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Why Play Open Legend and Legends of Today

There are reasons to choose Open Legend as a Role-Playing Game. For new players and new groups, there are so many choices of game to play! In the interest of that, here are some things to think about when you consider Open Legend.
For more about Legends of Today, check out What Kind of Game is This?

Open Legend benefits

1. It's free and open-source! This gives you a chance to try a game with little up-front cost. You can find all of the rules for the game on the website openlegend.com. There are already good online tools for Open Legend (openlegend.heromuster.com) so you can create characters and track things without paper. That means all you need is dice! There are online dice simulators readily available for free, so you could play this game at no expense. But dice are fun!

2. The game encourages you to make the characters you want. You can generate pretty much any character and simulate any genre. The rules are light and consistent. There are no spellbooks and few lists to read over. Boons, Banes, Feats, Perks and Flaws are lists you have to read through to appreciate. Even with all that, the page count is much lower than most RPGs with these sorts of rules. Full rules as printed with these lists is 142 pages. That's pretty light for most games!

3. The rules are fun! Exploding dice are fun to roll; when you roll for a 1-20 and get a 66, that's fantastic! The general game concept to roll only when needed can remove a lot of tedium from the game. Focus on having fun and enjoying the company of your friends. Encourage their cool ideas. Then use the rules when you need to.

Legends of Today

So these are ideas core to Open Legend that make it worth considering amongst RPGs. Legends of Today is one setting that is developing for this game. Why would you want this to be the setting of your game?

1. It's based in the modern world. This is the thing you know and interact with, but we're making it more interesting together. There's magic, there are spectacular beings, anyone can gain powers.

2. It's not a secret world. Unless you want it to be. A major inspiration for me is Shadowrun, where the changes to the world affect everyone openly. There are fantastic races like elves, orcs, trolls, etc. Like that, Legends of Today has fantastic races. It also has no penalties or problems, but instead we deal with social issues like real life. You can explore some of those if they're interesting, but you can also just shoot a rocket at a dragon.

For more about Legends of Today, check out What Kind of Game is This?

New Players and GMs

If you haven't played or run (the GM being the player responsible for the elements of the game other than Player Characters) a Role-Playing Game (RPG) before, it's important that you know something: it's a lot of fun!

The main thing that happens in a RPG is that players have their characters (PCs) act to explore and interact with the world, just like characters in any board or video game.

They can be played like a board game ('I move here, I get this'), or like parts in a play ('Shannon floats across the floor and crooks her finger to beckon the judge').

The player acting as GM handles the scenery and other characters, which we call NPCs for Non-Player Characters. They make rulings on how the players should handle their actions. When it's important to decide if they were successful, they determine that success using the rules.

This is how a RPG works in general. Most systems are going to work like this. The most popular RPG is Dungeons & Dragons. If you're considering playing a RPG, you've probably considered Dungeons & Dragons. Here's why I would play Open Legend instead:

1. Again, free. If you're going to try your first game, why not try the free one?

2. The rules are much simpler. Learning to play and run Dungeons & Dragons is a lot of work. I have been playing it for years and continue to, but it's a hard thing to start. If you are interested in Dungeons & Dragons, go for it, but if you want something quicker, simpler and more consistent in rules, try Open Legend.
As a game, it is easy to play and run. There is a learning curve for everyone, true for any RPG, but the way players can perform actions is consistent. The way GMs run the game is consistent. You can make the adventures and games that you want and impose the limitations you feel are needed.

3. Most people I know who have played Dungeons & Dragons for a long time only use the rules they like. This can make the way they run games look very fast and off-the-cuff, but this is a matter of experience and familiarity with the game. For most people, the rules as written for Dungeons & Dragons are a lot of work! In Open Legend, you are encouraged to keep your game easy and fast. This can lead to a similar experience with the game without worrying about rules.
If you watch a live stream game like Critical Role, imagine that the players and DM never have to look at the book to see how spells or effects work. They just play their characters. Open Legend could be about that easy.

Experienced Players and GMs

If you've played RPGs before, you've learned a rule set. Some of them are specific to a setting or genre, others are open like Open Legend. Open Legend has some of the best current ideas in game design. Failed rolls don't make players sit around re-rolling, they advance the story. Characters are powerful and have options immediately. The mechanical character benefits are organized into Feats, Perks and Flaws. There are no skills, specialties, etc; there are just Attributes. It means you have very few things to keep track of.

All of these things revolve around a single core mechanic. Combat is streamlined and easy but also gives players a lot of strategic opportunity. You can have lots of crunch, but new players don't need to feel like they're missing out if they don't get the rules right away.

Every experience point and level is meaningful and gives substantial progression. There is very little math or prep involved in the game. The rules won't restrain your game ideas.

For Legends of Today, as a new setting for Open Legend, the goal is for us to create a world as exciting and interesting as possible. It's the world we know but far more fantastic and magical. Using it as a setting gives you the chance to make the world amazing and have players help you reshape it.

For more about Legends of Today, check out What Kind of Game is This?

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