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[Mesa]

Site link for those who just want to jump straight into the thing.

Okay, so when it comes to tabletop RPG systems, there's two paths that people take - either they make a system highly tailored to a specific kind of genre and/or setting (the ever-famous D&D, World of Darkness, Shadowrun etc.), or they make it generic and thus applicable to a wide range of genres, themes and settings (GURPS, FATE, Tri-Stat dX etc.)

Many issues plague a lot of generic RPG systems though - whether it's being rules-ified to the extreme to account for every single possible scenario and being kinda overwhelming to try and get into (aka GURPS), or being a bit too vague in too many places (aka FATE and Tri-Stat) or being tangled up in some legal/managemental shenanigans (again, GURPS), many of them just kind of fail in some way or another, which was quite frustrating for me personally - I wanted to run an RPG campaign for myself and my friends, in a soft sci-fi setting of my own design, and wanted a nice and not too mechanically overwhelming system to grab (we were coming over from D&D 5e, and for a while even considered using just that, except with heavy homebrewing and reflavoring).

And then, a friend of mine sent me this video, and everything changed.
I reccomend watching it, it serves as a nice introduction to what OL is about. (And saves me the hassle of explaining most of the basics on my own here.)

All the core rules are available free of charge (and of red tape) on the official website, and only take a few hours to read through at most, possibly less if you skip through the flavor bits and already have some pre-existing knowledge of tabletop RPGs (such as points-based character creation, using dice for checks and the turn-based combat flow).

Spoiler: Impromptu 'session 1' report (click to show/hide)

Overall, our group is super pleased with it, and we all had a blast during our first, albeit highly impromptu and initally-supposed-to-be-noncanon session on roll20 (there's two character sheet choices on there, one more elaborate and newb-friendly, and one more minimalistic and requiring more manual work, for those who choose to play online) - it was only one, fairly straightforward combat encounter in a hastily-thrown-together dungeon (after which the party decided to retreat back).

For context, the party consists of:

- A Buzz Lightyear-esque human with a jetpack, a gun, and an over-the-top hero personality. (George Lightspeed)
- A femme goth psychic alien cyborg/mad scientist, hellbent on finding a cure for death. (Falmarine the Technomage)
- A giant limbless worm in power armor with a shotgun. (Worm)
- A three-armed flame-punching gal with a robotic pet (which she describes as though it's a Roomba). (Multah Aroiric and Beeps)
- A seemingly nice but actually kinda vengeful human mechanic/engineer. (Don Grindspark)
- A crystal gem rock singer. (Prasiolite)


The party, at least half of which have criminal backgrounds, were all thrown together into a half-military, half-hero star squad* of Dimstar, and sent off to fight in a war against the Xul'tonian Empire - a vast interstellar force ran by mind-controlling, three-eyed snakelike aliens, after their refusal to join the Pan-Galactic Federation on its terms, which, among other things, would force them to let go of their species-enslaving ways.

So, the party arrives at this cliffside bunker on some desert planet that's been in the warzone for a while, where supposedly some Xul'tonian forces have been hiding and conducting some nasty things.
As they hop off their ship, they notice a heavy metal door built into the side of the mountain. Falmarine's first thought is to try and go invisible and...try and sneak in? Not sure right now, but whatever the case, her cloaking device malfunctioned slightly and made a loud buzzing noise, which alerted somebody inside, who went to investigate - immediately after seeing the group, they ran back inside, and after a short while, the party followed them into the base, running straight into a room guarded by five Xul'tonian soldiers.

So at this point, full-on combat erupts between the two, and some highlights include:

- George Lightspeed charging in first, guns blazing, but being focused down rather quickly (and almost, but not quite, dying)
- Prasiolite being the first one to die - however, a portion of their shattered crystal body was used by Multah as a makeshift weapon, which surprisingly enough did manage to damage an enemy, though not by much.
- Falmarine constructing a robot drone, driving it between two enemies and detonating it, killing one and damaging the other.
- Don running out of the room during the party's attempt to retreat, but also being mad at the aliens for killing one of his partners, therefore trying to run back in and get some revenge...and basically missing his shot and almost dying on the second way back.
- Don and Falmarine trying to revv the ship's engines for roughly four combat rounds in a row.
- Overall many people being knocked uncoscious and almost dying, but proceeded to be brought back up.
- Quite a few spectacular rolls thanks to dice explosions.

Eventually, despite their initial doubts, the party did manage to kill all the enemies in that first room (of which there were like only five or six, for the record), but still decided to head back to base - however, Falmarine brought some of the enemy corpses with her and using her....tech, brought them back to life as cyberzombies, though maybe not as strong as she would've liked. By the same token, she also brought Prasiolite back from the dead, though also with some imperfections.

Now, the Federation seems to be gaining control over the planet, however this one Xul'tonian bunker still stands, but seems to have gone quiet recently - usually people would see lights and hear noises coming from its general vicinity, but now they seem to have stopped - the Federation sent out a scout squad to try and investigate, but they have not made it back, therefore they're sending this one force that already was there to try and take that place on instead. And that's where the next session will start.

Oh, and in case you want more than just a basic rulesystem to work with, there's a campaign setting in the works that was kickstarted some time back called Amaurea's Dawn, a multi-genre setting that highlights OL's flexibility, as well as the A Star Once Fallen adventure (though keep in mind that it's based on a slightly outdated version of the core rules, so you might see some things in it that are going to be confusing if you're just getting into the system).

I know there's plenty of RPG enthusiasts on here (or at least, I presume), but if you want something a bit more light on the rules without sacrificing the whole "fun and tactical, mechanical gameplay" entirely, check out Open Legend - it gets a huge +1 from me.

[Yoink]

I'm not sure quite why, but I find this extremely exciting.
The chance to jump into a new, fresh 'generic' rpg system, bash out some half-assed setting and run some zany, hijinks-filled adventures through it without having to study for years as a hermit before having any real grasp of the system? Not to mention having less in the way of veteran rules-lawyers, lurking and ready to humiliate my novice attempts at GMing?

Honestly, it's probably for the best that the shipping costs to get a physical copy of the book down here are astronomical, otherwise in my sleep-deprived excitement I probably would have blown a wholly unreasonable amount of money on ordering one on the spot. ^~^;   
Perhaps I'll just grab a PDF copy and get the whole mess printed out. That wouldn't be too difficult, really.


At first I thought you were one of the creators/otherwise involved in the game's development, for some reason... although I guess with the 'open source' business anyone could be. Were the the GM of your group's test session, or a player?

[Mesa]

I'm the GM in my friend group, though I'm not affiliated with the devs in any way.
I just tend to write about stuff I'm passionate about in a way that might make it seem more official than it actually is. :p

Also, the community, while somewhat small, seems pretty welcoming, so it also avoids the GURPS/D&D 3.5 sin of jaded veteran GMs scaring away newbies. I was spooked from GURPS for other reasons, but I hear that's a big thing. Most of the people hang out on either the official forums, or the Discord server.