I've not run this yet but after a read it feels a bit flat. The premise is ok (the PCs have lost their powers) and I like the options presented and the randomised powers table although it is not a comprehensive supers-generator. The "boss" himself is quite original and the mechanics of how the minions interact with the boss, but the encounters might feel too repetitive - the final encounter is very close to a repeat of the second major encounter. There is nothing special or unusual about the locations presented and the PCs are essentially led along from encounter to encounter, regardless of what they do. They can't get to the boss who is behind their kidnapping and ... power outage ... without a key NPC ally taking them there, or the GM puts him directly in front of the PCs. There's no real detective work to do following clues to track from the initial in-media-res opening leading to a resolution, the PCs are taken there one way or another. I don't mind a linear adventure but this is a bit of an odd mix of the default city setting with some fairly pedestrian minor encounters taking place in the mulling-around midsection of the adventure scenario. I can't help thinking a much more directed scenario with more variety and challenges would have been a better to hang the basic idea on. The cover is striking and the interior art is good but the text has a lot of padding for what is essentially a small scenario. A final note, I really hate the NPC blocks without characteristics. I can see it was done so that skills don't have to be figured out to be "correct", but very very annoying if you want to work out other skills, or if you want to work out KNOCKBACK (SIZ ???)- hardly rare in a supers setting, or if you want to work out Fatigue (CON ???). Frustrating. The NPC stat-blocks themselves look like they could have been tweaked to design each one to fit in a single column, as it is they are split into two almost everytime. It's just annoying to read, and the fact that they don't have characteristics just makes it even more grating.

Highlights: A good premise, supported by reasonable mechanics. An interesting "villain group" with novel Lt/Boss level combat encounter mechanics.

Lowlights: Combat encounters feel repetitive. Verbose text. Bland setting and incidental encounters.

Mythras Imperative is the new "RuneQuest 6 Essentials" this time a significantly abridged version of the full Mythras rules, which as of writing has not yet been published. Although Imperative is only 32 pages I noticed that with the new approach to layout the word count seems to have roughly doubled(!) on a typical page, it looks great. (Edit: it's actually about 1/3 more dense)

The implied setting for Mythras Imperative is wider than an ancient setting and includes things like firearms and high tech armour. Character creation takes up about half the book and is pretty close to the previous RuneQuest Essentials but this time abridged and condensed. Passions have been moved up into character creation and look like more like part of the core rules. The rules here do not cover the magic systems and the creature listing is much reduced, making me think of what kind of an adventure you could run ..."A Bear, a Lizardman and a Xenomorph walk into a bar...they had a lovely night out". The creature listing is clearly there to just give an idea of how different creatures work.

The overall impression is that Imperative has been designed as a taster that will get you started but is not going to give you enough to run more than a one shot or a a short run of adventures. It reminds me a little of the original introduction to 'basic roleplaying' booklet included with RuneQuest 2 although that was not much more than basic character generation, how skills work and the combat system. Imperative is a compressed but impressive sampler for the new Mythras system. It would be possible to use Imperative solely with TDM's Classic Fantasy which effectively replaces a lot of the Mythras core rules with its' own variant. If you want the full character gen and skills, the 5 magic systems, creatures, equipment, cults & brotherhoods you will have to get the full Mythras rules.

This is a conversion to the Legend rules system based on an original D20 publication by Morten Braten from Xoth.net.

As it stands now (23rd Feb 2013) its a real mess because of the way the conversion was handled - all of the stats for NPCs are essentially unusable - however, Mongoose have responded to complaints and have commissioned a revision which is currently being worked on. It is unclear how long this is going to take or what the result will finally look like.

My original review: (which is still accurate as things stand) There are some real problems - little consideration of how magic works, how cults work, cultural backgrounds lack detail, NPCs and especially NPC sorcerers and magic users have been very poorly converted. The original D20 NPC antagonists are fairly powerful spell users, here they have been translated to very bland low skill magic users - not only have their spells been reduced to one or two spells - it's usually the same two spells from sorcerer to sorcerer. Much of the characterisation has been lost because of this, let alone the fact that these NPCs are now pushovers due to the huge reduction in their capabilities.

Given that the whole point of this publication is to convert the original D20 book to the Legend rules I think it is very poor value. I would recommend going to to Xoth.net and buying the original directly from him and doing the conversion yourself, it's also almost half the price of this.

There's one plus to this version - it's got better maps.