Lejendary Adventure -- continued

[MattyHelms]

Re: The cheerleaders are here!

The LA Cheerleader has arrived!

http://www.lejendary.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=000519

Also see the previous thread:

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=42968

Technically, the "cheerleader" would be me, since I started the thread over on the LA board.

-Matt

 

[Lunamancer]

Kenjib,

First, thanks for your kind words. It did take me quite a while to put that all together, but I particularly enjoyed doing the write-up of last night's game, as it was a lot of fun at the time, and fun to re-live it again. To answer your question:

Oh -- one question. Are there players that too often try to stretch the open-ended skills too far in order to use them for things that are not really intuitive, and then argue about it? I just wonder if such ambiguity can lead to bickering.

The way it usually works when my friends and I play is the LM always has the final say. That's a basic fact of RPGs that the lot of us agree upon. Now then, when Gartak rolled against Stealth Ability to use the grappling hook, it more or less went like this:

Me: I take my grapnel out of my backpack and tie it to the rope. Once I have it tied, I want to toss it up on the wall trying to catch it on one of the merlins maybe.

LM: Do you have any Abilities that would cover that?

Me (thinking): Oh, yeah, Stealth includes access.

LM: Then roll against Stealth.

That's usually how it goes. Or often the LM will specify what Ability to roll against, and if the player feels his or her Avatar has another Ability that covers the action, he or she mentions it to the LM. As long as it's reasonable, the LM usually agrees. The LM has the final say, but the players have a lot of input. Of course, that's not really the one true way of doing it, but that way works really well for us.

We've never had any rules bickering come up. If there is a serious difference of opinion, like with any RPG, it can be discussed at length at the end of the session.

 

[Lunamancer]

Re: Re: Lejendary Adventure -- continued

It's definitely a major change in design philosophy from D&D - more akin to games like GURPS or Call of Cthulhu, where players tend to start out at a 'veteran' level of power, and then advance very slowly, as opposed to games like D&D which start you as a novice and then advance you a great deal.

You've got the right idea, although I think it's even moreso in LA--LA Avatars begin even more powerful than your 100-point GURPS character, and advance more slowly from there. Call of Cthulhu, from what I've seen, seems to advance pretty quick in that you get a d8 (IIRC) percentage points at a time, and that could happen to multiple skills.

If you wanted to do this in D&D you would need to start your characters at a middling level and then severely curtail XP gain to slow their advancement.

True. In fact, that's exactly what my last few AD&D games were like before I started playing LA. My tastes were certainly changing, and LA just happened to come out at the right time and fit perfectly with everything I was already doing with D&D.

Is there provision in LA for characters of differing levels of ability, like there is in GURPS? For example, being able to start your characters as apprentices rather than seasoned professionals?

Well, in AsteRogues beta, they do have guidelines for beginning with even more powerful/higher ranking Avatars. For lesser powerful ones, just cut down on the number of starting BR distribution points (as Golem Joe points out). Without concocting a formal Avatar creation system for less powerful characters, I have seen a couple of games where players would play "normal-level" characters--only for a limited time, however. And it was a lot of fun and very challenging indeed.

Currently, I'm working on converting GDW's Dark Conspiracy game over to LA rules, and I would likely include a 70-point character creation method so that starting Avatars are a little weaker, to make the game more challenging and basically to make the ACs really fear the dark

 

[Hadit]

Hello Lunamancer,
Nice write up of LA!
I am pretty much already decided on purchasing LA when I have the extra cash, but have a question or two anyway.
In regards to all weapon damage being between 1-20... I understand Gary's philosophy behind this to a degree. The idea that a longsword or a dagger can be equally dangerous to a body has a certain simple elegance in game terms, but only in regards to an unarmored opponent, I would think. Surely a heavy longsword (or battle-axe, or spear) is more effective against an armored opponent than a dagger?
Is there an account of this in the LA rules?
If not, are LA combat rules adaptable to a slightly more detailed resolution system?
Thanks for your time!

 

[Lunamancer]

Hello Lunamancer,
Nice write up of LA!

Thanks! I'm happy it was well-recieved here.

I am pretty much already decided on purchasing LA when I have the extra cash, but have a question or two anyway.

Fire away!

In regards to all weapon damage being between 1-20... I understand Gary's philosophy behind this to a degree. The idea that a longsword or a dagger can be equally dangerous to a body has a certain simple elegance in game terms, but only in regards to an unarmored opponent, I would think. Surely a heavy longsword (or battle-axe, or spear) is more effective against an armored opponent than a dagger?
Is there an account of this in the LA rules?

Actually, there is. Weapon harm is differentiated somewhat. Each weapon has a minimum harm. For example, a Falchion does 7-20 harm while a Short Sword does 2-20 harm. What this means is, when you roll your 20-sider, if you get lower than your minimum harm, it counts as minimum harm, rather than what you rolled. So suppose you're attacking someone with Half Leather armor (5 points of Armor Protection). That means if you're using the Short Sword, there is a chance that you will do so little harm that it will not get through the armor. But with the Falchion, you're always guaranteed to do enough harm so that at least some will get through.

The difference is a little less dramatic when comparing the Long Sword (4-20 Harm) to the Dagger (1-20), but you do still get the same thing. The Two-Handed Sword has a minimum harm of 11, so that gets through armor even better. There's also an optional "Strong Attack" rule which says that if armor absorbs 10 or more Harm from a single hit, the wearer will take 1 point of Shock Harm from the sheer impact of the blow. If this rule is used, that means the Two-Handed Sword is always guaranteed that one point of harm.

If not, are LA combat rules adaptable to a slightly more detailed resolution system?

I've found LA to be very adaptable to pretty much everything. For example, if you wanted to add a lot of extra detail on the armor penetration value of weapons, you could easily construct an armor vs weapon table a la AD&D 1st Ed, or if you're less ambitious, a damage type vs armor type table a la 2nd Ed. It could be a table of bonuses and penalties to harm, minimum harm, or even to hit. Most people thought those were pretty unwieldy, however.

I should also note that heavy bludgeoning weapons, when they are magical ones, have special armor penetration notes (don't recall them off hand, but it is mentioned in the section on those sorts of magical weapons in Lejend Masters Lore). If you really wanted to, you could make them apply to the non-magical varieties as well. I know some LMs have even toyed with the idea of making piercing type weapons do only half the normal amount of harm to armor, and the bludgeoning ones do double.

 

[Golem Joe]

Surely a heavy longsword (or battle-axe, or spear) is more effective against an armored opponent than a dagger?
Is there an account of this in the LA rules?

A battle axe does damage in the range of 7-20 points. So if you roll less than 7 on a d20, it does the minimum damage. Spears do only 1-20, but have a longer reach, which can affect initiative.

Certain Abilities also provide bonuses to the character's weapons ability. Chivalry, for example, provides +1 to weapons/+1 damage for every five points of ability score. It isn't hard for a beginning character, with Chivalry as his first ability (the noble order), to start out with nearly a 20 point damage bonus. This is the most extreme example. As nobles are supposed to reflect knights and samurai, this seems appropriate.

If not, are LA combat rules adaptable to a slightly more detailed resolution system?

What sort of detail would you want to add?

Personally, I don't know that it really needs to be more detailed. The core rules cover called shots, critical hits, armor defeating hits, parrying, reposting and a variety of conditions. Situational modifiers cover everthing from running to cover.

 

[Piratecat]

Nice writeup.

How tough is the learning curve for learning LJ? For instance, I found Deadland's rules to be a pain in the butt to get used to, but CoC's original rules to be quite easy. Do you have a feel for how LJ compares?

 

[Lunamancer]

Nice writeup.

Thanks. I'm glad the time I put into it was worthwhile.

How tough is the learning curve for learning LJ? For instance, I found Deadland's rules to be a pain in the butt to get used to, but CoC's original rules to be quite easy. Do you have a feel for how LJ compares?

Lejendary Adventure has been incredibly easy to learn. Understand where I come from--for years and years, I've seen other RPGs that I've really liked come and go, but I was never willing to give up AD&D. Why? Because I had so much experience with it, I was at the point where I could run a game smoothly, never having to look up a rule, and I even had quite a few monster stats memorized. What I didn't know, I knew the exact book and page number to find the answer. When a GM of any game knows the system that well, the game runs so smoothly, and that has the most potential for a really fun session.

It didn't even take me two months for me to be able to run LA comfortably and with confidence. In 4 months, I could run it almost as well as I could D&D (which I had started playing about 20 years ago to this day--more like 17 when I first started LA). In short, if LA wasn't so easy to learn, I would've just stuck with the game I already knew so well. Now granted, I haven't memorized nearly as many monster stats for LA than D&D, but that's okay, because most LA monsters can be summed up in just 5 stats: Health, Precision, Speed, Attack, and Defense.

I have had some experience with both Deadlands and Call of Cthulhu (I own more Deadlands books but have played CoC much more). LA is a percentile system, and pretty much just as straight forward as CoC. There are a few differences, but of the folks that I know personally who love CoC, they've also become fans of the LA game as well. The games operate similarly enough.

Deadlands I did not find to be particularly complicated. It's about on par with what I'd say is the majority of the games on the market in terms of difficulty... but as I said above, I've seen many such games come and go unwilling to give up the game I already knew so well. LA got me to switch because it was far simpler to learn than those of average difficulty, such as Deadlands. By the way, when I say switch, I don't mean I play one and only one game, I'm talking about my main game--the one I'll run weekly for a good amount of time.

Anyway, if you've enjoyed both D&D and CoC and what both games have had to offer, my best guess is you'd probably like LA, too. It's got the simplicity of CoC, the breadth in scope of D&D (that is, a fantasy genre with everything sorta tossed into the mix), supports the style of play of both games (Avatars are capable enough to go through dangerous dungeon crawls and come out triumphant--but are also frail enough so that there will always be creatures to scare the starch out of them!), and at the same time fills its own unique little niche.

 

[Hadit]

Thanks for the reply Lunamancer!
I find your explanation of LA combat damage simple and satisfactory. I probably wouldn't feel any need to eleborate on those rules. I just wanted to see if there was SOME acknowledgement of differing weapon type damages.
I play 3E right now and enjoy it's highly tactical combat resolution (our group doesn't mind spending hours resolving a complex battle, it's part of the fun for us), but I am definately interested in a more rules-lite game for when it's time to take a 3E breather. (1E fills that roll right now, but I want something with a little more variation from 3E, and maybe even simpler in execution... plus I like to support the good Mr Gygax in his endeavors when I am able!)

 

[Lunamancer]

I play 3E right now and enjoy it's highly tactical combat resolution (our group doesn't mind spending hours resolving a complex battle, it's part of the fun for us), but I am definately interested in a more rules-lite game for when it's time to take a 3E breather. (1E fills that roll right now, but I want something with a little more variation from 3E, and maybe even simpler in execution... plus I like to support the good Mr Gygax in his endeavors when I am able!)

There are, of course, a number of dual-stat d20/LA products available with several more on the way. Any group who played both systems would definitely get more milage out of those dual-stat books. And I would recommend each of the three (I think there are only three) currently out now--The Hermit (adventure module), The Canting Crew (suppliment detailing cities and organized crime in the fantasy setting), and The World Builder. And I'm waiting patiently for Castle Wolfmoon.