What books to have for a new campaign? (new to Pendragon)

[Dunkha]

Interested of Pendragon and I'm planning to start a campaign at some point. Not in very close future but at some point. I want to get a good grasp about the system and lore so I want to read the books before thinking of planning a campaign. I'm currently in middle of reading the core book and it has been a page turner so far. So what official 5.2 edition (or 5.2 edition compatible) books would you recommend getting in addition to core book and Great Pendragon Campaign?

[Morien]

Check this out:  https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/11000-helpful-suggestionsadvice-for-new-playersgms-what-books-etc/

Also, the adventure/regional books are great. I will have to see if I can find what I wrote on those.

 

[Voord 99]

The Book of Uther would be, for me, the next most practically useful thing after the GPC.  It extends the GPC backward by 5 years, and also contains a lot of other useful material.   The campaign extension can be bought as a standalone thing if you don’t want the other material.    If one gets the BoU, I think one should make sure to combine it with the free Marriage of Count Roderick (recommended in Morien’s thread).  One can combine the courtly challenges table from MoCR with the random court adventures tables from BoU to give one a very large number of things to happen in any courtly setting.

[Morien]

As for the adventure/regional books from 3e and 4e, they are still very usable in 5e (and presumably in the future 6e). Here are some of my thoughts on them:

Blood & Lust (Anglia) is my fav, with Savage Mountains a close second. I prefer Perilous Forest to Beyond the Wall, which I am more lukewarm about thanks to its focus is on Picts. Mind you, a lot of the grail stuff was originally in Perilous Forest before basically copied over to GPC. So that diminishes the value of Perilous Forest a bit, but it still has good stuff in it.

So my order would probably go... Blood&Lust, Savage Mountains, Spectre King (3e version, not the Tales of the Spectre Kings), Perilous Forest, Tales of Mystic Tournaments, Tales of Chivalry&Romance or Tales of Magic&Miracles, Beyond the Wall. Although I could see boosting Tournaments over PF, due to the Grey Knight and the replayability of the Golden Circle which has become an almost annual event for my PKs. Both C&R and M&M have a mix of adventures I like and some I am lukewarm about. 

I don't find Land of Giants all that usable in KAP campaign to be honest. The most digging I did on Pagan Shores was trying to figure out the politics in Ireland what with Strongbow and all that. So I did not find it super useful either, unless you are really getting involved there. Beyond the Wall slips towards the same verdict but is saved by the Treacherous Pict adventure which is very usable. Alas, as said, I don't find the Pict tribals as player chars all that exciting, so what pages could have been used for making adventures in the politically fractured Lothian were 'wasted' on shamans and spirits.

As indicated in the previous, I prefer the 3e Spectre King to Tales of the Spectre Kings. The Grand Tourney of Logres is, to me, a more interesting and reusable adventure than the White Horror that replaced it. The Grand Tourney was in fact so reusable that I had to shuffle Sir Lupin off the mortal coil to stop the PKs from spending a session there each game year. 😛

 

Saxons! Has some interesting ideas, and I like what it does with Badon, but I find it quite overpowered and as a Saxon focused campaign, it is more of a variant campaign than really applicable to your default Salisbury campaign. The timeline doesn't fully conform with KAP5.2/GPC/BoSi either, although I did enjoy the summaries of the Saxon kingdoms in it.

 

So if you can spot a trend... Those culture expansion books that set the campaign away from Arthur's Britain tend to get more of a 'eh, pass' from me. But if someone were into playing a more historical Anglo-Saxon campaign, Saxons! would be great for it. The Last Kingdom type of campaign or even earlier.

 

But pretty much all the adventure and regional books have enough good material to be worth having. As I said in a forum post once, a KAP pdf book tends to be cheaper than a pizza, and while the pizza is gone in an hour, the pdf is for hours and hours of enjoyment. Heck, 10 USD for 4e is worth it for the White Horse and the Lands and Peoples chapters alone.

Note though that most of the published adventures are written for Arthur's time. The Horned Boar would require only a bit of tweaking to work in Uther's times, though, and it would not be a huge stretch to make the White Horse into an almost generational event. The Faerie adventures from M&M would be easy enough to run in the Forest of Gloom or in the Forest Sauvage almost in any Period, too, without much tweaking required.

Edited June 15, 2021 by Morien

[Dunkha]

2 hours ago, Morien said:

Check this out:  https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/11000-helpful-suggestionsadvice-for-new-playersgms-what-books-etc/

Also, the adventure/regional books are great. I will have to see if I can find what I wrote on those.

 

Thank you. This is exactly what I was looking for. I browsed the books at Chaosium web site and I got very confused what books would be nice to have. For a side note I really dislike how much the graphic design changes between the books. I have also read that some of the books explains rules for same thing but different ways and can even contradict each other. Well, enough ranting, I'm still very excited of Pendragon.

1 hour ago, Voord 99 said:

The Book of Uther would be, for me, the next most practically useful thing after the GPC.  It extends the GPC backward by 5 years, and also contains a lot of other useful material.   The campaign extension can be bought as a standalone thing if you don’t want the other material.    If one gets the BoU, I think one should make sure to combine it with the free Marriage of Count Roderick (recommended in Morien’s thread).  One can combine the courtly challenges table from MoCR with the random court adventures tables from BoU to give one a very large number of things to happen in any courtly setting.

Thanks, will check that one out as well. I really like how much depth there is what it comes to lore and details. That is one thing that got me very excited about Pendragon.

What it comes to adventures. How much do they deal with fantasy elements? I'm planning to keep my campaign very low on fantasy and looking more of historical feel. Not that I'm going to ignore fantasy elements completely. This very close to historical setting is what I'm more fond of. Still, some fantasy elements is nice to have, if not directly involved with the players, but being at the background at least.

Edit: And I'm going to focus on default GPC with Cymric knights from Salisbury if it matters what it comes to the adventures.

Edited June 15, 2021 by Dunkha

[Hzark10]

The fantasy elements can be downplayed very easily, or ramped upwards if that is your desire (but sounds like the former for you).  Uther would be a better choice, imho, as magic is not that prevalent.  Later on, during the high times of Chivalry, it is easy to bring fantasy elements into the game.  You have to decide on the issue of the fae (who they are, and what role they play), but I have run a completely non-magical Pendragon, albeit my last campaign was much more fantastical.  

[Dunkha]

10 minutes ago, Hzark10 said:

The fantasy elements can be downplayed very easily, or ramped upwards if that is your desire (but sounds like the former for you).  Uther would be a better choice, imho, as magic is not that prevalent.  Later on, during the high times of Chivalry, it is easy to bring fantasy elements into the game.  You have to decide on the issue of the fae (who they are, and what role they play), but I have run a completely non-magical Pendragon, albeit my last campaign was much more fantastical.  

Sorry, I wasn't very clear. I was referring to the adventure books Morien listed. I might be wrong but I got an impression you were referring to the campaign as an overall. 

[Morien]

1 hour ago, Dunkha said:

What it comes to adventures. How much do they deal with fantasy elements? I'm planning to keep my campaign very low on fantasy and looking more of historical feel. Not that I'm going to ignore fantasy elements completely. This very close to historical setting is what I'm more fond of. Still, some fantasy elements is nice to have, if not directly involved with the players, but being at the background at least.

I'd say most of them have at least SOME fantasy elements, usually monsters or fae. Some are easy to modify away, some are integral to the adventure.

Like you can run through the Heart Blade (my favorite) as an almost totally non-magical adventure, simply by downtuning the magical elements, the magical glade becoming just an ordinary glade, etc. However, you do lose some of the charm.

The White Horse climax has a lot of magic in it, but if you don't like it, it is very easy to turn it into a vague 'blessing of Epona' which you either believe or not, with only the GM knowing if it actually has any rules-benefit.

Other adventures, such as the Deceitful Fae, obviously requires there to be a fae. So maybe give the Tales of Magic and Miracles a pass if you don't want any magic and miracles in your campaign.

The Cambrian War (my second favorite) is pretty much straight-up diplomacy/military/social multi-year adventure, without any magic in sight, unless the GM adds some.

The Golden Circle becomes a bit boring (as well as easier, actually) if there is no magic to help to sustain the little Kingdom. But you could, if you wished, run it without any magical creatures and so forth, and the core of the adventure would still be there. It becomes a more straight up 'fighting tournament' at that point.

The Grand Tourney of Logres doesn't have any magic to begin with, being just a big, famous tournament, so no problem there. However, it doesn't really get started until the Romance Period.

Those just off the top of my head.

[Voord 99]

It’s not at all a thing you need to run the game, especially not if you’re planning on the default knights from Salisbury.  But if you want a more pseudohistorical game, Book of Sires is useful — and it’s also just enormous fun (at least if you’re me).  

It’s a very in-depth, year-by-year, thing where one rolls through one’s family history for two generations.  Like the random family history in the corebook, but much, much more detailed (and with a broad geographical scope).  The main reason why I think it’s especially good for a more historical game, is that for such a game it’s helpful to have the politics and intrigue spelled out in detail, and BoS gives you a ready-made set of choices that different families can have made in the past, to side with this or that faction, which can echo down to the present day.

Plus it’s fun.  Did I mention that?  It’s a game in itself.

[Hzark10]

3 hours ago, Dunkha said:

Sorry, I wasn't very clear. I was referring to the adventure books Morien listed. I might be wrong but I got an impression you were referring to the campaign as an overall. 

Yes, sorry, I thought you were asking overall.  But, if the adventures themselves, what Morien said.  The time period is a bit important as well. I find it easier to run Uther and before with little or no magic, whereas it becomes harder once Merlin and ARthur comes on scene.

[Dunkha]

Thank you for the detailed description of the adventures. I'm not all against magic but I just want to keep it low. So some pinch of magic here and there is not a bad thing. I think I will check out Heart Blade first and see where to go from there.

Book of Sires sounds fun. It's so much easier to get into the setting when there is details about character relations to the world and detailed background really helps that. I was already impressed of the background generation in the core book.

What comes to different time periods. Few wizards like Merlin and others are still fine. It doesn't mean the players should have much to do with them. Maybe just few times occasionally. I like the idea to keep magic mysterious and unknown to the players but still present somehow.

[mandrill_one]

BTW, the inimitable @Morien has assembled a "starter kit" with suggestions for a few (almost-)free, relatively short scenarios that can be used to build a "mini-campaign" spanning the 530-543 period. The only two non-free scenarios are those included in the KAP 4th rulebook, since the latter costs 9.99 $. I think this is a bit of a stroke of genius and a really, really good way to test if your group likes playing KAP. Link to the thread, with many thanks again to @Morien:

This said, you SHOULD really obtain anyway all the adventure / geographic supplement books suggested above, since they are really THAT good. 😉

Edited June 16, 2021 by mandrill_one
Wrong emoticon

[Dunkha]

1 hour ago, mandrill_one said:

BTW, the inimitable @Morien has assembled a "starter kit" with suggestions for a few (almost-)free, relatively short scenarios that can be used to build a "mini-campaign" spanning the 530-543 period. The only two non-free scenarios are those included in the KAP 4th rulebook, since the latter costs 9.99 $. I think this is a bit of a stroke of genius and a really, really good way to test if your group likes playing KAP. Link to the thread, with many thanks again to @Morien:

This said, you SHOULD really obtain anyway all the adventure / geographic supplement books suggested above, since they are really THAT good. 😉

Nice! I will read them at some point and maybe even run the scenarios. Now I just feel that I have so much to read 😄 but that's ok as it is really interesting. Would also want to read some literature about medieval era and/or some King Arthur tales. There seems to be already some good suggestions on Pendragon discord server.

[Tizun Thane]

On 6/15/2021 at 1:36 PM, Morien said:

So my order would probably go... Blood&Lust, Savage Mountains, Spectre King (3e version, not the Tales of the Spectre Kings), Perilous Forest, Tales of Mystic Tournaments, Tales of Chivalry&Romance or Tales of Magic&Miracles, Beyond the Wall. Although I could see boosting Tournaments over PF, due to the Grey Knight and the replayability of the Golden Circle which has become an almost annual event for my PKs. Both C&R and M&M have a mix of adventures I like and some I am lukewarm about. 

I don't find Land of Giants all that usable in KAP campaign to be honest. The most digging I did on Pagan Shores

As Morien said, don't underestimate the old stuff.

1. Blood & Lust. Good Adventures (for the Romance period mostly). Good advices from Greg Stafford. A Good description of Anglia. A must have. 9/10
2. Spectre King (3e version, not the Tales of the Spectre Kings). The first edition is the best indeed. Good adventures. A good book. 8/10.
3. Savages Mountains. Good Sourcebook for Cambria with many good adventures. 8/10
4. Tales of Mystic Tournaments. Good old adventures, the Grey Knight especially. 8/10
5. Saxons! A good sourcebook about Saxons. Just ignore the rules. 7/10
6. Tales of Chivalry&Romance. Nice adventures for the Romance era. 7/10
7. Tales of Magic& Miracles. The less good of all the adventure compendium. Still useful. 6/10
8. Perilous Forest. I like it a lot, but the half of it is in the GPC now. 6/10
9. Beyond the Wall. Good Sourcebook, except I don't like their take on Picts. Still useful. 6/10
10. Pagan Shores. I really want to like it. I just don't. 4/10
11. Tales of the Spectre Kings. 2/10 if you have the Spectre King (for the white horse adventure). 7/10 if you don't.
12. Land of Giants. Useful if you want to play a viking campaign with KAP rules (8/10 in this case). Otherwise, useless 1/10.

[Morien]

26 minutes ago, Tizun Thane said:

Perilous Forest. I like it a lot, but the half of it is in the GPC now. 6/10

Somewhat disagreed. The Wasteland part is in GPC, but that is just 12 pages out of 128, so around 10%. Some of the Malahaut info is in GPC, but not the Perilous Forest & the Wall, as far as I can remember. The Adventure of the Perilous Forest is a nice long adventure, 27 pages, and there is another 19 pages of 16 short adventures, some of which will work nicely as the main adventure of the summer when you plump them up a bit.

In short, I stand by my decision to recommend Perilous Forest over the Tales of Chivalry and Romance and Tales of Magic and Miracles. Although I admit that if all you are after is some adventures to run, then the ToC&R and ToM&M are more useful.

Also, I would rank Saxons! below the adventure books and PF and BtW in usability. The Saxon kingdoms are pretty much wiped out at Badon, and prior to that they are very much enemies of the default GPC, so it really doesn't matter so much what the details of their societies are like. Whereas it is possible that the PKs will participate in fighting in Ireland during Romance, and get involved with the tournaments and such. I agree that as a book, Saxons! is very nicely written and it would be invaluable for a Saxon campaign, whether KAP or historical, but in a default GPC, it is simply not that useful.

That is really my complaint about Pagan Shores and Land of Giants as well. They are much more geared as variant campaigns, making characters in those distant lands and playing there. However, where they fall down (and Saxons! and Beyond the Wall do not) is that there is very little support for such campaigns. Pagan Shores doesn't have a single adventure in it. Land of Giants has two adventures adapted from Beowulf's tale, which fair enough, but they don't really make for a good campaign skeleton.

Edited June 17, 2021 by Morien

[Voord 99]

I’m planning to take the Beowulf stories from Land of Giants, set them in Britain, and when my players twig, which won‘t take long, say that a later lying Anglo-Saxon poet stole it and attributed it to his ancestral national hero.  🙂

I have my specific weird idiosyncratic problems with the basic decisions made for Pagan Shore, which I think were fundamentally not the way to approach Ireland in the Arthurian world — and I’ve ranted here about that at probably excessive length already.*  But as regards usefulness, it has the added problem that it’s an uneasy compromise.  It’s got decent support for Irish myth from a society-and-customs point of view, but because it has to make it compatible with Arthuriana, it’s too low-powered to reflect the ridiculous things that Irish heroes are supposed to be able to do.  So even if you wanted to use it as the basis for adapting Pendragon for an Irish setting, you’d find that it leaves undone quite a lot of what you would probably want it to do.  It’s not enough like Arthurian romance to make for a decent alternative Pendragon setting; it’s not enough like Irish myth to ditch the Pendragon setting and play in the world of the Ulster Cycle or the Fianna stories. 

To be fair to some of these “alternative settings” sourcebooks, they don’t give less campaign support than some GURPS sourcebooks that cover things like all of Chinese history.

 

*Although I am absolutely fascinated with it as an Irish nationalist subversion of Pendragon.

 

Edited June 17, 2021 by Voord 99