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The Perfect Game That Almost Vanished: Pendragon

• Iain Wilson • Season 1 • Episode 71

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What makes a tabletop RPG truly perfect? Not just popular or commercially successful, but flawlessly designed where every element fits together so seamlessly you can't imagine it any other way? Greg Stafford's King Arthur Pendragon stands as one of those rare masterpieces – a game that transcended traditional RPG design to create something genuinely literary and transformative.

Ready to experience the holy grail of RPGs? Join us as we explore how this revolutionary game changed what roleplaying could achieve and why, decades later, it remains utterly transformative for those who discover it.

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EMAIL: roll.to.save.pod@gmail.com
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HOSTS: Iain Wilson, Steve McGarrity, Jason Downey
BACKGROUND MUSIC: David Renada (Find him at: davidrendamusic@gmail.com or on his web page).
TITLE, BREAK & CLOSEOUT MUSIC: Xylo-Ziko (Find them on their web page).

Iain:

Welcome to Roll2Save the RPG history podcast, pendragon. Hello and welcome to another episode of Roll to Save the RPG history podcast. Now, I don't know about you, but I've got a bit of a thing for perfect games, not games that are popular or games that sell well, or even games that I personally love to bits Paranoia. I'm looking at you. I'm talking about games that are just right, games where every single piece fits together so perfectly that you can't imagine them being any other way. Now, sadly, there aren't many of them. To be honest, most RPGs are either compromises, bodge jobs or brilliant ideas held together with sellotaping good intentions. But every now and then lightning strikes and someone creates something that's just flawless for what it's trying to do.

Iain:

King Arthur Pendragon is one of those games, in my humble opinion. Arthur Pendragon is one of those games, in my humble opinion. I first encountered it back in the late 80s and, I'll be honest, I thought it sounded a bit rubbish. Medieval knights, chivalry, all that courtly love, nonsense. I was much more interested in my grimdark Warhammer fantasy roleplay campaigns, thank you very much. But then recently I actually read it and wow, this wasn't just a game about knights hitting things with swords. This was something else entirely. You see, what Greg Stafford did with Pendragon was create the first RPG that was genuinely literary, not fantasy literature, actual literature with themes and character development and proper dramatic structure. It's a game where your character's personality isn't just flavour text, it's the actual engine that drives the story. A game where time matters, where your actions have consequences, not just for you but for your children and your children's children. It's also a game with one of the most troubled publishing histories in the entire hobby. Over its 40 year lifespan it's been passed between publishers like a game of musical chairs, almost killed by collectible card game disasters, rescued by fans with their own money and subjected to some of the most exploitative business practices you'll ever hear about. But throughout it all, the game itself has remained brilliant. So today we're going to dig into the whole messy, complicated, occasionally heartbreaking story of King Arthur Pendragon, how it was made, what is so bloody good and how it nearly got lost forever.

Iain:

So let's start at the beginning. It's 1985, and if you're into RPGs, you're probably playing D&D or maybe RuneQuest if you're in the UK. Everything's high fantasy, everything's about killing monsters and taking their stuff, and that's fine. But it's also getting a bit samey, isn't it. Then along comes Greg Stafford with this mad idea. He wants to make an RPG based on Mallory's Le Mot d'Arthur you know that massive doorstep of a book from the 15th century that most people have heard of but nobody has actually read Well, except poor souls like me who had to slog through it for their English degree. Trust me, it's not exactly a page turner. And he doesn't want to just stick some medieval flavour on top of D&D. He wants to create something that actually feels like you're living inside Arthurian legend.

Iain:

Now, starford wasn't just some nobody having a go at games design. This is a guy who created rune quest and founded ksem. He knew what he was doing, but even so, this was ambitious stuff. He's looking at the source material and thinking right, how do I make a game that captures the tragedy of these stories? How do I make players care about honour and chivalry when they're used to optimising their way through dungeons? His answer was to throw out almost everything else everybody thought they knew about RPG design.

Iain:

So let's talk about the basic system, because this is where Stafford was genuinely ahead of his time. System because this is where Stafford was genuinely ahead of his time. Pendragon uses a D20 for everything Skills, traits, the lot Roll under your target number. Job done. If you roll exactly your target number, it's a critical Simple.

Iain:

Now it might not sound revolutionary, but back in 1985, games seemed to love using every polyhedral die they could get their hands on. Roll a D4 for this, a D8 for that, break out your unloved D12 for something else. You needed a whole bag of dice just to play most games. Stafford looked at that and thought what if we just needed one die for everything? It's the same maths as basic roleplaying, obviously the system that Stafford had to help create in the first place. But he'd simplified it down to its absolute essence. Instead of having a 50% skill, you got a 10. Instead of rolling under 25%, you're rolling under 5. It's the same maths, obviously, but psychologically it's completely different. Players could easily get their heads around the probabilities without needing a calculator. Plus, every single point mattered more. Going from a 10 to an 11 feels much bigger deal than going from 50 to 51. But the really clever bit, the bit that nobody had done before, was the trait system.

Iain:

Stafford gave every character 13 pairs of opposing personality traits Things like chaste versus lustful, generous versus selfish, that sort of thing. And these weren't just suggestions for roleplay. These were actual game mechanics you had to roll against. Picture this You've captured an enemy knight and your GM says right, make a merciful rule. If you succeed, you show mercy, because that's who your character is. If you fail, you end up being cruel instead, because that's who your character is. The dice are literally deciding your character's moral choices for you. Now I know what you're thinking. That sounds like it takes away player agency. Right, but here's the thing it doesn't. It creates player agency because, right, but here's the thing it doesn't. It creates player agency Because you're not just deciding what to do, you're discovering who your character really is, and better. Yet these traits change over time based on how you play. Be merciful enough times and your merciful trait goes up. Be a bastard often enough and your cruel trait increases instead.

Iain:

It was the first RPG system that made character development actually about character development and not just about getting better at hitting things. Then there are passions things like love, loyalty, honour, that kind of stuff, which basically work like supercharged traits. With a high enough passion, you can get massive bonuses, which lets you pull off genuinely heroic feats. But fail, a passion roll and you fall into melancholy because you've acted against everything you believe in, or you might even go mad, and this is pure Arthurian tragedy. Your greatest strength becomes your greatest weakness, and the story is Lancelot's love for Guinevere makes him the greatest knight in the world, but it's also what ultimately destroys everything he cares about.

Iain:

But the thing that still makes Pendryan unique is the winter phase. At the end of every game year, you roll dice to see what happens to your character during the months between adventures. Do your skills improve? Do you age badly? Does your wife have children? Do any of your children die of the plague? It's a bunch of steps of pure anxiety. Basically, you might spend an entire session building up your character only to have the winter phase age them horribly and then kill off their favorite horse. But it also means that in this game, time matters in a way that it doesn't in any other rpg.

Iain:

Most games your character exists in this weird timeless bubble where nothing changes, unless the gm specifically makes it happen. In pendragon, every year that passes is another year closer to death, another year of your night getting older and creakier, another chance for tragedy to strike. And when your character finally dies whether that's from old age and battle or just bad luck. You carry on playing as their heir. Your new character inherits their lands, their glory, their feuds, their mistakes. I've heard of campaigns where players ended up playing the great, great, great grandchildren of their original characters and the whole thing feels epic and like you're living through an actual history.

Iain:

The influence of all this stuff can't be overstated. Vampire, the Masquerade's humanity system that's basically Pendragon's traits with fangs, ars, magica's generational play Straight out of the Pendragon playbook, even video games like Crusader Kings that I have lost way too much time to owe a debt to what Stafford was doing back in 1985. But at the time nobody knew if any of this would work. Stafford was basically making it all up as he went along, trying to solve problems that most designers didn't even know existed. Now the first edition came out in 1985 as a box set, because this was the 80s and everything came in box sets back then, and it was immediately obvious that Stafford had created something special. The reviews were absolutely glowing. Ken Ralston in Dragon Magazine called it the best designed, most attractive and most effective RPG he'd ever seen. White Dwarf gave it a rave review, despite the price being absolutely mental for the time nearly £25 for a game which in today's money is about £100. But people paid it because the game was worth it. At the 1986 Origins Award, the first supplement won Best Roleplay Supplement, which was pretty good going for a game that had been out for only a year. Chaos AIM followed up with a third edition in 1990. They skipped the second edition entirely don't ask me why and that won Best Roleplaying Rules of 1990.

Iain:

By this point Pendragon was getting the recognition it deserved. The fourth edition in 1993 tried to be all things to all people. Suddenly you could play Saxons, the Irish Picts, scandinavians, basically people from all over Europe. You could even play wizards, though the magic rules were partly rubbish and everyone pretends they never happened. Some people loved this multicultural approach. Others felt it diluted what made Pendragon special. Personally, I think Stafford was right to give it a try.

Iain:

The game had always been about more than just the Christian Knights from Salisbury, but the execution was a bit all over the place. Still, throughout this period, the game was building a devoted of small following. Throughout this period, the game was building a devoted of small following. These weren't casual players either. Pendragon fans were obsessive in the best possible way, running campaigns that lasted for years and talking about their characters and their children like they were real people. Seriously ask a devoted Pendragon fan about their character and you will get the chronicles of their family. Sadly, all of this made what happened next all the more tragic.

Iain:

So it's the mid-90s and collectible card games are the new hot thing. Magic the Gathering has made Wizards of the Coast a fortune and suddenly every game company wants in on the action, including KSCM. Now, to be fair to them, their CCG Mythos, based on Call of Cthulhu, was actually rather good. It won awards, it had innovative mechanics. It was everything a CCG should be.

Iain:

The problem was the follow-up product, the Mythos Standard Game Set. Now, I've talked about this before on our Call of Cthulhu podcast, but let's go back into it for new listeners. This was supposed to be an entry-level product Two pre-built decks that beginners could buy and play straight away Non-collectible, reasonably priced, sensible stuff. It was a pretty good set. I owned one myself and it was what got me into Mythos.

Iain:

However, chaosium printed this at collectible card game levels, expecting massive sales. That never materialised. The results were catastrophic. We're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of unsold inventory sitting in warehouses, pallets of the stuff that they couldn't shift, and CCG failures don't just lose you a bit of money, they lose you stupid amounts of money Because print runs are massive and the margins are tiny. Krcm nearly went under. From what I've heard, most of the staff got laid off and by 1998 there were a whole bunch of people not actually getting paid. And what did they try to do to save money? Well, they cancelled basically everything except Call of Cthulhu, pendragon, elric Nephilim poor, poor Nephilim. That never got the attention it deserved All gone.

Iain:

But here's where Pendragon's story gets interesting, because into this disaster steps a guy called Peter Corliss. Peter was a fan of Pendragon and when KSE were going through the financial crisis, he actually lent them money to try and help keep the company afloat. When they couldn't pay him back, he said right, I'll take the Pendragon rights instead. Just think about that for a minute. A fan of the game literally bought the rights to keep the game alive. That's either incredibly noble or completely mental, I'm not sure which.

Iain:

However, corliss founded Green Knight Publishing in 1998 and spent the next six years trying to make Pendragon profitable again. He published new supplements, reprinted old ones and even got a fiction line going. But he was fighting an uphill battle. The RPG market was still recovering from the CCG crash and Pendragon had always been a bit of a niche product. Anyway, the fiction line did alright, turns out there is an audience for Arthurian literature. But the game itself struggled and by 2004 Corliss threw in the towel and sold the rights to White Wolf. One thing I will say for Corliss he was a genuinely decent bloke. When he found out the KSAM had not paid various freelancers and artists over the years, he actually paid them out of his own pocket, even though he had no legal obligation to do so. The industry could absolutely do with more people like that. Industry could absolutely do with more people like that. Anyway, white Wolf published a streamlined fifth edition in 2005 with Greg Stafford himself back at the helm.

Iain:

This was Pendragon returning to its roots no more multicultural knights, no more terrible magic rules, just pure Arthurian legend done properly. But the real masterpiece of this era was the great Pendragon campaign all 432 pages of it. This thing is huge and it's crazy in the best possible way. It's basically a year-by-year guide to running an Arthurian campaign from 485 AD to 566 AD. Every single year has events, gossip, adventure, hooks the lot. Just consider that for a moment. Every Single Year, if one year is one game session, that means you're getting at least 85 games out of this bad boy. It's enormous.

Iain:

It's broken down into eight distinct periods, each with their own feel. The Uther period is all about serving Arthur's dad and dealing with the Saxon threat. The Anarchy period is Britain falling apart after Uther dies. The Boy King period is Arthur establishing himself through bloody conquest. The Boy King period is Arthur establishing himself through bloody conquest. The Conquest period is Arthur expanding out across Europe. The Romance period is knights being all chivalrous and courtly and the Tournament period builds on this flowering of knighthood. The Grail Quest period is everything starting to go wrong and the Twilight period is the inevitable slide towards the battle of cameron. What's brilliant about this is that it gives you the full emotional arc of the Arthurian legend. You start with young knights full of hope and ambition and you end with something like their great, great great grandchildren watching the dream fall apart. It's tragedy on an absolutely epic scale, but it's a tragedy you will have lived through step by step. Stafford said it was accumulation of 40 years of research and 20 years of development, and it shows.

Iain:

This is not just a game supplement. It's a love letter to Arthurian literature, written by someone who genuinely loves both the stories and understands how to make them work at the gaming table. It won the Diana Jones Award in 2007, and rightly so, I'd argue. It's one of the best RPG supplements ever written.

Iain:

In 2009, white Wolf sold Pendragon to Stuart Weak, and he set up Nocturnal Media to keep it going. They did solid work. They updated 5th edition a couple of times and even tried to create a spin-off game called Paladin, which was all about knights serving Charlemagne. Paladin was actually quite good, but it kind of sank without a trace, Turns out, nobody really wanted oh, it's Pendragon, but French, you know, which is fair enough. Then, in 2018, both Greg and Stuart died within months of each other. The hobby lost two genuine giants, and Pendragon found itself orphaned once again. Fortunately, ksem stepped in and brought Pendragon home. Stuart's brother, steve, put it all rather poetically. Those of us who remain nocturnal have tried to keep the Pendragon fire lit through the night, but it's clear that for the fire to become a bonfire, the wheels should turn full circle and Pendragon return to its origin, which brings us to the sixth edition that KSEM released, and it's been something.

Iain:

Now, first off, let's get this out of the way, the sixth edition includes female knights as standard player characters and, surprise, surprise, some people on the internet had an absolute fit about it. There were angry posts, there were accusations of woke-washing, there were claims about historical accuracy the whole nine yards. This is mental for several reasons. First, female knights have been in Pendragon the game since 1990, this isn't new in the game since 1990. This isn't new. Secondly, you're playing a game set in 6th century Britain where knights wear 14th century armour, fight with medieval weapons and regularly encounter things like talking animals and magical swords. If you can accept all of that but draw the line at female knights, you might want to examine your priorities. Your complaints are not coming from a place of historical accuracy. They're coming from a much darker place. We all know where they're coming from. Thirdly, medieval literature, the actual source material Pendragon draws from, is full of female warriors Bradamante, the Order of the Hatchet, loads of others. This stuff isn't modern invention. It's in the bloody books. That is the source material.

Iain:

Greg Stafford himself was apparently fine with it too. Somebody once apparently told him that they wouldn't play Pendragon until they could play a lesbian Jewish knight, to which he said fine, come over next Tuesday and we'll see what we can do. Look, the RPG audience has changed massively since 1985. Being Jewish Knight to which he said fine, come over next Tuesday and we'll see what we can do. Look, the RPG audience has changed massively since 1985. Women make up a huge portion of players now and, frankly, a game about the highest ideals of knighthood and chivalry should probably live up to those ideals by including everyone who wants to be included. The mechanical changes don't affect the themes of honour, chivalry and tragic heroism. They just let more people experience them. So let's be clear female knights are not a problem. Let's talk about the actual problems with the 6th edition, because there are plenty of them.

Iain:

This release has had its problems from start to finish. There was a quick start put out in 2020, promising that the full game was imminent. Then they released a starter set in 2023, again saying that the core book was nearly ready, and the core book finally appeared in 2024. Those of you who were around for the Call of Cthulhu Kickstarter will be intimately familiar with KSCM's rather erratic release schedule. However, let's look at the products themselves.

Iain:

The starter set is lovely Beautiful production values, proper medieval manuscript feel, excellent introductory adventures. If you want to get into Pendragon, it's a great place to start. But if you actually want to run a campaign the core of what Pendragon's about yeah, good luck with that. It has no rules for all the generational stuff that makes Pendragon so great. There's a proviso that you would buy the main rulebook for that. But when we look at the core book, it's missing lots of stuff too. This feels much more like the player's handbook for D&D. There is no GM advice, there's no beast to read, there's no starting adventures, there's barely any equipment to speak of the battle system for mass battles that's actually in the starter set, but not the core book, which feels kind of bizarre. Estate management one of the core systems of the game that's relegated to a future supplement with no release dates.

Iain:

It feels like they've taken one complete game and chopped it up into three or four products to maximise sales, which would be annoying enough if all the products actually existed. But they don't. You're being told repeatedly to buy books that haven't been written yet. And here's the real kicker. In the Appendix A there's a note from Greg Stafford and he refers to this as Greg Stafford's Ultimate Edition. Ultimate as in the final definitive, complete version of Pendragon, except it's not complete. It's kind of the opposite of complete, it's the eventually we'll finish this edition.

Iain:

One reviewer put it perfectly. They said this feels like a product for people who own previous editions of Pendragon, which is a shame. If you're a newcomer trying to get into the game, you're basically stuck. If you compare this to the 5.2 edition, which gave you everything you needed in one book Character stats for major NPCs, background on the political situation, enough material to run a campaign straight out of the box the sixth edition gives us character creation, the core rules and a promise that other stuff is coming soon. And it's deeply frustrating because when Pendragon is firing in all cylinders, it's one of the best RPGs ever made, but right now it's kind of hard to recommend this to new people.

Iain:

However, all that aside, here is the thing about Pendragon. It proved that RPGs could be more than just tactical combat simulators or power fantasies. It showed that games could have genuine literary merit and that they could explore themes of honour and duty and sacrifice in meaningful ways. Most RPGs, even the good ones, are basically about accumulating power. You get stronger, you get more spells, you get better gear, you fight bigger monsters. That's fine, but it's also kind of shallow. Pendragon is about loss. Your character will grow old and die. Your kingdom will face challenges that can't be solved with your sword. Your greatest victories will contain the seeds of future tragedies, and somehow that makes the triumphs more meaningful, not less.

Iain:

The influence of this approach can be seen all over modern game design, story games, narrative mechanics, character-driven campaigns. Pendragon was doing all of this stuff in 1985, when most designers were still arguing about whether or not thieves should be able to backstab dragons. It's also influenced actual literature. There are novelists and screenwriters who've cited Pendragon as an influence and how they approach their writing. When you consider that the fourth edition spun off a whole line of Arthurian literature, you can realise that the game didn't just adapt the legend, it has become part of it.

Iain:

So where does Pendragon go from here? Honestly, I'm not sure. Ksm clearly believes in the property they wouldn't have brought it back otherwise but the 6th edition launch suggests that they haven't figured out how to quite make it commercially viable in the modern market. Maybe that's okay. Maybe Pendragon is destined to be a niche product for people who want something deeper than the usual RPG fare. Maybe it's enough that it exists that new players can still discover it and have their minds blown by what RPGs can actually do when they're done right. All I know is that once you've experienced proper Pendragon, once you've played through a generational campaign and watched your night's children grow up to face the same challenges their parents faced, it's hard to go back to games where death is just an inconvenience and time doesn't matter. Pendragon is the holy grail of RPGs beautiful, elusive and utterly transformative for those who find it. Here's hoping it survives long enough for the next generation of players to discover what all the fuss is about.

Iain:

And that was our deep dive into pen dragons brilliant but troubled history. We hope you enjoyed it. If you did, then please leave us a review and some lovely twinkling stars on your podcast platform of choice. We always appreciate that. We love reading them and it helps with visibility and also encourages us to do more episodes like this. Also, if you've got any RPG history suggestions, drop us a line at rolltosavepod at gmailcom, because we're always looking for new topics for follow-up episodes. You can also get in touch with us on social media. We're on Facebook and Instagram Just search for Roll2Save. We are a regular podcast on the history of RPGs. We have 70 episodes up at the moment covering reviews, roundtables, history episodes, interviews and some actual plays. So if you're new to our podcast, check those out and let us know what you think. Until next time, keep rolling.

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Iain Wilson

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Jason Downey

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Steve McGarrity

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