Tell me about your experiences with Pendragon

[King_Stannis]

One of the games I picked up at Games Plus this past week was "Pendragon", along with the "Boy King" campaign.

Could any of you tell me your experiences with playing this game. Is it DM friendly? Do the combats go smoothly? Does it make for a good mini-campaign?

Any input is appreciated ahead of time. Thanks!

 

[Someone]

One of the games I picked up at Games Plus this past week was "Pendragon", along with the "Boy King" campaign.

Could any of you tell me your experiences with playing this game. Is it DM friendly? Do the combats go smoothly? Does it make for a good mini-campaign?

Any input is appreciated ahead of time. Thanks!

I played a campaing years ago that took a entire summer (real time) and I enjoyed it a lot. The rules are simple but keep the atmosphere of the books very well: if you like the books (and I mean the medieval ones) you´ll like the game a lot.

Combat is simple and deadly. Keep in mind that it´s not remotely intended to be like D&D; instead of several encounters in a short space of time, it´s better to keep it to the righ moments, when you can use Passions and the like to spice it. And it can take months to heal serious wounds.

It´s a good game for both short scenarios and long campaings. Character creation is short enough if you just concentrate in thenumbers and ignore family, lords, and all the background rules.

Of course, those same rules make for an interesting long campaing.

 

[spunky_mutters]

I really liked it when I read it (of course I should have been warned off by the nutbar who ran the demo I tried at a con), but I found that it requires a certain type of player to make it work. My players at the time were not that type. It has great mechanics for enabling role-playing of romance, nobility, cultural conflict, etc. If you can get players to buy into the setting, I think it would be great. This was all 1st edition, I don't know what kind of changes it has gone through over the years.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

It certianly isn't for everyone.

The game assumes that you WILL die. Be it of old age or in battle. So having a son to carry on as your next character is vital.

Also, there are no "rogue" skills. You're a knight. Period. A lot of plalyers I know took one look at that and decided they wanted D&D instead.

Barring that its pretty cool.

 

[King_Stannis]

Thanks for the input, guys.

 

[Darkness]

Hm. King Stannis, there once was a Pendragon thread that might be of interest to you. It was over a year ago, so I'll have to see what the Search function turns up...

Ah, yes - there it is:

SHARK's Pendragon thread

Hope it helps, mate.

(PS - Any links in that thread to other EN World threads need to be modified a bit to become usable; they're stilll linking to the previous server... Just change the URLs from http://www.enworld.org/messageboards to http://enworld.cyberstreet.com to make them work.)

 

[ColonelHardisson]

It really takes a particular mindset amongst all the players for Pendragon to work. It's very much about chivalric ideals, naturally, which can grow tiresome for players who simply want to kick in doors and grab loot.

If you can find them, I would say take a look at Blood & Lust, The Spectre King, and The Grey Knight. These are, in my opinion, some of the best Pendragon books out there. They are either adventures (The Grey Knight) or collections of adventures (Blood & Lust, The Spectre King), and definitely will give you an idea of what Pendragon campaigns should be like. Knights Adventurous is also very good, but if you have the latest edition of Pendragon (4th, I think), you won't need it, since most of it was put into the main book.

Blood & Lust has what I feel is almost the archetypal Pendragon adventure - The Adventure of the Heart Blade. This is an adventure in which a PC knight (with help from the other PCs occasionally) woos a lady love, and must perform various tasks to prove himself. It also involves finding the Heart Blade, a pretty cool magic sword that gains powers from love.

 

[King_Stannis]

Thanks for rolling up your sleeves and digging up that thread, Darkness, my friend. Very interesting and exactly the kind of feedback - along with what has already been said in this thread - that I was looking for.

Colonel - I almost picked up "The Spectre King" at Games Plus. If it really takes off I might have to pick it up based on your recommendation. Thanks!

 

[Voneth]

I have nothing bad to say about Pendragon, in fact I just wondered why I haven't run a game of it for a long time ... oh that's right -- everyone wants to stick to d20

If you can find the players who appreciate the radical ideas that they are playing a dynasty of knights through the ages, not just one character, you can be only a knight (unless you get some of the 2nd suppliments) and that magic is for the GM only, you can have a great time. In fact ...

For several years, Pendragon was "the campiagn that would not die." The game has a "adventure chart" that lets people who missed sessions roll up the results of minor adventures to ensure they get some "XP" and not fall to far behind the rest. With that in mind, I had several players who would drop buy, roll up any years (you only adventure in the summer months) they missed and then play a session. Sometimes they would all be together, other times the players would show up in twos and threes.

I think that in keeping track of the years and passing on the "rumors" of what the rest of players did made people feel like the world was alive. Yet, all I was doing was following the adventures and timeline in "Boy King" and keep a log of what everyone was doing. It was the easiest and most fun campiagn I ever ran.