Last year, at the suggestion of a friend, I hunted up a copy of the RPG Legendary Lives (Second Edition, 1993) by Joe Williams and Kathleen Williams. Published by Marquee Press, which I believe was the Williams' imprint.
This is a hell of a book. I mean... it's of a time. It's a wonderful example of desktop publishing and early 90s RPG design. It has many, many flaws. It has difficult material that, for that time, felt perfectly OK... just fantasy stuff. But in 2026 having a "gypsy" as a race template is quite problematic at best. But all that being said, it's a hell of a book and I'd like to talk about it a little.
"In Legendary Lives™, you'll play a hero in a fantastic realm of epic adventure." says the back cover. It boasts 26 races, an open-ended magic system, and emphasis on fast action and storytelling. It also boasts that it is the first game to have player-facing dice rolls. But they don't call it that, they call it "semi-diceless", meaning that the GM doesn't roll anything. An innovation, it seems. I'm unaware of earlier games that had this baked into the rules.
For characters, you pick a race, generate or assign stats to a healthy list of attributes, make adjustments, pick skills, and roll 1d20 to resolve tasks. Pretty standard stuff for RPG design of the time.
You have a bunch of races like nethermen, foresters, witches, and hillfolk. The term "race" is used loosely here, which I think is kinda nice. Who ever heard of the "race of foresters"? But I think maybe each race is linked to a region of the world, which means race encompasses culture. If this was made in 2026, they might go with heritage instead, which would be a better fit.
There are also a bunch of character types, such as shaman, sorcerer, bard, knight, etc. So you end up with a netherman sorcerer or a nomad spy.
The magic is nice. There's a list of 16 or so spells that, like Ars Magica, are very broad in application. If you have the Illusion spell, then you can make all sorts of illusions. You describe what you want to accomplish and the referee (they use that dreadful term... oh well, I can just change it to Legendeer) decides how much it would cost. If that cost is more than your current spell points, you can't do it. Spell points are equal to your skill level with the spell.
The book has a chunky section about religions and cults. A hell of a lot more than you would expect, which is pretty awesome. This kind of stuff is spread out through the game from the races, types, magic, and the setting material itself. So the world is baked right in, but not heavily. It's a game you could play in a generic world or some other setting, with a little trivial effort.
Unfortunately it doesn't appear that the game is available for purchase or download anymore. I got my copy via eBay. But here's the official website and it has links to a bunch of adventures and resources for the game. I think there was a lot of love for it, at least for a time, and at least among a small cadre of gamers.
