Years before he designed the Pendragon roleplaying game, Greg Stafford transported players to Arthurian England Britain in the King Arthur’s Knights tabletop boardgame.
“Each player is a knight, and moves through the legendary Arthurian realms jousting and trysting their ways into the Round Table,” explains the Introduction. Like many similar tabletop adventure games, the players travel to a region, pulling encounter cards that remain in play unless defeated.
Players pick their power levels in the beginning: Knight Errant (low), Knight at Arms (med), or Great Knight (hard). Game mechanics keep the powerful characters in their lane.
“The farther north you go, the tougher the opponents are. Beginning knights have to stay south. And to prevent the tough knights from mopping up the south, and depriving the beginning knights of their natural adventures, there are really powerful women there who can disable the powerful knights, but who can be ignored by beginning knights.”
Greg Stafford, as quoted at Rick Meints’ Out of the Suitcase blog. More info and printing notes there.
King Arthur’s Knights
1978 … Greg Stafford … The Chaosium
CONTENTS: • one 22″x34″ color map of Legendary Britain • 9 sheets of die-cut cards of various colors • 1 smaller sheet of printed knight figures • 1 16-page rulebook
More early Chaosium releases documented at my RPG Reference site
Rule Book
Cards (Game Counters / Pieces)
Map
William Church is credited with the map art. He also created similar maps in early Chaosium games, such as Raiders & Traders.
The Chaosium Order Form and Survey
Hey, I’ve seen this promo sheet before!
See Also:
Somewhere on a miniatures games forum I was on in the previous couple decades there was quite an active subculture of gamers who used printed paper figures. Some very nice work & artwork on the figure prints and on the 3D paper scenery.