09/28/2023 Pendragon Starter Set
Our group started our first Pendragon adventure last night from the Starter Set. After a brief rules review, we chatted a little bit about various “questions” for our group to tackle. The starter set pointed out in various places that we should try to agree on whether we want to luxuriate in lavishly detailed scenes or if we should just get through them quickly and move on. We all weren’t quite sure so agreed to try out getting a very detailed scene and seeing if we liked it.
The starter set also made it clear that the purpose of the game was to earn glory, and find out “what kind of knight are you.” I made sure to emphasize these points.
The players picked Sir Asterius, Dame Lynelle, and Sir Evrain. It was a nice mix of characters - the stranger in a strange land, the knight hiding a secret identity, and the knight in love with Lady Morcades, respectively. I had generated some names of squires for them before the session started and we randomly rolled to see what their age was. These were not suggested by the starter set, but just ideas I had. I decided to give them each two traits that “stood out” to help me roleplay them. I didn’t end up roleplaying them much, but it was fun to add this little bit of color.
Only I had played through the solo scenario, so I spent some time reviewing what was on the character sheet with everyone as well. All in, we spent about a half an hour bringing everyone up to “rough speed” of playing. Which is a testament to the simplicity of the rules → roll under d20 isn’t so tricky. What is interesting though, are the various subsystems: traits, battles, passions, and winners & losers in combat.
In my last post I was sort of bemoaning the complexity of the starter scenario, The Adventure of the Sword Tournament. Now that I have played it, I think it makes a really strong introduction, and all my fears for it were for naught. My players all roughly fit into the “know about the sword in the stone” but nothing else about Arthur category. So the scenario beginning with a description of the anarchy, and the possibility of it coming to an end through the tournament was a great starting point. Bumming around Londinium gave us a chance to practice using skills and trait rolls, to get the hang of them.
The tournament battle was a great way to introduce how battles work, and how to fight a round of combat. Since all the weapons were rebated, everyone got to look at the huge damage numbers and then sigh with relief as they were cut in half. They all had wide eyes and realized how deadly a fight could be.
The big twist, of course, is that Arthur draws the sword and ends the tournament early. We had a “big scene” where the players had opportunities to think about how their knight felt, intervene against Lot, and swear loyalty to Arthur. We chose to end the session there, and spent a while debriefing and discussing the game.
Everyone was really pleased. I was especially happy to see how easy it was to GM the game. I was nervous that it wouldn’t land, or that I wouldn’t know what to do. But the rules reference I typed turned out to be very useful in the case of remembering all the “loser’s combat resolution” and the “battle turn procedure”. Mostly though, I kept referencing the definitions of the traits.
During the battle, they learned about Passions. Poor Dame Lynelle failed their passion roll, succeeded in a passion crisis, and entered into melancholy. Sir Evrain had a passion crisis regarding Lady Morcades, and fell into Misery, but caught sight of her and regained his composure. The mood swings were new to everyone but there was a lot of joy and laughter and groaning at these things happening. Lynelle’s player actually failed most of the rolls of the evening, but used each to color Lynelle’s experience. The poor Knight was seething by the end of the session. Asterius succeeded almost every time, even crit-ing on multiple occasions. In the first (and only) turn of the battle, he captured a knight of Gorre. So we had a wide range of results in the game.
All the players reported that they felt like there was a learning curve to the game, but that they were feeling like they were getting the hang of it. Each was busier than usual in the time leading up to the game, so I hope in the coming weeks they get to run through the solo. I think it’ll catch them up on the rules in an easy way.
We also decided that we really liked the heavy detail of the “cutscene” with the interruptions to ask how the knight felt about what was happening. So we will continue with the heavy details.
Overall, I’m really happy with how things turned out, and I feel like I have a handle on how to run the game. I’m excited about finishing the adventure in our next session (and I am worried about the deadliness of the Battle of Carlion!).
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