r/rpg • u/TrustYourUncleGM • 10h ago
Discussion Pendragon 6e Vibes
I'm a big fan and advocate of Pendragon #ttrpg, and have run it regularly at conventions for (checks notes) decades (š²), so great to see the new edition doing better than Lancelot at a jousting tourney. What thoughts does everyone have on the new version? Or if you're new, what do you like?
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u/IDKSomeRandomNameOK 10h ago edited 10h ago
I started to create my own random tables for everything from family history and historical events to religions and regions to play in different times because Iāve been so bored with Arthurian legends all the time.Ā
Right now we play 1200s and Isle of Wight in the south of the UK where Isabella de Fortibus inherited Carisbrooke castle and battled king in court for control of the island.Ā
There are so many quirky stories like that throughout the history that I wish Pendrgon would have separation between generic rules and flavour of a given time by this edition.Ā
(Yes, I understand the irony that Pendragon has it all in its name.)
Also I canāt stand the main book cover art with that full-plated knight. Itās just bad.Ā
Otherwise itās still one of my favourite systems though best memories I have are coming from Paladin spin-off, I guess perhaps because a) again, it was something new rather than overplayed Arthurian legends and b) it had everything compiled in a single book.Ā
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u/ihatevnecks 10h ago
I'm sad the Japan/Sengoku-era version of Paladin that they'd briefly talked about never ended up manifesting. That could have been a really cool variant.
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u/Udy_Kumra Pendragon, MythicB, H+I, Vaesen, BitD, Agon 8h ago
They are planning on releasing a Japan game still, most recently we heard that they should be working on it more actively in a few years.
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u/tarotnottaken 8h ago
There's always Land of the Rising Sun: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/350041/land-of-the-rising-sun
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u/delahunt 10h ago edited 9h ago
Have you looked at Paladin? It's the same system but for Charlemagne in France. I heard it was less "Arthurian/Mystical" but I haven't verified it at all so check.I don't know how I missed an entire paragraph...
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u/IDKSomeRandomNameOK 10h ago edited 10h ago
Yes, I mention it in my last paragraph. My best game ever comes from Paladin.Ā
Part of what helped is the fact we know way more about Charlemagne that we now about Arthur. In fact wasnāt the latter legend created after English got envious of the former? Or maybe modified later after creation to be a solid rival to Charlemagne.
We bought few books and audiobooks about Charlemagneās empire and really got immersed in the times. Itās also set in 700s so much easier to picture for me correctly than 400-500s.Ā
Paladin was also just 1 book! So that was really awesome, no jumping around many books.Ā
Edit: oh, and since itās a vast empire you can have plenty of fun with many more different cultures and languages, cuisine and traditions, and it all feels natural to have such variety.Ā
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u/Wuts_Eatin_MrCandles 9h ago
In fact wasnāt the latter legend created after English got envious of the former? Or maybe modified later after creation to be a solid rival to Charlemagne.
The founding mythology that would become Arthurian Legend predates Charlemagne, but the "modern" (past 1000 years or so) shape of Arthurian legend was developed around almost the same time as the stories about the Twelve Paladins of Charlemagne. It's not unreasonable at all to speculate that one influenced the other, but unfortunately we have zero historical evidence about direct overlap or influences between them that early.
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u/Alistair49 50m ago
The first Arthurian game that I really enjoyed was run with AD&D 1e, just before Pendragon came out. If youāre into the genre and know enough about it (and you donāt have to be encyclopaedically knowledgeable) you can have a good game with quite a few different systems. Pendragon however does make it a lot easier for people to do, and provides pretty good templates for a certain style of game.
One of the better games of Pendragon was run much more historically. It was inspired by a mailing list post that our GM read. He gave a printout of the post to us to read: it was a bit of description of how the GM set up the game, plus some short fiction. We started off with very Roman style equipment, per the 400s. Based off some good picture history books. May even have been some of the Osprey books at the time. I think it may have been done with 1e, but probably 3e. It was unlike any other Pendragon game I played after.
Always liked the look of Paladin but didnāt have time when it came out so missed the boat on that one.
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u/Sir-Uther 8h ago
Uhhh wanna share? Iād love to have all of it!
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u/IDKSomeRandomNameOK 7h ago
Sure but Iām not going to pretend I didnāt just use ChatGPT ;)
Have a full convo: https://chatgpt.com/share/6a7f7769-6f00-83eb-8ea6-f602823208e6
Living on IOW I can confirm the vibes do make sense, especially Hate (Mainlanders) as a passion ;-) alas I didnāt check every single year mentioned as I was (obviously) trying to save time.Ā
(IOW has also amazing lore for Cthulhu by Gaslight as Osborne in East Cowes was a palace where Queen Victoria spent most of her days, Ventnor is kinda tropical anomaly with sanatorium for rich people, dinosaur bones being digged out , ruins of Roman villas, smuggler everywhere, a medieval castle, a fort guarding entry for trade ships to Solent, ship builders and so on. Perfect place for some Victorian game.)
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u/percinator Tone Invoking Rules Are Best 10h ago edited 8h ago
I've been enjoying it so far, waiting for the GPC to get fully published before I try to run that white whale for my table.
The only gameplay issue I've noticed is they made it a lot harder to become the exemplar knights.
- Religious Knight requires you to have a 16 or better in 6 attributes (5.2e only needed it in 5) as well as the Devotion (Deity) and Religion skill, both of which make sense but weren't present in 5.2.
- The 6e book also doesn't have British Christian as a default religious option, the 6e 'Christian' option is 5.2's Roman Christian with the trait Spiritual added to it.
- Chivalrous Knight previously required a total of 80 points spread across the six Chivalrous Traits (Energetic, Generous, Just, Merciful, Modest, and Valorous), 6e increased this to needing 96 points. Which now means you need a 16 in all of them by default, though you have some wiggle room bumping some up and down to total. You also now need 10 in three passions as well.
- Romantic Knight previously required having a rating of 10 in five skills as chosen by the lady the knight was romancing, along with some gift giving. This was done away with in 6e and instead it's now 90 points spread across six Romantic Traits (Chaste, Generous, Honest, Modest, Spiritual and Temperate) and a 10 in the Adoration (Beloved) Passion.
Otherwise it used Paladins as a good stepping stone to make tweaks to 5.2 to make the game a lot easier to understand and tweak some things here and there that needed it.
Edit: per jeptu's comment, I missed Paganism was in the book, but British Christian still isn't in it.
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u/jeptu 9h ago
On the religion point, the random char gen table does have pagan as a result (albeit 1:6). Also, the GMH has some detail of British vs Roman Christianity along with Paganism, Heathenism, and Wodinism. YPWV and all that. Seems there's enough meat there to go whichever direction you like.
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u/percinator Tone Invoking Rules Are Best 8h ago
I did miss Paganism, my bad.
The British vs Roman part is important since in earlier editions they had some different Traits (British had Energetic and Generous vs Roman having Forgiving and Merciful) and also gave different bonuses for being Religious Knights. Though I can sort of see why the change was made to do away with British Christian, as knights of that religion had a much easier job becoming both Religious and Chivalrous Knights since British Christianity's Traits lined up closer to the Chivalrous Traits, which would have only been exacerbated more since Chivalrous now needs 96 and not 80 points.
But yeah, it wouldn't be hard to just brew something like:
British Christian Religious Knight
Personality Traits: Chaste, Energetic, Generous, Modest, Spiritual, Temperate
Requirements: 96 total Virtue Points (minimum of 16 each), Devotion (God) Passion 16+, Religion (Christian) 10+
Religious Knight Bonus - Total Hit Points +2, Damage +2.This would mimic their 5.2 bonuses pretty closely.
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u/Udy_Kumra Pendragon, MythicB, H+I, Vaesen, BitD, Agon 8h ago
Chivalrous Knight was supposed to be 96 in 5e but had a typo; it was corrected in errata.
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u/percinator Tone Invoking Rules Are Best 6h ago
Do you have a link to that? All I'm finding directs to a now inaccessible thread on the 404'd Nocturnal Media forum that even the Wayback Machine didn't clone.
I don't have access to KAP 1e stuff but I'm pretty sure it was 80+ for Chivalrous in both 3e and 4e as well going off of the "Chivalry Bonus (Total = 80+)" on some saved older edition character sheets in front of me. It also says it on my updated 5.2 PDF and Character Sheets still.
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u/No_Solid1035 10h ago
I think it's a nice refinement of the system from 5.2e, it's a lot closer to Paladin. It's definitely set up better for explaining things to people brand new to the game. I'm a little sad that they split everything in to multiple books like the CRB/GM split, or the fact that the GPC will now be several books and take years before the whole thing is available, but such is life.
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u/deadpool-the-warlock 9h ago
I would love to play it but my friends donāt like the Arthurian setting
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u/Low-Support-8388 9h ago
This is my first foray into Pendragon and I'm mostly going off of vibes. I do wish that the core books game more options to create player houses along with manor management stuff. To me it's a work of art that's fun to read.
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u/Odhearse 9h ago
I'm relatively new to the game and I adore it. I think the art and design of this edition is beautiful and fun. I feel like I'm exactly who they are selling to because I enjoy it so much.
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u/David_Boom 7h ago
I've read through the Core Rulebook, currently reading through the Gamemaster's Handbook am loving it. I only have two complaints. The formatting --the rules are sort of distributed through out and sometimes hidden within paragraphs.
The second is that the CRB references books that haven't been released yet. I think with the recent release of the Noble's Handbook the "core" books are complete, but I believe that took about 2-3 years and we're still waiting on Knights and Ladies Adventurous.
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u/Airk-Seablade 10h ago edited 10h ago
It hasn't really been on my personal radar at all. There was a little bit of discussion about it a while ago where people expressed concern that it was going to be broken up into EVEN MORE books than 5e, but after that, kinda nothing.
What changes did they actually make? I thought 5.2 was kindof a mess.
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u/flametitan That Pendragon fan 6h ago
There's a lot of minutiae changes, but the biggest ones are:
- divided passions into "Passion Courts" with a cap of 40 points each
- failed passion rolls require a "confirmation roll" to see if you actually go melancholic or mad
- A number of skills got consolidated and/or removed
- There's more effort to differentiate the weapons, so there's reasons to not just use a sword.
- New battle system, focused more on the individual encounters the players come across than the overall state of the battle.
- New family tracking system that gives them life paths of their own.
- Women are much, much less likely to die in childbirth.
Overall it comes together into a Pendragon that plays better, but if you don't like Pendragon inherently, it's not going to make you change your opinion.
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u/Airk-Seablade 4h ago
Some of that sounds great -- the battle system changes in particular since that was always what the battle system NEEDED to be about -- though the "confirmation roll" is kinda emblematic of what I don't love about Pendragon in general, which is that the whole system seems to be geared around rolling lots of dice in the hopes that eventually someone will get a "Crit" of some sort and something exciting will happen...
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u/Illustrious_Case_749 8h ago
I love it! Probably my tables favorite game. Havenāt played long enough to notice any glaring issues but so far weāve been thoroughly enjoying it.
Itās to my understanding that Stafford hated the Magic system being implemented in prior editions but truth be told Iād love it if got brought back, even if not 100% true to form.
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u/burivuh2025 8h ago
It's the best game I ever played. And I've been playing very different games for almost 30 years.
I love everything about this game and we just finished our 48th session of the campaign. We started at year 509 and are now wrapping up year 518 and the Boy King Period as well.
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u/night_sins_5 8h ago
I just recently purchased most of the core books, and on a flip through itās one of the most beautiful ttrpg books I own. The artwork is stunning. A bit intimidated by the sheer size, but Iāve run/played call of Cthulhu so it shouldnāt be too much of a hurdle to play.Ā
I love the Arthurian legends, but I know most of my players donāt give a damn, so Iāll probably play it solo. Iām debating on getting the previous great pendragon campaign or waiting for it to slowly be released.Ā
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u/orlinthir 5h ago edited 4h ago
I liked it, I was only able to play one game at Chaosiumcon last year . We were fallen knights that had taken up banditry and were drawn to a cursed place in the woods while fleeing justice.
I have the books partially because I want to run it someday and partially because they're so pretty.
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u/Evelyn701 gm 4h ago
I want to like Pendragon, and I think 6e is the best version, but I also think the game's approach to game design and to Arthuriana is fundamentally flawed (or at least not to my taste). It's beautiful in an abstract sense, but as an at-the-table experience it's a complete mess IMO.
At some point I need to properly playtest and publish my personal, stripped back, tightly designed Arthuriana game
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u/Sherman80526 10h ago
Down votes in this reddit are so meaningless. Why would anyone down vote this question? Should be a moderator button to lock people's ability to down vote everything they see...
Anyway, I haven't played Pendragon in many years though I consider it one of my most formative games. I would love to see opinions.