King Arthur: The Role-playing Wargame II Developer Diary
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We are talking about a character who has been around for hundreds of years. King Arthur (or at least a similar figure with a name resembling (Arthur)) was known to pop up in medieval chronicles as early as in the 12th century, and thereafter he and his knights made frequent appearances in the medieval romances. Arthur reached a new level of popularity in the 19th century, thanks to numerous Victorian retellings, and later, some time during the 20th century he made his way into popular culture. King Arthur himself, or at least the chevalier-king he represents, is nowadays a familiar trope of fantasy novels, role-playing games, movies and TV series.
There have been countless theories on the origin of King Arthur (even his name brings up some interesting questions), and there are many interpretations of the Arthurian mythology itself. Such interpretations range from the strict-to-fact historical versions (imagining Arthur as a real-historical person) through the stories set in low- or high-fantasy settings (Excalibur or Merlin) to the outright funny (Monthy Python and the Holy Grail).
However, in the very early stages of development we decided that we didn't want to inherit a given Arthurian mythology. Rather, we wanted to create our own version and wanted the players to participate in the process! We wanted our players to shape their own mythology, where Arthur could be a tyrant, a believer of the Old Faith, a true knight, a Christian zealot, or anything between. From this, we set out to create an fantasy world based on some historical facts, but also a great deal of myth and folklore. There was no need to invent giants and wizards, faerie folk and the like: these are all present in the old stories, just as they were in the culture. But we did want to enhance the fantasy aspect, to play with the well-known elements from Arthurian lore. This is what we are going to discuss in the later installments of this series.
