Pendragon Actual Play

[Lamorak33]

Hi

And if it isn't good enough, maybe you should try engaging a little harder with what we're telling you. Because honest to God, I don't think you've actually understood anything I've asked you.

Easy Brand! I started this thread based on my (recent) experience in a game where the GM and I have completely different interpretations of the genre. This problem is not rules or system based. Its like this, the rules give explicit information on codes of behaviour. However, those standards do not help us because I am playing heroic-chivalric-Malory and the GM is a dyed in the wool gritty medieval gamer.

What I am interested in here is not 'trying to fix my broken game'. Ron's 'tough love' in the other thread opened my eyes to what was going on and I am dealing with it. However, I may have allowed the thread to take a direction that I had not intended, but I was genuinely interested in the things you guys were saying. My bad for not keeping the thread discipline.

What I wanted to find out is whether other people have encountered this in a game. I have been playing for over 20 years and its a new one on me. So, has anyone else experienced a genre in a game that they have completely been at a tangent to other players/GM's interpretation of that setting?

Regards
Rob

[Web_Weaver]

What I wanted to find out is whether other people have encountered this in a game. I have been playing for over 20 years and its a new one on me. So, has anyone else experienced a genre in a game that they have completely been at a tangent to other players/GM's interpretation of that setting?

This is incredibly common in Pendragon and I have experienced it and also heard about it many times. The two most extreme:

• I Had a game where one player had very extreme views on the religiosity of knights, and he seemed to think it was "Wagner's Parsifal the RPG" not Mallory at all. He couldn't pass a church without going in and preying in character.
  
  
• A friend had a campaign where his players didn't understand why they should spend valuable time helping people or vanquishing monsters when they were travelling, they didn't quite get the genre, "We are in a hurry, lets not investigate the dragon rumours".

But, the above posters are providing the best solution, use the system. Mallory portraits a variety of behaviours, you need a baseline for you and the GM to agree on instead of just getting frustrated that you don't agree.

If you disagree on behaviour norms within the genre (ie Mallory v Dark Ages) it may be helpful for your GM to re-jig the requirements for such things as the Chivalry Bonus or Religious Bonuses. It may also be helpful to reset the starting values to a level that makes sense in the light of these new bonuses.

If you have a clear model for what kind of behaviour is expected of a knight, then you will know when you are diverting from it willfully or otherwise. Discussions of this kind will definitely help. You can then portray your character in any way, as long as you are all clear on how he departs from the norm, and why he is doing so.

This, or a reiteration of the standard bonus system has worked for me and appears to have worked for others here. The system answers you have received are a direct attempt to let you know that these issues are well addressed by it.

[Web_Weaver]

That was an awful spelling mistake back there, now I have an image of a rogue knight stalking priests down dark church aisles.

[Valamir]

Hey Lam,

I really hate trying to critique a GM's GMing in-abstentia.  Perhaps if he was interested in popping in we could actually have a valuable discussion on Pendragon GMing techniques.

Your analysis of the issue as a genre difference doesn't seem to ring true to me.  If you were picking up the dice to roll with X idea and he were picking up the dice to roll with Y idea...then maybe the clash between X and Y might be a genre thing.  But niether of you are picking up the dice to roll.  That tells me its most likely a mechanics thing.

Pendragon was my all time favorite game back in the day.  I didn't know why at the time, but now I do...because it actually gave rules for how to do stuff other than fighting, and it expected both player and GM to follow them.  Both of those seem pretty ho-hum by current Forge standards, but back then...dang revolutionary.  The worst Pendragon experiences I've ever had were when playing with GMs who treated Pendragon like D&D or Runequest or any of the other main games of the day...which involved alot of ignoring rules, and alot of GM fiat to cover situations where there were no rules.

Your description of how the GM handled your idea and the defeated knight's response is classic D&D DMing.  There are no rules in D&D for determining whether or not that knight would do what you told him to do...so the DM would resolve it by fiat...usually coming down on the "sounds like a sneaky player trick to me...I'm not going allow it" side of things.

Thing is Pendragon does have rules for resolving that situation.  Rules the GM is expected to follow.

So as much as I don't like critiquing other GMs when they're not here...if he did not roll any dice during that scene to determine that knight's response...then he's frankly breaking the rules (with a few caveats I won't bother listing here because they probably aren't pertinent).

Similarly if he did not award your knight with checks to Mercy and / or Honor and / or Loyalty to Lord or some similar variation for your act, regardless of the knight's response...then he's frankly not following the rules.

Don't know what else to say there. 

If your GM is interpretting things with a gritty medieval sensibility then he'd better have done some major renovation on the Pendragon Virtues and Passions system because the rules are very clear about the central place of Mallory as the prime source material.  And if he didn't tell you about any such alternate world view, then again...he's not following the rules, because as I recall the GM section is pretty clear on establish which Arthur you're playing up front.

[Lamorak33]

Hi

Hey Lam,

I really hate trying to critique a GM's GMing in-abstentia.  Perhaps if he was interested in popping in we could actually have a valuable discussion on Pendragon GMing techniques.

Your analysis of the issue as a genre difference doesn't seem to ring true to me.  If you were picking up the dice to roll with X idea and he were picking up the dice to roll with Y idea...then maybe the clash between X and Y might be a genre thing.  But niether of you are picking up the dice to roll.  That tells me its most likely a mechanics thing.

Curious. Here I was thinking, your not really getting what I'm saying. But then,

Pendragon was my all time favorite game back in the day.  I didn't know why at the time, but now I do...because it actually gave rules for how to do stuff other than fighting, and it expected both player and GM to follow them.  Both of those seem pretty ho-hum by current Forge standards, but back then...dang revolutionary.  The worst Pendragon experiences I've ever had were when playing with GMs who treated Pendragon like D&D or Runequest or any of the other main games of the day...which involved alot of ignoring rules, and alot of GM fiat to cover situations where there were no rules.

Your description of how the GM handled your idea and the defeated knight's response is classic D&D DMing.  There are no rules in D&D for determining whether or not that knight would do what you told him to do...so the DM would resolve it by fiat...usually coming down on the "sounds like a sneaky player trick to me...I'm not going allow it" side of things.

Thing is Pendragon does have rules for resolving that situation.  Rules the GM is expected to follow.

So as much as I don't like critiquing other GMs when they're not here...if he did not roll any dice during that scene to determine that knight's response...then he's frankly breaking the rules (with a few caveats I won't bother listing here because they probably aren't pertinent).

Similarly if he did not award your knight with checks to Mercy and / or Honor and / or Loyalty to Lord or some similar variation for your act, regardless of the knight's response...then he's frankly not following the rules.

Don't know what else to say there. 

If your GM is interpretting things with a gritty medieval sensibility then he'd better have done some major renovation on the Pendragon Virtues and Passions system because the rules are very clear about the central place of Mallory as the prime source material.  And if he didn't tell you about any such alternate world view, then again...he's not following the rules, because as I recall the GM section is pretty clear on establish which Arthur you're playing up front.

This is actually bang on. This is what Brand and others have been saying as well yes? Now your saying it it just makes so much sense. I have the 5th edition, I'll look up the sections youmentioned. Thanks,

Regards
Rob

[Brand_Robins]

Rob,

Some people have told me that I have "angry sounding post disorder." This is a terrible disease in which I sound very angry in a post when, in fact, I'm not at all.

I wasn't meaning to piss on you. I was just meaning to clarify where we're all coming from. Because if I'm thinking the thread is about X and its actually about Y, then responding like you're talking about Y is the wrong response. So I was just trying to pointedly get us all on the same page. If it's a bitch thread, I'm cool with that. If its a "has this happened to you" thread, I'm cool with that too. If its a "help me fix this" thread, then I'm good with that as well. I just need to know which it is, and I think a lot of others do as well.

So: for the bitch thread response: Yea, that sucks. Sounds like a lot of time got wasted.

For the "does this happen to others" response: Yea, used to happen to me all the time. Then I got to the things that Ralph and I have been talking about and it stopped happening (as much) because we realized there were actually rules to avoid this.

For the "help fix this" response: Yes! I don't know what magic Ralph has to say things more clearly than I could, but that is what I was talking about. By the rules of Pendragon when a conflict like that comes up you should be rolling dice to solve it. That's one of the main things Traits and Passions are for -- so you can roll dice to solve conflicts, rather than having to argue them out. They are guides to "how to play the character" but they're also much more than that, they are powerful mechanical system bits that let you make the way the game runs respond directly to the character and the character to the game.

[Web_Weaver]

Pendragon was my all time favorite game back in the day.  I didn't know why at the time, but now I do...because it actually gave rules for how to do stuff other than fighting...

As an aside, it also opened my eyes to the whole idea of telling an actual dramatic story, the rules on Moral Tests, Conflicting Emotions & Personality Disputes are so powerful as concepts that they changed my roleplaying forever. Rereading the whole Ideals and Passions chapter is well worth the investment.

To take a relevent quote to this thread:

Traits & Passions are the primary indicators that you will use to determine "correctness" in  the Arthurian setting. If your character gains the proper traits and passions, then your character will be doing just exactly those things which constitute correct behaviour in Aurthurian society.

This was the context of my previous advice, if your GM wants to have slightly different "correctness" then adjusting the traits and passions is all that is required. Everything else is handled in the rules.