Current & Future Pendragon 6th edition books

[glassneedles]

Inspired by the excellent threads in Glorantha and Call of Cthulhu forums I thought I'd get a start on one for Pendragon as I'm sure everyone else is as excited as me about the new edition! Bit bare bones at the moment but should be bursting with King Arthur goodness before we know it. 

Currently Available:

• Pendragon Quickstart Guide

Future Products

• Starter Set (interview) - Mini campaign going over 6 years including the sword in the stone, the foundation of the round table and Arthur's marriage to Guinevere with the players able to participate and "leave your personal stamp" on these moments.
• Pendragon Core Rulebook (interview)
• GM Book (discord)
• Custom & Law Book (discord)
• Resource Pack (post) - Contains a GM screen, Book of Salisbury and other resources similar to RuneQuest/CoC screen kits
• Great Pendragon Campaign (post, interview) - Three volume set each covering two periods (Boy King and Conquest, Romance and Tournament, Grail Quest and Twilight).
• Early Eras Campaign (discord)- Three volume set covering King Vortigern, Uther, Anarchy
• Regions books (discord) - Setting books covering various regions with scenarios included
• Knights and Ladies Adventurous (post) - Sourcebook with scenarios
• Book of Castles (post)
• Codex Mirabilis (post) - rules for playing a magician
• Codex Sanctus (discord) - rules for playing a saint
• Book on Courtly Ladies and Knights (discord)- running lady/courtier campaigns
• The Ancient Greek RPG (post referencing this previous post) - Greek heroic age with you playing children of gods.
• The Feudal Japan RPG (post referencing this previous post) - working title is Monogatari
• Robin Hood RPG (post please note this one isn't currently being worked on but David and Chaosium are very enthusiastic about the idea so it is likely to happen)

The interview links are timestamped to the bit in the video talking about the product in question. If you have non video sources for anything let me know and I will add these as well.

So with thanks to @Call Me Deacon Blues I found the Pendragon Discord server which seems to be a great place to chat to likeminded Pendragon fans and some people from there had been a part of a "What's Up with Pendragon" chat and they graciously took notes ( @Owlhunter and  discord user@Phantom Gardener) along with @ethawyn who took all the notes and made a 5 page PDF. Thank you to all for the notes and compiling it! I hope everyone else finds this as exciting as I do.

Please note I have given a very very high level summary of what @ethawyn put in the PDF as I didn't want to just duplicate their work. I highly recommend you look at it yourself. There are 5 pages giving a much more detailed breakdown than I have of what we know is in the books.

For anyone who wants to double check the veracity of the Discord sourced parts I can't directly link to the correct messages but by going to the kap6 channel on the server and scrolling up to the messages from the 28th of February 2021 you can see David Larkins posted the notes people took which is enough confirmation for me. 

 

Edited October 1, 2021 by glassneedles
updating sources and new books

[glassneedles]

Hi everyone! 

I can't be the only one who is beyond excited about the new version of Pendragon and I've been scouring the site for any information about what we can expect. I've only put products that I can directly confirm are from Chaosium at the moment. I've heard there's other stuff like an Ancient Greece based setting and a Japanese one but don't have a direct quote for these yet. If there is something I am missing (and I know there are a lot) please let me know along with a link to the source and I will add it in!

I've also left it at just 6e stuff for Pendragon. I have to say I haven't played Pendragon previously but with how strong Chaosium's books have been (I came in through Call of Cthulhu) I am very excited by the new edition. If you think we should put 5th edition books or Paladin (not sure if that is getting a new version or not) or even Prince Valiant (which I can't find on the Chaosium store?) let me know! 

[SirUkpyr]

I *greatly* dislike the idea of the GPC being turned into 4 books - as that increases the buy in price for the campaign quite a bit.

Now seeing it updated - GREAT!

Perhaps 2 books where "Romance+Tourney+Grail+Downfall" being a single book would work, but 4 books would take the price for the GPC at over $100 dollars, and possibly over $150.

[glassneedles]

25 minutes ago, SirUkpyr said:

I *greatly* dislike the idea of the GPC being turned into 4 books - as that increases the buy in price for the campaign quite a bit.

Now seeing it updated - GREAT!

Perhaps 2 books where "Romance+Tourney+Grail+Downfall" being a single book would work, but 4 books would take the price for the GPC at over $100 dollars, and possibly over $150.

I understand where you are coming from with that but if the quality of the additional material is like the Masks of Nyarlathotep for 7th edition then I'm happy to pay. Would definitely like to see more details on it however! I did just find a post by sirlarkin going into further details on what has been added if you were curious.

[Call Me Deacon Blues]

3 hours ago, SirUkpyr said:

I *greatly* dislike the idea of the GPC being turned into 4 books - as that increases the buy in price for the campaign quite a bit.

Now seeing it updated - GREAT!

Perhaps 2 books where "Romance+Tourney+Grail+Downfall" being a single book would work, but 4 books would take the price for the GPC at over $100 dollars, and possibly over $150.

So, as I recall, it was 3 volumes, each one covering 2 periods starting with Boy King. Then an un-numbered (presumably 3, but I dunno) number of prequel volumes covering Anarchy, Uther, and Vortigern periods. But I'm not sure the up-front buy-in is as big a problem as you think.. Keep in mind that 6th edition is mostly targeted towards new players, who wouldn't necessarily WANT a huge tome. Keep in mind the original GPC is almost 600 pages long and was like $50 when it was first printed, what, 15 or 20 years ago? Simply selling that exact book would probably cost $60 or $70 today, maybe even more depending. Putting out smaller volumes, running $20-30 or whatever, split up across several months or years, would objectively be more attractive for newer players, maybe they don't NEED the entire campaign because they like the early days or arthur, or prefer just the middle periods or something. Considering how many campaigns fail to make it through multiple periods, it's more info than you'd think. Plus keep in mind that they're adding new material, so my guess is, end-to-end, even cutting out potential duplicate pages, they'll probably clock in at over 600 pages (at least if you count Uther and Anarchy volumes, maybe not without them).

 

Of course, I'm gonna get all pdfs anyways, most likely. Books are nice, but damn is it convenient, plus they're usually cheaper.

 

EDIT: To put this another way; I DO own the hardcover for Paladin and it MSRPs for $60, and is only about 450 pages. So we're probably talking $65-$70 minimum for a 1 volume GPC.

Edited May 3, 2021 by Call Me Deacon Blues

[glassneedles]

2 hours ago, Call Me Deacon Blues said:

So, as I recall, it was 3 volumes, each one covering 2 periods starting with Boy King. Then an un-numbered (presumably 3, but I dunno) number of prequel volumes covering Anarchy, Uther, and Vortigern periods. But I'm not sure the up-front buy-in is as big a problem as you think.. Keep in mind that 6th edition is mostly targeted towards new players, who wouldn't necessarily WANT a huge tome. Keep in mind the original GPC is almost 600 pages long and was like $50 when it was first printed, what, 15 or 20 years ago? Simply selling that exact book would probably cost $60 or $70 today, maybe even more depending. Putting out smaller volumes, running $20-30 or whatever, split up across several months or years, would objectively be more attractive for newer players, maybe they don't NEED the entire campaign because they like the early days or arthur, or prefer just the middle periods or something. Considering how many campaigns fail to make it through multiple periods, it's more info than you'd think. Plus keep in mind that they're adding new material, so my guess is, end-to-end, even cutting out potential duplicate pages, they'll probably clock in at over 600 pages (at least if you count Uther and Anarchy volumes, maybe not without them).

 

Of course, I'm gonna get all pdfs anyways, most likely. Books are nice, but damn is it convenient, plus they're usually cheaper.

 

EDIT: To put this another way; I DO own the hardcover for Paladin and it MSRPs for $60, and is only about 450 pages. So we're probably talking $65-$70 minimum for a 1 volume GPC.

Well said! Just to double check something you mentioned 3 volumes in the GPC do you remember where you saw that? I have seen various things say 3 or 4 volumes but not been able to drill down to a primary source. One even mentioned a single volume collecting all the material from the smaller books which is either going to be an absolute unit of a book or the individual volumes will be smaller than I expected.

@sirlarkins could you clarify any details on the future plans for the GPC if at all possible? Also can you let me know if I've got anything flat out wrong in the first post? I wouldn't want to get people excited for a book I made up!

[Call Me Deacon Blues]

Are you in the Pendragon Discord? Someone in there made a list of all the things said back when Chaosium had their little Zoom convention things a couple months back. SOmeone put it all in one document and David Larkins said it was all correct, I believe.

Edited May 3, 2021 by Call Me Deacon Blues

[glassneedles]

I just joined! I'm presuming you are Sir Deacon on there? I've got the same username on discord. I grabbed the PDF from when you posted it 2 weeks ago and had a look through. All looks great and I'm even more excited now to play. I'm hesitant about updating the information from the PDF until I can track down whoever wrote it and get their permission to repost content from it, do you know who made the document? 

For anyone who wants to join the discord this link should work https://discord.gg/CfvJzeX

Then to grab the PDF it was posted in the kap6 channel on the 23rd of April by Sir Deacon. Should be fairly obvious.

Edited May 3, 2021 by glassneedles

[Call Me Deacon Blues]

I just linked the document to someone looking for info, someone else wrote the thing, just to be clear. And yes, I show up as Sir Deacon on there.

[glassneedles]

On 5/4/2021 at 2:14 AM, Call Me Deacon Blues said:

I just linked the document to someone looking for info, someone else wrote the thing, just to be clear. And yes, I show up as Sir Deacon on there.

Thanks, I managed to find the person who wrote it and get their permission. It's all been updated now in the first post. All looks very exciting to me and we even get a hoped for release date, Q3 depending on shipping which is obviously very much up in the air right now for the Starter Set and a hope to have the PDFs of the core rules by the end of the year. 

I am now debating whether I should pick up the Paladin Core book and corresponding adventures to tide me over. Only thing keeping my buying finger from clicking is the possibility of a Paladin 2e using the updated rules from 6e. Does anyone know if that has been said anywhere? Or if they have future books in the series planned?

Edited May 5, 2021 by glassneedles

[Tizun Thane]

13 hours ago, glassneedles said:

Three volume set each covering two periods (Boy King and Conquest, Romance and Tournament, Grail Quest and Twilight).

Honestly, I'm hungry for more "crunch" about Grail Quest and Twilight. Others books look fine, but I NEED this one.

[brumcg]

Has anything been said about VTT tools for Pendragon 6E?

[SirUkpyr]

7 hours ago, Tizun Thane said:

Honestly, I'm hungry for more "crunch" about Grail Quest and Twilight. Others books look fine, but I NEED this one.

YES YES YES - especially on the "NEED" aspect. My PKs are entering the Tourney phase of the GPC, and as a group have said they "don't give a hoot about the bloody grail".

[Tizun Thane]

1 hour ago, SirUkpyr said:

My PKs are entering the Tourney phase of the GPC

Oh yeah. For the tournament phase, there are many great scenarios published . But for the Grail Quest however ...😢

[Prometheus878]

Holy moly, the hype is real!

I'm particularly interested in how they're going to implement a solo-focused "super" knight. Not only is there clearly a market for this sort of campaign (I'm considering one), it's evocative of the source material as well.

[TrippyHippy]

On 5/5/2021 at 3:06 PM, Prometheus878 said:

Holy moly, the hype is real!

I'm particularly interested in how they're going to implement a solo-focused "super" knight. Not only is there clearly a market for this sort of campaign (I'm considering one), it's evocative of the source material as well.

Yes, can we have a book where we can have knights with super powers - like supersonic flight, elastic limbs and the ability to fire lasers out of the eyes?

 

Ta. 😉

[glassneedles]

Someone on the Pendragon Discord server (there's a link to join in the first post if anyone is interested) asked if there was any news on 6e. I've copied the relevant messages below:

@Sir Sir
Any news of kap6 ? Release date ?

glassneedles — Today at 14:27
In this post (****) David Larkins said PDFs for the core books would be next year. I had heard at one point that they wanted to get a starter set out this year but not sure if that's still on the cards. Chaosium don't like to release the PDFs of their starter sets first like they do their other books and with shipping this year being as bad as it has (easily doubling the amount of time it takes to print and get the books to warehouses if not tripling or quadrupling) I would be very surprised if we got it this year

Knight of the Lark — Today at 16:45
@glassneedles has the measure of it. With shipping so chaotic right now, it's impossible to give an accurate estimate of a release date, and we won't be putting out the Starter Set PDF before we have physical copies ready to go. (See the RQ Starter Set for an example.)

Everything is proceeding smoothly and on-schedule on the production end; it's just that damn shipping complicating things. What I can say for certain is that once everything is rolling out, it will continue to do so, and that 6th edition will continue to be very strongly supported and promoted for the foreseeable future.

 

**** Previous message:

Knight of the Lark — 05/11/2020
Yeah, I don't handle the Kickstarter side of the business so I'm not sure about the launch date for that other than "very soon."

As for the new edition, it's budgeted and will not need a KS campaign. Right now it's looking like we'll be putting out the Starter Set first, followed by the core rulebook sometime after. Still on track to get both out next year. I'll stay mum on more precise details, as these can change over the course of the production process.

(And since I'm sure someone will ask, we're making it so that the Starter and CRB complement each other, but each can stand fully on its own in terms of utility and playability in case someone just wants to purchase one and not both—though perish the thought!  )

 

So hopefully next year will be full of Pendragon goodness and this gives us all time to make sure we have enough money at the release to get the books.

[DreadDomain]

May I suggest this thread to be pinned. Especially if the intention is to keep it alive.

Edited September 29, 2021 by DreadDomain

[glassneedles]

45 minutes ago, DreadDomain said:

May I suggest this thread to be pinède. Especially if the intention is to keep it alive.

My plan is to keep this thread alive. I’m pretty sure we aren’t going to see much more books spoken about until the first 6e books start to come out so it’s a bit quiet at the moment. The only book I’ve heard about that isn’t in the list is a proposed Robin Hood version which as a former resident of Nottingham I’m very interested in. But David just mentioned it as a book he wants to do at some point rather than definitely happening ( @sirlarkins if you wanted to chime in here I’d be very grateful). 
 

I’ve got notifications set up so if someone replies I get an email so I’m not going to forget to update the list, if anyone knows of another book that Chaosium have mentioned is upcoming then post a link to the source in this thread and I will update the first post. 
 

Just need to wait until next year to move some of the upcoming books to currently available 🙂 

[Dagonet]

Robin Hood with Pendragon rules? I'll take a double helping of that, please!

[sirlarkins]

On 9/29/2021 at 4:55 AM, glassneedles said:

But David just mentioned it as a book he wants to do at some point rather than definitely happening ( @sirlarkins if you wanted to chime in here I’d be very grateful).

That's about the status, still. But I'm not the only one at Chaosium who is very enthusiastic about the project, so I think the odds of it happening at some point are very good.

[glassneedles]

5 hours ago, sirlarkins said:

That's about the status, still. But I'm not the only one at Chaosium who is very enthusiastic about the project, so I think the odds of it happening at some point are very good.

Thanks David, I've added it now with the provision you mentioned 🙂 

[Dagonet]

Any chance at a sourcebook for Faerie? You could even call it "Castle of Bones" after the one that didn't get published back in the day.

[Oleksandr]

On 5/3/2021 at 9:11 PM, glassneedles said:

• The Ancient Greek RPG (post referencing this previous post) - Greek heroic age with you playing children of gods.
• The Feudal Japan RPG (post referencing this previous post) - working title is Monogatari
• Robin Hood RPG (post please note this one isn't currently being worked on but David and Chaosium are very enthusiastic about the idea so it is likely to happen)

This make me wonder, since basic game focused on chivalric adventures, would there be in the future games themed on german  (nibelungs and the like), or eastern european/slavic legends...

[SDLeary]

6 hours ago, Oleksandr said:

This make me wonder, since basic game focused on chivalric adventures, would there be in the future games themed on german  (nibelungs and the like), or eastern european/slavic legends...

I would love this to happen. This had kindof begun during Pendragon 4 with Land of Giants. The "region" books from 4e were one of its best attractions.

SDLeary