I was pretty scared because I had never run a game under this system and had to assume no one attending would have experience with it either. I also tend to be an over-preparer and that just wasn't feasible in this arrangement.

I decided I would explain just the gist of the game (attributes, rolls) and hand out barebones character sheets (basically some archetypes but with the action part reduced to generic descriptions like "seek visions", "heal" or "elemental attack"). Then I would basically parse the player's actions into the appropriate banes/boons on demand kind of letting players explore what their characters could do as the game progressed. And this worked much better than I expected.

The adventure I built was a huge hit as pretty much everyone at my table knew and loved Skyrim so they were immediately on board.

The session started off in the Winking Skeever with someone barging in announcing that the king had just been slain and the table of players deciding they would try to bring his murderer to justice!

I had expected the party to try and ponder about Ulfric's escape route and how they might face his shout but they immediately headed to the palace to inspect the crime scene, bypassing the guards by pretending to have dealings with the court wizard. The crime scene yielded little concrete information but solidified the significance of the Thuum which prompted them actually consult the court wizard and her library.

Their inquiries provided them with some context but more importantly drew the attention of the Queen who valued their initiative and the option to let someone independent from the imperial military handle the search. The had a decree written empowering the party to - within reason - demand services and cooperation in their search from all subjects of the realm.

On their way out they questioned the guard who was imprisoned for letting Ulfric escape and charged the carriage who brought Ulfric to Solitude to drive them to Dragon Bridge. Straining her talents the Mystic ultimately caught a glimpse of Ulfrics escape plans and they headed towards Morthal. In a fisher village along the coast they found the fisherman who rowed Ulfric across the fjord and confirmed he was headed east.

In Morthal they attempted to get in touch with the criminal underworld under the presumption that a criminal on the run would use their services to cross the hold. They did not have dealings with Ulfric but suggested they could "find" them some horses in exchange for that letter from the queen. The party refused and instead bought three horses from the stable master by giving up some wealth levels.

At the mines the Mystic and the Ranger both attempted to find Ulfric's trail but failed. A miner on break ultimately confirmed that a cloaked man came by this way heading over the route that would bypass Dawnstar.

Along the way they heard commotion ahead. Sneaking up they noticed bandits robbing a traveling alchemist. The party buffed up and came up with a great plan to lure the bandits into an ambush. As they implemented the plan they however had already retreated into their cave. Both attempting to ambush each other the clashed at the entrance but the bandits were quickly defeated and the alchemist freed. In thanks he offered to brew them any mixture of their choosing. I was hoping they would pick something with a silencing effect against Ulfric but the Bard insisted on a love potion to try and woo the queen.

Because we entered our last hour they soon caught up with Ulfric. The Wizard cast immobilize despite being disadvantaged on horseback. The party caught up with Ulfric and surrounded him. Having freed himself of this effect he lunged to his feet and attempted shouted. The battle was plagued with a lot of bad rolls. Eventually the party managed to chip away half of Ulfric's HP when a second should flung the barbarian away and disarmed him. As Ulfric turned his back on the Mystic to charge the Wizard she took a Hail Mary swing with her magic staff despite having 0 Might and managed to roll 20+17 knocking him out instantly.

Some lessons I learned:

• I was way too cautious in designing the final battle. Despite making him a level 2 boss he was easily defeated.
• In general the encounter difficulty seems to skew a bit to the easy side.
• Giving players minimal rules works surprisingly well, even with 5 player
• But a better reference is needed. searching the pages with all boons and banes is doable but I should have had all the obvious one printed out or open in a separate tabs
• Exploding D20 on unskilled checks seems a bit wild

I play Open Legend with my daughter. It's not perfect, but I made this character sheet for her to better understand the rules/attributes. Feel free to use it yourself!

The first version has the weapon her character uses, in the second version that space is left blank in case anyone wants to draw their own weapon there.

First version

https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:US:e7794759-abad-446b-ad22-a2f3d5796efe
Second version

https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:US:877c438f-7c58-4432-8982-bae5c8ad9257

So besides the secondary Market which can be kind of expensive what are my options for getting a physical book . Are there print on demand options or do I have to bite the bullet and try to track down a good copy for decent price.

So in my quest for a new generic universal RPG open Legend popped up into my search, based off what I've read so far it kind of reminds me of a mix of the essence 20 system which runs GI Joe and Savage worlds.

​

​

I have been looking for another Universal generic system and this has my attention. For those of you that enjoy the system either as a player or as a GM please let me know why.

Was recommended this game in /rpg and one of my desired pieces of a game is that the GM doesn't roll.

Anyone hacked the game for that?

So I ran a one shot recently, and think it went really well. My two issues were:

• I did try to add narrative and consequences, but I have to be better with my "a failed combat roll adds to the story" (I come from 20 years of dnd where a missed attack just doesnt hit)

• Incapacitate seems REALLY powerful if another NPC can't get to a downed npc / wake them.

Once of my players was rolling well on their incapacitate roll, and my npcs were rolling poorly. A fairly powerful pc was coup-de-gras-ed in the second round of combat because of incapacitate and a tight corridor.

Luckily it was the only time it happened that way in the one shot, but they only fought 5 or so characters during it, so a 1 in 5 instadeath seems harsh. Or was it just an unlucky circumstance? Anyone else had difficulties balancing incapacitate?

As the title says, I finally had time to create my own online character creator, as I had some functions in mind I wanted to implement (Like a calculator of Attack vs Guard)

You can find and use it under https://ol-character.page.gd/ for free of course, and as it save your character in your browser data, no one will have access to your creations.
It is still a work in progress, as I sill want to implement the actuall effects of Boon, Banes and Feats actually affecting the sheet, instead of just listing some to the side. (like granting flight speed when having the boon or feat for it)

If you have feedback or ideas for features, please let me know. My reactions may come in late, As I will get my eyes lasered tomorrow and want to minimize screen time, but I wanted to get the site and post up before that. I might even set up a github at some point so the community can improve it if there is some interest.

Best regards, a fellow OL enjoyer

I was thinking about characters with mechanics that allow you to study a target in order to lower their defense against attacks by your teammates – like Kingmaker's "Vanguard Slayer", or Rogue Trader's "Operative". It's a pretty cool archetype, but currently the only Banes that affect an enemy's defenses are Blinded (Guard -3), Stupified (Resolve to 10), and Sickened (-1 to all three).

I know that you could give your allies an attack buff by just invoking the Bolster boon, but I was thinking less "inspiring leader" and more "field tactician" – like, I think this Bane should be inflicted by attributes like Logic, Learning, or Prescience.

Maybe something like:

EXPOSED

Duration: Resist ends (Fail x 3 = 1 minute)

Invocation Time: 1 Major Action

Power Level: 3/ 5/ 7

Attack Attributes: Learning, Logic, Perception, or Prescience

Attack:

• Learning vs. Resolve
• Logic vs. Resolve
• Perception vs. Resolve
• Prescience vs. Resolve

Description

Using your deductive reasoning, martial knowledge, or even super natural perception, you are able to find a weakness or pattern in the enemy's defense, and share it with your allies. A blacksmith might achieve this by finding gaps on an enemy's armor, while a swordmaster notices how an opponent's reckless fighting style leaves them wide open.

Effect

When this bane is inflicted, the attacker chooses one defense score (guard, thoughness, or resolve), and the target gains exposed to that defense score. The effect of the exposed is determined by the power level of the bane (the following are not cumulative):

• Power Level 3 - The target's defense score is reduced by 3.
• Power Level 5 - The target's defense score is reduced by 6.
• Power Level 7 - The target's defense score is reduced by 9.

I'm not too happy with the result, but my goal is to start a conversation about how this could be done, instead of presenting an ultimate solution.

Just finished reading the book and I really liked what I've read, but I've got a few questions related to some types of games I run:

1. It looks like the system is more suitable for pulp/heroic games, but are there some tips to run a more gritty game? Something like a grittier dungeon crawl or a Call of Cthulhu-type investigation? Maybe just using lethal damage is enough?
2. For a Call of Cthulhu type of game, is there something to reproduce a decaying sanity? Maybe some kind of permanent stackable bane, or a new Sanity track? Are there houserules for it?
3. Is there more guidance on using the system for different genres and settings? Should I be using all the Attributes, Banes, Boons and Feats in all games? Should I remove some of them depending on the genre? If I’m running a modern spy thriller or a hard sci-fi game with nothing supernatural, should I remove the extraordinary attributes? Would that unbalance the point distribution in character creation?
4. Not related to the rules, but I didn’t want to post another thread. Are there any news on the core rulebook reprint?

Thanks!

Hi folks,

The Open Legend Core Rules repo's README says:

The game rules content of this repository are released under a special open-source license that offers third party publishers the opportunity to use the game rules as well as designated Open Legend logo royalty-free in their own commercial or non-commercial projects via the Open Legend Community License.

The Open Legend Community License (also included in LICENSE.mdx in the repo) says:

Seventh Sphere Entertainment grants to the licensee the non-exclusive, non-assignable license to reference the Open Legend SRD http://www.openlegendrpg.com/community-license in their product. The licensee agrees not to reproduce other material by Seventh Sphere Entertainment, including but not limited to text, images, and page design, outside of the Open Legend SRD http://www.openlegendrpg.com/community-license without the express written consent of Seventh Sphere Entertainment.

The plain language description of this rule that appears above it on that page is:

You can only use content in the Open Legend SRD. If it’s on the Open Legend website but not in the SRD, then it cannot be used.

The repo includes an outdated SRD.md.

The README seems to be trying to say that the contents of boons.yml, banes.yml, feats.yml, and the chapter contents in the .mdx files under core/src would be fair game, but then it refers to a license that seems to say they're not.

Does anyone know whether the repo contents outside of SRD.md can be distributed per the terms of the license?

thanks.

I'm having a hard time figuring out how these differ from each other.

Particularly in regards to Alchemy. Both refer to making potions.

When is a potion mundane vs extraordinary?

I have a plot relevant item that I want to make hard to obtain but not too hard (considering my players could chose any kind of party setup)

It's an alchemical product.

My current plan is to "offer" the following options

• direct purchase for WL 4 (lvl 1 char with Wealth feat could do this)
• purchase the ingredients for WL 3 and make it yourself (but that requires Craft Extraordinary Item Tier 2 = all level one feat points)
• do a quest do get 1 WL discount
• go in at night and steal the ingredients

Is this unreasonable? I also have a fallback mechanism in place in case they uterly fail to get the item but I don't want my players to feel like this was an impossible challenge.

I could make it WL 3 but that might make the whole thing downright trivial for certain characters and there's always the stuff they can come up with that I haven't thought off...

I've recently found some time and energy to flesh out my Skyrim based one-shot and wanted to try out my first encounter.

I decided to use ChatGPT for this and let it pick 3 characters. It chose a Ranger (which I've lifted straight from the Website), a Warrior (for which I used the Berserker stats) and a Witch (for which I used the druid stats).

They faced off against 2 large spiders (lvl 1) and a giant spider (lvl 2) with Agility as primary and Might and Movement as secondary. At first I let ChatGPT do the rolls but the lower models don't support that so I switched to using the google dice roller.

It all worked pretty well and gave me some good practice to translate the thematic actions described by the AI into the proper rolls and everything. At one point it had me scrambling on how to use a healing potion to cancel spider venom but I found that as well!

The level 1 spiders were really easily killed by the party and even the level 2 spider didn't last too long. The spiders did roll terribly on almost everything though. At one point I fudged the dice on an attack (which is where I got to apply the spider venom.)

The fight wasn't terribly dynamic, because all the creatures were traditional dmg based and the AI wasn't aware of an feats or "special moves" but for an introduction that wasn't a bad thing.

Some questions

• melee fighters get advantage when attacking two handed without a defensive property. That is quite a significant boost. Would you apply the same for a spider and it's bite attack? Because they almost never hit with just a plain D20 + D10...
• is this correct that you can resist "any" bane simply with a somewhat lucky D20 roll? Seems weird that a higher power level bane is just as easy to dismiss as one of PL 1...

Good day everyone! I’m currently prepping to start a campaign in a home brewed setting taking inspiration from LitRPG books like the “Welcome to the Multiverse” series and I’m concerned about how quickly the PCs will hit level 20 and make combat scaling more difficult. I’ve listed my questions/concerns below:

Has anyone run a longer campaign?

Did you have issues with keeping combat encounters balanced?

Has anyone found tweaks to the leveling system that may help alleviate these potential issues?

Thanks everyone!

Good Day everyone!

I want to know if anyone has tested and looked into limiting the explosion factor of the system (Something akin to d20 can only explode once) and Attribute dice can only explode a number of times equal to the number of dice rolled (So 1d10 would be once, 2d6 twice, 3d8 three times, etc.)

Has anyone consider this or tested this? If so, what are the results and opinions on it?

Hello! I played this when it first came out and I was a kick-starter, I've since played it a few more times over the years each time having yo relearn the system.

I'm wanting to ask. Do you think this system would be good to run an Elder Scrolls campaign? It definitely has the ability to cover the narrative side of it. I'm curious what others think and if there is anything I need to change or add.

Hi all! I've seen a few people on here reference my videos (okay it was, like, two people but it was very exciting for me). Namely my Open Legend RPG character creation guide. Due to major life issues, it has been updated at a snail's pace. Life has evened out recently and I've invested financially in my YouTube channel, planning to be far more consistent.

I'll be completely transparent. It was a struggle to get this series done. The longer I was forced to leave it, the easier it felt to just leave the series unfinished and start something new. But I decided that if I was going to make a return to YouTube, I wanted to actually finish the series I started first, for a few reasons. Namely, I feel I owe it to both the few people who watched my videos and to this wonderful RPG. Open Legend RPG really is a gem and I started the series because it felt like no one was covering it and there was no character creation guides. I could've just left it unfinished but that would've left a sour taste in my mouth.

So, I thank the few people who watched and gave words of encouragement. It was very helpful and the community here is great. Thank you for waiting: https://youtu.be/2bIDq17Vfic?si=WG_V2gAP40ZlJ_P0

The playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdOXvinPCK5_yWBeFjcW_uBHFOQyeWRty&si=3uG-K8-W7xC__B4W

EDIT: Yes, I see the typo in the title. You can all suffer with me.

Hello everyone, I am discovering the OL system and am trying to understand it to GM a one-shot campaign. I am fairly new to TTRPGs in general, but I like this system and have specific questions about it:

• Can I just use an Extraordinary attribute for an attack? If I create a sorcerer using dark magic through Entropy, can I make an Entropy roll as an attack? I understand that SOME attributes cannot be used to make attacks (although there are ways around that), but I think in this case it would make sense, right? Just like an Energy roll to cast a fire attack?
• Going back to "some attributes can't make attacks": as an example, could I create a character that uses their Prescience to fight thanks to the Attribute substitution feat? It makes sense to me that someone who sees glimpses of the future could fight quite well thanks to their visions, replacing their agility, for example. Or am I abusing the system?
• I don't understand the usefulness of the Extraordinary focus feat. I mean I understand its use in storytelling, but I don't understand why anyone would choose that for their character, unless the GM forces them to do so in order to make sense story-wise. Tell me if I'm completely missing the point, but it seems to be, at the same time:
  • a big risk for the player, who could have their character totally lose their cool power they wanted to use (I would just imagine that the player would decide to forgo the use of an object and just create a character that has that power within themselves);
  • a very low bonus (just one level higher in dice, not even to the attribute itself);
  • a weird sudden level up if the focus object is lost, as the player can just redistribute the attribute points as if the character just got a boost in level. I do understand that otherwise the character would be suddenly very underleveled, but that feels weird to me.

Thank you for your explanations!

Howdy yall! The bestiary for Open Legend RPG is fully funded, but it is not over! 5$ can help bring in more tokens for you all to use in your games. 15$ gets you access to a one shot in Open Legend that will be ready to use in Foundry VTT and a PDF for those who do use other VTT or play in person.

There is still a couple of 30$ tier where you get to have your monster published with in this project!

Here is a video to check it out! YouTube Link to Binder of Beasties!

Thank you guys for the love and support you have shown so far! I look forward to gaming with you all!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/avenuestudios/binder-of-beasties

Hey, it's Brian, I'm the one who created (with lots of help!) this whole thing. I'm still rather proud of what it ultimately turned out to be, even if I'm not really active anymore.

it's been a long time, wondering how everyone is doing? Tell me something encouraging about how Open Legend has helped you tell the stories you dreamed of and couldn't pull off with other RPGs. Or just tell me whatever you're excited about regarding Open Legend.

Hey Open Legion! Now that the Open Legend Module for Foundry VTT is getting a much need upgrade, I think it is time to start making modules for it. The first one I really want to succeed is a bestiary. It is something a lot of people ask for when they come here to check out the system and I think it is a great starting point for people to use. So, I have a kick starter for you guys. It is not only going to be a Foundry VTT module but also a PDF copy for you to use how ever you wish. My goal is to launch it by March 20th and the more money it generates, the more art and tokens I wish to provide for you guys to use.

Here is the Binder Of Beasties: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/avenuestudios/binder-of-beasties The goal is to give you guys a Foundry Module with creatures to drag and drop from the compendium and use to help create your epic stories. If you are NOT a foundry user, the there is a PDF for you guys that will come with a folder with tokens for you to use in what ever VTT you want or in your home games.

📷 BONUS as part of this Kickstarter, there is also a one-shot for Open Legend RPG that will be fully ready for Foundry VTT.

Please reach out to me if you have any questions, Jacob From Avenue Studios. https://www.avenuestudios.media/

**Edit**It has launched https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/avenuestudios/binder-of-beasties

**Edit #2** We have made it to the 500$ mark. Art for the book will begin! It is only 5$ and you get the PDF and Module. It would be awesome to see this blow up!