King Arthur Pendragon

[Melmoth2]

After seeing Avernum pop up regularly on MacUpdate I finally gave it a go a few days back and now I'm completely and totally hooked. While playing it it struck me that this system would be perfect for turning Malory's Morte D'Arthur into RPG form, i.e. a really deep quest/exploration-based game of Arthur's Britain with a timeline spanning from the death of Uther Pendragon to the death of Arthur and covering all of Enchanted Britain (over a series of games). If anyone out there has ever played Chaosium/Green Knight's Pendragon RPG you'll probably know what I'm getting at - especially if you could include things like the character traits from the game (conflicting personality traits like Chaste vs Lustful which affects your interaction with others). The way Avernum's set up seems to be a perfect fit to me, deep involving stories, simple graphics, turn-based combat etc. I guess it's probably not the direction that the company wants to go in as Jeff's imagination is fertile enough for great original stories instead of old classics but I think there's the potential for the best game treatment of Arthurian legend yet.

[Triumph]

Though it's not Arthurian, quite, Jeff has presented Britannia and faerie story themes in a game using the same engine as A1/A2/A3: Nethergate: Resurrection. Check it out. It's my favorite Spiderweb game, actually.

 

(Yes, I know someone or the other on here adamantly prefers the original Nethergate, but it won't run on my computer so don't know if the original was better or not. )

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Melmoth2

Stuff

Good god no. Why on earth should we shackle Jeff, a game designer known for intelligent, nuanced, and original storylines with intricate and original worlds and plots with what is essentially an outdated anvilicious morality fable that's so trite and predictable it's actually funny, in a sad sort of way?

Next thing you know people will be suggesting that Jeff do a Lord of the Rings game or a computer RPG based on Narnia! Ha!

[Monroe]

Well, you could always make your own scenario with Blades of Avernum.

[Sss-Chah]

yeah, jeff could do a spin off maybe, but chances are his core market would prefer something more original.

[Slawbug]

I know that most of us probably hear "Arthurian" and assume "trite, cliche fantasy" -- but what Melmoth suggests above actually sounds very original, just as original as Nethergate was. I for one think it's a terrific idea, and I actually think it might sell well, too.

[Alorael at Large]

I'm with Slarty on this one. Arthurian legend is just a framework. It's a framework broad enough to include Le Morte d'Arthur and The Once and Future King. In particular, I think either interacting with the periphery of Arthur's court, perhaps as a small band of Round Table knights, or even playing the life of Arthur himself, complete with the parts the legends get wrong, could make a fantastic game.

 

I'd also guess that picking a famous premise would be good for PR, but I would've expected better from the Celts and Romans of Nethergate, too, so maybe that doesn't work.

 

—Alorael, who doesn't especially think the Avernum engine lends itself to excellence. He does think that Jeff's writing chops are more than adequate.

[The Ratt]

I am intrigued by this idea, but don't know enough about the Arthurian legends to know how many quests could be made, or how the story would play out.

[Monroe]

Originally Posted By: Melmoth2

traits like Chaste vs Lustful which affects your interaction with others

I would buy this game.

[Randomizer]

Depending upon which version you use for source material you could have lots of quests from hunting the mythological monsters including the Questing Beast, chasing after the Green Knight, and of course the Holy Grail. Then there are all the battles and tournaments.

 

You could even do it Nethergate style with players starting out in Arthur's court or working for Morgan le Fay.

[Callie]

I like the idea of blinding enemies with the Excalibur.

[Dintiradan]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

You could even do it Nethergate style with players starting out in Arthur's court or working for Morgan le Fay.

The knight who goes after Lancelot's Armour is always the traitor.

[Monroe]

Actual spoilers within:

Click to reveal..

I always saw Lancelot as the traitor. Maybe you could play as him, and make that decision yourself whether or not to betray your poor king and steal his wife.

[Melmoth2]

Yes, the Arthurian legends are a bit of a cliche, especially on the surface (the sword in the stone, Merlin etc.) but there's a massive amount of material in the medieval literature (and even in Tennyson and Roger Lancelyn-Green's rewriting of the stories for kids in the 50s) that tends to get overlooked. Chaosium's Pendragon went at this with a vengeance and captured the feel of the stories very well (at one point it was reviewed as the best RPG because the characters were so deep). It assigned character traits based on the seven vices and seven virtues which then played off against each other and used these to give quests moral solutions where a player's character had to struggle against their own personal weaknesses. It also had a dynastic component, you had to raise a family and at the end of the whole cycle you were playing your own grandchild. The game was never a commercial success as it was too far away from standard RPGs and seems to have disappeared completely (White Wolf picked it up around about 2005 but it's not in their catalogue). The Paradox game Crusader Kings has lifted the dynasty element and character traits from the game but that's about country management in real medieval Europe. Combining the Avernum game engine with the Arthur stories Pendragon style would be (for me) a killer game. You can have the Matter of Britain playing out in the background, and then knights wandering the lands either looking for adventure or going off on major quests for the Questing Beast or the Grail. One problem is that the adventures in the stories always tended to be singletons. You also have a few pitched battles/sieges towards the end and I'm not sure how this would work with my limited knowledge of Avernum.

[Slawbug]

Yeah. The thing to do is to approach it the same way Jeff approached Nethergate: not "I'm going to mostly duplicate lots of existing stories and characters, but change elements to make it fit, sometimes changing essential things and ruining immersion for the people who should be most excited about the setting" but rather "I'm going to draw heavily on the atmosphere of the tales to create an immersive world, making frequent reference to big-name figures but only including them where absolutely appropriate and it fits with existing legends."

 

Any game that asks me to "chase after the Green Knight," for example, would be instantly discredited to me.

[Thaluikhain]

What if you were chasing after the Green Knight because you fancied him, and there was Benny Hill music playing?

 

 

Yes, a decent game could be made about Arthurian legends, but then a decent game could be made about more or less anywhere else...it's not the setting, it's what you do with it.

 

Personally, though, I think Arthurian legends are a bit overdone...I like Exile because of the novel setting, and the way it's put together. "King Arthur" seems to be one of those "licence to suck" labels to stick on things.

 

There's no reason why someone couldn't do it properly, though, and done right it could be done very well...the knightly virtues et al are something that doesn't get explored much.

[Slawbug]

Are Arthurian legends overdone, or is a stereotypical medieval European setting overdone? I have a hard time thinking of any CRPGs with actual Arthurian legend elements, beyond Excalibur -- only one of many legendary swords that's been appropriated by Final Fantasy et al.

[Triumph]

Chrono Trigger DID have the Knights of the Square Table.

[Earth]

There is King Arthur RPG Wargame for PC and King Arthur action-game for prev. gen consoles (based on that movie which came 2004).

 

Which Arthur game should be made? King who had his knights and round table in his castle (like mythologies say) or warleader for Roman empire (like recent discoveries suggest)?

[Alorael at Large]

King Arthur is overdone in fantasy literature, but RPGs have mostly left him alone. And I disagree about making Arthurian England a backdrop rather than central. As long as the actual quests aren't identical, rubbing shoulders with Arthur, Merlin, Lancelot, and company could be really fun. Even having other knights come and go and talk about their own adventures, perhaps as chronicled by Mallory and his successors, would add to the atmosphere.

 

—Alorael, who doesn't see any reason to drag any historical people or even history into the picture. Mythological Arthur, mythological Camelot, and mythological England are all sufficiently well-developed on their own. And as a bonus, the setting could be real medieval rather than the standard fantasy quasi-medieval.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES

is a stereotypical medieval European setting overdone?

Oh god yes. I would think that that would be fairly self evident by now.

Originally Posted By: EE

Which Arthur game should be made? King who had his knights and round table in his castle (like mythologies say) or warleader for Roman empire (like recent discoveries suggest)?

Well, the "warleader for Romans" would just be a Nethergate clone by another name. So if there was one, it'd be the more well-known version, Knights of the Round Table, etc.

I guess it's just that I'd view Jeff doing a Kind Arthur game as a way to attach a popular label to one of his games to increase recognition, whether or not it actually had any similarities to the "well-known" bits of the legend or not.

Of course, this may just be a symptom of me being unable to distinguish between people who want a game about King Arthur and who go around finding Excalibur and fighting Morgana leFay and blah blah blah, or whether it was just a game about a dude named Arthur who was king, and you got to enjoy a freshm original storyline.

Originally Posted By: Triumph

Chrono Trigger DID have the Knights of the Square Table.

Interesting take on "knights of the round table"(Even though one of them is technically a lord):

Click to reveal..

[Tyranicus]

Originally Posted By: Triumph

(Yes, I know someone or the other on here adamantly prefers the original Nethergate, but it won't run on my computer so don't know if the original was better or not. )

I don't hate Nethergate Resurrection. I just prefer the original.

[Thaluikhain]

Originally Posted By: Earth Empires

Which Arthur game should be made? King who had his knights and round table in his castle (like mythologies say) or warleader for Roman empire (like recent discoveries suggest)?

Both!

And the one where Merlin is really an alien.

(IIRC, the "Arthur as Roman" thing takes an awful lot of liberties with history.)

[Kelandon]

I had a similar idea way back in my NK0:P days (around the same time as I had the Bahssikava/Exodus/Homeland idea) and even starting making a BoE scenario to this effect. I think LP was also sort of an offshoot of this, taking the Nethergate graphics and setting rather than the Avernum graphics and setting for a BoA scenario.

 

If I were to make another scenario, it would be a sequel, not another new series, but if I actually finished the Bahssikava trilogy and made the sequel to Nobody's Heroes that I keep tossing around in my head, my next thing probably would be Arthurian. I'm convinced that the idea is promising. BoA-ers could pull off an Arthurian scenario (or a series) well, I'm sure.

 

Whether Jeff should do it or not is another thing, though. I'm looking forward to seeing what Avadon turns into.

[Student of Trinity]

Hmmm, I wonder what Jeff's trilogy will be like. I'm thinking, Avadon II: the Brown Hut.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

Hmmm, I wonder what Jeff's trilogy will be like. I'm thinking, Avadon II: the Brown Hut.

Avadon III: The Red Villa by the Sea?

[Earth]

Originally Posted By: Thaluikhain

(IIRC, the "Arthur as Roman" thing takes an awful lot of liberties with history.)

Not that easy to proove which is more true than other.

[Thaluikhain]

Originally Posted By: Earth Empires

Not that easy to proove which is more true than other.

Which means they are taking liberties by labelling it "historically accurate" instead of, say, "not totally at odds with the little we know".