Disclaimer: This series is made possible by the generosity of the fine people of Chaosium, who provided me with a review copy of the game on PDF. No further compensation was provided to me, and all opinions in this series are mine.
If I were to pick a mechanic that would be “iconic” of Pendragon, it would have to be the use of Traits and Passions. While we touched upon these in the Character Creation article, it’s also important to understand just what kind of impact these have in play.
To put it simply, Traits and Passions lend a mechanical element towards something that is traditionally left up to the player’s ability and judgement: the personality of the character. In many RPGs, outside of some traits like Disadvantages or Quirks, the portrayal of a character’s personality and ideals (and consistency thereof) are largely the player’s purview. One session they might act one way, the next they can choose to act differently, and there’s really no way to manage that beyond telling them, “Wait, that seems to be way out of character for your concept.”
Tell me who you are
Traits manage this by creating trait pairings that show various dualities in a person’s personality and psyche. Each player-knight is represented by a list of no less than thirteen different trait pairings. Each pairing can only add up to a total of 20, and increasing one side will lower the other by the same value. The more strongly a particular Trait defines a character, the higher the value. Values higher than 15 are particularly dominant, as you’ll see later.
Of course, these pairing are representative of important emotional decision points that represent the Arthurian setting as well. This isn’t universal, and in doing so the game stresses that the average inhabitant of the era has these foremost in their minds when coming to a decision.
Take note however that Traits are not rolled in every minute decision. The GM (or the player) can call for a Trait roll when weighing how a character will respond to a situation. Unless, of course, the trait is higher than 15, in which case the player must always roll their Trait when weighing a course of action.
In the case of Sir Stephen, that Valorous score of 18 will make it so that any consideration of cowardly behavior will likely be ignored, as I would have to roll higher than 18 to even think about any craven behavior. Something that, personally I would find very challenging to roleplay as I tend to be more pragmatic about my approaches in most games.
What matters most
Passions, on the other hand are representative of things outside of a character that they feel most strongly about. There are general categories such as Love, or Hate, but these Passions are often very specific to a given subset of subjects.
Passions, like Traits are given a numerical value. In addition the Passions are sorted into sub-sets called courts. These courts are: Fidelity, Fervor, Adoration and Civility. A player-knight can only have up to 40 points in each court, and any passions that might increase the total beyond 40 will reduce another passion in the same court by the same value.
Like Traits, Passions also have categories, and again, Passions with a value higher than 15 dominant a character’s personality and attempts to act otherwise must incur a roll to do so. Passions are particularly interesting as one can roll on them in order to incur a bonus to an action. Fighting to defend your home can be bolstered by rolling your Love (Family) Passion can earn you anywhere from a +5 to a +10 bonus to a particular instance.
That said, there’s a powerful downside to it as well. Failing a Passion roll, or failing a task while Impassioned, results in a Passion Crisis, which can result in either Madness or Melancholy. Melancholy is a from of depressive state, while Madness takes a character out of play for a bit until their Madness is healed.
I’d like to take a moment to stress that portrayals of Madness and Melancholy here appear to be inspired from the literary sources of the time, and are not at all attuned to our understanding of Mental Health in the modern day.
Impressions
If you’re wondering just how important Traits and Passions are, they take up a full 32 pages of content, detailing not just how they work, but how each Trait pairing is defined and how each Passion is understood and used. This is even longer than the Combat chapter, if that’s any indication on the kind of priority understanding these mechanics are to the ideal play of Pendragon.
Much like in my impressions of RuneQuests implementation of this system, I find Traits and Passions to be one of the most defining aspects of Pendragon. It’s a genius system that helps emulate the psyche and personality of a character beyond what we take for granted, and certainly cements both games as unique in this aspect.
Next up, we’ll be taking a look at Combat in Pendragon!
I hope this series has been helpful to you, and if you’d like to get physical or PDF copies of Pendragon books, you can find it over at the Chaosium store HERE.
If you prefer PDF copies from DriveThruRPG, you can find it HERE for $24.99
Life and Times of a Philippine Gamer 