This is my second King Arthur Pendragon campaign and I hope my best. This campaign starts in 496 and it opened with the words "King Uther Pendragon is dead!" The main characters are Saxons. I have found that these make great beginner characters, as you don't have to worry too much about chivalry and being nice. Unfortunately for the Saxons however, everybody hates them. They are also a defeated nation and must use the breathing space created by Uther's death to regroup and reorganise. Weapons are basic with mounted fighting a new Cymric invention, which the PC's being good at it. The true lance is yet to be developed.

Each player has two characters, a knight and a squire. The squire is not their knights squire, but squire to another PC knight. This allows the players to develop a character from the beginning. To see how the characters progress see the "Characters" section.

Each year has a summary of what the characters did; some of these I will translate into actual scenarios. The first adventures where purposefully brief, so that players learnt the rules and advanced. This gave a sense of achievement early and a regard for their character and others in the party. I soon learnt that the favourite part of an adventure was the feast at the end (2 of the group are members of the Viking Re-enactment Society, and are very good at roleplaying this part).

The party is based in Essex and are vassals to the Saxon King Wulfhere. I tried to give a sense of progress by restricting certain items, including chargers. 495 saw the death of the Cymric King, Uther, but not before he had defeated 2 Saxon armies. It just happened that against the Essex Saxons, Uther used mounted knights with lances for the first time. The player knights were at the time squires, but realising the need to secure their knights they took up spears and used them as lances. Thus they saved their knights and were duly knighted for their bravery. This is the backdrop to the campaign.

Click on the links below to see how they got on.