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Yes. If a PC gets a crtical hit and kills a NPC or monster it's not a problem as the NPC/Monster was expendable. But a crtical hit killing a PC means someone might have to roll up a new character. Since PCs get into fights constantly and often have to face multiple weak opponents, and their chances of their talking a critical become a case of when rather than if. Yeah. Back in the day, everybody we gamed with had a double damage on a natural 20 houserule. When I say everybody, I mean that is was so prevalent, it was in effect at all the conventions. As it was explained to me when I inquired about it, a lot of monsters in the MM had special bonuses that kicked in on a roll of a natural 20. Swallow whole for instance.

It might not even be Cruel. Not much else to do, except maybe to ransom them off (apparently some commoners did have a random) or let them go (which could be a problem on campaign if they join up with another force. It is interesting that at Agrincourt, King Henry had to get the archers to kill the prsioners, becuase the Knights refused to kill the knights taken prisoner, although how much of that was because of chivalry and how much barbecue of ransom is hard to determine. That's pretty much what raiding is. Yeah, Chivalry is an ideal, and can be debated and lead to moral dilemmas. Hence all the opposed trait rolls. Yeah, I don't think just being cruel would cost honor. Just how you are being cruel and to whom would play a factor. By our standard most medieval people act cruel in many ways. But by their standards it just the way of life. So all those 10/10 traits are set towards the medieval norms, not modern norms.

Well, considering that last week I needed stats for two onagers for the Siege of Uffington, I guess Bulter beats the alternative.

Yes. Maybe you shouldn't Just give the characters a base Pantheon score, and track their Patron Deity. Stuff that would add to another deity in the Pantheon could be a flat +1 to the Pantheon scores. For instance, Let's say you had a PC who was a follower of Athena with Greek Pantheon 26 and Athena +40. He stops and helps a pair of young lovers to elope. This pleases Aphrodite, and would be worth 1d4 Alliance points to her followers, but as the PC follows Athena, he only gets a flat +1 to their Pantheon Score raising it to 27 to represent the fact that he pleased Aphrodite and she might use a little influence on some other deity on his behalf. If a PC does something than pleases on deity but angers another it would be a wash. You could opt to track the alliance/enmity score with a deity that dislikes the PC some some reason, too So you please Zeus but tick off Hera. I think that would keep everyone from going crazy tracking multiple allegiances. I'm not debating or anything, just trying to figure out how to keep the bookkeeping from becoming overwhelming, and the GM having to view every single action in terms of what every single god is going to think about it. Plus you have to figure that they miss a lot of the minor stuff. There must be people out there more interesting to watch than the PCs at least some of the time.

That works, it just a question of how many gods do you want to be bother tracking bonus scores for. Depending on how many gods there are and ways there are to earn/lose allegiance points it could get complicated. Maybe you could make the gods jealous of each other so a PK can only have favor with one at a time?

Yeah, one way to mitigate that sort of thing is to highlight the lords favor to those who serve him well and have a higher loyalty. The encourages the other PKs to "loyal up" so they can compete for favor. Practice fights are good here. You can run some training combats with the characters using withheld blows (half actual damage, but full score for knockdown). Or even a mock combat or two that doesn't really happen just to show the players how the game works. You can even do this without the players. Pick two characters or just take some stats out of the book and run a fight two or three times to see how it plays out.

Yeah there are a few options. First off there is the original Strombringer method, where someone track allegiance towards one deity. It is simple and it works. But there is little feeling on a pantheron. Or, you just track allergenic to the Panethon, but that would probably limit the ways a character could gain alliance to the common/universal ones. Or you could track allegiance for every god, but I think that would be way too much work, and you'd wind up spending more time bookkeeping than playing. If you want to try for a compromise how about you track allegiance towards one Patron Deity, but give a sort of affiliated status modifier (say half rating) towards the other gods in the Pantheon? Then apply an appropriateness modifier based on the purpose of the roll. For instance asking the goodness of Love to help you win the heart of someone would get a bonus, asking the god of war to do so would not.

Yes, but then you have to wonder why the lord is willing to knight them in the first place. Loyalty Lord is key so if the lord is suspicious of a squire he'd probably wouldn't knight him. In my campaign I had several PKs up their Loyalty Lord to 16 so they could be in the running for some special positions. If I were a noble I wouldn't put a knight in charge of a castle unless I was certain that he was loyal to me. Anything else is just gambling with your demesne. If a castellan betrays you to a neighboring lord you are going to have a very tough time recapturing your own castle. I'd sleep better if my castellans had Loyalty (Me) 20, and anybody not known for Loyalty (16+) wouldn't be put in that sort of position, unless absolutely necessary. Probably. Anywayit was more common to send the son out to be squires than to do it yourself. Well, it dpends. What RPGs do you have experience with. Pendragon can be deadly, and sometimes the dice can turn against a player, but there are more lethal RPGs. What I will warn you about is that Pendragon combat is fast, especially when characters don't have much in the way or armor and/or shields. Probably much faster than most experience RPers are expecting. A fight can, and probably will, beover in a couple of rounds. This can lead some people, even some GMs to think that the fight wasn't dangerous. That can lead to the PKs getting cocky and taking greater risks or the GM believing he should up the opposition in order to get a "good fight". That can lead to a major disaster and Total Party Kill.

Ohh, that's nice. I think my PKs would love to be able to do that. I've had some of think barely able to maintain themselves while waiting to see if a ransom would ever show up. I even had one prison earn his freedom by helping to defend the manor when it got raided by Saxons. Half up front, guaranteed? Yeah, they'd jump at that.

Not really, Book of Entourage does get into it a little with the background tables. Squires are usually the sons of knights with connections. Some will advance to knighthood, others will not and remain as squires or become esquires (older squires or ex-squires and ever mounted sergeants) either due to lack of funds, connections or desire. Some squires hail from common backgrounds and so wouldn't generally be eligible for knighthood unless they really distinguished themselves. Politics plays a huge part in it. It can help create ties between families. In some ways the knight is like a foster father to the squire. Yes./ Part of the reason for that was because it was felt that father would be too soft on his own son, which would be a detriment to the lad latter on when he because a knight. Yo u don't want your son to die on the battlefield because you didn't train him hard enough. It's quite possible, IMO. In most of my campaigns the PKs have married off sons and daughters to each other any by three or four generations the PKs all have some sort of family connection to each other. So it seems quite possible to me, depending on how large you group is and how close a connection you are looking for. I've had some PKS play brothers, althought that does affect the dynastic part of the game.

Doing the latter actually helps you when you do the former. There have been quite a few times where "pushing the envelope" on a fourm with other GMs has helped me to figure out a similar but less extreme version of the same thing in play.

Yeah, but I think we are talking cross purposes. There is a difference between acting unchivalrously and acting dishonorably. There are a lot of things that might not be chivalrous but perfectly honorable (like staying mounted against an unhorsed opponent). Likewise there are some actions that would be considering unacceptable no matter who they were done against. For example, I don't see cannibalism being tolerated simply because Sir So &So "only eats Saxons and peasants" [Surf & Turf]. Just look at what happened with Elizabeth Bathory.

But there is more that Chivalry going on here. Are you saying that a knight in Pendragon can behave like Jack the Ripper or Ted Bundy as long as he doesn't do it to Knights or Ladies? What about his traits and passions? I don't see a character with a high Hospitality or Merciful just slaughtering a guest out of hand because said guest isn't a knight or a lady.

Yeah, and it soert of cheapens the victory for those who go out and do the legwork. Of course with the new economics model another manor is only £1 in spending cash, not £6 so the big income boost isn't what it used to be either.

Doubtful, I'm working on some more prices, a bow draw weight table, horses, updating my armor stuff, etc.etc. But wine turned out to be far more confusing than anything else so far, except maybe cargo tonnage, but that's related. The funny bit is that the wine cask that the PK bought, a rundlet (18 gallons) got dropped from the table because it appeared to be a late 15th century addition. It seems to fill a need too. I'll look some more and see if I can find something along the lines of a half barrel in the 1/16 tun, 16 gallon range, and a quarter barrel in the 1/32 tun, 8 gallon range. The kilderkin and firkin might work but they seem to be for beer and ale. The Roman Amphorae varied but was around 7 gallons, which could be 8 for us. Romans were very practical.. Oh, and used wine casks are heavier than new ones.

Not quite. While war is war there are certain codes on conduct that would extend even to Saxons. The whole thing that makes the Knight of Long Knives so bad was that is was supposed to be a peace conference. If knight broke such rules willy nilly then they wouldn;'t have much of a problem with it. Obviously they fell for the trap because they believed that it wasn't one. Ans the Saxons wouldn't have offered it, if they couldn't trust the knights not to go and slautghter them when they showed up. If they come in peace and you let them in and offer them hospitality then you are bound by the rules of hospitality. So you can't just invite the Saxons to dinner and slaughter them. Same if they are at your lords hall or some such.. They would be considered their guest and they would look bad in something happened to one of their guests. Likewise I doubt King Arthur would tolerate one of his knights riding through Saxon lands slaughtering anyone he came across. Especially if it were through Surrey. As far as the commoners go, well the feudal system was supposed to be a symbiotic relationship, and the nobles were supposed to protect the lower classes. There were excesses and the nobility took liberties, but the commoners were supposed to be able to go to the court of their lord and have him charge such a knight with murder. It might or might not actually happen, but there were limits to what people would tolerate. If someone starts slaughtering too many peasants it's bad for the landholder. Dead peasants don't work, and terrified grieving ones don't work as well. I think a lot of the major excesses are from those with very low Honor or a high Hate. With a good deal of overlap.

"And there was great rejoicing." My players are going to like this, I think.

No problem. This is the kinda thing that happens when a game has three different versions of something. But as far as Cornelius' initial point goes, he's right. That why they toned it down some. In previous campaigns my PKs would accumulate large estates by inadvertently killing their wives through childbirth, and then remarry an heiress with a manor. With a little luck (back luck for the wives good luck on the marriage table) a PK can get a half dozen manors to pass on to his heirs. Even without much luck snagging another manor wasn't all that uncommon.

Ah, that's because it's the table from the core rulebook and not the updated one from The Book of the Entourage. They toned things down considerably and got rid of the "breed you way to more land" problem than existed. In that case: Yes, and the problem has already been addressed in the Book of the Entourage. Heiress with land, especially enough to support a knight and his family., are somewhat harder to obtain. PKs would be better off trying to roleplay for someone and get a sure thing.

Okay this all started because a Player Knight was on a quest and had to deal with a Giant that was guarding the way. The PK had been forward about the giant by a friendly pagan priest, and was also informed that the giant liked to drink. A lot. So the player decided that it might be a smart idea to try and get the giant drunk, and since wine is stronger than beer, they decided to stop off any buy wine. A lot. As in enough to get a giant to pass out, or at least gent him blind drunk. How much was that. A lot. Not knowing just how much wine it took to get a giant to pass out let along how big the giant was the player decided that bottles of wine wouldn't do. The knight needed barrels of wine. Fortunately the GM (raises hand) has anticipated such an action, after all he wrote the adventure, so he (I mean I) did a little prep work on wine barrels and worked out a price, and the player left town with a barrel of wine and a new pack horse to carry it. Things didn't quite go as planned (the giant kept noticing the PKs cup was empty and refilled it, so both got drunk), but it all worked out in the end (the PK defeated the giant, bandaged his wounds, and left the barrel-there were no hard feeling and it was the most civil fight the giant ever had). Later on, thinking that a table for wine barrels might be useful again some day, and not knowing when to quite while I was ahead, I took a closer look at some of the confusing and contradictory bits of information he ran across while research wine barrels and, after some SAN rolls and a little math, and some gamer friendly rounding of numbers, I ended up with what follows. Hopefully somebody else might get some use out of it, and I can spare them the minefield of medieval weights and measures. Update: Not knowing enough to quit when ahead, I did a little more research and decided to add in some more containers, mostly of Roman design, in part because the (mostly ceramic container were easier to seal and kept longer. They also didn't change the flavor of the wine the way wooden barrels did. This means that such containers would probably be favored for exotic wines, and also would be more likely to be used in places like Rome or Byzantium over barrels. Wine (Up to and including the Conquest Period) Town Price City Price Quality Cost (unless otherwise noted in the description) Local wine, poor (bottle) — ½d Poor x½ Local wine (bottle) 1d. 1d. Average x1 Local wine, good (bottle) 2d. 2d. Good x2 Foreign (i.e French) wine, good (bottle) — 6d. Better x3 Burgundian or Spanish wine, good (bottle) — 8d. Best x10 Italian wine, good (bottle) — 10d. Greek wine, good (bottle) — 14d. Exotic wine, good (bottle) — 20d. German or Occitanian Wine, good (bottle) — 25d. Wine (Romance Periods and beyond) Local wine, poor (bottle) 1d. ½d Local wine (bottle) 2d. 1d. Local wine, good (bottle) 3d. 2d. Foreign (i.e French) wine, good (bottle) 10d. 6d. Burgundian or Spanish wine, good (bottle) 12d. 8d. Italian wine, good (bottle) 14d. 8d. Greek wine, good (bottle) 18d. 10d. Exotic wine, good (bottle) 25d. 12d. German or Occitanian Wine, good (bottle) Quantity Cost Pint (a Cup) x½ Bottle or Quart(2 pints) x1 Pottle or Wineskin (4 pints) x2 Wine Gallon* or Big Wineskin (2 pottles) x4 Weight (SIZ), full Weight (SIZ) , empty Barrel (256 pints, 32 wine gallons, 1/8th tun) x£½ 250 lbs (SIZ 22) 50 lbs (SIZ 5) Hogshead (512 pints, 64 wine gallons, ¼ tun) x£1 500 lbs (SIZ 29) 100lbs (SIZ 10) Butt/Pipe (1024 pints, 126 wine gallons, ½ tun) x£2 1200 lbs (SIZ 36) 200 lbs (SIZ 17) Tun(2048 pints, 256 wine gallons, 1 tun) x£4 2400 lbs (SIZ 43) 400 lbs (SIZ 25) Roman Measure The Romans (and the Greeks ) preferred to ship wine in ceramic containers called Amphorae, which could keep wine better than other methods of storage such as barrels or (even worse) bottles. Although the actual value was supposed to be 80 roman pounds, or about 6.92 modern US Gallons, but historical examples vary considerably from the supposed official values, which gives us enough wiggle room to equal the Roman pound to the modern one, especially once Arthur becomes Emperor of Rome and standardized the Roman pint to be the same as the British pint, and Amorphae to be equal to 80 modern pounds and 10 wine gallons (to the benefit of all). So for import wines, consider the following containers, note that you don’t quite get as much wine per ton as with British Wines, so often containers are sold rounded down to the nearest value of 5 (a 21 Amphorae container sold as a 20 Amphorae container) Quantity Cost Weight (SIZ), full Weight (SIZ) , empty Urn (24 pints, 3 wine gallons) x12 42 lbs (SIZ 4) 18 lbs (SIZ 2) Amphorae Quadrantal (80 pints, 10 wine gallons) x40 80 lbs (SIZ 😎 34 lbs (SIZ 3) The Pithios or Dollum was a larger wine container than came in various sizes up to 2.5 tuns, and was usually measured in the terms of standard Amphorae. Some (hopefully) convenient sizes have been given below 3 Amphorae (240 pints, 30 wine gallons, 1/8 tun) x£½ 410 lbs. (SIZ25) 176 lbs. (SIZ16) 6 Amphorae (480 pints, 60 wine gallons, ¼ tun) x£1 820 lbs. (SIZ32) 352 lbs. (SIZ23) 9 Amphorae (720 pints, 90 wine gallons, 3/8 tun) x£1½ 1230 lbs. (SIZ36) 527 lbs. (SIZ27) 12 Amphorae (960 pints, 120 wine gallons, ½ tun) x£2 1641 lbs. (SIZ39) 703 lbs. (SIZ30) 15 Amphorae (1200 pints, 150 wine gallons, 5/8 tun) x£2½ 2051 lbs. (SIZ42) 879 lbs. (SIZ33) 18 Amphorae (1440 pints, 180 wine gallons, ¾ tun) x£3 2461 lbs. (SIZ44) 1055 lbs. (SIZ35) 21 Amphorae (1680 pints, 210 wine gallons, 7/8 tun) x£3½ 2871 lbs. (SIZ45) 1230 lbs. (SIZ36) 24 Amphorae (1920 pints, 240 wine gallons, 1 tun) x£4 3281 lbs. (SIZ47) 1406 lbs. (SIZ38) 27 Amphorae (2160 pints, 270 wine gallons, 1 1/8 tun) x£4½ 3691 lbs. (SIZ48) 1582 lbs. (SIZ39) 30 Amphorae (2400 pints, 300 wine gallons, 1 ¼ tun) x£5 4102 lbs. (SIZ49) 1758 lbs. (SIZ40) 33 Amphorae (2640 pints, 330 wine gallons, 1 3/8 tun) x£5½ 4512 lbs. (SIZ50) 1934 lbs. (SIZ41) 36 Amphorae (2880 pints, 360 wine gallons, 1 ½ tun) x£6 4922 lbs. (SIZ51) 2109 lbs. (SIZ42) 39 Amphorae (3120 pints, 390 wine gallons, 1 5/8 tun) x£6½ 5332 lbs. (SIZ52) 2285 lbs. (SIZ43) 42 Amphorae (3360 pints, 420 wine gallons, 1 ¾ tun) x£7 5742 lbs. (SIZ52) 2461 lbs. (SIZ44) 45 Amphorae (3600 pints, 450 wine gallons, 1 7/8 tun) x£7½ 6152 lbs. (SIZ53) 2637 lbs. (SIZ44) 48 Amphorae (3840 pints, 480 wine gallons, 2 tun) x£8 6563 lbs. (SIZ54) 2813 lbs. (SIZ45) 51 Amphorae (4080 pints, 510 wine gallons, 2 1/8 tun) X£8½ 6973 lbs. (SIZ55) 2988 lbs. (SIZ46) 54 Amphorae (4320 pints, 540 wine gallons, 2 ¼ tun) x£9 7383 lbs. (SIZ55) 3164 lbs. (SIZ46) 57 Amphorae (4560 pints, 570 wine gallons, 2 3/8 tun) x£9½ 7793 lbs. (SIZ56) 3340 lbs. (SIZ47) 60 Amphorae (4800 pints, 600 wine gallons, 2 ½ tun) x£10 8203 lbs. (SIZ56) 3516 lbs. (SIZ47) Byzantine Measure The Greek wine containers, the Attic and the Aeginetan metretes are still favored in Byzantium, and were set to the Sextarium (Pint) by the Emperor back when Rome conquered Greece. The Emperor of the East decided to keep that relationship, and so Greek wines are measured in the same units. Greek wine containers tend to be somewhat larger than the Amphorae, probably as larger offset the containers are both thicker (allowing it to stand up better to the rigors of travel) and can hold more wine by volume thanks to the cube-square law. Quantity Cost Weight (SIZ), full Weight (SIZ) , empty Attic metretes (72 pints, 9 wine gallons,) x36 125 lbs (SIZ 12) 55 lbs (SIZ 5) Aegintean metretes (120 pints, 15 wine gallons, 20 congii) x£¼ 210 lbs (SIZ 18) 90 lbs (SIZ 9)

That seems to be about right. In the early periods knights might be a bit more pragmatic about it. It also seems to be more of an issue on the small scale than the large scale. That is it's worse for a knight to ambush another knight, than for an army to ambush another army. Possibly because with armies you are obviously expecting a fight, so be caught by surprise is at least partly your own fault. Part of fighting a battle is to surprise the enemy about something. Later of Chivalry plays a bigger part, so there is probably a stronger emphasis on "being fair" about things.

Yeah, it does, but even so it won't be like D&D where PCs can have over 100 hit points. Monsters in BRP do a lot more damage than their D&D counterparts. A bear or worse a dragon, can drop an experienced d100 character in one hit, but that's not so likely in D&D.

Okay. That gives us a bit more to work with. First off d100 games can handle a classic fantasy game, in fact there is a d100 game called just that. Generally the magic in d100 games tends to be somewhat less powerful than in a typical FRPG. There are powerful spells but not the wipe out a room full of baddies type spells. A powerful spellcaster can almost certainly take out an opponent with magic, but probably not a group. And it takes time for the caster to regain the Magic points he used to power the spell. Crunch wise, it's probably more towards the medium end. Probably low medium. It does vary from game to game though. Something like RuneQuest is probably at the top end of the d100 complexity scale, while something like the original Basic Role Player or the original Worlds of Wonder are at the bottom end of Complexity. Most of the complexity actually comes from varaint rules, or added stuff, and so won't only apply to campaigns hat use them. But one of the things that make the rules easier is that there is (or at least was) an underlying structure and logic to how things worked. GM doesn't have to worry about things like spell compatibility and stacking. There are really only a couple of special cases, and most of those are common sense stuff. In fact common sense is kinda the watchword for handling the system. The game is definitely "simulationist". In fact it tends to be a dark & gritty sort of RPG. Characters only have about a dozen hit points and one or two good hits will end a fight. Character do get to defend themselves with their weapons and armor and sometimes magic can soak some damage, but big monsters are deadly, tactics important and superior numbers is a huge advantage. Just about anything can get lucky, roll a critical and potentially kill a powerful character. A typical D&D style encounter would probably wipe out a d100 group. If you want something with more of a D&D feel then Classic Fantasy might be the version of d100 for you. The author designed the game (both versions) to ty and capture the feel of Classic D&D . Hope that helps, good luck.

Probavbly MAgic World. It has more tools out of the box and gives you a decent start for a fantasy game. Plus as a Chasoium BRP product you have a high degree of comaptibility with all the other Chasoium games. So you can raid them for more stats, weapons, and the like. It would help if we know what sort of campaign you had in mind and just how rules-litea game you are looking for.

Indeed! I'm doing just that right now. A couple of my players went on vacation and I'm writing up some handouts to cover what they were doing while the rest of the group was on the adventure. Since I've been wanted to bring in some Berroc Saxons and the PKs are going to London. This was a good time to introduce them. Book of Sires has been pretty helpful in that regard. I now know that Berroc Saxons have been there since they arrived with Flavius Stilicho c.400, which was very useful to me since I started the campaign in 410.