Including New Creatures Added to the System not Found in the Core Book

By Gary Gygax

© 2001 Trigee Enterprises Company.  All rights reserved.

Version 1.0

Not a few Lejend Masters have called for more detailed information regarding the creatures encountered in the LEJENDARY ADVENTURE^TM game.  This is reasonable and useful, so here you have it.

The information is presented in tabular form.  The explanations for each heading are given immediately hereafter.  Note that the Cunning and Intellect portion is applicable only in a subjective manner as the LM determines, so it has a more lengthy explanation and benchmark table of its own.

Note: The information provided is for the average specimen of creature indicated.  The LM is advised that the variation in size from individual to individual within a species can be +/-10%, more if seen fit by the LM.

Length/Height:

The general size of the creature in regards its standing height or length, its girth, etc.

Weight:

The average weight of the typical creature indicated.

Quadrupedal Movement:

A quadruped has a lower height than a biped.  Some bipeds are capable of quadrupedal movement and vice versa.  The capacity to stand and/or move bipedally or quadrupedally affects movement considerations and the capacity to avoid combat.  For example, a tall biped in pursuit might be avoided by Avatars moving along a low passage, but not if that creature can drop to all quadrupedal (or multipedal) stance and follow thus.  Similarly, climbing a tree is a sure way to avoid attack by a bull, but a bear able to stand bipedally might be able to reach the one seeking to avoid it. 

Cunning and Intellect:

Cunning is the capacity to demonstrate defensive-protective and offensive-aggressive behavior that resembles intelligent thinking, but only, or mostly, in the areas noted.  Cunning is demonstrated in wild creatures in their capacity to avoid hunters and/or in their own hunting techniques.  It relies primarily on instincts and senses with what must be some cognitive input from memory (learned behavior) and situational analysis.

Intellect is thinking and reasoning, reference to memory, tool use; at higher levels it includes idea communication, planning, writing etc.  It applies to all situations, but in regards to most only 10% of the rating is applicable as a percent chance for using pure intellect as a means of doing something successfully, solving a problem.

The definition of intelligence is most difficult to accomplish.  It is not possible to offer more than the guidelines on the table below, and from the scores shown the Lejend Master must use his or her own cunning and intellect to apply the ratings to game situations.  The following extract regarding from the yet-to-be-published LEJENDARY ASTEROGUES^TM Game Lejend Master’s Lore, Volume I, might be of some use in assessing intellect.

Semi-Intelligent Creatures:

It is important to distinguish semi-intelligent creatures and operate them in a manner other than that ordinarily used for the basic “animal intelligence” ones.

As the expert Legend Master varies the words and actions of intelligent creatures encountered in play, so too must the next thinking level of life forms be treated is special and unique manner.  One would not assume the role appropriate to an enraged bear when playing the role of an innkeeper.  It is as generally inappropriate to don the trappings of a philosopher or a wombat when enacting the part of some semi-intelligent creature.  There is a clear dividing line that separates the bright from the instinctive, and to understand where this line is drawn enhances your ability as a Legend Master to provide appropriate, interesting, and challenging play in the campaign.

By way of definition, semi-intelligence is intellectual and manipulative capacity above that of an animal such as a crow, but less than that of even a stupid human.  A chimpanzee, for example is semi-intelligent in this definition, even lacking the manipulative capacity of opposing thumb and forefinger.  A discussion of this topic was held on the author’s online List, and some interesting comments were made by subscribers who examined the list of those things posed as being qualifiers for semi-intelligence.  One thing was clear from this exposure.  The concept of semi-intelligence is not a well-defined one in most persons’ minds.

Semi-intelligent creatures should pose a special threat because of their ability to reason and plan defense and attack, use tools and weapons to carry out such activity.  The greater the number of qualifications of semi-intelligence possessed by the creature, the nearer it is to being fully intelligent.

Here are the identifiers used to determine semi-intelligence:

1.  Communication: The ability to communicate by sound or other means, with at least 12 different basic concepts thus conveyed, such as: Attack, close/near, come, down, far/distant, few/small, foe, follow, food, friend, go, help, hide, hunt/seek, hurry/fast, kill, look, many/large, one, quiet/silence, run, stop, up.

2.  Planning: The ability to plan for and organize necessary activities such as hunting/attack and defense.

3.  Cooperation: The ability to act with others or its kind, or associated with its kind, in order to improve the chances for success of some necessary activity ranging from hunting or gathering to shelter acquisition and defense.

4.  Abstraction Recognition: The capacity to equate a depiction, symbol, or similar model of a thing with the actual area or thing in question.  Thus, for example, a map scratched in the dirt is understood to represent in small scale an area that is elsewhere.

5.  Bartering: The capacity to understand the benefit of and employ the use of the exchange of things, services and/or goods for goods and/or services.  Rather than doing all that is needed to provide for needed or wanted things, barter allows for exchange of available, excess goods or services for some of those needs and wants, thus assuring a complete or better provision of necessities and even luxuries of a sort.

6.  Tool Use: The capacity to use objects as tools, and the term includes weapons, a tool of hunting or combat, so as to perform tasks that would otherwise not be possible, or to enhance performance of otherwise possible tasks.

7.  Gaze Awareness: Relating Gaze (or other sensory attention) to Attention: The capacity to understand that gaze equals attention, and to observe the direction and object of gaze so as to know where attention if fixed.  This ability enables the capable individual to determine the potential threat of a possible enemy, or to be alerted by the gaze of another, whether of the same or different species.

8.  Pointing Awareness: Relating physical pointing to an area or object thus indicated: The capacity to understand than another is indicating some important thing by the act of pointing, and that attention should be given to the thing pointed to.

9.  Shelter Construction: The capacity to construct some form of physical shelter against the elements, and/or possibly enemies.

10.  Clothing: The capacity to employ animal, vegetable, or mineral material(s) for the protection of the wearer against the elements and also against physical Harm from enemies.

A creature possessing most, if not all, of these capacities is at least semi-intelligent.

The semi-intelligent creature demands that the Legend Master take its part and represent it in play on a basis commensurate with its intellect.  This means that the creature is to be played with such cunning and ingenuity in all of its actions as matches its nature, numbers, capacities, and so on.  For example, a pack of wolves will always behave in a certain way, depending on their number, hunger, etc.  The semi-intelligent creature is less predictable and will indeed attempt surprises in regards attack and defense.

In regards to cunning possessed by creatures with intellect, it is always of a 5 or higher rating, but it varies by individual, not species.  In regards to defensive-protective and offensive-aggressive situations, the cunning rating might well be added to the 10% base intellect score to find a probability.

Where applicable a cunning rating will be shown with an Intellect one thus: 11/50

Cunning/Intellect Table:

>Intellect begins, cunning ends but can operate in conjunction with intelligence.<

CREATURE LIST, ALPHABETICALLY