It’s been a long time coming, but we are very pleased to announce that all the blood, sweat and tears have come to fruition. At long last, Legend is officially released to version 1.0, and is available through the Get The Game link available in the header above.

There are far too many people to thank for getting us this far; an intense amount of dedication and effort by fans and volunteers has helped us push through radical changes in staff and an escalating workload of balancing, errata, proofreading and rule redesign. The names you see in the credits are listed under titles that massively undervalue their individual contributions, and it’s a real pleasure to be able to announce that their work has at last brought us the completed version of Legend.

I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome all Legend fans to come join us on the official Rule of Cool forums, where a small community has already drawn together to set up a great hub for this game. We hope to welcome many new members to the boards in the coming weeks as word of the Legend release spreads.

Lastly, this release represents the first step in a long road ahead of the Rule of Cool team. Our volunteers have hit the ground running on modules and the upcoming Legend Monster Guide, and we remain committed to delivering a high-quality tabletop experience to you and your group.

Thank you for all your patience and support, and enjoy Legend!

Mr. A

June 17th, 2013. The wait has been long, and will be longer yet, but the end is finally in sight. Thank you for your patience and understanding, folks.

June 17th, 2013. We can’t wait to finally show you the sweet fruits of our blood, sweat, and tears. Our bug fixes, our balance tweaking…so very delicious.

June 17th, 2013. Our 1.0 release of Legend shall arrive on that day.

The number is prime, the hour is near.

So along our journey to bringing out Legend 1.0, we found a scrappy young fan who really, really wanted to join our development team. We were hesitant at first, but we soon learned the error of our ways. We were awestruck at his first and only track. With his kind permission, we decided to release it right now, for you fine folks to enjoy while we get 1.0 ready. We will surely consider modeling all future content after this prodigy’s extreme design sense.

We proudly present our latest track:

I AM ONE NINJA.

Abandon all hope, all ye who enter.

Continue reading →

After 16 months of often-vocal feedback, we’ve assembled dozens of pages of bugfixes and balance changes for the final 1.0 release. Now we need to shift our focus from taking in new feedback to typesetting and merging 1.0 balance changes. Since this part of the process doesn’t really involve me, I’m here to announce that the Legend System’s first open beta is officially over. Keep playing Legend, keep enjoying yourselves, but at this time we’re locking down all content changes to release a game that we’re truly proud of.

Along with the rest of the Rule of Cool team, I’m extremely grateful for the insights and criticism the community has provided to make Legend a much, much better game than the original beta release 16 months ago. We hope that all of you will be back to download and play the 1.0 release.

Make of the cryptic title what you will.

Welp, with 1.0 ever in our sights, we realized that it was high time for a very, very, very close-to-version-1.0 update. This just might be the very last release before we reach our full version. You can nab it at the usual place. A rough changelog awaits you below the fold.

Continue reading →

Well, it sure has been a year since Legend‘s previous Christmas, when it was only a month old and still wobbly on its feet. Things have quieted down a bit with the team hunkering down for the last stretch towards 1.0, but we’d like to reward you with a little something for bearing with us. We can’t tell whether you’ve been good little boys and girls or not, because Legend lacks an alignment system, so to cover all the bases, we’ve thrown some coal into your presents.

Want to see Legend in action? Watch Aunty Paladin, the annual RPGs and Kid-Helping Extravaganza play the Osaka Street Stories adventure module! Watch their livestream and lend your support as they raise donations for Child’s Play, which benefits sick children in hospitals. For more information about Aunty Paladin, visit their tumblr.

You can download a version of Osaka Street Stories from the link above and play along in this exhilarating battle against crooked cops, demon snipers, and fearsome exploding ninja yakuza. And stay tuned throughout the week here and at Aunty Paladin for updates!

Update: Osaka Street Stories is lined up for play at 9:00 PM Pacific tonight (December 20th). Check it out!

Work on the Legend Monster Guide is proceeding apace, but in our drafts for content, it seems that a few beasts have been displaced. We’ve flayed our minds for a solution to the empty slots we’ve been faced with, but as we all know, the value of any creation lies in the eye of the beholder.

So why should we trust our own judgment? You, the audience, have an interest in getting the Monster Guide you want most, and we have an interest in giving it to you. Legend has always involved its players in its design process. So here’s what we’re going to do:

On Monday, November 26th beginning at 4:00 PM Eastern time (9:00 PM GMT), we’re holding the Battle Royale on Legend’s IRC channel! You, our audience, will be able to vote for your favorite new monster designs from a bracket of sixteen freshly-formed fiends and the winners will be included in the Legend Monster Guide. Hope to see you there!

Legend gives your players a fat stack of powerful, fun abilities that might make them feel invincible. For intrepid heroes like them, clearing out a spooky castle is a daily chore. So what if the locals say it’s haunted? It’s probably just the wind. The chilling howls in the darkness as they approach? It’s just some wolves. The candles in the hallways sputter out one by one? Someone just forgot to replace them. The rogue is missing? He probably just went off to steal some silverware. And then an ear-piercing shriek echoes through the halls, and the fun begins.

The Death Star got blown up because the rebels got their hands on its plans. Bard took down Smaug because he learned of the dragon’s singular weak point. The reason Batman is so effective is because he’s a masterful detective as well as a ninja. Loads of heroes succeed only because they clock in the hours doing research before kicking down the bad guy’s door, or at least clock a minion across the face and then asked them for directions to said door.

The Investigations skill game took a long time to finish up, as we had to adapt it from the Comfortably Grim setting to general use for the core book. This update also features a re-worked Skill Game general rule set, and will be included in the 1.0 release of the core book along with updated Interrogation and Parkour from Osaka Street Stories and the brand new Negotiation skill game. If you loved skill games in OSS, you’ll love these even more. If you didn’t like them, you’ll hopefully like them now. If you just want us to release 1.0 already, there’s just 5 items left on the checklist before that happens. If you’re still reading this update and not the PDF, I’m not sure why, there’s nothing more to see here.