New Game - Pendragon play-by-post Interest Thread.

Pendragon: Tales of Chivalry and Sorcery is the place to go if you want to play Pendragon. Cpt._Funkotron will be your GM, with assistance from CarrieVS.

New Game - Pendragon play-by-post Interest Thread.

Postby Cpt._Funkotron » Wed Feb 08, 2017 5:47 am

Pendragon is a tabletop rpg, not unlike dungeons and dragons, that deals specifically with Arthurian legends. The players take the role of romano-british knights, whose exploits, though left unmentioned by the chroniclers, run alongside the massive drama spanning nearly a century that is the collective arthurian mythos.

The game is NOT high fantasy, but neither is it entirely historical. It takes the various disparate facets of the mythology, the english chroniclers, the welsh balladeers, the french and german troubadours, modern historians, and sort of fuses them together into a cohesive universe. Instead of having the entire game play out as either a bunch of romano-celts in their hillforts, or full-on victorian fairy tale , the story is marked into several phases of society and technology.

The campaign begins in the first of these phases, the dark age that is set apart by the golden one of Arthur's Camelot to come.

The First Phase, the beginning

Phase I, technologically and politically analogous to the late 11th century. Knights clad in conical helms and chain-mail hauberks, with kite-shaped shields atop unarmored chargers. What passes for a castle in most of Britain is a wooden Motte-and-Bailey. It is a harsh world. Chivalry and courtly romance is all but non-existent. This is the time of battle-lords. Might makes right, and the Cymrics are losing.

The year is 485 AD.

King Uther is on the throne of Logres. The Saxons, Angles, and Jutes, invited to these shores by the traitorous King Vortigern, now dead, continue to hold the South-East. In nearly 19 years of combined effort, he with his brother King Ambrosius, "The last true roman" before him, Uther has been unable to dislodge the foreign foe. With every passing year, more wolf-headed longships and the honey-haired barbarians who row them appear than the last.

If this weren't enough, there is trouble at home. Half of the great barons are hesitant if not recalcitrant towards Uther's temperamental rule. Chief among them two of his dukes, Corneus of Lindsey (modern day lincolnshire) and Gorlois of Tintagel. The wizard Merlin, though trusted adviser, is a fickle ally and is often away on his own affairs.

One steadfast vassal, on the other hand, is Sir Roderick, Earl of Salisbury; your liegelord.

*********

You are a young, vassal knight, aged 21-26. You serve the Earl of Salisbury from your manorial estate as did your father and grandfather before you. Will you serve your lord with honor and bravery? Will you marry well and ensure the future of your family line? Will you defend the defenseless, honor the church, and rescue fair damosels? Or will you be a dastardly robber-knight, preying on the weak and innocent, spitting on the church and kidnapping those fair damosels in the first place? Will you slay the monster, or will the monster slay you? It is 485, and you have just won your spurs as a knight. Adventure awaits.
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Re: New Game - Pendragon play-by-post Interest Thread.

Postby KleinerKiller » Wed Feb 08, 2017 6:06 am

So, uh... what are the actual rules? How do we play? Is there a character signup like a typical game, or are we all playing this one knight post-by-post like a drawn-out game of exquisite corpse?

I'm very excited to be playing another thing, it's been way too long. I'm just awfully confused.
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Re: New Game - Pendragon play-by-post Interest Thread.

Postby Cpt._Funkotron » Wed Feb 08, 2017 6:45 am

phpBB [video]


There is a core rule book, there are character sheets, there are dice.

This thread is to gauge interest, I own most of the books and I can drop the core rule book to anyone who wants to sign up, so that they can fill out their character sheet.

In actual gameplay, I will try to keep as much of the game mechanics in the background and on my end as possible so as not to muddle the roleplay.

I would need a subforum to keep everything together. Every in-game year would have an adventure thread, for the main party-oriented event of that year, and a Winter-phase thread, where, after the adventuring season is at a close, players roleplay amongst themselves at winter court, scheme, plot, make economic decisions, and resolve family matters.
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Re: New Game - Pendragon play-by-post Interest Thread.

Postby KleinerKiller » Wed Feb 08, 2017 7:48 am

That sounds really complex, and way more involved than the games we typically host here. I'm down for it -- it basically sounds like some kind of TCS D&D, and I love that idea -- but I don't know how many others will be. A subforum all for this is also asking a lot, though it sounds like it has the makings of something that could be a major feature if enough people get on board.

So count me in, if this goes ahead.
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Re: New Game - Pendragon play-by-post Interest Thread.

Postby Grimstone » Wed Feb 08, 2017 9:04 am

Brightbane:
Human, Cleric
17/8/14/14/14/9

Skills:
Concentration
Diplomacy
Knowledge (religion)
Sense motive

Feats:
Armor proficiency light
Armor proficiency medium
Armor proficiency heavy
Combat casting
Shield proficiency
Simple weapon proficiency
Toughness
Turn undead
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Last edited by Grimstone on Wed Feb 08, 2017 12:34 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: New Game - Pendragon play-by-post Interest Thread.

Postby Anglerphobe » Wed Feb 08, 2017 12:17 pm

Is there any reason that things have to be based in 11th century history rather than that of the real 5th century?
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Re: New Game - Pendragon play-by-post Interest Thread.

Postby sunglasses » Wed Feb 08, 2017 5:04 pm

I'm down character TBD

Anything but a Paladin (if paladins exist in this uni)
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Re: New Game - Pendragon play-by-post Interest Thread.

Postby Cpt._Funkotron » Wed Feb 08, 2017 5:35 pm

Anglerphobe wrote:Is there any reason that things have to be based in 11th century history rather than that of the real 5th century?


Because that's the campaign setting.

In the real 5th century there was no such thing as a knight. The idea and practice of knighthood in the real world arose from the Franks, several hundred years after the Arthur's supposed reign, during ewhich time the Anglo Saxons have the run of the place, and are well on their way into developing into the modern English.

Most of the Arthurian legends we have and would recognize gestated between the 11th century (historia regum britanniae) and the 15th century (Le Morte de Arthur). People in the middle ages didn't really have the concept of history that we do, archaeology didn't exist as a discipline of study, they didn't have a good grasp of the advancement of technology or the ways society changes, so when they depicted events long-past there tends to be a common theme of the names being different, but pretty much everything looking like it did in their time. The Morgan Bible is a good example of this, for context that figure in the lower left hand is supposed to be King Saul:

Image

As I said, it's supposed to be an amalgamation of the early pseudohistorical chronicles, the welsh legends, the french and german romances, set in the context of actual history.

Don't get me wrong, it *does* fit in with the 5th century somewhat, but it's an alternate 5th century, where the institution of knightood is invented around 400 and developed over the decades, growing out of the roman equite class and local warrior nobility of Britain as a result of the legions abandoning them, where the feudal system is essentially invented early by King Ambrosius, in the form that in the real world won't be found in Britain until after the Norman conquest.
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Re: New Game - Pendragon play-by-post Interest Thread.

Postby Cpt._Funkotron » Wed Feb 08, 2017 5:48 pm

sunglasses wrote:I'm down character TBD

Anything but a Paladin (if paladins exist in this uni)


Well first of all there are no classes, so you should be solid on that front. guess a paladin in this context is essentially just a really really really virtuous knight, who by their pure souls and good deeds, the gods let get away with some bullshit that would kill most people, like Lancelot or Galahad for example.
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Re: New Game - Pendragon play-by-post Interest Thread.

Postby sunglasses » Wed Feb 08, 2017 6:12 pm

Cpt._Funkotron wrote:
sunglasses wrote:I'm down character TBD

Anything but a Paladin (if paladins exist in this uni)


Well first of all there are no classes, so you should be solid on that front. guess a paladin in this context is essentially just a really really really virtuous knight, who by their pure souls and good deeds, the gods let get away with some bullshit that would kill most people, like Lancelot or Galahad for example.


sorry, it was a bit of a joke. I HATE people who play as Paladins. To the point of making dick jokes about laying on hands, lol.
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Re: New Game - Pendragon play-by-post Interest Thread.

Postby Cpt._Funkotron » Wed Feb 08, 2017 7:14 pm

Ah ok, #OutOfTheLoop
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Re: New Game - Pendragon play-by-post Interest Thread.

Postby cmsellers » Wed Feb 08, 2017 7:30 pm

sunglasses wrote:sorry, it was a bit of a joke. I HATE people who play as Paladins. To the point of making dick jokes about laying on hands, lol.


Spoiler: show
Have gun will travel, reads the card of a man
A knight without armor in a savage land
His fast gun hire, heeds the calling wind
A soldier of fortune, is a man called Paladin

Paladin, Paladin, where do you roam
Paladin, Paladin, far, far from home

He travels on to where ever he must
A chess knight of silver is his badge of trust

There are campfire legends that the plainsmen sing
Of the man with the gun, of the man called Paladin

Paladin, Paladin, where do you roam
Paladin, Paladin, far, far from home

Far from home, far from home
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Re: New Game - Pendragon play-by-post Interest Thread.

Postby CarrieVS » Wed Feb 08, 2017 7:47 pm

sunglasses wrote:sorry, it was a bit of a joke. I HATE people who play as Paladins. To the point of making dick jokes about laying on hands, lol.


I play D&D and one of our group plays a Paladin and she's a vital member of the party and great fun to play with. And she laughs as much as any of us (and more than some) at the jokes.
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Re: New Game - Pendragon play-by-post Interest Thread.

Postby 52xMax » Wed Feb 08, 2017 8:00 pm

I'll play anything slightly related to knights, as long as I get to make references to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.


Spoiler: show
I bet nobody was expecting that!

You were probably expecting this instead

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Re: New Game - Pendragon play-by-post Interest Thread.

Postby sunglasses » Wed Feb 08, 2017 11:07 pm

CarrieVS wrote:
sunglasses wrote:sorry, it was a bit of a joke. I HATE people who play as Paladins. To the point of making dick jokes about laying on hands, lol.


I play D&D and one of our group plays a Paladin and she's a vital member of the party and great fun to play with. And she laughs as much as any of us (and more than some) at the jokes.


GASP!? A lady paladin?

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