Voord 99

Thank you! There is something quite expensive that I’ve been looking to buy from them.

The Homage *should* win out. But envisage a situation in which a knight has Homage (X) 10 but Fealty (Y) 17. My understanding is that in the real world, English knights did not always prioritize the lord they were supposed to. The way i would handle it* is: if Homage wins out, the knight absolutely should not suffer an Honor loss — they are obeying the rules. They might suffer a Fealty loss, especially if their Fealty is Notable. If Fealty were to win out, Honor loss is reasonable, along with Homage loss. *If we were using Homage and Fealty as written. As it happens, we’re not.

I was in a 4e game that, like most PbP games, only existed briefly. This was on Myth-Weavers. I can say that the game adapts well to that format as far as what we did. However, there was essentially no combat before it ended, and combat is often the place where PbP games bog down. I can also say that there was plenty of interest and several reliable players (the game ended because of the GM’s RL pressures, not because the players stopped posting).

That’s one that I probably won’t be taking over into my houserules, although I’ll have to see what my players think. I really like the flavor of the current Major Wound rules, especially the Valorous roll. At a minimum, I’d be inclined to allow a PK to stay conscious in extraordinary circumstances if they make an appropriate Passion roll.

What King Idres should obviously do is get help from Ireland, in return for agreeing to pay tribute. This will have no consequences in the future whatsoever. 🙂

Given the extreme prominence of the Old Testament in medieval literature and thought, I think one should canvass David and Bathsheba as one of the models for Uther and Ygerna. It would certainly be the sort of thing that would have supplied for an educated reader a great deal of the framework within which the story would have been understood. I’d quibble about looking for explicit authorial comment as a requirement to read Geoffrey as presenting Uther negatively (in this particular incident, not overall). There’s an interesting discussion in Siân Echard Arthurian Narrative in the Latin Tradition: she notes that Uther conforms to a recurrent pattern with British kings in Geoffrey, in which they put their personal desires above the good of their subjects.

I think creativehum is raising a more fundamental question, though, about the game not being designed to supply “Punch the Nazi”-type pleasures. (Nice shorthand.) I think that’s very true. For instance, KAP makes significant efforts to be more inclusive than the sources in the area of gender, but it is fairly insistent that you should play from a non-modern (or at least, highly conservative) perspective when it comes to class and social hierarchy. KAP oriented towards genre emulation of medieval romance. Insofar as it’s not about genre emulation, a lot of it is about emulating the actual later Middle Ages. KAP does a great job at those things. But if a game does what it does well, by definition it will fight you a bit if you want a different experience. You can twiddle the dial to some extent, but there are certain experiences where you’d be better off playing a different game entirely. There’s nothing wrong with that. In my group, this problem hasn’t come up, because of our idiosyncratic backgrounds and interests; we tend also to be a bit tongue-in-cheek and ironic/humorous in our approach to the game, which probably helps.

Actually, now that I reread the rules, it appears that it’s supposed to be Glory that bachelor knights get from their liege, not from the person who knights them. However, I’ll be adapting this for the above purpose nonetheless. It’s 1/100th of the Glory, capped at 1000 (for King Arthur). That seems reasonable enough, and not likely to cause too much Glory inflation. And there are definitely some good story possibilities in the fact that when you knight someone, you’re vouching for their honour…

Book of Knights has one solid addition to character generation that I really like: Glory from the person who knights you. This is both true to historical reality and, more importantly, is something that comes up in the literature. I’m going to add that to my game when Arthur “introduces” chivalry. But overall, I think 4e is the better bet (although creativehum is 100% right that the way it’s put together is ugly and off-putting). Aside from what has already been said about it, it has several short adventures (originally from 3e) with advice about how you could link some of them into a longer adventure, which would give very much the sort of episodic picaresque feel that many medieval romances have. And for any PC from default Salisbury, there’s a very nice little family history generator that will help get players into the setting. And although it’s geared to Salisbury, it could be used for many other places in Logres without needing any real adaptation, allowing one to use at least a few of the alternate locations with it for PK origins. If you run out of material from 4e and your players are hooked, there are excellent collections of published adventures from the 3e/4e era, all available cheaply as PDFs. I’d cautiously suggest Perilous Forest as being particularly suitable for a minicampaign (which not to say that it’s the best IMO or anything like that). It’s a geographically contained sandbox-y affair in which the player knights are supposed to wander around northwest England in search of adventures.

From my new favourite KAP GM resource: https://insearchofholywellsandhealingsprings.com/2013/04/19/holy-wells-and-healing-springs-of-lincolnshire-an-overview/ The other PKs have to get water from a nearby holy healing well by midnight, or the PK dies. They have to overcome some challenge, obviously. Maybe grab one of the faerie creatures from the back of the GPC to be the guardian of the well. Or relocate the Maid of Stevington Well from the Forest Sauvage section in the Anarchy Phase to one of these Lincolnshire wells and run that adventure now.

Even in English, the word “rider” could be used to mean “knight” in the Middle Ages, like in German. (There is one other European language in which a common word for “knight” is not connected to horses, but it’s a cheat: it’s medieval Latin.)

No, if you are sufficiently saintly, like that annoying bastard Galahad, you can in fact survive indefinitely only on taking Holy Communion and have no need for other food. Of course, it helps that you attend Mass several times every day. 🙂

Of course, if anyone actually eats anything at the Grail Feast (aside from participating in the Eucharist, I suppose), then they have committed the sin of gluttony and are immediately thrown out. 🙂

Alternatively, if you only have two PKs allow them Battle + a second roll, to make two knights the equivalent of four. Off the top of my head: First roll is always Battle. Second roll, GM rolls 1d6. Awareness Horsemanship Energetic Valorous Reckless Prudent This is if you don’t want to clutter things up with NPKs, which would be an alternative.

I’ve never read the story, but some vague thoughts. To start with the obvious, I think that it’d be easy enough to make the snake the problem of the year to which everyone has to find a solution, rather than something that takes “Caradoc” out of play or hindered (aside from being hindered during this one adventure).* One might want to reserve it for when the players start to get bored with all the battles and observing famous things at the beginning of the Boy King era, to give them a year where the game feels different. At that point it is a matter of a series of challenges for the PKs. 1)There needs to be something interesting that the PKs have to achieve to discover the bath of vinegar trick. It sounds learned, so maybe they have to do some favor for scholarly monks or nuns at an abbey? I’m lazy, so I’d just use one of the various short adventures and come up with a reason why the monks/nuns want that. 2) There could be a secondary challenge of persuading the beloved to co-operate, since she is taking a risk (and in the story, she is the one who suffers). If “Caradoc” doesn’t have an established “Guinier”, then maybe he needs to get one, find a woman who will love him, and vice versa? If he does, just how much does she love him? If he’s married to the typical NPC wife — who might after all be feeling a little worried about being married to a man who locks up his own mother — then she demands some task, perhaps connected with her family, as adventure no. 2. 3) The really interesting bit is how the PK deals with his biological father Eliavres, and his mother after this. Forgiving/Vengeful, Love (Family) — it could all get a bit difficult, even patricidal and matricidal. For the future: suppose that “Caradoc” had a twin that, unknown to him, Eliavres spirited away and raised? *For what it’s worth, we’re one of those groups where the players always have a backup character that gets played sometimes in place of the main character, e.g. when the main character rolls Fear (Sea Travel) and can’t go on the adventure for the year. So taking “Caradoc” out of play for a bit wouldn’t be a problem for us.

Yes, KAP’s sharp Cymric/Roman divide is very unlikely to be an accurate representation of how things worked. The Temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath is definitely a good example. Take its famous pedimental sculpture of a (sort of) Gorgon’s head. (Can be found here: https://www.romanbaths.co.uk/walkthroughs/temple-pediment). In some ways that’s “Roman” — the fact of it being a stone sculpture used to decorate a stone temple, for one thing, is something utterly unknown before the Roman conquest. But stylistically, it’s got more in common with pre-Roman art than it does with anything that would have been on a temple in Italy. Romano-British is a thing, hybridizations and remixes of cultural elements from different sources. Not all of them neatly “Roman” or “British,” either — think of the Mithraeum in London. The Roman Empire was a space in which an awful lot of different cultures mixed and interacted. KAP’s notion that there would have been separate and culturally different “Cymric” elites living outside cities and “Roman” elites living in them is particularly unlikely to have been true. That is not how it worked in the Roman period, at least.

Actually, there probably would be significant penetration of Roman law in Roman Britain among “pagans.” It’s what is somewhat problematically known as “vulgar law,” which are somewhat simplified versions of Roman law with influence from local law and custom that become normal in late antiquity. From about 300, Roman law starts to be very visible where we can detect how things were working on the local level in the provinces. It’s a delayed consequence of everyone becoming Roman citizens in 212 — the only law that applied was Roman law, and if one went to court (and what happens when one goes to court is what the law actually is in the real world), one was supposed to have one’s disputes settled by the Roman law rules. Not that simple in practice (for one thing, the Roman officials deciding cases didn’t have to be trained lawyers and didn’t necessarily have more than a broad-brush understanding of the rules themselves), but the result was that versions of Roman law would probably be normal in Britain by about 400. Certainly in places like Salisbury in southern England. On the other hand, the paterfamilias didn’t have as much power as the stereotype by the Later Roman Empire, and would not have been able to leave all his property to any one person, firstborn son or not. Not that this would have been a Christian expectation at this point. Much later on, English canon lawyers come up with very forced biblical justifications to protect primogeniture from challenge, but it’s after the fact (and they are very implausible — what Deuteronomy says is that the firstborn son gets a double-share, i.e. definitely does not get everything). Incidentally, British tribes were never actually called “tribe” — that’s a product of translation into modern English, and while there may be a connection between Latin tribus (a kind of voting-group in the Republican assemblies, not a “tribe” as in modern English, and never applied to British “tribes” AFAIK) and Latin tributum, it seems to be indirect and probably runs the other way (tribus > the verb tribuere > tributum). *If anyone really wants to do a Roman law version of KAP inheritance, the law of inheritance is very well-defined and the basics are easy, although the details are very complicated indeed. Essentially, the default assumption is that children inherit equally to one another, and that collectively they are entitled to a minimum of a quarter of the estate. So if you have two sons and one daughter, the minimum you could leave each is 1/12 of the estate. If no will, those three inherit jointly (as joint owners — they then decide how the estate is to be divided, or have a judge do it if they cannot agree, or they can continue as joint owners without dividing it at all). Things get more complicated if sons die and those sons have children, but those are the basics. These are legitimate children. Illegitimate children have rights to their mother’s property, but no automatic right to their father’s. Although their father can leave them up to the 75% that’s left over after reserving 25% for the legitimate children, so there’s that. But, as always, one must remember that sex outside marriage was most often with slave women, and children of those unions would have been essentially without any rights at all that their owner did not choose to give them. This was probably also true in post-Roman Britain — there will still have been plenty of slaves, and any society with slaves is likely to feature the sexual assault of slave women as a matter of routine.

I wouldn’t mind seeing some useful effect for being unarmored in the context of hunting. The trick is to design one so that it makes sense not to be wearing armor when hunting, on the one hand, and on the other in such a way that means that it never makes sense to be without armor in combat.

Thanks for the nice words. Seriously, though, this is where KAP’s design shines — the system is built to give you mechanics for medieval romance. All I had to do was go through the episode and interpret what happens in Trait rolls. Aside from that, this was essentially stenography.

I must admit, I’m not quite sure what “dead nuts on target” means….

Happy to be corrected if one of them was mine. The canon law stuff was all from memory (and obviously all later medieval).

Morien threw out a request on Discord for ideas about an adventure in which the PKs rescue a mad knight. I’ve been planning for a while to adapt something from the Historia Meriadoci, which contains a creepy and strange otherworld section that combines the faerie with hints of the demonic. Here’s a rough work-up, adapted to the mad knight situation. It’s a bit railroady as written, because it’s a series of events taken directly from the source with minimal adaptation — probably best to think of it as a menu of incidents from which to pick, rather than necessarily to play through as written 1) It starts with the PKs going to sleep in a forest, but scarcely have they opened their eyes when it is suddenly morning. Famously Energetic knights must fail Energetic to continue to rest. Knights who do not rest further are tired and at -5 to checks later in the day, as the GM thinks appropriate. However, not resting is very knightly and gets 10 Glory. 2) Then the PKs encounter what at any rate seems like your classic faerie hall, all wondrous and splendid. The lady of the hall says that she has been longing to meet the most glorious PK [Meriadoc in the original]. She then puts on a feast with a very large number of people. Get out the feast rules for show, but you won’t be using them. 3) Whatever the players decide to do at the feast, exactly the same thing happens. They have the best food and drink they have ever tasted (Temperate/Indulgent rolls to avoid becoming overindulging and becoming drunk, unless they choose to eat and drink nothing — being drunk will affect subsequent rolls). Also, no-one of the people in the hall says anything at all. If a PK talks to any of the servants or feasters (in the original it was the dapifer), the following happens. The first time, the NPC says nothing, but wrinkles their nose and has an insultingly mocking expression. (Modest/Proud to avoid reacting with anger). The next time a PK says anything, the NPC waggles their tongue like a mad dog and laughs at the PK (Modest/Proud at -5/+5 to avoid reacting with anger). The third time a PK says something, the NPC puts their hands to their head like donkey’s ears, they wiggle their fingers, and their mouth gapes horribly, as if to devour the PK. Their face suddenly changes, and they look more like a demon than a human being. The lady is angry with the NPC (unless it’s her), and says “Stop, stop!Don’t cause any harm to this noble knight, in case it will bring some mark of shame on our court, for not displaying proper courtesy.” Meanwhile, Valorous check at -10 for all PKs at the sight of the demonic(?) NPC or leap out of their seats and flee the hall. 4) 20 Glory award each for any who remain. What happens to them is up to the GM. In the original story, everyone flees, and it is hinted, but not explicitly said, that this was an encounter with something very dark and dangerous, presumably the Devil. It might be generous to allow Religion and/or Faerie Lore rolls for them to realize that it would be best to leave. Anyone who chooses to leave gets a Prudent check. Otherwise, perhaps adapt Galloping Devil: evil PKs are never seen again; most PKs wake up the next day with checks to their evil Traits, but no other cost; Religious Knights who pray and succeed in a Love (Deity) roll drive this dark place from the earth and it is never seen again (100 Glory to that PK). Also, if no PK at all refused to eat, overindulged, reacted angrily to the insults, or leapt out of their seat and fled, then a 100 Glory award is shared among everyone for this heroic display of virtues; they can also rest, removing any -5 penalty. Skip to 6) It’s possible that the PKs simply said nothing, like the NPCs. In that case, they fall asleep at the end of the feast and wake up the next day. They did not really behave very appropriately for medieval romance heroes. They get a Prudent check, but no Glory. Skip to 6) 5) The odds are that at least one PK failed the challenge in one way or another. If so, when they leave it is evening, and then it becomes night with unnatural speed. The night is so dark that they cannot see, and their horses become unnaturally terrified (Horsemanship rolls). The PKs also feel this terror, and any PK who fled in fear from the hall must make a second Valorous check or ride blindly in panic. PKs who either fail to control their horses or panic themselves end up trapped in water up to their saddles and are unable to rest for a second night, putting them at -5, possibly in addition to an earlier penalty, to appropriate checks. Others are able to rest, removing any previous penalty. 6) The next day, around noon, there is the worst and most terrifying storm that the PKs have ever experienced. They need shelter. A castle presents itself. (In the original story, there is a knight who knows that people who enter this castle have something terrible happen to them, and will guide people to the castle, but will not enter himself. Faerie Lore rolls can perhaps be used to give the vague knowledge to a PK that this is a sinister and dangerous place, but it is probably best not to have there be any need for a guide.) PKs may, of course, choose not to go anywhere near the castle. In which case, they should be making Hunting and Horsemanship rolls, and if things go badly, Swimming rolls, to survive outside in the storm, which causes terrible floods, lights trees on fire with lightning strikes, and so on. This is genuinely dangerous, so one can get a Valorous check and 10 Glory for taking this option. However, it ends the story — they do not rescue the mad knight, who is rescued later on by (you guessed it) Lancelot. 7) Any PKs who enter the castle find it completely empty. If they look at the stables, they are empty as well, but there is plenty of fodder for their horses. When they enter the keep,they find that the hall on its ground floor is decorated with tapestries, and there is a fire lit in the center. By that fire sits the mad PK. He is unresponsive, and obviously paralyzed with terror. 8 ) If the PKs do not leave immediately (in which case they deserve Cowardly checks!), then they too feel the same unnatural fear. It is overwhelming. Only a critical Valorous roll can prevent one from falling prey to it and being unable to move. A PK who escapes by this method can immediately lead the others out — they will not resist, and the magical effect ceases once they leave the castle. This also cures the mad PK, terrified into regaining his wits. The storm has stopped. 9) Otherwise, after several days, the PKs become hungry and thirsty. Successful Indulgent checks (at +5 if the PK refused to eat and drink the previous day) allow one to overcome one’s fear. However, the PK is desperately hungry and thirsty, and feels an overwhelming desire to see if the castle contains any food and drink. A Temperate roll (at -5 if they did not eat at the faerie/demonic feast) is required not to explore the castle in search of sustenance. (PKs may decide that they want to explore anyway, of course.) 10) PKs who explore find a room upstairs in the keep in which there is a marvelously beautiful damosel sitting on a couch, who has a table laden with bread and wine in front of her. A generous GM might allow a Hospitality check to enable a desperately hungry and thirsty PK to control themselves and not grab immediately at the food. If they ask for it, the damosel refuses and tells them to leave at once — APP rolls may charm her into allowing it. (I’m making up this part. In the story, Meriadoc tries to take it back to his comrades without saying anything. There’s also further business with him going to the kitchen and throwing another servant down a well, which I have cut, although I stole some of the description of that servant for the next part.) 11) If a PK tries to take food without permission, a servant of huge SIZ and preternaturally high STR appears. He is beardless and his head appears to have been shaven. and demands of the PK why they have stolen the bread and wine of the lord [sic] of the castle and tries to hit the PK with their fist, which still does a fair bit of damage if it hits. Small Giant stats, with -2 to SIZ and +2 to STR. Use brawling rules for the attack, but he is Inspired by his Loyalty. The damosel accuses the PK(s) of being without courtesy, because they took her food and drink without permission, and, if the PK was Knocked Down by the blow, of being weak, because they could not stand against an unarmed man. Good opportunity for Modest/Proud checks: PKs who apologise, leave the food and drink alone, and do not fight can still lead the others out of the castle peacefully at this point if they can control their hunger and thirst. 12) Otherwise, the PKs have to fight their way out against the castle servants — while leading their terrified comrades out. All are hairless, huge and strong, verging on being giants. None are properly armed. One uses a spit for roasting, another throws a beam of wood at the PKs, and so on — they are servants, not knights. For that reason, they are not very skilled, but they are all Inspired, like the first one. Earlier bad rolls and choices can potentially make this very dangerous due to penalties, so the servants offer the PKs the chance to surrender, and the GM may give them Prudent rolls to realize that it would be a very good idea take it. Unconscious PKs also have their lives spared. Any captives are thrown into a dungeon until Lancelot rescues them (of course). Lancelot also rescues them if no-one makes the critical Valorous or Indulgent check to escape the magical terror. 13) All PKs who make it out without Lancelot rescuing them get 10 Glory. Leading the other PKs out is heroic, and earns any PKs 100 Glory, shared between those PKs (only). The servants count as Small Giants for defeating them. Other awards at the GM’s discretion, but any critical Trait or Passion rolls certainly deserve 10 Glory.

From the Church’s point of view, I think the goal was more to encourage marriage and discourage sex outside marriage, not to penalize bastards for being illegitimate or assure a line of succession. There was a canon law rule in favor of legitimacy — i.e. if there is doubt, the child is legitimate. Whereas, if the goal was to make sure that father’s knew their child was legitimate, you’d presumably have a more restrictive rule that would allow the ostensible father more rights to question the legitimacy of a child that they suspected. IIRC from the time of Pope Alexander III, the Church also allowed and encouraged formal legitimization of children born out of wedlock to a couple who subsequently got married (because now they were no longer sinning). For what it’s worth, the consequences of illegitimacy were less stark in Roman law than they were in the later medieval England whose law KAP adopts. Although many, very possibly most, illegitimate children were born to slave women, and were slaves themselves, and I don’t imagine that the somewhat better position of free illegitimate children compared to the Middle Ages would be any comfort to those slaves at all. (Although obviously, illegitimate sons in the Middle Ages weren’t really much worse off than younger sons.) The presence of pagans reflects the actual C5th-C6th. Primogeniture is drawn from much later on. There’s going to be weirdness if one tries to imagine what realistic pagans in post-Roman Britain would have done, because you’d start with “Well, the firstborn son wouldn’t inherit everything,” (just like you would with realistic Christians in post-Roman Britain).

I’m vague — there are no maps for players to consult, and we can explicitly fit an infinite number of kingdoms in Wales and northern England/southern Scotland. Inevitably, though, I end up saying things like, “Rydychan’s basically Oxfordshire,” and because I am very definitely *not* worrying about the annoying official map of invented counties, my implied picture probably ends up closer to the real historical counties than the official map. I have some sympathy with Mr. Stafford’s attempt to rename everything, although I would have preferred more romantic names than have almost everything have a transparent meaning in English. Where I think it doesn’t work is that it’s still pegged to the real-world geography, so that one is endlessly looking up what the hell X is in the back of the books. If it had been combined with a shift to the vague and fantastic geography of the sources, I think it would work better for me personally — although that would be quite a radical change to the game, and one out of tune with the tendency towards “quasi-realistic simulation of actual later medieval England.” I am definitely intending to have story-driven geography once we hit the Tournament/Romance periods. The moment everything is about Adventure, not war, I think it makes for sense normal concepts of distance and whether or not there are mountains, etc., to go out the window. If I need to justify it, “Umm, Enchantment of Britain, [mumble mumble].”

In this situation, I believe the rights go to the lord until the heir is of age, as the heir is legally the lord’s ward (as Morien says above). It sounds as if the lord appointed the uncle as steward of the manor, which is reasonable enough. But if the uncle is not able to carry out his duties, then the lord can remove him from the stewardship and appoint someone who can. The uncle serves as steward of the manor at the lord’s pleasure. He has no actual rights to it (and so no duties connected with it, either) unless the lord so chooses. The uncle could definitely offer to pay for a mercenary in return for being left in charge of the manor, but it would be up to the lord whether or not they wanted to accept that. Of course, a wise lord might well be happy to accept that rather than anger an important vassal’s family. But a greedy or arrogant lord might look to extract a little extra, in return for going along with it. How have the uncle’s relations been with Roderick (or whoever)?