Open Legend: Open-source RPG & Amaurea's Dawn Setting
Created by Open Legend - Seventh Sphere Publishing
Community-driven RPG for any genre & Amaurea's Dawn, a multi-genre campaign setting with legendary Matthew Mercer & Ed Greenwood!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
YouTube Live Chat / Q&A w/ Brian Feister at 9pm EDT (TODAY!)
almost 7 years ago
– Fri, Jul 14, 2017 at 10:19:55 PM
Hey Open Legend Fam!
Sorry for not getting this out to you sooner, hopefully you already saw it floating around the interwebs, but tonight is the chance to come and ask all your Open Legend questions.
I've been out of it for a while, due to reasons you now know, but I'm finally getting back to a good place and I want to give you opportunity to ask questions that may have come up in my absence.
Also, I'm going to give you the opportunity to ask personal questions if you would like. In terms of personality, I am an extrovert and I like sharing my feelings with people if they are interested in hearing about them. And no worries about offending me, I'm an open book and if a question is too personal, I'll just ignore and you won't offend me, so feel free to ask away!
xoxo Brian
Production Update, Ryan Schapals - Narrative Director, New Art Preview
almost 7 years ago
– Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 12:09:32 AM
Greetings My Beloved Open Legend Fam,
I've got some good news for you in the way of an art update, but I'll save that for the end by way of some encouragement because I have some news to share first that's a slight bummer.
Production Update
I hesitate to share this info, because I don't want anyone to think that I'm using it to manipulate you (my lovely Open Legend community) into feeling bad for me, and I also don't want anyone to feel uncomfortable because I've shared information that customers would rather not have known. However, on the other hand, I trust all of you and see you as family. You've trusted me enough to enthusiastically support Open Legend both socially with your tweets, shares, likes, and kind words... and also financially, with your hard-earned money. So it feels natural to and safe to share this with all of you.
Shortly after I completed the first draft of the Core Rules PDF and the time leading up to it, I had a near miss with a mental breakdown. Many people might mistakenly guess that this is a result of the hours I've been putting into my work on Open Legend, and the 4 hours of sleep I was getting each night. But in this case, Open Legend was actually one of the things that saved me. It's true that the long hours and lack of sleep put a strain on me, but when that strain brought me to a breaking point, I became aware that the only thing in my life that was causing me worry or anxiety was my marriage. Without going into too much detail, what happened at this point was that after nearly buckling under the strain of the work I was doing. This drove me to self-examine and think about my life. For the first time in 12 years, I questioned whether my marriage (a source of continuous stress for 12 years) was really just a difficult relationship or if there was more to it. In doing so, I began doing research on mental health and mental illness. As I wandered through the research, I slowly became aware of what was happening around me and like a deep space traveler waking from cryo stasis, I felt as if I had been catatonic and just now finally waking from a perpetual dream that lasted for 12 years. My research showed me the thing I should have considered long before, but never did because mental health professionals were not involved until the very end. I had been explicitly forbidden from exploring the question of mental health and treatment via couples counseling. For these 12 years, what my partner had told me were "normal marriage problems", I came to understand were actually severe mental health problems on their side. I won't go into all the details about the symptoms of what I endured for the last 12 years, but if any of you are familiar with mental health and personality disorders, my research indicated that for all these years I had been trapped with someone with severe mental health conditions in the form of many different personality disorders. Studying the list on the Mayo Clinic website, I found my partner had ALL of the symptoms for 7 out of the 10 listed Personality Disorders (70% of the symptoms listed!):
With the "high conflict" tendencies and the absolutely mind-boggling behavior, it seems after all these years, I had been far too generous in my ongoing quest to assume the best about everyone I interact with. In the process of putting my partner's needs above my own, I had allowed them to refuse help and treatment for 12 years and as a result I had brought myself close to a breaking point.
You might ask "How did Brian live in denial of such severe problems for so many years?" The answer is threefold:
1) I was required not to speak about these issues to other people because it was a matter of personal privacy 2) I was manipulated into believing that the behavior was normal 3) On the spectrum of "resilience" and my ability to endure mental torment, I am extraordinarily gifted. You might say that my WILL attribute is somewhere between 7 ~ 9 (Can I get a shout from the Open Legend players up in here?! :D ). As such, it took 12 years for this situation to slowly strangle me, and bring me to a breaking point.
I shared my secret with friends, about the "marriage problems" (that weren't marriage problems at all) which I had promised to tell no one about. They were kind to offer me a place to stay and could see that I was in a place of mental and emotional crisis. They told me they were concerned and believed that I was close to having a breakdown. With their help, I left the home I had lived in for the last 12 years and am now living with them.
This separation happened 13 days ago. I am finally beginning to feel like I'm "coming around", but it's still very difficult to think and be productive and do work for my day job and also Open Legend, though I'm starting to make some slow progress. The good news is that I'm not obsessing about the divorce or the terrifying stories of what I suffered through in the past. I finally have quiet and peace, but I don't yet have much productivity or ability to work... but it's coming back.
As far as the answer to the "When will we get the books?!" question on your mind, I don't yet know... you'll get them 10 weeks after I get the print-ready PDFs off to the printer, but I can't say for certain exactly when that will be at this time. All I can say is that Amaurea's Dawn has been through editing, most of the NPC stat blocks are written, and it's now my job to go through and edit / optimize those NPC stats to make sure they have the "max fun level" to your benefit! After I finish that NPC stat editing work (and I'm close), I'll be on to the next step which is doing the layout design and getting it all in PDF format. Once that happens, it'll be off to the printer's ASAP!
Please accept my humblest apologies. I know I'm letting you all down, but honestly, I'm just glad to have escaped with my sanity and am in a good enough place to have my wits about me now, 13 days after the darkest day of my entire life. My counselor has been astonished at how quickly I've been able to process everything that has happened to me, come to healthy conclusions about it, and establish closure about it.
Thanks so much to everyone in the community who pitched in and helped out with some NPC stat blocks. That day when I reached out was probably one of the lowest points of my entire life. I'm grateful for your help in lightening the load!
And thanks to every other backer out there who is able to be kind and understanding and accept that these books will have nowhere near the same value without me being around to write the great supporting content which you will come to expect from us. Especially our fabulous FIRST EMPLOYEE, THE CREATIVE GENIUS, THE HARDEST WORKING MAN I'VE EVER COLLABORATED WITH, THE INFINITELY KIND --- RYYYYYAAAAANN SCHAPALS!
Ryan Schapals - Narrative Director
After almost a year of continuous hard work and selfless devotion to an unbelievable level of perfect prose, I've decided that it's time to kick things into high gear and get working on this stretch goal content. To that end, Ryan Schapals will be joining the team as the Seventh Sphere / Open Legend's Narrative Director & Brand Manager.
As Narrative Director, all Seventh Sphere writers will report to Ryan for direction and he'll also be handling the process of standardizing the Open Legend Writing Style Guide, reviewing submissions from freelance writers wanting to write for Open Legend, and let's not forget writing tons of stretch goal content that you're going to love!
Me, Ryan, and our writer Stephen Rhodes (https://twitter.com/rhodes_writes) are also hard at work brewing up some fresh content for you with the Sci-Fi / Space Opera mini campaign setting stretch goal. I'm incredibly proud of what we've hammered out, and can't wait to share something with you, though it'll probably be a while.
Also, Ryan will be the Brand Manager for Seventh Sphere, so he'll be helping out with alot of high level strategic decisions and also working on various initiatives to increase visibility, and relations between Seventh Sphere and other RPG industry organizations.
Art Preview - Gideon Graves (NPC)
Also I want to give a huge thanks to Richard Montes, one of our massively generous hierophant tier backers! Without his generosity, we wouldn't have the amazing art preview I'm going to share with you now! He contributed the character concept for Gideon and worked closely with the core team on both the story of Gideon Graves and also the illustration of the character. Keep an eye peeled on social media to see a follow-up post with him that also includes some of his story!
Huge kudos also to Mat Kolbeck, who did an incredible job on this illustration and worked tirelessly until it was just right!
Again, thanks for being the best positive and supportive community a guy like me could ever ask for, and thanks in advance for understanding! We'll get there soon, I promise I'm working on it!
<3 Brian
If You Couldn't Access the Alpha Core Rules Release, Try Again!
almost 7 years ago
– Sun, Jun 04, 2017 at 08:49:45 PM
If you saw the previous update and couldn't get access to the Core Rules PDF, you should be able to now, just head over to BackerKit and you should now have a "Digital Downloads" tab where you can get access to it.
Sorry for the mixup -- I kind of think BackerKit should have made this work a bit differently than it does, but I think everyone should be squared away now.
UNLEASHING the Core Rules Alpha -- Please Proofread & Enjoy!
almost 7 years ago
– Sat, Jun 03, 2017 at 10:32:56 PM
Thrilled to announce a big milestone, at long last each and every backer will have a (mostly useful other than the few typos that may have slipped by us) version of the Core Rules. Still a few known tweaks to make, but what you will be receiving via an email from Backerkit (if you never figured out Backerkit, then now is the time to do so, as that will be the distribution point for all PDFs) and other non-physical rewards.
PLEASE, PLEASE spend a few minutes proofreading if you're so inclined, I've set up a place for submitting any errors you find, so that we can hopefully catch them before the file gets locked and sent to the printer next week! https://goo.gl/forms/YPBm438LDu2NmPrq1
It's been a long night, started working double-time to finish this at 7pm and it's now 1pm :) ... just in case anyone thought I was slacking!
So, I hope you enjoy it, for those who are less detail-oriented, other than a few very tiny fixes, it might as well be the final PDF.
I would make more noise and celebrate, but I think I'm going to fall asleep on my keyboard now instead.
Brand new never-before seen art preview to go with the release... how could I almost forget?! ... zzZZZZzzz ........
Love you all! <3
Brian
by Andrey Vasilchenko:
by Forest Imel:
by Andrey Vasilchenko
by Alix Brawnwin:
by Forest Imel:
Core Rules + Amaurea's Dawn Production Update & Layout Previews!
almost 7 years ago
– Tue, May 16, 2017 at 12:53:41 AM
Greetings Open Legend family... I'm coming to you LIVE from the belly of the beast!
(Scroll all the way down for never-before-seen layout previews)
Good news! While the Core Rules aren't finished quite yet, I've done a major overhaul on my production process which will reduce my effort for layout design (and thus time required to produce the publications). By my current estimates, it should reduce my effort by about 30%.
So... the BIG question. Aside from the setup of the production pipeline which I think is mostly done (and perhaps as big as the actual layout design work itself) what is the progress of the actual PDF to be shared with the book printers as well as backers? Good question.
I've currently got 22 pages of the Core Rules laid out. While it's not as big a slice as I'd like, it was quite a complex layout (including the Multi-Genre Characters, which involve alot of complex text-flow styles to wrap the text around the character illustrations).
I also have made probably 80% ~ 90% of the style guide decisions which will then be re-used throughout the remainder of the book, so progress should speed up. Lastly, I have a significant amount of not-yet-laid out text which is already formatted properly to drop directly into the document.
So, I believe the production process improvements I've made recently, that they should put me back on track to finish Amaurea's Dawn and the Core Rules by the end of May.
In the interest of total transparency, however, I should caveat that with one rather big risk -- the method I'm using to generate these PDFs is non-standard and I've been waiting to hear back from the printer to verify that they will be acceptable as print-ready PDFs for the print runs. Once that hurdle is cleared (which should hopefully just be a "double-check" rather than a delay), it should be smooth sailing for me to complete the layout and PDFs for both books.
