Introduction

WELCOME TO LEGEND
What you are reading now is a culmination of a long term project that started around 1993 as a way to keep busy during a boring internship at college. It started out as its own system of rules and later merged with the the 3.5 OGL for D20 Dungeons and Dragons. What is contained within is what 4ed D&D should have been (in my opinion).
 * What is the difference between ROLE-PLAYING and a ROLL-PLAYING game?: The answer to that question is very simple, in a Role playing game you become your character and live out your characters hopes and dreams while the other has to due with the rolling of dice to become the best at what you are doing. Unfortunately many games try to be a role-playing game and end up being a roll-playing game instead. The hope is that the details contained within Legend will keep the game on the role playing vs the roll playing side of the fence.
 * What you will need: What is needed to play Legend is a set of polyhedral dice, a pencil, and a piece of paper, and a copy of this document. The player would also benefit by getting a figure as the combat takes place on a 1” grid or hex map.

Major Things That Have been changed from 3.5 D&D
Having played 2nd Edition AD&D for so long the change to 3.5 was a welcomed change. It made many aspects of the game easier to handle. However I did not feel that it took it far enough, especially when compared to various storytelling systems.


 * WHO ARE THE CHARACTERS:  In the D&D system, the characters are defined as people who are above average to become the heroes of legends. In fact there are sections of books that recommend to DM's to have players reroll poor stats and skills. In Legend the concept is that an ordinary person can become an extraordinary hero based on their actions not on their attributes. It is recommended that players with roll attributes and skills role-play out their characters flaws.
 *  REMOVAL OF THE CHARACTER CLASS:  I understand why character classes have been used. Many RPG games use the same concept to aid in character creation and assist players in creating a balanced team of adventurers.  However this system has it limitations, as one can see by the many many books that Wizards of the Coast and other D20 publishers have printed. These books contain new classed and prestige classes to handle a player's desire to play something just a little bit different. By removing the character class I have freed the player to define his characters role by his actions and the choice of his characters skills.
 *  SKILLS VS FEATS:  All you have to do is open any suppliment book for 3.5 and see that what makes a new character class is not the skills or actions of that character, but the new and special feats that that class has.  Feats should only enhance the character not make it its main focus. For Legend I have tried to place the focus back onto the character's skills not not as much on the feats.
 * CHARACTER LEVELS: I personally would like to get rid of characters levels altogether, but to maintain some backwards compatibility with 3.5 I have left level advancement in. However there is very little attached to the changes in level.
 *  ALIGNMENT:  I never liked the alignment system in D&D. This may be because I tended to play more evil characters then the rest of the party members. I did not see my characters actions as being evil because I saw the adventuring group as nothing more then paid mercenaries, thugs and thieves. Sure a local lord hires the group to rescue his daughter, but in doing so the characters will often kill the opposition and steal their valuables. They will get a heroes welcome when they return, but it does not hide the fact that they purposely trespassed and killed people. This is why I see character’s alignment falling in the middle of the two extremes. The two extremes are not defined by the game mechanics, but are defined by the society that the character is living in. It is a combination of local prejudices, codified laws, and religious beliefs. In this way the character will have to be aware of his local area before he does any questionable actions.
 *  MERITS AND FLAWS:  Feats allowed positive advantages to be added to the character. Many of the feats that the character obtained were defined by the characters class. This caused players to have really weird combinations of classes (that often did not fit together well) in order to get the needed feats to create their character concept. Since Legend removes the character class the player is able to choose what feats (merits) when he wants them. One of the other things that I added was character flaws. In D&D flaws were seen as bad, as the character was supposed to be this ultimate hero. Many heroes from books and movies will have one or more flaws that make them more interesting. Even Sir Lancelot had the flaw of obsession for Gwenivere. For Legend in order to get a merit during character creation you must first purchase a flaw of equal or greater value.
 *  THE SETTING:  The setting of the game is just as important, if not more so, then the characters themselves. The characters can come and go, but their actions can have impact on the setting long after they have gone. Most people in medieval times did not travel outside of a 50 mile radius (3 days by cart). Travel was slow and often very dangerous due to wild animals and bandits. Player characters however seem to disobey this very notion. I believe it has to do with the fact that D&D is based off of independent modules and the characters jump from one adventure to another, leaving the towns and cities as nothing more then healing and resupply stations. I have written Legend to be different. I want the players to have grown up in the local area and be as much a part of the setting as the next NPC. In being connected to the setting the merits and flaws that affect social interaction become very relevant. Characters that are from outside the local area can role play their arrival into the area and work on establishing their own set of contacts.


 * GAME MODULES:  Before you go and throw away all your modules, here is what I have to say. As a director you may have to adjust the modules to fit into your setting. For example, you can have a dungeon crawl type of adventure (Sunless Citadel), but how you hook it into the setting may need to be altered. Also once the adventure is concluded there are other things the director needs to consider since the citadel is now part of the landscape. Things like who owns it, will someone take it over, why was it abandoned, are there others like it, etc. Such things can come back and haunt the characters at a later time.
 * HISTORICAL REFERENCE:  Medieval fantasy by its definition combines the history of the middle ages with a dose of the supernatural. For those directors that need to do research for Legend the time period to look at the Europe between 0900 through 1400. During this time there was constant struggle with wars and plagues. Conflicts between the established nobility and the new and other times more wealthy merchant class were starting to take off. The church was starting to loose their foot hold on the power of Europe and countered it with the crusades. The peasants were repressed and boarded on starvation and believed the world was inhabited by all manor of vile creatures.
 * FANTASY:  The director can take all the historical material and then mix into it magic and mystical creatures and monsters. For plot ideas for example, the Germanic tribes could be replace with an Orc horde and Rome with a major capital city. The possibilities are endless if you have an imagination.