[LA] An Introduction to Lejendary Adventure

Lejendary Adventure (abbreviated as LA) is a role-playing game created by Gary Gygax. Now that we've got the wikipedia blurb out of the way, let's get right into it. How do you play it?

Here's what you need to know. At the game's core are its Base Ratings (BRs). These are Health, Precision, and Speed with an optional fourth rating of Intellect. These are often likened to the Attributes of D&D. However, I would disagree with this assessment. Health is most analogous to hit points, Precision to THAC0, and Speed to Movement Rate. The main function of the optional Intellect BR as referenced in the game rules is as a resistance to mind control. Also note that old-school D&D generally didn't assign Attributes to monsters. In LA, the three BRs form the core stats of all monsters.

Supplementing the Base Ratings are Attack and Defense modes. Again, you will find these as statistics for all monsters, listing their natural attack and defense capacities. For characters, however, these will primarily be what weapons and armor the character uses.

Taken together, these five statistics of Health, Precision, Speed, Attack, and Defense form the core of all characters and creatures in the game. Beyond this, different types of characters and creatures may have some additional statistics including Abilities, Powers, Special Capacities/Handicaps, and Special Vulnerabilities/Invulnerabilities.

The characters that players will play are referred to as Avatar Characters, or sometimes simply Avatars or simply Characters, Most of what Avatars will do, and much of what makes each one unique, is found in their Abilities. Abilities are broad bundles of skills and attributes. They can be thought of almost as mini-Classes. If you want to play a Fighter/Magic-User, you would want to have high scores in Weapons and Enchantment Abilities.

The game has Orders, which are often thought of as being similar to classes in D&D. Orders are generally for humans and usually require 4 or sometimes 5 Abilities. Bearing in mind, each Ability is almost a class unto itself, the Orders in LA make for well-rounded characters with a fairly broad array of competency.

As for the game mechanics, it's primarily a simple, straight-forward percentile system. In combat, Armor generally absorbs harm rather than making a target harder to hit. The magic system uses an energy system. Avatars with Extraordinary Abilities, such as those that enable magic-use, but also Psychogenics, have a reserve of energy for activating powers. These are called Activation Energy Points, or AEPs.

Avatars can improve in their Abilities and Base Ratings by accumulating and spending Merits. As a rule of thumb, each session, the Avatar will earn enough Merits to raise one ability by one point. Though for especially longer or more difficult sessions, or at the end of a series of sessions leading to the conclusion of a larger quest, there will be substantially larger bonus Merit awards that might enable an Avatar to raise a Base Rating or even learn a new Ability.

And thus we conclude our introduction and overview on how to play the Lejendary Adventure RPG. Future installments of this series will get into more depth about different aspects of the game. The aim of the series will be the create the most comprehensive commentaries on the Lejendary Adventure RPG.