Valiant Horizon is a heroic fantasy game about regular people chosen to gain the powers and mentorship of departed heroes through magical means, learning from and bonding with other fledgling heroes, developing their own legend, and eventually becoming enshrined in legend themselves. It’s about meeting new friends and growing with them, vanquishing enemies, discovering ancient secrets, developing a world together, and making a mark on the world. Crystal Fantasy: A brief, but evocative setting lays out the presence of crystals-as-magic. Some of these are Heroic crystals, containing the soul of someone who must pass their power on to someone else before their soul can be released back into the world; less powerful crystals form the basis of all other magic. The setting is intended to be built upon at the table, with advice as to how to do that in play for both the Narrator (GM) and other players included, especially through the development of the stories of the heroes trapped in those Heroic crystals. Character Customization: Twelve unique character classes representing heroic archetypes, each with its own unique ability set and focus, allow players to pick the narrative and practical role they wish to inhabit. Different characters are designed to work best in concert with one another, but no unique roles are ever required to be filled and every class is designed to be flexible. Heroic Action: Most actions can’t fail. Rather, some simply succeed based on expenditure of a resource, and some roll dice to determine how well they work. Combat is a fast and furious affair, inspired by the likes of LUMEN games such as NOVA and APOCALYPSE FRAME. Bonds, Reputations, and Legacies: Relationship mechanics allow for even more flexibility in building characters, driven by relationships established in-game: characters who grow close to one another will be able to borrow each others’ abilities and call upon each other for help. As characters grow in level, Reputation mechanics will increasingly define how the world around the protagonists perceives them, whether or not they play into it, and what their legacy will be. Campaign Play: The game, while playable and fun as a one-shot, is really built for campaigns. As characters gain levels, the scope of their interaction with the world and how the world perceives them increases until they themselves become Heroes of legend. A Novel System: Valiant Horizon is the first full game release powered by Binary Star Games’ novel Total//Effect system
