In the late 90s, Chaosium’s fourth edition of their Pendragon RPG was used as collateral for a loan, which they defaulted on. The game passed to Green Knight Publishing in 1999, then was sold to White Wolf in 2004 which, under its ArtHaus imprint, issued a new streamlined fifth edition of the game by creator Greg Stafford in 2005. When Stewart Weick left White Wolf to found Nocturnal Games, he took Pendragon with him and released a corrected and redesigned 5.1 edition in 2010. In 2016, Pendragon 5.2 emerged, once again correcting and reorganizing the game. With Weick’s death in 2017, Pendragon 5.2 finally returned to Chaosium in 2018. This is the most recent edition of the 5.2 rules, featuring a brand new layout and gorgeous new art by Jaime Garcia Mendoza.

As I’ve said before, Pendragon is Greg Stafford’s magnum opus, and due to his passing in October of 2018, I suspect this version will stand as the core rules’ final form. Which is fine by me, because they are buffed and polished to gleaming. I struggle to think of a contemporary RPG rulebook that is so straightforward and welcoming (even with stiff competition from the recent revisions of Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest rules – Chaosium is killing it right now).

I’ve already rattled on about how perfect I think this game is at what it aims to do – guide players through a unified version of the romantic legends of knighthood – so I won’t belabor that more here. Instead, let’s revel a bit in Mendoza’s art. Because holy crap.

The use of stained glass style art throughout is an inspired choice, giving the game splashes of saturated color it never really had before. His monotone work is pretty great, too. I particularly love his Mordred, which refers back to the creepy masked villain of John Boorman’s Excalibur. But all of his illustrations of knights are cool – the plate armor feels both fantastic and historical, heavy but full of movement. The blank helmets still manage to convey personality. And yo, his manticore doesn’t have wings.