Pendragon RPG: What's (Not) To Love

My joys and struggles with Chaosium's Arthurian Love Letter TTRPG

Painting by N.C. Wyeth

Sometimes we must admit that all games are not for all people.

Pendragon may be one of those games that’s not “for me.”

But - hear me out:

I think that Pendragon is probably one of the “great games” in the RPG world - something so ambitious and magnificent in its approach that it truly deserves everyone playing it once, just to see how something that really knows what it is and what it’s trying to do…does that.

The thing I couldn’t get around was, I wanted to “do it right” so badly that I was spending more time studying and reading than I was playing, and after several solo sessions, I still didn’t feel confident bringing the game to my table (a few of my regulars asked to try it out).

I always considered myself a fan of Arthurian myth and legend, but upon playing this game I realized I had so many questions about…everything. I know I could have (and did) just made a bunch of shit up on the spot, but then I wouldn’t have felt like I was playing Pendragon.

I’m still on the fence whether or not I’ll return to it and see what happens to Aeric or not - but something tells me I will “see” him again.

My biggest “con” of the Pendragon system might be this: there are so many rules in so many different places and editions, you always feel like you’re missing something -

Couple this with the sheer amount of setting information and there was never a time where I wasn’t asking myself: am I screwing this up?

Given enough time and a patient enough group, I think that could be overcome and eventually one might develop their own version of medieval England, but it is an extremely high buy-in for the GM to run this game.

This may be why every adventure I read for the system was either just a paragraph or two of info, or the complete opposite: a completely “on the rails” linear event with many things not really affected by what the PCs (or PK’s, sorry!) do or don’t do.

I suspect there are very few people who have actually run the Great Pendragon Campaign in totality, but I’d say this is one of the games where you really need a great GM to experience the fullness of what it is intended to be.

Because I am an incorrigible “hacker” of systems, and love to run house-ruled and homebrewed stuff, what this game definitely did for me was send me down a rabbit hole of asking myself:

What do I love about this?

What do I not love?

What kind of game do *I* really want to play, especially solo?

My answer to that is currently underway:

The Traits system from Pendragon is a godsend to solo players who may struggle with the question of “how do I keep my character separate from me, so that I can still be surprised by their actions etc. in the context of running a solo game?”

A set of matched personality traits that dictate how a character will act or react in a given situation is great, and was by far my favorite aspect of Pendragon - but there were other things I loved as well, including the combat system, which I’ve heard maligned elsewhere.

Attacks from both combatants rolled at the same time were awesome and really gave the feel of chaotic, swirling melee - coupled with the game’s “blackjack” style of success determination, I really enjoyed this.

Not so much for all the different rulesets and complex aspects of battle, mass combat and so on, which I must say left me a little confused and non-plussed.

A great deal of my problem was simply setting - so, I started creating “Dark Medieval Times,” a hack that combines aspects of Mork Borg (my go to gritty medieval violence game) and Pendragon.

I was already working on a dark fantasy setting booklet called Avreaux, so I mashed the two concepts together and am currently neck deep in making a booklet that contains both a system and toolkit for making your own version of Avreaux to adventure in, inspired by worldbuilding aspects of HOME and Black Sword Hack.

I kept elements of Pendragon combat, created a feat list and leveling system, worked up a quick-yet-tactically satisfying mass combat dice-pool system, and sitrred things together into an unholy witches brew of warring church factions, horrible monsters in a heavily wooded fictitious medieval country that feels similar to a war-torn and gritty version of Clark Ashton Smith’s “Averoigne.”

Have I succeeded?

Not completely - yet.

I’m heading into my third group playtesting session this week, but am still working on the GM tools section (you know I like tons of tables!) and some of the other things that need to be shaken out like:

Is this game played seasonally like Pendragon, or episodically, or whatever? This affects things like injuries and healing rules, domain play, and so on, all of which I am trying to keep streamlined and simple with a d20/d6 only system.

Is combat satisfying yet fast? Adding elements like combat stances and weapon traits in is something me and my players love but I’m walking that line between speed and depth that is always a tightrope.

There’s other stuff that needs tweaking too, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned about games it’s this:

Make what *you* love, and there’s a good chance that some other people will love it too.

If you spend all your time trying to please everyone, you’ll only create some monstrous chimera that doesn’t appeal to anyone.

Keep your blades sharp,

- Castle Grief