The recent Kickstarter for Valiant Adventures by Green Ronin made me revisit my copy of Valiant Universe, the first tabletop roleplaying game for Valiant Comics from 2014. Thankfully, Onebookshelf is not Sony so I still have access to my legally purchased copies.

Valiant Universe used the cue system that was originally made by Catalyst Labs for Cosmic Patrol. It then saw use in Shadowrun Anarchy. It is a rules light system that I'm not overly familiar with. Skimming the book, the interesting thing to me is that the Game Master rotates per scene and there is no dedicated game master. That is a rather interesting idea that would make forever GMs pretty happy. You can just use a normal GM and just not use the rotation rules.

Otherwise, it does seem pretty interesting. You basically roll d12 + Stat Dice + Modifers vs D20. If either of your dice match your Luck value, you automatically succeed. Powers added a special dice that acted differently based on the power. Some would have you discard the lowest rolling dice while others would have straight bonuses applied to the power dice and it would substitute the Stat Dice. You always ever got the result of two dice but it played around with it.

My main complaint is Cues where titular but really never added anything. I couldn't find them being anything other than just suggestions on how things went. Which always felt like missing the point of such systems. While games like Fate Core, Nobilis, and otherwise have these kind of descriptive systems where words and sentences are freeformed as part of the character, they all have a clear tie to mechanics. Fate Core hinges its Fate Point/Bene/Plot Point system on whether an Aspect is relevant, for example, and the fact Aspects are always true mean they automatically give you permission to try things if an Aspect applies (if it says I can fly, I can always fly). There is a clear benefit just by their inclusion. To my knowledge, cues change nothing about the game so it makes me wonder why they're there.

Overall, it was a fine enough rules light quick trpg. It was the case where I swear 44 pages where rules and the remaining 210 were stat blocks of Valiant characters and villians.

It is kind of whiplash to go to Mutants and Masterminds afterwards, considering that's a much heavier game. They are apparently simplifying the rules for this new game. Last time Green Ronin did a licensed version of M&M, it was DC Adventures in 2011 and it was used as a subtle way to experiment with ideas for 3rd edition. I got the sneaking suspicion Valiant Adventures might be trying to do the same, but I don't know enough about M&M3e to know what's different from the quickstart.