The party is about to meet the second greatest knight of all time...

I'm running Pendragon. We're to the point where Lancelot du Lac shows up, and instead of doing what the book says, I'm going to pull the old bait and switch.

In The Once And Future King, Lancelot's first appearance as an adult in Britain sees him show up and joust against an unknown knight in black armor - who turns out to be Arthur himself. I'm going to run that as an encounter - the players have already dealt with several knights errant who are running around challenging everyone to jousts, so this won't seem too remarkable (except for the squire, Lancelot's old uncle and trainer). The Pendragon source book suggests the Malory introduction of Lancelot, but I think I would much prefer handing each player his or her ass as casually as possible.

I kept telling them to re-read that book, and they kept ignoring me, so even though I'll be running this exactly as it is in White's prose, they'll have no idea.

Update! Three of the knights fought Lancelot in a joust. One of them, the spear master, managed to score a hit, which then triggered Lancelot to become impassioned and nearly impossible to beat on die rolls. Bloody and hurt, he proceeded to trounce the rest, going so far as to rip the lance out of the hands of the oldest knight rather than dealing him a potentially fatal blow. One of them considered asking him to duel with swords on foot, then realized (before being told) that this was probably Lancelot - and that a sword duel would be just as bad.