Gamemaster, you are already a noble among role-players! If you have the inclination to oversee a Pendragon experience, then you can do it. It only gets easier. Have fun. Enjoy.
Originally published as The Pendragon Campaign and The Boy King, the Great Pendragon Campaign is the flagship story framework for King Arthur Pendragon - meant to frame the entire Arthurian legend into one mega-campaign, aligning timelines and tying together different sources. It’s not necessary to run the whole campaign to play Pendragon, but at this point they’re practically seen as synonymous.
It’s an impressive work of compiling and constructing the whole-arc narrative (just in an rpg form) from a plain artistic stance. It’s also commonly in the lists of top campaigns of all time1.
I also loosely include in this adventures published in other Pendragon supplements that are meant to be slotted into the overall framework (either explicitly at certain times, or meant to give the GM and players more flexibility). Again, while these adventures may be run standalone, they’re meant to be put in some framework - and there’s no other one2.
The campaign designs an 81 year cycle - ostensibly meant to be played one year per session3, so 81 separate sessions4 - chronology, with events and changes happening year to year as the overarching story runs in the background. Some of these are detailed adventures meant to interject into the player characters’ lives and give them an experience of some of the major plot points of the legend or particularly gameable bits - some are much lighter descriptions meant to be filled in with other plotlines.
It largely follows Morte D’Arthur as its main source of the canonical shape of the story, though it digs into more obscure stories now and then to flesh out events and has a few fresh innovations of its own.
The campaign I want to run deviates a little from the official one - but largely hits the same beats.
Footnotes
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These often do overemphasize mega-campaigns and it’s clear the (earned) respect for the scholarly and artistic weight of the campaign may halo over complaints and confusion on practical matters. Still, while not the easiest campaign to run and not without its flaws, it’s beloved as a roleplaying experience as well as its contributions to Arthuriana and has been an inspiration in the hobby (including a clear influence on another megacampaign often in these lists: The Darkening of Mirkwood). ↩
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Unless, technically, you count Paladin: Warriors of Charlemagne which takes the King Arthur Pendragon rules with minor adjustments and adapts them to the Matter of France, complete with a campaign framework of its own. ↩
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With some variation, of course, and Your Pendragon Will Vary. ↩
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The Book of Uther extends this 4 more years into more of the reign of Uther, Arthur’s father and predecessor, and there’s some common extensions even a little further back. ↩