Sir Pellinore’s Favorite Game, Part II

This is the First Part Of The Second Part Of The Pellinore Walkthrough

Which Covers The Third Edition Of The Game

And So, We Return

Alright, I’ve been working on a novella for a month now, churning out words in anticipation of a contract, which is currently in a holding pattern, I hit my word goal but I’m only about 75% of the way done with the plot, the ending coming up feels unearned, there’s guns on the mantelpiece I have no targets for, and after 30 days of a minimum of 700-800 words a day, I need to shift my mind to something else, so, here we are. (I realized that decades of running games, rather than writing stories, has left me very skilled at starting a story, with a setting, concept, characters with motivations and goals, but not at all skilled at ending them, because I expect the PCs to provide the bulk of the conflict and chaos.)

Forward, Into the Slightly Less Distant Past!

Along time ago, in an office exactly where it is now, I did a walkthrough of Sir Pellinore’s Book, as the first edition was called, and threatened the same for Sir Pellinore’s Favorite game, aka, the Third Edition. Never let it be said I make idle threats! Lazy, slow, meandering, and very long-delayed, true, but not idle! Here we go!

This is the 1981 edition. Three years may not be long now, but at the time, it was as if aeons had passed. New technologies, including new concepts and genres, evolve quickly, at first exploding in a variety of forms and styles, followed just as rapidly with a mass pruning of the branches. Standards of design, production, and rules quality were visibly changing, year on year. So now we see how much Sir Pellinore’s work progressed. (The second edition is evidently lost. These books were, as noted in the prior article, very small press, even by the standards of the age.)

The Third Edition is over twice as long as the first, which is typical. Few games shed pages as they evolve. So let’s just get going, shall we?

Crisis Point

We begin with the definition of a “turn”, which is “the amount of time that passes from one crisis to the next”. Today, of course, we need to measure that in nanoseconds, but back then, you could have operational, tactical, or strategic. Strategic turns were a day, tactical turns 30 seconds, and operational turns 5 seconds, so there were 5 operational turns per strategic turn. (I shall note, for neither the first nor the last time, that AD&D’s insistence on a one-minute combat round was a really weird hangover from miniature gaming, requiring way too much fudging and hand-waving to make sense. A lot of other games of the era, even those mostly D&D derived, offered rounds of a few seconds.)

Here follows a typical “Example of Play”, of which I shall include but one entry, as it seems to bespeak a foreboding future.

What’s the foreboding part? The part where you’re multiplying 9 by 3/4 in-play. That’s the sort of thing you do, if you must, pre-play, and then record (for example, GURPS parry, which is 3+skill/2). I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot of “I have a calculator and I’m not afraid to use it!” rules.

We are here, though, to generate characters, which is the next page. Characters may be male or female, or even “Elves, Dwarves, or Div¹“, but should not be monsters, as they’d be too powerful. It’s 4d6, add the top 3, for “STRENGTH, INTELLECT, ENDURANCE, DEXTERITY, and PERSONALITY”. Let’s go!

Strength: 11
Intellect: 8
Endurance: 16
Dexterity: 7
Personality: 16

Well, that all looks #@%$@# spiffy. And pretty typical. Two good rolls, and neither (I’m betting) in a stat that will matter.

Secondary Steps

Next are Secondary Attributes, such as REPUTATION, LUCK, AGILITY, EVASION, and EXPERIENCE. Reputation is 0, Luck and Experience are 1, and Agility and Evasion are explained later.

Next comes rolling on the Height/Weight tables and multiplying by various things if you’re a woman, elf, dwarf, or div. Apparently, there is no sexual dimorphism among non-humans. Someday, I’m going to write an old-school game where the default H/W table is centered on, I dunno, female dwarves, and every other species/gender combo has to adjust.

I took a moment to search to see what the differences between the races were, and, erm… I can’t find anything to indicate there’s any difference between them except height/weight and what you write on the character sheet. I tried ‘elf’, ‘elves’, ‘elfs’, etc., and the only time they came up was on encounter charts, languages, or height/weight. That’s… odd. A lot of these games were Tolkien-obsessed and would overload elves and dwarves with special powers and features. Even with the more Arthurian inspiration, there ought to be something. But… there’s not. It brings to mind some very old CRPGs where you had a bunch of possible races, but they had no game effect. At most, it was a way to visualize your character, who was often just a few pixels or even simply a name. But in an actual tabletop RPG of the era? I have to imagine something just got dropped in editing (to whatever extent these were ‘edited’). I am, honestly, perplexed and disappointed. I don’t expect 160 pages of hyper-detailed stats, history, culture, gods, etc., as in modern games, but at least -1 here, a -1 there, here a plus, there a plus, everywhere a plus? Nope!

Anyway, height and weight. I got off on this digression because this is where you make that choice, and I wanted it to be an informed one. So much for that idea. So, dwarven female, then! With a big, flowing, braided, beard. Anyway, after rolling and applying modifiers, I’m 2’5″ and 80 lbs.

Oh! I found Div! They’re… desert dwelling cat-people. They’re under “monsters”, but elves and dwarves are not. Why do I suspect this is a Gor thing? There were a lot of Gor things in 70s roleplaying games. Can’t imagine why so few women were long-term participants in the hobby back then, not a clue, no-sir-ee Bob!

I also roll for coins. This game uses electrum pieces, which is a sure sign you’re seeing a D&D influence. (Hardly surprising. I would argue that, until Vampire: The Gothening came out in the early 1990s, anyone who said “I’m going to design my own RPG! With blackjack! And hookers!” started with D&D and it would be there at some level² even if they later moved on to other systems. And if you’re doing a level based 3-18 attribute scale game in 1981, well…) Anyway, 110 gold crowns.

Inheritance Tax

Next is rolling up your social status, or “Heritage”. At last, we see one case where gender, though not race, comes into play. If you roll 2nd or 3rd son of nobility, but you’re a daughter, you can’t inherit unless there are no men left, but you do get the extra money. (There is no ‘firstborn’ option, presumably because they won’t let to have adventures if you’re the designated heir.)

I rolled Middle Class, so I get no bonus gold, but I do have “extra knowledge about professions”.

I must choose Good or Evil. If I’m Good, I want a positive reputation, if I’m evil, I want a negative one. I can also counterbalance evil deeds with good ones, the classic “This will totally make up for that orphanage we burned!” maneuver.

Yer Not A Wizard, Hairy

Hairy, ’cause dwarf, y’see, and…

To be a Wizard, you must sell your soul to the devil, sacrifice a point of luck and endurance, and set your reputation to -1. You must also only do evil deeds, for if your reputation reaches the heights of 0, the devil will claim your soul! Well, that’s one way to avoid having to playtest the magic rules — make sure no one will ever want to use them!

(Good Wizards, such as Merlin, can exist, the rules say, yoinking up the gauntlet mere sentences after having cast it down, but they must have ‘some disadvantage’. Exactly what that might mean is up to the GM. Surely, you didn’t expect rules in this rulebook you paid for? Some people have such a sense of entitlement!)

Also, you need an Intellect of 10 to be a Wizard, so it’s right out, anyway.

Enough For Now

Next we do Secondary Attributes, buy gear, look at “Abilities” (skills) and skim combat. Please note this is pretty much the end of the choice-based parts. There are no classes other than “Wizard” and “Not a Wizard”. The races don’t seem to matter at all; even gender only impacts if you inherit the throne. Yes, GRRM gets a lot of mileage out of that, but in an RPG, few players want to inherit the throne and spend all day sitting at some big wooden table, looking at a bunch of scruffy old men saying things like “But, Mi’lord, Sir Shmendrick of Fa’laffel does call upon the oath sworn by your great-grandfather at the Battle of Little Hedgehog, and demandeth you send him 47 sheep and one two-headed goat, or there shall be war!”

As to when we shall meet again, in thunder, lightning, or in meh, looks kind of hazy, let’s see what weather.com says, I cannot say. It may be next week. It probably won’t be, but it may be.

What’s a “Div”? Who knows? Introducing things and not explaining them was how we rolled. ↩︎
See this for example. ↩︎

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Sir Pellinore’s Game, Part II