Lejendary Adventure!

[Kersus]

Yea! LA has a new home. I hope the hazing here isn't too bad. Well, then again, it's all in good fun.

I hope to se LA with it's own section in the forum soon and on the site.

I've met a few of you back with my Mighty Armies questions that went to Rebel Minis, but Salutations to the rest!

K

 

[dancross]

We need our own forum section.

 

[Kersus]

Mmmmmm... Will we have our own or be under the Flaming Cobra forum....

K

 

[Finarvyn]

It depends upon how much interest Mongoose wants to generate. I always thought that extra unique forums were better than combining several topics together because it's easlier to find exactlly what you want, but not everyone agrees. (See "Lankhmar" for details. If you can find it.)

The nice thing about Mongoose is that they have a bigger base from which to distribute products. The downside is the number of warped covers they seem to produce. (My local game store has a box of Mongoose books I won't buy because they're warped.)

At least LA has a home now....

 

[Finarvyn]

The downside is the number of warped covers they seem to produce. (My local game store has a box of Mongoose books I won't buy because they're warped.)

I wanted to let everyone know that Matt saw my comment above and PM'ed me to get the name of the store with the warped covers, then PM'ed me again to let me know that these books were being replaced.

No more downside!

I thought it was only fair if I made a statement such as the one above that I also respond again when it's no longer valid.

Thanks, Matt!

 

[Greg Smith]

Warped covers should be a thing of the past since Mongoose started using a new printing company. Also they guarantee to replace any faulty books.

So what differentiates Lejendary Adventures from D&D? (And why the j?)

 

[Kersus]

So what differentiates Lejendary Adventures from D&D? (And why the j?)

Others may officially answer about the 'j' but basically to separate it from the common word and for IP. That's NOT the official word. Plus it's just so darn cool. It's like a step above Legendary.

Could you imagine a web/ebay search with the g?

First, it's nothing like OD&D except for possibly a very old school feel in how it flows (not mechanically). It's nothing like later incarnations of that game.

You build your characters using skill bundles instead of attributes and the game is very free-flowing with the mechanics hiding in the background. You just tell the LM (Lejend Master) what you want to do.

People new to RPGs take to it easily, but those in a D&D mindset tend to take some time to adjust as it's completely different and you must clear your mind of trying to compare.

I'm sure others will comment. Incidentally there is a great article on just that - changing the mindset for LA. I'll see if I can find it.


EDIT: Found it - now it's not official and was just written by a fan and take it all with a grain of salt.



K

 

[Rakin]

What LA offers:

• Broad skill bundles, open to interpretation by both LM and player, putting creativity, on the player's part, in the limelight, allowing the "Mechanics" per se to melt into the background. Creative play will get you a lot further in LA than let's say +5 vorpal sword in D&D.
  
• The game puts the power back into the LM, the "rules" in LA are more of a tool set for the LM to use vs hard set rules. That said, LA does a good job at molding gameplay back into - LM gives scenario - Players give a response based on the scenario. There's really no "push button" skills or things to chose from a list, so with that in mind LM's are free to rule based on their own logic what will happen, giving rules lawyers little to nothing to stand on (other then perhaps arguing the LM's logic is flawed). This does take a little bit to get used to as a new LM, since you'll be expected to be able to come up with rulings on things that might not be covered in the books. But the Lejend Master's Lore has a huge section with suggestions on how to handle different things the players might come up with
  
  But don't worry because the game is so simple (based of 5 chosen broad abilities) rulling usually ends up as just a roll against one of those said Abilities, with perhaps a modifier thrown in by the LM.
  
• You have super deadly monsters, really nothing in LA should be something you just walk up to, or become fodder eventually
  
• "Merits" (xp) are based off of "good gameplay" and are very subjective usually awarded for being the most clever or creative, there's no xp for death of monsters, enforcing the ethos that fighting might not always be the best way
  
• The progression scale is very slow, again enforcing an ethos that the game isn't about gaining level and power but about the game, the Avatars, the story and the players playing the game.
  
• Armor is handled as an absorbtion, and this adds to the fact that monsters really never become fodder (maybe eventually way down the road) since the monster's chance to hit never really goes down, and your chance to be hit never goes down as well.
  
• Avatars start out as adventurers and not weaklings, with everything they need to just start taking out bad guys right out of the box.
  
• There's no classes, everything's based on your Abilities (a wide range of them) allowing you to create casters that wear armor, monks that cast magic, vikings, thieves, knights, holy warriors, necromancers, wizards, psyionics that can hunt, just about anything you can dream up, you can probably make in LA.
  
• 9 (I think 9 I could be wrong) new Alfar (non-human) races to play to include, Kobolds, Trollkin, Oaf, DWarves (ok they're not new) Ilfs, Wylfs, Veshoges, etc.
  
• All weapons are deadly, just like how you can kill someone with a dagger or sword, LA takes this and runs with it. How it works is that most weapons, espcially blades, have the same max harm but different minimum harm, signifing how acurate you have to be with the weapon to be deadly.
  
  For instance a dagger I think is 1-20 harm (a d20) but a maul might be 9-20 (a d20 but if you roll anything under 9 your harm becomes 9)
  
• Oh since everything is so deadly and based on action and not stats, some of the "spells" are really out there and crazy fun to use. You can become a ghost, as thin as a sheet of paper, summon an efreet, raise the dudes you just killed to fight for you, teleport places, read people's mind, and all spells are open to be chosen by Avatars made out of the box, this is balanced by having casting times (which I love) and again like the old days, spell interuption if hit while casting.
  
  Those are some highlights.

 

[saundby]

LA reads like a generic skills-based system, like the first incarnations of BRP or RQ, but plays like a rules-light system like OD&D. Characters behave like Traveller characters, you have a hand-full of general abilities, and the characters' numbers don't change a lot, but the adventuring makes the characters Characters rather than a class-race-level-with-kewl-lewt.

It plays great, but there are some things to get over...

The rules as I read them don't immediately bring to mind the gameplay style (I started with the box set.) The mechanics are all laid out clearly enough, but it takes playing with them a bit to get a sense of the effect they have on play.

The nomenclature is unique. It'll take some time for players to adapt. It doesn't match anything you'll find on your fantasy novel bookshelf, though the terms all pretty well map to well-known things.

OTOH, it's quick to learn and get rolling. I bought the starter set in midmorning, read it that afternoon, and ran a game where we did much more than chargen that night, a good little adventure rehashed from one I ran using OD&D back in 1978, closing shop about 1am.

One thing that helps things along is that it's like skipping the first couple of useless character levels in most games, you can do things and take some risks right off with new chars.