A while back, I wrote a guest post for the Castalia House blog on King Arthur Pendragon. You can find that here, the publisher page here, and its Amazon entry here.
It was only a matter of time before someone finally bothered to translate the concept behind that game to an analogous period.
Paladin takes the gameplay concept and formula of Pendragon and moves it from The Matter of Britain to The Matter of France. Everything I said about Pendragon applies to Paladin, with the major change being the source material and the timeline of events you're working with. This is not Dungeons & Dragons; it requires a different attitude despite some familiar-looking things on the character sheet, and making that jump away from today's Clown World to the pre-modern world of Charlemange's France or Arthur's Britain is the real challenge for most people to tackle- a challenge most of the Fake Gamers afflicting the subculture cannot surmount, if they even try to do so.
I was a backer of the Paladin kickstarter, so I'm not impartial regarding this game or its older brother, Pendragon. I think that Greg Stafford did a great job designing this game system and Ruben In'T Groen's work porting it from Arthurian legend (the Matter of Britain) to this Carolingian setting is superb.
ReplyDeleteI recommend them both to anyone who likes RPGs because they both touch on themes that run through the core of Western Civilization. I think you will find that playing them is immensely enjoyable, if you can make the jump from Clown World to our pre-modern past.
Just trying will be more fun than you think.
One of the reasons I backed this as thoroughly as I did was that in the current climate, I had no confidence that it would ever make it past the initial print run before 'the market' forced the company to pull it.
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