MRQII Becomes Legend

Several readers pointed me toward some news concerning the fate of Mongoose Publishing's RuneQuest II, the bulk of which I reproduce below:

First up, we have been chatting to those nice chaps at Ye Olde Gaming Companye and found out that they were not only prepping a new version for their Wayfarers RPG but that they were in need of distribution. Being familiar with their game and seeing they were obviously such nice chaps, we immediatly offered to print and distribute their game!

The Wayfarers RPG will be released by Mongoose in December this year, likely in the second week. We will be following it up with the first supplement in January, World of Twylos. Look for them in all good game stores.
Legend

Naturally, having a game called Wayfarers and another called Wayfarer released within a couple of months of each other does not make a great deal of sense! We discussed this with the chaps at Ye Olde Gaming Companye and, having no axe to grind, agreed we would change the name of our game.

Henceforth, the core RuneQuest II rules will be known as Legend.

 ...

First off, we have to stress that Legend will be 100% compatible with your current RQII books. If you have an RQII book now, you will be able to use it with Legend. If you buy a Legend book, you will be able to use it with your RQII books. So it is written, so it shall be.

We have had a few requests about tweaking the core RQII rules or adding some bits and pieces to them, and we are considering this. However, _if_ we add or change anything to RQII (and _if_ we do, it will be minor) then we will post any such changes, in their entirety, on our weeb site for free download. We are not looking at doing this lightly but where a tweak will make for a better game, we will have to consider it.

Second, All Legend books will be in 'digest' format, literally half the footprint of the current RQII line. The maximum price for these books will be $19.99, and a few will be less than that.

Finally, we have decided to proceed with an 'open' licence for Legend. This will allow anyone to publish pretty much anything they like using the RQII/Legend mechanics.

However, we are going to make it easier to operate and be a part of. There will be no registration required and no complicated contracts or agreements. You will simply abide by a few very easy rules (such as not copying the front cover designs of our books), put a Legend Compatible logo on the front, and you will be good to go! There will be no SRD - instead, you may freely use anything that appears in the core book range - from the schedule above, this will include the main rulebook, Monsters of Legend, Arms of Legend and Vikings of Legend. And yes, when they appear (likely in summer 2012), Samurai and Pirates of Legend too!

So, if you want to construct your own Viking saga, for example, you can do so using Vikings of Legend as the foundation, and then publish it alongside our core book. We recommend sticking to the digest format, but there is absolutely no requirement to do so.