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Yes. It's also the fact that once something has an established fan base, any new version or alternate take has to compete with the existing version. For Glorathan fans who wanted to play RuneQuest, HQ doesn't cut it. Oh, it might not had been a ll that bad. Arduin's biggest pitfall, and the one that apparently led to it's rejection was that is was more of an addition to D&D and not a stand alone game, so some deal would have to have been made with TSR. I figured that had it happened, we would have gotten something more like D&D. Just flip through one of the All the World Monsters books. It probably would have helped in capturing the high powered feel of Glorantha in a way RQ didn't, but we would probably had had to wait a bit longer for skill based FRPGs to be a thing. I know DragonQuest followed RQ, but was it already skill based by the time RQ came out or not?

The HRB will work for you, since it covers 439-480 just fine. I plan to one day fill in the gaps between 410 and 439, and update it all to SIRES format. That would give us a timeline that went back to the 460s, but it has been a low priority, as at this point the timeline isn't needed. The players are now making their own history. Just how good/compete a version I can send will depend on how fast it is needed. With revisions by J.A. Giles? That is the one I got. I have a Penguin Print edition too. I don't think too much changes between any of the editions. It mostly comes down to how it is translated from Latin, how manes are spelled, and sentence structure.

I'm going over my notes and typing to put together a coherentt timeline, and then working on shifting dates to match the Book of Sires. I didn't have it when I started (it wasn't out, I believe) and I have a few things happening at different dates. plus some adventures in my campaign moved a bit depending upon other events. I'm color coding my stuff from the official events. I could cut my stuff out entirety if desired, but figured it might help in suggesting adventure ideas, as some of the adventures could work in other Periods. Unfortunately my notes are a bit of a mess. I'm usually more concerned with getting next weeks adventure ready then cleaning up my old notes and fixing typos and dates, as I need the next adventure ot keep the game going. For instance, I'm up to 452 and Attila is going to invade Rome, and I plan of having the PKS at the Siege of Aquileia and being a scripted event with Flavius Aetius and Attila the Hun, it's been challenging to get the adventure to work out just right, without it being a TPK or pushing the PKS so far into the background that they don't matter. Also, my PKs have met and know Attila, but aren't aware of it, as they met him before he was given that name (it's actually a title/nickname meaning Little Father), and I needed to work in a sit down meeting with him before the siege to reveal that to the PKs and set up the story arc for some closure as this will be his last appearance, and probably Aetius' as well. I find historical adventures need to be work out "just so" in order to be both informative and interactive. It's easy to either railroad the PKS through a boring infodump, or mess up the timeline and have to fix stuff. Is the the one by Thompson?

It's not really that weird. In the early days you kind of had to know somebody who knew someone who gamed to find out about it. So most of the early RPG creators knew people who knew the people behind a game. So everybody in the business either knew or knew of everybody else. It was like that for the first few years, and was very a friendly and close-knit cooperative community until D&D really started to take off and TSR became more business-like and started to view the other companies not as fellow gamers but competition. If Greg hadn't stumbled across an early copy of D&D we might not have Chaosium producing RPGs, at all, or until later than they did. Although it's possible that the RPGers who were playing White Bear & Red Moon might have still convinced Greg to publish a Glorantha RPG.

Yeah, that's also touches upon something that jeffjerwin mentions in passing, th etimeline. Generally there are two different timelines that historians use to try and piece events together and about a 15-25 year difference in where some events are placed. THis is why the dates for things like Germanus' visit to Brtian is linked to multiple dates, as are many of the events of St. Patrick. This can greatly affect the psudo-historical timeline of Pendragon. A 20 year shift makes a big difference in the age of a character and determines if certain characters are contemporaries or not, or changes their relative ages. or if one is older than the other. For instance there are some sources that make Aurelius about the same age as Vortigern and a rival, and other that have him a boy during the famous Vortigern Tower incident (Aurelius is later replaced/merged into Merlin). Also, therre is some conflcit over how long Uther reigned before his death, and how long before Arthur took over. So there are a lot of characters who will end up a generation or too old or too young, and need to be time-shifted to fit the KAP timeline.

A lot of names are used by multiple characters, and a lot of relationships change between sources. If you check out the Arthrian name dictionary there is a bit on this, with four different Hoels, and a mention of a Welsh source naming him as the son of Emhyr. If he was Budec's son he would be pretty pretty old by the time Arthur becomes king.

There is a bit more to that. For starters, a lot of RQ was based around SCA experiences and the desired to not do things the same way D&D did, namely in that D&D abstracted everything with Armor Class and Hit Points. As you noted RQ all but invented simulationism. Would it have been better if it had invented narrativism instead? I think not. HQ is a much more narrative game, yet many RQ fans prefer RQ to HQ, to the point where MRQ and RQG are things desites years of being told that RQ wasn't a good fit for Glorantha. Frankly, had they gone narrative it probabyl would have crashed and burned. I think Greg went with RQ because it was the best option available to him at the time. He did reject Ardiun for it. Yup. There are quite a few things that RQ lack, because they didn't come along until later, such as opposed rolls, some sort of hero/character/rescue points to save characters and so on. Note that most of these thin gs only came out a few years later. RQ also benefits from doing something in ways that can be modern even today. While many do not like skill checks, they are still one of the few improvement methods where characters actually get better at the things to do, as opposed to the things they want to get better in. A sniper who hides in the woods, climbs trees, and shoots things with a crossbow will get better at hiding, climbing and crossbow, unlike, say, D&D where he might just level up as a wizard.

Yeah, a few things First off Welcome DMMori. Secondly, the advice given by Morien is basically sound. As Tizun Thane pointed out, this is a very ambitious project, and not one that I'd recommend to a beginning Pendragon GM. That said, I'm basically do what you are going to do, for much the same reasons.I can tell you some of what I did and even send you some of my notes and time specific adventures, along with some observations on what worked and what didn't. My suggestions: Get a copy of the HRB, as I mentioned in my last post. It's really the "recent" history for your characters, and even if it isn't done up in a year by year format it's the stuff they should know. Basically it comes down to: the Romans leaving Britain in 410; The Picts, Irish and other all raiding the Brits; The Brits unable to choose someone to lead them, probably do to rivalries; the archbishop of London convincing everyone to offer the crown to King Aldronus of Armorica (Brittan y); his refusal, but recommended of his brother, Constatin for the job; Constatain coming over, being made High King, and defeating the Picts, (and Huns, maybe); the land mostly setting down with internal sqbbles between the Pelegians (British Christians) and the Roman Christians culminating in the Pope sending Bishop Germanus of Auxere to debate with the Pelgians, an d also leading the Brits to victory against an army of Picts and Saxons; and then not much internally other than the births of Aurelius and Uther, and the mystery of why Constans was shipped off to the chruch instead of being groomed to be the heir, and Vortigern's plotting in the background. You also have Maelwyn Succat's kidnapping by the Irish, escape, joining the clergy under Germus, and eventual return to Ireland to covert them to Chrsitianity. Maelwyn is eventually called "Father" by the Irish or Patricus (Patrick) in Latin, and could be worth an adventure of three, if you are so inclined. Society is different. I have a chargen table where characters could start off as warriors instead of knights and you could make knighthood something that the first characters earn, but with the stronger Roman flavor of the times, Knights, which the Romans called Equites, could and probably would be a thing in post Roman Britian, and are probably the model for the feudal knight.So you can have some early knights if you want them. As Morien points out the Knightly saddle with stirrups were not a thing yet, but the Celts and the Romans had a "four pommel" saddle that was almost as good, and I've allowed to work normally but with a -2 to the rider's knockdown. I also have some stats for other saddles, but you won't need them in 439. Javelin was still far more common than a Lance charge though. I generally downgrade the armor with 8 point habergeons being the standard for knights and costing £2, and 10 point hauberks the high grade stuff,costing £5. I also have a few suits of Cataphatici scale that protects for 11 points, 12 with the face mask (-5 Awareness), light scale barding (8 point), Byzatinine Chargers and a few other such things but they are rare one offs, and no aviable for purchase. For instance the suit of scale, Byzantine charge and barding were a gift to the PK who lead the British contingent that assisted General Aetius during a Roman civil conflict c. 430, where the PK captured an enemy commander on the battlefield. Chargers are also more expenisve with the standard charger being the Poor Charger. Note that your PKs will natually gravitate towrds the good stuff, and will probably get the best armor and horses they can afford or win in battle, and you can make upgrading armor a thing. Herardly doesn't really exist yet, buty decorated shields are quite common. Most shields are round, but larger oval shields also existed, which I treated as 8 points but a penalty to Horsemanship due to the bulk, and difficulty in bringing them to block cross body. Over time my player shields have slowly evolved from wild Celtic designs to stuff that looks more like a knight's coat of arms, but on a roundshield. I'm saving the Kite shield for Aurelius and his troops. It's worth googling the old iron age and roman settlements. Several of the "Manors" In Pendragon were villas' at this time, such a s Tisbury, or have villas nearby, such as the one near Grateley, where there was a dead body. So you could put in a smattering of Roman and Romans into Salisbury to give it a bit of a Roman feel, and then have that fade out as the old Romans die off and are replaced by Cmyri. For istance, I had the position of Master of Horse get retired after the death of the character who held the office. I've got a timeline of events, although many of them are natually about the characters in my campaign. Other events however, deal with the history and could be useable for you. For instance, I have an adventure where the PKS helped to rescue the Princes in 443 and bring them to Armroica. As far as historical events and adventures go, be careful. They are fantastically epic when you pull them off, but dangerous as if they go wrong, you could risk loosing an important NPK. For instance when I ran the adventure where the PKS rescue the princes, I had several contingencies in place in case the players messed up, or something went wrong to ensure that Aurelius and Uther survive, for obvious reasons. This isn't that big a deal as you will have to work out similar things in the future. The general rule for these things is that you want to ensure that important events happen mostly as written in the timeline, but you also want the players to be able to make decisions and do things. I'm probably good at walking that tightrope, but even so those adventures are the hardest to plot, and take the most time. I usually start working on them well in advance, and try to present them so the PKs will generally do what is needed for the timeline. For the quite times, between the big events, I have used a mix of local adventures, personal ones, border conflicts, and oversees adventures -mostly involving n alliance with the Romans, specifically General Flavius Aetius in an attempt to defend the west and get Constatin's claim recognized. This can let you put your PKs in battle against Attila the Hun. The Princes in Brittany thing is a major subplot in my campaign, as the PKs did help rescue the Princes, and some have knights serving in Brittany as their backup characters. This can help to give the PKS a link to what is to come. Also the Draco banner of the the Pendragons has a history (I linked it to one that was actually carried by Caesar) and Excalibur is the Sword of Macsen Wldig which may be Caesar's Sword, or one that Caesar came to Britain for (he might have invaded Britian to get the Sword of the Two Rings, another magical sword from Arthurian literature that grants victroy in Battle), and their appearance will be relations that will have an effect on the course of events. Overall, as I mentioned before, I'm doing what you are trying to do, and have gotten from 410 to 452 (so far) and I'll share what I got, although most of it is in notes and outline form as opposed to presentable adventures. Oh, as as others have said, Good Luck! You've bitten off quite a mouthful.

Okay, I'll update the tables and fix a few errors, and see if I can crib a timeline together from my notes, along with some of the key event s and maybe a short description on them. I'd also recommended your GM find a copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain, and look over Book VI, Chapters 1-6 (about six pages total). The HRB was one of the earliest versions of the King Arthur story in a form that mostly matches with the common tale we all know, and was the "go to " book for the Pendragon RPG, and the Book of Sires, for events that take place before the reign of King Uther. Since the Book was written nearly 900 years ago, and has bee in in print for years, several versions old enough to be in the public domain and a free version can be found on the internet pretty easily. The Aaron Thompson translation is available in a PDF.

It has the same advantages and disadvantages as it does in Pendragon. The advantages are that gives the campaign a more of a sense of time passing and adds weight and significance to the major events by spreading them out over time. It also helps with the fell of hero maturing and taking time to reach hero status, as opposed to the r apid improvement possible in older RQ, with (approximately) weekly improvement rolls. The disadvantages are that it is not well suited towards longer adventures, or times when a lot is happening and characters have to jump from one adventure to another. It can also force a GM to have to choose between two good adventure ideas at times, because there is only enough time to fit one of the adventures into the year, or else have a really long year. Oh, and sometimes GM might have to rush through something to have more time for something more important.

I can put together my timelines from Year 410-440. Most of it is specific to my campaign, but some of the battles and other events's are things that would happen in any campaign, such as when Constatin becomes king, or (Saint) Germanus first visit. I'll crib my notes and put together a timeline of events.

Well in that case you shouldn't have too much trouble with NPC stats, as D&D uses the average stats for monsters and generic NPCs. One thing I'd reccomened is that it is better to err towards the side of weak opponents as opposed to strong ones. BRP isn't as forgiving as D&D and it's harder to bounce back for getting killed. Since Hit points are mostly fixed, a good fight can be one where nobody gets hurt, unlike D&D where you might expect people to take 25-50% of this hit points in damage.

Yes, and pointed out by your's truly. The deadliness would be less than RQ if you just used RQ armor values for armor, weapons and shields, with parry weapons soaking damage per RQ. 4d6 damage wouldn't be so bad if a shield blocked 12 points on a partial success. Yes. While KAP coul d be adapted to replace RQ for non-Glorantha games, it is obviously better if RQ could just handle such games. Hence why even those of us who are not pleased with RQG are still curious about RQ-nonG. I think CoC7 would need some work to really replace RQ. As some of the threads have illstrated, the bonus dice do not quite equal to bonus to attack.

Yup. Which makes their extinction in Britain more curious. It also seems that in many cases the Driuds remained as priests, but they switched to other religions that were better tolerated. So the possiblity of a Druid mystery cult, masquerading as another religion is quite possible.. But the same holds true for many other lands the Romans conquered and the priest were not exterminated. Plus even the "they were behind most of the uprisings" is all taken from Roman sources. It's like with the Picts. We get very little information, and all of it is through the eyes of their enemy. From the lens of a historian most of this doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

I'm sure it will be, but in what ways, mechanically Nordic runes replace Glortathan ones seems obvious, although that would mean a lot more rune skills. But what hit point method will be used, will armor potect as in RQG despite being iron or steel, or have higher values? All that stuff. Well, there is also this game called Pendragon which does handle medieval fairly well. And now Charlemagne. With a few adjustments it could probably give you your fix. A lot of BRP stuff could be bolted onto or adapted to the KAP core rules.

Yes. Morien raises a very good point, and probably what you GM meant. Ask the GM what year you character was born and what year it is in the game. SIRES is of little value for player chargen prior to 439. It's got some info, but not in a usual format. I do have some family background tables that run from the 360s to 410, in the old format (I plan to update it to SIRES format, but it is a low priority), and I could clean them up and make them available for your GM, as I have grand delusions of maybe doing up a Book of Constatin with them, but I'm bnot sure how much help they would be as they stop at 410. I also got some notes for what happens in the 410s-430s, although much of that is specific to my campaign, or my making a choice over several options for an event, so again I don't know how useful it would be. The major events would be correct though.

I'm not sure you can have HQ2 style without the treadmill. The treadmill is a byproduct of PC advancement, and is inherent in most RPGs. As soon as the PKS can improve select NPCs need to as well to keep up the challenge. It's just that in most RPGs it isn't as noticeable. HQ, by virtue of it's simplify, having one mechanic to do everything, becomes easier to notice what is going on. We get to see the man behind the curtain and spot the illusion.

I liked it too. Plus Greg's later statements that RQ never really represented Glorantha well, and that HQ supposed was better at doing so, contributed to my feeling that the game system worked better outside of Glorantha. Yes, they needed a Fantasy Europe setting pack s imilar to thier usual packs, and I suspect there was one in the works, but never got printed. I think Ninja wasn't as good as Vikings, and was too far removed from Fantasy Europe. LotN seemed to lack the wort of detail that Bob Chareette had put into Bushido, and there was a lot of blank space, and reused the same art multiple times. It reminded me a lot of the old Hawkmoon boxed set. It was if there was supposed to be more but for some reason it never got done and they had to find away to fill out the page count. It was still a good supplment, but I think they would have been better off saving it until after they had fleshed out Fantasy Europe more. I like Glorantha but: It is very different than any other FRPG setting, making it harder for a new player to just play. Everything from who can cast spells (everybody), what races are available and what they are like (they are not Tolkien/European Elves, Dwarves and Trolls), to what weapons and armor are available (bronze?) all made it tougher for new combers to grasp. The rich background and history has a steep learning curve, made worse by the fact that it isn't a common legend that we all know a little about. Glorantha is/was unique and that made it both appealing and also harder to both run and play. It will be interesting to see how non-Glorantha RQ develops. Will it s till closely to and be compatible with RQG, or will it diverge to better emulate whatever setting it is being used for, or even be more generic.

That was the way they did it in the earlier editions. In a nutshell it comes down to two goals that tend to oppose each other. On the one hand a fixed scale of competency helps the GM to rate challenges and characters as well as give the players a idea of what to expect and an understanding of just what their particular skill ratings mean. Taken in a vacuum, 17 mean nothing. Take\en with 1d20, 17 looks pretty good, until you hear about masteries. On the other hand, a relative competency scale helps the GM to keep adventures and opponents challenging to the player characters. If the bad guy is rating as character skill +10r some such, then he will always be better than the players and thus a challenge. The goal is always to try to blend these two goals in some way.

Uh yup, and SDLeary called me out on. My bad. Yes, it why we know very little about British Druids. What little we do know is usually from Roman sources, and heavily biased. Yes, and it is believed that there were differences between Irish and British Druidic orders, much like everything else between the two lands. It was more than just that. Look at other lands their conquered, such as Judea. Usually the Romans would leave a lot of the local religions intact, and just demand the locals make token offerings to Jupiter, pay their taxes, and not cause trouble. But with the Druids they went out of their way to exterminate them. Now the Romans generally disliked human sacrifice, but some other subjected cultures had it. So there must have been something that the Druids did that the Romans found completely unacceptable, or just scared the hell out of them.

First off check with your GM to see if they have something already. There are a lot of alternate takes on things, especially that early on, and you will want follow their lead on how certain events play out. Yes, there are some key event's that take place prior to 439, that we could go over, but just which version of them and how much your PK knows about them is up to your GM.You probably should also check with the GM about looking through SIRES as it is like peeking into the future. I can fill you in on some of the happening prior to 439, and even set up a campaign to start in 410, and have generation tables that go back to t he 360s or so, but you really should check with your GM first to find out how they want to handle all of this.

For the most part go with it. A lot of this stuff is only important if you focus on certain aspects of the game or not. The economics only become important if the knights have land or want to buy something beyond thier normal gear. It's just that Pendragon, due to it setting and tone, and things differently that a typical FRPG, such as D&D, and the dark age world view is very different from the view that we have today, and we probably should project our modern views onto the actions of the people from those times. BTW, some of the supplements cover or at least hint at some of the things that Morien and I brought up. You might want to give some of them a go. The Book of the Estate gives a good breakdown of how much money a Manor brings in and where it all goes, how much the knight sees of it, how land works, what improvements cost, and what sort of money and armies the nobles have (Warlord covers that in more detail, but Estate give you the building blocks and explain how it works). The Book of the Entourage covers supporting characters and covers wives a bit better. Naturally the Great Pendragon Campaign is invaluable as a timeline to follow, as loosely or rigidly as you want - it a tool, not a straitjacket. The Book of Uther is sort of a Who's Who? during Uther's reing and adds a few years and adventures to the GPC. All the other books have some use, obviously, but these three are probably the most helpful for a starting campaign, or to grasp the society and economics. I'll warn you off the Book of the Manor, as it uses a more detailed land management system that is not only more time consuming, but also is easily exploited and can lead to economic escalation. Most of what is in it, is covered by Estate now, anyway.

Yeah, I think your right. it's been about a Year since I looked that up for my campaign. Ynys Mon, so I probably used Isle of Mon in my notes and mis-remembered it as Man. Good Catch, thanks. One interesting thing is that considering how tolerate the Romans usually were with local religions, despite the tribulations of early Christianity, they made a real effort to wipe out the Druids. The Druids must have really have engaged in something that the Romans found extremely unacceptable.

Yes, but Arthur is likely to have come from the Roman name Artorius, and that Uther came out of a mis-translation. Arthur map Uter (forgive t he spelling) meant "Arthur the terrible", commenting of his formidable battle prowess. But map is also a Welsh word used to denote Son on, similar to how Mac or Mc is still used todaty, and so the phase was mistranslated as Arthur son of Uther. Yes, although just what the original version of all this is still shrouded in mystery, as the story wasn't not written down until over a century and had no doubt been altered a few times before being recorded. It also didn't help that those who did record the tale usually had an axe to grind and would alter things to b etter fit with their narrative or to link it to other figures.

Probably not even that long. From what I've read, British Christianity was really more of a blend between Christian and Pagan beliefs. Even in later periods when Christianity was the only religion in Britain, most common folk would still leave out offerings to the old gods and to the faeries. It partly has to do with polytheistic cultures. Rather than deny the existence of a new god or a rival group of gods, most polytheistic culture just accept the existence of these other gods and try to accommodate them accordingly, if possible. Thus British people would become Christian and worship God and take Christ to be their savior, and go to heaven after death (a good deal), but they will also still leave out offerings to the old gods and perform rituals and ceremonies to stay on their good side. When the Romans conquered the Isle of Man their forces were met with a group of hostile Druids and maiden assistants, on some sort of platform. The roman Legions tore into the Druids who put up no resistance. Then the assistants threw torches onto the platform, which lit up, becoming a bonfire. The Romans suddenly realized that they had been duped into helping thr Druids perform some sort of human sacrifice and feared just what sort of curse they had brought down upon themselves. So if you look at it from the view of absorbing anew religion into existing beliefs rather than converting people away from the older relgion, you get a better idea of w hat was happening. T he Pelegian "hersey" was in part about preventing this sort of fusion. And the Pope back William of Normany's invasion in hope of finally stamping out this sort of mix. Eventually the Church ended up reverse tactics and started to absorb local gods and goddess into the chruch dogma as Saitns, allowing the chruch some means to direct the worship and ultimately to eliminate those cults. The Ladies of the Lake in Pendragon are probably the remnants of the older Celtic water goddess and faeries, combined with the Matriarchal Celtic Christianity. For the dynamic you probably wouldn't be too far off if you thought of some sort of blend of New Age Pagan and Christian groups with members having female priests with a belief with female priests, whose members beleive and practice magic.