Living Legends

Villains and Vigilantes Home

Crisis at Crusader Citadel

Death Duel with the Destroyers

The Island of Doctor Apocalypse

The Dawn of DNA

Living Legends

Villains and Vigilantes Collector Checklist

Villains and Vigilantes Websites

More Superhero Roleplaying Games

A Review of Living Legends

This is a review of the 32 page demo rules for Living Legends which is available as a free download on their official site. Living Legends is Jeff Dee's "sequel" to Villains and Vigilantes, and it's a completely new rules system with a similar sensibility to the original game. (One gets the impression that this would have been 3rd edition Villains and Vigilantes, but the trademark and copyright of the game name Villains and Vigilantes is owned by Fantasy Games Unlimited.)

The 1st page of the demo is the cover artwork, which is lovely, but not as inspired or as exciting as any of the covers to the original Villains and Vigilantes game editions'.

The 2nd page is a sample character on a sample character sheet. I have a buddy who laughs at me because the 1st thing I always look at on a new RPG is the character sheet. So far Living Legends is the only RPG designed specifically for someone like me, who loves character sheets. The character sheet gives you a pretty decent idea of what the game is going to be like, and just based on the character sheet, I'm liking the game already.

The Living Legends Introduction

This section seemed needlessly long to me, but I've read so many introductions about "what is a roleplaying game?" now that I'd almost rather my eyes bleed than read another one. I'm not sure that anyone buying this game really needs an explanation of what a roleplaying game or what a superhero is. But it doesn't hurt anything, and you can always skip it and not read it.

Living Legends Character Generation

Each character starts with an arbitrary number of character points based on the power level of the campaign, which is determined by the gamemaster. The initial character points range from 40 for an incompetent normal to 140 for a high powered campaign. This is a significant departure from the original Villains and Vigilantes, since that game was geared exclusively toward random character generation. This is a welcome and needed improvement over the original game system, especially since the author offers a random character generation option for people who like that. (Having both options is the kind of flexibility modern RPG'ers expect.)

The random generation of characteristics was innovative and more than a little bit different than most games offer.

I liked that the game suggested playing a superpowered version of yourself in real-life. I thought this was a great way of honoring the Villains and Vigilantes tradition while understanding that a lot of people probably aren't going to play that way.

Living Legends Skills

The outcomes of trying to use skills are determined by rolling a die and trying to get a high number. Depending on the situation, you might be rolling against a target number or an opposed roll. Or you might just be rolling to get a general picture of how well your character did. The excerpt didn't make it clear in which situations you would use the various options, but I think a streamlined version of the game where all target numbers are determined by an opposed roll might make more sense, a la Ghostbusters, Risus, or the old West End Games Star Wars system.

That's a piddly criticism though, and it's somewhat unfair since I haven't read the complete rules yet.

Living Legends Powers

The list of powers looked cool, and it seems like you can build the kind of character you want in Living Legends with a minimum amount of difficulty. The chart listing the powers doesn't include how many character points each power costs. You have to look up each individual power to get that information, which is included in the description of the text.

The game also features power enhancements and restrictions, which is a definite sign that the author has been influenced by newer superhero roleplaying games like Champions and Mutants and Masterminds.

The equipment catalog seemed to list a lot of medieval weapons. These were available in Villains and Vigilantes also, but I always thought that extensive equipment sections and catalogs were a little out of place in a superhero roleplaying game. (To me equipment should be treated the same as superpowers.)

Living Legends Game Mechanics

The games mechanics chapter of Living Legends presents the "universal table", which tries to translate any kind of real-life measurement into gaming stats via one table. This is an idea that seems similar to what has been done recently with Mutants and Masterminds and earlier with DC Heroes. The excerpt for this section was short, and it only included the table, so I can't comment much on the mechanics of the game other than to say that the universal table looks cool enough.

Living Legends Combat

Other than using a random die roll to determine initiative, there wasn't much information presented in the demo rules about combat. There was some stuff about movement included, but the meat of the combat situation wasn't included. I don't think anything is necessarily wrong with a random initiative roll though, and since it's based on the characters' reaction statistic, it seems like a logical enough way to do things.

Conclusion

Based on the demo rules, I'd like to learn more about the game. I didn't get the impression that the game has more to offer or anything radically different to offer from other superhero roleplaying games on the market, but that's not a vicious criticism. And besides, there might be something really innovative in the full set of the rules I don't know about.

The supplements looked interesting, and I love Jeff Dee's artwork, so for that reason alone I'm intrigued and interested in finding out more about the game. I was disappointed to see that the news page there hasn't been updated since 2006, which seems to indicate that maybe this game hasn't taken off?

But I like the artwork and design of the book well enough to buy a full copy of it and give the game a try. After I've done that, I'll write a new review.