[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

The Pendragon RPG I know had a magic system, as well as support for players creating and playing several different types of characters, not just various flavours of fighty fighty.

The edition I played didn't have that, and yet this was not a problem. Yes, all knights were warriors, of somewhat variable style, and you had to fight sometimes, because the setting is one where important issues are often settled that way.

But it's a mistake to think of Pendragon as being either a semi-historical fantasy game, or a postmodern fantasy game. It's a game that is quite focussed on emulating a particular literary genre, that of Thomas Malory and his imitators.

That genre is quite narrativist; it is not at all surprising to knights that adventures come along that they are suited for, and that the problems they face are ones that they can address, and hope to succeed with. That's how the genre works, and what they expect.

The reason for that is based in the original purpose of the genre, which was romantic pro-Plantagenet propaganda. Knights, as essentially the only people in the society with money, freedom to travel, and some authority, are thereby the only people available to right the many wrongs and evils that a complex world creates. And that's what Pendragon knights do: as well as being warriors, they investigate crimes, find missing persons, and basically do the village- and town-level policing of society. They also do quests for legendary and numinous things, such as the Holy Grail, visit faire realms and come back still sane, and generally keep the world running.

They do this because it's their duty, and their role in society, and because their ultimate liege is King Arthur. He is a wise ruler, a noble man in all senses of the term, and a work of propaganda who is deliberately superior to those kings whose reputations he was intended to support. He creates an example of what kings should be, as an encouragement to them - this propaganda isn't entirely one-sided.

Arthur's rule provides the ideal of a just and reasonable society, and makes the adventures of his knights into examples of restoring the proper state of things, rather than struggling against a chaotic world full of evils. Again, this is comforting propaganda in the 1400s, but it isn't simple-minded. Lastly, Arthur's rule addresses the fundamental British political problem, which is thousands of years old: that of making an "us" out of several sets of "them", which varies according to which groups have recently arrived from Europe, but never quite goes away. The imaginary Arthur addresses it in the best, if not the easiest way: by accepting anyone who will obey the laws, and behave honourably, which builds a unified society, albeit one that inexorably changes, rather than a fractured one.

Incidentally, Tolkien seems to have failed to understand that. Few do, but he might have. One of the motivations behind his creation of Middle-Earth was to create a mythology for the British, because he felt that they lacked one like that of the Norse, Finns or Greeks. It's true that British mythology is very different and rather newer, but that's because it's political allegory rather than, for example, the lessons about men and women that the myth of the Judgement of Paris teaches.