Greg Stafford has passed away

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I recieved mine….from the Kickstarter campaign, along with the latest (5.2?) edition of Pendragon.

Awaiting Paladin and Aquelarre (although a POD holdover version is on it's way). Looking forward to getting Book of Magic, Mymidon and Samurai in future years, hopefully.
 
I think that (the final point) is the point though. Nobody has thought to make incremental changes to Pendragon, as they generally are done in most other games through multiple editions, because he got it so right at the first attempt.

You are kind of ignoring 4th edition here, which added magic rules and more complex character generation and lost the focus of the game, drifting away from medieval Arthurian romance by putting out lots of books on various historical cultures. The purpose behind 5th edition was that Stafford felt he needed to step in an streamline things after 4th edition.

Yes you could say that old school D&D players still play old editions of D&D, but I bet a whole bunch of them house rule it to bits. Certainly for me, Pendragon is one of the few 'old school' games where there has never been much temptation of houseruling at all.
We've got an ongoing thread here where someone is running Pendragon with Savage Worlds as the core system. It's even more common to find people who have converted it to a percentile version of BRP. You'll also people bristling at the passion rules tossing those out as well. And there were even people complaining at the time of 5th's release that the game had taken out the magic rules and looking to "fix" the game. People will house rule anything.
 
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You are kind of ignoring 4th edition here, which added magic rules and more complex character generation and lost the focus of the game, drifting away from medieval Arthurian romance by putting out lots of books on various historical cultures. The purpose behind 5th edition was that Stafford felt he needed to step in an streamline things after 4th edition.
They added things in the 4th, to provide more character options, but didn't change the underlying rules. Greg decided that the extra stuff was more worthy of supplements by the time of the 5th edition, and indeed wanted to reign in on the focus of the game, particularly with regards to The Great Pendragon Campaign.

We've got an ongoing thread here where someone is running Pendragon with Savage Worlds as the core system. It's even more common to find people who have converted it to a percentile version of BRP. You'll also people bristling at the passion rules tossing those out as well. And there were even people complaining at the time of 5th's release that the game had taken out the magic rules and looking to "fix" the ga. People will house rule anything.
You can't account for people with pre-existing preferences wanting to adapt their favourite systems for everything.
 
Do you figure there is any chance of Chaosium reissuing Stafford's first game design, the boardgame set in Glorantha White Bear Red Moon which was later re-released as Dragon Pass? I think a KS for such a project would be pretty successful. Of course I think Chaosium are probably pretty gunshy of such projects after their past KS experiences.
 
You can't account for people with pre-existing preferences wanting to adapt their favourite systems for everything.
And you can't account for all the evidence of the Internet of people houseruling Pendragon, so you need to keep goalpost shifting.
 
Do you figure there is any chance of Chaosium reissuing Stafford's first game design, the boardgame set in Glorantha White Bear Red Moon which was later re-released as Dragon Pass? I think a KS for such a project would be pretty successful. Of course I think Chaosium are probably pretty gunshy of such projects after their past KS experiences.
The Kickstarter problem was under previous management. The current management kickstarted the Runequest Classic books, and recently just kickstarted this board game.

I don't know if they will kickstart Dragon Pass though. It is very, very old school. It would be a hard sell even to the current hardcore boardgamer crowd.
 
Better splitting hairs than heirs.

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Sorry I'm being more of an a-hole than usual today, I'm dealing with my wife's clinical depression while I have laryngitis and I'm not at my best. :thumbsdown:
 
Sorry I'm being more of an a-hole than usual today, I'm dealing with my wife's clinical depression while I have laryngitis and I'm not at my best. :thumbsdown:
Sorry to hear about your wife's troubles, but I've always liked the way you play the jester... not mean-spirited, just taking the hot air out of whatever topic/situation arises.
 
Sorry I'm being more of an a-hole than usual today, I'm dealing with my wife's clinical depression while I have laryngitis and I'm not at my best. :thumbsdown:

Sorry to hear that, I'm not exactly in the most mature mood myself. Hope she feels better.
 
And you can't account for all the evidence of the Internet of people houseruling Pendragon, so you need to keep goalpost shifting.
What evidence? Where are the examples of this?

And with these examples, are they houserules to adapt KAP towards different uses or because they find the rules flawed or inadequate.

I haven't shifted any goal posts. Are you arguing that KAP has changed it's rules in any significant way since 1st edition? Because it hasn't, whereas almost all other games from the same period of time has through resultant new editions, and that was the point.
 
I'm with T Trippy here. Regardless of internet evidence, it's clear Pendragon is among the most tight games ever designed, with little fat or incoherent parts. Contrast that with, say, AD&D or Shadowrun and it's easy to see that the later ones are much more prone to tinkering and houseruling.
 
What evidence? Where are the examples of this?

You can start at the Nocturnal forum which has a subforum entirely for house rules and variants.

And with these examples, are they houserules to adapt KAP towards different uses or because they find the rules flawed or inadequate.
You'll find both.

I haven't shifted any goal posts. Are you arguing that KAP has changed it's rules in any significant way since 1st edition?
Nope. I never argued that.

I'm with T Trippy here. Regardless of internet evidence, it's clear Pendragon is among the most tight games ever designed, with little fat or incoherent parts. \
Who said it wasn't?
 
I loves me some Pendragon, but are we really arguing whether a game that is up to edition 5.2 is perfect and has never been changed?

Seriously?

There is no perfect game, there’s only what YOU find perfect...at the time.
 
I loves me some Pendragon, but are we really arguing whether a game that is up to edition 5.2 is perfect and has never been changed?

Seriously?

There is no perfect game, there’s only what YOU find perfect...at the time.

I agree. That’s why people are always looking for the One True System.
 
Nope. I never argued that.
That was my argument, which you took issue with. So yes, you were arguing with that.

And to be sure, I didn't actually argue that it was "perfect design" - I said it was the best version of BRP, bar none, and the fact that it hasn't been changed, mechanically, since it's inception, is a testament to the quality of it's design - by way of a comparison to other games from the same era that have changed a lot.

You took issue by claiming, initially, this wasn't a good measure of quality, then that 4E had introduced changes (which it hadn't, mechanically, it had merely expanded character options into the core), then that somebody here had converted Pendragon to Savage Worlds, and then that there are online house rules to the game. The first mention of a "perfect" design actually came from yourself.

As others have made the point, it is splitting hairs and, with due respect, it's not me who has been shifting the goalposts. All I was doing was praising Greg Stafford's creation, by pointing out how long lasting it was from it's inception.
 
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You omitted the important part: can you say the same about Shadowrun or AD&D ?
Fair enough, let me quote you again in full.

I'm with T Trippy here. Regardless of internet evidence, it's clear Pendragon is among the most tight games ever designed, with little fat or incoherent parts. Contrast that with, say, AD&D or Shadowrun and it's easy to see that the later ones are much more prone to tinkering and houseruling.
My original point is that new editions rarely have anything do with flaws in a game. They are generally a business-driven decision. AD&D and Shadowrun enjoyed much larger popularity than Pendragon, even spawning video games. They are going to be rebooted and rebooted with shiny new editions forever. D&D and Shadowrun haven't had so many editions with major changes because they were flawed. They got them because they made a lot of money (by gaming standards) and in the business world, nothing needs fixing like something that is already working.

Pendragon
editions have the luxury of being mostly left alone because it is partly put out as an act of love. Stafford could scale back Pendragon to its roots in 5th edition without input from marketing surveys and concerns about how they product would interact with licenses.
 
I loves me some Pendragon, but are we really arguing whether a game that is up to edition 5.2 is perfect and has never been changed?

Seriously?

There is no perfect game, there’s only what YOU find perfect...at the time.

I have 5.2 and the original edition. They are essentially the same game.

But as Baulderstone Baulderstone says the real key to the few changes over the years is that Pendragon was the product of one man who never lost control of it. Chaosium has tended to not bother too much with messing with their systems in general, CoC was essentially the same game right up to 6e and 7e isn't nearly as radical a shift as many claim.
 
I have 5.2 and the original edition. They are essentially the same game.

But as Baulderstone Baulderstone says the real key to the few changes over the years is that Pendragon was the product of one man who never lost control of it. Chaosium has tended to not bother too much with messing with their systems in general, CoC was essentially the same game right up to 6e and 7e isn't nearly as radical a shift as many claim.
I'm not sure what would be considered a radical shift, in context, but in the case of CoC7E, the decision to make changes was largely driven by the expressed motivation of dealing with 'long standing problems' of the previous editions. Now, I don't personally accept that there were major problems with the rules of previous editions (neither did Sandy Peterson, going on some of his public responses) and I found some of the changes made to be heavy handed and a bit incongruous at times (without being so radical that they ever became entirely damning), but changes were made nevertheless.

Pendragon had a sole authorship, which certainly does help preserve the integrity of a game system over time, but it also had multiple publishers. Changes could possibly have accrued over time, in the same manner that RuneQuest diverged over the years, or Marc Miller's Traveller has had some significant changes through multiple editions (even when Marc Miller has been at the helm). However, I think the main reason Pendragon didn't was mainly due to the very clear writing and tight focus that the original game had. It was more of an aspect of there being no real reason to fix what wasn't broken, rather than any ongoing conservative drive to prevent change.
 
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A good episode of Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff dedicated to Greg Stafford. It is touching to hear Laws choke up often throughout whenever he starts to talk about Stafford on a personal level.

One interesting thing they discuss is the controversy that Pendragon sparked upon release, thankfully it was pre-mass-internet, I could imagine the bile the game would have provoked otherwise.

Ironically the consensus today is overwhelmingly that it is a masterpiece, to me showing that it is sometimes good for a designer to not listen to the RPG community and to not just give them what they want.
 
What was the controversy regarding Pendragon on it's release?
 
A good episode of Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff dedicated to Greg Stafford. It is touching to hear Laws choke up often throughout whenever he starts to talk about Stafford on a personal level.

I've got that queued up on my phone. I'm both looking forward to hearing it, and kind of dreading how sad it will inevitably be. I've always gotten the impression that Laws reveres Stafford more than anyone in the game design, and you can here a glow in his voice whenever he has talked about projects where he has gotten to work with him.

One interesting thing they discuss is the controversy that Pendragon sparked upon release, thankfully it was pre-mass-internet, I could imagine the bile the game would have provoked otherwise.

Ironically the consensus today is overwhelmingly that it is a masterpiece, to me showing that it is sometimes good for a designer to not listen to the RPG community and to not just give them what they want.[/QUOTE]
I can remember some people I knew looking askance at the personality traits in it at the time. Of course, it being pre-Internet, it was simply actual people talking to one another about it rather than a meltdown.
 
Its Traits and Passions mechanics and requirement that you play knights and not wizards, etc. How dare he tell you how to RP. How dare he not allow players to play Merlin if they want.
In other words, entitled whining:smile:?
 
Its Traits and Passions mechanics and requirement that you play knights and not wizards, etc. How dare he tell you how to RP. How dare he not allow players to play Merlin if they want.
I remember clearly the day he came to our table and slapped us around for attempting to play it any way we wanted, including disregarding traits and passions. :beat: I hate how game designers are given names and addresses of anyone who has a copy of their games so they can make sure we play them right. :thumbsdown:
 
Its Traits and Passions mechanics and requirement that you play knights and not wizards, etc. How dare he tell you how to RP. How dare he not allow players to play Merlin if they want.

Funny that I didn't even know about the beef at the time. Maybe because I was too young for convention and not on usenet groups back then. I just went to the hobby shop and saw a King Arthur game and went home and played with my older brother and my friends.
 
Funny that I didn't even know about the beef at the time. Maybe because I was too young for convention and not on usenet groups back then. I just went to the hobby shop and saw a King Arthur game and went home and played with my older brother and my friends.

fanzines were the internet forums of the 80s, and the wider hobby was just as oblivious
 
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