Frontinus

Thanks for the timeline clarification @Morien. Happy to report we did The Great Hunt with one GM and four PKs. It was tight but the PKs kept together and managed to get the leopard belch on day 28 with all animals retrieved. The whole session came in just under 4 hours, which included a quick rules intro at the beginning. Ran on Roll 20 so modifiers and interpreting dice rolls was done automatically by the character sheet roller, which was a nice touch since we were all learning the system. The PK nearly grievously embarrassed themselves while asking the Queen for a leopard, but I let the Courtly Knight smooth things over with the help from a sympathetic lady's maid attached to the Queen. The incident I mentioned adding with Mordred jousting the PKs on the road to Camelot was a super effective way to make an instant nemesis! I'm going to reuse this trick in campaign play, as the players lost 2 out of 3 on the joust and upon defeat the group immediately began planning their revenge, though we left that escapade for another day. The hunting rules were also well received. We had a variety of different hunt roll results, so each hunt felt unique. One area I would improve if I did it again was the final confrontation with the dragon. The players had collected all the animals, so RAW that should have knocked out the dragon but we were at this point at about the 3 hour mark, they were so excited by my description of them cresting the hill with Sir Ector, arms and armour glinting in the sunlight, and I also wanted to see how a more complex combat would handle. This is where I dropped the ball. I figured give the dragon two rounds of lethargic fighting before it falls asleep (first round at -5, second round at -10). I grievously underestimated how deadly that dragon is, even at -5 on all attack rolls. After the first round, half the horses were dead (only sheer luck that none of Sir Ector or the PKs were killed) and the PKs were scared as heck as they had barely scratched the beast. For round two, one dismounted PK volunteered to hold the line while everyone else retreated. At that point we finished the scene narratively with the dragon grievously wounding the brave rear guard before falling into a stupor and creating the opening for the survivors to properly hack the head off. This whole combat felt really slow compared to the previous brisk pacing, as I found the five simultaneous combats (4 PKs + Sir Ector vs. Dragon Head, 2 Dragon Claws, 2 Tail swipes against the two flankers) a bit of a mental overload for me. Having them come upon and butcher the sleeping dragon just seemed a bit anti-climactic. I'm curious how other groups have handled this. Despite my mis-step in the dragon encounter, the players and I had fun and picked up the system (and the deadliness) pretty fast. I wouldn't say it was enough exposure for us to feel ready to tackle a GPC, but we are aiming to do a multi-session campaign later this year (I'm seeing good things about the Adventure of the Grey Knight, anyone else have favourites/suggestions?). A big thanks to everyone at Chaosium for making this adventure. It is a great introduction to the themes and rules. Looking forward to exploring the great history of adventures available and seeing what additional awesomeness 6th Edition brings.

My group and I are going to use The Adventure of the Great Hunt adventure as a one-shot to try out Pendragon in mid-January. I’ll be GMing and I recognize one session misses out on a lot of the dynastic/family elements that make the full game famous and distinct, but it should at least give us a chance to try the rules and decide if they want to do a longer term commitment. We’ll aim to use the “preview 6e rules” as much as possible but I have the 5.2 rulebook to fall back on. Has anyone else run this adventure yet? What was your group’s experience? What are some common slowdowns and dead ends to avoid? Is there anything that doesn’t fit well? Also, two things have me curious: 1. Sir Ector riding out to confront the dragon early. I’m thinking of ignoring the proposal of opposed rolling Sir Ector’s competing passions starting at day 15 (“Sound the Hunt!”, p. 10). There is no obvious way for the characters to influence this, especially when Sir Ector tells them he will wait a month/31 days. Further, showing up on time and being told Sir Ector is already dead because of a bunch of off-screen die rolls seems narratively suspect. Am I misunderstanding or misreading this part? 2. The pregen knights don’t have glory totals. Given how Glory is supposed to provide a bit of “chivalric precedence” and rivalry element to knightly decisions, and the play describes plenty of opportunities for small glory awards, I’d like to include it. I figure I’ll have the knights all start at 1500+6d6x5 or something like that, but I can also see an argument for having everyone start at a flat amount so that decisions in play can immediately reward knights jockeying for Glory. Any recommendations on starting Glory? The way I’m reading it, the optimal play through involves getting two animals through courtly interaction (panther and eagle), one animal retrieval delegated to squires (mouse), two through standard hunt mechanics (stag, lion cub-with a possible twist), one through a very non-standard hunt (unicorn), and one with an abbreviated hunt mechanic (crane). Further I’m seeing a minimum 18 days of travel, plus probably an average 1.5 days for each animal, puts us at 28 days close to the limit of one month/31 days to get a belching panther to Sir Ector’s lands. This sounds about right and if anything goes wrong along the way (most obviously by my guess, not getting the panther from Queen Guenevere or getting injured in a hunt), they will immediately start have to making trade-offs. Two other small tweaks I’m planning: the adventure will start in a manor with Sir Gregor de Stafford, as in Quest of the Red Blade, and on the way to Camelot the knights will be stopped and challenged to a joust by Mordred. That will give them a low key introduction to the charging related combat rules before the opening charge against the dragon. I’m an experienced GM and appreciate the structure is a nice mix of light sandbox elements (variety of challenges, go in the order and to the extent you want) within a soft time limit. Looking forward to giving it a try and will post our experience here afterwards so that others can learn from our victories and errors. Thanks in advance for your advice.