Lejendary Adventures?

[smubee]

I have found a seller who has the 3 rulebooks for sale still in its shrink wrap, but before I purchase I would love to know if anyone here has any experience with the system and can list some of its merits?

[Falconer]

The main merit was that if you wanted to play in a game run by Gary Gygax in the 2000s, this was the ruleset you were likely going to need!

[ritt]

Very curious. Tell us more, please.

[jcstephens]

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman, but lost the rights in a copyright dispute. Hoping to recreate the magic, they teamed up with their original editor to produce:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funnyman_(comics)

Sadly, inspiration like lightning rarely strikes twice in the same place.

[Falconer]

Here’s what it comes down to, for me. Sometimes I want D&D in all its quirky, awesome glory, with all its famous dungeons and monsters and artifacts and treasures and spells. And sometimes I want something distinctly different from D&D (like RuneQuest, or Call of Cthulhu, or Star Wars). The problem with something like LA is that it’s just a humble little slice of more D&Dishness, only it’s incompatible with all the rest of D&D, and just not awesome enough to be worth the effort.

[Deleted]

Own but have never played. Would love to, though.

[jdn2006]

There is a quickstart PDF for preview:

www.trolllord.com/downloads/pdfs/la_quickstart.pdf

[Finarvyn]

I owned a copy at one point, but it never really stuck with me so I got rid of the thing. I love the concept of playing what Gary played, but I loved OD&D a lot more and for me it wasn't worth the time to learn LA and then teach it to my players.

[kesher]

It's fun to read--pure Gygaxian prose at its most dense.

I never played it, but the "basic" rules that take up the first quarter of the main rulebook seemed pretty playable to me.

OH WAIT. I was talking about Dangerous Journeys; for some reason I can never keep those two names clear in my head. :-P

N

[codeman123]

Yeah first thing that came to my mind was Dangerous Journeys heh. LA i never played but have had it for along number of years. My problem with it is it had to many weird names for everything but the core system seems really solid. So if ran it i would just take out all the weird names.

[Dohojar]

I played it for about 4 years. The wierd names for things was due to the fact that Gary wanted to keep LA as far away from D&D as possible (I asked him about it back in 2004). And it does do that. Once ya get used to it, the wierd names become second nature.

As a game system, it was the best one I played. Easy to run and very rules light. The only really complicated part of the game was Avatar creation. Once you get over that hurdle, the game is simple. It reminds me of OD&D in the way it plays. Very free and not restricted by rules. It was probably Gary's best work for a game imo.

[Deleted]

@dojohar echoes what I've heard about the game; that it was a precursor to the simpler, more linear kind of gaming we all here appreciate. I owned two books for it, I think one was an adventure, but I gave it away when I moved to Spain. In retrospect, it reminded me a bit of crossing the stories of "Sagard the Barbarian" with "Kingdoms of Kalamar". Not bad at all, but sort of like a less polished C&C, IIRC.

That said, smubee, knowing that, from what I gather online, you're very, very young compared to most of us old foxes here, I would recommend you to use your money for a game that is more up-to-date. Say, "Beyond the Wall", "Lamentations of the Flame Princess", Kobold Press' "Midgard", or even D&D 5th edition: Not because it would be better, or worse, but because it will keep you more in touch with modern gaming. Now, that might not seem attractive, for all the known reasons, but it keeps you in touch with what potential new players might expect. - Like, to your generation, playing LA is perhaps as if someone today invited me to a game of "Swordbearer", or SPI's "Dragon Quest": Before anything else, it would likely be a very, very alien experience. And while that can be cool, it will not spark with everyone.


EDIT: "Hall of Many Panes" seems to have been the best adventure for LA, though, and I am a big fan of "The Lost City of Gaxmoor", a module that I've run perhaps three or four times over the last decade, already. (Though I did so with the d20 version, under NWD Fantasy and DCC rules.)

[smubee]

Jan 27, 2017 2:18:02 GMT -6 @rafael said:

@dojohar echoes what I've heard about the game; that it was a precursor to the simpler, more linear kind of gaming we all here appreciate. I owned two books for it, I think one was an adventure, but I gave it away when I moved to Spain. In retrospect, it reminded me a bit of crossing the stories of "Sagard the Barbarian" with "Kingdoms of Kalamar". Not bad at all, but sort of like a less polished C&C, IIRC.

That said, smubee , knowing that, from what I gather online, you're very, very young compared to most of us old foxes here, I would recommend you to use your money for a game that is more up-to-date. Say, "Beyond the Wall", "Lamentations of the Flame Princess", Kobold Press' "Midgard", or even D&D 5th edition: Not because it would be better, or worse, but because it will keep you more in touch with modern gaming. Now, that might not seem attractive, for all the known reasons, but it keeps you in touch with what potential new players might expect. - Like, to your generation, playing LA is perhaps as if someone today invited me to a game of "Swordbearer", or SPI's "Dragon Quest": Before anything else, it would likely be a very, very alien experience. And while that can be cool, it will not spark with everyone.


EDIT: "Hall of Many Panes" seems to have been the best adventure for LA, though, and I am a big fan of "The Lost City of Gaxmoor", a module that I've run perhaps three or four times over the last decade, already. (Though I did so with the d20 version, under NWD Fantasy and DCC rules.)

Oh, I am very young compared to most of you guys.

But at the ripe age of 20, my gaming collection is actually pretty decent.

I don't necessarily play any of the games that I get, I just like collecting things. Collecting RPGs is my hobby!

[Deleted]

Hehehe, indeed, a nice collection. it's a good thing that you've really tried, or at least read, many different versions of D&D - it's so helpful to understand what the game is really supposed to be about. - As a collector's item, seeing what books you already have, I personally can warmly recommend LA: as I wrote above, "Gaxmoor" really impressed me, and shaped my gaming like few other adventures. About the rest, I have to confess that I don't really remember, though; I was big into "The Kingdoms of Kalamar" as well, back in the day, and I think I might be confusing the different elements.

[Falconer]

There was no LA version of Gaxmoor, it was for D20/3E only.

[smubee]

Jan 29, 2017 14:17:33 GMT -6 @rafael said:

Hehehe, indeed, a nice collection. it's a good thing that you've really tried, or at least read, many different versions of D&D - it's so helpful to understand what the game is really supposed to be about. - As a collector's item, seeing what books you already have, I personally can warmly recommend LA: as I wrote above, "Gaxmoor" really impressed me, and shaped my gaming like few other adventures. About the rest, I have to confess that I don't really remember, though; I was big into "The Kingdoms of Kalamar" as well, back in the day, and I think I might be confusing the different elements.

Thanks!

I started with 3.5 when I was 10 years old, but within a few months and after some sessions of 3.5, I quickly wanted to know all I could about the game. I dove right in and started slowly building my AD&D 1e collection, all the while reading up on the history of the game and such. Eventually got 2e (never played, and 4e (never played), but we played a lot of 5e in college as it had JUST come out before I went.

I got the WOTC OD&D reprint in 2015, but found a 5th print white box this summer so I just had to have it.

OD&D using the 3 books, AD&D 1e, and finally 5e are my three favourite D&D versions.

I'm also a huge fan of Star Wars and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So I have the WEG Star Sars game (the first RPG I ever played) and wanted to try out the Fantasy Flight Star Wars system.. and the TMNT game from palladium + all of the supplements for a good price.

But I just love Gygax's writing, hence my interest in LA. How does Dangerous Journeys stack up when compared?

[Dohojar]

Lejendary adventures is very rules light. Dangerous journeys is the exact opposite.

[Dohojar]

If you do pick these up I recomend you don't get hung up on the different terminology Gary uses. And Avatar creation can be confusing the first few time. I created about 5 or 6 avatars before I got a good grasp of how the system worked and Gary was always around to answer any questions I had. He was really excited about the game and the impression I got from him was that he was enjoying LA more than he was OD&D. It was his system of choice before he passed away. Sadly you don't have that option available to you

d**n I miss Gary.

[Deleted]

Dohojar, do you happen to know whether Gary developed LA beyond the published material? I recall very dimly that the setting was more the baby of another writer... Oakenfield, or the like.

[Dohojar]

I never really got into the setting for LA too deeply but I have the 2 books that were published. I do believe it was based on an alternate earth. They kinda reminded me of the old greyhawk folio book in the way they were written. A little info on each area on the different continents and that's about it. It left the setting wide open for your own imagination.

[Deleted]

I played LA for a couple of years and to be honest I wasn't in the right place rpg growth wise to appreciate it fully. We moved on to 4E/Pathfinder and the rest and it was only after getting feed up with rule heavy games and getting into the OSR that I started to remember bits and pieces of LA in a better light.

I still have the books sitting on my shelf and have recently started to open them back up again. I'm still playing White Box for now but soon I can see another game of LA on the horizon.