What are you getting?
The campaign setting for Pendragon 5th edition, The Great Pendragon Campaign arrives as a great whale of a book; over 400 pages long and in hardback. It covers the events and adventures of an eighty year period, beginning ten years before the death of Uther and ending with the fall of the Round Table. Greg Stafford has drawn from many sources for inspiration but the campaign is most strongly linked to Mallory's version of the Arthurian Legend. There are also an assortment of new rules, and statistics for new foes. At the time of writing this, I am getting on for half way through running the campaign.
Campaign Structure
The Great Pendragon Campaign keeps with the Pendragon idiom of aiming for a year of game time each session, and each year of the campaign gets an entry detailing gossip, news, intrigue and events for that year. The size and quality of these entries varies wildly. The campaign is divided into a number of periods, each covering a section of the tale, and with a steady ratcheting up of the technology and society as it steps through, so play begins in a sort of dark ages and ends in high Knightly honour and gothic plate. The periods are:
- King Uther Period. The time of Uther provides a sort of prelude to the game, designed to ease the players in.
- Anarchy Period. Between the death of Uther and the drawing of the Sword from the Stone, the characters deal with the threat of Saxons but with few powerful nobles left they are free to find their own path.
- Boy King Period. King Arthur returns, and there is a bloody period of re-unification in the land. (This is as far as I have played)
- Conquest Period. More campaigns are fought to unify Britain, and cut a swath across Europe.
- Romance Period. This period, and the following one, are the time when the dividends of peace are reaped and knights come to be chivalrous and glorious heroes.
- Tournament Period. The great flowering of knighthood continues.
- Grail Quest Period. The seeds of destruction are sown as the knights throw everything into tracking down the Grail.
- Twilight Period. Magic seeps away from the land, and the Round Table slides into defeat.
Playing once a week, you can expect getting on for two years of play from this Campaign.
The problem of Metaplot
As you can imagine, there's an awful lot of metaplot in the game. The players are lesser knights of Britain for much of the time while the true heroes of Britain go about their business. And, unfortunately, the Great Pendragon Campaign provides little help or guidance with this often going unforgivably over the line into making the players either utterly railroaded or mere spectators. This problem is exacerbated by Pendragon's battle system in which character's actions and rolls have no mechanical effect on the outcome of battle.
You have to make it yours
In order to get a good game out the campaign you have to make it yours, you need to invent new events, pick and choose listed scenarios, string them together sensibly and add, and improvise, characters. Despite the weight of the tome, this isn't a guided adventure, it's a lose structure to hang your game around. The problem with this is twofold: firstly, I didn't feel I was getting what I had paid for, and secondly the book is badly organised and gives you no help in running it like this. Significant events are mentioned only in passing, tucked into gossip or news sections. Places are mentioned without being listed on any map, or easily locatable description. Characters appear with no description of who they or where they came from. All of which means that you can never be quite sure whether any of the stuff you improvise is going to break later sections of the plot.
In the campaign I've been running, easily the most enjoyable section of the game so far was during the Anarchy period where I dropped the plot from the book entirely and did my own thing with it, merely sticking loosely to the structure put in place by the book. Frankly, I didn't need the Great Pendragon Campaign to do that.
What is needed
More than anything else the Great Pendragon Campaign lacks a decent character guide, a good index and a decent reference section. A section at the back of the book listing each character in alphabetical order with a quick paragraph describing who they are, and what they do in various years would make the whole book massively more useful, as would a quick reference year-by-year calendar of events.
Conclusion
With some regret then, I have to chalk up the Great Pendragon Campaign as a critically flawed product. At first sight it sees a rich, interesting and exciting product but as you delve further and further into running it you find that it is rarely helpful and sometimes actively obstructive to your campaign. Much like the core 5th edition rulebook it is woefully badly organised. A thinner tome, giving outlines, guidelines and character guides would, I think, make for a much more useful product.
Review Summary