Exclusive first look at Pendragon 6E’s Player’s Handbook and The Grey Knight, fantasy RPG’s biggest update in almost 20 years

King Arthur Pendragon, the epic fantasy RPG of questing knights considered by late RuneQuest creator Greg Stafford as his “masterpiece”, is returning with its first full new edition in nearly two decades. Ahead of Pendragon 6E’s release this April, Dicebreaker can exclusively reveal a first look at the cover artwork for the returning RPG’s Player’s Handbook and revised campaign The Grey Knight.

Pendragon 6E is the first major revision for the tabletop RPG since 2005’s fifth edition, which was followed by incremental updates in 2010 and 2016. In 2020, publisher Chaosium - which regained the rights to the game after Stafford’s passing in late 2018 - released a quickstart set of sixth-edition rules and scenario The Adventure of the Great Hunt, followed by a starter set for the upcoming Sixth Edition last year.

Pendragon’s sixth-edition Player’s Handbook marks the first core rulebook released for the latest iteration of the tabletop RPG. The book will be one of three core rulebooks covering the entirety of Pendragon’s rules, which are newly divided into separate tomes. A Gamemaster’s Handbook, including guidance for GMs for creating original campaigns, and Noble’s Handbook, with more advanced rules for higher-level play, will be released “as soon as logistically possible”, Pendragon line editor David Larkins told Dicebreaker.

Alongside the core rulebooks, Chaosium will release the Pendragon Campaign Kit, containing resources for generating elements of the world such as NPCs and background on a new setting in Salisbury, plus a GM screen. Planned releases include an atlas, expanded bestiary and books detailing expanded character creation options, magic and miracles, as well as revised editions of the RPG’s existing regional sourcebooks in the future.

Releasing in April with the Player’s Handbook will be a revised version of The Grey Knight, the first adventure released for King Arthur Pendragon’s first edition in 1986. The story by designer Larry DiTillio - who also co-created seminal Call of Cthulhu campaign Masks of Nyarlathotep - will be expanded with two prequel scenarios that both set up the main campaign and connect to the Sword Campaign included in Sixth Edition’s starter set.

The Grey Knight will be followed by a revised edition of Stafford’s own Great Pendragon Campaign, itself a revision of the designer’s eighties The Pendragon Campaign, which won the Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming upon its release in 2006. The sprawling supplement covers eight decades of in-game time - something that will see it broken into multiple volumes for Sixth Edition, with the first covering the Boy King and Conquest periods across roughly two dozen sessions.

Pendragon’s Sixth Edition represents what Stafford described as the “Ultimate” vision of his RPG, with the designer working on the rules for a decade before his death. Alongside revised rules for the game, including overhauled rules for battles and sieges and expanded representation of non-male knights and characters, the books feature full-colour interior illustrations for the first time. The finalised core rules also feature some changes from the quickstart, with failed Passion rolls now resolved using a follow-up ‘Passion Crisis’ roll rather than a table check.

Pendragon 6E’s Player’s Handbook and The Grey Knight will be released in April, with release dates for the Gamemaster’s Handbook, Noble’s Handbook, Pendragon Campaign Kit and the first volume of the Great Pendragon Campaign yet to be announced.