Open Legend RPG: Amaurea’s Dawn Campaign Setting

Open Legend is an open-source tabletop roleplaying game being played right now by gamers around the world! Now, we want to take the next step by delivering beautiful physical books and PDFs to our fans. But we can‘t do that without your help!

If you have played roleplaying games in the past, you may be wondering What makes Open Legend worth my time? What makes it different? The secret’s in the title: Open. Ok, maybe it’s not such a secret. Everything about the game is about opening up the doors of possibility for a flexible narrative that still has lots of strategic choices and a solid gameaspect that delivers in the fun department. Here are a few things that are unique about Open Legend.

Open Narrative. The rules respond and react to your narrative, not the other way around. So you can get deep into the strategy but have the freedom to shape many stories from each combination of character attributes and feats. It’s not the first time a classless system has been attempted, but we believe that both the strategy of character development and the storytelling of freeform roleplay can compliment each other. So we’ve merged the two in a fresh way that (through much testing) has proven very rewarding to veterans and newcomers alike.

You aren’t tied down to a limited subset of character options or a pre-chosen path, archetype, or race. Instead you paint a picture of your character in your imagination, and then use the rules like a paintbrush to bring forth your creative masterpiece. The only limit is your imagination (and maybe the GM’s veto power). This is accomplished through feats, attributes, perks, and flaws. All characters can access all of the options for each, rather than being forced into a list of set classes with a menu of skills, you freely chose from each set of options and create an infinitely variable and unhindered character.

Open Genre. We designed Open Legend for all genres, so the core rules are compatible with any setting. The mechanics focus on resulting effects rather than causes, allowing you to explain the cause in a way that tells the most satisfying story at your table. Struggle for survival in a post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland. Or soar amidst the clouds on your crystal-powered airship in a steampunk-inspired campaign. Or explore an alien-infested space station abandoned at the edge of the universe. The possibilities are endless.

Open Dice. In Open Legend, dice EXPLODE! That means that whenever ANY die rolls maximum, you get to re-roll it and add the new roll to your total, ad infinitum. The volatile nature of dice rolling makes every roll count. Each session of Open Legend is full of tense moments and the tides can turn at a moment’s notice, for better or worse.

Open Source. That’s right. The core rules are written with accommodation for free use in commercial and non-commercial 3rd Party publications. That means anyone can publish their own adventures, rules supplements, and more. We’re excited to see what unexpected additions to Open Legend come next!

After years of testing, we brought Open Legend to the public eye in February 2016 (over 8 months ago) and we’ve got tons of great actual play footage to check out. If you’re interested in the Amaurea’s Dawn Campaign Setting, head over to YouTube to watch either Hyper RPG or Encounter Roleplay to see our LIVE actual play sessions that highlight a number of the important plot threads woven into the fabric of Amaurea.

We’ve created a system that rewards creativity and strategy without the strenuous bookkeeping of bulkier systems, but with all the epic high points you’d expect when the dice tumble unexpectedly and explode in glorious triumph or untimely disaster. Open Legend gives you all the tools to play that character you’ve dreamt of but couldn’t find the right expansion book for while also seamlessly working with tried and true character concepts.

We wanted to do more than just give you a rules set and set you loose, though we love all the world-builders in our community! To demonstrate Open Legend’s multi-genre capacity we’re releasing a companion book, the Amaurea’s Dawn Campaign Setting. Written by legendary storytellers such as Ed Greenwood and Matthew Mercer, Amuarea’s Dawn serves as as an exemplar campaign setting with a genre-bending and narrative rich world. Breathtaking illustration by world-class illustrators accompany and reveal the deeply layered world.