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Pendragon Roundtable: Virtues, Passions, and Winter's Embrace

• Iain Wilson • Season 1 • Episode 74

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Step into the world of Arthurian legend through Pendragon, the RPG that masterfully captures the essence of knightly virtue, tragedy, and legacy spanning generations. Unlike traditional fantasy games, Pendragon isn't about magical powers or ever-increasing abilities—it's about creating meaningful stories where your knight's personality traits, passions, and family lineage take center stage.

We talk about what makes Pendragon unique: its revolutionary personality trait system, it's  approach to mortality and legacy, and the infamous "Winter Phase".

Join us as we reminise about this wonderful game, and Jason laments the sad tale of his poor knight who never found love.

Contact us at:

EMAIL: roll.to.save.pod@gmail.com
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/rolltosavepod
WEBSITE: https://rolltosave.blog

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. So hello and welcome to another episode of Roll to Save. I am joined here today by Jason, as usual. Hello Jason. Hi Ian, how's it going? It is going well. We are fully into autumn here in Utah. I think I'm in the last of the sitting out on my deck with a cigar weather that is sadly leaving us, so I managed to do that on Friday, but it's slowly getting colder and colder, so we're not going to be able to do that much longer. I say colder and colder, it's a relative thing. I think it was 27 degrees the other day, which is still pretty warm, but when we're used to 38 degrees, that's getting colder still pretty warm, but when we're used to 38 degrees, that's getting colder still a bit higher than we get down here in cork.

Jason:

So you know, I think we might have, might have, might have had one day where we reached about 27 degrees at the height of summer. Um, the only way, the only reason you can tell the seasons in in ireland is that the rain is warmer or colder depending on what part of the year you're in yeah, so.

Iain:

So how are things down in sunny cork?

Jason:

uh, lovely. Uh, sunny cork is soon to be exchanged for the sunny southeast of the town of wexford, so I'm moving east. Uh, I'm going to become a yellow belly, uh, which is what the nickname for people from wexford is.

Iain:

Irish regional rivalries.

Jason:

Yeah, all due to the hurling and GAA colours rather than anything else. But yeah, famous for strawberries and potatoes.

Iain:

Okay, strawberries is a non-stereotypical thing to go on there. Yeah, we had a bit of a fun bit of podcast news the other week. Apparently, we were the number five RPG podcast in Austria.

Jason:

Number five. It amaz Number five.

Iain:

Wow, Number five. We were above critical role in Austria.

Jason:

Vielen Dank, Herr Österreich.

Iain:

Ja, sehr gut, and there's the extent of my German. I was just saying that I can order taxis, I can carry bitter ein in certain nouns. As long as I know a noun, I can ask for it. But then when they reply to me, I'm not very good at the rest. So confession for our Austrian listeners that happened to me in Paris.

Jason:

I went to Paris and I did my best to work out what I was asking for. I asked for it. The guy immediately knew what I wanted and then answered me, and that was where I was lost. I was like, oh well, you know. I just then pointed and made like sad monkey noises and he let me off. So yeah, not very good at that.

Iain:

That's actually quite good for Paris. They're normally a bit kind of it is lagard, not lugar, that's my French accent. Ladies and gentlemen, so we don't have Steve again today. Poor Steve is looking after a sick dog, which is a shame. Poor Steve is looking after a sick dog, which is a shame. Poor Steve's dog.

Jason:

Yeah, get better soon. Steve's dog.

Iain:

Yeah, hopefully Steve's dog will get better soon and his lovely transatlantic Ears will be back on the podcast Soon.

Jason:

Yeah, I mean, it's a lot of pressure on us without him, isn't it really? You know?

Iain:

It is. Yeah, it feels like a sad shell. It does it does.

Jason:

I mean we miss him greatly and he had so much when he's here and I just don't think it's not the same without him. It really isn't, ian.

Iain:

It's not, and it's obviously. When I write the extensive script for these episodes, I have to then go back and re-edit it and take all of Steve's stuff out. And this, this well-polished, well-put-together machine that this is, it's not just us busking it.

Jason:

Are we here for a purpose?

Iain:

We are here for a purpose. Yes, we are here for a purpose. What gaming have you been up to recently?

Jason:

So my Thursday night still continues to be D&D 5th Edition. I mean, that's been running now for probably over three years. I think we've hit 13th level. We're getting some activism, some serious magic. It level where there's some serious magic. It's the highest level D&D game I've played since I was a kid, because when you're a kid I mean you played at silly levels, right. But since being a grown up, this is like the highest D&D games only ever seem to get to level 10 and then people lose interest and start again. You know when it becomes too hard to ref. Most did a great job until we were up to 13th level. I got a feeling we're not a million away, miles away from, uh, a final confrontation with the big bad guy. But uh, who knows, we'll see. And then on monday night's just recently come to the conclusion of a dark heresy game that sandy's been running for us it's very strange.

Jason:

Sandy's a very open worldy kind of uh ref um and he's you know. It's very different from some of the games I play where they're on rails and you're going from a to b to c to the. Yeah, he's very open and very and so for a lot of it I think we were sitting there floundering and frustrated and not knowing where we were going, but actually he's done some really clever stuff. I hate to say it because if he hears this his ego will be even larger than it is already, but uh, yeah, he's yeah, it'll just inflate.

Iain:

And yeah, a whole, a whole mess of an ego. Oh, that's good. I'm actually finishing off a dnd campaign that's been running for almost two years. We are not level 14, we're level seven, so half as powerful as you, and my little rogue guy is hopefully going to get an end to his story. That's been a lot of fun.

Iain:

It's the game where my son was telling me oh, you should, are you playing a rogue? Well, you should do blah, blah, blah, and then you can basically be Batman. And I looked at the qualifiers that he gave me. I'm like, oh, I can't actually multiclass to be a monk. And he was like oh well, you know. So it gave that sad revelation that not everyone can be Batman. Not everyone can be Batman, it's true, not everyone can be Batman, including my rogue. My rogue is definitely not Batman. He does fulfill that wonderful stereotype of rogues of he's got all this stealth coming out the kazoo and it's always hey, ian, you could sneak in there and see what's happening. And I'm like I could. But we all know what's going to happen in this role. Oh, look, there's a natural one. I get a trip, or just like to bring along all the pots and pans with me as I try to sneak into the enemy lair, but it's been probably a lot of fun.

Iain:

I'm also running Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th edition the Enemy Within with my group. Now you say about Sandy's open world stuff. The Enemy Within is obviously a campaign that's fairly prescribed. It's good in that there's sections of it that are kind of open world and that there's kind of some good advice in the new edition. That's almost like, hey, relax, if the players decide that they're not going to follow the plot, it's cool, let them go do the stuff they enjoy, and you can always circle it back to the main thing, which is kind of nice. But we've hardly even get into the plot and I'm looking at what I've written and it's like, nope, we're not doing that then because they've found something else that they're interested in. It's been cool. We've only had one combat so far. There's been lots of roleplaying and people kind of getting into the skins of their characters, which is nice.

Iain:

I'm very grateful for Foundry, though, because the thing that's put me off Warhammer 4th Edition for years is they've, if possible, made it more complicated than 1 edition was and they've really doubled down on that kind of late 80s school of game design and thankfully foundry has got some excellent modules for it that does all that clever stuff for you. So all the calculations for combat there's a thing you use in combat called advantage, which is a score that you accumulate as you do stuff, but you lose it if you get hit. But you can gain it from doing other things and there's a lot of who's got what at any given time and thankfully, foundry just does it all for you. It just works it out and there's no need to to try and calculate in your head what all these these modifiers are. So it's going very well.

Iain:

Absolutely shout out to Cubicle 7 for the Foundry modules. They are professional beyond belief. I've made Foundry modules before and it takes a lot of effort to make them. There's a lot of trying to dust off your JavaScript and remember how to get certain things to work, but these things are incredibly polished, so clearly a lot of effort going into them. Or maybe I'm just really bad at making foundry modules and don't realize what effort is actually involved.

Jason:

Luckily, yeah, these, these guys do a great job I was gonna say luckily for you, there are some people that clearly do know how to make foundry modules work yeah, exactly, this is not just me with like vast walls of text.

Iain:

I did that recently, for steve has wanted me to run l5r fourth edition, which is probably the best edition of l5r and there was a really good roll 20 module for it. But I do everything through foundry these days and don't have a roll 20 subscription. Sorry, roll 20 that's obviously that lucrative sponsorship deal getting out the window there. But with foundry it's got the base mechanics for l5r fourth edition, but everything else you've got to build out and I was like I can do this. I got like a bit part way through one of the clans and I'm like, oh no, this is a nightmare, this is too difficult. There's so much like every skill you've got to create because it doesn't have it in there, every ability you've got to create.

Iain:

At first I was like I could just do the early abilities for people, but what if they want to buy this? And then what if they want to buy that? And before you know it, you're looking at several hundred pages of rules that you've somehow got to translate electronically. So that didn't happen. So sorry, steve, that's why we're playing warhammer fourth edition and not l5r, because I'm lazy, but we are not here to talk about warhammer fourth edition, dark heresy or dnd. We are here to talk about pendragon, the game of knightly goodness and king arthur's fictional world. I don't think that's the official tagline, but it's what I'm going to stick with. So, jay, what's your experience with Pendragon, when did you first come across it, when did you play it and what are your initial thoughts?

Jason:

I mean, we're talking first edition, so I think we're going back to when it was first released 85? Was it 85? Oh, my god, I am that old. It was something completely different to what we were used to playing. So at that point I'm playing ad and d and you know things like that.

Jason:

And pen dragon came along and it was the first first game I actually really came to, came to that actually focused more on, like, the personality of the character and the role-playing aspect of the character, and we may have got a little bit carried away with how that works, because, despite me being that old, I was still young at that point and then we started rolling for everything and it was like what would I do?

Jason:

Oh, let's pick a virtue or a, you know whatever, and and roll against it. So I'm sure we'll get into what I'm talking about, about these personality traits and stuff like that. It was weird because basically everybody plays a fighter. You know it's, you know there's no, there's no real wizards and there's there's no. Well, there are, but you don't get to play them right and there's no, there's not a huge amount of monsters or magic or anything like that. It's quite a low fantasy thing in that kind of aspect. It was really different to what we, what we did, and I think it was quite formative around the kind of, as I said, developed personalities for characters.

Iain:

It's served me well since, I think well, I remember first seeing it in 1991, and do you remember a magazine called games master international? Oh, yeah, yeah, I've probably got some copies, actually somewhere over 1991.

Jason:

Do you remember a magazine called Games Master International? Oh, yeah, yeah, I've probably got some copies, actually somewhere over.

Iain:

Yeah, there was a whole bunch of reviews for King Arthur related stuff in one particular issue and I remember seeing all the different. There was a whole bunch of supplements for, I think, third edition of Pendragon in there, but that was the edition where it was really branching out into well, you don't just need to play a knight, you could play a Pict or an Irish knight, or you could be a Scandinavian or you can play a Saxon or all these other things. So there was all these sourcebooks released and I remember seeing those sourcebooks in the Virgin Megastore in Glasgow in the KCM section glasgow in the kcm section because I was ravenously hunting for call of cthulhu stuff and it always intrigued me because the art was beautiful, it looked really, really good. I never actually played it then until I came across at university a few years later and there was a guy in the, the club who ran it, but I think, similar to what you said, I think he'd come from adnd and was very much a role player, r-o-l-e and you mean r-o-double-l right yeah, r-o-double-l.

Iain:

Yeah, I'll, I'll edit that out or I won't bother, who knows. But yeah, r-o-double-l. But he wanted to roll for everything and the game just wasn't fun because it was like okay, so this is really just a game of simon rolls to see what the rest of us do. And we had zero agency. That was my initial takeaway was this game gives you no agency because every time you do the gm was like you need to roll your Mercy versus Cruel trait and you know I botch it and it's okay, you're going to wipe out the village. I'm like well, why, I don't want to wipe out the village?

Iain:

And it wasn't until years later and there was a friend of mine who ran Pendragon, and it's when it was with White Wolf, actually for fourth edition. And he was saying well, you really like White Wolf stuff, you should see what they've done. And my first thought was, oh, my god, they've not used the storyteller system, have they? It's, it's the, it's the original Pendragon system. And again I immediately was like, oh, I played that university. I hated it because I didn't have any agency. It was just like you know, roll on this table of traits and see what you do. And he's like no, that's not the way you play it. And he took me through this edition and kind of really pulled scorn on the guy who'd run it before and he was saying that you know you use these for dramatic effect. It's like humanity in Vampire. In Vampire you're not rolling for self-control at every little thing, but it's when it's dramatically appropriate. Likewise, in pen dragging it's not like do you roll mercy or mercy or cruel to see you know what attitude you take to the servants at home but it's like you finally defeat your, your nemesis. And that's when you roll it. You know, do you spare his life or do you? Do you become cruel? Because that's the the dramatic tone of the Arthurian stories. It's like people being undone by their, their virtues and their vices, which makes perfect sense.

Iain:

And as a bit of background, I had to study some of the Arthurian stuff at university because I did English literature. That's why I work in technology these days. But we had to look at Le Morte d'Arthur and also Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and the theme that runs through them is people being overcome by their passions and their virtues. At the most dramatically appropriate moments, like in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, he essentially gives into temptation and takes a thing that could magically protect him when he's acting with honor throughout the entire thing, but he comes. There's one moment where it's like this could really save my life. Okay, you know what I'm going to give into temptation and take this and that's a dramatically appropriate moment, which is very fitting for athurian tragedy and all the, all the stuff that goes with that. That really appealed to me. Me because that captured the essence of these stories. I remember quite enjoying them at university after I got through the trudge that was medieval English Because spoiler alert folks, for those of you who haven't studied literature it's not very similar to modern English, it's more like German.

Iain:

When you get through all of that, the stories and things that really appealed was that build up to tragedy. The whole Moth to Arthur is a tragedy. It's about Arthur's beautiful dream, for Britain is essentially undone and you know he dies heroically at the end of it. Spoiler, but I think everyone knows that and that's what I think Pendragon truly captures. Is that tragedy that is built into Arthurian stories? What's your experience of playing with the various mechanics?

Jason:

Absolutely. So I actually looked out and I've got my one of my character sheets actually here in front of me from a game that was run for me. A Pendragon that was run by a guy called Rob did a fantastic ref. He's one of the best refs I've actually played with and when he first said he was going to run Pendragon I was like, oh, but we're all going to be just knights and we're all going to be. But he manages to keep it all really interesting.

Jason:

But to go over the thing, you've only got sort of five stats compared to the usual sort of six. But they're all you know, a lot of size, dexterity, strength, constitution and appearance are kind of like five stats. But the main bulk of what we've been talking about is these personality traits and they're paired and split across at one to 20, okay. So you have energetic versus lazy and they add up to 20. So if you've got 30 in energetic, you've got seven lazy and so forth and they go down all through the um, the virtues, the vices of, and there are I'm just actually counting them now uh, 13 pairs seems an odd number, 13 pairs.

Jason:

But you also got uh, glory, which was the main kind of mechanic for progressing your character based on your personality traits is particularly if you exemplified some that were good for your religion. So if you were a christian knight, you needed to be honest and chaste and pious and all that kind of stuff. If you were a pagan knight, uh, a bit more lustful, a bit more, uh, you know, honest and generous but very proud, and so forth, so you had some conflict you played a pagan night.

Jason:

Oh yes, I played a pagan night. Of course, I played a pagan night, always played a pagan night, you know.

Iain:

So I can't see you in this exemplar of christian piety I can do it.

Jason:

I can do it, um, but I didn't at this point. So, um, you know, my my, you roll these stats and you get some various uh sort of levels between, as I said, 1 and 20 uh, and if you've got a trait that's above, kind of 16, you become known for it. It's exemplary, uh. So sir cadigan the just was born because he had a very high just stat. So he was very good, not very arbitrary, he was very fair. And then the other thing that came into it was passions, and every knight had the same sort of basic four, which were a loyalty to his lord, a love of his family, hospitality and honor. But then you could add your own ones.

Jason:

So this guy that I've got here was very, really didn't like saxons, okay, had a hatred of saxons out of the kazoo and it would really, you know, he if, if, got woe betide if a saxon crossed his path. You know, and it and a lot of it was, you know I, I agree, when I first started playing when I was a kid, it was you know we would roll everything. You know. Roll your energetic versus lazy, see, if you get up in the morning, you know it's. You know. Roll your greed, you know, to see if you eat too much breakfast or drink too much, and it's like that.

Jason:

That I agree with you and you know it's just. It's just, it's quite lazy. I mean it was good fun for 10 seconds because you know, but it's not. There's no player agency involved and it needed reigning in, as you said, to the dramatic and the kind of relevant points of the story. And when you did that, like rob did for us, they were, they were really good. I mean I can, I can I talk a little bit about dnd alignment in this, should I?

Jason:

yeah, because obviously it's almost like the opposite to alignment right, because you've got all these personalities much more developed. But it's a similar concept in that, if you don't know what your character is going to do, look to this and it will guide you right. It shouldn't mean every decision is dictated by these things.

Iain:

It's when you either haven't got a clue, in which case yeah, go for it, or, as you say, dramatically appropriate, pick something that you know, in which case the lack of agency actually becomes quite enjoyable, you know yes, exactly, and that's what I highlighted on when I did the history episode was, when you actually look at it, it does actually give you more agency and it gives you these signposts in terms of this is how, if you're famed for being just, if you're in a given situation where you're meant to be fair, then you're probably more likely than not going to be fair. It's not going to be. You roll a dice. You're famed for being just. Therefore, you are going to be fair and going to arbitrate correctly, and I much prefer it to the dnd alignment system. I mean, I think everyone's had that experience where there's somebody who plays lawful good but basically uses that as an excuse to do genocide at any given opportunity and you're like you're actually playing lawful evil. No, no, I'm upholding the law, I'm, I'm being good, I'm like you just wiped out a village. You're basically darth v, you're basically Darth Vader, you're lawful evil, whereas with Pendragon it's not so defined.

Iain:

Like you say, you've got 13 different things, 13 moving parts. That is a hugely complex combination of traits and they can guide how you behave. And I like the fact that they introduced that system where if you were a different denomination of knight like if you were a pagan knight or you were a christian knight. You have different traits because it shows the cultural values and I know they. They did that with older editions with if you were from a different culture, you had different traits as well. Like if you're a saxon, you different traits to if you were a k, for example, and it really helps up, bring that world to life and it means that people aren't behaving the same way. I also kind of like the fact that the book really makes out that these are knightly traits, like your average peasant toiling in the field is not going to be affected by these. These are the traits that mark you out as something special and something different, because you are guided by a coat of honour, whereas the poor fellow in the field, he, just wants to survive and have enough to eat, whereas you're more concerned with your good name and the good name of your Lord and behaving in a virtuous manner, rather than you know, am I actually going to get some bread for my family this day or are they going to starve? You mentioned as well the passions, where you're guided by a devotion to certain things and the passions take all sorts of different forms. As you said, it's things like love, honour etc. And those are really great.

Iain:

If you're running Pendragon, those are great role-playing opportunities. The example that's always given in the rulebook is Salansalot in Lamotte Dathur, that his love for Guinevere is what makes him the best knight in the universe. However, it's also the thing that ultimately ruins him. That's the thing that causes him to betray his lord and bring everything crashing down. And if you're a clever ref, you should be keeping an eye on what your players passions are and putting those situations in there that force them to make a choice between what they want to do and what they don't want to do. And I like as well. There's mechanics in there that if you fail a passion role, you become melancholic because your great love is not what you thought it was. But there's also the chance you'll go mad and just run off naked into the wilderness for like five years and then reappear, presumably having got therapy in the wilderness.

Jason:

And, to be honest, that's just a Tuesday. If you're a pagan knight, though, Running off naked into the world.

Jason:

I think the other major thing I think Pendragon brought in that I'd never seen before in in a, in a, in a role-playing game, was that focus on relationships as well, because, um, death is inevitable. In Pendragon there is no resurrection, there is no magical healing. There's a bit of herbs and stuff like that. You might be able to get a bit of chirurgary or whatever, however you pronounce it, but the other thing you've got to do is you've your. The intention is for you to marry and have kids and run your estate so that your peasants aren't worried about where their bread comes from to survive the winter. Surviving the winter was a big deal, you know, it was a huge thing. You have to make all kinds of rolls in the winter down period. They made a thing that every adventure was basically one year.

Iain:

I really like that. It was almost like every adventure was just a thing that happened to you during, essentially, the spring and summer. It was like a thing, but there was a whole bunch of other stuff that happened. But you roll the tables for that because it's not like a super accurate night simulator, accurate night simulator, it's like, no, we'll roll to see what happens in the background. You're right, the winter phase really made pendragon stand out because, again for those of you unfamiliar with it, pendragon is a game about legacy, that, as jason said, you need to get married and have kids because when your character dies, you're going to play your heir and your heir inherits a whole bunch of stuff that you had beforehand. But it actually makes the winter phase I remember playing it and getting genuinely wanted worried in the winter phase. Is my you know sickly one year old heir going to survive the winter or is he going to die in his cot, which is pretty bleak?

Jason:

yeah, and will my wife survive childbirth? All these things I mean you're talking about these. These games are supposed to be set in that kind of dark ages period, from what? Seventh century to kind of in that kind of few hundred years following that. So you know, childbirth was a big thing. People didn't always survive it. Your kids may not survive the winter. Your horses may not survive.

Iain:

I mean, your horse was really yeah, there's a literal does your horse survive? Yeah, absolutely.

Jason:

There's a horse personality table and one of the editions there was as well and there's all different types of horses you can buy.

Iain:

It's very horse very horse focused.

Jason:

Yeah, it made a difference on your, on your jousting ability, depending on what your, what your horse was, and things like that so if you're the quality horse interesting.

Iain:

I talked to one of my um friends about pendragon it was just when I was doing the history episode and once I explained it to her she was like why, why would I, as a woman, want to play in this game if my sole objective is to have kiddies but I might die? And there is a nod to that in fifth edition where if you're a female player character, you get a bonus to your child birth role, I guess because it's like it's not much fun for it to be and you die in child birth. So there's a bonus to female player characters for giving birth. That was the thing that did fascinate me when fifth edition came out, because there's rules for female knights. Now there's been rules for female knights since third edition, it's not a new thing.

Iain:

But surprise, surprise, certain corners of the internet were absolutely outraged at this and claiming that this was historically inaccurate. And you, how dare you have female knights in this? This game like this is a game about magic swords. There's a wizard called melon in it. It's set in a version of britain in the 6th century where they're wearing 14th century armor and carrying 14th century weapons. And you're concerned that because a woman and a horse might be able to spear someone. That's the least accurate thing yeah, that's mad, isn't it?

Jason:

I mean it is, it is. You know, there are parts of it which are supposed to, which are attempt that the attempt is there to be, you know, historically accurate. As I said, you know, wintering and having things die in childbirth, or or having you know your horse, your air and things like that, or or indeed the joyous events of childbirth and so forth. There is definitely some kind of effort to be historically accurate, but it is not a historical game. Arthur is a legend, and by that I don't mean he came back with crisps when he went to the bar. He's a proper legend, right, but he is a proper legend, right. So, but he's, he's, you know he's, he's, he's a mythology. You know it is not accurate. Yeah, I don't, I don't get it. I mean I must have.

Jason:

I think all the characters we've ever played in pendragon have been, have been, male knights. Uh, I think even when we've had a couple of girls playing, they've played male knights as well. Um, there definitely seems to be. Is, you know, I don't know, inherently sexist, I guess, which is poor, but only because we let it be. It doesn't have to be.

Iain:

As you said, there were rules for it the book makes out that it actually gives examples historically, of women who were warriors at that time, which it makes fascinating reading of your history like myself you say, you can't have female warriors.

Jason:

Well, tell buddhica. I mean, do you know what I?

Iain:

mean right, exactly, they're just trying to encourage more people to play yeah, like it's not just like you. You give the example. There's women who will be like yeah, I'll happily play a male knight. Equally, there's probably other women like no, I want to play a female knight. Why can't I play a female knight? Like no reason you can't, there's no reason, no reason. You can't just just play a female knight and again, it's this fantasy kingdom that you're essentially in brienne of tarth.

Jason:

If you've taken game of thrones, for example, game of thrones is as much of an accurate historical representation as lamorte dartha at Le Morte d'Arthur okay, it's you know yeah.

Iain:

Yeah, in fact, Game of Thrones is probably closest thematically to Pendragon than many other major fantasy franchises.

Jason:

I may have hit on something there.

Iain:

Yeah, exactly, you could easily run a Game of Thrones RPG using the Pendragon rules Very easy, very easily indeed, yeah, but I think the other thing is that the actual concept of knights did not exist in the 6th century wales, which is what we're actually talking about here. Therefore, let the ladies play knights if they want to absolutely you mentioned before the the stats on your character sheet.

Iain:

Um, I think the keen-eyed listener will keen-eyed, keen-eared listener will work out that those are basic role-playing stats. If you've played Call of Cthulhu or RuneQuest, those stats will appear very familiar to you. But the actual system itself is almost a cut down version because, unlike basic role-playing where everything is a percentage, in Pendragon all the skills are basically between 1 and 20. I don't know about you, but I found playing that that actually made things flow more easily, I feel, and it was less prone to sway than sometimes you get. And, like Call of Cthulhu used to annoy me.

Iain:

I'm this like world-renowned expert in like ancient languages and someone's like we have this tome, we need translating, and I roll like 86, like no, you can't translate it, like oh, great, and I mean obviously it's not that it can't drive, you have a decent ref. You're like it takes you a bit longer to translate, but it felt very, very open to swing, whereas I think with 1 to 20 it feels less inclined towards a way plus. I think with 1 to 20, it feels less inclined towards a way Plus. When your stats went up by one point, it felt like more of a big deal in Pendragon than in Call of Cthulhu, when your skill went up by 1%, for example.

Jason:

I think it's quite a clever system. It's not the most intuitive, I guess, because generally if you're fighting or you're doing something, it tends to be an opposed role. Generally it's just roll under your skill. So every skill is rated from 120. Rolling under it, you succeed, and a critical.

Jason:

A critical success was if you rolled the exact number of your skill. So if you've got 15 in longsword it's you know then you roll 15. That's a critical rather than, in fact, 20 was the worst role you could roll. Okay. So theoretically, ian should be great at this game because he's never rolled a natural 20 in his life. Um, so you know he should be great at it. So, but when it was opposed, the interesting thing to me was always highest roll wins. That is, under your skill. So that means if I've got 14 skill and you've got six, there's much more chance of me winning and I'm going to beat you much more frequently than you're going to do me. So it's almost like the guy with the highest skill is in a much, much better position than the guy who isn't, in my opinion.

Iain:

So but that is kind of fitting with the source material, I think. I mean that fits with there's. I think there's one moment in Mort Dathur where Lancelot takes on a billion knights on his own and it's because he happens to have like 20 in statistical terms.

Jason:

Do not take Lancelot on in a joust, is all I'm saying. But combat was lethal, absolutely lethal.

Iain:

Yeah, combat is brutal Hit points never went up.

Jason:

You literally added two stats together and that was your hit points. I think the maximum you're going to have is 36 in those. Right, they're two level eight, two eighties. And if you got hit by a major wound if you got hit, took enough damage in a round to be a major wound that was you pretty much down and out and potentially having long-term ramifications. You know so the the, the old knight who, with one arm or one leg, was definitely a feature.

Iain:

Um yeah, didn't sugarcoat it that's something I really liked about it, though, and that's the fact that, as you mentioned, your hit points never went up. They just went down. As you get older, your stats as all of us who are getting older know your stats go down, your physical stats start to decrease, and there's a role in the winter table to basically see how much you degenerate every year once you're over 30 or something, and you're just gonna get worse and worse. But as a knight, to maintain your glory, you have to be out there doing knight stuff, unless you abdicate to your heir. So, as you mentioned, the old knight who is crippled and missing an eye and just basically propped up with his horse. But out there for one more, you know, glorious run into battle. That is a feature of of the campaign.

Iain:

I also like the fact there's the sort of the knightly etiquette that if you're defeated in combat, you're not necessarily dead. Your opponent may spare you and ransom you off back to your estate, which is it's quite a nice way to soften the blow, but usually, if you've taken a major wound, you're not in a great shape anyway and you're probably going to die of sepsis, because medical science isn't really a thing in the world of of pen driving. But I like the fact the combat is fast, moving and brutal and the fact that, as a knight most non-knightly foes you just beat them. If you're against a load of peasant levies, you're going to tear through them because you're a trained warrior and they're essentially peasants with spears.

Jason:

That and you've got chainmail and a shield generally as well helps.

Iain:

Yeah, chainmail and a shield and you're a massive horse and they've basically been dragged out of the fields where they're worrying if they're going to make enough food for the winter. And I think it's where the conceit of every adventure is a thing that happens in a year. It means you're focusing on more important stuff. There's not loads of adventures where you're fighting against loads of mooks. The adventures that you focus on are the big things that happen. Your night may go back at the end of the winter. It's like I remember there was that peasant uprising that we put down in 10 minutes flat. You don't play the peasant uprising out because that's not fun. It's just you threshing your way through a bunch of peasants. However, you do play out the adventure where you find out who the instigator was, and it's actually some dark sorceress who's in sorrel. The minds of the, the peasantry.

Jason:

So it it fits very well with making adventures relevant and fitting the nightly theme yeah, and I think there was a lot, of, a lot of focus at least when I played around around nightly games as well. So tests, so it wasn't necessarily. You went out and fought your way through a horde of bad guys and found whoever was at the end of it. Sometimes one of your events a year might be you. You entered a jousting competition which ended a you know a melee, a grand melee or whatever, and then you'd fight and and you'd win a prize.

Jason:

Maybe that was what you that were you aiming to do, or you would impress that lady that you were trying to trying to win over uh and so forth, taking favors and things like that. So there was an awful big focus on the kind of not just gaining xp, killing things and moving on. There was a lot done that. Just as you say, it fits thematically so well with like, oh yeah, well, I'm not actually very good with advanced, but if I want to win this, this tournament, I best buck my ideas up and things like that.

Iain:

So yeah, one of the best games I played on was the scenario was essentially slightly mentioned a tournament, but there was a load of courtly intrigue happening and there was the events happening.

Iain:

But there was a load of courtly intrigue happening and there was the events happening, but there was stuff happening in the background and it was trying to work out what the you know the scheme was. In this case it was somebody who was poisoning certain knights so that they didn't perform well in the joust, and I remember that my character went up against some guy who was like the best jouster in this particular county and I was like, oh my god, this is going to be terrible and I absolutely blow him out of the water and I'd be thinking that was weird. I thought he was really good and then it turns out he's been poisoned and oh my god, did you poison him so you could win? And then I have to go clear my name by finding who had done it. So that sort of stuff's fantastic. Again, very fitting with the, the source material. It helps build the world and build the, the atmosphere of, of the, the athorian side of things, rather than just being dnd where everyone's like playing a paladin, essentially yeah, and this is a great thing.

Jason:

I mean, I mentioned rob. He did some great stuff. I mean, um, you know, I think I'm literally looking through my passions here, and there was one to a Lady Beren, and Lady Beren was basically put forward as Lord Cadigan and Sir Cadigan's future bride, and I've got a really low love score for her, so that clearly didn't work out very well you the worst.

Jason:

I couldn't help it, but I don't think she had a particularly good. I think it was like if, in case of they're both trying to almost like force together, neither of them wanted it. All she wanted to do was ride. She's right to ride horses. That's what she wanted to do. She's a bit, you know, and I I think at one point I managed to sneak her in as disguised contestant into a horse race.

Jason:

Effectively was one of the things that we did, which probably wasn't very knightly of me, but you know, I'm just not honorable. This is difference. All right, um, and then I don't think she didn't win it, which was a bit anti-feminist. I thought I should have won it, but never mind, um, and then the other thing he did, which was this was the one of the best things, I think is we went, we were set before arthur, we were in Uther's reign.

Jason:

This is Uther trying to bring the clans together and all of the lands together, and Uther had a son and it just so happened that myself and my mate, jason Shruton's Christian knight, happened to intercept this guy with a beard smuggling out this baby boy and, um, I may have distracted. Uh, I can't. What's the name? I can't remember his character's name, but the christian knight, uh, to allow merlin to make an escape with the baby arthur. So that was our, and it's just little touches like that where you actually realise you are in this background. You don't have to be Arthur, gawain, lancelot, you know these guys. The idea is you're on the fringes of it or, in this case, we're on the fringes of it, and that was fantastic. I was just like I was so made up that basically I'd helped Merlin escape with Arthur. Mr.

Iain:

Shrimp wasn't very happy with me. That's one of the things that I really like about the Grand Pendragon campaign, because I bought that and it's like an absolute beast of a book and when you read it you can tell this is Greg Stafford's magnum opus. This is his passion just poured out on paper. The guy clearly loved the material but to your point, it's exactly what you describe. You have this whole campaign from like beginning of uther's reign all the way through to when arthur dies at the end and you play in there. But it's these incidental parts. It's not like, hey, you're hanging out, hanging out with Arthur and doing Arthurian things. You are, as you mentioned, at the fringes of the myth, enough to be part of it, but you're not the main guy. You're not Lancelot, you're not Gawain, but you're embroiled in that world and it builds it.

Iain:

I've never seen a campaign as atmospheric as the Grand Pendragon campaign, just reading it. I've never seen a campaign as atmospheric as the Grand Pendragon campaign, just reading it. I've never played through it, but reading it it just reeks of atmosphere. I've played in some of the really big campaigns like Mask of Neathletep and Enemy Within and they're always touted as these cornerstone RPG campaigns and they're really good. But I would argue that the grand pendragon campaign is probably one of the pinnacles of campaign design, just for the atmosphere it has.

Iain:

There's all this information on setting up like salisbury, essentially as this sandbox for your players to play in, all this advice on little adventures you can do. And then there's these things you can drop in on a year-to-year basis that that happen, that are related to the main campaign that slowly builds over the years. I mean you can get years of play out of that campaign. There's, I think there's something like about close to 90 years worth of campaign material. So if you take each one of those as a four hour session, that is a lot of hours of RPG stuff going on there.

Jason:

Count me in.

Iain:

Yeah, exactly, I would love to run it. It's an incredibly good, well put together piece of work and also vital for home defence. If someone breaks into your house, hit them with a Grand Pendragon campaign. They are not getting back up. That is a hefty book, which actually brings me on to my next question. Did you ever play any published adventures, or was it all homebrew?

Jason:

That was all homebrew. Well, as far as I'm aware, the very fact that you talked about the Grand Pendragon campaign and it spanning the user to Arthur, I mean maybe maybe he was running some of that. I don't know, maybe he got some ideas from some of that, but as far as I'm aware it was all, uh, homebrew, um, when I was playing it in school a guy craig was right was running it, um, and you know he did. He did a lot of stuff with everything as far as I was aware was was homebrew.

Iain:

I don't think I've ever played, knowingly played any of the published adventures yeah, that's what I found as well, like when I played it, the guy running it. In both instances it was all stuff that they'd come up with. But the interesting thing I found in both cases, even though a university was very much, you know, you roll on your passions, your passions, your virtues and see what happens. But the adventure stuff that we did do it had a similar atmosphere to the stuff that the better campaign that I played in. Maybe 10-15 years later it had the same feel to it and I think it's a testament to the advice and guidance given to GMs of making it Arthurian. So it feels Arthurian. It doesn't feel like D&D. This is not Ewan Greyhawk or the Forgotten Realms wearing plate mail. This is something different. You are in 6th century Wales or Salisbury or wherever you are. It has that feel to it. There's not orcscs, there's not goblins, there's loads of saxons. Those are your, your mandatory foes, but it feels that way and I did find that consistency between different campaigns. It's something that disappointed me with the latest edition. So if you read the latest edition of Pendragon, there's a note at the end from Greg Stafford who basically says this is Greg's ultimate edition of Pendragon and he makes a nod at the fact that, because I've got really old and I'm not probably going to write another edition and, sadly, the poor guy passed away.

Iain:

However, it's not really a complete edition. The core rulebook is like the D&D Player's Handbook it tells you how to make a character and it tells you some rules and there's a little bit of the winter phase but there's all sorts of oh and more stuff will be coming in this book, but it doesn't have a GM's chapter to say this is how you build an Arthurian story. There's none of that. It's just rules and there's tables for different types of horses you can buy and different types of armour you can buy, but there's no GM section and I know the previous editions had that. I think 5th edition's really good. I've seen a copy of that and there's a whole tonne of stuff in there that makes it very, very complete, but sadly this latest edition doesn't have any of that advice. What, what editions did you play through? Obviously you played through first edition, when you honestly couldn't tell you.

Jason:

I think I've always just played personally, so this is the thing I'm sitting here going. Oh yeah, sixth edition. I don't even know how many editions there are. I think they say six. I did have a quick look and see what the latest one was and actually there's some comments on the internet about a similar thing, about it's more like a players nights handbook, effectively. But I remember the first edition, uh, it came in a box, it was from, it was from chaosium, if I remember. Yeah, and it was like you know, that was the only edition I kind of remember. Um, I am now. I am now suspecting that rob might have run the Great Pandragon campaign, by the way, because my liege lord apparently was Roderick of Salisbury. And now I'm like ah, hang on did he run?

Jason:

ah, and I thought he was great. Now he's still a very good ref, so no, I don't.

Iain:

You heard to hear Rob Jason thinks you're a charlatan.

Jason:

Well, all of a sudden it's dented my confidence.

Iain:

No, because I was what are the things I'm not playing in another game that guy runs.

Jason:

Yeah, because one of the things I've said before it's like you know you all play human fighters with chainmail and sword right. Occasionally you might get somebody's got a mace or a two-hander or an axe. Absolutely and all of a sudden, if you think about it, it's almost like the only difference between character is what, and even the weapons don't even do any different damage. All the damage is based on your strength and your size. There's nothing to do with what weapon you're wielding and things like that.

Iain:

The weapons are purely thematic. I was trying to be all historically accurate.

Jason:

It's like I'm gonna have a horseman's pick and it's like cool, it does the same damage absolutely you know, he managed to, to have play a campaign that lasted, you know, probably 18 months, couple of years, and you never got bored with it and you never thought, you never felt limited by the fact that you were all and what. What was focused on was not the fighter part, right, it was the personalities, it was the relationships, it was the, you know, sneaking merlin out the back door while your christian knight is looking and tutting at you, you know, and he's not happy with what you've just got to do man shrimpton's so judgmental, isn't he?

Jason:

his christian knight was very judgmental, so I'm not saying. Shrimpton, but his Christian night was definitely very judgmental. We set him up, he got married, had kids, all that kind of stuff, whereas poor Sir Cadigan never settled down.

Iain:

That's because he was just unhappy that that woman who liked riding horses wasn't tall enough for him.

Jason:

She wasn't happy with him either. So you know, If you think about it, how many of those marriages would have been arranged or kind of were all for political reasons, not necessarily, for you know, people didn't marry for love back then, you know.

Iain:

I did like that part of the system, though, because you get players who at first were like I'm this young freewheeling knight, I don't care, you know, I've got a woman in every port, sort of thing and then you're like no dude, you really need to get an heir, you need to settle down. Then they're like you'll do, come here. Oh, she died in childbirth. Wonderful love, the 6th century, and it's socialised healthcare.

Jason:

The only way of getting any form of immortality for your character effectively is to get an heir and for them to get an heir, and so forth.

Iain:

I think it's. What makes Pendryking good is you mentioned it earlier is death is inevitable. It's not the D&D where there's a resurrection spell waiting around the corner or anything like that. It's not the Warhammer with its fate points where you can cheat death. Your character is just going to get worse. I suppose it's very similar to Call of Cthulhu in that regard. Call of Cthulhu, you never really get better. You just start this slowly downward spiral into madness. With Pendragon, your character is going to almost even get old and infirm soon. They're not going to be able to sit on their horse and they're going to become bedridden and then you're going to have to abdicate to this young buck who is going to take over. But that's really cool and that's what makes it what it is. It reminds me and again, when I did the history episode, I actually found that there was a link between the two.

Iain:

One of my favourite games on the PC is Crusader Kings, which, for those of you who don't know, is a grand strategy game by Paradox. But unlike a lot of their games where you play a country, this is a civilisation type game. You don't play a country, you play a dynasty, so you play a king or a queen of a certain dynasty, and your objective is not necessarily to conquer land and get more territory, although you absolutely can do that. It's to keep your dynasty going, which means you have to marry, you have to find and ideally find people with good genetic traits that they can have passed on to your, your offspring, and that's what pendragon is. Pendragon is about securing this lineage and making sure that, when your character does finally go off to the pearly gates, you've got someone waiting in the wings that they can take over and look after their estate. And it's quite cool because you inherit all the stuff of your previous character.

Iain:

Like you inherit part of their glory, you inherit their estate and or their debts obligations, whatever obligations, yeah, whatever, whatever they have, and I've heard these stories of people playing in campaigns where they're literally playing their great, great great grandchildren of the original characters and I think that's fantastic that you've you've played through that much history and that obviously creates a real living, breathing world because you can tell the legends of what your ancestors did, which you don't get in any other rpg no, that's true, that's true, and it's I don't know, it's I.

Jason:

I mean how you could play. I don't think I've ever played even my son or daughter in one of these games, you know um, that's because you never get married.

Iain:

He was too fussy.

Jason:

I've had other characters that definitely did get married and definitely did have kids. I'm stunned into admiration with people that have actually managed to keep a game going that long that they would get into that kind of realm.

Iain:

Maybe they were just really unlucky and are just playing a whole bunch of infants because people just keep dying in the winter. One character made it to 30, you know yeah, one of the things I liked about sixth edition, though I've obviously mentioned that it's um, essentially a player's handbook. Have you seen the starter set for sixth edition?

Iain:

obviously no, I haven't sixth edition was curious and they released the starter set before the main book. And again it's another kind of wonderful KSEM publishing debacle where sixth edition was promised for years. Then it's like it's coming really soon. Here's a starter set but no main rules, and it's a really nice looking starter set. The character sheets are gorgeous, they're like medieval manuscripts, they've got fantastic artwork on them and you've got a little introductory adventure, like a fighting fantasy style thing that you play through on your own.

Iain:

That teaches you the basic mechanics. It's a wonderful way to learn because every single role comes up. And then you've got roles for a sort of mini campaign, which is nice, and there's sort of the main rules condensed into a little rule book. The problem is, as a starter set this is Pendragon there's no rules for the winter stuff, because they obviously want you to buy the main rules, but you're basically confined to playing the six characters out of the box and you're missing that fundamental core part of Pendragon which is the legacy system that lets you move on to something else. And I always wonder whether, because it was such a big delay between the starter set and the main rulebook being released, whether some people who bought it thought this looks really cool and then just never got any further with it because the rules to move on to like the next stage of play were never there, which is a shame, because it's a really cool stuck with the longest summer that never ended yeah, exactly so.

Iain:

The difference between editions in pendragon it's a bit like a lot of the KCM games and mechanically they're not that different. If you think when you started playing first edition I think I started third edition mechanically it's pretty much the same as sixth edition. You have this rule under system. You have the virtues and vices, which haven't really changed. It's more like little tweaks under the hood.

Iain:

I know with call of cthulhu, like until seventh edition, ksm hadn't really changed the rules in any shape or form. You know a few minor tweaks here and there. Characters were a bit more powerful throughout editions, but it wasn't until seventh edition that they actually changed how the rules worked fundamentally and I quite liked that with Pendragon and that there was this consistency. Like I played 3rd edition then picked up. I think when I played it it must have been 4th or 5th edition again with you.

Iain:

I wasn't even sure what edition we played in the mid 2000s. It must have been fourth, but it felt exactly the same. There was no need to relearn anything and I think they just added more, more stuff for gms and more stuff to like behind the scenes to keep it going. But one thing I know that they did add was rules for playing wizards, and I I've never used them, but looking at the criticism of it like when I was doing the history episode I went and looked this up they were not favourably received. It wasn't just the rules were not great, but the general consensus seemed to be is you've killed what the main theme of this game is. This game is you're playing Arthurian knights. This is not D&D. You don't need a wizard in the party. Wizards are meant to be rare, like there's Merlin and maybe there's an evil guy somewhere.

Jason:

Morgan, the Fate that's it.

Iain:

Yeah, you don't have wizards just knocking about doing wizard stuff. And likewise I mentioned 3rd edition. I saw those reviews in Games Master International for the different publications and seeing those publications in the shop, apparently they were massively favourably received. People were like I don't want to play a Pict or a Viking or any of the other cultures. I want to play a Kymric knight doing knightly stuff in Arthurian Britain. By all means have those as antagonists. And having colour on what it's like north of the wall in Pictland, that's cool, but don't necessarily have players playing them. What's your feeling on that?

Jason:

It's a mixed bag, I think. So, wizards, no, go away, no, no, go away. Not, no, no, no, no, I don't want anybody throwing fireballs or, you know, charm persons or anything like that. That's reserved for, you know, as you said, merlin, and, and you know we should all be terrified of magic. I mean, there might be, there might be the old wise woman that has the odd herb skills and all that kind of stuff. You know we're talking way pre. You know well, I mean, christianity isn't even the major religion a lot of the time. So having a wise woman who can do healing and a bit of chirurgery or whatever potions or whatever, that seems OK to me. But it's not really going to be much of a player character, right, because you know you're not going to be establishing a lineage and all this. I suppose you might, but I don't think so.

Iain:

A lineage of wise women.

Jason:

Absolutely. You know it could be, who knows? But the other I don't know. Some of the other stuff I'm not too fussed with. I mean, I think Chris came into the game we were playing with this game that I've got the character sheet for, and I think he came in as a Norse, as effectively a Viking, which is great, because as long as he wasn't a Saxon, I was fine, because if he was a Saxon, we'd be having words.

Jason:

So I don't know, as long as he doesn't dominate. I mean, I guess you know it's like when you look at some of the Hollywood remakes of certain legends and stuff, where you've got a guy who's oh, he's a Saracen, but he's come over from the Crusades and now he's Robin Hood's best mate or whatever.

Iain:

Are you bad-mouthing Robin Hood, prince of Thieves, in 1991 Extravaganza?

Jason:

I'm not bad-mouthing it, I enjoyed it but, but, but, but. But. Saying that Robin O'Sherwood did the series with her and the hunter and you know that was phenomenal and that had magical aspects into it and stuff, but again, not particularly from the what I would consider the protagonist kind of perspective. It was all stuff that happened to them rather than they did it themselves.

Iain:

I always felt sorry for Morgan Freeman. In that movie he's trying his best to do his Saracen accent. Kevin Costner doesn't even bother that other guy. What's his name? Who is it, please? Will Scarlett.

Jason:

Wasn't it some Cockney geezer? It was some Cockney geezer, wasn't it?

Iain:

No, it wasn't, it was an.

Jason:

American lad. Okay, see all I'm now thinking of. All I can hear in my head is Ray Winston doing Beowulf. You know I'm here to kill your monster.

Iain:

Yeah, it was Ray Winston as well in that King Arthur film that they did with the one where he was like a Roman centurion or something. You've got Ray Winston playing like Gawain or something. Oh Boz, he plays Sir Boz and it's just Ray Winston playing Ray Winston. It's like, oh yeah, I'm going to give him a good scene too, mate.

Jason:

Like are you? Are you really? It's still the best Arthur film as far as I'm concerned is Excalibur.

Iain:

Oh, excalibur's brilliant. I absolutely love Excalibur, absolutely amazing film. Christian Slater, that's who played the Scarlet, and he didn't bother with that English accent either. And also you had a bunch of random people in Sherwood Forest with West Country accents.

Jason:

Yeah, because Sherwood Forest being in Nottinghamshire, in Nottinghamshire they land at the white cliffs of dover and kevin cosner's.

Iain:

Like by nightfall, we'll be in my ancestral home, like are you sure? Because this is like the 1200s, and you're in dover and you're trying to get to nottinghamshire, which is a fair old distance.

Jason:

Geography's just not important, is it? Let's face it.

Iain:

He'd fast travel unlocked, so him and Morgan get up there in no time at all. But yeah right, excalibur is a brilliant film. I really enjoyed that.

Jason:

Amazing. If anybody's not seen it, I heartily recommend it. The only thing is I'm now worried is that I did watch it a long time ago and this might just be rose-tinted spectacles, but that's what this podcast is all about, right? So Helen Mirren was in it.

Iain:

Helen Mirren was in it. Who else did you have? Patrick Stewart, I think, was in it. Sherry Loongie was in it. Patrick Stewart was in it. Gabriel Bunn was in it. Yeah, it's a Amazing cast, great, great, absolutely amazing cast.

Jason:

And a great film, but overlook the fact they're wearing basically 13th century French full plate armour but other than that.

Iain:

No, don't, because that's what Pendragon's all about. In Pendragon, you can eventually get that as well, and it's not accurate in this line. But woe betide, you play a female knight, because that's historically inaccurate. Yes, thanks, incels on the internet, going back to Pendragon and away from Robin Hood, prince of Thieves, which I'm sure we could talk about for hours.

Jason:

And then we'll get you onto Braveheart, and then you'll never stop.

Iain:

Just don't, don't even Do not even start on Braveheart. That's our word. Just don't do not even start on Braveheart, that's our word. You don't get to use that word. Braveheart's probably as historically accurate as Pendragon is well, yeah, absolutely in fact Pendragon's picked supplement is probably the source material that they based Braveheart on. All the woad on the face except the 6th century is probably fairly accurate for that, compared to the 14th century which Braveheart is based in.

Jason:

I saw some guy on telly basically putting up an argument about how Arthur and Guinevere in particular, was buried in Glastonbury Tor, and I'm like well, you know fictional being was buried here. You know, you can say where you want, right.

Iain:

It's a bit like Whitby. They've got that graveyard and for our international listeners, whitby is a coastal town in the north of England and it's famous for the fact that it features in the story Dracula and it's very popular with Goths for this reason. But there's a graveyard in Whitby. It's all the way up a whole massive flight of stairs, up the side of a hill and there's a rumour that Dracula's grave is there and loads of people go up to look for dracula's grave and, oddly enough, there is no grave of dracula, because a dracula is a fictional being and also he's a vampire, so he's not going to actually have a grave. But apparently it was a story invented by locals to get people to come to go and visit. This is great and it works. All these tourists like, oh, where's, where's Dracula's grave? It's up that massive flight of stairs, off you go and you get to the top and there's no Dracula's grave. But yeah, that's similar to the King Arthur stuff. You think the amount of myths and touristy stuff spun around Arthur. It's insane.

Jason:

Yeah, I've been to Tintagel right, which is down in Cornwall. It's a beautiful part of the world. It's worth a visit. They're leaning heavily into the Arthurian connection there. You know there's statues. There's a lot of stuff in the tourist shops, Absolutely but it's fantastic and you go up there and you could imagine it. You really could imagine it.

Iain:

Well, especially, especially if the castle is, it's very atmospheric the way it looks out over the sea and you've got all that. Yeah, it's a beautiful part. It is absolutely fantastic. There was a fascinating thing that I read when doing the history episode about because I was going to go into the whole how historically accurate is the legend of arthur and then realized there are a million podcasts out there about that and we're talking about role-playing games. But he was talking about if you look at the archaeological record of especially that sort of southeast of England, wales, cornwall area.

Iain:

There is all this stuff in the archaeological record that basically shows the Saxon encroachment as they moved inland. But then it gets to a certain point and it's for like a period of I think it's like 25 years. There is nothing like it stops and then it carries on again and this sort of suggests that there was some sort of ancient britain war leader at the time who managed to halt the saxon advance for a small period of time and, you know, keep that local culture, that romano-british culture, going, and then presumably he died and then the saxons carried on their, their rampage. But I think that's about as close as you get to actual historical arthur. I mean, there's tons of books on it and there's there's tons of podcasts on it and there's a million youtube videos talking about how historically accurate arthur is. But I don't think we're concerned with that because we were talking about a fantasy game where, as you said, they get to wear 14th century french plate mail while jousting in 6th century Britain.

Jason:

Well, that's the thing much of a lying Clive Owen film about was probably where he was a Roman legionnaire and it's like, nah, you know.

Iain:

And he's facing vaguely Saxon, vaguely Norse bad guys who have got crossbows that function as machine guns for some reason. And then you've got a bunch of druids hanging about with woad on their faces in the southeast of England. Yeah, it's quite something.

Jason:

But yeah, historical accuracy is not what we're going for.

Iain:

Anyway, we are coming up to time. I think we're considerably over time in terms of our, because we always set this limit. We're going to talk about one hour about the game and we haven't this limit.

Iain:

We're going to talk about one hour about the game and we haven't managed it. We're well over that. No, we've not. We tend to ramble. This was the thing a little peek behind the curtain for our listeners that when Steve said he was ill, jason and I were like are we going to be enough to talk to him about Pit Dragon? Yes, turns out we do. Actually, one little aside I think we mentioned this. Remember our Palladium episode we did a couple years ago and we basically talked about the fact that Palladium is a bit of a mess, but we all really enjoyed it with your misogynistic koala he was misogynistic, he was James Bond the koala.

Iain:

But one of the supplements for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game that I remember seeing at the same time as these supplements for Pendragon, was a supplement called Mutants in Avalon and it was for there after the bomb setting, essentially the after the bomb supplement for the British Isles. But it's like King Arthur has returned, except he's a mutant crow and he rides around on a giant slug. That was his steed I strongly remember. The cover is him sitting on this massive snail and fighting bad guys.

Jason:

I mean, he's never going to get anywhere fast, is he? And when he's jousting, the guy's got time to fortify before he gets there.

Iain:

It's a big old snail though it's a massive snail, but yeah, that was a really interesting little take on it. I never actually got that book. I just remember the cover and the blurb and part of me is kind of intrigued by it and might want to seek out a second-hand copy, just so I can see I think you should what the After the Bomb Arthurian scenario is that involves King Arthur as a raven riding on a giant snail. So what are your final thoughts on Pendragon? Jason, if you're trying to sell it to people who've never played, what would you say?

Jason:

It's not your typical game. It's not, it's nothing like you've played before. In my opinion, there are no levels. There are no levels, there are no wizards, but it is that the way it captures the source material is second to none.

Jason:

I've played various games that have taken an intellectual property of whatever description, whether it's your aliens or whether it's your Storm or whether it's your storm bringer and things like that, and nothing captures the arthurian legend or its source material, like pendragon catches that arthurian legend. Um, you know, and you, you know, you're absolutely right, you do worry about the winter phase and whether your sickly air is going to make it through, and I don't know any other game that makes you feel like that or has that kind of aspect to it. And you know whether your horses are going to survive, what type of horse you have, all this kind of stuff. So it's just a bit different. And the personality trait system I don't think anybody's done anything else that comes close to it.

Jason:

I mean, I haven't played every role-playing game in the world. I'm sure somebody has somewhere, but you know, uh, it was. You know, it's groundbreaking for me and, and you know, I'd say with the character sheet I've got sitting here was from a game that only played probably five years ago or so, so it's relatively recent and it's still still captured my imagination, still was enjoyable, um, and it's very different. So I'd heartily recommend, if you've got any interest in the Arthurian legend, go and reread one of the many versions and then find yourself a game. It's definitely worth it.

Iain:

Yeah, I really agree with that as well. I think it's one of the reasons it's had the longevity that it's had is because it captures that source material. It's not that it's had is because it captures that source material. It's not that it's a niche game, because, like king arthur, is something that everyone's heard of, like if you're in the western world, you have heard of king arthur. It's not some obscure regional hero. It's like you know that hollywood are making films about it. It's. It's that big and I know it was quite a nice story that I heard that when White Wolf lost the license to King Arthur in 4th edition but one of the former founders of White Wolf, he actually got the license to give it back to Greg Stafford and say, look, I've kept your baby safe for you, which I thought was quite nice.

Iain:

But it has this enduring longevity and I don't know anyone who's played it who didn't enjoy it. As you said, your first impression is, oh, I'm just playing a human fighter, great. But then when you actually play the game, it's something that sucks you in with the atmosphere and how different it is the fact that you are genuinely worried if your family's going to survive the winter and you're conscious about securing a legacy. So, like in agreement with you, it's something that people should experience because it is completely different from anything else you play. Also, go and watch Excalibur If you haven't seen it. If you're one of these young people who, although we're saying this now, I've not watched Excalibur probably in about 30 years, so it may be absolutely terrible.

Jason:

I might go and watch it again. So if you have watched Excalibur, go and watch it again, is what I'm going to say.

Iain:

So, yeah, Although, seeing that I re-watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail as part of the history episode, it's not actually that funny. I know that sounds like heretic, but I watched it and I was like this isn't actually that funny. People like it because it's got catchphrases in it. That's why people like it.

Jason:

Not for the actual the debate on what a system of government is and you know whether it's doled out by some woman in a lake chucking swords at people.

Iain:

I'll give you, that bit's funny, but the rest of it it's just like oh god, come on. I find that with a lot of stuff you go back and re-watch it and you're like, oh man, this isn't actually very good.

Jason:

I disagree. Holy Grail's fantastic Life of Brian amazing.

Iain:

We will beg to differ on that yeah, you could be wrong.

Jason:

I am a benevolent god.

Iain:

I will concede you that fact that sometimes I differ on that. Yeah, you can be wrong. I'm a benevolent god. I will concede you that fact that sometimes I can be wrong Not often, but sometimes. Anyway, on that note, Jason, thank you again for joining us. Hopefully we'll have Steve next time. Hopefully it won't be him or an animal that is ill and we'll have the whole crew back. But thanks again.

Jason:

And may the winter phase be kind.

Iain:

And that was our deep dive into Pendragon's 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. It 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.

Contributor

Iain Wilson

Host
Contributor

Jason Downey

Co-host
Contributor

Steve McGarrity

Co-host