Legend Previews

Head Injury Theatre!

They've actually been up for a little while now, but Mongoose has posted a character sheet, preview, and packet describing any adjustments between the RQII edition and the Legend edition of the core rules (all available here).

I'm getting progressively more excited as Legend gets closer. I like the concept of the core RQII mechanics, but effectively divorced from the Glorantha setting. It's not that Glorantha is a problem; rather, its that any game system which ties itself to a setting (specially and in particular fantasy systems) necessarily limits its audience and functionality, even if the core rules are sufficiently robust and stretchable as to make the tether sufficiently ephemeral. I also admit that this isn't necessarily a weakness....many, many people enjoy having a system which provides that sort of content straight up, of course....but not being one of them, instead falling into the camp of gamers who like to take the rules and wed them to my own creations, means I much prefer these things when they do not contain any implicit assumptions about the "where" of it all.

Yes, I'm one of those guys who thought that having the Greyhawk pantheon in the core rules of 3rd edition D&D was a mark against it. And while I like the core setting assumptions of D&D 4th edition, I also feel it of necessity created boundaries and limits that have also hurt that edition more than helped it. It's only fortuitous that the core assumptions for 4E were carefully thought out and integrated with the core expectations of D&D in general. From a certain point of view, of course! I know I like them, and I know I have found that the 4E approach meshes more closely to fantasy as I enjoy it, but that is certainly not the case for all people...which is exactly my point; the increased focus of 4E necessarily cost the game some of its versamilitude from earlier editions, especially the chunky-weird mechanical era of 2nd edition, which for all its lumpiness could still somehow manage to provide for non-western cultures, exotic non-standard fantasy locales and outright strangeness better than any successive edition could. From a certain point of view.

Baby Front! Just a quick update, as well as an explanation of why I might not post much at some point soon. Jody is days away from due date and all progressing along just fine. Marcus should be here ideally between 5 minutes from now and sometime around the tenth according to the midwife nurse. He could run late, but it seems unlikely. Personally, I'll be surprised if we're not in the hospital by this Sunday.

Okay....that's it for now.....as usual, I have preloaded blogs for the "Ages of Lingusia" column through the 13th, so there will be no interruption of that until then. I have plenty of additional material that I could load for future Ages columns, just need to find a couple hours to set them up....so even if I'm absent from the blog due to imminent fatherhood issues, there will still be some material for a while.