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Atgxtg

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Everything posted by Atgxtg

  1. I think an unopposed Horsemanship roll was the problem, as a knight with Horse 20 only got knocked down when taking 2xSIZ in damage.. If the horsemanship roll had been opposed by the damage roll it would have worked. I wonder why the knockdown rule was changed to exceeding SIZ? Yeah, what?! That is usually strapped on. That might not change much, as you still can't get more hit points back from an injury that it caused. In my campaign one player's main characters have the natural healer family characteristic and typically have a character with a score over 20 in First Aid. The player often criticals when treating 2 and 3 point wounds. The rules still favor the mounted character. While I think the rule was poorly worded by "capping skill" the important thing to remember is that the +5/-5 reflexive modifier for being mounted still applies, and can bump the skill above the Horsemanship score. And a horseman should have a good horsemanship skill. Me too. I'm not so sure the new rules are more gentle, as a 3 on 1 situation is now for someone with Sword 10, now means one opponent will get an unopposed attack. I MO the older method of dividing skill was better and simpler. Still the new method is more consistent with how multiple actions are handled. I think the armor rules are the same. Just some of the names used might have changed. THe standard protection for the knights in the adventure is still 12 points with Sir Ector getting 14 points. No, per page 6 : "If the loser rolled a Partial Success, they may also apply the Shield or Parry protection value of their shield/weapon" Good catch, and yeah, that's bad. In fact it is deal breaker bad to me. If hit points become SIZx2, I won't even pick up KAP6.
  2. Jeff, that would depend entirely upon the GM of a given group. Per KAP5.2 page 34, " Each Gamemaster determines the prevailing attitude of Britain toward women during his or her campaign. In some, female knights may be common and acceptable, raising no eyebrows at all. Or they might be strange and unaccepted. Most likely, reactions will vary from person to person," So it really comes down to what a given GM deems suitable in that campaign. If a GM is okay with it then some or even all the knights could be female. If not, then the players have to either accept what the GM rules, or not play. Things like inheritance, marriage, and and how child birth affects knightly responsibilities would need to be addressed (maternity leave?) somehow just because they will come up as Pendragon is a generational game.
  3. Why? That's never been what the Arthruian Mythos or Pendragon was about. There are plenty of RPGs where you can do what you want, and have that. But this is not the setting for such. Historically men fought and women stayed home and raised the children, and it really wouldn't have worked the other way around Also historically LGBTQ+ people would not have been tolerated in a medieval society. Again, there are plenty of RPGs out there where you can have equality regardless of sex/race/social status/religion/etc. But that's not how it was, nor how it should be for a historical or semi-historically based RPG. Why must every RPG be changed to suit modern ideals? Why would it be a good thing? What makes you think that? The mounting evidence, based upon what we are seeing with films, tv, video games, and now D&D is that doing so ruins everything. All these pre-existing settings and stories are interesting as they are, and altering them to make them all fit the modern cookie cutter image ends up destroying everything that made them compelling in the first place. For example, part of the appeal of the Arthurian story to many people, is the illicit affiar between Guinvere and Lancelot. Well, with modern rules and values, Gwen could simply have divorced Arthur. That whole story only works because of the way medeival soceity worked. Even Arthur becoming King does make sense when looked at from a mdoern point of view. Michael Palin was right, " strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government! Supreme executive powerderives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony!" That's what makes that scene so funny. Would any person in a modern soceity let someone rule over them as a king because of a sword? 1. If people have been excluded/rejected from a gaming group, for any reason, then they will continue to be excluded for said reason, regardless on what's in print, because it is the other people in the gaming group who exclude or reject them. FYI I have indeed excluded people from a gaming group, but never over the gender or sexual orientation. Usually it was because they were terrible to game with, or could show up on a regular basis. 2. If someone is not attracted to a particular game, well, that's just tough. No one has to rewrite a game to appeal to someone else. There are lots of games out there that I'm not attracted to and I don't play them. For instance, I'm not found of RQG and don't play it. As far as I can tell the game is doing just fine without me. 3. The games are not prejudiced, the settings are. For instance if someone were running a game set during WW2 you won't be able to play someone who is Jewish in the German military, because Nazi Germany was a racist, prejudiced place. 4. If people won't play a game because the genders and sexual orientation of the characters in the game different from their own, then how do they expect to be able to deal with the many setback that will occur during actual play. Or how can they deal with the other people the have to interact with in daily life, especially at the gaming table? Since the vast majority of people in the world are straight heterosexuals, anyone who cannot tolerate that has problems well beyond the gaming table. Then why have the forums become less inclusive and unwelcoming over the last decade? There was a time when people could come to a site like this and debate all sorts of ideas and rules. Now everyone has to cater to those who want "inclusivity and diversity" brought into ever game, regardless if that fits with the setting or not. Ten years ago we'd have a good debate with lots of people chiming in and giveing thier own points of view. Today, we get progressive levels of wokeness (anyone remember how this started with one person just wanting more female knight artwork?). Frankly I'm surprised the thread hasn't been locked down yet. And I cannot help but think that you are horribly wrong. Pendragon is popular today for what it is. If you throw all that away to recast in the the mold of 2020 society, it won't be anymore. Just look at how Star Wars, Star Trek, Terminator, and Doctor Who are doing. All those franchises went down the same path you want Pendragon to go down,. and all have lost most of their fan base and can't sell any merchandise anymore. If someone want's an Arthruian RPG where half the knight and rulers are female, with lots of LBGTQ+ characters sprinked about, then they should write it. No co-opt an existing RPG. IF someone really wants to do that in Pendragon, well they can. It's thier campaign, they can put Arthur, Lance, and Gwen into a threesome, if that's what they want. But you don't really want that, you just want to try and force everyone else to do that.
  4. Oh. I'm less opposed tot hat, although it could be viewed as being sexist. It's not really that valid an option though. Female knights open up a can of worms, though. There was some female warrior art in a previous book that, while nice art, turned out to be poor armor. Oh, okay. From your previous post I though you were pushing for change to make the setting more emancipated. I;m not sure if that is a good thing though. I think that people should be aware of what the game and setting are like coming in, or else they might be disillusioned with the reality of the game. Pendragon is something of an acquired taste, and is differnt from the typical FRPG. I could certinaly see it get a few pages in whatever the KAP6 version of Knights & Ladies turns out to be. I do think that a warning about the consequences- at least in terms of lots of female knights (a one off here or there is no big deal), and and how to handle the passing of generations would be in order. For example, in my campaign I houseruled that new knights get 1/10th the glory of the parent with the highest glory. That way if a knight marries a noblewoman with much more glory than him, the children will benefit from that (which they don't do by RAW). That rule would also help as far as playing the daughters of female knights or warriors. I've considered extending it to close family, to allow for a nice to inherent, as female warriors tend not to have children, as there are often social, religious, and physical complications. No they don't Having enough to fill half the seats at the Round Table would. Neither is any character in a RPG. In the end this is all just "make pretend". A GM has to run characters of all races and genders in a game, all the time, yet a player having to do so is some sort of life crisis? This is a non-issue. It is catering. Pendragon is not a democracy. THe GM is the authroity at the table. That's actually in the rulebook. If the GM says "no" then the answer is no, even if everyone else at the table thinks it should be yes. How do you know that playing someone of a different gender in a RPG is all that differernt from playing somone of a different species? We have no dragons or hobbits to compare notes with. In the end, this is all stuff that we pretend, and is played using the same methods. And it should be. It is a partriacal setting. I wouldn't allow an all feamle RAF fighter sqadron if I were running a game set in Brtian during WW2. No, it actually a near inevitability of the time and place. I know we all are raised with the idea of equality, and I certainty wouldn't want to take rights away from any group of people, the fact is historically most warriors were men for reasons. Childbirth and rearing being one of the major ones. Greater upper body strength being another. Modern society has ways around those problems but pre-industrial societies didn't. And speaking of relics, how about plate armor, warhorse and lance charges. Don't they seem archaic? How about game breaking? Where all these female knights getting their income from? Why isn't some male "rightful" heir running it instead? What happens to the estate when she dies? What happens when she can fulfill her knightly duties becuase she is pregnant? o they haven't. But you are knocking on everyone elses door by stating that the game needs these things to evolve. Pendragon can do just fine without more art of women in armor. Well, Greg made many of his thoughts known, and the guy in charge of the game now was hand picked by Greg, and 6th edition is supposed to be Gregs final vision of the game. As far as getting Greg's ideas on Pendragon from the ground up, they are out there, in various designers notes, articles, and posts. And nothing has really evolved. People think that the ideas of equality and making games more feamle friendly is a new thing, it isn't. Yes, there is a lot of room for flexibility, but that is precisely what you will lose by making feamle knights more mainstream in the setting. A good example of this is the magican rules from KAP4. On the one hand the rules made magican player characters an option. On the other hand such characters didn't fit well into the game. I think that would be false advertising. As it stands a player can play a female knight if, and only if their GM allows it. As far as the extra ifo went, that would reqiure raising a lot of questions, most of which should probably be left to a GM. For instance what would be the proper form of address would female knight use. Sir? It wouldn't be Lady, as that refers to a marries noblewoman, nor Dame as that was the propr title for a landholder Banerettess. And is that a bad thing? Not all change is an improvement upon what existed before. That's why somethings end up getting dropped when they don't pan out-such as the Book of the Manor. Then play it. And I think you're dead wrong. If any GM wants to have female knights in the game, they can. Nothing is stopping them. But to do so they will have to sit down, do some research, and figure out how doing to is going to impact their game. That's the same thing a GM has to do when adding any new houserule or other element to their campaign. But if they aren't willing to put in the effort to do that first, then maybe they shouldn't. What it seems like is that you want the designers to alter the structure of society in the game to accommodate female knights. That means they will decide how all the fiddling details work out, how inheritance is supposed to work, how marriages for female knights work, how childbirth affects knight's service (this is pretty much a killer as the enemy isn't going to postpone a war because someone is in the family way), etc. etc. Now once there is any sort of official sidestep of the feudal structure already in place, then it becomes the new standard, and makes it all the more difficult for a GM to diverge from that interpretation. Yup. As have I. But once again, the door is open for those who want female knights in their game, and there is tons or females in armor pics all over the internet for those who want them. There is no reason for Pendragon to go Woke.
  5. Well, if it were up to me, I'd go with Dodge or a difficult (half) Agility roll.But then there are a few things I'd houserule if I were running a modern BRP game anyway. I'm not all that thrilled with how the game handles grenades to begin with, fragmentation grenades in particular. With those grenades it less about the explosion and more about the fragments. Rather than doing 4d6, I'd probably have then do 1d6 hits for 1d6 each or some such. A flak vest is quite useful against grenades.
  6. Yes, however the vast majoirty play the same in fairly similar ways, which is why we shouldn't alter the core rules to cater to a small subset of players who think that we need more rules for female knights. How about the ones that have been used as the primary sources, namely Le Morte D'Arthur and to HRB. Most everything else in the game has been tweaked to be compatible with those two. Yes they are. It's a tabletop roleplaying game. They don't have to. But that doesn't obligate a GM or a game designer to alter things to accommodate them. If a GM was running a RPG where everyone plays female characters and somebody feels "widly uncomfrtable" about doing so, then they don't have to play. And the GM doesn't have to alter the game just to cater to that player. How do you know? Yes people play for different reasons, but that factors into what they play. I doubt anyone who plays Pendragon lives as a medieval serf, or was married off against their will for political reasons. If that is the sort of BS they had to go through in real life then they probably don't want to play a game sent is a feudal medieval culture. THe thing is, no one is forced to play Pendragon or any other RPG. The see a game, and decide they want to try it. If that game was so objectionable in the first place, then they wouldn't have decided to play it. Pendragon has existed more or less the same for over 30 years. Anyone who is going to play it has fair warning as to what it is and should decide if they are okay with that before they decide to play it. If they don't like something then they can certainly work out changes for their group. But that doesn''t mean the game itself should be changed just for them. Pendragon is what it is, and shouldn't be altered to chase after people who don't want to play it. The core ideas behind Pendragon have remained unchanged. It has been and hopefully will continue to be Greg's vision of an Arthruian RPG. Note that Prince Valiant, another Arthurian written by Greg, is different and reflect Hal Foster's take on King Arthur. No, Lancelot is female fanficion, essnetially a "paperback romance". Galahad is church propaganda for the devout. But then pretty much all the main characters are fanfiction by modern standards. Was the world in a different place when 5th edition came out. Look, Greg could have made the game more "unisex" at any time but didn't do so because it didn't fit. He left things up for each GM to decide for themself, because YGMV. But if you alter the core rules to make knighthood unisex, then you take away that choice. To answer it bluntly, why? Why does Pendragon have to evolve? It has lasted all these years becuase people like it for what it is. There are lots of RPGs out there where people can play female knights. D&D springs to mind again. Furthermore, the door has been open to female characters since at least 3rd edtion, and no one needs to change the rules to play female knights. Any Pendragon GM could start up a campaign tomorrow based around a group of female PKs. Nothing in the game prevents that. So why do we need to change the game? And, if we did change the game, we'd have to tackle the economic, inheritance, and social problems that would come from it, specially: Economic: A pre-industrial society can only support so many knights. In fact, that was why the manor system of land management came about. If you have women knights then you need to figure out what those men are going to be doing. Inheritance: Primogeniture is how inheritance is decided. Once you allow for female knights things get much more complicated. Does the first son or first daughter inherit? Maybe the first child? What happens when two knight marry? Historically, Primogeniture came about to stop the cycle or wars over succession whenever a powerful noble died. Put the daughters into the mix and things would be even less stable than they were. If people want to play in a game where everyone is equal then a game where you have a High King ruling over everyone isn't going to be it, no matter what gender the knights are. King Arthur's count is pretty much the poster child for a patriarchy, and the PKs are helping to support it.
  7. Pagans existed in the 5th and 6th centuries and much of the early Arthruian tales are basically pagan. That not a break at all. Medieval people looked at things through a medieval lens. They pretty much retconned Rome and anient Greece into a Feudal structure. It how people like Julius Cesar and Alexander the Great end up being viewed as Knights. Certainly. I'm all for the exception, provide it remains the exception. I think the occasion feamle knight, or other woman warrior is fine for a campaign, and can enhance things. Matter fo fact I have a woman running a female Saxon now, and she is planning on bringing in another woman to replace her and maybe even become a knight. What I'm against is making the setting cosmopolitan with equal representation for all, as that not Arthurian Britain. But they are all over the place in Arthruian Lore. Look at the orgins of characters such as Gawaine, and Kay, or items such as Excalibur and the Holy Grail. All have pagan roots. But turning the dials in the game books changes where the center point lies. It also causes a lot of problems in terms of economics and succession. It takes a manor with hundred of peasants to support one knight. If knighthood becomes open to women then the whole feudal structure is going to need to be reworked. If a GM wants to alter things in their campaign, that their choice, but I don't think the core rules need to be changed to chase after people who aren't interested in the setting in the first place. For contrast look at D&D. Most D&D game worlds tend to be the same, because all have a sort of cosmopolitan society going on - the same cosmopolitan society. If Pendragon gets altered to bring it more in line with modern values then it will just be another D&D. I don't think the questions are sensitive, just some of the people. Honestly, there is no need or reason to change Pendragon from what it is into some sort of modern socialist state. The Arthurian world is not fair and equal. Not everybody get fair representation in that setting. That goes for the 98% or so of the population who aren't part of the nobility as well as women, and foreigners. If they feel exclused from the game then why are they at the table? Look, when I started up my current campaign, I had a female player who wanted to play, and I laid out some ground rules as far as what was permitted in this campaign- that included no female knights -at least at first, and that she would need to play a male knight. If that wasn't acceptable then we wouldn't have played Pendragon. I don't buy into the whole "feel excluded" argument. If someone wanted to play a hobbit would the feel excluded if the GM refused because there aren't any hobbits in the setting? People watch and read and play all sorts of stories where the main characters differ in species/sex/race/social class/color/religion/economic wealth level/political leanings/favotire food/etc. and do not feel excluded. Yes it is a bit of a hodge-podge, athough there is some undelyng unity. Again, I'm fine with what a GM chooses to do in thier campaign, but I don't believe the game should be altered to try and cater to gamers who aren't interested in Pendragon in the first place. Greg could have made the game gender netural back in first edition. He didn't do so becuase it didn't fit the setting. You eliminated pagans? How to you represent Merlin, the Ladies of the Lake, Faeries and other Pagan elements of the setting? It depends a lot of what sources you use. There were (and still are) a lot of Celtic Pagan and semi-Pagan elements in the Arthurian tales as well as in the historical setting. Such elements remain in many of the stories and also explains why some stories make so little sense to modern readers. These elements weren't really a problem in Pendragon until the KAP5 supplements when Arthurian Britain shifted into a mid-late medieval model.
  8. Okay, in that case: 1. Dive behind cover. Can be dome with a Jump roll (or possibly a Dodge roll) with the protection determined by the cover. 2. If you are already some distance away you can drop prone and hope the fragments go over your head. I'd probably use a Luck roll here to avoid getting hit, and probably adjust the difficulty by range as the further out you are the less likely would would be to get hit. 3. Grab grenade and throw it away, hopefully making it someone else's problem. You might want to use a DEX roll here to get rid of it before it goes" boom" or just a hard Throw roll. 4. Find something to cover the grenade with, such as a helmet or a ally you're not that fond of. Get protection based upon what you put onto of it. I'd suggest double damage to whatever gets sacrificed upon the grenade, but probably no damage to anyone else. I wouldn't tie things to the initiative count. Realistically in a grenade lands at you feet right before/during/after you take a shot, you still have a second or two to react. Otherwise you will wind up with player playing all sorts of timing tricks to get the enemy committed to action so that they can't do anything about the grenade. Instead I'd look at it more like a dodge or parry, namely as a reaction to an attack. I'd make it a hard roll, since you only have a couple of seconds to act, but otherwise not worry about intiative counts. Besides, a combat round is 12 seconds, while a typical grenade will explode in only 4 seconds. Well by RAW it goes off off like any other attack- it explosed on the same Strike/DEX rank as it was thrown. It doesn't just sit there for a full round. THat's why I think it's best to make any sort of reaction to the greande a free reaction similar to a dodge, or parry. It depends upon what version of BRP you are using, but I believe the damage droops off a die every so many meters. BRP Gold Book Grenades to 4d6/4m, and drops off 1 die per additional meter. That's actually much kinder than real life, where the drop off would be more along the lines of 1 die per 4m. BTW, the gold book does have rules for diving prone (Dodge to avoid damage, or DEXx5% for half damage).
  9. No, no, no, no, no. The whole point of playing any sort of RPG based upon a particular setting is to play in the world of that setting, not in the world of today. If you "modernize" Pendragon to fit the social and cultural views of today (probably close to the views duJour) it ceases being that setting and becomes something else. There are loads of logistical reasons as to why the men fought and the women didn't, and any sort of pre-industrial society cannot support that many knights And while were at it, I doubt anybody today would really want to live in a country where they are rules under a monarchy where they have few to no rights. But we don't turn Arthurian Britain into a democracy (well, unless your writing the play Camelot). Let Pendragon remain true to it's source material. Greg gave very good reasons for why the role of women is what it is in PEndragon and those reasons are as valid today as they were in the past. How does it make the game more accessible? Are modern role-players so inept as role playing that they cannot play someone of another race or gender? I'm pretty sure I'm not an elf, dwarf, hobbit, dragon, or a female, but I've played characters are all those species and genders at one time or another. The whole point of role-playing is to play someone that you aren't. I disagree. All that would do would be to encourage people to play the game as something different than what it is. It would also cheapen any warrior women that do appear in a campaign, as they would be commonplace.
  10. Whoa! Dinner first. More seriously, I have found some of my old notes including my "Critter Fitter" speadsheet that I used to scale animals from nearest analogs. It might be worth alook, especially if I can find where I put the "Weapon Class" stuff for scaling up damage for bigger critters. Oh, and the Superworld SIZ table would be useful to you too, as it can help to turn real world data into game stats based on a creatures mass or weight. Oh the rough rule of thumb is x2 mass = +8 SIZ = +6 STR & +6 CON, and probably -1/2 DEX. But most creature in BRP have STR equal to SIZ.
  11. Smashing! I suppose the word "foe" is redudant here as throwing someone onto a live greande is probably not going to edear you to anybody.
  12. Oh, bad for you, they usually don't have a 41 minute fuse.
  13. It depends. "Reinforced Mail" is something of a blanket term, as is "coat of plates", and could cover several transitional armors. For instance a close knight weave (advanced mail) with shoulder pieces, knee cops, elbow cops, and such can ofteen protect as well. I'll take a close look at the armor stuff and see if I can reverse engineer it.
  14. I think Deviotion is you strongly you feel about your relgion. How you might react =if someone bad mouth's it, etc. I think Station is probably how much of a snob you are, how sacred you view the titles and ranks of the noblity, how much you buy into the whole "divine right of kings" idea, and so forth.
  15. Actually the opposite. Reifnorced Mail in KAP3-5 was 12 points while Sir Ector's refirnoced mail is listed at 14 points in the adventure. Sir Servause le Breuse's Advanced Mail seems to be equivlaent to the 11 point Mail with nasal helm but protects for 12 instead of 11. I don't like it. As for the footmen, they should have been give a SIZ increase backin JKAP3 when PK SIZ went from 3d6 to 2d6+6, which would have fixed them. I also haven't seen lance crtis be autokills. Most PKS tend have good weapon skills and get their shield. I with you on this. I started a thread on this awhile back noting that APP is essentially a dump stat, and Morien had a way to adress this fix it but I think you might be readying too much here. It is just a quickstart, so they probably just listed the skills that might actually come up during the adventure. I have mixed thoughts on this. While folk lore wasn't used a lot in my games, I'm not all that thrilled with the idea that someone who knows a lot about his peasants in now an expert of faeries or vice versa. Really? Heraldry and Recognize come up all the time in the published adventures. Maybe. They might have just dropped skills that wouldn't come up in the adventure, especially the ones that would normally start at 0. IMO a slight improvement, as Literacy implies the ability to write, too. Once again, the "missing skills" are all those that would normally start at 0 during the early periods, and were probably omitted as not being relevant to the adventure. Again, it might have just be omitted for the quickstart characters as it wouldn't come up in the adventure, and is a skill that normally starts at 0. Once again, I doubt it's gone. It just wasn't required for the adventure. I hope it isn't gone, as we did know what to do with it. Yes, no real change, other than to be more historically accurate. I think this one is a rule change, but a subtle one, as the charge action doesn't seem to reguire a lance (or spear) to execute. This seems to indicate that a knight who descides to charge using a sword rather than alance can do so but that he still rolls his Charge skill AND he doesn't get the +5 bonus (which does require the lance or spear). I might make for Ladies. Seems problematic to me, as it will ususally negate the mounted vs. foot bonus. Seconded. Brawling doesn't seem to come up much in our games. I don't think it hurts shields in anyway, as 6 points of protection from a heater sure beats 3 from your sword. I think these will be a non-issue. The new passions are all pretty low in value, and would be omitted for most NPKs.I think the reasons why we see Devotion and Stationthen in the write-ups of the sample characters is because this is a quickstart, and to show Agreed. I think these might be a misstep. While it did work that way in KAP1, I think this is just a case of poor rule wording, as the "critical = 20" bit has been omitted. Well that's you opinion. Having played with piecemeal armor in KAP3-4, I disagree. It can be fun to piece together a better suit by getting a new helm or better body armor. It not all that more complex to buy 3 pieces of armor rather than one suit.
  16. Well it is a quickstart, so I expect the actual rules will have some changes, just like RQG did. So far I'm more interested in the obvious rule changes: First Aid can now be applied to oneself, at -10. It also heals damage equal to the healing rate/double healing rate rather than 1d3/1d3+3 Critical hits now do +4d6 instead of double damage Passions & Inspiration now give a inspiration bonus based on the passion value as well as the die result, but (IMO) at the expense of critical successes. Brawling damage is a small fixed amount, making it difficult to harm an armored foe. Weapons now have a parry value and can stop some damage, on a partial success, like a shield. Weapons also seemed to be classed into groups now, rather than specific weapons. Armor has become piecemeal again, similar to, but different than the system in Knight's Adventurous.
  17. 1. Dive behind cover. 2. If you are already some distance away you can drop prone and hope the fragments go over your head. 3. Grab grenade and throw it away, hopefully making it someone else's problem. 4. Find something to cover the grenade with, such as a helmet or a ally you're not that fond of.
  18. Perhaps, but most of the alternate locations that have been presented (Cadbury, Caerleon) have the same problem. Logistics pretty much ensure that any place that could have been Camelot would have been a prominent city or town. Unless you put it somewhere in Faerie.
  19. Yeah, the Tolkien stuff was something of an afterthought. Baiacally "cashing in" on LOTRs popularity. But that did lead to D&D and AD&D developing a sort of pseudo-Middle Earth type setting as the default. Whenever I run an RPG set in Middle Earth, a big hurdle is the various preconceptions players bring with them about Middle Earth thanks to D&D. I've known players who thought it was wrong for wizards to wield swords (Gandalf did), and who thought Grey Elves were smarter and more knowledgeable than High Elves, Wood Elves bigger and stronger than High Elves, and that the Middle Earth-based RPG got things wrong somehow. This despite the fact that Tolkien invented the Silvan (Wood Elf), Sindar (Grey Elves) and Noldor (High Elves) and that Gygax mixed things around in D&D by making High Elves the "common" elves (and HIgh Men the standard man). But back to my main point: While the Prince Vlaint comic strips are chock full of great ideas and characters, not everything is a good fit for Pendragon.
  20. The only problem I see with not using Winchester is that it contradicts Le Morte. That's about it. Still, Greg went with Cadbury Castle in KAP1. If you pick a city outside of Logres, it will probably lead to some difficulties.
  21. I don't know if this would work for you or not, but a few years back I was working with someone on a bestiary, and I did some work deconstructing the creatures from RQ3. Here are a few things I worked out: STR typically is similar to SIZ. Realistically it should increase at a 2/3 ratio with SIZ due to the sqaure-cube law, but most large creatures in the game are magical, and so can be considered to be supernaturally strong. CON tends to increase in proportion to 2/3s the SIZ increase. Ths a creature that's SIZ 40 will probably have a CON around 25 ish. Armor is susally a multiple of the damage bonus. Typically 1 point per db, although values of 3 or even 4 times db are possible for creatres with tough natural armor, such as dragons. Damage dice tends to shift up a dice if the creature is a carnivore, and also for every 8 points of SIZ past a certian point (I'd have to find my notes to get the actual progression). Also, some smaller animals either have a larger damage stat than normal to offset thier db peanlty, or a smaller damage stat but ignore the db modfier. We were using this stuff to stat up animals based on the nearest analogues that had stats- i.e. stating up a Megalodon based on the RQ3 "Large Shark" stats and the square cube law, and we have a database with lots of animals, but then general ideas could easily be adapted to a table with generic stats for creatures of a given size. Probably in increments of 8 SIZ points (double the mass), or 4 SIZ points (about a 40-50%) increase).
  22. Good find. I was speaking more in general terms. What happened was that pretty much every place that liked the Arthurian legend would link itself to King Arthur in some way, retconning the story to suit their needs. That's why practically every region of Britain claims to be Arthur's birthplace or the real Camelot. Many of the famous characters we consider core parts of the tale (Lancelot, Galahad) were such retcons. I think the key thing here isn't if a GM can do this, but what does the GM get out of idea. If a GM has some good story ideas, almost any alternation can work. I still kick around my infamous idea of having one of the player characters turn out to be Arthur during the Sword in the Stone adventure. I've been kicking it around for over 25 years. It's just that such an idea would really alter the campaign. But for any radical idea to really work, there has to be more to it than the novelty of the change.
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