Pendragon RPG -- Starter Set Deep-Dive Review

After some Brexit-related delays, I was finally able to get my hands on a copy of the new Starter Set for Pendragon 6th Edition, Chaosium's ambitious launch of a new version of Greg Stafford's beloved game.
In Pendragon, everyone plays as a knight, yet the system of Traits and Passions makes them all very distinct in personality and their approach to life. The Starter Set gives players a taste of Pendragon's unique campaign structure, in which adventures are followed by a 'winter phase' where people age, marriages and other family events take place, and characters change in response.
As with all Chaosium starter sets, this is excellent value for money, with eight highly varied pregenerated characters, a dense but clearly-explained rulebook, a fun solo adventure and a 3-year mini-campaign for newbies to dig into. My only complaint is that one of the pregens has misprinted stats in his traits section, so look out for that; I'm sure the digital version has been updated already, but still it's a bit annoying that such an error made it to print.
Other than that, it comes across like a unique and deep roleplaying system that I'll definitely try out on my group, and for £23/$30 I think it's a steal.

[@King_Shroom]

Thank you for the well detailed video! Awesome

[@misterballista]

This is a very nice and in-depth review, thank you very much for doing it. One thing I'd just take issue with is the assertion in the rules that the middle-ages in Britian was to all intents and purposes gender-neutral. This is false; there were no women knights, ever. People who wish this was so, if they attempt to produce any evidence for their assertion at all, bring up Joan of Arc, Nicola de la Haye and Aetheflaed. None of these were knights or fought in battle - women are physically smaller and weaker than men and would be killed in 2 seconds flat in such a circumstance. Furthermore, Pendragon is emulating a particular literary genre more so than history, that being Arthurian romance. Find me a female knight in Malory. No, it can't be done. Including female knights upends some of the key aspects of the game - courtly love, the feudal system and so on. Female knights have no historical or literary basis. This is just another sympton of Chaosium's enthusiasm for woke nonsense and notably wasn't a thing when Greg Stafford was in charge of the game. A game which seeks to emulate a particular period in history or a literary genre works best when it does exactly that, instead of trying to force C21st progessive politics into its setting just with the material trappings of that period - like a renaissance fair or LGBTQ+ medieval cosplay event.

[@djthorsilver]

This kind of thing is always a tough issue in games with some link to historical reality (or mythical historical reality, as in this case). To be frank, I don't think Chaosium has any particular enthusiasm for 'woke nonsense' (which is a phrase that doesn't mean anything, IMO, but that's another discussion), but they simply see which way the wind is blowing. It's 2023, non-binary pronouns and gender equality are major issues in the popular press and online culture, and including a 'pronouns' field on a character sheet or allowing female knights costs them little effort, so they opt to be inclusive and let people game how they want to game. Personally, I don't have a dog in this hunt one way or the other; if the table finds it more fun to have female knights or whatever, then they can have female knights. If they don't, then I still have a copy of Pendragon 5.2, so we can just use that. Or just play 6E make all the knights male, who cares. Once the book enters my hands it becomes my group's game, and we can do whatever we like with it. I personally think Chaosium has handled this particular minefield very well in Call of Cthulhu 7E -- supplements like Harlem Unbound have shown the realities of 1920s America in full detail, but they also repeatedly point out that not everyone finds exploration of racial prejudice fun, so one should always consult with your play group and decide together how historical you want the game to be. CoC's about cosmic horror, at its core, and the window dressing around that can change to adapt to any era or venue, real or imagined. In other words they give you *options*, and honestly I think that's the best way to go in today's climate. My expectation is that the Pendragon 6E core book will take a similar tack, or at least I hope it will, but I suppse we have a while yet until we know for sure!

[@King_Shroom]

@Mirsterballista I agree with you 100% I hope that in the release of the 6th edition core rule book adds better details to that part similar to the previous editions

[@skyblazeeterno]

ultimately the players would decide if knights could be female even if you had a rulebook saying they were male. Its THEIR game they play how they like abandoning whatever rules they dont like