RPG Spotlight: ‘The Green Knight’ Roleplaying Game
This week we’re joining the Arthurian legend and Dev Patel with an RPG based on the Sir Gawain inspired movie, ‘The Green Knight’.
The Green Knight is one of the most acclaimed movies of 2021 so far and David Lowery’s take on Arthurian legend Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. While it’s one of the most well known of the Arthurian legends, if you haven’t had a chance to read it since your school days we won’t say too much so you can be as surprised by the movie as possible. Instead, we’ll be taking a look at A24’s The Green Knight: A Fantasy Roleplaying Game so you can join in on the adventure for yourself.
Right from the start this feels – and likely is – a game meant to be supplemental and possibly even promotional to the film. They go out of their way to make the game pretty, self-contained, and one-shot friendly for the ease of casual players who had their interest piqued by the movie and experienced tabletop role players alike. Not to mention, the timing of the game’s release lines up with the movie like a Happy Meal toy tie-in.
A GM’s guide walks you through this world, giving beautiful flavor text and description, but drawing enough inspiration from the movie to be considered a long interactive spoiler. There are three encounters before the story’s climax, allowing players to use their characters’ special skills and make choices. It’s a little like a chose your own adventure book – you make your choices but unless the GM takes the core mechanics and runs their own story, your characters are more or less on a trajectory. That said, that’s how it is with most game modules.
Players can choose to be a noble, bard, sorcerer, knight, or hunter with sheets that are color coordinated and pre-filled out for your gameplay convenience so character creation isn’t a thing you’ll need to worry about in The Green Knight. And Neither is death. “Characters need not fear death,” the game lets us know. “The ultimate punishment is dishonor.” And so the top of each character sheet has a scale ranging from honor to dishonor with shades of gray between. And honestly, this is nice for a one-shot. Having a character die on you outside of a strictly horror game can be daunting and discouraging, but honor is something you can try to recover from in the next encounter.
That said, honor can be lost despite the character and player both trying very hard to uphold their code of chivalry. There is a constant challenge in The Green Knight to uphold your personal code, but sometimes that code will pause the story from progressing and your hand will be forced. The rules themselves are light. The game comes with just one d20 and while there are skill checks for combat, passes and failures are by and large up to the GM’s discretion.
Like reading (or watching) an Arthurian legend, The Green Knight RPG puts more importance on players making it through the entire story than struggling to get there. It’s a simple system that will definitely be fun for some people and lends itself well to a one-shot evening with some friends. If you saw and enjoyed The Green Knight or are just a fan of classic literature, this is a game you should check out at least once.
If you’d like to learn more about The Green Knight: A Fantasy Roleplaying Game you can find more information on the A24 website, here.
Have you played The Green Knight? Have you seen the movie yet? What do you think of these takes on the clasic? Let us know in the comments!
Happy Adventuring!
