Pendragon vs RuneQuest
Compare Pendragon and RuneQuest side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.
| Pendragon | RuneQuest | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy, Historical | Fantasy |
| Tags | Character-Driven, Domain Management, Lore-Heavy, Deadly, Simulation, Crunchy, Social Intrigue | Crunchy, Tactical, Lore-Heavy, Deadly, Character-Driven |
| Core Mechanic | Roll d20 against the relevant skill or attribute: a result equal to or under its value succeeds, a roll exactly equal to the value is a critical success, and a natural 20 is a fumble. Opposed actions have both sides roll under their value, with the higher success winning and a beaten-but-successful roll scoring a partial success. Personality traits and passions use the same numeric scale and are rolled the same way when a knight's character is put to the test. | Roll d100 under your skill percentage. Criticals at 1/20th of skill, specials at 1/5th, fumbles at 95+. Seven characteristics (STR, CON, SIZ, DEX, INT, POW, CHA). Combat uses hit locations (d20) with per-location HP and armor. Strike ranks determine action order. Runes are percentile-rated cosmic affinities that fuel magic and shape personality. Passions (Love, Hate, Honor, Loyalty) augment skills when invoked. |
| Dice | d20 | d100 |
| Complexity | High | High |
| Availability | Paid | Free quickstart |
| Runnability | 4 of 5 book tools | Book tools not listed |
| License | Proprietary | All Rights Reserved |
| Third-Party Publishing | Not yet researched | Not yet researched |
| Publisher | Arthaus | Chaosium Inc. |
| Year | 2005 | 2018 |
| Languages | English, French, Spanish | English, French, German, Spanish |
| Best For | Long-running Arthurian campaigns where a knight's aging, death, and dynastic succession are part of the genre, and where playing out a character's traits, loyalties, and passions matters as much as winning fights. | Groups who want deep mythic fantasy where characters are embedded in cults, clans, and cosmic forces: with tactical hit-location combat and a world steeped in decades of lore. |
| Highlights | Thirteen opposed pairs of personality traits and a set of named passions are rated numerically and rolled like skills, and a passion roll can leave a knight inspired to heroics, disheartened, or maddened beyond the player's control: the heightened behavior that drives Arthurian drama. Every chivalric act (combat, generosity, romance, piety, holding a title) feeds a single lifelong Glory total that sets social rank and rewards embodying knightly ideals over simply winning fights. A yearly Winter Phase resolves aging, estate income, and family events between sessions and passes the line to an heir on death, so a campaign can span generations from Uther's court to the fall of the Round Table. | Glorantha is one of the most detailed settings in RPG history, Rune and Passion mechanics tie characters to the mythic world, hit-location combat adds tactical detail, skill-based advancement through use, three distinct magic systems |
| Considerations | Core rules restrict player characters to knights, with no mechanics for playing magicians, priests, or commoners, which narrows the cast to the warrior aristocracy. The Winter Phase's multi-step annual procedure adds meaningful between-session bookkeeping to every campaign year. High-damage attacks such as a couched lance or great sword can end a fight in a single exchange, making disadvantaged or improvised fights disproportionately dangerous. | Very steep learning curve, tightly coupled to Glorantha setting, combat bookkeeping is heavy, expensive to collect all sourcebooks, dense lore for new players |