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The old (RQ2) solution was to have weapon skills cross over to related weapons at half ability. So someone who knew how to use an ax at 80%, could use a mace at 40%, instead of the starting percentage, and so forth.

Okay. THe PCs were agents sent to Novaya Zemlya to make contact with a Russian major who crashed there during a storm after alerting MI6 that something was going on and he had to come in right away. The PCs got dropped on on the iland and reached the crashed site, where the airplane was half buried in a ravine. One of the PCs climbed down to the door and got inside, only to find said polar bear already inside, siffing around the cockpit, where the body of the Russian Major was. The player hoped to get the bear to chase him outside the airplane, and literally poked the bear before jumping out the door to grab onto the rope he climbed down on. Meanwhile, one of the other PCs went around to the opposite site of the airplane and found the cargo door came open during the crash (which was how the bear got inside). Sadly for the bear, one of the agents shot it in order to get access to the (unknown to them) dead Major. LOL! Sounds like a classic B monster movie. Ursula, Terror of the North. The Hunters caught more than they bargained for. Un-bearable carnage, un-bearable tradegy, un-bearable puns.

Sort of/not really. What I mean by that is styles do chance and every advances at an accelerated rate in Pendragon, so sort of. On the other hand, it would take a lot of time and resources to build or rebuild a castle, fort, or cathedral, and little incentive to do so with a function design other than to keep up with the latest styles, so probably not. What I expect happens in that different areas probably upgrade in fits and spurts depending upon the situation and economics. If a lord does well in battle, harvest or whatever, he might put some of his extra income to updating buildings and fortifications. When a lord has to rebuild stuff that got damaged in siege or raid, he probably replaces it with newer stronger designs. So the land is probably a Hodge Podge of styles and eras, being more uniform or either extremes of the income scale. THe ultra rich can afford the latest and greatest, while the poor have a hard enough time just maintaining what they already have. I think everything sort of radiates out from Arthur. The closer you are to one of his favorite cities (Camelot, Caerlon, etc.) the richer and more advanced you'll tend to be. The further away you are, the more historically accurate you'll be - and this reaches out further than Logres. You can get a feel for this by looking at the gear knights have. While the overall tech advances, a knight in Norman mail riding a charger wouldn't be all that out of place in the 550s.

It's nice for explain the weird "customs" and behaviors seen in some of the Quests, but that's just one specialized aspect of the Arthurian setting. Most of the Quests turn out to by some sort of symbolic representation of some spiritual concept or virtue, and are by the nature somewhat surreal- even to the knightly heroes of the story -most those adventures tend to dip into Faerie a bit.

Kinda. Most sceanios tend to have a short synopsis of the adventure that functions similarly to a outline. Mostly individualized, although as adventures are a form of story telling, each typically has themese common to all stories, such as a introduction and ending. But since not all stories are the same, all outlines cannot be. If fact, I'd say that if two adventures had the same outline they'd pretty much be the same adventure. That said, certian styles and layouts were common to several adventures written for a particular game during a particula era. RQ2 stuff has it's own "flavor", as does early Stormbinger and CoC. Yes, some BRP games use one or more story formats at times, and do reuse the same story ideas and swap out different elements to keep it fresh.Prince Valiant in particular probably comes the closes to having a standardized outline, followed by Pendragon, but in both cases the advture outlines are really just frameworks that a GM can start with to help create their own adventures, and both play upon common tropes of their setting: damosel in distress; challenge knight at a bridge; a evil knight who mistreats his serfs; a monster terrifying the land; the quest. Very different for each game and setting. Pendragon, for instance, is very different form CoC, in almost every aspect. Mechanically it wouldn't be hard to cross pollinate stuff from one RPG to the other, as all BRP games share many common characteristics, (although Pendragon uses very different game mechanics that most other versions of BRP), but thematically CoC would radically alter (some would say ruin) Pendragon.

For CoC I could see something like an eight pointed start of Chaos with every option pointing to death. Maybe Ian should run a campaign where all the PCs start off dead and are trying to become alive. Just to break up the monotony. BTW, is the flowchart what the designed & intented path of the story should be, or should it include all the detours, sidetracks and dead ends the PCs add to the adventure? For instance I recently had a player who decided to play tag with a polar bear. That wasn't something I had planned on when I wrote the adventure.

The introduction on pages 7-8 of the KAP 5.2 core rulebook comes close. With a little cutting & pasting it could easily fit onto one page. Of course, that just gives a rough overview, but that can't be helped.

Yes you can. To what depth depends upon your prefernces and how much more detail you want to add to combat. I watched Lindybeige's video on Spear vs. Sword and wondered how to model it in Pendragon (a variant of BRP), and figured out that applying the +5/-5 reflexive modifier (or even a +10/-10, and Pendragon uses D20s not D100s) , combined with another modifier for a shield wall, would come pretty close and still remain simple. In the end I didn't implement the idea because, although it may be more realistic, it isn't more Arthurian, and would lessen the importance of knights. If I were running in a different setting, I might have done it. I've also allowed long weapons to attack from the second rank, leading to situations where someone can get double or triple teamed yet only attack one of those people. Most of that could port over to BRP fairly painlessly. In fact, RQ2/3 had Phalanx rules that could help as far as the overlapping shield coverage and attacking from the back ranks goes.

Yes, I'll second that. A unit that see's it's not being effective and withdraws to try something different later isn't suffering form a loss of morale. A unit that throws down it's weapons and scatters in every direction to try and get out of dodge as quickly as possible probably is.

Yeah, although as written the character is "busy" all night. But in general "Lustful" for Pagans if off. The idea is that Pagans acknowledge and appreciate the power of fertility, not that their all sex maniacs.

Okay. Or even making it a POW based skill would work for me. My major point here is that a unit that has it's morale break and turns and runs isn't rationally reworking their strategy, but panicking and fleeing for their lives. BTW, in real life morale tends to get shaken a lot quicker than in most RPGs. Most people don't really want to fight for their life, and it doesn't take much to make then want to give up and run away.

And it might be worth noting that medieval manors tend to be small plain buildings, not the elaborate mansions we think of as manor houses today. I believe I posted a plan for one awhile back and it's pretty much two levels and five or so rooms (Hall, Parlor, Kitchen Buttery, Bedroom, and maybe a Solar). Most manor houses you see in RPGs tend to be laid out a bit too modern with multiple bedrooms, libraries, chimneys and such. Something like... this:

And British Christians get Energetic, too. Maybe an opposed roll of sorts. Ideally any sort of "temptation" on a quest would be opposed by some virtue or passion. But as written the adventure is easier for most Christians than for most Pagans.

Not surprising as it was written over 30 years ago. Yes, the Pagan "virtues" are all played off as negative traits that must be overcome to succeed. It's practically paganism as viewed by Christians, who would have an easier time of it. I think this is part of a bigger problem with fitting Paganism into the Pendragon setting.

I'd say you have a mix of Celtic (native pre-Roman designs), Roman (mostly the cities and villas), and Medieval (the age of knighthood), architecture. One thing worth noting is that with the accelerated technological advances, the "Medieval" architecture would actually cover nearly a thousand years, from post-Roman Britain to 16th century Gothic. If you got the old Lordly Domains supplement or older Nobles Book, you can see some of the evolution in terms of castles, with castles becoming more complex, and multilayered, towers become more rounded and so forth. As castles represent the dwelling places of the ruling classes similar characteristics will trickle down to manor houses of knights, churches and so on. As times goes on the Celtic and Roman building should be upgraded to latter designs. For resorces, I suggest you look up any famous buildings and look at the year they were constructed. St. Paul's, Notre Dame, the Tower of London, the old Roman villas near Grateley and Tisbury, Celtic round houses. All this should help to give you an idea of what was available and when.

(Sorry duplicate post)

Yes, but that isn't morale, just good common sense. THe idea here isn't that only idoits fight on when they should be running, but that as things happen some combatants will lose the will to continue fighting - and this might have little to do with the overall coruse of the battle at that point. For instance let's say during a battle someone sees the guys on either side of him get shot and drop, and a third shot barely misses him.. Now the rest of his forces might be doing good, but he might be feeling expecially vulnerable and decide to bug out. Yes, that would work. Personally I think a simple POW roll (or skill roll) would do it. Perhaps with modifiers. THe thing is, it's not so much about making the right tactical decision and more about what the character feels he should do.

Which all going to show that it isn't about INT. Single-cell organisms aren't thinking they are reacting. Except morale isn't a intellectual decision not to fight, but more of an emotional one. Its about confidence, enthusiasm and disciple. Again, if it were an intellectual decsion about self preservation then one side or the other probably wouldn't be there in the first place, as combat is inherently against self preservation. A lot of the time where one side or the other's morale breaks and the run away, it isn't the right choice tactically. Often the outcome of the battle was still undecided, or even favored those who fled. I still that that reflect POWs and the determination to stick thing out when they look bad. The difference is that isn't a lose of morale but a change of tactics. Just like an army that withdraws from the battlefield in good order isn't being routed. I don't. By the narrative, a character can always choose to act heroically. Player characters would never be afraid and so on.

That would work, escept that if it functioned like a skill it would almost always get better when low. In BRP terms I think POW and the SAN rules seem to work out the best. Get shot at a lot and you could suffer from shell shock. About the only thing I think it needs is the possibility of a POW gain roll. Don't forget Valorous/Cowardly

I don't think it really should be INT based. Morale isn't "tactical awareness" it's if someone has the will to fight on after seeing their allies get mowed down. If it were about Intelligence then the bright people on one side of a battle would be taking off after the first round. Take a look at right lift combat statistics. Most of the actual fighting is done by a small percentage of the army, while most people either duck behind cover and don't shoot back, or just shoot in the general direction of the enemy. Niether of those things are particular intelligent, but it's not just the dumb people who duck for cover.

One of the things that gets brought up around here a lot is that most BRP games, Pendragon included, have a bit of a learning curve that can make them intimidating to new Game Masters. People feel that if they don't know a lot about Glorantha, the Cthulhu Mythos, or Arthurian Lore, then they feel too intimidated to run RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu or Pendragon. The BRP Big Gold Book was a similar case. It gave you most of the rules and variants that Chaosium ever did, in one book, which was great for an experienced BRPer, but made it tougher for new GMs, who now had to mix n' match a ruleset before they could start. What Pendragon might need would be some sort of "Pendragon Lite" intro that makes things more approachable to novices. Something like what the original BRP did for RuneQuest. Just cover the basics of rules and setting in a 16 page booklet or so, including a short solo adventure for a squire or newly knighted character. The maybe a short supplement for starting up a campaign, how to adapt things for inexperienced characters, and so forth. Most of us GMs do that sort of stuff automatically, but it might not look so easy to someone new to the game. Unlike many other RPGs Pendragon doesn't come out and tell you what sort of characters are needed for any given adventure, and adventures are not "balanced" in the classic RPG sense (i.e. rigged). In my own campaign, when I ran White Horse, one of my players was upset because the trait tests involved were very difficult for a pagan character to pass. He griped that "The adventure is designed so that I'll fail." I replied "No, it's just not designed so that you will succeed. They are not the same thing." That's something that people coming from other RPGs aren't prepared for, but probably should be alerted to.

Most of the published adventures are two hard for only two knights, especially to starting characters. Maybe there is potential for a supplement designed for starting characters and players? Especially for those who don't want to start back in the Uther Peroid.

I think it sort of harks back to my previous post. Generally speaking, in Pendragon, as well as in most other RPGs, the more interesting and setting specific adventures tend to required more experienced characters and seasoned players. Once it becomes an introductory adventure for novice players with new characters the GM needs to reduce the difficulty, but then risks making the setting seem to easy. It sort of like playing Star Wars and running a new group of PCs into Darth Vader or some other famous baddie. In a straight on scenario, the players will probably get their heads handed to them. If the GM nerfs it so that they can survive Vader, then there is the risk that the players will get the wrong impression about their relative ability compared to such a major character. The Adventure of the White Horse is nice in this regard as most of the major tests are personal in nature with the players success or failure not reflecting upon anyone else. About the only opposition the speak of in the adventure are the knights that force the PKs to joust, and their abilities don't reflect upon anyone else. The overall adventure is so offbeat that the GM could adjust the difficulty without it coming back to haunt the group later.

I'll second White Horse, although the PKs will need to be good horsemen to reach the interesting part. It's nice in that the consequence for failure aren't live and death (for the PKs anyway). It has more of a Celtic feel than a King Arthur feel, and might be a bit hard on new players.

Hmm. It's hard to think of something that works as a good introduction and capture the spirit of the game, and cover romance. Ususally the intro style adventure are set in the earlier Periods when things are more direct and simple. The more interesting Arthurian adventures kinda assume the players are up to speed and their characters are somewhat more seasoned, and would probably chew up a pair of new characters/players. My advice would be to start with the bear hunt introductory adventure from the rule book (print out the hunting tables in advance to make running the hunt easier). If you want to add a more Arthruian feel to it, add something else to it, such as Merlin showing up and sending the squires off on some side quest. You just need to consider the limitations that come wih two inexperienced characters being run by two inexperienced players. There is only so much you can expect them to pull off. Frankly, for what you want, you'd probably be better served with the Prince Valiant RPG. It has the feel you want but is much more forgiving.