Truth & Justice is a superhero game by Atomic Sock Monkey Press (www.atomicsockmonkey.com). Legends Walk! is a superhero game by Silver Branch Games (www.silverbranch.co.uk). This document is for anyone that's interested in running LW with the system in T&J instead of the one in the LW book; that is, using LW as a T&J setting. (You'll need access to both books.)
Why suggest this? Well, for one thing people have different preferences and often like to stick to a system they know. For another, LW does its job pretty well, but it's a slightly different job from T&J. The LW approach is more about modelling what a superhero world would be like, with its peculiar branch of physics, whereas T&J is only about reproducing the kind of story you see in the comics. LW comes more from the game end; T&J more from the comic end. They don't end up as far away from each other as some other pairs of supers games would, but it's enough of a difference to make it worth thinking about which one suits your group better. Fortunately they share an approach of defining things simply, so converting is pretty easy. Bear in mind that converting one loose thing to another loose thing is going to be imprecise.
Legends Walk is flexible, style-wise: you could emphasise different aspects in your campaign, and in fact it's designed as a framework rather than a prescription. It doesn't fit neatly into the broad categories in T&J - hardly surprising, as it grew from reading lots of different comics material as part of the design process. It keeps the fragility of normal people from modern titles like The Authority, without delving far into their gore or cynicism. The weird and varied powers themselves are kind of a mix of Golden Age and Moore's Top Ten, but on the other hand it avoids extremes of silliness, cartooniness and melodrama. It wants to have the sensibility of Astro City, where there is something it is like to be metahuman in a real world. (It's a subtle thing, but these considerations make it unlike the material in the T&J rulebook.) In general, assume the world works like the real world in most respects: it's quite rooted, even though the setting's changed quite a bit from our reality. Superpowers should always be a notable exception to normality, not lost in a massive background noise of strangeness-become-routine.
Fundamentally, all you do is go through the T&J character creation process using one of the LW power programmes as a firm guide for what powers you can take. You don't need to worry too much about exact levels as long as they're in keeping with the spirit, eg don't go buying a power up to Master if the programme says you only get a little bit of it. Let's walk through the different elements.
Attributes, skills, quirks: it's all handled using qualities instead. Take whatever you want. An occupation at some rank is recommended.
This is a mandatory freebie for characters imbued by gods. It has a positive and a negative side, and each can come into play once per scene. The negative side works just like a Vulnerability: lose an action, take some damage (once only), gain Hero Points. For the positive side take an action to soak up the power, heal some damage (or failure) ranks, gain some Hero Points. The Aegis rank is Good (though it's probably not a problem if you want to vary it for different characters).
You can safely ignore the other Gate Modifiers - Domain and Followers - or if you wish use them as one-shot 1d6 HP gains in situations where they're particularly appropriate, eg Mr Hercules embarks on an adventure in Greece or manages to grab the Mystic Amphora from his arch-enemy.
You still have to take at least some of this (occasionally, these) - ie at least an Average power. This might make T&J versions slightly less flexible due to the power-buying schema. It's suggested that you use the optional rule of having any combination of powers where the modifiers add up to 6, with Average counting as 1 as usual in these situations (T&J p28).
LW has a set of attributes, with a normal range for humans progressing into "meta" levels. Boosts are increases in levels of an attribute, with a cap depending on the Source. T&J doesn't use attributes, so a Boost translates to one of two things. You could use it to give ranks in a suitable Quality via the Intense Training power - eg for "Boost: Strength" use an Average power to take Strong from Good to Master. But you'll probably want to keep it as a power, so there's a super version of each LW attribute. They can add into rolls when appropriate, and do their own special stuff too. In particular they're a source of stunts, letting players themselves do the creative work. The maximum power rank depends on the cap listed in LW: "+1"=Av, M1=Gd, M2=Ex, M3=Ma.
To take a skill from the power programme, use the Intense Training rules to convert a power into levels of an appropriate quality.
The division between the two blurs even more in T&J. At one end of the scale you'd tend not to take many ranks in some Switches because just having them does the job. At the other end of the scale, the way T&J lists powers suggests that some Adds should actually become metapowers - eg LW's Fire Control can include T&J's Control Fire, Blast of Fire and Body of Fire. You'll have to use your judgment.
The first step is to look at the sample powers listed in T&J to see whether there's one that does the same, or one that can be adapted to serve. Sometimes ones that sound similar actually work quite differently - LW sometimes departs quite a bit from traditional supers fare - and then you'll have to choose which style to go with. One difference is that all of these work in tandem with an attribute in LW, whereas they're their own thing in T&J.
These are kind of like Super-Gadgets. They're (non-technological) objects with powers built in, all subject to the Limitation of Must Have Item. In LW the fact that they can be taken away makes them cheaper to get at character creation. In T&J this is not the case - instead you get a Hero Point when you temporarily lose the item. Bear in mind that the Limitation applies to each power, so if you lose an item with several powers in it you're likely to get several HP.
This does mean characters relying on items will have a more limited repertoire in T&J. One way to compensate is to think about which LW powers could actually be T&J qualities, which you can buy with levels from the Intense Training power. Perhaps the most common item power is Effectiveness, and that's certainly a candidate - it could just give the item itself a rating. So for instance we could spend an Average power to give Thor's hammer Good (+2) Hammer and Good (+2) Returns When Thrown (which really only needs to be switched on rather than ranked). All the qualities are treated as a single power for HP when the item's lost.
An alternate way to handle an item is as a Sidekick or Super-Sidekick (eg Odin's raven).
Items do keep the LW property of being indestructible (or unkillable), barring major plot events. (Remember, ordinary items tend to break when used with Super-Strength.) Their other powers only work for someone imbued by the Source that created them. The GM might allow a Hero Point to buy short-term use for a character to whom the Source would be sympathetic, eg someone imbued by an allied god or hero.
Each LW power programme has a number of Disadvantages. These link in with the point-buy system: hero-imbued don't have to take any but get fewer points, god-imbued characters must take one and are in the middle; monster-imbued must take 2 but get most points. They can take up to a couple more for more points to buy powers. Most Disadvantages are alterations in the body or personality that make it harder to get along in normal society.
T&J doesn't have anything that quite does this. Limitations and Vulnerabilities don't fit the bill. The closest thing seems to be a Poor quality. The simple way to handle this is to require every character to take one of the Disadvantages as a special Poor quality. You could just ignore them altogether, but it's nice to convey the feel of people affected by powers beyond themselves.
Optionally, you could use a Revoltin' Development to temporarily manifest another of the Disadvantages or, in some cases, a more severe version of the existing one. This would presumably be a symptom of the chaotic flow of your Source's power. It might even be something a player requests to get much-needed HP. This is for you to agree in your own group.
T&J has its own built-in stuff for handling motivation, attitude to your powers and how far you're willing to go to get what you want.
Presence and Destiny are replaced by Hero Points.
Immunities - in LW these provide large but finite "armour" against particular types of harm (so a really major effect caused by another metahuman can slow you down a bit). The easiest conversion is to treat them as limited versions of T&J's Invulnerability, putting a character on the super scale in certain situations. (Across-the-board Invulnerability is almost non-existent in LW - characters have to build up damage resistance through combinations of abilities. Balder would have it, though, with a Limitation.)
Magic - if you want, you can replicate the LW magical styles system using the various spell aspects for upshifts and downshifts. That's probably too detailed for T&J though. Best bet is to identify the style descriptively and use it as a Sorcery metapower as suggested (p48). In LW Magic is used with the Ingenuity attribute; the GM may choose to allow the modifier of Super-Ingenuity to contribute to Sorcery rolls.
© Tim Gray, Silver Branch Games, 2005
Here's the sample character from the Legends Walk book written up for Truth & Justice.
Background: Martin Egilsson is an American professional baseball player imbued with the power of Thor, the Norse god of thunder. He's athletic and good-looking, notable more for his popularity than his technical skills on the field. He got his powers when some criminals were causing problems with his team - perhaps extortion, drugs or bribing them to throw games. Marty's first "mission" was to put a stop to it, so his powers were a useful tool, and now he's seen what he can do he feels a responsibility to help more people. He still has that urge for spotlights and adulation once in a while, though. It's not clear yet whether he can continue his career. He's a bit ashamed of being afraid of enclosed spaces, and doesn't like it to be known.
Motivation: Protect ordinary hardworking people from criminals.
Qualities: Good (+2) Baseball Player, Expert (+4) Athletic, Good (+2) Drive Motorbike, Good (+2) Attractive, Poor (-2) Claustrophobia.
I've rolled his normal-level Strength and Agility attributes into Athletic, and assumed that the Medicine mentioned as part of his LW occupation is covered in Baseball Player as first aid for sports-type injuries. I've abandoned the Iron Will Quirk - it'd translate into some advantage to do with Hero Points, and I don't want to fiddle with them.
Origin: The power of Thor!
Powers: These are listed out in longhand to show the working.
Aegis: Thunder - positive in extreme weather conditions; negative where there's no weather, eg underground, ocean depths, deep inside a large building.
Meta Disadvantage: Poor (-2) Weather Signs - lightning eyes and sound of thunder when stressed.
Stunts: LW doesn't have these, so there's nothing to translate. Possibilities include some sort of ricocheting multi-attack with the baseball. [Not sure that's allowable. It comes from a power, but doesn't end up as one or a suitable Master quality.]
Hero Point Pool: 5/10
Uniform: He adapts a leather jacket and some sports gear into an outfit. In LW that gives minor armour as a freebie - that would cost points here so it's abandoned.
To whack someone with his bat he can use +2 from Baseball Player and +2 from Super-Strength and +4 from the bat for a total of +8, adding 9 damage from Super-Strength against normal scale targets. If the bat wasn't a Power Item he couldn't use all of these together: the Super-Strength would just break it.