SPOTLIGHT ON: THE FIRST FRENCH EDITION OF KING ARTHUR PENDRAGON RPG

The '80s were a great period to be a roleplayer in France because big publishers were interested in RPGs, not just specialist ones such as Jeux Descartes. Among the biggest I can point out to Schmidt (that released Marvel Super Heroes, Chill and The Dark Eye in French), a big publisher of mass market boardgames, and to Gallimard who published French versions of Talisman, The Dark Eye (yes, two different French versions!), Ace of Aces and King Arthur Pendragon besides a lot of gamebooks. Gallimard was and still is one of the biggest French book/magazine publishers and its version of The Dark Eye was aimed to bookstores, not toy and game stores, using the familiar paperback format of gamebooks for all the supplements and adventures (there were three The Dark Eye Gallimard boxed sets). There were rumours about a role playing magazine too that never materialized.

Chaosium released the first, boxed version of the wonderful King Arthur Pendragon RPG in 1985 in a beautiful boxed version and Gallimard released its French version in 1986. Only the basic game was released but it was quite different from the original US version. The French box set was a plastic, not a cardboard, one and it used a wraparound paper 'cover' because the box was used, for example, in the French edition of Talisman and for Gallimard The Dark Eye - a great way to save money on production costs and having a very strong box.  

The usage of a plastic 'generic' box and cardboard 'covers' was not a French exclusive. The Italian published Black Out Editrice used the same method for the (third edition) reissue of its I Signori del Caos (The Lords of Chaos) fantasy role playing game. It was a great idea, in my eyes, because plastic boxes were durable and reliable but it did not catch on...  

The differences among the US and French editions did not stop with the box (which, as you can have noticed, used a different image). Besides Player's Book (who absorbed the Characters booklet), Gamemaster's Book and the beautiful full colour map of Britain, the French edition had a GM screen, dice, a pen, a full colour play aid with all the various colours and a pad of character sheets. Very impressive. 

The French have an extremely well deserved reputation for designing beautiful games, including role playing ones, and often making better versions of original US RPGs (the very first French edition of Hawkmoon, for example, was a jewel far better than the original Chaosium game). Alas, this is not the case with Gallimard's King Arthur Pendragon: Chaosium's beautiful artwork is used sparingly, graphics were basic and very uninspired. But the main problem is the translation. 

According to critics from the magazines of the '80s, including the usually quite tame Casus Belli, the translation was a mess: garbled rules, missing parts, incomprehesible mechanics and so on. No wonder perhaps that the game was never followed by any supplements and did not get the success it richly deserved. But King Arthur Pebndragon got another chance in 1992 when another French publisher, Oriflam, released the third edition. This time the game met with success and it was followed by many sourcebooks and adventures.  

Gallimard involvement with RPGs and adventure boardgames ended in the '80s, when the mass public that for some time showed interest in this kind of games decided that perhaps they were too complicated (a situation similar to the 'bust' of the US market after 1983). It kept, when all the other French publishers stopped publishing them, printing gamebooks (albeit at a far lower rate than the 'golden age' where 14 millions of copies were sold in France) reissuing titles from the Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf lines.