Has anyone played Pendragon? I’m a big fan of all things Arthuria and I was listening to Cole Wehrle talk about it on the Bastionland podcast, which really piqued my interest.
There’s a whole lot to try to sort out though since it’s been around for forty years and has so much STUFF.
Anyone played it? Where do you start?
Yep I play it often and am running an irregular campaign of the Great Pendragon Campaign yet again.
The easiest way to start nowadays is with the recent edition starter set. The adventure contained is a little meh by the book but it’s easily hackable to allow for more player knight agency.
Given that a lot of respected game designers gush about Pendragon I suppose I have to tr it sometime (or it’s more TAG cousin Mythic Bastionland 
)
I’m a big fan of it, and like Justin I think the recent edition starter set has pretty much all you need, if you’ll be paying for it.
I have historically ran it as duets, though I’ve also recently ran it as a longer form campaign. It works perfectly fine and I often steal the “Personality Trait” system it has for other games (such as my current one).
Having said that, a lot of the stuff that Pendragon has isn’t directly gameable, so to speak. As in, there are older setting books for each region of Great Britain with maps and keyed locations, but the keys are stuff like “A town”, “A motte and bailey castle”, “A bridge where the Devil appeared once”, etc.
Also, the latest edition dismembered GM information in one book and player in another, which is mostly fine, except the bestiary is in the GM book, which is quite an important part of the game, so be conscious of that if you’ll be getting it.
You might see a lot about the Great Pendragon Campaign if you look for it online, but my honest opinion is that unless you and your players are very into Arthuriana, it will do little for you. And I do mean into actual Arthuriana, as in having some knowledge of Geoffrey of Monmouth and having read The Death of Arthur, not just enjoying The Knight of the Cart or wtv, because quite a few of the entries are either events from those or foreshadowing for events, and these do not hit at all if your players aren’t at least aware that this was a momentous occasion or that you just stopped a canonical event.
Much like Glorantha, the best way to play Pendragon is get the book, read it once, and then fill in the gaps yourself. The adventures range from “ok” to “basically a series of linear cutscenes”, and the sourcebooks mostly expand the basic game in increasingly pseudo-feudal ways which are really unnecessary for the short term.
Thanks! This is good to know
Yep I’ve run quite a bit of it, as a Cult of Chaos GM for Chaosium it’s my favorite system to run. I’ve only recently gotten a campaign of it to the table, and I don’t think it realistic to aim for a full Great Pendragon Campaign in my situation, but one shots and a monthly drop in drop out campaign of it have been rewarding experiences.
I started with the Starter Set, and still primarily use that product even though I have the special editions of the players book and the GMs book now.
Very cool! Yeah, I don’t anticipate being able to get a Great Campaign going, so this is more what I’ll be looking at
I was so worried just how into Arthuriana I had to be so this is really encouraging (my hardcover of the stories of King Arthur and his knights is looking at me from the bookshelf, waiting for me to read it)
What type of game can one expect from Pendragon though? Is it more suited to wandering around the realm for a quest and taking down a mythical beast? Navigating the court and sometimes being sent out?
You don’t “have” to be into Arthuriana at all unless you want to get into the Grand Pendragon Campaign. IMO the most powerful version of Pendragon is just taking the concept of “Knights, Arthur, go” and running with whatever comes to your head.
As-written, the assumed adventure-type for Pendragon is that every summer the knights either go to war or go erranting through the countryside of Britain and find themselves doing quests and adventures. These are typically killing mythical beasts, like you said, though more than a share have a little undertone of investigating stuff and finding the correct way to take the monster down (like the famous Spectre King adventure). Standard stuff.
However, most Pendragon games from what I know quickly get involved into court politics, just because Pendragon inducts you into domain-level play in no uncertain terms and from the jump; you always start with a patron because it’s an essential part of a knight to be a vassal.
Also, it doesn’t really have any procedures at all for that wandering, or really even very big maps, it just assumes you’ll take a loog at a map of Britain (I used google maps), measure it out, then divide it by the speed rate and that’s travel. “Encounters” and stuff are what the DM decides to put in front of the players, that kind of thing. It’s very classical and old-fashioned so to speak, don’t expect OSR-like multitudinous random tables and adventure seeds to roll.