Monty Python’s Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme - A Review of Glorious Medieval Nonsense

You can smell it before you open the box. No, not the faint whiff of parchment and ink, this is a very particular scent. It’s the smell of absurdity wrapped in academic robes, dusted with fake medieval authenticity, and garnished with a sprig of slightly damp lettuce. Monty Python’s Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme (MPCMRP) doesn’t just wink at you from the shelf. It saunters over, taps you on the shoulder, and starts reciting the opening lines of The Liberty Bell March in falsetto while handing you a small ornamental shrubbery.

If that mental image already makes you grin, congratulations - you are precisely the intended audience.

Setting the Scene

There’s something delightfully unhinged about packaging a game as a "co-curricular" programme, complete with pseudo-academic seriousness. This is not Dungeons & Dragons. There are no heroic stat blocks or tightly balanced combat encounters. Instead, you’re given a big, lavish, fully licensed Monty Python sandbox in which the very concept of rules is treated like the Holy Grail: revered, sought after, and ultimately revealed to be rather silly after all.

The team behind this opus - Brian Saliba, Craig Schaffer, and artist/designer Keith Lowe - have captured something that’s surprisingly rare in licensed games: the spirit of the source material. Too many tie-ins lean on surface-level references. This? This lives and breathes in the Python universe. It doesn’t just nod to the sketches. It builds scenarios where you can be in them, with all the illogical digressions and perfectly-timed anticlimaxes intact.

The Physical Feast

Let’s talk components. The hardcover clocks in at 352 pages, and the deluxe edition is a thing of beauty: faux leather cover, gold foil accents, a ribbon bookmark, and full-colour pages so lavish they feel like they should be in a museum, albeit a museum run by the Ministry of Silly Walks. It’s the kind of book you want to leave out on your coffee table just to see visitors’ reactions.

Inside, the layout is a love letter to chaos. Margins are cluttered with doodles, footnotes bicker with each other, and pages occasionally appear to have been vandalised by medieval peasants with too much free time. It’s immersive in a way most RPGs wouldn’t dare attempt, because here the book itself feels like an artefact from the world you’re about to inhabit.

The Quick-Start Option

If committing to the full absurdity right away feels intimidating (or you just want to test the comedic waters before buying the full set), there’s a 77-page quick-start digital edition. It distills the essentials: simplified rules, sample characters, and enough bizarre prompts to run your first session before the kettle’s even boiled.

The Rules (Such as They Are)

Mechanically, this is rules-light to the point of feeling more like a structured improv kit than a traditional TTRPG. Character creation is fast and freeform. You’re guided toward traits, quirks, and ridiculous backstories that would make even Sir Lancelot raise an eyebrow.

Resolution mechanics are quick, leaning heavily on collaborative storytelling. Numbers exist, but mostly to justify a silly voice or a theatrical pratfall. Combat, when it happens, is a brief, chaotic interlude rather than a tactical exercise. Think "charging the enemy with a herring" rather than "measuring flanking bonuses."

One of the standout inclusions is Fetchez la Vache - a mini-game within the game where livestock become projectiles. It’s exactly as dignified as it sounds.

The Ten Adventures

The book contains ten loosely connected adventures, each structured more like a Monty Python sketch than a standard RPG module. You might find yourself playing God, complete with a giant cut-out head floating in the clouds. Or negotiating with an army of knights obsessed with animal-based heraldry. Or attempting to resolve a dispute over the correct number of "Ni"s to be uttered in a ceremonial greeting.

They can be played in order as a kind of "campaign" (though that word feels far too serious for what’s happening here) or as standalone scenarios. Each comes with its own flavour of absurdity, ranging from sly satire of medieval society to outright farce.

Why It Works So Well

Here’s the thing: a lot of comedy RPGs run out of steam quickly. The joke wears thin, the novelty fades, and you’re left trying to coax laughs from the same gag. MPCMRP sidesteps that trap by building variety into its very structure. The humour isn’t just in the punchlines - it’s in the situations, the presentation, and the permission it gives players to be joyfully, recklessly creative.

Four key reasons it works:

- Authenticity to the source: It doesn’t just quote Python, it thinks like Python. The rhythm, timing, and surreal digressions all feel right.
- Player freedom: You can take the prompts and run in any direction. Want to solve a diplomatic crisis by staging an interpretive dance? Entirely valid.
- Replay value: With ten distinct adventures and countless improv prompts, no two playthroughs will feel the same.
- Visual immersion: The physical book is part of the experience, drawing you into its world before you’ve rolled a single die.

Who It’s For (and Who It Isn’t)

This is a dream for:

- Monty Python fans who can quote Holy Grail and Life of Brian without thinking.
- Story-first TTRPG groups who prioritise character moments and improvised chaos over tight mechanical play.
- Players who enjoy "losing" if the loss is funny enough.

It’s less ideal for:

- Tactical-minded players who thrive on crunchy combat.
- GMs who prefer linear plots and predictable pacing.
- Groups allergic to breaking character for laughter (because you will, frequently).

The Experience at the Table

A session of MPCMRP is less like playing a game and more like collaboratively writing a live sketch show. You’ll have moments where you’re reading flavour text straight from the book, only to immediately veer off into a tangent because a player decided their character collects exotic cheeses and must, at this precise moment, acquire a wheel of Wensleydale.

One group I played with managed to turn a simple quest for a misplaced relic into a full-blown musical number about the perils of using coconuts as currency. Did we "win"? Not in any conventional sense. Did we laugh until someone nearly choked on a biscuit? Absolutely.

Comparisons to Other Games

If you’re coming from D&D or Pathfinder, be prepared for a seismic shift. This isn’t about building an optimised character or navigating a carefully balanced encounter. It’s about making choices because they’re funny, not because they’re "right." The closest comparison might be something like Fiasco or Paranoia, but even those tend to have more structure.

What it shares with D&D is the group storytelling element - you’re still sitting around a table, embodying characters, and reacting to each other’s actions. But the tone is pure farce, and the mechanical scaffolding is deliberately wobbly to encourage player-led chaos.

Final Thoughts

Monty Python’s Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. It’s a very particular flavour - equal parts historical parody, improv theatre, and printed lunacy. But for the right group, it’s an unforgettable experience.

It captures the anarchic brilliance of Monty Python without feeling like a museum piece. It invites you to make the world your own, to take the absurd prompts and escalate them beyond all reason. And it does all this while looking fantastic on your shelf.

It’s not a game you "win" in the traditional sense. You win by making each other laugh, by creating moments so bizarre they feel like they should be in the DVD extras of a lost Python sketch. And if you can do that while lobbing a cow over a castle wall, all the better.

If the idea of a medieval history lesson that involves a surprising amount of fish-slapping appeals to you, then you owe it to yourself to give this a try. Bring friends who can commit to the bit, a table big enough for the book (and possibly livestock), and a willingness to shout "Ni!" at strangers. The rest will take care of itself.