Pendragon (role-playing game)
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{{Infobox RPG |title= Pendragon |image= |caption= |designer= Greg Stafford |publisher= Chaosium, Green Knight Publishing, White Wolf, Inc. (since 2004) |date= 1990 |genre= Historical |system= Basic Role-Playing variant |footnotes= }} Pendragon, or King Arthur Pendragon, is a role-playing game in which players take the role of knights performing chivalric deeds in the tradition of Arthurian legend. It was originally written by Greg Stafford and published by Chaosium, then was acquired by Green Knight Publishing, who in turn passed on the rights to White Wolf, Inc. in 2004. In 1991, Pendragon won the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Rules of 1990.
Like several other RPGs from Chaosium (most notably Call of Cthulhu), Pendragon has a literary basis, in this case the fifteenth-century Arthurian romance, Le Morte d'Arthur, and it studiously avoids fantasy RPG cliches in favor of its source material. This has caused it to become something of a cult game, even within the narrow confines of the RPG market.
It uses fairly traditional game mechanics for normal play, based to some degree on Basic Role-Playing, but also has a set of charts and tables for determining what happens to a character's family in between adventures. The characters' ability scores are based on BRP standard, but skills are resolved using d20, rather than d100.
Adventures are often political, military, or spiritual in nature, rather than dungeon crawls, and are often presented as taking place congruently with events from Arthurian legend. An important part of the game is the time between adventures, during which player characters manage their estates, get married, age, and have children. Typically, the characters will have one adventure per year, and campaigns often carry over across generation, with players retiring their character and taking the role of that character's heir. This is quite different from most role-playing games, where one set of characters is played fairly intensively, and there is typically little consideration made of what happens to their family or descendants. The influence of this idea can be seen in the Ars Magica RPG, which also encourages stories taking years or decades to unfold (and which is also set in medieval Europe).
The first edition was a boxed set published by Chaosium in 1985, and was written by Greg Stafford.
The fourth edition, reprinted by Green Knight Publishing, came as a thick single manual, King Arthur Pendragon.
Greg Stafford has completed the much-streamlined fifth edition, which was published by White Wolf in December, 2005. Stafford is working on the Great Pendragon Campaign, a massive scenario book which will detail events from Uther's reign in 480 through to the end of the Arthurian era.
KAP v1 Map
The first edition included an A1 sized map which shows all of Britain, plus a Ireland [which is small part of Eire]. It is by Charlie Krank.
Rough Terrain, Woodland, Dense Woodland and Marsh are shown by colours on a white background, together with the main Rivers, Roman Roads and main non-Roman Roads, plus the Major Regions and places of interest of Britain during the Reign of King Arthur.
The map shows the main battle sites, as well as having 30 'Royal' Shield Blazons around the edge of the Map, and an additional 5 Shield Blazons for main characters.
The Sea's are named, as Demetian, Irish, North, British [channel] and Severn.
The Kingdoms shown are: Anglia, Benoic, Brittany, Cambenet, Cameliard, Cornwall, Escavalon, Escoce, Essex, Estregales, France, Ganis, Garloth, Gomeret, Gorre, Ireland, The Isles, Kent, Logres, Long Isles, Lothian, Malahaut, Norgales, Northumberland, Orkneys, Out Islands, Strangor, Sugales, and Sussex.