Legion of Gold Review

The third and perhaps final Gamma World expansion, Legion of Gold offers what every Gamma World product has so far: new origins, monsters (with token sheets), some maps, a card booster pack, and an adventure at the end. Between all three books, you could easily get a party from 1st to 10th level just by running out of the book. Since the only really new thing is the content out of the book, that's all I'll be talking about, as the maps and tokens are what you'd expect.

Chapter 1: New Character Options
Unlike Gamma World and Famine at Far-Go, there's only eight new origins. Since it brings up the total count to forty-eight, I guess I can't complain too much. There's a d12 table in there if you want to try and build a character using every potential option, along with others for restricting diversity (or just sticking to Legion of Gold). New origins include antimatter, demon, octopoid, and more. My favorite is the reanimator, which is Wisdom (psi), gets a Conspiracy and Fortitude bonus, and resist 10 necrotic. The critical deals bonus damage, and you get to prone any one enemy next to a summoned minion (if you have one out at the time). As an added bonus, here's the power list:

• Graveyard Summons (novice): You summon an animated corpse that lasts for a turn, and can make its own basic attack, or use weapons that you give it/it picks up. At one hit point it's pretty frail, and since you need a Standard action to summon it, it looks like you can't actually attack until your next turn, so it might get taken out before then. If nothing else, at least it provides a distraction.
• Meat Shield (utility): An immediate interrupt that gives you a hefty defense bonus against an attack.
• Forest of Hands (expert): An area burst that deals a decent amount of damage, with a Miss effect. Oh, if an enemy moves it also takes automatic damage as an Effect.

Vocations are Gamma World's answer to feats. The way it works is that at level 4 you can pick a vocation, gaining the first feat associated with it. There are thirteen vocations to choose from, such as Animal Hunter, Diplomat, and Spice Trader. There's no cost for doing this, so there's no reason not to pick one. One interesting vocation is Beast Rider. It deals with mounted combat, and there's an entire page devoted to explaining how it works on the following page.

Chapter 2: Monsters
Unlike the first two Gamma World products, most of the stuff in this book is level seven and up. Yeah, there are a few level 4-6 goodies (such as a pair of new grens), but the majority consist of super-powered robots, dinosaurs, demons, undead, and other bizarre shit like star slime. I'm not too surprised, since the lower levels had plenty of coverage in the first two products. Also, it's very easy to level stuff up and down to where you need it. I particularly like the saurians, which are simply regenerating, spear-wielding dinosaurs. The descriptive text mentions that fusion rifles or nukes wouldn't be much more of a stretch, which is awesome.

Chapter 3: Moon Zone 9
The moon is apparently somewhat terraformed, giving it a thin atmosphere that doesn't really make it habitable at all (you can last like, ten rounds total). Aside from the lack of an atmosphere, there's other features danger features such as nanofiber streams (ongoing acid damage, as well as acid vulnerability) and superconductor sands (automatic electricity damage when you flux). If you've got a suit and the sense to avoid all this crazy shit? Space eels.

The chapter also provides you with a map of a small portion of the moon that features numerous sites of interest, including a ruined station where Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, mysterious, radioactive wreckage, and the domed city of Tranquility. Tranquility gets a few pages of exposition, detailing over twenty locations along with some personalities and quest ideas. Oddly, the pair of NPCs with stat blocks are both above level 10, though given the level range of lunar monsters I guess it's not too surprising.

The rules for Skill Challenges have been reprinted again, with examples like replacing a breather tank on your suit, extricating a stuck vehicle, and setting up a habitat to bunk in. There's also 20 new items to be found on the moon, including the obvious moon suit, inflatable dome, and the coveted space pen. Characters on the moon automatically get a space suit and 2 -5 items off the Moon Zone 9 gear table, presumably by off-camera trade ins or other "acquisitions". These also get brief descriptions on the following page, explaining that a water re-former changes 50 pounds of rock into a pint of water in an 8-hour span. Good to know.

Chapter 4: Legion of Gold
This is the actual adventure, and similar to Famine at Far-go, it takes up a considerable chunk of the book (about half). Mysterious raiders in golden armor are attacking the towns in the Horn barony, and its up to the heroes to put a stop to them. The adventure is divided into four parts, which involves tracking them down, investigate a machine-staffed facility, get teleported to the moon, and destroy a malfunctioning AI. While not quite a cool as beating up Dracula in his moon-castle and surfing his robotic double back to Earth, it's still pretty epic.

Conclusion
If you're up for sending your group to the moon in order to stop a mad scientist from zapping Gamma Terra with a laser cannon, deal with robotic aliens that cobble bodies out of humanoid corpses, or just make a quick buck whaling, this is a great buy. If moon-walking isn't your style, it's still alright for the new origins and monsters.