Pendragon - Chapter 4: Stats and Skills

[@NefariousKoel]

I like the concept of Personality Traits more than other moral and behavioral ones in other RPGs, such as D&D's Alignment system. Indicating what your character is likely to do, as opposed to what they should do or penalizing them long-term for it, pushes the "role play" part more and doesn't place characters into boxes so much. It's also interesting how it can slowly shift over time depending on game play.

[@LogicianTim]

I agree. The Passions and Traits really help to shape your character in Pendragon and makes it more likely they will behave one way over another.

[@VaughanCockell]

If you think back, you have met the idea behind traits before... In RuneQuest. Designed by the same person, Pendragon was designed after original RQ and was, as I understand it, partly created as a route towards expanding RQ back in the day. The most recent RQ edition brought the concept fully in through the opposed pairs of runes. RQ also used passions, as well.

[@LogicianTim]

oh yea! RuneQuest! I thought some of it sounded somewhat familiar.

[@VaughanCockell]

What I find interesting about the focus on personality and behaviour in the mechanics says about the type of scenarios and adventures that are expected in the game. Yes you play awesome Knights who can fight really well, but that is often not the focus. There will be a lot of political conflict, along with moral and spiritual challenges to the characters...

[@LogicianTim]

That's what I am reading into it as well. Those moral dilemmas seem to be a large focus which makes sense because that concept helped define the era.

[@jameshenderson4876]

Thanks for this, very helpful. I was in a game of Pendragon 5.2 for the very first time just last night. So this video is also very timely. I admit I found the impact of the Passions pretty imbalanced and made me want to avoid using them. Basically if you succeed you get a big bonus for the scene in one skill (very good) but if you fail you get hit with a lesser but very significant penalty on every single roll in the scene. And then are a mess for weeks later. Looking at the quickstart pdf for the upcoming 6th edition, this looks as if it has been overhauled, in my opinion much for the better. There the impacts of success/fail etc depend on the strength of your Passion. For example, for a Passion with a score of 15 or less, a fail is a "no result" and only a fumble makes you melancholy. At 16 and above, the results are more as in 5.2. This rather makes sense to me - if you do not feel a Passion particularly strongly (say a 10), why would you (50% of the time!) becomes a melancholic mess for weeks if you fail? Basically in 5.2, it appears that the less strongly you feel a Passion, the more likely you are to be incapacitated by it. Which is odd.

[@LogicianTim]

Oh, I didn't know they were making changes in 6.0. I like the sound of that. It makes the idea of using Passions a lot more appealing.

[@williamobraidislee3433]

Tim are you still making videos? I enjoyed your fresh, non-jaded view of games!

[@LogicianTim]

It's been a while. I'll get back to it soon. I'll likely finish up the Pendragon series this fall and go from there. 💙

[@ravenshadowz2343]

It makes it a little confusing when you and other KZbinrs say roll under instead of what ever the number you have in that trait or skill, what would be better to say is roll skill or trait number or lower than that number. The wording makes it sound like for example. A skill has 7, and you say roll under that number, then it makes you believe that you need to roll a 6 or lower for success.