I picked up Pendragon 1st Ed a week or two ago on RPGNow out of curiosity, and have been reading it over. It's interesting how very similar 5th Ed remains to 1st Ed, to the point where I suspect a completed character sheet generated in one system would probably be perfectly viable tp use by a game run in another.

There are of course some differences and the most obvious one from reading the sheet are the Language and Culture skills. These essentially cover each of the five core cultures in Pendragon 1st Ed. (And, curiously, Nobles Book does not add in French skills)

There's an essay on Greg's website explaining why he dropped them, but I was curious if any old guard or old system fans had any play experience in using them? His arguments seem pretty sensible - in particular, language barriers never come up once in Le Morte Darthur despite knights from across the world bumping into each other - but I wonder how often it was a factor "in the wild".

How I used Custom and Language skills in my grittier campaigns was as a limiter. You could not use certain skills at a value greater than your appropriate Custom or Language. A Cymric knight's use of Courtesy was limited in a French court to his French Custom score, and his use of Flirting was limited to his Speak French. Good for a more realistic Dark Ages game, but completely out of place for the haut romance of Malory or Chretien.

EDIT: Removed mentions of Culture, replaced with the correct Custom.

How I used Culture and Language skills in my grittier campaigns was as a limiter. You could not use certain skills at a value greater than your appropriate Culture or Language. A Cymric knight's use of Courtesy was limited in a French court to his French Culture score, and his use of Flirting was limited to his Speak French. Good for a more realistic Dark Ages game, but completely out of place for the haut romance of Malory or Chretien.


Yeah, that's an interesting mechanical idea, albeit not one which makes the game more classically Arthurian.. Possibly an idea to nick for another game, though.

The other route for would be to go the way of Elric!'s Young Kingdoms / Unknown East and Cthulhu Dark Ages Own Kingdom / Other Kingdoms skills, but once again that doesn't really suit the sort of legendary history which Pendragon typically emulates.

When I noticed that 3rd edition plus didn't use the language and custom skills, I was very happy. I've rarely had good experiences using Language skills in roleplaying games - all they do is create a barrier to communication, in a type of game where communication is necessary for the game to even work. Especially when you consider that the player-knights might each have different base languages.

There's a good reason most scifi and fantasy tv shows dispense use a common languages.

I can see a use for the culture/custom skills, but the courtesy, folk lore, religion, etc., skills each can cover the same ground. Often it's better to reveal knowledge again through communication (the players talk to a peasant or other noble to find the knowledge), than simply 'know' it (the group makes rolls, one or more succeed, the GM then tells them that knowledge, and they then redundantly tell the other players - it simply wastes time).

When I noticed that 3rd edition plus didn't use the language and custom skills, I was very happy. I've rarely had good experiences using Language skills in roleplaying games - all they do is create a barrier to communication, in a type of game where communication is necessary for the game to even work. Especially when you consider that the player-knights might each have different base languages.

I suspect language skills might offend less when everyone starts with the same base and is using it mainly for communicating with NPCs, translating texts, etc. When it becomes an impedient to PC to PC communication then it's more of an issue, or when the plot breaks because no-one speaks French and yet the major NPCs must be spoken to in that tongue.


I can see a use for the culture/custom skills, but the courtesy, folk lore, religion, etc., skills each can cover the same ground. Often it's better to reveal knowledge again through communication (the players talk to a peasant or other noble to find the knowledge), than simply 'know' it (the group makes rolls, one or more succeed, the GM then tells them that knowledge, and they then redundantly tell the other players - it simply wastes time).


I know what you mean about the group success thing. I see that with a few other skills as well - as long as one person passes it it doesn't matter who else tried.

Your point about the other knowledge skills is interesting. I wonder if one way to reflect culture might just be to give a small bonus or penalty when dealing with odd cultures - i.e. Lancelot gets a +2 to Courtesy with fellow knights from his region, while a Dane with a totally different culture gets a -2 or somesuch.

It's not so much the inclusion of skills which characters might fail that's an issue with Pendragon (and most other games, to be frank), it's that most game rules, adventures and gamemasters take a binary approach to success and failure. I direct people to games like Gumshoe where characters always get the essential information needed for the story to progress, and James Bond 007 where multiple degrees of success provide an increasing amount of useful information gained.

In James Bond 007, a Quality Rating 1 result gains a character all useful information available related to the task attempted, a QR 2 about three-quarters of that information, a QR 3 about half, a QR 4 about a quarter (or the bare minimum), and a Failure gains nothing (or erroneous information which still at least suggests a course of action). James Bond 007's Quality Ratings map reasonably well to Pendragon's degrees of Critical Success, Success, Partial Success, Failure and Fumble.

Using Language as an example, even with a failure a player-knight would understand the gist of anything said but may not grasp all the nuances. With a partial success, he might note that the tone was brusque. With a success, he might heed that it was also dismissive. With a critical success, he might recognize that it implied a slight on his character. The uses are varied, and are certainly of greater utility in games which place as much stock in verbal sparring as trussing with swords. (It would suit the Pendragon-based Musketeers game I once considered developing, for example.)

It's not so much the inclusion of skills which characters might fail that's an issue with Pendragon (and most other games, to be frank), it's that most game rules, adventures and gamemasters take a binary approach to success and failure.

My intent was to present the qualities of success/failure as such an approach


Using Language as an example, even with a failure a player-knight would understand the gist of anything said but may not grasp all the nuances. With a partial success, he might note that the tone was brusque. With a success, he might heed that it was also dismissive. With a critical success, he might recognize that it implied a slight on his character. The uses are varied, and are certainly of greater utility in games which place as much stock in verbal sparring as trussing with swords. (It would suit the Pendragon-based Musketeers game I once considered developing, for example.)

A good start, but I find your example more like a phone call than a face to face.
I do not need to understand a word to detect hostility, calm, or good humor
body language does a lot of essential communication

I've had a fair experience in bilingual situations, and would say that this might mimic it
Critical: understand perfectly "get the brown shirt from the big box and bring it to the second table on the left."
or perhaps, "Boneslicer will cleave you to the tooth-box and splat your head-clouds on the ceiling."
Success: "get the some color shirt from some box and take it to somewhere on the left over there."
or, "Someone will chop my teeth out and rain my head upwards."
Failure: "get something brown and take it somewhere."
or, "bla bla break my teeth and, uh, rain and ceiling, maybe make the ceiling fall on my head?
Fumble: "take the green dress and give it to the man on the left."
or, "Umm... chop head, take upstairs...?"

but I don't think a fumble will deliver entirely wrong information like "the dentist will see you upstairs."
Exceptions:
1. when you can fit a piece of the plot, or a long-going plot in there
2. when something is so funny it has to happen, and the players don't mind either :)

Reading is different--no body language