the other matt's rpg blog

10/11/2023 Pendragon Session Two - A SHIELD BORN IN BLOOD (The Adventure of The Sword Tournament, 510 pt. 2) pre-session We gathered again for our second session of Pendragon.  In between sessions I’ve been binging on Arthuriana… and I’ve sort of got the bug?  I watched Excalibur and Knightriders .  I’ve read the first two books of Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur .  And I purchased a pdf of the Great Pendragon Campaign.  I’ve read through the “Boy King” period which corresponds with the starter set.  My mind has been swimming with thoughts on the tellings and retellings of Arthur’s legend, and how to have fun with it. Most of my thoughts concern ideas for years 511 and 512, mostly using stuff I’ve read and pulling from the GPC to expand upon the starter set.  I am also toying with extending our starter set with the additional boy king years… maybe up to 515?  Not sure.  The starter set doesn’t have a “satisfying ending”.  We will have to wai...

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 rolle...

Initial Thoughts Running a new game is always a little daunting.  The enthusiasm for the new game usually helps me ride through it, and access to other players online makes finding advice or getting questions answered pretty easy.  It's still more work than playing a familiar game though. It hasn’t been any different, really, for Pendragon.  I’m really excited for it.  I don’t have so much personal time in my life to devote myself fully to it, but I’ve been examining it in chunks for a little while now.  Luckily, the Pendragon starter set somewhat follows the format of the Cthulhu starter set.  It begins with a Solo adventure that you can play immediately.  Then a rules booklet, and finally a booklet of scenarios.  It differs from Call of Cthulhu in two important ways though: there are no character creation rules, and the scenarios are linked into a specific mini-campaign. In the first case, this is understandable, but disappointing.  In Cthu...

Moving to a new city is tough for many reasons.  One of those is the loss of your in person RPG group.  Re-establishing one can be very tricky, but I've done it each time I've moved over the last 3 moves successfully.  The trick is to offer to play D&D before you let loose the idea that there are other RPG games out there that you'd like to play. I answered an ad in a sticker shop looking for players for D&D back in December.  The group needed a DM.  I volunteered and in session 0, I suggested a campaign that would go from 1st to 5th level and end in about 6 months.  At which point we'd revisit.  Everyone thought that sounded good and we began.  This was basically our audition.  Not just mine, but theirs.  We were all testing out if this group of strangers would transition into friends that would play RPGs. It went really well!  The D&D campaign wrapped up nicely and that's when I gave them the pitch: all three Chaosium ...