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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9141157" data-attributes="member: 82106">They're quite different. Pendragon relies on a set of virtue/vice pairs, and 'passions'. Any time a character is doing something interesting in game mechanical terms they will need to make a test on one of these. Half of the v/v pair traits are 'good' and the other half are 'negative', a character always has a total of 20 in each pair, so 13/7 brave/cowardly for instance. If you might run away, you test cowardly. If you want to do something really brave, you test bravery. The passions are Love, Family, Hospitality, and Honor, they don't really have opposites, though later they came out with 'classes' that use different ones and more were added.The main point is, there's no focus on things like 'skills' and such, everything is governed by 13 v/v pairs and the passions. Characters are knights, they adventure once a year, and then there's a 'domain system' kind of thing where you do 'other stuff'. Character marry, have kids, etc. If you get old and die, your son can take over. Early editions used random chargen, but the '90s and later editions are point buy. Earlier editions also had a lot of supplements to run things like vikings and whatever, but most of that was abolished in the last couple of editions, you are a Knight of the Round Table in classic fantasy 5th century Britain, and Arthur is king! In its newer forms it has almost a neotrad kind of thing going. You make up the personality you want, and then you play to it. Sometimes 'stuff' might happen that isn't quite how you planned it all out, but your character concept strongly defines how you play, within the limitations of the milieu/genre of the game. Situations are meant to represent stuff that might happen in Mallory, basically. Questing after beasts, meeting damsels in distress, warlocks, enchanters, 'black knights', etc. The domain part of things is also fairly involved, though you can get more or less into that. A lot of times the adventures and yearly events may tie in together.So, one of the things about it is the game is pretty hard and fast locked to its genre. You could, in older editions, play a Pict, a Welshman, a Saxon, or a Viking, but they were still basically landed warriors or similar. Adventures might vary based on the sorts of characters in use, but modern versions stick to stuff that is pretty much Mallory straight up. It isn't a super gritty sort of game, but the GM does pretty much make up the adventures in a rather classic fashion.Between the two, Pendragon and Prince Valiant, I always thought the later game was the fundamentally stronger design. Pendragon is flirting with some of the more narrativist ideas to a degree, but I think PV's design just does KA stuff better. But for whatever reason PV has not had as much love, though it did get reissued a few years ago (and Pendragon has a fairly current edition too I think).</blockquote>

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