Brown

19 hours ago, Beowulf said:

Further, if Yvane rolls anything from 16 to 20, he gets a critical success (and not a fumble).

Yeah so this is written confusingly in the book. "Further" here doesn't mean "also, [separate clause]" - its a continuation of the previous sentence. Instead of "Further," it should say "So," or something:

"... Yvane would win because his increased roll equals 17. [So], if Yvane rolls anything from 16 to 20, he gets a critical success (and not a fumble)." 

The 16-20 is a crit because the +4 modifier to roll brings it up to 20 which is a crit for skill values 20+.

12 hours ago, Grimmshade said:

Couple of other questions for veterans of the system.

In the new quick start, it looks like the player knights have very few decent skills. They are well below average in most skills. Is this normal?

The NPC knights in the adventure have fantastic combat skills compared to the PC's, and there are more of them than PC's. Am I not reading it right, or is there little chance for a PC success here?

What is the Squire Skill? Are squires normally full characters?

The system looks amazing, and I'm anxious for the actual books, but it's pretty different than other games I've been playing lately. (I really like the sound of the mass battles! I love how they focus on PC events rather than rolling for the whole clashing armies.)

Yes it is typical that starting knights have low skills. In previous editions there is a cap on skills at character creation so you are unable to go above 15 at all. Actually compared, to 5.2e, many of the skills for the pre-gens here have higher skills. A lot of the pre-gens have a 5 in many of their low skills while in previous editions 2s or 3s were much more common.

The NPC knights have higher skills because they are likely intended to be more senior knights. King Lot/"The Commander" specifically is a legendary character, so his very high skills reflect that. The bodyguard units are meant to be some of a Lord's best knights - the ones who protect him. The other knights (Lothian and Gorre) have pretty typical combat skills - 17 Sword is quite average for a knight who has been around for more than a few years. Id say in my experience 15-17 is the common combat skill range for 'standard' knight enemies. For the player knights, one tool they have on their side to help them against these better knights are their passions, which can increase their skills to compensate. Otherwise, the 'lethality' of the adventure is minimal since there is only likely to be one round of combat, and using rebated weapons so half damage at most. EDIT: To complicate things more, the high skills of Lot and his bodyguards actually are not that high in practice. For the one tournament round, these characters would be mounted, and therefore their Sword/Charge skills are limited by their horsemanship skill -  a 16! So if lucky players got to fight against them, they would in practice be spared from the scary 20+ skills.

"Success" on the other hand is a bit relative - doing well in the tournament battle itself might be challenging and not all player knights will win their fight, but thats kind of par-for-the-course in Pendragon. The other parts of the adventure are still open for them to experience and tell a story as the adventure isnt written in a way that requires the players to succeed at any one thing for the adventure to move along. Its quite "safe" in that regard.

Regarding the squire skill: good catch! I don't think this adventure actually tells you what the squire skill is haha. In past editions, the squire skill is equal to their age. So a new squire will start at 14, while an older one nearing knighthood would have a 20. Squires can be full player characters, nothing prevents that, but the rules dont give too much support for how they differ from playing knights. A 5.2e supplement "Book of the Entourage" gives more mechanics for playing a squire, but not a whole lot.

On 7/27/2022 at 8:11 AM, ArkSvid said:

 

I'm a player in an ongoing Great Pendragon Campaign, and we just had one of those moments that's exciting enough I want to share.

While our party has had some influence on the world, we hadn't done anything big enough to mess with the Canon Timeline until now. When the Anarchy started our PKs focused heavily on diplomacy and trying to secure allies, with my knight dreaming of reuniting Logres through mutually beneficial alliances (not even remotely likely, but a man needs a goal.) Dorset was quick to jump onboard, and Jagent eventually joined with the promise that we would protect them from Cornwall's expansionism.

When Cornwall invaded Devon the PKs were ready to go charging in and nip Cornwall in the bud, but Countess Ellen vetoed that plan. She believed we had too many of our own problems in Salisbury to waste knights on what she viewed as an already lost war (tbh she was almost certainly right about that.) However, come 499 Cornwall invaded Jagent, and we were obligated to support the defense.

At practically the last minute, we made a diplomatic trip to the Kingdom of Somerset and convinced them to come to Jagent's defense. When Cornwall began their invasion, they found themselves not just facing the armies of Jagent, but also Salisbury, Dorset, and Somerset all together.

The war in Jagent was pretty rough from our party's perspective; while we captured a ton of Cornish knights, by the end of it one of us was dead and everyone else unconscious. However the campaign overall was a total success; Cornwall's army was devastated by our alliance, and lost 2/3s of its invasion force while trying to retreat. The last we heard, Jagent and Somerset had pursued the Cornish army into Devon and were in the process of liberating the county. Our knights were unable to join (on account of being stuck in a hospital or underground,) but if things go well we may see the newly freed county of Devon joining our alliance.

I've been avoiding spoilers for what's coming up in the campaign, but I do know that Cornwall was supposed to devour Jagent and be a major player in the future. As things are going now, they're on the path to becoming a rump state that serves as a lesson in one's reach exceeding their grasp. Really looking forward to seeing how this weaker Cornwall plays out in the future.

Fantastic story! I think this is a great representation of how things can go in Anarchy. Thanks for sharing

On 7/27/2022 at 10:12 AM, SaxBasilisk said:

 If you look really closely at the border between Logres and Cornwall in the Boy King period in the semi-annual maps from GPC, Jagent does appear to be in Logres.

My guess is that Greg changed his ideas of Jagent between Boy King and GPC, and nobody (to my knowledge) caught the difference, because nobody cares about Jagent.

In my GPC, I just shrugged and told my mapmaker that something happened when we weren't paying attention. Your campaign is yours, but I'd definitely give the players a win if I were in your shoes.

 

Unrelated to the OP topic, but I thought I'd mention here that the maps in the GPC are wildly inaccurate and shouldn't be relied on for an accurate representation of what is going on in the campaign. The easiest way to see this is the whiplash one gets from looking at the first map in 510 and comparing it to the second. My point being, don't try to interpret too much from the map other than very general ideas - I'd instead follow what is actually written in the GPC and infer what that means for your own maps. As someone who also makes maps, my policy has become my interpretation of campaign events is more important than any official sources, as the sources conflict far too often to rely upon.

I am a bit of a stickler for geography in my own campaign. I constantly consult several maps and maintain a few for me to keep track of landholdings and points of interest. For the most part this is just to keep things straight within my own head as I plan into the future and try to connect things - abstracted locations don't work for my brain unfortunately. For weird places, I am fine with just saying "in the woods/fae", but for most places I try to maintain a static location. Basically I try to do a few things:

1. I try to adhere to travel restrictions if its appropriate.
   1. If the adventure or task at hand is time sensitive, I try to account for travel times and distances between locations. For example, getting word that Salisbury is under attack while you are off around London means that whoever is attacking Salisbury has had a good deal of time to ransack the county before you can ride there. It takes time to react to these events, and rewards planning in advance. In the same vein, mustering an army to fight someone who's arrived on your doorstep also takes time.
   2. If the time doesn't matter though, I ignore it. Oh you travel to Levcomagus? Yeah some time goes by and your there. You send messages to contacts to round up a few extra knights for an adventure? Sure, soon enough they arrive at your doorstep ready to fight. Unless there is a reason to bring attention to the travel times, I ignore it.
2. I try to make armies react to the existing geography and fortifications in their campaign.
   1. This I haven't has as much opportunity to really play with in my campaign, but for the most part I try to have armies make decisions that account for local terrain and settlements. Specific areas of Logres boast much better forts than other areas, and for future army campaigns, I plan to incorporate them into the adventure rather than have them be ignored. Going around a fort is always viable (good thing forts dont move!), but you risk their garrison harassing you. Assaulting them is also very costly of course. I want to draw attention to specific places rather than generic areas, and forts make natural focal points for combat and such. Reading through Book of Warlord showed just how many cool and important places there are that are ignored in GPC adventures/battles as written. If there is a massive DV26 fort in the way between your army and your goal, it has got to impact your military campaign at least somewhat - maybe the battle takes place near there instead, maybe forces need to be sacrificed to maintain a siege?
3. I maintain my own maps that I can edit and revise as the campaign progresses.
   1. This helps keep a handy reference for where things are and I can easily consult them to decide if the geography will matter for the adventure. If an adventure describes a new location that isn't on my map, I add it. If it doesn't say where it is in relation to other places, I usually just put it somewhere that's a bit empty on the map and try to account for the local geography in my descriptions of it. If its an explicitly fae or weird location, I'll just say its in the forest and the player's need to make a few checks to see how easily they track it down each time they try to visit. To me, the fae is in its own dimension - it doesnt follow the rules I apply for the rest of the geography, it is a realm subject to the whims of my own creativity (or laziness haha!)
   2. This map is explicitly not an in-universe resource. Its just there for me and my PKs to reference and get a better OOC idea of the world their characters inhabit. So I can frequently adjust things without worrying about tearing the world apart and can add new locations as required by the narrative.

This is an awesome write up! Will definitely be saving this for the future. Thanks!!