creativehum Posted November 28, 2019 Share Posted November 28, 2019 3 hours ago, Steve said: The beautiful Lisa Free illustrations made that set for me. Her illustrations (along with the layout and maps) are what make the 3rd edition the definitive KAP for me. Everything about that edition was top notch across the board. 2 Quote "But Pendragon isn’t intended to be historical, just fun. So have fun." -- Greg Stafford Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goldenwheeldancer Posted December 1, 2019 Share Posted December 1, 2019 On 11/28/2019 at 6:33 PM, creativehum said: Her illustrations (along with the layout and maps) are what make the 3rd edition the definitive KAP for me. Everything about that edition was top notch across the board. Except that awful cover!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atgxtg Posted December 1, 2019 Share Posted December 1, 2019 38 minutes ago, goldenwheeldancer said: Except that awful cover!! Well to be fair the cover was by Mike Weave, not Lisa Free. 1 Quote Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
creativehum Posted December 1, 2019 Share Posted December 1, 2019 To be honest, I know some people hate the cover. But I have never understood the hatred. It's a bold, colorful image of Arthur welcoming the reader to Camelot. For me it works great. Quote "But Pendragon isn’t intended to be historical, just fun. So have fun." -- Greg Stafford Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atgxtg Posted December 1, 2019 Share Posted December 1, 2019 3 minutes ago, creativehum said: To be honest, I know some people hate the cover. But I have never understood the hatred. It's a bold, colorful image of Arthur welcoming the reader to Camelot. For me it works great. I don't hate it but I think it is the worst cover on any KAP product. It looks too "Saturday morning cartoon-ish", and does not invoke any Arthurian feel to it. The nobles on the cover do h ave anything to identify them as Arthur, Guinevere or anyone else for the literature. For me it falls flat, and is a big downgrade from the First Edition cover. I think overall KAP4 is a better book, mostly be incoprating the expanded chargen rules, which got dropped in KAP3. Quote Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
creativehum Posted December 1, 2019 Share Posted December 1, 2019 (edited) The expanded chargen rules for KAP 3 were in Knights Adventurous. The expanded chargen rules are literally the pages of Knights Adventurous pasted into the pages of KAP 3. Because the pasting was awkward and ugly I could never really take KAP 4 seriously. The fonts and formatting of the two books were never ironed out even as they were shoved into one book. Since the layout of KAP 3 was one of the most beautiful RPG layouts I'd ever seen (and still sets the bar in many ways, as far as I'm concerned) the laziness found within KAP 4 was an utter disappointment to me. I already had everything contained within KAP 4 in my KAP 3 books except for the magic system. And since I didn't want the magic system... well, then there was nothing new there for me. Edited December 1, 2019 by creativehum Quote "But Pendragon isn’t intended to be historical, just fun. So have fun." -- Greg Stafford Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
creativehum Posted December 1, 2019 Share Posted December 1, 2019 (edited) Oh, and as for the covers: I really do love KAP 1. Bold. Colorful. For my own taste (and let me be clear, only my taste and no claims to anything more) I find the covers from KAP 4 onward (apart from the Lady of the Lake cover for 5.1) somewhat "too grounded." King Arthur Pendragon always carries the tension between the mundane and the ideal. It is built into the rules and should always (in my view) be part of play. As I've noted elsewhere my own taste for running KAP is that I and the other Players are creating new chapters of Le Morte D'Arthur that Mallory didn't know about or couldn't figure out how to squeeze into his book. I'm not trying to create a "reality" of how things would really work in a historical sense, but rather have enough "reality" to ground and complement the ideals and fantasy as Mallory did in his book. Again, that's my taste. But looking at the core rules of KAP 1, 3, and 5x, that's what I find in both the text and the mechanics. To that end, outside of the Lisa Free art, which I love, my own druthers would be to publish KAP using the art of N. C. Wyeth and Howard Pyle. Both illustrators have a beatiful sense of weight and reality to the lines. But they use that work within the context of paintings and drawings full of romance and heightened reality beyond "reality." . Edited December 2, 2019 by creativehum 2 Quote "But Pendragon isn’t intended to be historical, just fun. So have fun." -- Greg Stafford Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goldenwheeldancer Posted December 2, 2019 Share Posted December 2, 2019 6 hours ago, creativehum said: To be honest, I know some people hate the cover. But I have never understood the hatred. It's a bold, colorful image of Arthur welcoming the reader to Camelot. For me it works great. Fair point! I have to admit that I have not liked ANY of the Pendragon covers except for the first edition! So I am probably quite picky! Though third edition KAP is definitely my least favourite of the lot! I was quite young when I first bought KAP 3 and there was definitely a cringe factor whenever i saw the cover. But, as you say, the internals were absolutely golden! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeffjerwin Posted December 2, 2019 Share Posted December 2, 2019 The Lisa Free illustrations were so good. I particularly liked Mordred, the Raven Witch, the Questing Beast, and Morgan. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.