Sir Pellinore's Book

A few weeks ago, a regular correspondent of mine, who often sends me pointers toward forgotten bits of RPG history, alerted me to the existence of Sir Pellinore's Book of Rules for a Game of Magical Mideval [sic] Adventures, a 1978 amateur publication by Michael Brines of Prescott, Arizona. 

As you can probably tell just by looking at the cover to the left, I'm not kidding when I call this an "amateur publication." Sir Pellinore's Book is the raw, unpolished work of a fan, replete with misspellings, grammatical errors, occasionally unclear text, and little illustrations (presumably by Brines). It's also a charming window on the early days of the hobby and, for that reason alone, of great interest to me and anyone else who has an interest in such matters.

Consisting of twenty typewritten pages, Sir Pellinore's Book is quite clearly a variant of Original Dungeons & Dragons, though even a cursory examination of it reveals that it is quite variant in places. For instance, there are ostensibly three classes of characters, just as in OD&D. These classes are wizards, fighting men, and "others," the latter consisting of "priests, merchants, etc." Likewise, Wisdom is replaced with Luck, which is used to calculate most of a character's saving throws (25 – Luck score + level = target on "two dice," presumably 2d6, though it's never specified). At the referee's discretion, other ability scores might be substituted for Luck, such as Dexterity for falls and Constitution for resisting poison. 

Nearly every rule in OD&D is given some alteration or tweak, from combat to experience points to spells. The result is something that feels at once familiar and strange. It's difficult to tell whether Brines was inspired by other early RPGs – his use of Luck reminds me of Tunnels & Trolls and his percentile-based combat reminds me of RuneQuest, to cite two examples – or whether his ideas simply ran parallel to those of other games at the time. The early days of the hobby were one of reckless enthusiasm and cross-pollination, so this may not be an either/or situation. In any case, the end result is something that feels genuinely distinctive and reflects the sensibilities and tastes of its creator, something of which I've always been quite supportive.

I had intended to write a post about Sir Pellinore's Book when I was first told about it, but it slipped my mind, as too many things seem to do these days. Fortunately, another correspondent informed me that Precis Intermedia has made it available in electronic form both through its own site and through DriveThruRPG. There are apparently plans to make it available in print as well, in case that's your preference. If you're at all interested in the roots of the hobby, it's well worth a look. Plus, it has a spell called "Banana Peel;" you can't go wrong with that.