, but again, the same applies for PCs. For example, let's say someone defended the fact that Rogues can't Sneak Attack constructs and undead in 3.5 by saying that if your game has lots of constructs and undead then the players can just choose not to play Rogues. Even if that's true, I hope you get why people find PF's setup, in which Rogues can Sneak Attack both, superior. We expect the rules to take some tweaking and some common sense, but we also expect them to be fairly reliable.

Or, you know, modify the "one spell that gives the PC access" so that they are not getting everything that monster has to offer, nor are they getting every single monster regardless of suitability for PC use. 3.5 did this with summoning spells, and PF went a step further with the shapeshifting ones, as it should have been.

It's never just going to be one spell, though. Or rather, all it takes is one spell giving too much access. You can certainly get away with keeping that sort of thing out of your system, that's what 4e is for. But plenty of people find those sorts of "invisible walls" in the system excessively gamist. That's why PF still kept a variety of ways to gain access to monsters, including mind control and rebuking undead, as well as beefed-up summoning and their laughable non-attempt at an ECL system. It's why 5e went back to the "you can get access to pretty much any monster you want eventually" philosophy. And it's why systems like Legend are our best bet: because if PCs are going to be using monsters for their own ends, monster abilities should be balanced along PC lines.