As I’ve noted elsewhere King Arthur Pendragon is one of my favorite roleplaying games ever. I first encountered it in the 3rd edition and was blown away by the mechanics, the layout, and Lisa Free’s gorgeous art.
James Maliszewski wrote a lovely tribute to the 1st edition back in 2010. And lo and behold, DriveThruRPG currently has a PDF of the 1st edition available for FREE until January 31st, 2017. All the contents of the original game are included in a single PDF.
While the editions haven’t changed that much over the years (apart from the 4th edition which added magic and expanded the “classes” of characters from knights to many other folks) I’m curious to see how the original version of the game reads.
Below is the copy from the DriveThruRPG page:
Chivalric Roleplaying in Arthur’s Britain.
Relive the glory of King Arthur’s court. Uphold the chivalric ideals of fair play, courage, honesty, and justice as your caliant knight-character undertakes perilous quests and risks monstrous dangers in legendary Britain. He’ll smite bloodthirsty giants and crush treacherous invaders for King Arthur and his own glory.
To play the Pendragon roleplaying game, you create and take on the role of squite, knight, or noble of the realm. Armed and armored, you overcome life and death struggles, impossible frustration, and ruthless enemies to join the Fellowship of the Round Table
The gamemaster leads the other players in interpreting the Pendragon rules and is central in bringing the adventures to l ife. He commands the magic of Merlin and Morgan le Fay, the actions of King Arthut and Queen Guenever, and the schemes of Mordred and Agravaine.
Game Features:
Roleplaying – innovative game mechanics awaken passionate love, hate, and loyalty in your characters, leading them to acts of mercy, cruelty, lust, piety, valor, and cowardice.
Campaign Play – customs, manners, and weapons change during teh phases of Arthur’s long reign. Over these years your character-knight begets a family whose reputation depends on the glory he achieves. He passes his hard-won inheritance and grudges to his sons. Up to four generations of knights will live and die during Arthur’s reign.
Game System – Easily remembered, simple-to-play mechanics feature a single die roll to determine combat, to settle personality encounters, and to resolve skill use.
Character Generation – create a squire, knight, noble, or fair damsel, of Roman Saxon, Cymric, Pictish, or Irish heritage. Select between the Christian, Wotonic, or pagan religions.
Background – Includes a 22″ by 30″ map of Britain complete with kingdoms, cities, castles, keeps, forests, Roman roads, abbeys, rivers, mountains, fortified walls, and battle sites. A bestiary of natural and mythical creatures includes avancs, barguests, dwarfs, elves, giants, kelpies, spriggans, unicorns, yales, and the Questing Beast among many others. You are provided character statistics for major personalities such as Arthur, Guenever, and Lancelot. Also enclosed are lesser-knowns such as Balin le Sauvage, Breuse sans Pitie, Saint Cadoc, King Mark, Nimue, Percivale and Ulfius. A chronology includes wars, adventures, customs, campaigh escalation, and characters of note. An extensive bibliography provides further sources of information, all to support campaign play.
The Game of Quest, Romance & Adventure
Tales to Astound! 
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Darn, I didn’t see this until after the deadline. Pendragon is one of my all-time favorite games. I have the 4th edition now. No idea what happened to the copy of 2nd (I think, or was it 3rd?–I could tell by the cover) I first had. Such good stuff.
FYI it’s currently a free PDF and so is the 1st edition Pendragon Campaign and the Grey Knight module. Pretty much all anyone would need to get started and enough material to play for weeks, months, maybe even years depending on frequency of sessions. What a great and generous deal.