Udy Kumra

22 hours ago, Morien said:

3. Especially if you are using BoF often (but I would do it in any case), reduce the Glory amounts for winning (the amount currently is way excessive), and especially just participating in a royal feast (I believe 100 in BoF, while GPC is giving like 50 for important events like Arthur's Wedding Feast...). The thread above has some suggestions.

What I like doing for feast glory is the following:

(APP x Geniality) ÷ Feast Modifier

Modifiers are: 1 for a feast hosted by the High King, 2 for a feast hosted by a King or Duke, 3 for a feast hosted by a Count or Baron, 4 for a feast hosted by non-nobility. If you are the host, you get one level higher, and if you get the most geniality, you get one level higher.

So if your APP is 15 and you get 6 Geniality at a feast hosted by the King of Estregales, you get 15 x 6 ÷ 2 = 90 ÷ 2 = 45 glory. If you get the most geniality, you get 90 glory.

Once we have the 6e feast rules, I might replace the "most geniality gets one level higher" rule with the feast geniality threshold rule. I do want those rules, because right now it's always desirable to go to Arthur's Pentecostal Feast instead of some smaller feast, but if smaller feasts have easier to hit geniality thresholds, then you'll have a reason to go there instead of to Camelot. (And I generally want the rule of geniality in play outside of feasts too.)

On 3/5/2024 at 10:36 PM, Morien said:

Read the Cambrian War in the Savage Mountains. It seems pretty close to what you are wanting.

I have! I'm looking forward to running that.

On 3/5/2024 at 10:36 PM, Morien said:

GPC's Roman War offers a couple of suitable Battles, and of course if the PKs are glorious enough and high enough in the pecking order, they might lead a battalion/wing of a larger battle, too. Also, the start of the Roman War, the pacification of France, offers loads of chances for relatively small size battles over individual castles or counties. GPC abstracts those into a simple roll in the French War Events table, but you could very easily write it out into a small campaign of its own.

Yeah, I definitely had some ideas for this. One thing that I saw another GM do was that he gave his players control over a "theater" of war. Since in the Battle of Bedegraine year I'm actually going to have them mostly skip the battle and instead go to Benoit to meet King Ban and do a little murder mystery while trying to get his alliance, I think I'll have them work to reconquer Benoit (which could also get them friendly with Lancelot!).

On 3/5/2024 at 10:36 PM, Morien said:

As you pointed out, GPC does offer chances in Romance and later for the PKs to take a lead in fighting in various wars in Ireland and Ganis. However, personally I think those are distractions from the main draw of the Romance Period. Instead, I think you are on the right track to rather give the PKs a chance to lead. You can even give them a small army and fight an action against a portion of the Roman army to prevent them from escaping to Italy, away from Arthur's army, and hence have to stand at Saussy to fight. And that makes all the difference. Or if you wish to be more HRB compliant, maybe they slow down the Roman army enough that Arthur gets to Saussy first to prepare the battlefield, even if they end up losing that smaller battle. It is very easy to make up these various smaller actions and tie the results to the events of the larger campaign.

My other idea was also to move up the war in Ireland to the Conquest Period and let the players take the lead there if they want. Of course, everyone takes a break to go to Rome, but my thinking was to move up the Roman War to earlier in the Conquest Period and let the players go to war in Ireland after. One of the player-knights in my group is Estregales Irish, and I think he'd enjoy going there since it's a bit more blank slate than Britain and he could really make a mark (like, it would be amazing to retire that character as the "High King of Ireland" if there are enough successes lol).

I do agree that by the Romance Period I want them in "errantry and adventure" mode, and one of the ways I'm going to do that is actually inform them at the start of the Conquest that we're gonna do a soft reset in the Romance Period with new characters from the family—super junior people who might have powerful enough families to be knighted with good armor and be given household knight positions, but have no inherited landholdings and not even enormous amounts of inherited Glory (probably I'll say they have to go with a nephew family branch, so that instead of getting 1/5 of the previous character's glory to start they get 1/20). I think that would set the tone of the Romance really well, where it's these really junior knights coming from great families with lots of pressure on their shoulders to be great themselves, and who idolize the Round Table and want to get on it.

On 3/5/2024 at 10:36 PM, Morien said:

Arthur assigning commanders to various battalions of his army, before the Battle of Saussy (in HRB):

Thanks for sharing this. I really need to read the HRB lol

Late to this, but in Dragons of Britain 1 there is an adventure called "The Birthday Hunt" which I believe was designed for con games. I've run it before in campaign and it's great, and it would be even better as a one-shot. 

Lynelle is my favorite only because Vengeful is my favorite trait. But Asterius is a close second—I love the fish out of water story, and I love the idea of playing a Greek/roman far from home.

On 3/6/2024 at 7:25 PM, Morien said:

Udy mentioned in Discord his house-rule of Reckless Attack being -5 skill of the Reckless Attacker, rather than +5 skill of the defender. This changes the odds a bit (~60/25 with 15% mutual misses and ties), but the general analysis of the above stays the same. It does make Reckless attacking a bit more survivable when the opponent is not as likely to land an hit (on a partial, too, in my house-rule) or a critical, without that +5. So it probably would combine well with my other two changes.

I don’t know that I would allow hitting on a partial with this house rule. With -5 to the attacker’s skill, the defender has a greater chance of landing a hit *at all*. I haven’t done the math on it though…but I’ll add that psychologically, taking ANY -5 is a tough pill for players to swallow. Knowing that the opponent will be able to hit back even on a partial will essentially mean they never use reckless attacks.

As a side note, I decided to call reckless attacks “power attacks” to mechanically separate them from the reckless trait. While a power attack might be used in a situation where it is particularly reckless to do so (like if you fight King Pellinore) it isn’t ALWAYS reckless (like if you are attacking a prone opponent).

Also I wanted to ask other GMs about my idea for the Conquest Period: I think it would be hella fun to allow the veterans of the Saxon wars here to take the reins of a particular war in this period. Perhaps they take a leading role in the Irish conquest, or they lead a theater of war in the Roman war—things like that. Does anyone have experience running this kind of thing?

I ran a mini-conquest of Clarence in the Anarchy Period that was really fun for my players, so this would just be a larger version of that, I guess.

5 hours ago, merlyn said:

One advantage with starting during the Boy King Period (or later): You don't have to worry over the player knights' response to Uther's war with Gorlois over Igraine (I recall an earlier thread here on that subject), and possibly trying to change history by getting rid of Uther before he can beget Arthur.

I think this can be addressed in one of two ways:

1. Keep the players very distant from the top level during the Uther Period. In a game where I was a player, the GM took this approach, so the idea of killing Uther never really entered my mind because I felt like such a small fish (even though I was cracking 8000 glory by Terrabil) and the combat system was so unforgiving that it didn't really seem at all feasible.
2. Make Uther's quest for Ygraine more sympathetic. This one might be controversial, but a friend brought up the point that if Uther and Ygraine were actually in love, and he was trying to take her away from Gorlois, that might work better specifically in a ttRPG context to keep the group comfortable. Of course that might not work thematically, so just depends on GM.

But still, I see your larger point: starting in the Boy King means that you don't have to deal often with players potentially having moral problems with their leaders and trying to change that. I agree.

Thanks for this great write-up Morien! I use your posts as reference all the time 😄

I'll add that the land-grabbing of Anarchy ought to bite the player-knights in the butt sometime in the Boy King. It may not be Arthur doing it, especially because the PKs might be super influential advisors to him depending on the campaign power level, but it might be big political headaches they have to deal with. Like if you seized Rydychan instead of restoring it to the Countess over there, Ulfius and the other great nobles might now try to pressure you to give it up, and there might be raids on your lands if you refuse. Arthur might choose to remain aloof of all this infighting so long as they don't bring it to him, and if the player-knights are stupid enough to bring it to him they'll come across his famous sense of justice that might tell them they don't have a legal claim to the land when there are heirs of age. All that could make for interesting drama!

One piece of advice I'll add for new GMs, whether using 5.2e, 6e, or some other edition is this: you are best off starting in the Boy King Period, barring some very specific situations that may make a different period a better start. The Boy King Period onwards has a lot more adventure support from previous and forthcoming supplements both, plus this is the period where chivalry comes into play, and soon enough romance comes up as well. This is where you start seeing all the famous characters like Gawain and Guinevere. This is the game that people often sign up to play. As a bonus, anyone wanting to try out the game can do so with the Starter Set which has adventures starting in the Boy King Period.

There's a few reasons to start in other periods, though:

• Uther Period: You might want to start here if you really want to emphasize the generational play, since you get 30 extra years to build those mega-families. You might also want to emphasize the themes of how might makes right is replaced with chivalry later on. In general, though, I think this period isn't a great start because it's very much a gritty war drama and very different from what a lot of people associate with Arthurian legend, plus the gameplay can get quite repetitive with all the military action and battles.
• Anarchy Period: This might be a good start if you want to show some of the hopelessness before Arthur, or again emphasize the might-makes-right theme (though I don't think it is as great as if you start in the Uther Period). Also, it might be worth starting in 505 rather than 495 so you can go along with Nanteleod's wars against the Saxons, watch him get pummelled, and lead into the Sword Tournament.
• Conquest Period: I don't really recommend starting here, but it might work if one wants to jump to the first period where the wars aren't really mandatory and where you can just do adventures.
• Romance Period: This is a great starting point, and actually I will run a campaign starting in this period sometime, because you can just run a kind of sandboxy adventures-driven campaign. There's tons of adventures set around this time. Tournament Period is pretty much the same, but you get more time starting in the Romance. Plus, courtly romance and tournaments become big here, and who doesn't like that
• Grail Quest and Twilight: If for whatever reason you just want to experience the tragedy of the ending of Arthurian legend, you can start here. I don't think it's a great idea though lol.

Mostly I anticipate if people don't start in the Boy King Period, which is the best period to start in, they'll be best off starting in Uther, Anarchy 505, or Romance.

Hey folks! So many of my friends and I are very into the HBO series Succession and I had the crazy idea to create a campaign that basically mashes the show with this game. Essentially, the players would all play adult siblings, the children of an aging and ailing oil baron (who was an abusive father) each competing with one another to become his successor. In a similar way to how the show begins with their father falling sick, I had the idea that the campaign would begin with their father going Indefinitely Insane from extended contact with Mythos entities that he was dealing with in order to strengthen his business against competitors. This being the inciting incident that gets the siblings to get more involved with the Mythos side of the business that involves everyone from cults to governments.

I wanted to ask if you guys had any ideas for how I could run this campaign. I am still relatively new to the Cthulhu Mythos (only been playing CoC a couple of months now, and only read a few works) so I don't know what material I can draw upon and what ideas might be great to use. To be clear, the ultimate antagonist of the campaign should be their father, until the final act where, similar to Season 4 of the show, 

 (I don't want to spoil Season 4 for anyone, it's one of the greatest seasons of television ever produced.)

Also, what published scenarios might work for this? Obviously this would be structured very differently from many other CoC games, more focus on conflict and drama between the players than the players working together to solve problems—but one of the hallmarks of Succession is that rather than most episodes taking place in an office or at home, they take place in exotic locations at big events, from political conferences to weddings to vacation homes and more. So my idea was to hack scenarios like Dead Light to suit this kind of campaign.

If you have ideas, let me know!

I made a spreadsheet template that would allow people to make their own customized battlecards for any enemies. You'll see I already went ahead and made a bunch. Feel free to make a copy of the spreadsheet and tailor it to your own needs!

(Link coming soon)