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Today I am going to review The Great Pendragon Campaign (GPC from here on), a supplement for the 5th edition of King Arthur Pendragon. While the rules for Pendragon have not changed substantially during the revisions leading up to the current edition, enabling players to use just about any previously published supplements, this book is well worth a review, not only being the first and, at this time, only supplement for the 5th ed; I think the GPC shold be sold together with the rulebook, preferably in one large tome.

So, what are we talking about?

Well, the GPC could be described as the largest scenario book ever published for a roleplaying game. It is a massive tome filled to the brim with maps, characters, adventures, places and some gear and additional rules. Basically, this is a really very much expanded version of The Young King.

In case you have never heard of Pendragon: it is a roleplaying game focused on playing knights at King Arthur's court, a true classic combining the spirit of high to late medieval Arthurian romances with just the right amount of grim grittiness and anachronisms that make you wish it all were true. The Rulebook starts in the early period of Arthur's reign, and this book full of waiting adventures provides material for playing in the other periods as well.

How does it look?

My, it looks just gorgeous! Coming from White Wolf's Arthaus, this is of course a hardcover book, and one that is decently bound at that. You know, where there is actual sewing involved, and not just a blob of hot glue. That is as it should be, of course, but with many publishers cutting costs in this market it is nice to see quality work.

I am going to start with the evocative cover. In contrast to the rulebook, which has a somewhat down-to-earth-ish Celtic looking Arthur trying to stick a huge spear into a monstrous boar, the GPC's cover features everything you could ask for in a movie about knights: a regal King Arthur, crowned and resplendent in polished plate armour, a fantastic Camelot in the background, and at the bottom, in front of him, Lancelot and Gunever, separated by the sword in the stone. The painting wraps around to the back, where Merlin has to endure having the blurb text laid over him. Lots of golden haze on the cover; this is the stuff of the Arthurian romances.

The endpapers are printed in colour and display the coats of arms of several noteworthy knights.

The text is well typeset, in a readable font (with a slightly fancier font for headings and others for specialized stuff). The layout is decidedly unbusy: two columns, with a nicely sized margin for annotations and to keep notes (not too small, nor too large), and no frilly background underlays or other irritating stuff distracting from the well organized text. At the top of each page there is a graphical header with different drawings for each chapter.

However, the biggest impression is made by the sheer size of the book: it consists of 429 pages (plus 3 pages of ads in the back. Hmpf. With the money I paid for this book, I could really have done without those), twice as much as the rulebook itself. You can always get a laugh from newcomers by showing them first the rulebook and then pulling out the PGC: "... and this is the adventure we're going to play!"

I liked the bit about the cover; tell me more about pretty pictures!

The book contains lots of maps, enough even to satisfy me. Maps of Britain (lots and lots, to keep up with changing borders, events and conditions like the spreading wastelands), maps of the Forest Sauvage, maps of Ireland, France and other regions, where needed, maps of Paris, London, Tintagel, Sarum and Camelot (two of these, for 531 and 555 A.D.), a map for the continental campaign, one for the battle of Badon Hill, and so on. Good thing there is a map index.

The biggest part of the non-map illustrations is made up by shaded pencil drawings depicting the faces of knights and other characters, including the coat of arms where appropriate (these definitely count as important in the world of Pendragon). A few other drawings illustrate some of the monsters player characters might encounter, and a few more show the dress and weapons for each era (more on that later).

All in all, the art is very well done, but don't expect a lavishly illustrated coffe-table book. The GPC contains copious amounts of information, and those have to go somewhere. It is, after all, a book the GM is expected to work with, and this is reflected by the presentation (meaning: lots of text, headings and subheadings, with tables and maps where necessary, and some illustrations where they help fuel the imagination).

No picture book, I see. What's inside instead?

The content is organized as follows: after an introduction and a chapter of rules, you get ten chapters detailing different epochs (or locales, on two occasions), followed by five appendices with more useful stuff. In the introduction, you get some advice on how to navigate and use the GPC as a GM. Basic, but useful.

Next there are some twelve pages expanding on the winter phase rules (with tables for bad weather, stewardship and harvest resolution), dealing with cities, siege rules (kept very short; I guess a protracted siege is hardly any fun at all), tournaments, favours ("the immaterial currency of the feudal age") and travel, with short rules for several terrain types, a handy "miles per day" table for mounted travel and individual hunting modifiers for different types of forests.

Other miscellaneous rules include a "Madness Activity Table" you can roll on to determine what a character did while he was stricken by madness and which skills he earned checks in, plus a short paragraph on tied rolls in combat. Appendix four, by the way, contains a very useful table listing relevant traits and bonuses for members of ten different religions, including the three ones from the rulebook for ease of reference. Characters can be Byzantine Orthodox or Saracen. Or Evil. Yes, that's a religion. "Individual benefits" it says.

The campaign! Tell me about the campaign, will you?!

Right, the campaign. This is obviously the meat of the book, broken down in ten chapters, eight for the different periods of King Arthur's reign, and two more covering the Forest Sauvage and the semi-magical Wastelands.

Now here is a bit of beautiful madness: the book covers every single year between 485, when Uther suddenly decides he'd not be averse to becoming High King, and 566, the year after Arthur's death. Starting off in the Dark Ages with King Uther's period (that is, Kelts vs. Saxons and each other in a somewhat historical manner), the game advances through periods each of which covers about eight to ten years and is made equivalent to much larger real historical periods.

In other words, the beginning is set in the year 485 in a manner as realistic as possible, but once King Arthur appears the fast forward kicks in and a wild ride begins, real time being compressed and accelerated until in the end the last period (Pendragon-year 566) can be compared to the era of the War Of The Roses (second half of the 15th century).

Wait a minute, not so fast! About those periods...

OK. So, there are eight periods:

1. The King Uther Period, during which Arthur is sired and Uther gets all uppity and big;
2. the Anarchy Period after Uther's death;
3. the Boy King Period, in which Arthur draws the sword out of the stone and, leading a large campaign, becomes king of all Britain;
4. the Conquest Period, which details Arthur's campaigns in Ireland and France, ultimately going up against the Roman Empire itself;
5. the Romace Period, during which things get all romantic, with courts of love and ladies to be courted (and a few unruly kings to be beaten down; can be compared to the early 13th century, wtih Richard Lionheart etc.);
6. the Tournament Period, an other age of refinement, with lots of knightly tournament stuff (roughly analogous to the early 14th century England);
7. the Grail Quest Period, a short time during which holy miracles take place and things begin to fall apart;
and 8. the Twilight Period, which sees the end of the glorious age of Camelot.

Each period sees the advent of some innovations. By and by warhorses get stronger and bigger, armor gets more resistant and heavy (and much more expensive, slowly going from chainmail to full plate), new weapons appear, customs change, heraldry develops, new types of fortifications are introduced ("Gotta get one of those new-fangled barbicans for my castle!") and so on. In other words: reaching the next period is the Pendragon-equivalent of leveling up, satisfying players' desire for new and better stuff, and keeping things from becoming boring.

The two other chapters do not deal with periods, but with regions. Both the Forest Sauvage and the Wastelands (a growing area desolated by a magical blight due to certain unfortunate Grail-related incidents and the intrusion of faery creatures) offer lots of adventures of both the natural and the supernatural kind (medieval Arthurian literature being fond of faery knights of all colours, uncouth giants, magical castles and holy wonders). Actually, there is a whole Enchantment Period making up appendix two, with details on everything supernatural going on.

And what do the entries for each year cover?

You get a list of basic bits of information like, where court is held this year, who is missing from Camelot, what people are gossiping about, what some prominent characters have on their minds, whats going with King Arthur, and when the next tournaments take place. You also get a map, when useful, special winter phase modifiers, and a list of events taking place.

These can be longish descriptions taken from Malory, or a short paragraph on notable deeds, details on the wars and battles to be fought, and other stuff to make player's lives interesting. In addition each period provides comes with some pages of adventures which are not fixed in time and can be thrown in whenever it seems like a good idea.

Some of the skripted adventures, however, smack of heavy railroading, and, especially grating, some events have the player knights stand by and watch important events unfold, entirely without their lifting a single finger. GMs should take care to give their players interesting stuff to do and not overdose on the metaplot and background events. As there are enough adventures in this book to fill years of play this shouldn't prove difficult, and there are always the standard scenarios and "roll up a battle" tables to spice things up when the campaign needs some action ("Zounds! A band of saxon raiders! CHAAAAAARGE!"). The four setting chapters/appendices are also designed to be inserted where needed.

Metaplot, you say?

Actually, yes. All the stuff from the Arthurian stories is there: the love triangle between Arthur, Guenever and Lancelot, the quest for the grail, the machinations of Mordred, the rise and fall of the age of Camelot... This is clearly a work of love on Mr. Stafford's part, and he crammed in everything he could find in the literature. His main source seems to have been Malory's Morte D'Arthur, while development seems modeled on T.H. White's Once And Future King, but events also include stuff from the vulgate version.

Sounds like a lot of stuff. Anything else?

The appendices, for one. Creatures (animals, human opponents and monsters from leprechauns to basilisks), a goblin market, a page on the ladies of the lake, and the aforementioned Enchantment Period appendix. The main chapters also contain helpful information on Arthur's sons, Mordred's role and character, there's an updated price list for the romance period, and Camelot is described in detail.

So far you haven't said a single negative word about this. Anything you didn't like?

Well... there is no master index. I must admit that the table of contents is really quite good, and it comprises an index of the adventures (by title and period) and of the maps (by type). Usually you can find what you're looking for, but sometimes you just have to search. For example, the page dealing with Arthur's sons is... well, somewhere in there, but unfortunately not that easily found. I will grant that a preparing a useful index for this book would have been no easy task ("Lancelot, going mad - see pp. 15-381"), but still.

Worse is the lack of characters. Full writeups were supposed to be available in a free PDF supplement, but in the end this turned out to be quite a big file carrying a small pricetag of $5 or thereabouts. Not much, but it's stuff that should have gone into the book itself. Another thing I didn't like was the inclusion of the "Threshers". In White this was Mordred's fascistoid party of good-for-nothing might-makes-right boneheads and thugs, but in Pendragon it sticks out. Mmh... that's it.

All things considered, how would you rate it?

As I said before: in my opinion, the GPC should be sold together with the Pendragon-rulebook. In one huge tome, if possible. It is one of the best campaign books I have ever seen, brimming with useful stuff of every kind. It certainly is the biggest campaign book I have ever seen, and it is very well made in all regards.

Style: High marks for the clean layout and general presentation. This book is beautifully made and deserves full marks for style. I especially like the graphical page headers, which are not only beautiful and in keeping with the matter, but also help navigating this brick by virtue of being different for each chapter.

A clean 5, with stars for the chapter headers.

Substance: I am inclined to give this a 5 as well: there is simply an incredible amount of useful stuff in there. However, the missing character writeups and the lack of a proper index somewhat reduce the usability rating somewhat. It may be slightly overharsh, but it's just that tiny bit less than a deserved 5.

I give it a 4 and feel slightly ashamed for it.

Any final words?

Yes. If you like Pendragon, go out and buy this book. It is not exactly cheap, but it is worth every penny. Just beware of railroading, and you're good for years of knightly adventures.

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