Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition and the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, The Companions of Arthur is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon. It enables creators to sell their own original content for use with Pendragon, Sixth Edition. This can be original scenarios, background material, alternate Arthurian settings, and more, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Pendragon Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Pendragon campaigns.
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Heirs & Spares is a supplement for use with Pendragon, Sixth Edition.
It is a full colour, Seventy-six page, 97.90 MB PDF.
The layout is tidy and it is nicely illustrated.
Where is the Quest Set?
Where is the Quest Set?
Heirs & Spares is suitable to run with any campaign for Pendragon, Sixth Edition, but has content specific to the Pendragon Starter Set.
Who should go on this Quest?
Heirs & Spares is suitable for knights of all types, works exceedingly well with the Knights provided as pre-generated Player-knights in the Pendragon Starter Set.
What does the Quest require?
Heirs & Spares requires the Pendragon, Sixth Edition rules or use it at its fullest the Pendragon Starter Set. In addition, Squires Rampant may also be useful.
Where will the Quest take the Knights?
One of the key aspects of Pendragon is the lethality of its combat combined with dynastic play. Players are expected to not just roleplay their characters, but the sons and daughters of those characters, and in turn, the grandsons and granddaughters of those characters, and so on, over the course of several decades. As knights and thus members of the nobility, it is important that the Player-knights not only have designated heirs, but also spares. The heir is the one who will inherit a Player-knight’s mantle and position as well as his wealth and his duties, should something catastrophic happen to the Player-knight. The spare—a slightly dismissive term suggesting a certain uselessness—is there should something terrible happen to the heir. Thus, it is both vitally important that a Player-knight should have an heir and a spare to continue the family line and honour and full of potential in terms of storytelling.
Heirs & Spares is a supplement which explores these roles in Pendragon, Sixth Edition, but goes further than this by examining in greater depth their role and place in the lives of the Player-knights given as pre-generated Player Characters in the Pendragon Starter Set. In addition, it gives advice on how to integrate these heirs and spares to the Player-knights into the campaign—which will lead from the Pendragon Starter Set and into The Grey Knight and beyond—and provides plot hooks and story seeds for all eight pre-generated Player-knights and their heirs and spares. There is a wealth information and detail in this supplement that will add depth to the lives of the Player-knights and the beginnings of the official Great Pendragon Campaign as whole. However, although the content is very much tied to the pre-generated Player-knights, it is important to stress that none of it is official and that it definitely falls under the purview of ‘Your Pendragon Will Vary’.
Heirs & Spares opens with a discussion of the nature of both roles and where they can be drawn from in game terms. From the backgrounds of pre-generated Player-knights and families of Player-knights, with glance at simply replacing the deceased with someone unconnected and wholly new. It also looks at the degree of Player-knight creation, either taking a pre-generated Player-knight—as is presented for the Player-knights from the Pendragon Starter Set in Heirs & Spares, simply cloning an existing Player-knight (even one of the Player-knight who has just died), or full character generation. It notes the limited scope for this using just the Pendragon Starter Set and the Game master will need the Pendragon Core Rulebook.
The largest section in Heirs & Spares is devoted to the eight Player-knights from the Pendragon Starter Set, providing an overview of why each is interesting to play before detailing their heirs and spares. It is followed by a timeline of their family history. All expand their backgrounds in interesting ways. For example, Dame Lynelle and her squire, Booth, share a history, but are not related, and so technically, she has no family heir. Further, it is suggested that Lynelle’s younger brother and actual heir, might still be alive. Were he to be found, then he would become her heir and Booth, her spare. The heir to Asterius, the Byzantine knight, is his cousin, Callinicus, described as “the Slippery Exile”, more courtier than knight who fled Byzantium after his father was arrested by the emperor for corruption. Dame Cwenhild’s family is expanded with the addition of a half-brother, Oswain, but more Cymric than Saxon like Cwenhild, whilst their cousin, Eahild, whom Cwenhild regards as a younger sister, follows in her footsteps in wielding a heavy axe and a vengeful nature. All eight Player-knights are explored and expanded in this fashion.
The Player-knights and their heirs and spares are supported with advice for the Game Master on how to use them, primarily as NPCs, as well as suggesting alternative their respective Luck Benefits. Each Player-knight is given two pages of plot hooks and story seeds, the most obvious being to explore whether or not Dame Lynelle reveals her lack of status as a knight and potentially, her attempt to reclaim her family seat. To that end, her estate is detailed. Dame Cwenhild’s story hooks examine the politics and bureaucracy of Londinium, Dame Tamura her connection with the Ladies of the Lake, and so on. Of course, these will need development, but all are worth looking at, if only for their ideas. Lastly, Heirs & Spares details three NPCs that can be added to a campaign. Morcades of the White Tower is the daughter of the Constable of the White Tower in Londinium, renowned as a nunnery-raised, literate tomboy healer with an independent streak a mile wide, who could become firm friends with a female Player-knight, appear as part of Londinium-based adventures, and be the subject of courtship attempts by other Player-knights despite her father’s protestations! Her father is also detailed. The other two consist of Griflet de Carduel, actually a squire in the Pendragon Starter Set, and his sister, Lore de Carduel, both of whom are secondary characters in the Arthurian canon. Their detail enables the Game Master to bring them into play and so further the Player-knights’ involvement in telling the chronicles of King Arthur’s legend.
Should the Knights ride out on this Quest?
The usefulness of Heirs & Spares depends very much upon if the Game Master is running the campaign in the Pendragon Starter Set with the included pre-generated Player-knights or not. If not, Heirs & Spares will be of limited use and application, perhaps best serving as a ready source of NPCs and replacement Player-knights, plus associated story hooks and plots.
However, if the Game Master is running the campaign in the Pendragon Starter Set with the included pre-generated Player-knights, then Heirs & Spares is very, very useful. It expands greatly upon the backgrounds of the eight Player-knights, giving them heirs and spares when it even seemed unlikely that they would have any, and in the process, adding a wealth of story possibilities that can be told alongside the events of the great chronicle that makes up Pendragon. The fact that Heirs & Spares falls under ‘Your Pendragon Will Vary’ is actually disappointing. The content in the pages of Heirs & Spares is not only useful in terms of what it will add to a Game Master’s Pendragon campaign, but also so well developed and thought out that it will enrich the lives of the Player-knights and the campaign as a whole. Heirs & Spares may not be official, but it is very good and it is the companion to the Pendragon Starter Set—and beyond—that Pendragon, Sixth Edition did not know it needed.
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