Outremer:  http://www.nwi.demon.co.uk/outremer/index.htm

Ancient Rome:  http://descarte.pbwiki.com/Draft%20character%20creation%20rules%20Pendragon%20Rome

Ian Young did a good Japanese one that I have saved down at home, but can't currently find online.

Anyway, thought these might interest people.

Quote from: BalbinusOutremer:  http://www.nwi.demon.co.uk/outremer/index.htm

Ancient Rome:  http://descarte.pbwiki.com/Draft%20character%20creation%20rules%20Pendragon%20Rome

Ian Young did a good Japanese one that I have saved down at home, but can't currently find online.

Anyway, thought these might interest people.

OOoh! Thanks, Balbinus! I love Pendragon's default setting, but the Outremer setting looks awesome!

-clash

Its not going to be using the rules-set for Pendragon, but my upcoming Chinese Historical campaign set in the "Three Kingdoms" era will be using rules for family and personal maintenance that were heavily inspired by Pendragon's whole "winter period" mechanic.

RPGpundit

That does sound like a great game, have you written up the relevant rules?

Oooh... shiny.  Pendragon's actually a very flexible system.  You can do practically any pre-industrial setting with it with minimal amounts of tweaking thanks to the fact that the rules channel realism rather than heroic fiction.

Do y'all know about PenDragon Pass?

http://www.pensee.com/dunham/pdp.html

Quote from: BalbinusThat does sound like a great game, have you written up the relevant rules?

I have, but I'm a little reluctant to post them here since a couple of my future players are on here, and to me these rules are for GM-eyes only.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalOooh... shiny.  Pendragon's actually a very flexible system.  You can do practically any pre-industrial setting with it with minimal amounts of tweaking thanks to the fact that the rules channel realism rather than heroic fiction.

You think? My take on the rules is that they model heroic warrior societies nicely, but they're not highly realistic. And I think the Traits and Passions need considerable tweaking once you step outside a European paradigm.

No, they're not "realistic" but they are incredibly brutal.

I'm playing Pendragon at the moment and combat generally goes

- GM rolls
- I roll
- I succeed more
- I roll damage dice
- NPC loses a limb

One of our characters this week got so profoundly fucked up he couldn't talk without taking damage, let alone continue with the adventure.

It's nicely gritty and I think that while the passions would need slight tweakage the model of love X, hate Y and then familiy and something like pride or honour or shame or respect make for a passion system that's pretty much universal to human experience.

What I meant was that it would have been easy to try and make Pendragon cinematic or action-packed like D&D at the time with characters taking loads of punishment but instead the combat's deadly whether you're a king or a viking farmer.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalIt's nicely gritty and I think that while the passions would need slight tweakage the model of love X, hate Y and then familiy and something like pride or honour or shame or respect make for a passion system that's pretty much universal to human experience.

Passions aren't too hard, but I think there's a Christian morality built into the Traits (in the selection and ordering). For something like Japan you'd need to strip it back and build customised Trait-pairs

QuoteWhat I meant was that it would have been easy to try and make Pendragon cinematic or action-packed like D&D at the time with characters taking loads of punishment but instead the combat's deadly whether you're a king or a viking farmer.

The king usually has more armour, but yeah, PD combat is hard and fast. I remember introducing some GURPS players to PD and they were a bit culture-shocked. From tap-dancing and pussy-footing to "HYAHHH!"

Quote from: droogPassions aren't too hard, but I think there's a Christian morality built into the Traits (in the selection and ordering). For something like Japan you'd need to strip it back and build customised Trait-pairs

  I really don't think so.  The pairings are fairly neutral, what makes someone a Christian or a Wotan worshipper or a Jew is which traits are seen as being more important than others.  I'm normally the first guy to get a whiff of assumed christianity but I don't get one from Pendragon.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalI really don't think so.  The pairings are fairly neutral, what makes someone a Christian or a Wotan worshipper or a Jew is which traits are seen as being more important than others.  I'm normally the first guy to get a whiff of assumed christianity but I don't get one from Pendragon.

Okay, I'm going to get analytical. Here are the Trait pairs:

Chaste/Lustful
Energetic/Lazy
Forgiving/Vengeful
Generous/Selfish
Honest/Deceitful
Just/Arbitrary
Merciful/Cruel
Modest/Proud
Pious/Worldly
Prudent/Reckless
Temperate/Indulgent
Trusting/Suspicious
Valorous/Cowardly

Chivalric Traits are bold; Christian Traits are underlined.

First thing we notice is that all the 'good', 'Christian' Traits are lined up on the left, in good alphabetical order; while the 'bad' opposites are defined out of order, only in opposition. If your culture values a Trait on the right, it does so as a deviation from the natural order of things.

Note that the Chivalric Traits are all left-hand ones. Several of them coincide with Christian Traits; no other religion has such a favourable starting position.

Finally: we can see that by no means does the list of Traits cover all human possibilities. Hence the list of a dozen or so we have is selected for the purpose of modelling Malory. And what is the society in Malory? A barbarian warrior society with an overlay of Christianity. So, the closer to that you are, the more comfortably the game as it stands will handle it.

Genpei, Ian Young's Japanese variant, does change the traits to a degree and to great success.

Quote from: droogFirst thing we notice is that all the 'good', 'Christian' Traits are lined up on the left, in good alphabetical order; while the 'bad' opposites are defined out of order, only in opposition. If your culture values a Trait on the right, it does so as a deviation from the natural order of things.

  The point that there's more overlap between the virtues of christianity and the virtues of knighthood than between knighthood and any other religion might well be valid.  It makes sense up to a point seeing as knighthood was a christian thing but you could well be correct on that one.

  However...

  A) Symbolism aside, it really doesn't matter whether your culturally favoured traits are on the left or on the right.  That's just a presentation issue.

  B) Being a knight is quite a christian thing and as such if you aren't a part of christian medievel culture whether or not you have knightly virtues isn't really going to make a lot of difference to you as a character.  If we're talking about adapting Pendragon to other cultures and times then the overlap between christianity and knightlyness ceases to become much of an advantage.

  C) Admittedly those traits were selected to model Mallory but they seem pretty flexible to me in terms of coverage.  Bear in mind that personality tests tend to break down into fewer sets of opposed traits than your average Pendragon character has.  The only thing I can't really see catered for is how conservative/respectful of authority you are.

Balbinus - can you remember what modifications the Japanese variant made because I'm really not seeing the problem here.

I'll post them up next week.  I'm not saying there was a problem that needed fixing, but they did work well.

I think Fatalism was one trait, Ambition was another, those two might have been paired and it worked very well when I ran it.

Thing is, do you need to change the traits?  Not really IMO, certainly not for Outremer.  Can it help to tweak them?  Sure, for some settings it can.

I'm a pragmatist, I've run Ian's variant a couple of times and it worked really well, so for me the question of whether his changes were necessary or not is by the by, in play they worked well.

The left/right thing, I mean Droog's right technically but I never noticed and it's never affected my play of the game so I really don't think that matters at all.