I am playing the Great Pendragon Campaign for the second time (in the first one, we only got as far as 491) so I was in the appropriate frame of mind to read this post by verdantgreen:

Finally, I have a tournament-style one-shot Klingon game using the Savage Worlds system. I call it tournament style, because the PCs are attempting to earn as much glory as possible in 90 standard days without starting a war with the Federation. The glory is measured in points, which I keep track of each time I run the scenario.

and think there should be a hack of Pendragon to play Klingons – called Kahless, obviously. And a Great Kahless Campaign (GKC, or qeylIS Qu’’a’) as well, which would take the Player Klingons (PKs) from TOS to TNG, passing through the Military Command, Disaster and Peace, and Alliance periods, among others.

I could not unthink it, so I sat down to write it with the help of a few RPGnetters. The result is this file,  KAHLESS – in full caps, because it’s a Klingon supplement! –, that you are reading. It collects rules adaptations and offers new systems that allow you to use the Pendragon engine to run a Klingon campaign.

Bear in mind none of this has been playtested, so it may prove to be clunky at some places or even a complete mess. If you take it out for spin and find out what works for you and what doesn’t, feel free to drop me a line and I will try to incorporate it in future versions (which are not guaranteed).

Also, I completed this work before the release of Pendragon’s 6th edition quickstart, so none of the rules changes have been taken into account. KAHLESS is mostly based on the 5th edition.

But why use Pendragon for a Klingon game, when there are several official Star Trek RPGs out there? Modiphius has even released a Klingon core book. Well, I see it as a way to have a game focused on character choices and how they navigate the events and history of the Empire; to witness how they and their values change. With space battles and bat’leth fights.

KAHLESS is just a primer for the much more ambitious qeylIS Qu’’a’. I want to do it, but I am not sure when I will be able to. Again, if you have ideas or seeds for it, send them my way and one day they will be part of the saga.

I hope you enjoy KAHLESS and have as much fun playing and running it as I had writing.

Send your comments, compliments, criticisms and suggestions to the email below.

Qapla’!

PDF

(963 KB)

Character sheet

(199 KB) 

Star Trek copyright © 2020 CBS Studios Inc.
Pendragon copyright © 1985-2020 Moon Design Publications