Post by Chris on May 19, 2018 8:40:01 GMT -5
Pendragon is the game of King Arthur.
It brings the extraordinary world of Arthurian chivalry, magic, and romance to life, with you playing one of the knights of the realm. You start off small, but through action, intelligence, and luck, you have a chance to join the Round Table. As time passes, your knight may establish a famous family and participate in the wondrous events of the most famous king of fiction.
This is a game of medieval fantasy, played using feudal standards and offering a chance to experience vicariously that long-lost world, in both its brutal reality and its fantastic idealism. Every player character is a knight, thus having both the privileges of elite society and also the risky, often deadly responsibilities. These dichotomies — brutal reality versus idealism, elite privilege versus deadly burden — are the basis for the game.
Pendragon is a game for knights. It is not about magicians, thieves, or scholars, nor about “might-have-beens” or “could-haves” (though these options will appear in later supplements). In this core game, designed for playing the heavily armed and armored chevaliers of Arthurian literature, knighthood is complex enough!
But the “reality” of this game is not a specific period of knighthood. The game crowds the entire Middle Ages into its framework, moving your character’s family through the equivalent of centuries of time. It begins in the Dark Ages and ends
in the War of the Roses, just before the Renaissance, allowing you to sample the developments of armor, weapons, castles,
and customs in a process of accelerating change.
This setting is not “fair” to people outside Britain, and does not strive for game balance for everyone. The untamed Celts, Saxons, and Picts who defy Arthur’s rule must rely upon their own barbaric cultures, devoid of the anachronistic gifts that feudalism, chivalry, and romance deliver to the player characters. Their warriors might be addressed as knights, and their chieftains might be called kings, but these enemies of the Pendragon are deluded, destined only to be conquered by him.
Between the kingdoms of men lie the mythical domains of Faerie — great dark woods and bright shining fields unexplored by human foot or thought. Entire kingdoms of immortals lie both beyond and within Arthur’s realm. Their cities and castles appear and vanish like mist. Their magical residents, such as the Green Knight, often visit the world of men. In turn, bold human questers sometimes enter the Faerie realm to seek the greatest adventures.
Each character has its own character sheet, a piece of paper that categorizes all of his game-relevant information. This sheet lists statistics to show his physical characteristics, his prowess at various knightly things, and his behavior. These statistics change as time goes on, for as the knight uses his abilities, he gains experience and has a chance to improve. After many game years of play, though, he begins to age so that certain attributes deteriorate.
The object of the game is to acquire Glory. Everything a character does that is knightly helps to acquire Glory, and when he attains 1,000 Glory points he has the chance to develop in ways denied to normal folk. He gets Glory through combat, chivalrous behavior, religious behavior, familial obligation, possessions and riches, and social position.
Warning: This game is potentially deadly to player knights. Their job is one of combat, and the game is designed to be dangerous, not easy on them. Characters need to be careful! In any case, every character is going to die, either through violence (quite common) or through old age. This mortality makes the game more poignant and the characters more affected with the concerns of real people.
But there is a solution to this mortality — a family. One of the concerns of the game is to raise a family. Thus, when your character retires from play, either through death or old age, then all his possessions go to his heir, the next character you will play. The coat of arms, horse, manor, and family name live on!
Hence, reputation is critical in the game. Everyone is a knight, but the kinds of knight one portrays can vary greatly from one’s fellows. A character’s actual behavior is always up to the player, but certain behaviors earn more Glory than others. Everyone is judged on the thirteen paired traits , which denote the most important types of knightly behavior. Everyone also has certain passions, such as loyalty to their feudal lord, love of their family, and obedience to the laws of hospitality. Most people have other passions as well, be they love for a paramour or wife, hatred of enemies, or loyalty to a certain group or brotherhood.
These things are important, for when fired by a passion, a knight can obtain nearly superhuman prowess!
The Pendragon game moves quickly through time. The objective is to go through almost ninety game years, covering the entirety of King Arthur’s life. Your first character might well be on hand to learn of the conception of the great king, fight through the anarchy before his reign, and witness him drawing the sword from the stone. Later, he, or his family, will participate in the great and deadly battles of Arthur’s reign. Most likely, though, it will be his progeny who share in the period of High Adventure, when questing and love rule the court, and it might be his grandchildren who witness the decline of the Round Table, the great Grail Quest, and the final destruction of all that is wondrous in the final battles.
The history of Pendragon is not static. Customs change, armor improves, new weapons and better horses become available.
The pace of these changes is set so that fifteen years of game time approximate a hundred years of real-world medieval history, bringing the campaign not just through the Arthurian story, but also through the entirety of the Middle Ages.
Pendragon offers a chance to be a part, vicariously, of the greatest epic of Western literature in a way that can thrill, challenge, affront, and entertain. Its unique features bring the important aspects of medieval feudalism and Arthurian chivalry to imagined reality in a series of enjoyable sessions that you will never forget.
It brings the extraordinary world of Arthurian chivalry, magic, and romance to life, with you playing one of the knights of the realm. You start off small, but through action, intelligence, and luck, you have a chance to join the Round Table. As time passes, your knight may establish a famous family and participate in the wondrous events of the most famous king of fiction.
This is a game of medieval fantasy, played using feudal standards and offering a chance to experience vicariously that long-lost world, in both its brutal reality and its fantastic idealism. Every player character is a knight, thus having both the privileges of elite society and also the risky, often deadly responsibilities. These dichotomies — brutal reality versus idealism, elite privilege versus deadly burden — are the basis for the game.
Pendragon is a game for knights. It is not about magicians, thieves, or scholars, nor about “might-have-beens” or “could-haves” (though these options will appear in later supplements). In this core game, designed for playing the heavily armed and armored chevaliers of Arthurian literature, knighthood is complex enough!
But the “reality” of this game is not a specific period of knighthood. The game crowds the entire Middle Ages into its framework, moving your character’s family through the equivalent of centuries of time. It begins in the Dark Ages and ends
in the War of the Roses, just before the Renaissance, allowing you to sample the developments of armor, weapons, castles,
and customs in a process of accelerating change.
This setting is not “fair” to people outside Britain, and does not strive for game balance for everyone. The untamed Celts, Saxons, and Picts who defy Arthur’s rule must rely upon their own barbaric cultures, devoid of the anachronistic gifts that feudalism, chivalry, and romance deliver to the player characters. Their warriors might be addressed as knights, and their chieftains might be called kings, but these enemies of the Pendragon are deluded, destined only to be conquered by him.
Between the kingdoms of men lie the mythical domains of Faerie — great dark woods and bright shining fields unexplored by human foot or thought. Entire kingdoms of immortals lie both beyond and within Arthur’s realm. Their cities and castles appear and vanish like mist. Their magical residents, such as the Green Knight, often visit the world of men. In turn, bold human questers sometimes enter the Faerie realm to seek the greatest adventures.
Each character has its own character sheet, a piece of paper that categorizes all of his game-relevant information. This sheet lists statistics to show his physical characteristics, his prowess at various knightly things, and his behavior. These statistics change as time goes on, for as the knight uses his abilities, he gains experience and has a chance to improve. After many game years of play, though, he begins to age so that certain attributes deteriorate.
The object of the game is to acquire Glory. Everything a character does that is knightly helps to acquire Glory, and when he attains 1,000 Glory points he has the chance to develop in ways denied to normal folk. He gets Glory through combat, chivalrous behavior, religious behavior, familial obligation, possessions and riches, and social position.
Warning: This game is potentially deadly to player knights. Their job is one of combat, and the game is designed to be dangerous, not easy on them. Characters need to be careful! In any case, every character is going to die, either through violence (quite common) or through old age. This mortality makes the game more poignant and the characters more affected with the concerns of real people.
But there is a solution to this mortality — a family. One of the concerns of the game is to raise a family. Thus, when your character retires from play, either through death or old age, then all his possessions go to his heir, the next character you will play. The coat of arms, horse, manor, and family name live on!
Hence, reputation is critical in the game. Everyone is a knight, but the kinds of knight one portrays can vary greatly from one’s fellows. A character’s actual behavior is always up to the player, but certain behaviors earn more Glory than others. Everyone is judged on the thirteen paired traits , which denote the most important types of knightly behavior. Everyone also has certain passions, such as loyalty to their feudal lord, love of their family, and obedience to the laws of hospitality. Most people have other passions as well, be they love for a paramour or wife, hatred of enemies, or loyalty to a certain group or brotherhood.
These things are important, for when fired by a passion, a knight can obtain nearly superhuman prowess!
The Pendragon game moves quickly through time. The objective is to go through almost ninety game years, covering the entirety of King Arthur’s life. Your first character might well be on hand to learn of the conception of the great king, fight through the anarchy before his reign, and witness him drawing the sword from the stone. Later, he, or his family, will participate in the great and deadly battles of Arthur’s reign. Most likely, though, it will be his progeny who share in the period of High Adventure, when questing and love rule the court, and it might be his grandchildren who witness the decline of the Round Table, the great Grail Quest, and the final destruction of all that is wondrous in the final battles.
The history of Pendragon is not static. Customs change, armor improves, new weapons and better horses become available.
The pace of these changes is set so that fifteen years of game time approximate a hundred years of real-world medieval history, bringing the campaign not just through the Arthurian story, but also through the entirety of the Middle Ages.
Pendragon offers a chance to be a part, vicariously, of the greatest epic of Western literature in a way that can thrill, challenge, affront, and entertain. Its unique features bring the important aspects of medieval feudalism and Arthurian chivalry to imagined reality in a series of enjoyable sessions that you will never forget.