What happened to Gygax's Lejendary Adventures?

[cignus_pfaccari]

At first I was really confused by all the people talking about a rules-light system.

Then I realized I was remembering Dangerous Journeys and not Lejendary Adventures. Man, that thing had a lot of numbers.

...that's what I was thinking, too.

Never actually looked at Lejendary Adventures to the best of my knowledge.

Brad

 

[Connorsrpg]

I too was thinking 'Rules lite! MFA!' But yeah, that was a different game . Sorry can't help with the other one, so I am kinda wasting your time here aren't I. Sorry. Out. C

 

[Gloomshroud]

At first I was really confused by all the people talking about a rules-light system.

Then I realized I was remembering Dangerous Journeys and not Lejendary Adventures. Man, that thing had a lot of numbers.

Ever played Role Master? Eight hour chargen was the best I could do.

 

[TarionzCousin]

The core books titles are Lejendary Rules for All Players (Amazon link)

Here is the one Amazon.com review about this book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
About Lejendary Adventures Essentials, December 28, 2006
By Robert Fisher (Texas USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Gary Gygax's Lejendary Adventure: Essentials (Game)

The Lejendary Adventure game falls in a middle ground between class based games like D&D and skill based games like GURPS. Starting characters have five "abilities" that are very, very broad skills. It calls them "skill-bundles". e.g. Enchantment, Stealth, Theurgy, & Weapons.

There are also Orders that group a certain selection of four abilities into specific careers. Members of the Noble Order, e.g., should have--at least--the abilities Chivalry, Weapons, Hunt, & Physique. While joining an Order has benefits, a character may also remain "Unordered", if his abilities don't match any of the Orders.

The abilities that are available & the ways in which they relate to each other do an amazingly good job of keeping characters well rounded despite the best attempts at power gaming while still offering more flexibility than a class based system.

Unlike D&D (but like many other games), characters typically start out as full-fledged members of their choosen career rather than youngsters straight out of their apprenticeships. Progression is slower than D&D, but fast enough to keep those players who need it happy.

Unfortunately, Gygax has choosen to eschew standard roleplaying game jargon. PCs are called Avatars. NPCs are called NACs (non-Avatar characters). Spells are called Activations or Powers. Spellcasters are called Activators. Spell points are called Activation Energy Points.

Essentials comes with everything you need to play. It has fewer races, abilities, extraordinary abilities (kinds of magic), activations (spells), orders, & monsters than the "full version" of the rules. Yet, there is plenty here: 6 races, 35 abilities (including 2 extraordinary abilities), 9 orders, & 156 activations.

It seems that the rules themselves have been abbreviated as well, but again, there's plenty here to play the game without ever buying anything else.

It is not a complex game with lots of rules. It is closer in these respects to the old classic (Basic & Expert Set) D&D than to, for instance, GURPS or the latest edition of D&D. In some ways it resembles a more serious version of Risus, but less free form & more "rules medium" than "rules light".

I bet [MENTION=13892]jdrakeh[/MENTION] has played Lejendary Adventure. I'll summon him here and we'll find out. If not, he has played a lot of Risus.

 

[Treebore]

I only got to play a few sessions of it and I would say first off that review is very spot on for the Essentials rules set, however I found them very confusing and the full set was much easier to understand. I also liked the skill bundles and the point progression was very interesting and seemed like it would allow me some meaningful customization even within the profession of "knight", as well as to do some development outside of it.

Plus it was written by Gary, and I always enjoy reading stuff written by him, even if only strong supervision was given. These books once again allowed me to delve into his creative genius like I hadn't done since the 1E DMG and that alone was worth the price of admission for me.

 

[Deset Gled]

Diamond Cross, can you please explain what "rxop" means?

 

[FunkBGR]

I played and owned Lejendary Adventures. It had a blue cover, and it was some dudes adventuring. One of the dudes on the cover was obviously Gary, and according to another guy I know, the cover was done by an artist who really liked to draw adventuring parties that consisted of the role-playing group as their characters.

It was fun, but weird. Everything had a weird name, so you had to puzzle your way through some of the names - Ilf's and Wylfs and stuff. People could be Kobolds, and could turn invisible at will. You had three or four basic stats, including a speed stat, which I recall got really wonky when you mixed in spellcasting, because apparently one of the most effective things to do was cast this bolts spell, make as many as you possibly could, and keep nailing people's speed stat for 2 to 3 points of damage per bolt (when speed stats were around 10 to 15). There was also some skill in the book called Pandimensional Spanning or something, which was Weird. Another random weird thing I remember is that you needed a d30 for one of the listed weapons in the back (giants fist or something). Characters used Orders as "classes", and if you couldn't become a member of one of the listed orders, they had a "non-ordered character" advancement thing that I remember took me awhile to completely figure out.

All that said, if you could puzzle through all that, and felt comfortable hand-waving some of the funny business, it actually was a lot of fun for a skill-based system. It wasn't too terribly hard to grasp the basic rules, and you could hand-wave a lot of the weird stuff or just house-rule things to make it fit. I do recall sometimes you had to do some multiplication on the spot - so I made a custom character sheet that had some value x4 (I think it was Speed again) on it.

So it's cool to own for the Gygaxianess of it (the weird stuff), but also at its core is pretty fun. Does my group remember it fondly? Definitely. Would I run it again? Probably not - if I want skill-based, I'll stick to something less weird.

 

[Piratecat]

Diamond Cross, can you please explain what "rxop" means?

It means he'll be spoken to by a moderator for randomly spamming XP, which we definitely don't want people to do.

 

[Jor-El]

Wait, wait, wait. You mean Lejendary Adventures had a set/collection called Essentials?

 

[Treebore]

Wait, wait, wait. You mean Lejendary Adventures had a set/collection called Essentials?

Yes, a boxed set sold by Troll Lord Games, which is how I started to get into it. Then I found it interesting enough to hunt down the original books, which I was able to buy from someone involved in its original printing.