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Legends Walk! by Silver Branch Games is another roleplaying game that focuses on Superheroes, probably the second biggest RPG genre after Fantasy. It's a PDF product, weighs in at 170 pages when printed, featuring its own setting and unique method of character generation. The market's already swarming with superhero RPGs, new and old, so I'll cut right into what kind of people would enjoy playing it. If it sounds like you might dig it, read on.

You will probably enjoy Legends Walk! if:

* You are interested in world myth/folklore, or just even the particular myth and folklore of one cultural group ("Irish Folklore", "Greek Myth", etc).
* You enjoy very detailed game mechanics, especially involving combat.

You may enjoy Legends Walk! if:

* You dislike the amount of time spent on character creation in most other superhero games like HERO, DC Heroes/MEGS, GURPS Supers, Mutants and Masterminds, Aberrant, Silver Age Sentinels and the like (meaning that Legends Walk! is much quicker).
* You like the idea of understandable, "logical" superheroes that all get their powers in a similar way, have similar limits, etc. Like in the game Aberrant or Godlike, but unlike a game where you would have one hero bitten by a radioactive ferret teamed with a magical alien and a tech genius with hyperspeed cyborg legs (different sources, etc).
* You dig the idea of (with myth/folklore, above) being tied to a Source for power, gaining and losing favor with the Gods through worldly actions.

Another game may be better for you than Legends Walk! if:

* You really just aren't history in world myth, folklore, legends or the idea of Gods.
* Or, with that, you can't stand the idea of gaining power by appeasing the archetype of your Source God ("I just want to do my own thing and have Cu Cuhlainn give me powers anyway!")
* You like spending time in systems like HERO flushing out exactly what your character's powers can or cannot do, usually for hours during chargen.
* You like game systems that are more freeform, without a lot of restrictive rules conditions or combat rules; games like Fudge FATE, Risus, With Great Power..., etc.

BACKGROUND: The background of Legends Walk! is simple to grasp: People have become empowered by the Gods, Legends and Monsters of popular world myth. Whether the Gods themselves have returned, or if it's all a sort of spontaneous evolution of the collective unconscious, is up to the GM and the group, but each hero basically represents one being from legend: A God like Thor, Cernunnos or Athena; an Angel like Michael or Gabriel; a Hero like the Norns, Hercules; or a Monster like Fenrir or a Spriggan. They gain their powers through the representation of the values of that "Source", and basically become a half-human, half-avatar of that Source.

RULES: The system of resolution is very simple (though the rules themselves, especially around combat, can get extremely complex), and requires only six-sided dice. Fans of Burning Wheel or similar d6 pool systems will easily pick them up. You basically roll a number of six-sided dice (usually less than 4-5), 4-6 is a success and 1-3 is a failure. If you get any success dice, you succeed. The thing that will trip up many people familiar with dice pools is this: One success is always a success- You never need more that one success to "really succeed"... however, the amount of Base Dice that you use goes up and down constantly, depending on the relative difficulty of the task.

So say that you were meant to roll 3 dice. If this was a task that only a skilled person could do (driving, diving, cycling), you get 2 Base Dice. If the task is only something that an expert could do, but still somehow possible for the normal human (like patching up a bullet wound), you get 0 base dice. If it's something that only a master with lots of experience could do (Jackie Chan stuff), then you get -2 Base Dice. If this reduces your starting die pool to 0, then there's no chance of succeeding. This slider, this Base Dice, is different from many other dice pool system, where the base dice always remain at "0", but the difficulty or success number slides up or down.

And that's it in a nutshell. However, it seems simple by reading the above, but I found the system to be very complex. When you get into tasks like "doing two things at once" or "punching people in combat" (with the option of sending them flying back), the simple dice mechanic remains, but more complicated rules structures come in to lay down the law. Make no mistake, this is a crunchy, rules-detailed game surrounding a simple core mechanic.

SETTING: 33 pages of background detail how the world has changed since the rise of the "Metas", including a partial timeline of changes (the game is set in the year 2020). Everything from countries (China and India, having like a bajillion Gods, and people to act as avatars, have quickly become superpowers) to secret societies are detailed. Overall, standard faire, with a nod to countries with a rich tradition and history of myth and legend- This is where the Metas come from. However, any person can be imbued with the powers of any Source. The default example character is an American baseball player sponsored by Thor.

In the back of the book, the game presents an alternate dice mechanic: "Lid Off": Basically exploding dice, where every time you roll a six you get to add another die. This was an option for a much higher power or over-the-top game. However, the default of the game is a low-medium power one (no earth-shattering stuff) with more realistic effects- More like a highly intense action movie or drama, not like Dragonball Z or the fights in Matrix Revolutions.

CHARACTER CREATION is relatively simple, and this is coming from a guy who normally dreads "CharGen" in supers games (I even sold my copy of the Revised Mutants and Masterminds because it just didn't do for me what With Great Power... or Fudge FATE could do faster and better by my standards). You create your human character, which consists of spending a few points on Attributes, Skills and Advantages (Brave, Wealthy, etc). Then, you pick your "Source": The book carefully divides each major pantheon that it lists by culture; Greek, Norse, Celtic and Angelic, and distribute another round of points to make your character Metahuman, boosting their attributes, granting them powers, etc. Each source has its own list of powers, advantages and drawbacks (at least one of which must be taken) to choose from. In other words, if you had a party where every player's source was Odin (which you wouldn't, but just as an example), they'd more or less have the same or similar powers, maybe similar advantages, maybe the same drawback.

All in all, even allowing for "special equipment" ("Imbued Items", like a scalpel that cuts with the power of the Angel Michael's Sword) and the like, chargen took a new group of players about 30 minutes, most of which was trying to decide which combination of Sources to have in one group would be the coolest. This, compared to the games listed above, is ridiculously fast. To demonstrate, here's a copy of the sample character included with the game:

In the end, you get a pool of "Presence Points", which your character spends to get a better chance to succeed at tasks and refresh every scene; "Destiny Points" which you can also use to boost some actions, but are primarily gained by in-game actions and spent like experience points to gain abilities; And finally you choose Goals for your character, your character's basic view on the powers they were granted (Blessing/Curse/Unwanted, etc), and finally your "Boundaries" (sort of like your Social Alignment: "The Greater Good", "Personal Code", "Self-Gratification", etc).

MORE RULES AND COMBAT: The rules were summarized above, but there's a lot of content on things like physics in-game (time, motion, damage threshold, size), using powers or abilities to break and throw things, falling, poison, all the typical RPG stuff. There's also rules for things like technology (creating gadgets), Magic, and doing creative things with the Superpowers.

Basic Combat runs pretty much like the standard rules: You roll initiative, roll to attack or defend, and the difference is added to the damage of the weapon. Damage is resisted with a "Resist Roll", and the leftover determines damage, on a scale of Unhurt, Hurt, Injured, Injured and Unconscious, Injured and Comatose or Dead, and Definitely Dead. No hit points or the like.

After that, there's "Advanced Combat", which people who like developed rules will go gaga over. There's rules here for:

So anyone who is into the above will flip out on the amount of detail given to the combat system in the Advanced rules. This game may be a PDF for under $10, but it has all the detail, refinement and thoroughness of anything you'd find on your gaming shelf.

RUNNING THE GAME: Speaking of thoroughness, the game doesn't just give you the system and setting and split; There are pages of GM information and advice for running Legends Walk! games, including a very simple-to-use but surprisingly useful "Adventure Seed Generator".

I ended up running two adventures of the game with my regular gaming group, using only the Basic Combat rules, and had a blast. The first game I provided pre-generated Angel Source characters who fought against a satanic element in a city using steel and kung fu. We were testing out the system, and found that combat, while relying on a LOT of dice rolls, went slower than Mutants and Masterminds or Silver-Age Sentinels, but faster than Aberrant or HERO.

For the second adventure, I let the players create their own characters, and I rolled on the Adventure Seed Generator: "The characters must 3: Investigate/Observe the 4: Organization/Group in 5: Exotic or Dangerous Location with 2: Criminal while dealing with 6: Bigger challenge is revealed. Even though the game does not initially include any Indian pantheon Sources, I decided since I dig that culture I'll have the PCs infiltrate a secret organization in India, run by criminals, and the bigger challenge turns out to be that this group is funded by a team of three Kali-Source Metas. There is no India Sources in the core book, so I made my own using a blend of some of the other existing sources- It wasn't too hard.

This showed me that:

1) The Adventure Seed Generator actually works, and isn't just a gimmick!
2) New Sources can be developed by ripping off, using or combining existing ones.

OVERALL: All in all, I give this game high marks. It's cheap, it's expansive, it's not a game to leave you hanging on the rules ("Oh, just resole it yourself!"), gives you a campaign world and a very cool take on superheroes. It is also very clearly written, features a core rule system that is easy to grasp, and character generation doesn't take more than an hour unlike most of my other games. However, there were some parts that I didn't like, or wish were changed or fixed:

1) The main one was the lack of Pantheons. I see that there's now a Pantheon splatbook at RPGNow that features Aztec, Maya, Sumerian and Babylonian gods, so that bodes well. But I was really hoping to see Chinese, Indian, and Mesoamerican gods (or more "non-whitey" pantheons) in the core book (but understand that the amount of research required to treat them in the same depth that the featured pantheons were would have totally killed the release of the game). I also would have liked to see Amerindian "legends", the unique kami of Japan, Southeast Asian deities and maybe some African or West Indies Sources. These may eventually be released in future pantheon books.

2) I'm not too keen on learning complex rules systems for things like combat, so I stuck to the Basic Combat. It was kind of thwarting for me, but even in my own group there are people who love "crunchy" rules and sucked them all up like popcorn. But that's just me.

3) I wish more play examples were included to further demonstrate rules like Magic, Tech, Character Generation and some of the Advanced Combat features. I'm one of those guys who really only learns by example, and it took me a few reads to get the above, plus the basic mechanic (while simple, it used dice pools in a new way with the Base Dice thing), down.

4) The layout is EXTREMELY plain. However, it is also dense; Not a lot of wasted space in the entire 170 pages, compact font that's not bloated to inflate page count, etc. This thing was well-researched and thoroughly written, like any regular store-display game. Unlike a game you'd find in the store, though, the layout is rather plain (though serviceable), and completely absent of art. Just a few public domain pics or layout tricks like sidebars would have broken up the text and made it a little easier on the eyes.

So there you have it. If the thought of playing the avatar of a God or Hero of legend sounds interesting to you, even if you have a shelf of other supers games, I highly recommend dropping the $9.50 for it on RPGNow- It's a solid buy, and easily comparable in scope and volume to any game you currently own. If you're simply not interested in world myth or legends, then stick to what you have.

Style: 3 (lots of good info, averaged out by a too-plain layout)
Substance: 5 (there are no superhero effects that don't get addressed in the rules- They are that complete. While the game lacks other world pantheons, the core ones that it addresses are done so impeccably)

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