Okay, that probably gives you a feel for what the game is about. And alliances will be forged and shattered. As the campaign progresses your character's children and his/her children's children will take front stage. And this is where you will be very grateful for those kids. He (or she) will also grow old and decrepit and will eventually have to retire. With the passing of time your knight will marry, develop a fief and have children. Each year includes a “winter phase” where the action takes a break and the players settle domestic affairs. It is recommended that players only have one “adventure” per year and that should mean that the years just fly by. The "Great Pendragon Campaign" (which is scheduled for release in June 2006) will take the players on a journey which will include at least three generations of play and 80 game years of adventuring covering the decline of Roman influence, the arrival of the Saxons, the appearance of the Boy King, the battle of Badon, the enchantment of Britain, Camelot, tournaments, fine amor, the Wasteland, the Fisher King, the Holy Grail, the fall of Lancelot and the final tragic battle at Camlann.Īs noted above, bloodline is something of a defining factor and this is because time passes at a much faster rate than most games. The game has its own built in campaign and the early glimpses of this we get in the core rulebook shows this to be more even more focussed and comprehensive than previous incarnations. This edition places stricter limits on those options, but does so with a purpose. They could come from different parts of Europe and be of a wider range of faiths. Some earlier editions of Pendragon had a wider range of options for knights. The other aspect of character creation which is notable is that it involves developing a family and a family history for your most important predecessors.Īs you will see, bloodline and Traits/Passions are the two factors which really define Pendragon. You do not just play a knight, but a "Just", "Valorous" knight or a "Lustful" Pagan knight with a "Hatred of Saxons" or a "Cruel" knight with little respect for his liege or a "Pious" and "Chaste" Christian knight and so on. A remarkable system of "Passions" and "Traits" is really what ends up defining the characters. Character generation subdued the complaints because while all the characters are knights, they are also all unique. One pleaded repeatedly with me to let him play some kind of mage. When I told my players this they looked at me and winced. And all the knights come from the same fief in mythical post-Roman/pre-Arthurian Britain. To expand upon the latter point, Pendragon is a game in which all the characters play knights (although there are some additional options for female characters). And, as author Greg Stafford described in a recent RPGNet column, it focuses on addressing one very specific area very well, rather than providing a Pandora’s box stuffed with every character option and setting under the sun. Pendragon has always been a game which focuses less on the external (adventures, booty) and more on the internal (character development). When the first edition appeared in 1985 it was remarkable for a number of reasons and a number of ideas contained within that boxed set are only just starting to become trendy now. Pendragon has been with us for many years. My final disclaimer to say that while I have played previous editions of King Arthur Pendragon (from now on just Pendragon), I have no connection with the publishers and paid for my copy with cold hard cash. So please don’t expect too much in-depth analysis of obscure tables and charts. At the best of times I am a reluctant GM and as a player I prefer to lie back and let rules wash over me. Secondly, I am not a person who usually takes much notice of crunch. First of all, this is my very first review. I’m going to start with a couple of disclaimers.