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Legend Has It is an anthology mythmaking card game for one or more players where you create legends prompted by excerpts from the books on your shelves. Take turns telling stories with your friends!

  • Timeline Cards advance play through phases of telling one, two, and three simultaneous storylines. 
  • Storylines advance by interpreting sentences drawn from real books—cards in the game generate the random page, paragraph, and sentence number that you will use.
  • Each self-contained storyline draws all of its prompts from the same book. When a story ends, you’ll choose a different book from the shelf to start the next one!


Anthology

Legend Has It, you'll be telling a collection of stories with your table that revolve around a central theme. By the end of the game you'll have a complete anthology of interwoven myths.

As you play, you'll be placing timeline cards on the table. The lines on the cards represent the storylines in your mythos, with stories ending and starting anew as you play the game.

Mythmaking

  •  Origin Myth - The origin of something - your town, your nation, your planet, your universe. Explore how these stories explain natural and cultural phenomenon.
  •  A Hero's Epic - A main character (or characters) on a grand journey. As you play, you’ll weave stories of their trials and adventures.
  •  An Object of Legend - An object like a cursed sword, a king’s crown, a cabin in the woods. Each storyline tells a different tale of a person’s interaction with the object.
  •  Religious Texts - The collected word of a religion or belief system.  You’ll create the main tenets of the religion and the stories that drive it, and learn more about how the followers of the religion interpret these stories and justify their actions.
  •  War Stories - Two great forces in opposition. You’ll create the stories of a grave war and learn which side emerges victorious.
  •  Local Folklore - The local legends of a place. Draw a map as you tell the stories of an area.
  • Card Game

    Legend Has It is a card game. It will be printed by the GameCrafter and takes advantage of their Hook Box form factor to print all of the main rules right on the inside of the fold-out box. The game has 54 cards in a variety of types:

    •  Timeline Cards contain one, two, or three storylines. These are the bulk of the cards, and they direct where our stories take us.
    •  Mythos Cards represent the mythos types listed above. Players choose one at the start of the game to construct the framework of their anthology.
    •  Turn Order Cards keep track of who gets to choose the next book or start the next round with a timeline card.
    •  Bookmark and Table Cards mark the story prompt in the book you're reading from and keep track of which book represents which storyline on the table.
    •  Number Cards are shuffled each round to generate the page, paragraph, and sentence of each active book that will be used as a story prompt.
    •  Alternate Rules tweak the game for a modified experience—pull from wikipedia instead of books, set up a deck for quicker play, and more.
    •  X-Card and Safety Tools provide a framework to check in with each other throughout the game.

    Here's an overview of all of the cards from my proof copy of the game:

    Gameplay Overview & Demo

    Playable Digital Tabletop

    The digital files include a fully playable version of the game with all of the core cards that you need to play the game in the digital tabletop playingcards.io, as well as instructions on how to import that file into the website. Colorless print & play files are included as well.

    A screenshot of the playingcards.io, my preferred way to play Legend Has It online

    Updated 26 days ago
    StatusReleased
    CategoryPhysical game
    Rating
    Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars
    (22 total ratings)
    Authoradamebell

    Purchase

    Buy Now$10.00 USD or more

    In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $10 USD. You will get access to the following files:

    legend has it rules reference.pdf 1 MB
    legend-has-it.pcio 3 MB
    Poker Size Printable - Full Color.pdf 7 MB
    how to import the pcio file to playingcards.io.jpg 1 MB
    legend has it rules reference phone-readable tall image_2.jpg 3 MB
    Poker Size Printable -BW.pdf 4 MB
    3x3 Sheet CARD BACKS - BW.pdf 744 kB
    3x3 Sheet CARD BACKS - Full Color.pdf 534 kB
    Individual Card Files - BW.zip 7 MB
    Individual Card FIles - Color.zip 13 MB

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    Development log

    Comments

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    (+2)

    I played this game by myself the other day and it was a lot of fun. It felt really cool to use an assortment of books and kind of bibliomancy my way into a story that made a lot of sense despite none of my books being that connected. 

    I really look forward to trying this out with other people but it’s really nice that it’s not really required. With the simplicity of the cards and set up of the game, in my opinion this would be a great way to just spend some time or to get ideas of ways you can world build if that’s something you’re interested in. 

    Below is the exact process that I followed when playing which I also shared after I finished in another kind of review/questionnaire:

    Since I was playing solo I did a lot of things at random.

    I have too many books to choose so I rolled a d8 and found a way to randomize what book I grabbed based on what shelf the d8 correlated with and which area to grab from if I broke down the books in the shelves into eights. 

    I grabbed a Mythos Card at random (Religious Text) and rolled a d4 to see what column I’d use to progress the story lines. 

    I used “Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe”, “Bradbury Stories”, “Harrow the Ninth”, “Dead Astronaut”, The Amber Spyglass”, Swan Sung”, and “The Darkness That Comes Before”. 

    I interpreted “Religious Text” in the way that most texts tell parables or stories of families to reach morals. So my story was of a group of people that were native to a land which had been from them. 

    It followed them through many struggles where they lost a lot of their people through violence by oppressors and despite their desire to be peaceful those that remained decided to enter the society of the other communities to eventually also use violence to give themselves enough power to be left alone. 

    Eventually they were able to kidnap a person in power and forced them to attack his own people which caused a lot of confusion and turmoil which gave the native people the opportunity to build their communities enough to be stand free. 

    (+3)

    Reviewed it on my (french) blog : https://www.gulix.fr/blog/2022/05/07/lectures-de-role-25

    I really liked how it played out (try it solo). I want now to play it in a public library.

    (+3)

    Excellent game ! Incredible stories !!!!

    (+1)

    Glad you like it!!