You guys are incredible! We’ve passed the $3500 funding goal for our Kickstarter in under three days. And the more money we raise past this goal, the more awesome illustrations we can afford to commission. Also we made a video to explain more about the Kickstarter and its rewards, and a chart to track our progress. Follow the latest Kickstarter updates on the Kickstarter page!

Legend’s very first adventure module, Osaka Street Stories, is finally complete. Take to the streets of Osaka as one of up to five 4th level characters as you solve the mystery of a missing artifact while dodging attacks from Yakuza thugs, demon snipers and sinister oni. In addition to 15 encounters, the adventure document also introduces rules for modern firearms, new consumables and an alternative system for encounter resolutions called skill-games. Skill-games provide GMs and players with a rules framework for handling complex tasks such as sniper duels, interrogations and parkour races.

As you may already know, Legend’s proceeds all go to Child’s Play. However, we are still committed to delivering a professionally designed product, and that means illustrations for our content. We’d like to be able to have more illustrations, and to offer better rates to the talented artists we work with. There are a couple of other things, such as hosting fees, which also need funding. To raise money for all of these things, we’ve made a Kickstarter with some nifty pledge rewards. Ever had an idea for a cool ability, a unique monster, or just wanted to force us to listen to your angry ranting? All that and more could be yours.

Perceptive people among you may notice that unique forum flair is one of the pledge rewards, and then remembered that there is no Legend forum. We would like you to append a big fat yet to the end of that statement. Forums are just one of the things planned for the site redesign.

We raised just short of 13,000 dollars for Child’s Play in the first phase of our open beta alone. I can’t tell you how incredible this is to me. For now, the beta book will remain accessible without any associated fee, charge, or required donation. Anyone who has donated will always have access to the book, and eventually we hope to publish an SRD. We’ll talk more about our larger plans when we release Osaka Street Stories. Right now, I just want to tell everyone that Legend will remain readily available, particularly to anyone who’s on the fence about the game.

Your charity, kindness, and devotion to the cause of complete strangers has let me pursue a childhood dream. And not just pursue it. Surpass it. We’ve moved over 20,000 copies of Legend so far, which is a positively insane number. We’re going to move plenty more. We’ve got some incredibly cool things waiting in the wings to show you guys, including a really clever hack that produces a seven-level lightweight version of Legend.

Cordially,
Jake

First order of business: those of you who like the feel of a good sharp sword as it cleaves through yet another dragon will find this new track of interest to you. If you prefer to blast the dragon from afar with magic, or if you would rather be the dragon, then you’ll also be interested in that link, because the Order of the Black Dragon takes both of those under its wing.

You’ll notice that this is the first DLC put out in quite a while. This is because we’ve been working on our first adventure module. And now it’s done, barring a few editing passes and art assets, and weighs in at a solid 48 pages. In addition to the 14-encounter adventure, the module also introduces Skill Games (skill-based challenges that work on a bidding system similar to what we use for Social Combat) and six brand-new Consumables.

Looks like site maintenance has seen them right.

ChipIn (the service we use to process donations for Child’s Play) has been having issues today. If you see that the ChipIn widget in the site banner and/or the download page has disappeared, this is not because the pay-what-you-want period has ended. We don’t know how much longer this problem will persist, because the ChipIn site is also down, so they can’t make an announcement about it.

The download link for Legend, however, is still active, so if you’re looking to make a donation, feel free to download the PDF now and donate when the ChipIn widget is back.

First of all, thank you all for your donations. We hit the $12,000 mark a couple days ago, and the numbers are still going up. That’s pretty cool.

Second, we have integrated the newest errata into the Legend PDF. This errata cleared up some imbalances and bad interactions in the Rage, Undead, and Utter Brute tracks, as well as clarifying some things in the Scene rules, the glossary, and the item rules. Download the PDF to catch up!

Finally, we’ve decided on new donation bonuses for the $11,000 and $12,000 dollar marks. For the $11,000 bonus content, expect a set of new feats and spells for the magically-inclined! For the $12,000 bonus content, we are releasing a new track for characters who just like to hit people with swords. A lot of you have been requesting one or both of these things, so we’ll release them as soon as possible.

As a pleasant side bonus, you no longer need to right-click on the download button in order to download the PDF – the download dialog window will appear as the default action.

This is the first in what I hope will be a series of short interviews with people who helped inspire Legend directly or indirectly. This interview is with the inimitable Danielle Corsetto of Girls with Slingshots. Her example as a self-employed cartoonist and general bon vivant helped me make my decision to take a couple months off of traditional work as a programmer to finish up Legend. Find the interview after the cut!

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Polls: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th

The last poll of Vote Up A Track is finished, with Hope as the most popular option. Just as a reminder, the other winning options in the series of polls were Dreamer, Walking Nightmares and Oddball. Looking forward to see how they all combine? Stay tuned, and feel free to speculate.

Should be resolved now, as we’ve switched to S3 for hosting the pdf. Please please please let us know if you still have any problems.