The Death of Arthur •

The Death of Arthur

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A Human Made This Game

My praise is finished. Now I plan
to tell a tale as best I can
and pray to God as I begin
that I may interest you therein, Ulrich von Liechtenstein, The Service of Ladies

Neither the text on this site nor in the game materials uses generative AI (Large Language Model) content. Nor do I use diffusion models for artwork herein.

I do of course use a spellchecker, lasso-selection and other tools that sometimes are (or were, in the pre-ChatGPT world) lumped in as “AI”. I have used LLM results to generate scripts to run simulations of dice mechanics and to make some adjustments to CSS on this site. I’ve tried to use it in some places to find synonyms for game mechanic terms (i.e. for what to name a Reputation to be clear about my intent) - but the results haven’t been useful1.

I just care that when I make this, I make it for the wonder of the craft itself. In some cases that will be better and I can hone my skills in it - in others… I’m less than a craftsman, but what you’re seeing is still somebody’s work.

Actually, Many Humans

Not that there’s a crew of people writing these articles or the game2. The only voice here is my (eccentric) one.

But I stand on the shoulders of plenty of giants. There’s been many designers and writers of rpgs in the last 50 years or so. There have been even more authors of Arthurian literature to quote and draw from, and artists depicting it to pull for reference. Any list is going to be insufficient to cover all the sources and inspiration I’ve used - but I’ll give a starting point, without prejudice to those not included.

This work wouldn’t exist without the work Greg Stafford did designing Pendragon and the GPC, as well as its many other contributors, including the current creative director David Larkins - and many forum discussions (like those of Chaosium forum user Morien). It would be very different without the work of Felix Isaacs (The Wildsea), John Harper (Blades in the Dark), Cam Banks (Cortex Prime) and numerous other contributors to those rpgs and to others I’ve pilfered for inspiration.

For general supplements and non-mechanical inspiration in the rpg space I’m indebted to Lisa J Steele, Stout Stoat Press, Drew Baker, Kevin Crawford, Hayley Gordon, and too many others to list. There is an even more impossible to complete list of writers on general history which helped me understand the background provided34. I’ll name Francis and Joseph Gies whose works give some solid overviews that helped me get the basics under my foot to start, as well as some foundational work by Peter Coss5, Serina Patterson6, Kristen B. Neuschel7, Elisabeth van Houts8 as a very tiny start - and the online writings of Bret Devereaux. Also I’m indebted to the writers of the period who wrote works that lasted to be read be me today, like Geoffroi de Charny, Christine of Pisa, and Ulrich von Lichtenstein among others.

I’ve benefitted greatly from Arthurian scholars such as Norma Lorre Goodrich, Norris J Lacy, Christopher W Bruce, Nigel Bryant, and many more9 - and of course from the writers like Tennyson, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Malory, Chrétien, Natsume Sōseki, John Masefield - just to pick a few whose quotes I frequently reference here, and not to mention the very many writers whose names have been forgotten to history.

Unlike an rpg with a newer theme, I can fill this with a lot of art that’s well outside of copyright and which covers a rich tradition of continual reinvention of the legends. There are many illustrators from the Middle Ages who put their imagination to the page or hammer, though pretty much all have no name remaining. More recently there’s a lot of art that we can attribute names to - especially in the Pre-Raphaelite era10 - including Edmund Blair Leighton, Eleanor Fortescue Bricksdale, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones and Edwin Austin Abbey.

And I wouldn’t have done any of this without everyone who fostered my creativity and curiosity - but especially to the players and GMs in my gaming groups from Kingmaker to A Wind Age, A Wolf Age.

And You Too

My writings here are dedicated to the public domain, which has taken good care of the legends so far.

There are quotes from various sources not my own, and some artwork or pictures used for reference may fall under other jurisdiction.

Footnotes

  1. Theoretically this would be an ideal case for this too- to find a pattern of similar words that are associated with other themes or tones or eras (i.e. finding a synonym that evokes a particular feeling or at least a particular era, regardless of whether it’s actually most used then) is part of what a large language model should be doing. The results from my tiny bits of testing weren’t better than brainstorming, though - often very generic. So, I did try it, but didn’t end up using anything from these results. ↩

  2. Though I’m not entirely alone in the design, it’s by suggestions and advice, not a formal team effort. ↩

  3. I also came with a lot of this from general history classes and of course from many times delving into encyclopedias as a child or Wikipedia when older. I can’t even begin to find all those who encouraged my already strong love of the period before I started down this particular work. ↩

  4. Also not going to mention the many writers whose works I still need to finish reading which sadly may be the largest category. ↩

  5. The Foundations of Gentry Life - a good primer specifically for the standards of living for the class of characters we’re focused on. I need to read the others which cover other time periods too. ↩

  6. Games and Gaming in Medieval Literature - which had several very gameable and fascinating subjects. ↩

  7. Living by the Sword on the meanings of swords and their cultural weight and narratives beyond just the obvious use. Pretty formative for a lot of my thoughts on motifs in the game. Also one of the cooler titles for these books. ↩

  8. Married Life in the Middle Ages which fills in some important concepts. ↩

  9. I primarily picked to mention authors/editors of some of the major compendiums/encyclopedias of the topic. These are especially useful, but also stand on so much other discussion. ↩

  10. Because they really loved Arthurian topics, and their art is very iconic for our modern view of the matter. ↩