I got this a few months back and it is, hands down, the BEST starter set I have ever gotten (and I own a few!). Need a few more weeks to get the core rulebook and the first adventure but I intend on making this the third RPG I get every book for (the others being Star Trek Adventures and Fantasy Flight Games' Star Wars Force & Destiny).
May I just say that you have good taste in games :) I'm currently running STA 1e (for which I own every hardcover), and playing in a Star Wars FFG campaign (running now for over two years!). Both those games are wonderful, in my humble opinion of course. I fully agree this starter set is an absolute winner! For sheer value-for-money, it's right up there with Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest starters (which are also Chaosium... I'm noticing a pattern here!).
@@djthorsilver Chaosium puts out high quality starter sets for like $25 while everyone elses are either subpar or cost as much as a core rulebook in and of themselves! And thank you for the compliment XD Live long and prosper and may the Force be with you!
This is a very nice and in-depth review, thank you very much for doing it. One thing I'd just take issue with is the assertion in the rules that the middle-ages in Britian was to all intents and purposes gender-neutral. This is false; there were no women knights, ever. People who wish this was so, if they attempt to produce any evidence for their assertion at all, bring up Joan of Arc, Nicola de la Haye and Aetheflaed. None of these were knights or fought in battle - women are physically smaller and weaker than men and would be killed in 2 seconds flat in such a circumstance. Furthermore, Pendragon is emulating a particular literary genre more so than history, that being Arthurian romance. Find me a female knight in Malory. No, it can't be done. Including female knights upends some of the key aspects of the game - courtly love, the feudal system and so on. Female knights have no historical or literary basis. This is just another sympton of Chaosium's enthusiasm for woke nonsense and notably wasn't a thing when Greg Stafford was in charge of the game. A game which seeks to emulate a particular period in history or a literary genre works best when it does exactly that, instead of trying to force C21st progessive politics into its setting just with the material trappings of that period - like a renaissance fair or LGBTQ+ medieval cosplay event.
This kind of thing is always a tough issue in games with some link to historical reality (or mythical historical reality, as in this case). To be frank, I don't think Chaosium has any particular enthusiasm for 'woke nonsense' (which is a phrase that doesn't mean anything, IMO, but that's another discussion), but they simply see which way the wind is blowing. It's 2023, non-binary pronouns and gender equality are major issues in the popular press and online culture, and including a 'pronouns' field on a character sheet or allowing female knights costs them little effort, so they opt to be inclusive and let people game how they want to game. Personally, I don't have a dog in this hunt one way or the other; if the table finds it more fun to have female knights or whatever, then they can have female knights. If they don't, then I still have a copy of Pendragon 5.2, so we can just use that. Or just play 6E make all the knights male, who cares. Once the book enters my hands it becomes my group's game, and we can do whatever we like with it. I personally think Chaosium has handled this particular minefield very well in Call of Cthulhu 7E -- supplements like Harlem Unbound have shown the realities of 1920s America in full detail, but they also repeatedly point out that not everyone finds exploration of racial prejudice fun, so one should always consult with your play group and decide together how historical you want the game to be. CoC's about cosmic horror, at its core, and the window dressing around that can change to adapt to any era or venue, real or imagined. In other words they give you *options*, and honestly I think that's the best way to go in today's climate. My expectation is that the Pendragon 6E core book will take a similar tack, or at least I hope it will, but I suppse we have a while yet until we know for sure!
@Mirsterballista I agree with you 100% I hope that in the release of the 6th edition core rule book adds better details to that part similar to the previous editions
ultimately the players would decide if knights could be female even if you had a rulebook saying they were male. Its THEIR game they play how they like abandoning whatever rules they dont like
Thank you for the well detailed video! Awesome
I got this a few months back and it is, hands down, the BEST starter set I have ever gotten (and I own a few!). Need a few more weeks to get the core rulebook and the first adventure but I intend on making this the third RPG I get every book for (the others being Star Trek Adventures and Fantasy Flight Games' Star Wars Force & Destiny).
May I just say that you have good taste in games :) I'm currently running STA 1e (for which I own every hardcover), and playing in a Star Wars FFG campaign (running now for over two years!). Both those games are wonderful, in my humble opinion of course.
I fully agree this starter set is an absolute winner! For sheer value-for-money, it's right up there with Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest starters (which are also Chaosium... I'm noticing a pattern here!).
@@djthorsilver Chaosium puts out high quality starter sets for like $25 while everyone elses are either subpar or cost as much as a core rulebook in and of themselves! And thank you for the compliment XD Live long and prosper and may the Force be with you!
This is a very nice and in-depth review, thank you very much for doing it.
One thing I'd just take issue with is the assertion in the rules that the middle-ages in Britian was to all intents and purposes gender-neutral. This is false; there were no women knights, ever. People who wish this was so, if they attempt to produce any evidence for their assertion at all, bring up Joan of Arc, Nicola de la Haye and Aetheflaed. None of these were knights or fought in battle - women are physically smaller and weaker than men and would be killed in 2 seconds flat in such a circumstance. Furthermore, Pendragon is emulating a particular literary genre more so than history, that being Arthurian romance. Find me a female knight in Malory. No, it can't be done. Including female knights upends some of the key aspects of the game - courtly love, the feudal system and so on.
Female knights have no historical or literary basis. This is just another sympton of Chaosium's enthusiasm for woke nonsense and notably wasn't a thing when Greg Stafford was in charge of the game. A game which seeks to emulate a particular period in history or a literary genre works best when it does exactly that, instead of trying to force C21st progessive politics into its setting just with the material trappings of that period - like a renaissance fair or LGBTQ+ medieval cosplay event.
This kind of thing is always a tough issue in games with some link to historical reality (or mythical historical reality, as in this case). To be frank, I don't think Chaosium has any particular enthusiasm for 'woke nonsense' (which is a phrase that doesn't mean anything, IMO, but that's another discussion), but they simply see which way the wind is blowing. It's 2023, non-binary pronouns and gender equality are major issues in the popular press and online culture, and including a 'pronouns' field on a character sheet or allowing female knights costs them little effort, so they opt to be inclusive and let people game how they want to game.
Personally, I don't have a dog in this hunt one way or the other; if the table finds it more fun to have female knights or whatever, then they can have female knights. If they don't, then I still have a copy of Pendragon 5.2, so we can just use that. Or just play 6E make all the knights male, who cares. Once the book enters my hands it becomes my group's game, and we can do whatever we like with it.
I personally think Chaosium has handled this particular minefield very well in Call of Cthulhu 7E -- supplements like Harlem Unbound have shown the realities of 1920s America in full detail, but they also repeatedly point out that not everyone finds exploration of racial prejudice fun, so one should always consult with your play group and decide together how historical you want the game to be. CoC's about cosmic horror, at its core, and the window dressing around that can change to adapt to any era or venue, real or imagined. In other words they give you *options*, and honestly I think that's the best way to go in today's climate. My expectation is that the Pendragon 6E core book will take a similar tack, or at least I hope it will, but I suppse we have a while yet until we know for sure!
@Mirsterballista I agree with you 100% I hope that in the release of the 6th edition core rule book adds better details to that part similar to the previous editions
ultimately the players would decide if knights could be female even if you had a rulebook saying they were male. Its THEIR game they play how they like abandoning whatever rules they dont like