Lejendary Adventures had its heyday from 1999 to 2008 or so. Not bad when you think about it. The game had its own problems (a lot of problems), but the biggest issue was the introduction of Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition and the OGL, which took the gaming world by storm.
Still, it seems that Legendary Adventure had its devoted fanbase. It left Hekaforge and then moved over to Troll Lords for a time while Gary was partnering with the Trolls. Sadly, that partnership ended with Gary's death and the bad advice Gail was getting that Gary's material would be worth more if she waited a bit. Now we are at a time where the Troll Lords have their licenses back to do Gary's material. Does that mean we will see more Lejendary Adventures? Somehow I doubt it. The Trolls have a great game in Castles & Crusades, one that Gary himself called the "Spiritual Successor to AD&D," and Lejendary Adventures...well, it was always late 80s game design introduced in the late 90s. It was "old feeling" then, and it would fare much better today.
Still, there is nice support for it on Dragonsfoot, and the Perilous Journeys Publishing company has produced a Steam Punk game, SteamCraft, that uses the same (close) system. Here, it seems to work much better. The world even feels like the same Lejendary Earth in the Steam Age.
So while Lejendary Adventure might not be the game for me (or even for many) it is the game for a lot of others and they all seem to say something rather similar; the game reads poorly but plays great. I can certainly see that with SteamCraft.
My Future with LA/Lejendary Earth
I half-joked that I am just mental enough to want to try and merge AD&D, Mythus, and Lejendary Adventures into one game but sane enough to realize that it is, well, completely insane.
But there are, as I have mentioned many times, some interesting ideas here.
So how about this. What about a world, obviously related to Oerth, Learth, and Ærth, with these "legendary" and "mythic" connections. It would need to be conventionally Earth-like to do the things in Dangerous Journey/Mythus and Lejendary Adventures, but also fantastical enough to cover the Oerth and maybe even Urt, which also seem to have the Gygax connection.
I also joked that with Earth, Oerth, Learth, Urt, and Ærth all we were missing was Ierth or Iarth. There is an Uerth and a Yarth mentioned by Gygax. On Uerth, Iggwilv/Tasha's double is a sorceress known as "Ahsat."
I will not create a new RPG rule system for a thought experiment like this. I don't have that sort of time or inclination. BUT I do have a system that is AD&D adjacent, has a lot of options, and is already tied to a mythic Earth. That system is Castles & Crusades. Their world is Aihrde, but originally it was called Erde, which is the German word for Earth. I should point out that Tolkien (a professor of Middle English) used Arda as the name for his Middle Earth.
Now Troll Lords have a great world, filled with history and myths, and so on. But they also have the Codices which detail Earth's mythologies.
So. How about this.
There is a world, right now I am calling Erde but that can change, that looks like Earth. It has similar but different land masses. Say something like the Earth clones we see in Star Trek or Mondas from Doctor Who.
I would use the Castles & Crusades system. Use all their mythological codices, and adopt ideas from Dangerous Journeys and Lejendary Adventure. It could be fun. I could find places for all the Gygax adventures on Earth, like the GDQ series (and T and some B) and find ways to work them into an Earth, not Oerth background. If I am doing that I might as well include my various myths like my Roman/Germanic pantheon. Thanks to the magic of the Internet I even have an idea about some of the Lejendary Earth gods.
I don't know. Maybe I am desperate to make something out of both of these games. More Sunk Cost Falicies, I guess. I mean I have Wasted Lands for my "near Earth" games, but it's still not quite this Erde thing I am trying for.
Ah well. Let's see what develops here.
