Gary Gygax's Lejendary Adventure: Essentials (Lejendary Adventure)

Rating:
Summary: About Lejendary Adventures Essentials
Review: 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".