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Hmm, so its' probably tied to the size of the kingdom. Cornwall wasn't part of Logres before, but its own land. Oh wait, I forgot SIRES subdivides Cornwall into three seperate lands, which later get gobbled up by Gorlois and Idres, after Riothamus is killed.. Still if Tintagel is part of Logres there doesn't seem to be much of Cornwall in Cornwall.

Yup. I was just using the "typical example". In reality no two estates are exactly the same, or any two manors either.

Yes, it seems like any PK who is elevated does so because that's what Uflius wants. Probably because of the PKs rep and to help cement an alliance between Silchester, Rydychan and Salisbury. It is a/the major farm area in Logres and a major powerblock to secre the region. Anyone who subscribes to the theory that Uflius knows about Arthur and is setting up for the future might believe that Ulfius is purposely building a power base for Arthur.

Life isn't fair. JUst because RPGs are games doesn't mean that everyone should get the same rewards. Now that said, if a PK is allowed to marry a countess he should have stood out from the pack and done something to deserve it. Don't just give away such a rich holding because of a throwaway line in a pre-made adventure. Make then earn any such reward-a real nobleman would.

I can. The weight and balance are very different, and the weapons wielded in different ways.

What do you mean almost? For better or worse modern comics have pushed to make the female heroes at least equal to the male heroes. Considering the views of her creator, this is probably justifiable in Wonder Woman's case. She was created to get men ready for Woman's Domination. That's not a knock of Women's Liberation or Feminism, but just noting that Marston believed that women should rule the world.

Generally an estate is considered to be one big parcel of land. So to gather manors into one estate they would sort of have to be close to each other. You'd have to consider the manors in between and determine if there was anyone there, and what do do about them. It's possible for a liege to move a vassal from one manor to another, but it's not a popular thing to do, and usually requires the liege to add something to sweeten the pot. The big thing to consider here is that giving someone an estate is a big honor/reward. It's about a good a reward as a knight can hope to ever achieve. SO you need to consider why the Countess would give one knight such a great honor, and he has to be so important to her that she values him more than ten other knights, as those knight won't be getting manors if he gets an estate. None, normally. The key factors here are that: A liege normally gives/grants away only around 20% of his manors. A ten manor estate means making one vassal knight very happy instead on making ten vassal knights happy. So the liege must value that one knight more than ten other knights. A estate holder has ten knights under him and will be a major figure at court and on the battlefield for the Count. That also makes him the most dangerous type of vassal if he were to rebel to shift allegiance to someone else. So he must have proven both his prowess and his loyalty. In the case of Salisbury, considering the 1 manor per knight rule of thumb, and the force of 150 knights, it has about 150 manors, of which only about 30 (20%) would be held by vassals. So adding in an estate means that there would only be 21 vassal knights with land. Two estates reduces that to a dozen knights, and three to only 3. It's all over the place and more of an administration term, based upon population, geography, history, and custom. Most would contain several manors but few if any could hold an entire estate or more than one. IMO you'r best off just ignoring the hundreds. It might be different once a detailed book of Salisbury comes out with a list of manors and such, but for now it's more of a pain. That said, any estate would probably end up being the hundred. That is is an estate hold held ten manors around Thornbush, he's probably end up with an este entire in, or mostly in Thornbush, and it might even be known as Thornbush estate. AN estate is just a group of manors held by the same knight. The term is used to denote a knight with a large holding but not large enough to deserve a greater title. He has more status than a knight, but isn't the equal to a Baron or Count. No problem. MOst of this stuff is both archaic and spefic to Britian, and so even native English speakers probably don't follow all of it. Our modern views of equality and fairness also tend to work against us here.

Oh, I missed that one. Since two of thre PKS in my game were just made bannerettes by Aruelius after his march to retake Brtian, they will be happy. BTW, Is that 100 just from the High King, or would any king do? For instance, since Uther no longer is elected High King in Pendragon, would anyone he appoints get such glory or even be considered a Bannerett? Hmm, come to think of it, if Uther was't High King, why was Gorlois in trouble for leaving Uther's Court? It's not like Gorlois is his vassal.

Yes, to some extent (See below). I think that some of that could be handled by factoring in STR into the move rate, and into default armor value (i.e. anyone that can dish out a punch that does 1d3+5d6 can take throwing such a punch without breaking something, and has a body touch enough to shrug off punches for normal people). But we probably only want to go so far with that thinking, as the comics bends the natural laws as needed. Perhaps something as simple as a point discount for buying related powers? Yeah, that's the problem with thinking logically and applying physics to superheroes. It's a big can o' worms. Like the comics we are forced to draw a line somewhere as to how realistic we make it. Eventually it either becomes too complicated or so self contradictory that it breaks down. I think the best approach is probably to take things only to the point where they still look/seem believable, after allowing for the powers. Unfortunately that point actually varies depending on how much people understand about how and why things work. I remember talking with a friend and comic shop owner about a cover of a classic Superman comic where he is holding up a battleship. My friend didn't have a problem with the picture, as superman was strong enough to do it. I did have a problem as I knew the battleship wasn't strong enough to be lifted from one point and Superman would either break the bow off, or go right tough the battleship like a tack through a piece of cardboard.

I believe it did do something like double move rate outside of combat but there were quite a few borderline cases in the comics. For instance jumping up to a bridge while outrunning flood waters after a dam burst, or leaping to an airplane while some bad guy is leaning out the door shooting at him. What Superwolrd didn't have but probably should was a modifier to leaping and running based on excess STR. Basically is someone is strong enough to be able to lift five tons, then they could naturally jump higher than a normal person. So Supes should probably have a few levels of Leap for free. I'd also question if Superman "had the hots" for Lois back in the early days. It was more the reverse (she kissed him and didn't want him to get away), and probably a bigger failing.

As Morien points out it comes down to if a modifier is something that is tied to what the character does, or due to situation. Most modifiers (inspiration, combat tactics, rearming) are based solely on what one character is doing, add to the skill of the character and are thus a one time bonus. Situational modifiers such as height, or weapon reach are things that factor in the opponent relative to the first character and thus would factor in whenever the situation applies, but might not apply against all opponents. The most common examples of this are the height modifier (AKA mounted vs. foot) and greatspear/halbard vs mounted (a subset of the height modifier). So over 99% of the time the only modifier you need to worry about applying after dividing will be some sort of height modifier.

It's not so much a pagan blessing but a pagan festival. Or that sometimes you have to avoid having fun and put work into achieving some greater goal. Or that could just be me complaining that I had to work on my campaign on Saturday rather than watch movies and play video games. Somewhat. Old D^D was more deadly, sometimes stupidly so, out of the idea of it being a "fair game" or "realistic". Hence you had things like 1st level characters running into a Purple Worm and being eaten 20 minutes into a game session. The whole "game balance" thing is an attempt to address stuff like that. Unfortunately it seems to have gone to far in the opposite direction. That's the thing with limitations like that. The players eventually become aware of them and rely upon them, even learning to exploit them to their own advantage. Like how in A&D players could tell that a character was a assassin simply because he was wearing leather and using a shield. The handful of classes that could do so, were either identifiable as spellcasters (clerics, druids), capable of affording/wearing better armor (fighters), or assassins. Now, the "safety net" in D&D 3+ isn't necessarily a bad thing (that would be another argument), but players expecting the D&D "balanced game" approach elsewhere is. Likw Morient, I do not write adventures the deliberately outclass the PKs. In fact most adventures are written biased towards the PKS. They have to be in order to have a campaign- otherwise players would cycle through PKs too often. That said, I do not nerf the big baddies. If a player decides to go after a dragon, and finds one, well he gets one, and has to deal with the consequences.

That happens at times, in either direction. Sometimes it can be how the players taclke a problem too. For instance my players tend to underestimate threats and get into trouble before they realize it, but occasionally something scares them and they take things much more seriously, alter thier approach, and blow right though something that otherwise would have been a problem. Me either. The thing is that Pendragon is a game where characters are rated on more of an absolute scale, rather than relative to the player characters. Plus the game system is deadly enough so that even weak and unskilled characters can get lucky and drop just about anything short of a dragon or huge giant with a single hit. Just what sort of skill scores constitute a good or excellent knight can stay consistent throughout the campaign, and doesn't need to be updated to reflect the PKs scores. So that footman with Greatspear 15 is always (or nearly always) enough of a threat to be taken seriously. It';s a different RPG but I used to have to explain to one D&D player that "no matter what level you reach, you'll never be a Star Destroyer". That's kinda the situation. In D&D/D20 games everything is relative to the PCs and viewed in that light. An ogre might be tough for beginning PCs but a walk over for high level PCs. But in Pendragon, an ogre is always going to be a dangerous monster and a threat due to it's high STR, SIZ, and damage stats. As far as "chosen one" type adventure go, yes they do exist, but many adventures are winnable, but difficult, and things like traits and religion can make some tasks easier or more difficult but that stuff can balance out depending on the adventure. A pagan might have a problem in one task, but an advantage in another. Plus people can always get lucky. I ran a Dreamjoust adventure, similar to that in the Tournament of Dreams a few sessions back and one Saxon PK, who had terrible traits for that quest, got lucky and crticalled his first lance roll, beating his opponent in the first pass. Meanwhile, another PK with traits good enough for the chivalry bonus, failed, repeatedly. Now there isn;t anything wrong with this, just that some players are accustomed to something else and take time to adapt.

Yes we are going over what sort of staff she wants/needs. Remember that Stabler, grooms, and a "Lacky" is included in the basic manor. She just got the manor this year. At the least she will need a Steward to run the lands, and probably a Chamberlain to run the household, and is considering training another shieldmaiden which would be similar to maitaining a squire. Yes, but I think BoE is a bit too harsh with that. It seems that historically it took quite a while for manors to be revalues properly (that's exactly what Doomsday was supposed to be doing). So I plan on only re-evaluating manors when the King changes or so. Otherwise many investments don't make a lot of sense, considering how long they take to become profitable. Yup, and since the manor was a gift and not a grant, and the character is in her 50s, it's debatable if she will live long enough to make a profit before she dies and looses it. Which at present it can't. Now, if she does more stuff for Aurelius and/or Uther before she dies, there is a chance that it might become sort sort of grant or that the King could do some sort of end run around primogeniture to see that the land ends up with someone she chooses as a heir. Kings can do that, especially with newly won land. Frankly with her Nordic Charm of 26 and Uther's weakness for the fair sex, it doesn't seem all that difficult for the land to become more permanent. Yup. Plus investments can be damaged or destroyed, manors lost and so forth. In fact, as most of the PKs have returned from exile, they have had to spend a good amount of their accumulated treasure (all those successful battles under Aurelius) to repair their manors to the states the were left in. Nothing eats up PKs money like land. One of the PKs had a villa on his holding get raided and torched, and lost a tower, stable, and a small fortune in furniture, but was just happy that the Saxons didn't find the hidden vault full of coin.

Thanks. that was what I thought, but wasn't sure. Looks like the PK is going to be set up well. The character is actually a Berroc Saxon shieldmaiden who was in exile at Budec court and served as one of Uther's guards, and supported Aurelius campaign, and was gifted with a manor after the march. So going with the typical £10 manor and eliminating the need to maintain a wife, maid, children and squire (but adding in for a steward and chamberlain) she should have around 2.5-3 in discretionary funds and could easily build 6-8 weirs, 2-3 fisheries , a riding and route, and make a tidy sum. Thats without using "Space".

True, but most campaigns tend to be. FOr instance most GM wouldn't think of running an adventure that required something that the PCs lacked, or use a monster that overpowered the group. So, by default, anything in the adventure is something that they players are expected to be able to overcome. When players go from that to Pendragon, where there are adventures that are only achievable by Lancelot or Galahad or some such, they suffer a bit of culture shock. I've had similar things happen with RuneQuest. The first time a PC lost a limb in RQ the players were so shocked that you'd have thought the GM had actually took off a player's limb. Dismemberment was just something outside of the expected norms . This is a two way street, too, as someone who plays a lot of Pendragon will tend to react a bit differently when playing D&D. We had a situation where one player was running a knight of the king who was sent to help the party but heard on of the other PCs bad mouthing the king within a minute of the knight's arrival. The knight drew steel and wanted to bring the other PC in for treason, while the D&Ders were shocked that the knight would attack a "party member". Two completely different paradigms.

Fair enough. My point though is that the player was somewhat surprised and bothered that the adventure hit him in his weak spot. He had a similar reaction to the Tournament of Dreams as his chivalric traits weren't all that great. He hasn't quite adjusted tot he fact that not every adventure is equally challenging for every PK.

Yes he did/does. But the "D&D mentality" does cause misunderstandings and problems when playing other RPGs. Sometimes a player who is used to how D&D does something makes assumptions or decisions based upon how things work in D&D, believing them to be universal truths rather than game specific ones. For instance, the player was somewhat upset when I ran the Adventure of the White Horse (from KAP 3/4) feeling that his Pagan PK had "no chance" of succeeding on the adventure. Now the Adventure of the White Horse is an especially challenging adventure for Pagan PKs, due to certain traits, but that's part of the game. Adventures are not necessarily written to a character's strengths and not every character of approximately the same power level has the same chance of success on a given adventure. That's not a secret either, but it does catch some players off guard at times. Especially if they are used to D&D campaigns where things tend to be customized to suit their characters.

In the Book of the Estate, page 94, under the entry for WEIR, KYDELL it states that the Thames counts as Huge " upriver to Stones", and Large "from Stones to Oxen Ford". The place index in the bake of BoE lists a Stone, Hantone as Stoeham but that's not on the Thames. I'm pretty certain that Oxen Ford is Oxford, but an unsure as to where Stones is. Is is Stains (Stanes, Pontibus) in Surrey? One of the PKs was awarded a manor for their part in March of Aurelius, and random rolls in the Book of Knights & Ladies reveal said manor to be in Stains, Surrey (perfect as they were a Berroc Saxon). So I need to figure out what size the river is at Stains, ha, for purposes of a weir.

Well there is but many people houserule it instead. By RAW, a 0 Combat skill is just a 0, and a character has to rely on inspiration and/ or combat tactics to have an effective skill. THis actually works just fine and makes some sense. Someone unskilled with a an axe doing an "all-out attack", which leaves him vulnerable, sort of makes sense. That's why I prefer Morien's idea of DEX/2 instead. It give an typical starting score of 5, which is on par with most starting values, and makes a high DEX somewhat useful for the greater depth and breadth or weapon skills. A Roman PK with DEX 20 can literally pick up any weapon and start with a 10 skill, which greatly speeds up his maxing out any weapon at 15, and could lead to him being very good with lots of weapons, without losing focus on his main combat skills. BTW, the original concept also had APP/2 as the default for many Courtly skills, with an eye to make APP and DEX more useful than they are now. But some people strongly objected to the idea so we mostly dropped it. The only reason why we haven't dropped it completely is that is is still one of the good solution to several things, such as the 0 weapon skill problem.

By RAW any weapon skill a character doesn't possess starts off at 0. Also by RAW a character who ends up wielding a weapon that they lack skill in can opt to fight defensively, make an all-out attack, or even attempt to become inspired to gain some sort of skill. All with various restrictions and complications. That said, something like DEX/4 would be similar to what RQ does, and Morien's idea of starting combat skills off at DEX/2 has merit.

That's what I hoped, and would normally expect. I asked because I've seen gamers new to Pendragon assume that the players are supposed to get everything they want. It stems from the whole "balanced" encounters thing from some other RPGs. I have a player in my current campaign who has trouble sometimes understanding that success and reaching any stated goal is not a given, and who becomes puzzled and frustrated at times when he bites off more than he can chew under the assumption of "game balance".

Dr Nick. Maybe, I misunderstood something, but are you saying that the PKs will become round table knights simply because they want to? It's supposed to be a goal that chivalrous knights aspire to, and that many (if not most) fail to achieve. Now it's perfectly okay for one or more of your PKs to succeed where other fails and become round table knights, that's what heroic RPGing is about, but it should be something that the PKa have to earn, and not just something they get because they want it. Yes some RTKs are appointed due to political reasons and influence (most of them, IMO), but that should make it all the harder for the average knight to make it. Again, maybe I misunderstood what you meant/were going for with your post, but I just wanted to point out that RT membership for a PK isn't a given.

I see you already talked with the design team and see the limitiations, but I can offer a little advice and possible work around. What I do is note Year Born, and then track the current year. That way I only have to update the current year and don't have to bother with actual age. It's not an ideal solution, but it works for now. BTW, Glory is probably going to be more of a pain to track than age. Not much other than noting year born. I would be surprised if one did. The four examples you mentioned were all either game systems related to Pendragon, and then the One Ring, which probably was inspired by Pendragon in a few ways. The vast majoirty of RPGs tend to have a much slower passage of time and tend to play though every day of the PCs lives. Even with the accelerated pace of game time vs. real time, especially when travelling, it ususally takes several months in real time for a year to pass in game time. It's one of the drawbacks to playing something other than a D20 based or WotD based RPG.

In real world, and in fiction, personal "Hates" have a tendency to turn into "Loves". I'm not saying it has to or will go that way, just giving you some more options. For instance, she capture him and makes him suffer for a bit, then feels pity for him and her feeling change over time. Or not. It's all up to the GM.