Pendragon Roundtable: Virtues, Passions, and Winter's Embrace

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Step into the world of Arthurian legend through Pendragon, the RPG that masterfully captures the essence of knightly virtue, tragedy, and legacy spanning generations. Unlike traditional fantasy games, Pendragon isn't about magical powers or ever-increasing abilities—it's about creating meaningful stories where your knight's personality traits, passions, and family lineage take center stage.

We talk about what makes Pendragon unique: its revolutionary personality trait system, it's  approach to mortality and legacy, and the infamous "Winter Phase".

Join us as we reminise about this wonderful game, and Jason laments the sad tale of his poor knight who never found love.

Contact us at:

EMAIL: [e-mail]
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/rolltosavepod
WEBSITE: https://rolltosave.blog

HOSTS: Iain Wilson, Steve McGarrity, Jason Downey
BACKGROUND MUSIC: David Renada (Find him at: [e-mail] or on his web page).
TITLE, BREAK & CLOSEOUT MUSIC: Xylo-Ziko (Find them on their web page).

Episode Transcript

Iain (00:07):
Welcome to Roll2Save, the RPG history podcast, pendragon.
So hello and welcome to anotherepisode of Roll to Save.

(00:29):
I am joined here today by Jason, as usual.
Hello Jason.
Hi Ian, how's it going?
It is going well.
We are fully into autumn herein Utah.
I think I'm in the last of thesitting out on my deck with a
cigar weather that is sadlyleaving us, so I managed to do

(00:50):
that on Friday, but it's slowlygetting colder and colder, so
we're not going to be able to dothat much longer.
I say colder and colder, it's arelative thing.
I think it was 27 degrees theother day, which is still pretty
warm, but when we're used to 38degrees, that's getting colder
still pretty warm, but whenwe're used to 38 degrees, that's
getting colder still a bithigher than we get down here in
cork.

Jason (01:09):
So you know, I think we might have, might have, might
have had one day where wereached about 27 degrees at the
height of summer.
Um, the only way, the onlyreason you can tell the seasons
in in ireland is that the rainis warmer or colder depending on
what part of the year you're inyeah, so.

Iain (01:26):
So how are things down in sunny cork?

Jason (01:28):
uh, lovely.
Uh, sunny cork is soon to beexchanged for the sunny
southeast of the town of wexford, so I'm moving east.
Uh, I'm going to become ayellow belly, uh, which is what
the nickname for people fromwexford is.

Iain (01:44):
Irish regional rivalries.

Jason (01:46):
Yeah, all due to the hurling and GAA colours rather
than anything else.
But yeah, famous forstrawberries and potatoes.

Iain (01:53):
Okay, strawberries is a non-stereotypical thing to go on
there.
Yeah, we had a bit of a fun bitof podcast news the other week.
Apparently, we were the numberfive RPG podcast in Austria.

Jason (02:06):
Number five.
It amaz Number five.

Iain (02:07):
Wow, Number five.
We were above critical role inAustria.

Jason (02:11):
Vielen Dank, Herr Österreich.

Iain (02:14):
Ja, sehr gut, and there's the extent of my German.
I was just saying that I canorder taxis, I can carry bitter
ein in certain nouns.
As long as I know a noun, I canask for it.
But then when they reply to me,I'm not very good at the rest.
So confession for our Austrianlisteners that happened to me in
Paris.

Jason (02:32):
I went to Paris and I did my best to work out what I was
asking for.
I asked for it.
The guy immediately knew what Iwanted and then answered me,
and that was where I was lost.
I was like, oh well, you know.
I just then pointed and madelike sad monkey noises and he
let me off.
So yeah, not very good at that.

Iain (02:50):
That's actually quite good for Paris.
They're normally a bit kind ofit is lagard, not lugar, that's
my French accent.
Ladies and gentlemen, so wedon't have Steve again today.
Poor Steve is looking after asick dog, which is a shame.
Poor Steve is looking after asick dog, which is a shame.
Poor Steve's dog.

Jason (03:06):
Yeah, get better soon.
Steve's dog.

Iain (03:08):
Yeah, hopefully Steve's dog will get better soon and his
lovely transatlantic Ears willbe back on the podcast Soon.

Jason (03:15):
Yeah, I mean, it's a lot of pressure on us without him,
isn't it really?
You know?

Iain (03:19):
It is.
Yeah, it feels like a sad shell.
It does it does.

Jason (03:24):
I mean we miss him greatly and he had so much when
he's here and I just don't thinkit's not the same without him.
It really isn't, ian.

Iain (03:32):
It's not, and it's obviously.
When I write the extensivescript for these episodes, I
have to then go back and re-editit and take all of Steve's
stuff out.
And this, this well-polished,well-put-together machine that
this is, it's not just usbusking it.

Jason (03:45):
Are we here for a purpose ?

Iain (03:46):
We are here for a purpose.
Yes, we are here for a purpose.
What gaming have you been up torecently?

Jason (03:51):
So my Thursday night still continues to be D&D 5th
Edition.
I mean, that's been running nowfor probably over three years.
I think we've hit 13th level.
We're getting some activism,some serious magic.
It level where there's someserious magic.
It's the highest level D&D gameI've played since I was a kid,
because when you're a kid I meanyou played at silly levels,
right.
But since being a grown up,this is like the highest D&D

(04:15):
games only ever seem to get tolevel 10 and then people lose
interest and start again.
You know when it becomes toohard to ref.
Most did a great job until wewere up to 13th level.
I got a feeling we're not amillion away, miles away from,
uh, a final confrontation withthe big bad guy.
But uh, who knows, we'll see.
And then on monday night's justrecently come to the conclusion

(04:36):
of a dark heresy game thatsandy's been running for us it's
very strange.
Sandy's a very open worldy kindof uh ref um and he's you know.
It's very different from someof the games I play where
they're on rails and you'regoing from a to b to c to the.
Yeah, he's very open and veryand so for a lot of it I think
we were sitting therefloundering and frustrated and

(04:57):
not knowing where we were going,but actually he's done some
really clever stuff.
I hate to say it because if hehears this his ego will be even
larger than it is already, butuh, yeah, he's yeah, it'll just
inflate.

Iain (05:09):
And yeah, a whole, a whole mess of an ego.
Oh, that's good.
I'm actually finishing off adnd campaign that's been running
for almost two years.
We are not level 14, we'relevel seven, so half as powerful
as you, and my little rogue guyis hopefully going to get an
end to his story.

(05:30):
That's been a lot of fun.
It's the game where my son wastelling me oh, you should, are
you playing a rogue?
Well, you should do blah, blah,blah, and then you can
basically be Batman.
And I looked at the qualifiersthat he gave me.
I'm like, oh, I can't actuallymulticlass to be a monk.
And he was like oh well, youknow.
So it gave that sad revelationthat not everyone can be Batman.

(05:54):
Not everyone can be Batman,it's true, not everyone can be
Batman, including my rogue.
My rogue is definitely notBatman.
He does fulfill that wonderfulstereotype of rogues of he's got
all this stealth coming out thekazoo and it's always hey, ian,
you could sneak in there andsee what's happening.
And I'm like I could.
But we all know what's going tohappen in this role.
Oh, look, there's a natural one.

(06:15):
I get a trip, or just like tobring along all the pots and
pans with me as I try to sneakinto the enemy lair, but it's
been probably a lot of fun.
I'm also running WarhammerFantasy Roleplay 4th edition the
Enemy Within with my group.
Now you say about Sandy's openworld stuff.
The Enemy Within is obviously acampaign that's fairly

(06:37):
prescribed.
It's good in that there'ssections of it that are kind of
open world and that there's kindof some good advice in the new
edition.
That's almost like, hey, relax,if the players decide that
they're not going to follow theplot, it's cool, let them go do
the stuff they enjoy, and youcan always circle it back to the
main thing, which is kind ofnice.
But we've hardly even get intothe plot and I'm looking at what

(07:00):
I've written and it's like,nope, we're not doing that then
because they've found somethingelse that they're interested in.
It's been cool.
We've only had one combat sofar.
There's been lots ofroleplaying and people kind of
getting into the skins of theircharacters, which is nice.
I'm very grateful for Foundry,though, because the thing that's
put me off Warhammer 4thEdition for years is they've, if

(07:22):
possible, made it morecomplicated than 1 edition was
and they've really doubled downon that kind of late 80s school
of game design and thankfullyfoundry has got some excellent
modules for it that does allthat clever stuff for you.
So all the calculations forcombat there's a thing you use
in combat called advantage,which is a score that you

(07:44):
accumulate as you do stuff, butyou lose it if you get hit.
But you can gain it from doingother things and there's a lot
of who's got what at any giventime and thankfully, foundry
just does it all for you.
It just works it out andthere's no need to to try and
calculate in your head what allthese these modifiers are.
So it's going very well.

(08:05):
Absolutely shout out to Cubicle7 for the Foundry modules.
They are professional beyondbelief.
I've made Foundry modulesbefore and it takes a lot of
effort to make them.
There's a lot of trying to dustoff your JavaScript and
remember how to get certainthings to work, but these things
are incredibly polished, soclearly a lot of effort going

(08:28):
into them.
Or maybe I'm just really bad atmaking foundry modules and
don't realize what effort isactually involved.

Jason (08:34):
Luckily, yeah, these, these guys do a great job I was
gonna say luckily for you, thereare some people that clearly do
know how to make foundrymodules work yeah, exactly, this
is not just me with like vastwalls of text.

Iain (08:46):
I did that recently, for steve has wanted me to run l5r
fourth edition, which isprobably the best edition of l5r
and there was a really goodroll 20 module for it.
But I do everything throughfoundry these days and don't
have a roll 20 subscription.
Sorry, roll 20 that's obviouslythat lucrative sponsorship deal
getting out the window there.
But with foundry it's got thebase mechanics for l5r fourth

(09:11):
edition, but everything elseyou've got to build out and I
was like I can do this.
I got like a bit part waythrough one of the clans and I'm
like, oh no, this is anightmare, this is too difficult
.
There's so much like everyskill you've got to create
because it doesn't have it inthere, every ability you've got
to create.

(09:31):
At first I was like I could justdo the early abilities for
people, but what if they want tobuy this?
And then what if they want tobuy that?
And before you know it, you'relooking at several hundred pages
of rules that you've somehowgot to translate electronically.
So that didn't happen.
So sorry, steve, that's whywe're playing warhammer fourth
edition and not l5r, because I'mlazy, but we are not here to

(09:52):
talk about warhammer fourthedition, dark heresy or dnd.
We are here to talk aboutpendragon, the game of knightly
goodness and king arthur'sfictional world.
I don't think that's theofficial tagline, but it's what
I'm going to stick with.
So, jay, what's your experiencewith Pendragon, when did you
first come across it, when didyou play it and what are your

(10:13):
initial thoughts?

Jason (10:15):
I mean, we're talking first edition, so I think we're
going back to when it was firstreleased 85?
Was it 85?
Oh, my god, I am that old.
It was something completelydifferent to what we were used
to playing.
So at that point I'm playing adand d and you know things like
that.
And pen dragon came along and itwas the first first game I

(10:35):
actually really came to, came tothat actually focused more on,
like, the personality of thecharacter and the role-playing
aspect of the character, and wemay have got a little bit
carried away with how that works, because, despite me being that
old, I was still young at thatpoint and then we started
rolling for everything and itwas like what would I do?

(10:55):
Oh, let's pick a virtue or a,you know whatever, and and roll
against it.
So I'm sure we'll get into whatI'm talking about, about these
personality traits and stufflike that.
It was weird because basicallyeverybody plays a fighter.
You know it's, you know there'sno, there's no real wizards and
there's there's no.
Well, there are, but you don'tget to play them right and

(11:18):
there's no, there's not a hugeamount of monsters or magic or
anything like that.
It's quite a low fantasy thingin that kind of aspect.
It was really different to whatwe, what we did, and I think it
was quite formative around thekind of, as I said, developed
personalities for characters.

Iain (11:34):
It's served me well since, I think well, I remember first
seeing it in 1991, and do youremember a magazine called games
master international?
Oh, yeah, yeah, I've probablygot some copies, actually
somewhere over 1991.

Jason (11:44):
Do you remember a magazine called Games Master
International?
Oh, yeah, yeah, I've probablygot some copies, actually
somewhere over.

Iain (11:49):
Yeah, there was a whole bunch of reviews for King Arthur
related stuff in one particularissue and I remember seeing all
the different.
There was a whole bunch ofsupplements for, I think, third
edition of Pendragon in there,but that was the edition where
it was really branching out intowell, you don't just need to
play a knight, you could play aPict or an Irish knight, or you

(12:14):
could be a Scandinavian or youcan play a Saxon or all these
other things.
So there was all thesesourcebooks released and I
remember seeing thosesourcebooks in the Virgin
Megastore in Glasgow in the KCMsection glasgow in the kcm
section because I was ravenouslyhunting for call of cthulhu
stuff and it always intrigued mebecause the art was beautiful,
it looked really, really good.
I never actually played it thenuntil I came across at

(12:37):
university a few years later andthere was a guy in the, the
club who ran it, but I think,similar to what you said, I
think he'd come from adnd andwas very much a role player,
r-o-l-e and you meanr-o-double-l right yeah,
r-o-double-l.
Yeah, I'll, I'll edit that outor I won't bother, who knows.

(12:59):
But yeah, r-o-double-l.
But he wanted to roll foreverything and the game just
wasn't fun because it was likeokay, so this is really just a
game of simon rolls to see whatthe rest of us do.
And we had zero agency.
That was my initial takeawaywas this game gives you no

(13:21):
agency because every time you dothe gm was like you need to
roll your Mercy versus Crueltrait and you know I botch it
and it's okay, you're going towipe out the village.
I'm like well, why, I don'twant to wipe out the village?
And it wasn't until years laterand there was a friend of mine
who ran Pendragon, and it's whenit was with White Wolf,

(13:43):
actually for fourth edition.
And he was saying well, youreally like White Wolf stuff,
you should see what they've done.
And my first thought was, oh,my god, they've not used the
storyteller system, have they?
It's, it's the, it's theoriginal Pendragon system.
And again I immediately waslike, oh, I played that
university.
I hated it because I didn'thave any agency.

(14:05):
It was just like you know, rollon this table of traits and see
what you do.
And he's like no, that's notthe way you play it.
And he took me through thisedition and kind of really
pulled scorn on the guy who'drun it before and he was saying
that you know you use these fordramatic effect.
It's like humanity in Vampire.
In Vampire you're not rollingfor self-control at every little

(14:27):
thing, but it's when it'sdramatically appropriate.
Likewise, in pen dragging it'snot like do you roll mercy or
mercy or cruel to see you knowwhat attitude you take to the
servants at home but it's likeyou finally defeat your, your
nemesis.
And that's when you roll it.
You know, do you spare his lifeor do you?

(14:48):
Do you become cruel?
Because that's the the dramatictone of the Arthurian stories.
It's like people being undoneby their, their virtues and
their vices, which makes perfectsense.
And as a bit of background, Ihad to study some of the
Arthurian stuff at universitybecause I did English literature
.
That's why I work in technologythese days.

(15:09):
But we had to look at Le Morted'Arthur and also Sir Gawain and
the Green Knight, and the themethat runs through them is
people being overcome by theirpassions and their virtues.
At the most dramaticallyappropriate moments, like in Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight, heessentially gives into

(15:33):
temptation and takes a thingthat could magically protect him
when he's acting with honorthroughout the entire thing, but
he comes.
There's one moment where it'slike this could really save my
life.
Okay, you know what I'm goingto give into temptation and take
this and that's a dramaticallyappropriate moment, which is
very fitting for athuriantragedy and all the, all the

(15:54):
stuff that goes with that.
That really appealed to me.
Me because that captured theessence of these stories.
I remember quite enjoying themat university after I got
through the trudge that wasmedieval English Because spoiler
alert folks, for those of youwho haven't studied literature
it's not very similar to modernEnglish, it's more like German.
When you get through all of that, the stories and things that

(16:15):
really appealed was that buildup to tragedy.
The whole Moth to Arthur is atragedy.
It's about Arthur's beautifuldream, for Britain is
essentially undone and you knowhe dies heroically at the end of
it.
Spoiler, but I think everyoneknows that and that's what I
think Pendragon truly captures.
Is that tragedy that is builtinto Arthurian stories?

(16:38):
What's your experience ofplaying with the various
mechanics?

Jason (16:43):
Absolutely.
So I actually looked out andI've got my one of my character
sheets actually here in front ofme from a game that was run for
me.
A Pendragon that was run by aguy called Rob did a fantastic
ref.
He's one of the best refs I'veactually played with and when he
first said he was going to runPendragon I was like, oh, but
we're all going to be justknights and we're all going to

(17:04):
be.
But he manages to keep it allreally interesting.
But to go over the thing, you'veonly got sort of five stats
compared to the usual sort ofsix.
But they're all you know, a lotof size, dexterity, strength,
constitution and appearance arekind of like five stats.
But the main bulk of what we'vebeen talking about is these
personality traits and they'repaired and split across at one

(17:27):
to 20, okay.
So you have energetic versuslazy and they add up to 20.
So if you've got 30 inenergetic, you've got seven lazy
and so forth and they go downall through the um, the virtues,
the vices of, and there are I'mjust actually counting them now
uh, 13 pairs seems an oddnumber, 13 pairs.

(17:51):
But you also got uh, glory,which was the main kind of
mechanic for progressing yourcharacter based on your
personality traits isparticularly if you exemplified
some that were good for yourreligion.
So if you were a christianknight, you needed to be honest
and chaste and pious and allthat kind of stuff.
If you were a pagan knight, uh,a bit more lustful, a bit more,

(18:15):
uh, you know, honest andgenerous but very proud, and so
forth, so you had some conflictyou played a pagan night.
Oh yes, I played a pagan night.
Of course, I played a pagannight, always played a pagan
night, you know.

Iain (18:26):
So I can't see you in this exemplar of christian piety I
can do it.

Jason (18:30):
I can do it, um, but I didn't at this point.
So, um, you know, my my, youroll these stats and you get
some various uh sort of levelsbetween, as I said, 1 and 20 uh,
and if you've got a traitthat's above, kind of 16, you
become known for it.
It's exemplary, uh.
So sir cadigan the just wasborn because he had a very high

(18:52):
just stat.
So he was very good, not veryarbitrary, he was very fair.
And then the other thing thatcame into it was passions, and
every knight had the same sortof basic four, which were a
loyalty to his lord, a love ofhis family, hospitality and
honor.
But then you could add your ownones.
So this guy that I've got herewas very, really didn't like

(19:15):
saxons, okay, had a hatred ofsaxons out of the kazoo and it
would really, you know, he if,if, got woe betide if a saxon
crossed his path.
You know, and it and a lot ofit was, you know I, I agree,
when I first started playingwhen I was a kid, it was you
know we would roll everything.
You know.
Roll your energetic versus lazy, see, if you get up in the

(19:38):
morning, you know it's.
You know.
Roll your greed, you know, tosee if you eat too much
breakfast or drink too much, andit's like that.
That I agree with you and youknow it's just.
It's just, it's quite lazy.
I mean it was good fun for 10seconds because you know, but
it's not.
There's no player agencyinvolved and it needed reigning
in, as you said, to the dramaticand the kind of relevant points

(20:01):
of the story.
And when you did that, like robdid for us, they were, they
were really good.
I mean I can, I can I talk alittle bit about dnd alignment
in this, should I?
yeah, because obviously it'salmost like the opposite to
alignment right, because you'vegot all these personalities much
more developed.
But it's a similar concept inthat, if you don't know what
your character is going to do,look to this and it will guide

(20:25):
you right.
It shouldn't mean everydecision is dictated by these
things.

Iain (20:30):
It's when you either haven't got a clue, in which
case yeah, go for it, or, as yousay, dramatically appropriate,
pick something that you know, inwhich case the lack of agency
actually becomes quite enjoyable, you know yes, exactly, and
that's what I highlighted onwhen I did the history episode
was, when you actually look atit, it does actually give you

(20:52):
more agency and it gives youthese signposts in terms of this
is how, if you're famed forbeing just, if you're in a given
situation where you're meant tobe fair, then you're probably
more likely than not going to befair.
It's not going to be.
You roll a dice.
You're famed for being just.
Therefore, you are going to befair and going to arbitrate

(21:13):
correctly, and I much prefer itto the dnd alignment system.
I mean, I think everyone's hadthat experience where there's
somebody who plays lawful goodbut basically uses that as an
excuse to do genocide at anygiven opportunity and you're
like you're actually playinglawful evil.
No, no, I'm upholding the law,I'm, I'm being good, I'm like

(21:34):
you just wiped out a village.
You're basically darth v,you're basically Darth Vader,
you're lawful evil, whereas withPendragon it's not so defined.
Like you say, you've got 13different things, 13 moving
parts.
That is a hugely complexcombination of traits and they
can guide how you behave.
And I like the fact that theyintroduced that system where if

(21:58):
you were a differentdenomination of knight like if
you were a pagan knight or youwere a christian knight.
You have different traitsbecause it shows the cultural
values and I know they.
They did that with oldereditions with if you were from a
different culture, you haddifferent traits as well.
Like if you're a saxon, youdifferent traits to if you were
a k, for example, and it reallyhelps up, bring that world to

(22:21):
life and it means that peoplearen't behaving the same way.
I also kind of like the factthat the book really makes out
that these are knightly traits,like your average peasant
toiling in the field is notgoing to be affected by these.
These are the traits that markyou out as something special and
something different, becauseyou are guided by a coat of
honour, whereas the poor fellowin the field, he, just wants to

(22:44):
survive and have enough to eat,whereas you're more concerned
with your good name and the goodname of your Lord and behaving
in a virtuous manner, ratherthan you know, am I actually
going to get some bread for myfamily this day or are they
going to starve?
You mentioned as well thepassions, where you're guided by
a devotion to certain thingsand the passions take all sorts

(23:06):
of different forms.
As you said, it's things likelove, honour etc.
And those are really great.
If you're running Pendragon,those are great role-playing
opportunities.
The example that's always givenin the rulebook is Salansalot
in Lamotte Dathur, that his lovefor Guinevere is what makes him
the best knight in the universe.

(23:27):
However, it's also the thingthat ultimately ruins him.
That's the thing that causeshim to betray his lord and bring
everything crashing down.
And if you're a clever ref, youshould be keeping an eye on
what your players passions areand putting those situations in
there that force them to make achoice between what they want to
do and what they don't want todo.

(23:49):
And I like as well.
There's mechanics in there thatif you fail a passion role, you
become melancholic because yourgreat love is not what you
thought it was.
But there's also the chanceyou'll go mad and just run off
naked into the wilderness forlike five years and then
reappear, presumably having gottherapy in the wilderness.

Jason (24:11):
And, to be honest, that's just a Tuesday.
If you're a pagan knight,though, Running off naked into
the world.
I think the other major thing Ithink Pendragon brought in that
I'd never seen before in in a,in a, in a role-playing game,
was that focus on relationshipsas well, because, um, death is
inevitable.
In Pendragon there is noresurrection, there is no

(24:33):
magical healing.
There's a bit of herbs andstuff like that.
You might be able to get a bitof chirurgary or whatever,
however you pronounce it, butthe other thing you've got to do
is you've your.
The intention is for you tomarry and have kids and run your
estate so that your peasantsaren't worried about where their
bread comes from to survive thewinter.
Surviving the winter was a bigdeal, you know, it was a huge

(24:53):
thing.
You have to make all kinds ofrolls in the winter down period.
They made a thing that everyadventure was basically one year
.

Iain (25:02):
I really like that.
It was almost like everyadventure was just a thing that
happened to you during,essentially, the spring and
summer.
It was like a thing, but therewas a whole bunch of other stuff
that happened.
But you roll the tables forthat because it's not like a
super accurate night simulator,accurate night simulator, it's
like, no, we'll roll to see whathappens in the background.
You're right, the winter phasereally made pendragon stand out

(25:26):
because, again for those of youunfamiliar with it, pendragon is
a game about legacy, that, asjason said, you need to get
married and have kids becausewhen your character dies, you're
going to play your heir andyour heir inherits a whole bunch
of stuff that you hadbeforehand.
But it actually makes thewinter phase I remember playing
it and getting genuinely wantedworried in the winter phase.

(25:46):
Is my you know sickly one yearold heir going to survive the
winter or is he going to die inhis cot, which is pretty bleak?

Jason (25:55):
yeah, and will my wife survive childbirth?
All these things I mean you'retalking about these.
These games are supposed to beset in that kind of dark ages
period, from what?
Seventh century to kind of inthat kind of few hundred years
following that.
So you know, childbirth was abig thing.
People didn't always survive it.
Your kids may not survive thewinter.
Your horses may not survive.

Iain (26:16):
I mean, your horse was really yeah, there's a literal
does your horse survive?
Yeah, absolutely.

Jason (26:21):
There's a horse personality table and one of the
editions there was as well andthere's all different types of
horses you can buy.

Iain (26:30):
It's very horse very horse focused.

Jason (26:32):
Yeah, it made a difference on your, on your
jousting ability, depending onwhat your, what your horse was,
and things like that so ifyou're the quality horse
interesting.

Iain (26:40):
I talked to one of my um friends about pendragon it was
just when I was doing thehistory episode and once I
explained it to her she was likewhy, why would I, as a woman,
want to play in this game if mysole objective is to have
kiddies but I might die?
And there is a nod to that infifth edition where if you're a

(27:03):
female player character, you geta bonus to your child birth
role, I guess because it's likeit's not much fun for it to be
and you die in child birth.
So there's a bonus to femaleplayer characters for giving
birth.
That was the thing that didfascinate me when fifth edition
came out, because there's rulesfor female knights.

(27:23):
Now there's been rules forfemale knights since third
edition, it's not a new thing.
But surprise, surprise, certaincorners of the internet were
absolutely outraged at this andclaiming that this was
historically inaccurate.
And you, how dare you havefemale knights in this?
This game like this is a gameabout magic swords.
There's a wizard called melonin it.

(27:44):
It's set in a version ofbritain in the 6th century where
they're wearing 14th centuryarmor and carrying 14th century
weapons.
And you're concerned thatbecause a woman and a horse
might be able to spear someone.
That's the least accurate thingyeah, that's mad, isn't it?

Jason (27:59):
I mean it is, it is.
You know, there are parts of itwhich are supposed to, which
are attempt that the attempt isthere to be, you know,
historically accurate.
As I said, you know, winteringand having things die in
childbirth, or or having youknow your horse, your air and
things like that, or or indeedthe joyous events of childbirth

(28:19):
and so forth.
There is definitely some kindof effort to be historically
accurate, but it is not ahistorical game.
Arthur is a legend, and by thatI don't mean he came back with
crisps when he went to the bar.
He's a proper legend, right,but he is a proper legend, right
.
So, but he's, he's, you knowhe's, he's, he's a mythology.

(28:40):
You know it is not accurate.
Yeah, I don't, I don't get it.
I mean I must have.
I think all the characters we'veever played in pendragon have
been, have been, male knights.
Uh, I think even when we've hada couple of girls playing,
they've played male knights aswell.
Um, there definitely seems tobe.
Is, you know, I don't know,inherently sexist, I guess,

(29:01):
which is poor, but only becausewe let it be.
It doesn't have to be.

Iain (29:04):
As you said, there were rules for it the book makes out
that it actually gives exampleshistorically, of women who were
warriors at that time, which itmakes fascinating reading of
your history like myself you say, you can't have female warriors
.

Jason (29:19):
Well, tell buddhica.
I mean, do you know what I?

Iain (29:21):
mean right, exactly, they're just trying to encourage
more people to play yeah, likeit's not just like you.
You give the example.
There's women who will be likeyeah, I'll happily play a male
knight.
Equally, there's probably otherwomen like no, I want to play a
female knight.
Why can't I play a femaleknight?
Like no reason you can't,there's no reason, no reason.
You can't just just play afemale knight and again, it's

(29:42):
this fantasy kingdom that you'reessentially in brienne of tarth
.

Jason (29:47):
If you've taken game of thrones, for example, game of
thrones is as much of anaccurate historical
representation as lamorte darthaat Le Morte d'Arthur okay, it's
you know yeah.

Iain (30:00):
Yeah, in fact, Game of Thrones is probably closest
thematically to Pendragon thanmany other major fantasy
franchises.

Jason (30:05):
I may have hit on something there.

Iain (30:07):
Yeah, exactly, you could easily run a Game of Thrones RPG
using the Pendragon rules Veryeasy, very easily indeed, yeah,
but I think the other thing isthat the actual concept of
knights did not exist in the 6thcentury wales, which is what
we're actually talking abouthere.
Therefore, let the ladies playknights if they want to
absolutely you mentioned beforethe the stats on your character

(30:30):
sheet.
Um, I think the keen-eyedlistener will keen-eyed,
keen-eared listener will workout that those are basic
role-playing stats.
If you've played Call ofCthulhu or RuneQuest, those
stats will appear very familiarto you.
But the actual system itself isalmost a cut down version
because, unlike basicrole-playing where everything is
a percentage, in Pendragon allthe skills are basically between

(30:54):
1 and 20.
I don't know about you, but Ifound playing that that actually
made things flow more easily, Ifeel, and it was less prone to
sway than sometimes you get.
And, like Call of Cthulhu usedto annoy me.
I'm this like world-renownedexpert in like ancient languages
and someone's like we have thistome, we need translating, and

(31:16):
I roll like 86, like no, youcan't translate it, like oh,
great, and I mean obviously it'snot that it can't drive, you
have a decent ref.
You're like it takes you a bitlonger to translate, but it felt
very, very open to swing,whereas I think with 1 to 20 it
feels less inclined towards away plus.

(31:36):
I think with 1 to 20, it feelsless inclined towards a way Plus
.
When your stats went up by onepoint, it felt like more of a
big deal in Pendragon than inCall of Cthulhu, when your skill
went up by 1%, for example.

Jason (31:46):
I think it's quite a clever system.
It's not the most intuitive, Iguess, because generally if
you're fighting or you're doingsomething, it tends to be an
opposed role.
Generally it's just roll underyour skill.
So every skill is rated from120.
Rolling under it, you succeed,and a critical.
A critical success was if yourolled the exact number of your

(32:08):
skill.
So if you've got 15 inlongsword it's you know then you
roll 15.
That's a critical rather than,in fact, 20 was the worst role
you could roll.
Okay.
So theoretically, ian should begreat at this game because he's
never rolled a natural 20 inhis life.
Um, so you know he should begreat at it.
So, but when it was opposed,the interesting thing to me was

(32:29):
always highest roll wins.
That is, under your skill.
So that means if I've got 14skill and you've got six,
there's much more chance of mewinning and I'm going to beat
you much more frequently thanyou're going to do me.
So it's almost like the guywith the highest skill is in a
much, much better position thanthe guy who isn't, in my opinion

(32:50):
.

Iain (32:50):
So but that is kind of fitting with the source material
, I think.
I mean that fits with there's.
I think there's one moment inMort Dathur where Lancelot takes
on a billion knights on his ownand it's because he happens to
have like 20 in statisticalterms.

Jason (33:07):
Do not take Lancelot on in a joust, is all I'm saying.
But combat was lethal,absolutely lethal.

Iain (33:12):
Yeah, combat is brutal Hit points never went up.

Jason (33:17):
You literally added two stats together and that was your
hit points.
I think the maximum you'regoing to have is 36 in those.
Right, they're two level eight,two eighties.
And if you got hit by a majorwound if you got hit, took
enough damage in a round to be amajor wound that was you pretty
much down and out andpotentially having long-term
ramifications.
You know so the the, the oldknight who, with one arm or one

(33:38):
leg, was definitely a feature.

Iain (33:41):
Um yeah, didn't sugarcoat it that's something I really
liked about it, though, andthat's the fact that, as you
mentioned, your hit points neverwent up.
They just went down.
As you get older, your stats asall of us who are getting older
know your stats go down, yourphysical stats start to decrease
, and there's a role in thewinter table to basically see

(34:02):
how much you degenerate everyyear once you're over 30 or
something, and you're just gonnaget worse and worse.
But as a knight, to maintainyour glory, you have to be out
there doing knight stuff, unlessyou abdicate to your heir.
So, as you mentioned, the oldknight who is crippled and
missing an eye and justbasically propped up with his

(34:23):
horse.
But out there for one more, youknow, glorious run into battle.
That is a feature of of thecampaign.
I also like the fact there's thesort of the knightly etiquette
that if you're defeated incombat, you're not necessarily
dead.
Your opponent may spare you andransom you off back to your
estate, which is it's quite anice way to soften the blow, but
usually, if you've taken amajor wound, you're not in a

(34:45):
great shape anyway and you'reprobably going to die of sepsis,
because medical science isn'treally a thing in the world of
of pen driving.
But I like the fact the combatis fast, moving and brutal and
the fact that, as a knight mostnon-knightly foes you just beat
them.
If you're against a load ofpeasant levies, you're going to
tear through them because you'rea trained warrior and they're

(35:07):
essentially peasants with spears.

Jason (35:09):
That and you've got chainmail and a shield generally
as well helps.

Iain (35:12):
Yeah, chainmail and a shield and you're a massive
horse and they've basically beendragged out of the fields where
they're worrying if they'regoing to make enough food for
the winter.
And I think it's where theconceit of every adventure is a
thing that happens in a year.
It means you're focusing onmore important stuff.
There's not loads of adventureswhere you're fighting against

(35:33):
loads of mooks.
The adventures that you focuson are the big things that
happen.
Your night may go back at theend of the winter.
It's like I remember there wasthat peasant uprising that we
put down in 10 minutes flat.
You don't play the peasantuprising out because that's not
fun.
It's just you threshing yourway through a bunch of peasants.
However, you do play out theadventure where you find out who
the instigator was, and it'sactually some dark sorceress

(35:56):
who's in sorrel.
The minds of the, the peasantry.

Jason (35:59):
So it it fits very well with making adventures relevant
and fitting the nightly themeyeah, and I think there was a
lot, of, a lot of focus at leastwhen I played around around
nightly games as well.
So tests, so it wasn'tnecessarily.
You went out and fought yourway through a horde of bad guys

(36:21):
and found whoever was at the endof it.
Sometimes one of your events ayear might be you.
You entered a joustingcompetition which ended a you
know a melee, a grand melee orwhatever, and then you'd fight
and and you'd win a prize.
Maybe that was what you thatwere you aiming to do, or you
would impress that lady that youwere trying to trying to win

(36:42):
over uh and so forth, takingfavors and things like that.
So there was an awful big focuson the kind of not just gaining
xp, killing things and movingon.
There was a lot done that.
Just as you say, it fitsthematically so well with like,
oh yeah, well, I'm not actuallyvery good with advanced, but if
I want to win this, thistournament, I best buck my ideas

(37:05):
up and things like that.

Iain (37:06):
So yeah, one of the best games I played on was the
scenario was essentiallyslightly mentioned a tournament,
but there was a load of courtlyintrigue happening and there
was the events happening.
But there was a load of courtlyintrigue happening and there was
the events happening, but therewas stuff happening in the
background and it was trying towork out what the you know the
scheme was.
In this case it was somebodywho was poisoning certain

(37:28):
knights so that they didn'tperform well in the joust, and I
remember that my character wentup against some guy who was
like the best jouster in thisparticular county and I was like
, oh my god, this is going to beterrible and I absolutely blow
him out of the water and I'd bethinking that was weird.
I thought he was really goodand then it turns out he's been
poisoned and oh my god, did youpoison him so you could win?
And then I have to go clear myname by finding who had done it.

(37:52):
So that sort of stuff'sfantastic.
Again, very fitting with the,the source material.
It helps build the world andbuild the, the atmosphere of, of
the, the athorian side ofthings, rather than just being
dnd where everyone's likeplaying a paladin, essentially
yeah, and this is a great thing.

Jason (38:08):
I mean, I mentioned rob.
He did some great stuff.
I mean, um, you know, I thinkI'm literally looking through my
passions here, and there wasone to a Lady Beren, and Lady
Beren was basically put forwardas Lord Cadigan and Sir
Cadigan's future bride, and I'vegot a really low love score for
her, so that clearly didn'twork out very well you the worst

(38:31):
.
I couldn't help it, but I don'tthink she had a particularly
good.
I think it was like if, in caseof they're both trying to
almost like force together,neither of them wanted it.
All she wanted to do was ride.
She's right to ride horses.
That's what she wanted to do.
She's a bit, you know, and I Ithink at one point I managed to
sneak her in as disguisedcontestant into a horse race.

(38:54):
Effectively was one of thethings that we did, which
probably wasn't very knightly ofme, but you know, I'm just not
honorable.
This is difference.
All right, um, and then I don'tthink she didn't win it, which
was a bit anti-feminist.
I thought I should have won it,but never mind, um, and then
the other thing he did, whichwas this was the one of the best
things, I think is we went, wewere set before arthur, we were

(39:16):
in Uther's reign.
This is Uther trying to bringthe clans together and all of
the lands together, and Utherhad a son and it just so
happened that myself and my mate, jason Shruton's Christian
knight, happened to interceptthis guy with a beard smuggling

(39:38):
out this baby boy and, um, I mayhave distracted.
Uh, I can't.
What's the name?
I can't remember hischaracter's name, but the
christian knight, uh, to allowmerlin to make an escape with
the baby arthur.
So that was our, and it's justlittle touches like that where

(39:58):
you actually realise you are inthis background.
You don't have to be Arthur,gawain, lancelot, you know these
guys.
The idea is you're on thefringes of it or, in this case,
we're on the fringes of it, andthat was fantastic.
I was just like I was so madeup that basically I'd helped
Merlin escape with Arthur.
Mr.

Iain (40:18):
Shrimp wasn't very happy with me.
That's one of the things that Ireally like about the Grand
Pendragon campaign, because Ibought that and it's like an
absolute beast of a book andwhen you read it you can tell
this is Greg Stafford's magnumopus.
This is his passion just pouredout on paper.
The guy clearly loved thematerial but to your point, it's

(40:40):
exactly what you describe.
You have this whole campaignfrom like beginning of uther's
reign all the way through towhen arthur dies at the end and
you play in there.
But it's these incidental parts.
It's not like, hey, you'rehanging out, hanging out with
Arthur and doing Arthurianthings.
You are, as you mentioned, atthe fringes of the myth, enough

(41:03):
to be part of it, but you're notthe main guy.
You're not Lancelot, you're notGawain, but you're embroiled in
that world and it builds it.
I've never seen a campaign asatmospheric as the Grand
Pendragon campaign, just readingit.
I've never seen a campaign asatmospheric as the Grand
Pendragon campaign, just readingit.
I've never played through it,but reading it it just reeks of
atmosphere.

(41:23):
I've played in some of thereally big campaigns like Mask
of Neathletep and Enemy Withinand they're always touted as
these cornerstone RPG campaignsand they're really good.
But I would argue that thegrand pendragon campaign is
probably one of the pinnacles ofcampaign design, just for the
atmosphere it has.

(41:43):
There's all this information onsetting up like salisbury,
essentially as this sandbox foryour players to play in, all
this advice on little adventuresyou can do.
And then there's these thingsyou can drop in on a
year-to-year basis that thathappen, that are related to the
main campaign that slowly buildsover the years.

(42:04):
I mean you can get years ofplay out of that campaign.
There's, I think there'ssomething like about close to 90
years worth of campaignmaterial.
So if you take each one ofthose as a four hour session,
that is a lot of hours of RPGstuff going on there.

Jason (42:20):
Count me in.

Iain (42:22):
Yeah, exactly, I would love to run it.
It's an incredibly good, wellput together piece of work and
also vital for home defence.
If someone breaks into yourhouse, hit them with a Grand
Pendragon campaign.
They are not getting back up.
That is a hefty book, whichactually brings me on to my next

(42:42):
question.
Did you ever play any publishedadventures, or was it all
homebrew?

Jason (42:47):
That was all homebrew.
Well, as far as I'm aware, thevery fact that you talked about
the Grand Pendragon campaign andit spanning the user to Arthur,
I mean maybe maybe he wasrunning some of that.
I don't know, maybe he got someideas from some of that, but as
far as I'm aware it was all, uh, homebrew, um, when I was
playing it in school a guy craigwas right was running it, um,

(43:08):
and you know he did.
He did a lot of stuff witheverything as far as I was aware
was was homebrew.

Iain (43:14):
I don't think I've ever played, knowingly played any of
the published adventures yeah,that's what I found as well,
like when I played it, the guyrunning it.
In both instances it was allstuff that they'd come up with.
But the interesting thing Ifound in both cases, even though
a university was very much, youknow, you roll on your passions

(43:34):
, your passions, your virtuesand see what happens.
But the adventure stuff that wedid do it had a similar
atmosphere to the stuff that thebetter campaign that I played
in.
Maybe 10-15 years later it hadthe same feel to it and I think
it's a testament to the adviceand guidance given to GMs of

(43:58):
making it Arthurian.
So it feels Arthurian.
It doesn't feel like D&D.
This is not Ewan Greyhawk orthe Forgotten Realms wearing
plate mail.
This is something different.
You are in 6th century Wales orSalisbury or wherever you are.
It has that feel to it.
There's not orcscs, there's notgoblins, there's loads of

(44:20):
saxons.
Those are your, your mandatoryfoes, but it feels that way and
I did find that consistencybetween different campaigns.
It's something thatdisappointed me with the latest
edition.
So if you read the latestedition of Pendragon, there's a
note at the end from GregStafford who basically says this

(44:40):
is Greg's ultimate edition ofPendragon and he makes a nod at
the fact that, because I've gotreally old and I'm not probably
going to write another editionand, sadly, the poor guy passed
away.
However, it's not really acomplete edition.
The core rulebook is like theD&D Player's Handbook it tells
you how to make a character andit tells you some rules and

(45:03):
there's a little bit of thewinter phase but there's all
sorts of oh and more stuff willbe coming in this book, but it
doesn't have a GM's chapter tosay this is how you build an
Arthurian story.
There's none of that.
It's just rules and there'stables for different types of
horses you can buy and differenttypes of armour you can buy,
but there's no GM section and Iknow the previous editions had

(45:26):
that.
I think 5th edition's reallygood.
I've seen a copy of that andthere's a whole tonne of stuff
in there that makes it very,very complete, but sadly this
latest edition doesn't have anyof that advice.
What, what editions did youplay through?
Obviously you played throughfirst edition, when you honestly
couldn't tell you.

Jason (45:44):
I think I've always just played personally, so this is
the thing I'm sitting here going.
Oh yeah, sixth edition.
I don't even know how manyeditions there are.
I think they say six.
I did have a quick look and seewhat the latest one was and
actually there's some commentson the internet about a similar
thing, about it's more like aplayers nights handbook,
effectively.
But I remember the firstedition, uh, it came in a box,

(46:06):
it was from, it was fromchaosium, if I remember.
Yeah, and it was like you know,that was the only edition I
kind of remember.
Um, I am now.
I am now suspecting that robmight have run the Great
Pandragon campaign, by the way,because my liege lord apparently
was Roderick of Salisbury.
And now I'm like ah, hang ondid he run?

(46:26):
ah, and I thought he was great.
Now he's still a very good ref,so no, I don't.

Iain (46:33):
You heard to hear Rob Jason thinks you're a charlatan.

Jason (46:35):
Well, all of a sudden it's dented my confidence.

Iain (46:38):
No, because I was what are the things I'm not playing in
another game that guy runs.

Jason (46:43):
Yeah, because one of the things I've said before it's
like you know you all play humanfighters with chainmail and
sword right.
Occasionally you might getsomebody's got a mace or a
two-hander or an axe.
Absolutely and all of a sudden,if you think about it, it's
almost like the only differencebetween character is what, and

(47:05):
even the weapons don't even doany different damage.
All the damage is based on yourstrength and your size.
There's nothing to do with whatweapon you're wielding and
things like that.

Iain (47:13):
The weapons are purely thematic.
I was trying to be allhistorically accurate.

Jason (47:17):
It's like I'm gonna have a horseman's pick and it's like
cool, it does the same damageabsolutely you know, he managed
to, to have play a campaign thatlasted, you know, probably 18
months, couple of years, and younever got bored with it and you
never thought, you never feltlimited by the fact that you
were all and what.
What was focused on was not thefighter part, right, it was the

(47:40):
personalities, it was therelationships, it was the, you
know, sneaking merlin out theback door while your christian
knight is looking and tutting atyou, you know, and he's not
happy with what you've just gotto do man shrimpton's so
judgmental, isn't he?
his christian knight was veryjudgmental, so I'm not saying.
Shrimpton, but his Christiannight was definitely very

(48:00):
judgmental.
We set him up, he got married,had kids, all that kind of stuff
, whereas poor Sir Cadigan neversettled down.

Iain (48:12):
That's because he was just unhappy that that woman who
liked riding horses wasn't tallenough for him.

Jason (48:16):
She wasn't happy with him either.
So you know, If you think aboutit, how many of those marriages
would have been arranged orkind of were all for political
reasons, not necessarily, foryou know, people didn't marry
for love back then, you know.

Iain (48:32):
I did like that part of the system, though, because you
get players who at first werelike I'm this young freewheeling
knight, I don't care, you know,I've got a woman in every port,
sort of thing and then you'relike no dude, you really need to
get an heir, you need to settledown.
Then they're like you'll do,come here.
Oh, she died in childbirth.
Wonderful love, the 6th century, and it's socialised healthcare

(48:54):
.

Jason (48:55):
The only way of getting any form of immortality for your
character effectively is to getan heir and for them to get an
heir, and so forth.

Iain (49:03):
I think it's.
What makes Pendryking good isyou mentioned it earlier is
death is inevitable.
It's not the D&D where there'sa resurrection spell waiting
around the corner or anythinglike that.
It's not the Warhammer with itsfate points where you can cheat
death.
Your character is just going toget worse.
I suppose it's very similar toCall of Cthulhu in that regard.
Call of Cthulhu, you neverreally get better.

(49:25):
You just start this slowlydownward spiral into madness.
With Pendragon, your characteris going to almost even get old
and infirm soon.
They're not going to be able tosit on their horse and they're
going to become bedridden andthen you're going to have to
abdicate to this young buck whois going to take over.
But that's really cool andthat's what makes it what it is.

(49:45):
It reminds me and again, when Idid the history episode, I
actually found that there was alink between the two.
One of my favourite games on thePC is Crusader Kings, which,
for those of you who don't know,is a grand strategy game by
Paradox.
But unlike a lot of their gameswhere you play a country, this
is a civilisation type game.

(50:06):
You don't play a country, youplay a dynasty, so you play a
king or a queen of a certaindynasty, and your objective is
not necessarily to conquer landand get more territory, although
you absolutely can do that.
It's to keep your dynasty going, which means you have to marry,
you have to find and ideallyfind people with good genetic

(50:27):
traits that they can have passedon to your, your offspring, and
that's what pendragon is.
Pendragon is about securingthis lineage and making sure
that, when your character doesfinally go off to the pearly
gates, you've got someonewaiting in the wings that they
can take over and look aftertheir estate.

(50:47):
And it's quite cool because youinherit all the stuff of your
previous character.
Like you inherit part of theirglory, you inherit their estate
and or their debts obligations,whatever obligations, yeah,
whatever, whatever they have,and I've heard these stories of
people playing in campaignswhere they're literally playing
their great, great greatgrandchildren of the original

(51:08):
characters and I think that'sfantastic that you've you've
played through that much historyand that obviously creates a
real living, breathing worldbecause you can tell the legends
of what your ancestors did,which you don't get in any other
rpg no, that's true, that'strue, and it's I don't know,
it's I.

Jason (51:27):
I mean how you could play .
I don't think I've ever playedeven my son or daughter in one
of these games, you know um,that's because you never get
married.

Iain (51:37):
He was too fussy.

Jason (51:39):
I've had other characters that definitely did get married
and definitely did have kids.
I'm stunned into admirationwith people that have actually
managed to keep a game goingthat long that they would get
into that kind of realm.

Iain (51:48):
Maybe they were just really unlucky and are just
playing a whole bunch of infantsbecause people just keep dying
in the winter.
One character made it to 30,you know yeah, one of the things
I liked about sixth edition,though I've obviously mentioned
that it's um, essentially aplayer's handbook.
Have you seen the starter setfor sixth edition?
obviously no, I haven't sixthedition was curious and they

(52:11):
released the starter set beforethe main book.
And again it's another kind ofwonderful KSEM publishing
debacle where sixth edition waspromised for years.
Then it's like it's comingreally soon.
Here's a starter set but nomain rules, and it's a really
nice looking starter set.
The character sheets aregorgeous, they're like medieval

(52:36):
manuscripts, they've gotfantastic artwork on them and
you've got a little introductoryadventure, like a fighting
fantasy style thing that youplay through on your own.
That teaches you the basicmechanics.
It's a wonderful way to learnbecause every single role comes
up.
And then you've got roles for asort of mini campaign, which is
nice, and there's sort of themain rules condensed into a

(53:00):
little rule book.
The problem is, as a starterset this is Pendragon there's no
rules for the winter stuff,because they obviously want you
to buy the main rules, butyou're basically confined to
playing the six characters outof the box and you're missing
that fundamental core part ofPendragon which is the legacy
system that lets you move on tosomething else.

(53:23):
And I always wonder whether,because it was such a big delay
between the starter set and themain rulebook being released,
whether some people who boughtit thought this looks really
cool and then just never got anyfurther with it because the
rules to move on to like thenext stage of play were never

(53:44):
there, which is a shame, becauseit's a really cool stuck with
the longest summer that neverended yeah, exactly so.
The difference between editionsin pendragon it's a bit like a
lot of the KCM games andmechanically they're not that
different.
If you think when you startedplaying first edition I think I
started third editionmechanically it's pretty much

(54:07):
the same as sixth edition.
You have this rule under system.
You have the virtues and vices,which haven't really changed.
It's more like little tweaksunder the hood.
I know with call of cthulhu,like until seventh edition, ksm
hadn't really changed the rulesin any shape or form.
You know a few minor tweakshere and there.

(54:29):
Characters were a bit morepowerful throughout editions,
but it wasn't until seventhedition that they actually
changed how the rules workedfundamentally and I quite liked
that with Pendragon and thatthere was this consistency.
Like I played 3rd edition thenpicked up.
I think when I played it itmust have been 4th or 5th

(54:49):
edition again with you.
I wasn't even sure what editionwe played in the mid 2000s.
It must have been fourth, butit felt exactly the same.
There was no need to relearnanything and I think they just
added more, more stuff for gmsand more stuff to like behind
the scenes to keep it going.
But one thing I know that theydid add was rules for playing

(55:12):
wizards, and I I've never usedthem, but looking at the
criticism of it like when I wasdoing the history episode I went
and looked this up they werenot favourably received.
It wasn't just the rules werenot great, but the general
consensus seemed to be is you'vekilled what the main theme of

(55:33):
this game is.
This game is you're playingArthurian knights.
This is not D&D.
You don't need a wizard in theparty.
Wizards are meant to be rare,like there's Merlin and maybe
there's an evil guy somewhere.

Jason (55:46):
Morgan, the Fate that's it.

Iain (55:48):
Yeah, you don't have wizards just knocking about
doing wizard stuff.
And likewise I mentioned 3rdedition.
I saw those reviews in GamesMaster International for the
different publications andseeing those publications in the
shop, apparently they weremassively favourably received.
People were like I don't wantto play a Pict or a Viking or

(56:12):
any of the other cultures.
I want to play a Kymric knightdoing knightly stuff in
Arthurian Britain.
By all means have those asantagonists.
And having colour on what it'slike north of the wall in
Pictland, that's cool, but don'tnecessarily have players
playing them.
What's your feeling on that?

Jason (56:33):
It's a mixed bag, I think .
So, wizards, no, go away, no,no, go away.
Not, no, no, no, no, I don'twant anybody throwing fireballs
or, you know, charm persons oranything like that.
That's reserved for, you know,as you said, merlin, and, and
you know we should all beterrified of magic.
I mean, there might be, theremight be the old wise woman that

(56:54):
has the odd herb skills and allthat kind of stuff.
You know we're talking way pre.
You know well, I mean,christianity isn't even the
major religion a lot of the time.
So having a wise woman who cando healing and a bit of
chirurgery or whatever potionsor whatever, that seems OK to me
.
But it's not really going to bemuch of a player character,

(57:15):
right, because you know you'renot going to be establishing a
lineage and all this.
I suppose you might, but Idon't think so.

Iain (57:22):
A lineage of wise women.

Jason (57:23):
Absolutely.
You know it could be, who knows?
But the other I don't know.
Some of the other stuff I'm nottoo fussed with.
I mean, I think Chris came intothe game we were playing with
this game that I've got thecharacter sheet for, and I think
he came in as a Norse, aseffectively a Viking, which is
great, because as long as hewasn't a Saxon, I was fine,

(57:45):
because if he was a Saxon, we'dbe having words.
So I don't know, as long as hedoesn't dominate.
I mean, I guess you know it'slike when you look at some of
the Hollywood remakes of certainlegends and stuff, where you've
got a guy who's oh, he's aSaracen, but he's come over from

(58:05):
the Crusades and now he's RobinHood's best mate or whatever.

Iain (58:09):
Are you bad-mouthing Robin Hood, prince of Thieves, in
1991 Extravaganza?

Jason (58:14):
I'm not bad-mouthing it, I enjoyed it but, but, but, but.
But.
Saying that Robin O'Sherwooddid the series with her and the
hunter and you know that wasphenomenal and that had magical
aspects into it and stuff, butagain, not particularly from the
what I would consider theprotagonist kind of perspective.

(58:35):
It was all stuff that happenedto them rather than they did it
themselves.

Iain (58:40):
I always felt sorry for Morgan Freeman.
In that movie he's trying hisbest to do his Saracen accent.
Kevin Costner doesn't evenbother that other guy.
What's his name?
Who is it, please?
Will Scarlett.

Jason (58:52):
Wasn't it some Cockney geezer?
It was some Cockney geezer,wasn't it?

Iain (58:55):
No, it wasn't, it was an.

Jason (58:57):
American lad.
Okay, see all I'm now thinkingof.
All I can hear in my head isRay Winston doing Beowulf.
You know I'm here to kill yourmonster.

Iain (59:08):
Yeah, it was Ray Winston as well in that King Arthur film
that they did with the onewhere he was like a Roman
centurion or something.
You've got Ray Winston playinglike Gawain or something.
Oh Boz, he plays Sir Boz andit's just Ray Winston playing
Ray Winston.
It's like, oh yeah, I'm goingto give him a good scene too,

(59:30):
mate.

Jason (59:30):
Like are you?
Are you really?
It's still the best Arthur filmas far as I'm concerned is
Excalibur.

Iain (59:36):
Oh, excalibur's brilliant.
I absolutely love Excalibur,absolutely amazing film.
Christian Slater, that's whoplayed the Scarlet, and he
didn't bother with that Englishaccent either.
And also you had a bunch ofrandom people in Sherwood Forest
with West Country accents.

Jason (59:53):
Yeah, because Sherwood Forest being in Nottinghamshire,
in Nottinghamshire they land atthe white cliffs of dover and
kevin cosner's.

Iain (01:00:01):
Like by nightfall, we'll be in my ancestral home, like
are you sure?
Because this is like the 1200s,and you're in dover and you're
trying to get to nottinghamshire, which is a fair old distance.

Jason (01:00:14):
Geography's just not important, is it?
Let's face it.

Iain (01:00:18):
He'd fast travel unlocked, so him and Morgan get up there
in no time at all.
But yeah right, excalibur is abrilliant film.
I really enjoyed that.

Jason (01:00:26):
Amazing.
If anybody's not seen it, Iheartily recommend it.
The only thing is I'm nowworried is that I did watch it a
long time ago and this mightjust be rose-tinted spectacles,
but that's what this podcast isall about, right?
So Helen Mirren was in it.

Iain (01:00:44):
Helen Mirren was in it.
Who else did you have?
Patrick Stewart, I think, wasin it.
Sherry Loongie was in it.
Patrick Stewart was in it.
Gabriel Bunn was in it.
Yeah, it's a Amazing cast,great, great, absolutely amazing
cast.

Jason (01:00:56):
And a great film, but overlook the fact they're
wearing basically 13th centuryFrench full plate armour but
other than that.

Iain (01:01:04):
No, don't, because that's what Pendragon's all about.
In Pendragon, you caneventually get that as well, and
it's not accurate in this line.
But woe betide, you play afemale knight, because that's
historically inaccurate.
Yes, thanks, incels on theinternet, going back to
Pendragon and away from RobinHood, prince of Thieves, which

(01:01:27):
I'm sure we could talk about forhours.

Jason (01:01:30):
And then we'll get you onto Braveheart, and then you'll
never stop.

Iain (01:01:34):
Just don't, don't even Do not even start on Braveheart.
That's our word.
Just don't do not even start onBraveheart, that's our word.
You don't get to use that word.
Braveheart's probably ashistorically accurate as
Pendragon is well, yeah,absolutely in fact Pendragon's
picked supplement is probablythe source material that they

(01:01:55):
based Braveheart on.
All the woad on the face exceptthe 6th century is probably
fairly accurate for that,compared to the 14th century
which Braveheart is based in.

Jason (01:02:07):
I saw some guy on telly basically putting up an argument
about how Arthur and Guineverein particular, was buried in
Glastonbury Tor, and I'm likewell, you know fictional being
was buried here.
You know, you can say where youwant, right.

Iain (01:02:31):
It's a bit like Whitby.
They've got that graveyard andfor our international listeners,
whitby is a coastal town in thenorth of England and it's
famous for the fact that itfeatures in the story Dracula
and it's very popular with Gothsfor this reason.
But there's a graveyard inWhitby.
It's all the way up a wholemassive flight of stairs, up the

(01:02:52):
side of a hill and there's arumour that Dracula's grave is
there and loads of people go upto look for dracula's grave and,
oddly enough, there is no graveof dracula, because a dracula
is a fictional being and alsohe's a vampire, so he's not
going to actually have a grave.
But apparently it was a storyinvented by locals to get people
to come to go and visit.

(01:03:13):
This is great and it works.
All these tourists like, oh,where's, where's Dracula's grave
?
It's up that massive flight ofstairs, off you go and you get
to the top and there's noDracula's grave.
But yeah, that's similar to theKing Arthur stuff.
You think the amount of mythsand touristy stuff spun around
Arthur.
It's insane.

Jason (01:03:34):
Yeah, I've been to Tintagel right, which is down in
Cornwall.
It's a beautiful part of theworld.
It's worth a visit.
They're leaning heavily intothe Arthurian connection there.
You know there's statues.
There's a lot of stuff in thetourist shops, Absolutely but
it's fantastic and you go upthere and you could imagine it.
You really could imagine it.

Iain (01:03:56):
Well, especially, especially if the castle is,
it's very atmospheric the way itlooks out over the sea and
you've got all that.
Yeah, it's a beautiful part.
It is absolutely fantastic.
There was a fascinating thingthat I read when doing the
history episode about because Iwas going to go into the whole
how historically accurate is thelegend of arthur and then
realized there are a millionpodcasts out there about that
and we're talking aboutrole-playing games.
But he was talking about if youlook at the archaeological

(01:04:19):
record of especially that sortof southeast of England, wales,
cornwall area.
There is all this stuff in thearchaeological record that
basically shows the Saxonencroachment as they moved
inland.
But then it gets to a certainpoint and it's for like a period
of I think it's like 25 years.

(01:04:41):
There is nothing like it stopsand then it carries on again and
this sort of suggests thatthere was some sort of ancient
britain war leader at the timewho managed to halt the saxon
advance for a small period oftime and, you know, keep that

(01:05:03):
local culture, thatromano-british culture, going,
and then presumably he died andthen the saxons carried on their
, their rampage.
But I think that's about asclose as you get to actual
historical arthur.
I mean, there's tons of bookson it and there's there's tons
of podcasts on it and there's amillion youtube videos talking

(01:05:24):
about how historically accuratearthur is.
But I don't think we'reconcerned with that because we
were talking about a fantasygame where, as you said, they
get to wear 14th century frenchplate mail while jousting in 6th
century Britain.

Jason (01:05:36):
Well, that's the thing much of a lying Clive Owen film
about was probably where he wasa Roman legionnaire and it's
like, nah, you know.

Iain (01:05:46):
And he's facing vaguely Saxon, vaguely Norse bad guys
who have got crossbows thatfunction as machine guns for
some reason.
And then you've got a bunch ofdruids hanging about with woad
on their faces in the southeastof England.
Yeah, it's quite something.

Jason (01:06:02):
But yeah, historical accuracy is not what we're going
for.

Iain (01:06:04):
Anyway, we are coming up to time.
I think we're considerably overtime in terms of our, because
we always set this limit.
We're going to talk about onehour about the game and we
haven't this limit.
We're going to talk about onehour about the game and we
haven't managed it.
We're well over that.
No, we've not.
We tend to ramble.
This was the thing a littlepeek behind the curtain for our
listeners that when Steve saidhe was ill, jason and I were

(01:06:26):
like are we going to be enoughto talk to him about Pit Dragon?
Yes, turns out we do.
Actually, one little aside Ithink we mentioned this.
Remember our Palladium episodewe did a couple years ago and we
basically talked about the factthat Palladium is a bit of a
mess, but we all really enjoyedit with your misogynistic koala
he was misogynistic, he wasJames Bond the koala.

(01:06:50):
But one of the supplements forthe Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
game that I remember seeing atthe same time as these
supplements for Pendragon, was asupplement called Mutants in
Avalon and it was for thereafter the bomb setting,
essentially the after the bombsupplement for the British Isles
.
But it's like King Arthur hasreturned, except he's a mutant

(01:07:13):
crow and he rides around on agiant slug.
That was his steed I stronglyremember.
The cover is him sitting onthis massive snail and fighting
bad guys.

Jason (01:07:28):
I mean, he's never going to get anywhere fast, is he?
And when he's jousting, theguy's got time to fortify before
he gets there.

Iain (01:07:36):
It's a big old snail though it's a massive snail, but
yeah, that was a reallyinteresting little take on it.
I never actually got that book.
I just remember the cover andthe blurb and part of me is kind
of intrigued by it and mightwant to seek out a second-hand
copy, just so I can see I thinkyou should what the After the
Bomb Arthurian scenario is thatinvolves King Arthur as a raven

(01:08:00):
riding on a giant snail.
So what are your final thoughtson Pendragon?
Jason, if you're trying to sellit to people who've never
played, what would you say?

Jason (01:08:09):
It's not your typical game.
It's not, it's nothing likeyou've played before.
In my opinion, there are nolevels.
There are no levels, there areno wizards, but it is that the
way it captures the sourcematerial is second to none.

(01:08:32):
I've played various games thathave taken an intellectual
property of whatever description, whether it's your aliens or
whether it's your Storm orwhether it's your storm bringer
and things like that, andnothing captures the arthurian
legend or its source material,like pendragon catches that
arthurian legend.
Um, you know, and you, you know, you're absolutely right, you
do worry about the winter phaseand whether your sickly air is

(01:08:53):
going to make it through, and Idon't know any other game that
makes you feel like that or hasthat kind of aspect to it.
And you know whether yourhorses are going to survive,
what type of horse you have, allthis kind of stuff.
So it's just a bit different.
And the personality traitsystem I don't think anybody's
done anything else that comesclose to it.

(01:09:14):
I mean, I haven't played everyrole-playing game in the world.
I'm sure somebody has somewhere, but you know, uh, it was.
You know, it's groundbreakingfor me and, and you know, I'd
say with the character sheetI've got sitting here was from a
game that only played probablyfive years ago or so, so it's
relatively recent and it's stillstill captured my imagination,
still was enjoyable, um, andit's very different.

(01:09:36):
So I'd heartily recommend, ifyou've got any interest in the
Arthurian legend, go and rereadone of the many versions and
then find yourself a game.
It's definitely worth it.

Iain (01:09:48):
Yeah, I really agree with that as well.
I think it's one of the reasonsit's had the longevity that
it's had is because it capturesthat source material.
It's not that it's had isbecause it captures that source
material.
It's not that it's a niche game, because, like king arthur, is
something that everyone's heardof, like if you're in the
western world, you have heard ofking arthur.
It's not some obscure regionalhero.

(01:10:08):
It's like you know thathollywood are making films about
it.
It's.
It's that big and I know it wasquite a nice story that I heard
that when White Wolf lost thelicense to King Arthur in 4th
edition but one of the formerfounders of White Wolf, he
actually got the license to giveit back to Greg Stafford and

(01:10:31):
say, look, I've kept your babysafe for you, which I thought
was quite nice.
But it has this enduringlongevity and I don't know
anyone who's played it whodidn't enjoy it.
As you said, your firstimpression is, oh, I'm just
playing a human fighter, great.
But then when you actually playthe game, it's something that
sucks you in with the atmosphereand how different it is the

(01:10:54):
fact that you are genuinelyworried if your family's going
to survive the winter and you'reconscious about securing a
legacy.
So, like in agreement with you,it's something that people
should experience because it iscompletely different from
anything else you play.
Also, go and watch Excalibur Ifyou haven't seen it.
If you're one of these youngpeople who, although we're

(01:11:15):
saying this now, I've notwatched Excalibur probably in
about 30 years, so it may beabsolutely terrible.

Jason (01:11:20):
I might go and watch it again.
So if you have watchedExcalibur, go and watch it again
, is what I'm going to say.

Iain (01:11:26):
So, yeah, Although, seeing that I re-watched Monty Python
and the Holy Grail as part ofthe history episode, it's not
actually that funny.
I know that sounds like heretic, but I watched it and I was
like this isn't actually thatfunny.
People like it because it's gotcatchphrases in it.
That's why people like it.

Jason (01:11:45):
Not for the actual the debate on what a system of
government is and you knowwhether it's doled out by some
woman in a lake chucking swordsat people.

Iain (01:11:54):
I'll give you, that bit's funny, but the rest of it it's
just like oh god, come on.
I find that with a lot of stuffyou go back and re-watch it and
you're like, oh man, this isn'tactually very good.

Jason (01:12:06):
I disagree.
Holy Grail's fantastic Life ofBrian amazing.

Iain (01:12:10):
We will beg to differ on that yeah, you could be wrong.

Jason (01:12:13):
I am a benevolent god.

Iain (01:12:14):
I will concede you that fact that sometimes I differ on
that.
Yeah, you can be wrong.
I'm a benevolent god.
I will concede you that factthat sometimes I can be wrong
Not often, but sometimes.
Anyway, on that note, Jason,thank you again for joining us.
Hopefully we'll have Steve nexttime.
Hopefully it won't be him or ananimal that is ill and we'll
have the whole crew back.
But thanks again.

Jason (01:12:33):
And may the winter phase be kind.

Iain (01:12:56):
And that was our deep dive into Pendragon's brilliant but
troubled history.
We hope you enjoyed it.
If you did, then please leaveus a review and some lovely
twinkling stars on your podcastplatform of choice.
We always appreciate that.
We love reading them and ithelps with visibility.

(01:13:16):
It also encourages us to domore episodes like this.
Also, if you've got any rpghistory suggestions, drop us a
line at rolltosavepod atgmailcom, because we're always
looking for new topics forfollow-up episodes.
You can also get in touch withus on social media.

(01:13:37):
We're on Facebook and Instagram.
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We are a regular podcast on thehistory of RPGs.
We have 70 episodes up at themoment covering reviews,
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.
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(01:13:59):
know what you think.
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