40 years on from its original release, Greg Stafford’s Pendragon returns with its 6th edition, the first since Stafford’s passing. Regarded as amongst the greatest RPGs published, Rob Wieland speaks to those who've found inspiration over the years from its courtly intrigues & knightly passions
Role-playing games are full of scoundrels, indeed you might say that a penchant for skullduggery and bad behaviour is embedded in the hobby’s DNA. From the start Dungeons & Dragons took inspiration from some of fantasy fiction’s most famous thieves, the likes of Conan, Fahfrd and Bilbo Baggins. And with games often structured around finding a big score and then spending your loot on better equipment to pull off even bigger scores, there was always space in a party for a class that specialized in disabling traps and bypassing security systems.
Even as D&D shifted away from desperate action to high fantasy adventure, infiltrating evil lairs and pulling off audacious heists have remained an important part of the game and consequently its love of roguish behaviour soon spread to both other games and other genres.
Take a trip into space you’re more likely following in the footsteps of Han Solo or Firefly’s Malcolm Reynolds than Captain Kirk or Flash Gordon. When urban fantasy flourished in the 1990s it was because of a game where players wrestled with monstrous desires that pushed against their flickering humanity. Cyberpunk games focused on slick techno-thriller heists, sometimes cut with magic but always stocked with betrayal. And as modern games have focused on emulating fiction, the subject matter more often than not remained about people trying to steal good lives for themselves, whether that’s in a gritty steampunk city or a chicken shack in Texas.
When gallant knights do enter the equation in these games, they are often set apart as outsiders. They’ll often have strict codes of honour they must adhere to or risk losing access to whatever powers and abilities make them unique and, more importantly, useful members of a party. In the best games, this can cause some interesting discussions about morality and power that make players think about how these forces often clash in real life. At the worst, they inspire memes where the paladin gets locked in a closet like an overbearing teacher while the kids run wild in the school corridors.
It’s that internal conflict, however, that makes knights so fascinating in a role-playing game. Playing a character that follows a rigid code of honor offers great storytelling opportunities alongside hard choices. It’s not so easy to do the right thing when doing so diverges from what’s expected and comes with a personal cost, even when those rules were created by a force of good in the world.
Whether it’s a Starfleet commander wrestling with the Prime Directive or Luke Skywalker having to choose between saving his loved ones or following the Jedi code, a hero caught between two choices makes for compelling stories. Whilst those choices might be an interesting sideshow in many games, they’re to be found at the heart of Pendragon, Greg Stafford’s storied role-playing game set during the life and times of King Arthur. Stafford set out to make a game that felt like the tales of old. He wanted players to act with passion, to make hard choices and to enjoy the consequences of making the wrong decision in the name of seeing where the story went. All of these elements, and more, have been part of the game since it was first published in 1985.
Regularly lauded as one of the best role-playing games created and with a new, sixth, edition upon us, I wanted to speak with several designers about their encounters with Pendragon. How had it inspired their designs, how had the game’s mechanics taken their stories in unexpected directions, how had it influenced the modern era of design and what they hoped the future may hold now that Arthur has once again returned in our hour of need.
Greg Stafford is a legend in the game designer community. He founded Chaosium and co-designed the RuneQuest, Ghostbusters and Prince Valiant role-playing systems. These games would find direct evolution in games like Call of Cthulhu and West End Games’ Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game. He had two major passion projects throughout his life. The first was the bronze age fantasy world Glorantha, which to this day remains a favorite of players seeking a rich, deep fantasy setting. The other was Pendragon, which allowed him to share his love of Arthurian myth and storytelling.
Andrew Peregrine, lead designer on Dune: Adventures in the Imperium and My Little Pony, recalls meeting Stafford in the 1980s ‘It was at a convention somewhere in the late 1980s. I'm just enjoying getting to play when we got interrupted by this American guy who came over to ask the GM if he could borrow the map of England from the boxed set to show a friend. The GM was a bit worried what might happen to his map but the guy seemed ok and was only nearby so he said sure. As he left one of the other players looked at the GM aghast and said “You know that was Greg Stafford don't you?!” We did not. When Greg returned the map we all went completely fanboy on him.’
‘John Wick coined “The Greg Stafford Rule” which says that every time you think of something cool and innovative in game design, Greg Stafford has probably already used it in a game,’ said Peregrine. ‘I've certainly suffered from that before when the smooth and elegant mechanics of Pendragon sunk into my subconscious.’
‘My best friend picked up the original 1st edition boxed set of the game and ran a series of excellent campaigns with it,’ said Cam Banks, designer of Cortex Prime and creative director for TTRPGs at Dire Wolf Digital. ‘My first and longest-lasting knight, Sir Alyn, ended up as a petty king with a tragic and ill-won kingdom in the North.’
‘My friend Geoff Gillan (author of Horror on the Orient Express) introduced me to Pendragon,’ said Call of Cthulhu author Mark Morrison. ‘I was hooked by this dramatic game which tells a long story of an extraordinary life. I'd always worried I needed to know the Arthurian story to play, but once you're in it, there's no need at all. I couldn't get over how the game puts you on the spot. In Pendragon, things really matter.’
‘I first became aware of Pendragon back when I was in high school, thanks to a review of The Spectre King supplement in Dragon magazine,’ explained David Larkins, the current Pendragon line editor at Chaosium. ‘I've since gone back and re-read the review, and I can see that it's as much an endorsement of the game as the supplement itself, which might explain why I came away from reading it the first time with a strong desire to check out Pendragon one day. A few years later, I finally picked up the game's 4th edition rulebook, which was something of an omnibus edition, a huge softcover beast. It took me a while beyond that to finally get the game to the table, and by that time The Great Pendragon Campaign had just dropped. The experience of running the game proved well worth the wait, and the rest is history.’
Stafford’s design thrusts its characters into a world of responsibility right away. The players in Pendragon are sixth century knights, a status which provides them the opportunity to travel, feast with kings and get caught up in all manner of courtly intrigues. But it also means they have their own estates to run. The Winter Phase, as it is known in the game, offers a series of tables for players to roll on after the campaign season wraps up. It summarizes the highs and lows of the rest of the year when the knight isn’t out adventuring but doing the administrative side of their title. Rather than wait a few levels before the players have more gold than they know what to do with, the Winter Phase adds an almost strategic element to the game. It can feel a little like X-COM where exciting stories of combat are alternated with the drama of building new fortifications and improving your character’s abilities.
Pendragon was also one of the first games that offered dynastic play. The myths of Arthur stretch in both directions beyond his lifetime. Knights alive to see him draw the sword from the stone as a boy are unlikely to be around when he dies by the hand of Mordred (sorry for the spoilers to a thousand year old story). Unlike most of their role playing game counterparts, Pendragon players get to see the rise and fall of their characters and their mantle passed on. Again unlike many other games that succession wont always be because of a bad combat roll either; characters have every chance of dying in bed at a ripe old age surrounded by family and friends. Players then take up the story through their character’s squires or their children. Death is meaningful in this game no matter when it takes place. Much like the characters at the center of the stories, players experience the highs and lows of their persona.
‘I have always loved the generational aspect of Pendragon,’ said Banks. ‘You play your knight through the years, and then their son or daughter, and even sometimes their grandchild. This, combined with an excellent annual phase of upkeep and estate management have inspired me to write about similar kinds of long-term growth and aspirations in my own games.’
Perhaps the greatest expression of this idea is The Great Pendragon Campaign, otherwise known as The Pendragon Campaign or The Boy King. This epic campaign covers centuries around the life of King Arthur, from the rise of his father Uther Pendragon to the years after Arthur sailed through the mists to Avalon. Those who have made it through the massive amount of sessions it takes to finish the game leave with quite the impression.
‘My first experience playing Pendragon was at a gaming club in Norwich,’ said Matthew Dawkins, Creative Strategist at Onyx Path Publishing. ‘God, it was a terrible game. Having heard of Pendragon before, I was excited to create my first knight. They were playing through The Great Pendragon Campaign and were still in Uther's reign, so I hadn't missed much, but what I found was a GM who would never deviate from what was on the page until it came to the Winter phase, at which point the real roleplaying would begin.
‘It was an odd experience, as I could see the quality of Pendragon behind the intensely linear, inaccessible story the GM was telling, and the Winter Phase really made the campaign tolerable as it allowed us to explore families, dynasties, protecting our petty fiefdoms, and building our reputations in ways that the core of the campaign didn't. It was no fault of The Great Pendragon Campaign, however, as I went on to run it myself some years later and found so much good material in there that our GM had just failed to act on.’
Playing through so many years of mythology sounds intimidating but those who enter into the campaign have a chance to install their characters at decisive points in the Arthurian cycle. They get to be the knights who help shape the Boy King into the legend everyone knows, or sit at the Round Table at the height of Camelot’s power. It’s a template that the best licensed games have used for decades. Arthur’s story might be the most famous, but it’s not the only one.
‘I love playing Arthur as an NPC. It's a challenge to be kingly,’ said Morrison. ‘My teenage Arthur has a good heart but needs wisdom, so he takes the advice of the player knights and grows with it. When a crisis comes, he always says the right thing, but where possible it's a reflection of what the players have taught him. I want them to love him as their king. The game hinges on it.’
Feelings and emotions are at the root of the game’s design. Characters have Passions that they can use to influence their rolls. If they hate the Saxons because they once sacked their castle and killed their parents, they can tap into that passion for bonuses to their rolls in battle or intrigue, but in Pendragon giving into your passions can have serious consequences which can shape your choices in the future. At its extreme end failing a Passion roll may infect the character with melancholy and sadness that can spiral into madness, states of mind that, mimicking the source material, may require the character to disappear off into the woods for a year or so and live with the birds, or somewhat less dramatically require penance or an urgent pep talk from a trusted advisor.
“She half-drew her sword, the truce failed and the Battle of Caerleon began”
‘Knights are driven by passion,’ said Morrison. ‘In our last game, Arthur rode out to parley with King Lot, choosing player character Dame Lynelle as his bodyguard. Player Jess flubbed her Forgiving roll when confronted by the picts in Lot's army, and then made a Hate Picts roll. She half-drew her sword, the truce failed and the Battle of Caerleon began. The outcome is exactly as Malory set it down 550 years ago in Le Morte d'Arthur, but at our table the reason was a player made a Passion roll.’
Perhaps the most famous part of these rules are the paired virtue traits that dominate the character sheet. Each pair reflects a mirrored set of personality traits such as Just/Arbitrary, Merciful/Cruel or Chaste/Lustful. The ratings in these traits measure how strongly they manifest in a knight’s personality. When a player acts toward one of the traits it has the opportunity to go up but the traits always remain balanced; as one side goes up, its twin goes down.
‘I love the paired personality traits, and the fact that as one goes down, another goes up,’ said Banks. ‘Pendragon definitely inspired how values worked in Smallville and later Tales of Xadia, for example.’
So long as these traits remain in the center of the field, the player can act freely, if with consequences. But should a trait rise above 16 something unusual happens. It has now become a famous trait. Not only does it give your character a reputation that goes before them, and potentially an epithet like The Just or The Brave, but mechanics kick in to make it difficult for them to act against that trait. To do something counter to the traits you have to fail a trait roll against the virtue. Want to kill the noble that you know murdered your lord even though you have no evidence besides a gut feeling? Too bad, Sir Mortan The Fair-Hearted, you’ll have to wrestle with those feelings using dice.
This process matches the passionate swings in the source material. Arthur and his knights make absolutely terrible decisions all the time and it’s easy to pull up examples that fit the rolls against virtues. But in both the mythology and the tabletop game these decisions push the stories in interesting ways. People have consistent personalities and tend to act in ways one might expect, but everyone has a bad day where other pressures force selfish action. Or, for that matter, days where otherwise unlikable people show unexpected grace or kindness.
‘While some might think it’s a straightjacket,’ said Peregrine, ‘I think it forces you to role-play more realistically. Sure, you want your knight to be brave all the time, but few people actually are. Pendragon forces you to have moments where your worst angels take over. It is always up to you to decide after wards if your character regrets it, excuses it or is consumed by guilt and then how they make up for it.’
‘Personality traits like Valorous and Honest are perhaps the most significant lever in the GM's toolbox,’ said Banks, ‘as we are forced to play our characters according to their most famous traits. No chance of running from a fight if your Valorous is 20. I had an occasion where I was sure I was going to die against a monstrous annis hag but because my knight wouldn't back down from any fight I couldn't flee. Fortunately for me, the Passion of Loyalty (Lord) came in when I was inspired to rid my liege's lands of this monster and I defeated it, though almost at the cost of my knight's life.’
‘This occurred in a campaign of Pendragon I ran,’ said Dawkins. ‘The knights were on trial, accused of having sewn seeds of treason against King Uther. They were innocent of the accusation, but fabricated evidence pointed the finger of blame at them. Through some cunning and chicanery, they were able to prove their innocence on a technicality, but King Uther, who presided over the trial, in a rather corrupt fashion, basically told them “You're on notice. If I catch a whiff of treason from you - down to as much as disparaging my name as your king - it won't be you who pays the price, but your Earl Lavidendus, who has shown his weakness in his failed attempts to rein you in.”
‘It was the final part of the sentence that made one of the player knights roll their virtue of Just, as they couldn't stand by and allow their Earl, who was admittedly weak, to be insulted before the court. Needless to say when they shouted at Uther to take back his words he was as good as his word and had Earl Lavidendus arrested and promptly executed.’
‘I'm playing a pagan enchantress called Nia,’ said Peregrine. ‘She is stunning as I rolled very well for appearance and being a pagan has a very high Lustful. She also finds the Christian Knights she is with rather staid and boring with their chastity and uptight ways. She thinks their constrictive attitudes to sex almost insulting so plans to teach them a lesson and help them loosen up. One in particular, my friend James' character has a Chaste of 19, which she sees as a challenge.
‘As a player, I know that I just have to encourage James' knight character to make more Chaste tests, and sooner or later he'll roll a 20. So Nia keeps snuggling up to him and working her charms. Eventually it works and he rolls a 20, not only a fail but a fumble and she has her way with him. However, James was not going to let his character be so manipulated and has a surprise for me. After their midnight tryst instead of rethinking his ways, he proposes! Now they have gone that far, he has to marry her! Nia realizes she has gone too far, especially as it’s a tenet of her particular goddess that she must remain unmarried. She realized that it was a far bigger deal for James' character, and that while to her sex was just a fun way to enjoy a connection, it was very different for a friend that she's now badly hurt.’
Passions and virtues stand as examples of early mechanics to support fiction-first gaming by defining relationships and character aspects not limited to what they can do in the physical world. These aspects are much more common these days with games such as Dune: Adventures In The Imperium using virtues as central character traits and even Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition encouraging players to set up bonds between their characters.
Stafford understood that role-playing games are meaningful, not for the cool magic items or power fantasy they can provide but for the unexpected choices and attachment to characters that players develop as they play. People like to talk about moments where they remember being in a place when something legendary or historical happened. But moments like the sudden proposal or the death of a lord caused by a fellow player character are just as indelible in our memories. I’ve run enough games where there are still certain characters who, if I mention them in the right company, will get me glowering looks of hatred and oaths of vengeance that would make Arya Stark blush.
These elements also highlight something Pendragon shares with its spookier sibling, Call of Cthulhu. The characters in these games are, at their core, regular people dealing with extraordinary situations. Getting wrapped up in faerie court intrigues is just as dangerous and thrilling as seeing an unspeakable horror slither through a summoning gate. That these are regular people who might make the wrong Passion roll or whiff a Sanity check and that makes them relatable to those of us sat around the table. Few folks know what it’s like to miss with a berserker’s axe or a magic ball of fire but everyone has had those moments where they realize it’s better to walk away without finding out the awful truth or reckoning with their self image after a virtue they thought they cherished failed them in an hour of need.
With Call of Cthulhu flying high on the back of its most successful version in years, Chaosium hopes that exposing Pendragon to a new audience increasingly more interested in embracing fiction first gaming will put it back on fan’s shelves. Part of that has included embracing the fact that King Arthur stories are mythology, not history, and can be modified as groups see fit.
While the central text of previous editions has been Thomas Mallory’s 15th century retelling Le Morte d’Arthur, the new Sixth Edition sees an opportunity for many different styles of Arthurian stories to be played out.
‘I actually prefer the earlier Celtic and dark age tone of Arthurian fantasy over the period of grail quests and romance,’ said Banks. ‘It makes me an odd duck in the ranks of Pendragon fans. So I like the early tales of Merlin and Vortigern, of Uther and his downfall. I've never liked "perfect knights" like Galahad or even Lancelot, preferring flawed and tragic characters like Tristan or Percival, who nevertheless succeed in their own fashion.’
‘The remarkable thing about Pendragon is how it synthesizes so many different strands of 1,500 years of Arthurian lore,’ said Larkins. ‘I know some folk like their Arthurian storytelling more "grounded" in a sub-Roman Britain of late antiquity, but for me the appeal of the genre has always been its weird anachronisms, fairy-tale fantasy, and all the color and pageantry of the High Middle Ages. Not that we had to change anything, but this also makes Pendragon a perfect sister game to RuneQuest, set in Greg's other magnificent creation, the world of Glorantha. Observant gamers can probably spot several interesting parallels, sometimes complementary, between the two games and their settings.’
These changes can be seen in the Pendragon Starter Set. The pre-generated knights include ones from non-European cultures as well as female presenting characters who have taken up swords. Previous editions often struggled with these ideas, trying to stay true to Mallory or be “historically accurate”. Instead, this edition plays things a little fast and loose, just like the original authors in fact. Until researching this article I hadn’t realized myself that one of the central characters, Lancelot, and his tragic love triangle with Queen Guienevere and their King, was a later addition to the cycle.
Despite Stafford passing away in 2018, Larkins see the new edition as remaining faithful to his vision. ‘When Chaosium welcomed Pendragon back into its stable of games in 2019 after 20 years under the able stewardship of other publishers there was a natural interest in putting together a Starter Set in a similar vein to the Call of Cthulhu and Runequest starters,’ said Larkins.
‘After Greg's passing, I became the keeper of his Pendragon archive, which literally fills a dozen magazine files as well as hundreds of digital files. One of my first tasks was to flex my librarian and archivist skills from a prior career and create a database of what all was in there. Among the files was a 30-page draft of what would eventually become the heart of the Starter Set's rulebook, and another draft of the scenarios that would eventually become The Sword Campaign. I wrote the tutorial SoloQuest, and had way too much fun doing so, since I got into the tabletop hobby through reading choose-your-own-adventure gamebooks, and made the pre-generated characters with input from my wonderful band of freelance developers, and we were mostly there!’
The early books from this edition also look to focus on the early years of Arthur as the Boy King. It feels like a solid starting point for people new to the game and to the mythology. Helping shape Arthur into the legend that he will become seems like a very open space for players to explore. The upcoming releases will follow that thread along with a content program called Companions of Arthur similar to Dungeon Masters Guild or Chaosium’s own Miskatonic Repository.
Available right now are the Starter Set, the Pendragon Player's Handbook and The Grey Knight campaign explained Larkins. ‘This new edition includes two prequel scenarios that directly link The Grey Knight adventure proper to the scenarios found in The Sword Campaign [from the Starter Set]. But likewise, folks getting into the game via the Player's Handbook, which includes rules for character creation as well as the game's core rules, can grab The Grey Knight and use that as a launchpad for their own campaigns. After that, the Pendragon Gamemaster's Handbook and Pendragon Noble's Handbook will round out the core rulebook trilogy.’
With a huge new audience for role-playing games today its an exciting time for both veterans of many a winter and young squires alike to explore classic games like Pendragon, that have done so much to shape this hobby. Like the Arthurian myths themselves, these stories get told and retold in new ways over the years but the tale at the centre remains the same. It’s hard to be a knight but if it was easy, everybody could do it.
The Pendragon Starter Set, Player’s Handboook & The Grey Knight are out now from Chaosium