King Arthur Pendragon... A Retrospective

A Little History:  Originally published in 1985, King Arthur Pendragon was built on mechanics modified from Chaosium's BRP rules.

It was, in many respects, ahead of the curve, introducing numerous traits for a character's faith, allegiances, personality and using them as a core aspect of the rules rather than just background fluff.  In the '90's  many games would use virtues, morality and so on, but from the start King Arthur Pendragon applied mechanical purpose to love, hate, honour and family in a very substantial way.  A knight could be empowered by his hatred, made miserable by his love for a lady or driven to madness by conflicting oaths.

It was a game set in the Arthurian world, and if you couldn't get with the program the game wasn't for you.  You played a knight, a knight or a knight!  No thieves, bards or wizards, just knights.  You had lands to steward, official duties, families to raise and lords to serve.  Y'know, everything most role-playing games glossed over.  But in King Arthur Pendragon these were just as big a deal as your skill at swordsmanship.

King Arthur Pendragon began as a boxed set with two slim booklets, but it grew into substantial core rulebooks in later editions.  Beyond the oddity of 2nd Edition never actually being released at all, each release of King Arthur Pendragon was somewhat different to the last while maintaining all the same core rules.  4th Edition remains the biggest and most in-depth, including the most developed character creation rules and even the option for playing magic-users!  This was wisely dropped for later editions.

The game licence was used as collateral by Chaosium and moved to Green Knight Publishing in the late nineties.  The next edition was released through White Wolf and the most recent revision through Nocturnal Media.

Various supplements were released to support the game, and thanks to a constant rules system they are all viable regardless of edition.  Some simply expanded the existing game rules and setting, others offered alternatives such as playing mythic Norse hero sagas.

My History:  I first picked up 4th Edition King Arthur Pendragon in the mid-90's.  At the time it was the most expensive role-playing game book I had purchased, but I was very keen to have it anyway.

I've always had a bit of issue with Stafford's vision of the Arthurian world which I deem to be too inclusive, but he wrote the game well, and with differing views in mind so that it was never a problem.  Views of society, cultures, religion and morality can easily be emphasised or ignored without it affecting the game.

I enjoyed 4th Edition for many years, but not until I picked up 5th Edition did I consider a long-term campaign.  The Great Pendragon Campaign was a monster of a book, twice the size of the core book and covering the entire reign of Arthur, as well as the last years of Uther's life.  Unfortunately, a group split prevented me from getting as far through as I would have liked to.  Still, maybe one day...

It is difficult for me to criticize King Arthur Pendragon, as it may be my very favourite role-playing game, but I do think it suffers from some unclear rules, particularly the battle system.  I never found a way to use it without a lot of difficulty and longed for something as simple as Legend of the Five Rings 1st Edition's war rules.  Thankfully, in the Great Pendragon Campaign all battles are scripted to a greater or lesser degree, taking a lot of the pressure off.

Still, I do wish King Arthur Pendragon had the clarity and economic writing Stafford used for the Prince Valiant game.  There are so many great ideas and wonderful implementations of passions, personality traits and more, I just think that Greg needs to trim it down and tidy it up one day.

These days, I stick with 3rd Edition, though the revision of 5th Edition does look lovely and I might splash out the cash on that one day.

The Game Today:  Is still alive, I'm happy to say.  Greg Stafford is still involved in the game and while it remains something of a lost classic for the many in the hobby, anyone interested can find copies on e-bay or amazon.  The supplements are somewhat tougher to get hold of at a low price.

King Arthur Pendragon's lack of broad appeal is just something of a trend for much of Stafford's work, and Chaosium in general, but there are fans and players for the game and the rules consistency between editions means that unlike Dungeons & Dragons, there isn't a divide in King Arthur Pendragon's audience.