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Yeah, it';s just a bad fir for the group at the wrong time. The PKs come into a situation where they see people whom they dislike doing something bad. So the natural response will be to want to oppose them. May be if the odds are bad, the PKs unarmored and such they might not be able to, but they sure don't have any motivation to want to sit down and negotiate things. And the timing is just all wrong. The PKs are nearing the Anarchy Period, and Saxons have been and will remain the defacto boogeymen. So this is really a bad time to run an adventure that relies on the PKS humanizing them. The natural response would be to want to boot these "invaders" out of Britain. They are only there because they allied with Vortigern the tyrant and murdered the rightful lords of the land, and even poisoned good king Aurelius only ten years ago. It's almost a prefect storm for things not going peacefully. The first hurdle I see is why would the PKs even want to negotiate? They should probably be thinking about shoring up their defenses and convincing the higher ups to drive these barbarians out of Britain. There is really little reason for things to go well, and less reason for the Pks to want things to go well. Just the opening where Beomart doesn't recolonize the King's law gives the PKs justification to kick some butt. It's basically changes him from just a Saxon to a treasonous Saxon. I don't see this playing out the way the OP wishes.

Yeah, and the Duke is a good example of what can happen with a high Hate. It's not that this adventure can't go down the negotiation path, but that there is very little reason for it to do so.

Okay. And I agree it doesn't have to be a suicidal fight, but I think there isn't much hope of things turning out well. Negotiations seem unlikely. To the PKS the Saxons here seem like a bunch of raiding bandits and I don't see much incentive for the PKS to want to try and talk with them. I think it's far more likely for the PKS to try and help whoever the Saxons are fighting against. If the OP wants much more than "Saxons! Chaaarrge!" this probably isn't the time, place, and situation for it.

Oh, okay. That's different. I haven't read that adventure in years. But if it is optional, then I don't see a group of PKs with Hate (Saxons) bothering to go down that rabbit hole. That would be like expect people to try to work things out with the Manson family. They already k now how bad and treacherous Saxons are, and Long Knives and all that. For this to have any chance of working I think the GM needs to plant the idea that these Saxons aren't Saxons and show them doing good and honorable things first.

Yeah. Such situations are par for the course, especially if you read the source books. Knights tend to react in exaggerated, larger than life ways to situations, in part because the authors were kinda new to the whole idea of character motivations. It's like watching amateur actors on stage or in a cheap film. If a passion comes up, it really comes up. It's not like the knights will just short sheet the beds of those they hate. Yeah, it's almost the prefect set up. The PKs see someone they hate doing something that looks wrong. The PKs would probably assume they know the situation and act from that. And part of the difficulty here is that if the players are trying to role play their characters properly, they will probably play a little biased against the Saxons to begin with. So this is really preaching to the choir.

It didn't. It came from " I won't force a combat just because of a passion roll" That's sort of comes with the territory with Pendragon, especially with high Passions. THat is part of the point of high passions. If a GM isn't willing to run the bad side of passions and allow something bad to happen because of a passion roll, then they are short circuiting the way the game is meant to be played. The high hates might cause trouble, they will certainly put the players on edge, and might derail the negotiations. Or not. It depen ds a lot on the PKS Loyalty, orders, and just how these Saxons behave. No murder would be something else. But keep in mind that a knight who is offended challenging a Saxon to a duel or some such isn't murder. At least not to knights. These Saxons are (mostly) commoners, and it's rare for a noble to suffer insults from a commoner, or repercussions for dealing harshly with one.

Yeah. This just looks like the wrong group of knights at the wrong time. It's like sending some sort of bigot to a negtionations with the people he is bigtoed against. In fact that is exactly what it is.It's possible for the PKsto succeed, especially if they have some other reason/passion to help ofset the hate, but overall this looks like a challenging adventure where they will probably fail. Yes and no. While Greg certainly wrote that into the rule book, actual examples and gameplay from the various adventures don't work that way. Usually if Greg wrote in a passion roll it was a roll regardless of the value. So that part of it is up to the GM here. And that's fine. Still, to run this adventure without someone Hate (Saxons) every coming up would be odd, and he does have at hleast one PK with a hate over 15. That would be true if it were the player's choice, but it's not. The PK gets the hate in chargen, and the GM, as their liege lord, assigns the mission to them. Exactly. While how he exprresses it could vary, - this could be that guy who doesn't say much but just gives the Saxons the cold stare throughout the meeting, the general point is that they would not be the best diplomats for this, and that whoever sent them would know that. Yes they should, but just who goes and who doesn't is something that is beyond their control. The whole thing smacks of a liege lord trying to provoke an incident that he can use to justify going to war. Why else would he send someone with Hate (Saxons) 20 on this mission? The Liege lord obviously knows that this guy really hates Saxons, so why send him, of all people, on the mission? Ultimately the PKS are being set up to fail here, and it's not their fault.

Well, that's fine, but that sort of adventure is going to be difficult to pull off in this period, at least as long as "Saxons" are than antagonists. Basically the PKS have no reason not to just :"kill Saxons" as that fits the established narrative, and thier passions feed into that. Then maybe you are running the wrong game. Part of what makes Pendragon Pendragon is that character actions are at times driven by their passions. If Hate (Saxons) 20 isn't enough then what is? And conversely why is Hate (Saxons) then enough for inspiration? I really think you have to accept the bad with the good here. I would. At least I would depending on the events taking place. Otherwise, what are passions for? Now that doesn't mean that PKs might not have reasons to act differently and have abilities they can use to counter their Hatreds, but you have to accept that a Hate can force things to take a dark turn. Honestly, considering the year, and that virtually everybody has a Hate (Saxons) passion I think this adventure is highly likely to turn sour-and it should be. So good luck, but don't be surprised if things get ugly. What you got is a situation with a lot of underlying tension that could easily get very very bad if something starts to go wrong. The Hates probably won't start the trouble, but they will probably escalate any trouble that occurs.

Yup. Players should be aware that passions are double edged swords. They can inspire you to greatness but they can also force you into actions that you'd rather not do. Good passions are just a troublesome as Hates, too. Several of the PKS in my current campaign have formed their own knightly order and has a Loyalty passion to it, and that passion has often caused them trouble by forcing them to do things they didn't want to, such as sticking around in a bad fight to try and rescue another member of the order when they would have preferred to withdraw, or saving a downed member of the order in battle instead of the Count! I'll also point out that a GM who always puts the PKs into situations where those downsides becomes evident is just as bad. If someone has Hate (Frisian Tailors) and every Tailor he runs into happens to be a Frisian, that's not right either.

Unless you don't want the negotiations to be successful. If the lord just wanted to provoke a war and was looking for an excuse, a PK with a high hate would be ideal.

I think rather than adventures you might want to look at rule sets. Specially Pulp Cuthlhu. Standard CoC doesn't really play all that "pulpy" and investigators will tend to go down quickly in a firefight. Pulp Cthulhu, however has a bunch of modifications that improve the suitability of the investigators (and major bad guys) to better reflect the pulps.

Exactly. Quite true. My concern is that when RPGs put in some sort of mechanism to try and do this, even as a guideline, then that guideline becomes accepted as "the way things are done" and that a GM is doing something wrong if he doesn't follow those guidelines. Look at D&D and it's history of XP formulas, Challen ge Ratings and "balanced" encounters. It's reach the point where not following the CR guidleines, such as they are is treated as doing things wrong. Probably. I think it varies from game to game. I believe that there has been a tendency to try and make games easier/simpler not so much to streamline rules or to focus on role-playing, but merely to compete with computer RPGs and other games. RPGs demand a lot from the GMs running them, compared to other types of games. I think "quick and dirty" guidelines, really just try to make things easier than they are to try and encourage more people to GM. It's not that the guidelines themselves are bad, only that any sort of foumulatic method becomes gospel. But it is better if a GM (and the players) have an understanding on what such guidleines are for and what the ultimate goals are of the game.,

I did up a version where I calculated the Categories without the -10. For instance Mental would be INT plus half od POW and EDU. Then I used this value as the base score for all Mental skills. This streamlined skills since we didn't need to track what were usually minor differences (5-10%) between the default values. I also allwed a player to add +1/10th of this value to improvement rolls for those skills so that someone who is naturally good at something would improve faster.

Well the general view of most Brits is that Alges, Jutes, and even Danes are all just variations of "Saxons". At least unitl they get a reason to believe otherwise, as with the Berroc Saxons. Like jerrjerwin suggested, if you want the players to have any sort of reaction other than "Saxons!!!! Chaaaarrrrgggee!" then you need to establish somehow that these people a aren't typical Saxons, and again, as he also pointed out, that's hard when someone has a high Hate passion. What you need to do to do is somehow introduce some "good" Saxons/Angles that show qualities that the PKs can admire and win their respect. You have to give the players a reason to want to like these Saxons and not just lump them in with all the other, "bad" Saxons. But 490 is a bad year for this since in 490 about the only Saxons that people like are the Berroc Saxons, and St. Albans and the Anarchy Peroid won't help. Your best best is to have the Angles do something noble and honorable that wins the PKs respect. In my own campaign I had a "Saxons" show up and help out a knight who had saved his father's life. As a result the PKs felt that this Saxon was an honorable standup guy whom they could trust and it eventually lead to a friendship forming. But you need to give the PKS a reason to like the Angles, at least enough for the PKs to not consider them as Saxons. I'd suggest throwing in a couple of encounters, to reinforce that new image, and do it before you run the adventure. In essence you are humanizing the Angles so that the players will view them as people and not cardboard bad guys to cut down.

Quite a few, since I Gm a lot. It's important for the GM to undertand the rules. I didn't buy them for nothing. Now as far as referring to the book duing the game, I do try to keep that down to a minimum. Not many. I just look up relevant vales as needed. No. Having or not having a character sheet doesn't change how often I have to refer to the rulebook. The character sheet just tracks the character stats. No I cannot. I can can come up with several examples of a poorly organized sheet slowing play down because the person who designed it didn't think that something important was actually important. Can you point out what rules are on those character sheets? Eh, the shield does the rest is just legible text in a decent layout. Function trumps form. It's a character sheet. It is supposed to provide the relevant game stats in a clear and concise layout. That's it purpose. It's not supposed to be an ad for the game and tell you what the game is about. If you need a character sheet you already know all that. There are no rules on the Pendragon character sheet. Just stats. Give a newbie a character sheet and they can't figure out one rule from it. I disagree. Dumbing the game down won't make the hobby better. There are quite a few very simple RPGs out there that take up a couple of pages and leave a lot to the GM. Those games don't draw lots of new people into the hobby. Then end up being diversions for people who already play. And if nobody wants to read the "intimidating" books so they can learn the rules, they certainly won't want to put the effort into writing actual adventures. That's work. There is no major RPG out there that someone can learn to play just by looking at the character sheet. Somebody has to read the rulebook. Yes if the game is based on or similar to another RGP that someone is familar with they might be able to use what they do know from another RPG to figure out the new sheet, but that isn't becuase the rules are on the sheet. For instance, anyone familiar with any BRP game can figure out some things from the sheet of any other BRP related game. But that isn't the same as the rules being on the sheet. I cannot think of one instance where someone's decision to play a game or not was influenced by a character sheet. Unless someone is familiar with the RPG being played, the numbers on it don't mean anything. Seeing CON 15 on a character sheet doesn't mean anything unless you know what CON stands for, and what a 15 means.

Yes it does. Not many Even D&D tends to have ways to increase the chance of a crtical. It's mostly life and high level, although it can be mitigated to some extend by the ability to raise the dead. Now I'm not saying that it is a big problem, just that is something where people are expecting one thing to happen and the opposite happens. The reason why is happens is also artificial, mainly the need to keep things exciting. Me either, other than improvement with repetition, and spending their ill gotten gains on training and better gear. But it is part of the "leveling up/increasing opposing" viewpoint that the opponents will increase in ability. Me either. It just leads to players shaking their heads and wondering what all those points they spent did for them. Well raising the difficulty after every "Season" certainly indicates that they are going to use that guideline as a bit more than just a guideline. Even the HQ2 advancement every so many sessions isn't that great a guideline as it doesn't consider the relative abilities of the PCs. If it is supposed to rate the opposition relative to the PC it would be better just to base it off the PCs actual ability ratings instead of the number of game sessions. Not only would that be a more accurate gauge but also simpler to implement.

Do the math. In RQ, for example, the chances of the opponents rolling a critical or a special success increase with thier skill, and such attacks tend to be harder to survive, crticals tend to bypass most armor, and specials have additional effects usally extra damage. So as the opposition's skill increases so does the chance of that "lucky hit" that will drop a PC. Most RPGs have some similar game mechanic.Now just applying the normal laws of probability and the duration of a typical fight should indicate that a PK is more likely to take a nasty hit as the opposing skill increases. A the guy with Sword 100% who is more likely to take a critical from an foe with 70% skill than one with 50% who was fighting a foe with 20% skill. Now I used RQ as an example, but the underlying math holds true for most RPGs. Basically the PCs getting better results in their fighting with more powerful enemies, who in turn have a better chance of getting a lucky hit and dropping a PC. It why character death can become more common in high powered games. It gets easier to get that one big hit past the defenses. Uh, not in most RPGs. In most games the bandits go up in level/hit dice are are still a threat. Now games that use an absoule scale of ability, such as most BRP games, as opposed to a relative one, like Class & Level RPGs, don't usually do that, but in those games a bandit is always a threat because a PC is always vulnerable to one lucky hit from a sword. spear, axe, whatever. Now if the GM does throw in an encounter with bandits who the PCs now outclass that is great. It helps to show the player show much they have improved. But that goes agains tthe whole automatic increases idea, or the rate everything relative to the PCs idea. I think it is a better way ot handle things though. It shouldn't feel worse, but it might very well be worse. The overall illusion is that the characters have gotten better. But since the relative difficulty remains the same they really haven't. They just traded in their foes for better foes.

Counter intuitive isn't a fancy philosophical term. it means: contrary to intuition or to common-sense expectation (but often nevertheless true). Now a process where you want to roll low for a better sucessl level but higher than someone one with the same success level is counter intuitive. For example, look at a contest between two characters each with a 40% skill. The first character rolls a 10 and the second looses with a 09. Now the fact that the guy who rolled a 9 would have won if he rolled an 8 or less or an 11 or more is counter intuitive as common sense expectations would be for one or the other of those two situations to be true, but not both.

LOL! Yes exactly. I tried writing up a system around the old Top Secret SI method of 10s die is the damage and the "win", 1s die is the hit location, and using the difference and quickly came to the conclusion that the whole thing would work much better if it were just rolling 1D10+a skill mod, or scaled the die skize by skill (i.e. 60% skill rolls 1D60). D100 is just not as well suited to opposed rolls as smaller dice, or multiple dice.

Yeah, I think it is to some extent inherient in all RPGs, and is sort of a disconnect between how a RPG works vs. how it appears to work. For example, when someone raises their sword skill over time there is the underlying belief that because they have improved with the sword they should do better in a sword fight. The reality is that in most RPGs they will probably do worse in a sword fight as their opponents have improve as well. So players are looking at character improvement as a step up, either due to experience or as a reward for play, but an actual shift in probabilities is counterproductive, so the improvement is mostly canceled out- at least in terms of serious opposition. Either the opposing improves or their numbers increase or some such to counteract the increased PC abilities, at least most of the time. To some extent this has to happen to keep the game interesting and exciting. It wouldn't be much fun if every opponent was a beggining opponent. HQ's mechanical simplicity (one game mechanic for virtually everything) makes this more transparent than most RPGs.

No, it's percentile dice so both have an equal chance of having the lowest roll. The difference is that thge one with the higher skill has a better chance of a high roll being successful. That is a flawed view as it overlooks the reason why both fail, namely that the higher skilled character will succeed on rolls that are failures for the lower skilled character. For example, compare player A with 5% skill against Player B with a 95% skill. There is only a 4.75% chance of both character's failing. So you are designing the resolution system around the least likely case. Realistically, ignoring success levels for the moment, the odds break down as follows: A succeeds, B fails = 0.25% (.05x.05) = A wins A fails, B succeeds = 90.25% (.95x.95) = B Wins Both succeed: 4.75% (.05x.95) Both fail 4.75% (.95x.05) So you don't have to go high roll wins, here as the majority of the contests will fall into the B wins category., The odds actually increase for B once you factor in for success levels, allow B to take an even larger share of the both succeed and both fail results. That's fair. I'm not a fan of opposed rolls combined with success levels. I think it's double dipping, and in the case of BRPO counter intuitive. I think it could be resolved better with one method or the other. Except that is missing out on the fact that the characters won't bet getting the same success level as much as the higher skileld character winning. Using my example above, both characters will never get the same success level, as any result that is a sucvcess for A would be a crtical success for B, and any roll that would be a failure for B would be a fumble for A. Yes, but the extra subtractions could be kept simple (just read the tens die and ignore the 1s, for example a 64-47 would just be a margin of "2" (6-4) instead of 17) . Or you can just tie the success level to one of the dice be it the ones or the tens. For instance all dice that end in 1 or 0 could be critical or some such. The blackjack method isn't bad, assuming you don't have a lot of success levels to complicate it. Pendragon works because the critical number is equal to the skill value, or any result of 20+. HeroQuest works becuase the crtical number is always 1, and the game allows for "bumps". But I think the method currently in use for BRP/RQG is really the worst of both rolls. Success level only games handle it better, and opposed roll only games handle it better. It kinda negates the whole point of opposed rolls, namely that they were a simple and quick way to resolve a skill vs. skill contest.

Not really. Players want to roll low, and high. For instance someone with a 80 skill can beat an opponent who rolls a 10 but rolling an 8 or less (a critical) or a 10 or more (higher result in the same success level). That's counter intuitive. Yes,but it is counter intuitive. It's not as bad in Myhras as it is in BRP, though due to there being fewer success levels. But I think it would probably be better to get success levels out of die roll/skill rating and instead based the results off of the actual die value or difference between die values. Then we could have our cake (success levels) and eat it too. It would eliminate the tables and scale up as characters improve.

First why, why did you go highest roll wins, why not lowest? Secondly, in my post I was referring to generating some sortof result, in terms of using the die roll to generate soem sort of result or value. For example, let's say that a special success was one where you beat the oppomnents roll by a set amoun t. In most games, that works because the die rolls generate some sort of value, and wide differences in the die rolls can at least partially be due to skill. But with a pass/fail system, if the failed rolls "zero out" that almost any success by the opponent isgreater when opposed by a zero. Roll under systems are fine, it's just that most of them, especially those that incorporate success levels the way RQ does, were not designed for opposed rolls. Pendragon uses a roll under system and handles opposed rolls just fine. But it doesn't have as many success levels, nor does it fit them in on the bottom of the table.

Or even slightly above average if it fits the story. For instance a band of mercenaries might be a bit more buff than average and all have 12 or 13 STR. Or not. I'm just mentioning that so OP doesn't think that all groups need to be exactly average, although the more extreme the stat, the harder it is to justify in a group. One APP 18 woman living in an apartment is rare, but believable. Three APP 18 women living in an apartment is a TV series.

Well since the new version that ups the difficulty each "season" hasn't come out yet, only the designers, playtesters know., assuming they have a work around. Keep in mind we are all just speculating based on what we've seen so far. As far as HQ2 goes , well it is partially be handled with the new rules, but I suspect most Gms would probably adjust the progression manually in play or just override the formula. It's no different that looking over an adventure and then adapting it to better suit the capabilities of the PCs, shifting the existing stats up or down to better fit the requirements of the campaign.That's what GMs are for. To be fair, pretty much everything I mentioned as a negative can be avoided by a competent GM, provided they pay attention and adjust things either before the become a problem or even shortly after. If the PCs start to get beaten most of the time, and they aren't just in a die rolling slump, then the GM should start to wonder why, and scale things down. The problems usually happen when a inexperienced Gm blindly follows the "rules" regard of what is actually happening at the table. It's like CR in D&D. It's okay for a general guideline but the DM needs to factor in the situation to see how difficult a challenge really is. For instance, CR 1 goblin archers aren't much of a threat to a 4th level party, unless the archers are on the other side of a ravine with cover and the PCs are out on a flat open plain, and can't get to the archers. On paper it is a cakewalk for the party but in reality its closer to a cakewalk for the goblins! That is why all such methods for encounter design and predetermined difficulties are just guidelines and should be suspect. If I were going to use some sort of mathematical formula for rating opposition rather than a fixed rate of increasing difficulty I'd just rate things relative to the PCs abilities and how difficult I wanted the challenge to be. Say I took the average of the PCs best, middle and worst skills, and then used one of those as the baseline and shift the opposition rating up or down from there depending on how tough I wanted the encounter to be. Maybe even randomize the values a little. That way I'd never have to worry that contest would ever be too difficult or too easy. But... ...that method would make improvement fairly pointless, so I wouldn't want to rely on it exclusively and probably mix in some fixed difficulties at lower values so the PCs can see some signs of how they have improved relative to the common mook. Basically it's not much different that how most GMs create the oppositions for an adventure. A mix of standard, generic challenges plus a few custom ones scaled tot he PCs abilities to keep things interesting. A good example of how this would work would be in a Superhero themed game. While naturally the adventure should challenge the PCs with Super villains who aren't pushovers, you also want to put the heroes up against some "normal" bad guys very n ow and then to show the players just how awesome their super heroes actually are. After all, that's part of why they wanted to play superheroes in the first place. But if everybody the run into can lift a tractor-trailer, then super strength doesn't seem all that super anymore. If everybody can do something then it isn't special anymore. If everybody has Strength 10W10 then nobody is going to be impressed by feats of strength for very long. So you need those Strength 17 and Strength 13 guys to show the contrast. Just like those guys need a Strength 6 Jimmy Olsen to beat up to show that they aren't incompetent but that Superman is just that much better than they are.