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I play and gamemaster the Pendragon Role Playing Game by which is published by Green Knight. This game is set in King Arthur's England, where you take the role of a questing knight. You stand up for the weak, bring justice to the wicked and enjoy the pleasures at court.
What sets this apart from most RPG's is the dynastic aspect. Since a whole campaign can cover more than 75 years, sooner or later, you will have to step down from the adventuring due to old age; or maybe you'll get killed in battle, die from infected wounds, or get insane. In those cases it's good to have a son who can take over. You can actually end up playing your original character's great grandson.
But in order to have a son, you'll have to get married, and preferably rich. So you'll pursue and court lovely and/or rich ladies and prove your commitment. Write, play and sing romantic ballads, dance and entertain the lady with witty conversation, and wear her colors in the tournament to prove your powress.
But a Pendragon session does not have to be a demonstration of courtly skills. There are rebellious Saxons, Picts and Irishmen, decietful whitches, evil enchanters, ungodly monsters and arrogant barons to chase. Or maybe you'll encounter the fairies, and see their magical land.
Your personal goal can be to get wealthy and build a mighty castle, to marry a beautiful lady, to earn the reputation of a fearsome warrior or a cunning general, to spread christianity among the pagans or to find a seat at King Athur Pendragon's legendary round table.
Actually, it's great fun.
I began a new campaign in late 1998, set in the days of anarchy before King Arthur came forth to claim the throne of Britain. Since the plot is rather involved, with lots of characters and secret agendas, my players has asked me to write a chronicle of what has come to pass and who have said what. This will become a rather long narrative, I fear, because there is so much to tell. We shall see how long I will endure. Do not forget to check out the beautifully drawn illustrations.
A Chronicle of the Years Between the Kings.
Trolls in King Arthur's Britain
As I am interested in nordic myths and folklore as well, it was only natural that I would try to incorporate this interest in the world of Pendragon. So far, this has resulted in an article on trolls, nordic style, published in the e-zine Chaosium Digest, issue 21.1, released in August 1997. This earned some response, which, together with my own use of Trolls in adventures, has resulted in a reedited, revised and extended version.
This article appeared in Chaosium Digest, issue 29.1, released in November 1999. Since the editors decided it had a bit of "adult" content, they put in a caveat and cut the offensive pieces out. Here is the unabridged version.
As a gamemaster, it is a bit of a nuisance to have to come up with good names for NPCs, and after a while you will find yourself reusing the same old set. With this table you have 240 more or less genuine-sounding Cymric names to chose from, and if that isn't enough you will find it easy to make up you own using the same pattern.
For other Pendragon players, I have made an administration utility to keep track of characters and print new character sheets when the old ones are too worn. Features include:
Download PendAdm.zip (174 kB, contains PendAdm.xls, last updated 2000-01-27). It runs in Microsoft Excel (versions 5.0 or later, including Office 95, 97 and 98) on both Mac and Windows computers.
You can also download PendAdm97.zip
(237 kB, contains PendAdm97.xls, last updated 2000-01-27). This is stored on
Excel 97 format, and will in some far and distant future also include handy functions
for creating characters and so on. At the moment, the content is the same as
PendAdm, so there is no real benefit of downloading it instead of the ordinary
PendAdm, except for one thing:
files stored in Excel 97 format are considerably smaller than files stored
in older versions.
There is also an empty version of this file available, if you just want to
print an empty sheet and fill it in by hand.
Download PendEmpt.zip (83 kB, contains
PendEmpt.xls, last updated 2000-01-27).
For consistency's sake, there's a Excel 97 specific version of this as well.
Download PendEmpt.zip (126 kB, contains
PendEmpt97.xls, last updated 2000-01-27).
For GM's, a friend of mine made an Excel file for random generation of knights, damsels and Saxon warriors. You can print out a sheet full of NPC's without having to spend hours with dice and paper. This was written by Staffan Blomqvist.
It runs in Microsoft Excel (versions 5.0 or later, including Office 95, 97
and 98) on both Mac and Wintel computers. Very handy, I use it myself.
Please note that this requires that you have Analysis ToolKit installed.
Download PreGen.zip (33 kB, contains PreGenc.xls, last updated 1998-05-14).
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 2001-03-02 |
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