My encounter with Greg Stafford comes very late. I got into RPGs in the late 70’s in Mobile, AL, with Dungeons and Dragons—first with the Holmes and White Box editions, then graduating to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. There was a little DragonQuest and Villains and Vigilantes that got into the mix, and I dimly recall the name RuneQuest coming up, but Stafford’s games were not in the orbit of my gaming group in Mobile. There wasn’t even a gaming store in the city at that time that dealt with RPGs, so we had to persuade one of our mothers to drive us to Mississippi for us to get our hands on new material.
But, with news of Greg Stafford’s death, I have finally started to dig into some of his material, beginning with King Arthur Pendragon (1985). While the reading is long overdue, it couldn’t come at a more opportune time for me in terms of some of my current projects, which include designing games with morality, the achievement of glory, and the early middle ages in their sights.
What follows here is not a proper review or a tribute. Rather, it is a reflection on my first pass through King Arthur Pendragon (edition 5.2). I’m currently through the introduction and first three chapters, which provide an overview of the Arthurian material, “The Pendragon Realm,” “Character Generation,” and “Family and Fatherland.” More installments to follow!
Right off, one should say that Pendragon is a role-playing game that HAD to be made, dealing as it does with some of the ur-matter of fantasy world building and literature. And the knights and ladies of Camelot should happily carousing that the first designer to come up with a fully fleshed out game dealing specifically with the Arthur legend was knowledgeable (about history, literature, and RPGs) and also innovative. Pendragon is NOT some dungeon crawl / sword & sorcery game reskinned for Arthurian fantasy. Pendragon IS a historically and socially nuanced game with a system that is almost dizzying in its layers and richness.
Stafford was steeped both in medieval history and the Arthurian material, and he aimed for a game that would both be true to the sources and that would enmesh the players in a world that is dizzying not in terms of magic but in terms of its social complexity. It is a demanding game that challenges the players to consider the economic, cultural, political, and moral fabric of King Arthur’s Britain. If you commit yourself to the game, there is no doubt that you will receive a uniquely “lived” education about the middle ages (and don’t come here if you are after gelatinous cubes or kobold hordes!). I’m well into the rulebook (80 pages of 265), and Stafford has scarcely broached any information about combat mechanics or conflict resolutions. While Stafford does pepper some humor into the mix, for the most part, his tone is direct and lucid, not unlike Thomas Malory and other sober authors of the Arthurian tradition.
What does Stafford require of his players?- A basic understanding of feudalism
- A sense of religious traditions (British Christianity, Roman Christianity, and paganism)
- An understanding of the economics of the manor
- An acquaintance with the gender politics of the middle ages (though he does thoughtfully present some flexible ways of involving female characters in the mix)
- An appreciation of lineage and family bonds
- A knowledge of castle architecture and layout
- A sense of the equestrian demands of knighthood
- And more!!
When you are creating a character for this game, skills and stats are only one layer: You have to have an understanding of who you are in terms of the land, your family, your history, and your social environment. There is part of the game that involves going on adventures (more on that on the next post), but of equal importance is your character’s maintenance of the estate. Part of your “job” as a knight involves managing your land, finding a suitable spouse, and preparing for a legitimate heir. (Aside: The discussion of inheritance leads to one of the games terrific puns, which involves the problem of “Premature Heir Loss!!”)
Pendragon is sprawling in terms of time: The idea of the game would be to play through multiple generations of a family. So your starting character will hopefully raise a son who will then become a squire and then inherit the mantle of knighthood to carry forth the campaign through the rise of King Arthur to the dissolution of the Round Table.
To get the players enmeshed in the game, Stafford resorts to a number of techniques--some innovative, some direct, and some charming.
Some examples:
- You are instructed to design a coat of arms for your family, and the rulebook provides a couple of pages template elements to assist in the task. You fill in the coat of arms and color it on your character sheet.
- At the end of the character generation process, you are instructed to hold an actual knighting ceremony which comes complete with a ritualized text for the gamemaster and the characters to complete. I imagine some players will skip this step, but Stafford insists (rightly) on its importance to establish the right tone for the game.
- Stafford includes a number of straight-forward reference sections to give the gamemaster and players some quick efficient overviews of such topics as castles, the layout of England, early English history, etc.
One of my less favorite sections: The rules suggest that you work out the recent history of your family, focussing on your grandfather and father and taking you from 439-485 A.D. (a period which sets the stage for the appearance of Arthur).To accomplish this you are faced with a sequence of charts spanning across 8 pages. You roll on one chart for the year 439, consult the effects, and then move on to the next chart. I understand the purpose behind this set-up, but it is a grind!
Many of the “numbers” you enter on the character sheet are what you would expect: attribute scores, skill scores, and combat scores. Notably missing is intelligence and Stafford makes it a point to highlight this absence. His argument is that your character is basically the same intelligence as the person who is playing that character.
But there are innovative elements such as personality traits and the passions.
Personality traits: There are 26 of them and they come in opposed pairs. These pairing have to total 20, so the more you have of one of the pair, the less you have of the other. For example, if your character ranks high on the forgiving side (say, a 14 score), then your character will be low on the vengeful side (a 6).
I like the idea of opposed traits, and it is dealing with an issue that I am playing with. I do wish that the traits were not arrayed as good vs. evil, however. For example, Stafford pairs energetic with lazy, and players are almost always going to gun for high on the energetic side. But what if instead of “lazy” you used something like “serene?” That would give you a far more intriguing pair to consider.
Passions: You start with four: Loyalty, Love, Hospitality, and Honor. Stafford also suggests a fifth passion of Hate (specifically aimed at the Saxons). More on this next time, as I know that Stafford’s use of the passions as a mechanic is one of the innovative aspects of Pendragon, but that part of the system has not yet been covered.
A second page of the character sheet gives you places to keep track of your family, your holdings, your equipment, and your history.
Whew! There is a lot to consider and chew over here.
I end with a brief anecdote. As I was reading through the rules in my classroom during one of my lunches, I was engaged but was personally thinking to myself, “I don’t know whether my high school students would have the attention and endurance for this type of game.” But then, low and behold, two students (one a senior the other a freshman) asked me what I was reading, and when I explained to them, they were fired up by the idea. So there might be some Pendragon actual play in my future and in the future of some young gamers.
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