Welcome to the inaugural post of The Stuff of Legend! Every Monday in this column, I will be discussing elements of Legend’s design, development and creative processes, giving you the behind-the-scenes look at decisionmaking and the work that goes into constantly improving the game.

Today’s column kicks off by looking at the rationale underpinning what I’d call the very heart of Legend, the singular innovation that characterizes the game and gives it life:

The track system.

Tracks are without a doubt the major highlight of Legend. The ability to assemble any character you like and not worry about a gameplay cost for doing so inspires some really great game and character concepts, many of which can be seen on the Rule of Cool forums. Tracks are consistently our most popular content, a factor that’s weighing on the forthcoming Legend Monster Guide and, beyond that, the Magic Book. In the Homebrew section of the forums, tracks are miles beyond any other form of Legend content being generated.

In brief, for those readers who are unfamiliar with the game and its signature innovation: the track system allows you to select three tracks, combinations of abilities staggered across level gaps, and arrange them in progressions to create your character. By setting your tracks into fast, medium and slow progressions, you determine how abilities of a similar tier are allocated to you, and you never have a dead level. The abilities of tracks are not specifically linked to level, but rather progress in circles, which are linked to character level according to the progression the track is on, rather than the track itself.

So why tracks? Why break things up into packages that are arguably a third of a character? Why not go more granular still and split circles out into freeform selections?

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