Light is a Destiny-inspired modular rpg about cosmic warriors going on heroic missions.
It's loosely PbtA-ish, and it's easy to pick up, but the GM may benefit from prepping their material in advance rather than running the game on the fly.
You only need the first 2 pages to play Light, but if you include all the modules then this is a 2--8 page game system.
As this is the first rpg I've reviewed where I've had to give a page range rather than a page count, I'm also going to make my review modular.
CORE RULES REVIEW
Layout-wise, everything here is clean and easy to read, and the cover art is nice and expressive.
That said, if you download the "Core Rules" pdf, it's formatted for printing, so you may want to make sure you get the pages or spreads version instead.
Mechanics-wise, Light is much clearer. You roll d6s and count the highest, and on a 6 you succeed without consequence. This would seem pretty mean (and lead to a lot of consequences) except Light has a very neat system built around soft death and resurrection. Every time you would die, you instead black out one of your Light boxes, pop back up, and add an extra die to every roll. When that dark die is the highest, you take damage.
So basically, as you take damage your rolls get better and your odds of taking damage further increase.
If you take too many deaths in a scenario, you die for good, but until then you can see just how close to the wick you can burn the candle.
This was absolutely a standout to me, and I'd recommend the system on its strength alone, but the core rules' also have some notable absences.
For example, there are three classes, each with a unique flavor and movelist, but there aren't any sample enemies to compare them against. The game orbits around player-driven combat encounters, and you have to design your own.
Also, content-wise, the information the core book gives you about the setting is a bit murky. You are an immortal elemental being and the text implies you have a very specific place within the cosmology of the setting, but I couldn't figure out what that place was.
So as a GM using the core rules, you have to be ready to homebrew quite a bit for things to run perfectly smoothly.
VULCAN REVIEW
The title text looks a little strange compared to the more stylized logo on the core book, but everything inside is clean and readable and the cover image looks nice.
Content-wise, this supplement orbits around its titular npc, Vulcan, who forges the guns used by the PCs.
This bit of lore is nice, and it gives the setting slightly more of an anchored feeling, but the real meat here is mechanical.
There's a system for generating and modifying weapons that is about as crunchy as anything I've seen in a PbtA engine. You can have all kinds of mechanically relevant tags on a weapon, and slowly cultivating and customizing your gear while scavenging and selling enemy weapons is a neat gameplay loop.
Vulcan feels like a very solid addition to the core rules, and can probably be grafted onto other crunchy, combat-oriented PbtA systems with a few proper noun changes.
NEMESIS REVIEW
The contents are clean and readable, and the cover art looks great, but again the title font feels a little strange.
Content-wise, Nemesis feels essential to the system, and it should be a part of core.
It features antagonists with stats (thus giving the GM an idea of how to stat enemies), and it also clarifies a huge chunk of what's going on in the game's setting. Humanity is a dying empire, alien forces are pressing in, and the PCs are fighting against that tide.
You do need to be relatively familiar with the flow of PbtA games to use these enemies easily, but they're each flavorful and well designed, and the factions they represent feel interesting and mysterious.
This is an essential addition to the game.
LIGHTHOUSE REVIEW
Clean and readable, Lighthouse fills in some helpful worldbuilding about the place the PCs hail from, and it adds a factional favor system.
Essentially, the players can take missions and optional objectives from major or minor factions and make progress towards specific factional rewards.
It's a fun extra layer, but there's a lot of elements here that refer to Vulcan and feel like they're designed to run alongside it.
I wouldn't recommend using Lighthouse by itself, but it's definitely an interesting addition if you want to develop a more story-focused campaign.
OVERALL REVIEW
Light is a modular game, but it feels like those modules have a specific load order:
Core, then Nemesis, then Vulcan, then Lighthouse.
Nemesis feels semi-essential, whereas Vulcan and Lighthouse are for longer-form play, and with Nemesis added I think Light is a stable, fun, and interesting system.
I'm not a Destiny player, so I can't speak to this from a fan angle, but just going on game mechanics alone, I think if you like fast-paced, sleek, neon space-fantasy with a special operations edge to it, you'll enjoy this.
Minor Issues:
-Core, page 1, Fuel, "In especially rare situations, the conversion of a Dark into a Light", the text on page 2's Health & Harm says that you convert all dark back into light after a strike. Is this incorrect?
-Core, page 2, how do perks work? Is there anything to prevent you from just spamming Solar Well?
-Vulcan, page 2, Vulcan, 3rd para, you say Boons and "1 favor" in the same paragraph. Are they referring to the same mechanic?
-Vulcan, page 2, is there a tag limit for weapons? Or can you keep spending favor to add tags via Vulcan? And do tags stack with themselves?
-Lighthouse, page 2, Home, 2nd para, you have the word "Strikes" by itself at the end, and this looks like a fragment.
-Lighthouse, page 2, Boons, 1st para, there's a reference to Shine Bright and I'm not sure what or where that is.