Pendragon References

[EccentricOwl]

I just started running Greg Stafford's fascinating RPG "Pendragon."

It bears the mark of madness.

Seriously, the writing is (although painfully railroad-y) fantastic and the effort, breadth, and detail is amazing.

I'm also having loads of trouble getting it to make sense. There are a billion NPCs to take care of in books like "The Great Pendragon Campaign." I have no idea who half of them are since I'm not a big Malory buff and there is NO form of NPC index or anything.

Anybody got a recommendation like that? Something similar? Some sort of, oh, I dunno, listing of major NPCs?

For example, did you know King Uther (arthur's father) had a son named Uther? And I think he was a bastard but it's not really all that clear.

And after Uther dies but before Arthur takes the throne, some woman who I have never, ever, ever heard of named Countess Ellen is regent? And I think she has a son, too.

Anybody got any tips?

[comicshorse]

Ban anybody making 'Holy Grail' quotes it will destroy the atmosphere of your game so fast .......

[EccentricOwl]

Hahaha, good plan. I think that as gamers and people we're a little past making nothing but Monty Python quotes; but thanks for the tip all the same.

[EccentricOwl]

Really, I'll take anything people recommend to help with Pendragon.

[Jay R]

There is no single clear Arthurian legend, and hasn't been since the introduction of all the Lancelot/Gwenevere and Tristan/Iseult romantic goo was introduced into what started as a straightforward war epic. Stafford is trying to make a consistent narrative out of many conflicting medieval tales.

The result is that there are two ways to play Pendragon:

1. Follow Stafford blindly.
or
2. Read Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. (A couple of Tristan and Iseult or Lancelot romances wouldn't be amiss either.)

There's not really another answer.

Oh, I suppose you could modify it to fit the modern versions of the legend, but then it wouldn't be Pendragon.

[Anxe]

Study it furiously and then make your own table?

[Doug Lampert]

Study it furiously and then make your own table?

Or there's the King Arthur Companion by Phyllis Ann Karr which has already done that.

Or you could just wing it. IIRC there are 150 seats on Mollory's version of the round table. IIRC one of those seats is filled at least 5 different times, i.e., it's specified in the narative that X got Y's seat, and then later that Y got Z's seat, and then later that A got Z's seat, and then later that B got A's seat.

That may not be the record.

The number of filled seats at any given time varries. But as long as you keep the "main" storyline in the background then in almost any year of the stories you've got something like 100+ round table knights almost no one has ever heard of plus innumerable other knights wandering arround Britain.

Fortunately for you people have shoved most of the main characters off to distant lands over they years. Lancelot is French, Gawain and his brothers were moved to Orkney prior to Mallory's writing. Tristan if from Cornwall and Isoult is from Ireland. So if you stay in Logress you actually don't need to deal with most of the major characters except as people who occassionally pass through.

[Socratov]

well, the legend of King Arthur has been told, written, filmed, played, etc. for over 9000 times allready. But historically you could distill some facts like the fact that Arthur never carried the name Pendragon as it was a title (someone who conquered the whole of england/brittain). There are others but they elude me at the moment.

[JustIgnoreMe]

For example, did you know King Uther (arthur's father) had a son named Uther? And I think he was a bastard but it's not really all that clear.

And after Uther dies but before Arthur takes the throne, some woman who I have never, ever, ever heard of named Countess Ellen is regent? And I think she has a son, too.

Anybody got any tips?

Pray God I am not too late!

Hi OP. I ran the Grand Pendragon Campaign successfully for, um, three years? It was a while ago, but I may be able to help. You can have an absolute blast with it. It's not rail-roady, any more than a map is rail-roady because "You can only travel on the roads!" While yes, events will happen in the wider world which your knights can't change, that's because the story you're telling has a defined beginning, middle and end. My party killed Mordred years before the final battle at Camlann: no matter, his mother merely raised him from the dead as a skeletal knight to fight Arthur. My group weren't at Camlann, they were far in the North taking on Morganna in her home castle. They won at a bitter cost and arrived back home just in time to see King Arthur die. One of them took the part of the Last Knight. Awesome stuff.

Anyway, here's what I logged on to post: you've made a few small reading errors. They're not major, but they may impact on your game.

I don't know where you get the idea that Uther had a son called Uther. Uther's son is Madoc. He dies before Uther does, and it's pretty tragic.

Countess Ellen is not regent of the kingdom in the Anarchy period: she's regent of Salisbury for her young son, Earl Robert (the default start point for the campaign has the PCs as knights of the County of Sarum/Salisbury).

From 495 to 509 the throne of Logres is empty: there is no High King after Uther before Arthur.

My advice: read and watch all the Arthurian stuff you can find! Every book, every movie, every TV show. Steal ideas from it and make it all your own. That said, I found Phyllis Ann Karr's "Arthurian Companion" very handy: it wasn't written for the game but Chaosium (who published earlier editions of Pendragon) kept it in print for a while.