Knights of Camelot is a fantasy board game published in 1980 by TSR.
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Knights of Camelot is a fantasy board game published in 1980 by TSR.
Knights of Camelot is a board game set during the reign of King Arthur. The players take on the roles of chivalrous new knights who go forth to fight evil and right wrongs. The Knight earns Chivalry Points and Virtue Points in the hopes of one day becoming a Knight of the Round Table. [1] The mechanism to discern a Knight's true worth is Virtue Level, which is calculated by dividing Chivalry Points by Virtue Points. The lower the Virtue Level, the more virtuous the knight. As game designer Charles Vasey pointed out, "a Knight who grows mighty without caring for his immortal soul, or remembering the Poor and the Church of God, will find his Virtue Level getting bigger (whereas in this game ... a low Virtue Level is what you want)." [1]
The game comes with:
Knight of Camelot was designed by Glenn and Kenneth Rahman. The box art was by Kenneth Rahman (under the pseudonym Eymoth) and Erol Otus, and interior art was by Jeff Dee, David S. LaForce, David C. Sutherland III, and Kenneth Rahman. The map was designed by Darlene Pekul.
In the February 1982 edition of Dragon (Issue #58), game designer Glenn Rahmann published alternate rules for players who wanted to play evil knights, called knaves. [2]
In the August–September 1980 edition of White Dwarf (Issue #26), Charles Vasey found the game had "a pleasing design [and] a helpful set of counters." However, he found that because the game's random encounters came from finite tables, "you will find that the game gets samey after quite a few plays", although Vasey did admit this would take some time, since "the designers have provided lots of these tables." Vasey admired the Virtue Level mechanism for judging a knight's purity. But he found the map "a little unexciting and rather small, and hence rather featureless"; he suggested swapping the map with that of another game such as Chaosium's King Arthur's Knights . He concluded by giving the game an average rating of 7 out of 10, stating that this was "a well-designed game that succeeds at all it essays." [1]
In King Arthur in America, Alan Lupack and Barbara Tep Lupack identified Knights of Camelot as part of a growing trend in the 1970s to move games involving Arthurian legend from simplistic fare for children to increasingly sophisticated adult games. [3]
In Marketing Arthur: The Commodification of Arthurian Legend, Elizabeth Sklar differentiated between exploitative and glib promotional Arthuriana, which uses the Arthur legends to sell things, and games like Knights of Camelot, an Arthurian product that "treats the legend seriously, even reverentially." She pointed out that the counters "include all major and many of the minor figures, both male and female, from the Morte d'Arthur , and for those that prove themselves sufficiently worthy, the game culminates in the Grail Quest." [4]
At the 1980 Charles S. Roberts Awards, Knights of Camelot was a finalist in two categories: Best Pre-Twentieth Century Game, and Best Fantasy or Science-Fiction Board Game.
Camelot is a legendary castle and court associated with King Arthur. Absent in the early Arthurian material, Camelot first appeared in 12th-century French romances and, since the Lancelot-Grail cycle, eventually came to be described as the fantastic capital of Arthur's realm and a symbol of the Arthurian world.
King Arthur, according to legends, was a king of Britain. He is a folk hero and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain.
The Round Table is King Arthur's famed table in the Arthurian legend, around which he and his knights congregate. As its name suggests, it has no head, implying that everyone who sits there has equal status, unlike conventional rectangular tables where participants order themselves according to rank. The table was first described in 1155 by Wace, who relied on previous depictions of Arthur's fabulous retinue. The symbolism of the Round Table developed over time; by the close of the 12th century, it had come to represent the chivalric order associated with Arthur's court, the Knights of the Round Table.
Gawain, also known in many other forms and spellings, is a character in Arthurian legend, in which he is King Arthur's nephew and one of the premier Knights of the Round Table. The prototype of Gawain is mentioned under the name Gwalchmei in the earliest Welsh sources. He has subsequently appeared in many Arthurian tales in Welsh, Latin, French, English, Scottish, Dutch, German, Spanish, and Italian, notably as the protagonist of the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Other works featuring Gawain as their central character include De Ortu Waluuanii, Diu Crône, Ywain and Gawain, Golagros and Gawane, Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle, L'âtre périlleux, La Mule sans frein, La Vengeance Raguidel, Le Chevalier à l'épée, Le Livre d'Artus, The Awntyrs off Arthure, The Greene Knight, and The Weddynge of Syr Gawen and Dame Ragnell.
Mordred or Modred is a major figure in the legend of King Arthur. The earliest known mention of a possibly historical Medraut is in the Welsh chronicle Annales Cambriae, wherein he and Arthur are ambiguously associated with the Battle of Camlann in a brief entry for the year 537. Medraut's figure seemed to have been regarded positively in the early Welsh tradition and may have been related to that of Arthur's son. As Modredus, Mordred was depicted as Arthur's traitorous nephew and a legitimate son of King Lot in the pseudo-historical work Historia Regum Britanniae, which then served as the basis for the following evolution of the legend from the 12th century. Later variants most often characterised Mordred as Arthur's villainous bastard son, born of an incestuous relationship with his half-sister, the queen of Lothian or Orkney named either Anna, Orcades, or Morgause. The accounts presented in the Historia and most other versions include Mordred's death at Camlann, typically in a final duel, during which he manages to mortally wound his own slayer, Arthur. Mordred is usually a brother or half-brother to Gawain; however, his other family relations, as well as his relationships with Arthur's wife Guinevere, vary greatly.
Galahad, sometimes referred to as Galeas or Galath, among other versions of his name, is a knight of King Arthur's Round Table and one of the three achievers of the Holy Grail in Arthurian legend. He is the illegitimate son of Sir Lancelot du Lac and Lady Elaine of Corbenic and is renowned for his gallantry and purity as the most perfect of all knights. Emerging quite late in the medieval Arthurian tradition, Sir Galahad first appears in the Lancelot–Grail cycle, and his story is taken up in later works, such as the Post-Vulgate Cycle, and Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. In Arthurian literature, he replaced Percival as the hero in the quest for the Holy Grail.
The Matter of Britain is the body of medieval literature and legendary material associated with Great Britain and Brittany and the legendary kings and heroes associated with it, particularly King Arthur. The 12th-century Catholic cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, widely popular in its day, is a central component of the Matter of Britain.
Tristan, also known as Tristram, Tristyn or Tristain and similar names, is the hero of the legend of Tristan and Iseult. In the legend, he is tasked with escorting the Irish princess Iseult to wed Tristan's uncle, King Mark of Cornwall. Tristan and Iseult accidentally drink a love potion during the journey and fall in love, beginning an adulterous relationship that eventually leads to Tristan's banishment and death. The character's first recorded appearance is in retellings of British mythology from the 12th century by Thomas of Britain and Gottfried von Strassburg, and later in the Prose Tristan. He is featured in Arthurian legends, including the seminal text Le Morte d'Arthur, as a skilled knight and a friend of Lancelot. He is also a Knight of the Round Table.
The Once and Future King is a collection of fantasy novels by T. H. White about the legend of King Arthur. It is loosely based upon the 1485 work Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. It was first published in 1958 as a collection of shorter novels that were published from 1938 to 1940, with some new or amended material. The title refers to a legend that Arthur will one day return as king.
Pendragon, or King Arthur Pendragon, is a Tabletop role-playing game (RPG) in which players take the role of knights performing chivalric deeds in the tradition of Arthurian legend. It was originally written by Greg Stafford and published by Chaosium, then was acquired by Green Knight Publishing, who in turn passed on the rights to White Wolf Publishing in 2004. White Wolf sold the game to Stewart Wieck in 2009. Wieck formed Nocturnal Media, who updated and reissued the 5th edition originally published by White Wolf. In 2018, it returned to Chaosium.
In Arthurian legend, Ywain, also known as Yvain and Owain among other spellings, is a Knight of the Round Table. Tradition often portrays him as the son of King Urien of Gorre and of either the enchantress Modron or the sorceress Morgan le Fay. The historical Owain mab Urien, the basis of the literary character, ruled as the king of Rheged in Britain during the late-6th century.
Balinthe Savage, also known as the Knight with the Two Swords, is a character in the Arthurian legend. Like Galahad, Balin is a late addition to the medieval Arthurian world. His story, as told by Thomas Malory in Le Morte d'Arthur, is based upon that told in the continuation of the second book of the Post-Vulgate cycle of legend, the Suite du Merlin.
Divine Right is a fantasy board wargame designed by brothers Glenn A. Rahman and Kenneth Rahman. The game was first published in 1979 by TSR, Inc., and a 25th Anniversary Edition was published in 2002 by The Right Stuf International.
Dinadan is a Cornish knight of the Round Table in the Arthurian legend's chivalric romance tradition of the Prose Tristan and its adaptations, including a part of Le Morte d'Arthur. Best known for his humor and pragmatism, he is a close friend of the protagonist Tristan. Dinadan is the subject of several often comedic episodes until his murder by Mordred and Agravain.
King Arthur's messianic return is a mythological motif in the legend of King Arthur, which claims that he will one day return in the role of a messiah to save his people. It is an example of the king asleep in mountain motif. King Arthur was a legendary 6th-century British king. Few historical records of Arthur remain, and there are doubts that he ever existed, but he achieved a mythological status by High Middle Ages that gave rise to a growing literature about his life and deeds.
The Boy's King Arthur was an abridged version of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur edited by Sidney Lanier and published in 1880. It was intended as a children's edition, alongside Lanier's other "Boy's" works. The original title, including its subtitle, was The Boy's King Arthur being Sir Thomas Malory's History of King Arther and his Knights of the Round Table. It was republished in 1950 under the title King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.
In the chivalric romance prose works in the legend of King Arthur, Cameliard is the kingdom of the young Princess Guinevere, ruled by her father, King Leodegrance. The texts identify it variably, with the main version of the Vulgate Merlin locating it between Bedingran and Norgales. Its historical roots may be in Cornwall.
The Matter of Britain character Morgan le Fay has been featured many times in various works of modern culture, often but not always appearing in villainous roles. Some modern stories merge Morgana's character with her sister Morgause or with aspects of Nimue. Her manifestations and the roles given to her by modern authors vary greatly, but typically she is being portrayed as a villainess associated with Mordred.
King Arthur's Knights is an Arthurian board game published by Chaosium in 1978 in which knights of the Round Table perform chivalrous quests for artifacts and treasure.