piersb

The Poet Knights

The Poet Knights are a trio of minor knights who appear in several mediaeval sources, most notably the Black Book of Carmarthen and the Red Book of Hergest. 

What Would Andred Do?

Lady Nim sat looking over the assembled knights of her and Andred’s family. Beside her, her sister-in-law attempted with limited success to hide her distress.

On 10/16/2021 at 4:31 PM, Voord 99 said:

Obviously, though, killing a fellow knight by having your horse trample on them would be, under normal circumstances, unchivalrous behavior.  I mean, it’s unchivalrous if you don’t dismount and fight them on foot, let alone if you don’t even allow them to get up and just have your horse stand on them. 

Presumably Saxons are eminently trampleable-upon.

When players have missed a session or several, do you tend to run their Winter Phase in full for each year they've missed (with marriages, childbirth, harvest and all, and all the implications that might have for Glory), or just run the solos for experience checks and give them a flat estate-value-in-libra glory and assume nothing particularly else happened?

The Jorvik Fragment

Wodon þa Wealcynn hrade ofer hruse...

The fall and flight of Syagrius

An extract from Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (unpublished draft)

A Change of Shield

Lady Nim swept through into the hall, her sudden stop leaving her skirt swirling. It had become a ritual whenever she was home, to stop in front of the mounted shields and to take a moment to think of what had been, had been hoped and what had occurred.

Excalibur's Heritage

Three brave knights accompanied Merlin the Magician to protect him while he received a sword from the centre of a lake.

Update: My female PK has decided that she wishes to be addressed as Sir Nim when armed and armoured and performing knightly duties, and Lady Nim when unarmed and unarmoured and interacting with the Court.

I agree with the stance in 5.2 and use Sir for all knights regardless of gender.

12 hours ago, Dagonet said:

Suppose a player wanted to play a line of exclusively female knights. How would that work in the early periods? Perhaps they could pass as men. Then at the right period, Sir John could reveal herself to have been Sir Joan all along?

After The Adventure of Sword Lake the three involved were taken before Earl Roderick who Merlin had told a Great Change was coming and that these three characters would be a part of it. 

Helms off to be knighted, and Shock! Horror! It's a girl!

Bit of a surprise for ol' Roderick, but he knighted her anyway in front of his whole court.

So female knights exist now.

The way 6e is approaching this is very similar to the way I'm approaching it in my home game.

There were no women knights in the world at the start of the campaign; there is one now; as time moves on it will be seen to become unremarkable.

TIME TEAM: THE BATTLE OF MERCREDESBURNE

PART FOUR

EXT. PENHURST AERIAL SHOT

TONY (V.O)
We’re in East Sussex, near the villages of Ashburnham and Penhurst, looking for the site of a Dark Ages battle. Ancient sources say the native British fought with the invading Saxons at a place called Mercredesburne, or Mearcred’s Creek. Could this be where it happened? Geophys has been inconclusive, there’s been nothing definite so far from either of our two trenches, and time is running out.

A Shell

They carried his body into the chamber & lay him across a table. Lady Nim steeled herself for the sight of her beloved, cut down in his prime. As the men shuffled out, she closed the door firmly behind them and the noise of her hall. Her steward would make sure they had refreshments as they remembered their friend.

So I've been thinking about APP recently, and although the 5.2 rulebook says it's not a dump stat, other than for reasons of not dying through aging it's... uh... kind of a dump stat. Cos it doesn't really affect anything. The only mention of using your PK's app is that it might give modifiers to Flirting if particularly high or low, according to GM whim.

There's a previous thread about this, and several folk have offered some possible house rules which I'll try to summarise before going on to my own attempt at a solution.

OPTION ONE

APP/10 is used as a Glory modifier. So high-app characters trade in extra damage etc that they could have got by putting the points in another stat for more Glory.

OPTION TWO

Each superlative APP point (16+) grants a +1 bonus to the following: Flirt, Intrigue, Orate, Singing, Play, Dancing. It does not affect Romance.

There were also various mathematical options, eg the bonus being APP-11/2.

OPTION THREE

Glory for Courtly skills is equal to APP rather than a flat 10.

OPTION FOUR

Scrap APP entirely

OPTION FIVE

App can be rolled as Inspiration-ish for social skills. Success is +5/+10 for a crit, Failure is the reverse

OPTION SIX

New mechanic:  A reaction roll based on APP determines people's attitudes to the character.

I'm not keen on option one because it could mean that a character could quickly outpace the others if they survive the first few years - and if they then start putting more of those points into APP you could end up with a seriously overpowered PK. I think that's enough to take it off the table for me.

Option two has the potential to make social rolls super-powerful and into auto-crit territory - especially if you've got some bling and use some Fashion rolls to bump up the APP before making those social rolls. So I'm not so keen on that either.

Option three I'm interested in, but feels more like a tweak than making APP equivalent-ish in power to the other stats.

Option four: No, I want to keep it.

Option five and six both effectively introduce a new mechanic, and I'm quite keen to keep it simple rather than design a new edge case; both of these could work, but don't feel right for my game.

What I've decided to go for, then is OPTION SEVEN.

All of the other attributes are used to create a derived characteristic, but APP isn't. So instead I'm going to derive a characteristic from APP which can be used on courtly skills. None of the derived attributes end up with negative attributes, so instead I'm going to give a bonus to the Courtly skills listed in option two - plus Romance - of +1 for each 6 full points of APP.

• So 0-5 APP = +0
• 6-11 APP = +1
• 12-17 APP = +2
• 18 APP = +3 

And so on.

Players can use the Fashion skill to bump their APP in any given encounter per the rulebook, but only the most expensive piece of clothing/bling will count, so you can't just load yourself up with twenty different bits of jewellery. And of course, Fashion is non-knightly, so most PK's won't be wanting to lose Honour for doing it.

I think this should give enough weight to APP to make it worthwhile without over-powering it. I'm going to give it a test-run over the next few weeks and will let you know how it goes.

14 hours ago, Call Me Deacon Blues said:

Though if they're not starting with lower skills, it might not be an issue.

These particular ones were generated as knights but just haven't been knighted yet.

It's a biggy.

I have some thoughts on APP. Should I necro a two-year-old thread, or create a new thread with a link to it?

I went with this in the end...

• Check one of the following: Battle, First Aid, Dagger, Horsemanship, Siege, Sword, Lance.
• Check one of the following: Compose, Courtesy, Dancing, Flirting, Gaming, Intrigue, Orate, Play (Instrument), Singing.
• Check a Trait that is famous for your knight (if you want to emulate them), or its opposite (if you want to rebel against them).

Heraldic Threads

Andred employed all his restraint not to run down the hallways. Knights had to show some dignity and decorum after all. Keeping his pace even, he reached his destination with only a few curious glances at his excited countenance.

The Adventure of the Beare

Four squires there were in castell Vagon in the londe of Salisbury, and these four hyght Idres, Andred, Edward and Pellandres. Now these squires did jouste ryght well and did ryde as well as any knyght, but had never ben on ony adventure...

Turns out two players couldn't make my first session (and therefore didn't get knighted at the end of it) so I guess I'll be trying this next week...

6 hours ago, SaxBasilisk said:

How would you handle this?

Exactly the same; but perhaps allowing the squire to choose either side of a Trait their Knight is famous for. (They could follow in their knight’s footsteps, or decide that they don’t want to be like that.)

I've taken on your houserule that Passions no longer auto-increase with a crit after they hit 20 (because of the geometric ladder).

Immediate Experience Roll + Check Too seems perfectly cromulent.

Just suddenly occurred to me that you could end up with Hate (Saxons) 24.

Ouch.