creativehum

This is GREAT! Thanks so much for pointing this out! And even without the book Greg referenced, Google Image will pull up tons of pictures to fill the need of the book. Also, the Bateke Plateau is as gorgeous as I would want Sartar to be! I think this sort of illustration matters. It shows why the Orlanthi would be so defiant against anyone would want to unravel reality... no matter how seductive the clever words of Lunar Priests might be!

@Jeff I love this. Could you give examples of images from other real-world analogues for areas of Glorantha? (Specifically of Dragon Pass for my own interests!) And if not images, then perhaps names of parts of the world that I could Google Image on my own. Thanks!

@Morien what method do you use to track/illustrate a PK's Family Tree Csn you show any examples?

Yes. I don't think that's Greg meant. (And that's what he wrote: about the matter, not that there shoudn't be family knights, but that the presentation of the idea was botched.) And, yes, Morien, I don't think we're that far off fro each other. If at all, really. My own take is that I'd roll on the Family Tables first, then roll on find out if any of the age appropriate men are knights by rolling on the Family Knight table. This would probably help reduce the number of Family Knights, since the Family Table rolls would put a cap on the number of Family Knights. (Normally you add more family if you have more knight slots to fill. In this case this does not happen. Like you I would want some of these family members to be bridges between the PKs, letting the Players sort this out as they built out their families.

Huzzah!

For what it's worth I find this approach... dramatic? No, the Family Knights should not be used as a personal army on a whim. But I've never seen them as such. I think the text is unclear on this point, referring to the Family Knights as a "Backup Army." I do see the value of this. After all, the game makes it clear family matters a LOT in this setting, and so family should be part of the KP's life. We know family members do come to each other's aid in the literature, so why not have some family members as part of the KP's characters sheet. As stated in the KAP rules* there is no need to track (or even name) the Family Knights until they come into play. And even then... maybe not much is known about them. Futher, during the Winter Phase there is a 10% chance a family member will die. And another 15% chance a family member is lost or missing. Sometimes this will be the Family Knights. That's a 25% for a family member to provide adventure grist (rescue missions, gathering money for ransom, vengeance and so on.) And so whatever number of Family Knights the PK starts with, odds are that number is going to be getting smaller within a few years. Further still, as noted above, the Family Knight might well have other obligations. The rules state family is who will drop everything and come to your side when you need help. But the literature tells us that family can also fracture. Having Family Knights means Knight with split loyalties, or behaviors the PK might find aborant, or even Family Knights that become enemies. Like the point above, I see family Knights as grist for adventure as much as aid in combat. Finally, the rules make it clear that the Family Knights are uncles, brothers, or any other member of an extended family. They can be cousins, second cousins, in-laws. In this matter, it makes perfect sense that the KPs might have relations with a small percentage of the overall number of knights in Salisbury. After all, they might well have a second cousin who owns a manor down the river, or an uncle who is a mercenary knight, or a cousin who is a household knight of a knight who does not like the PKs. Of course, these knights are also related to other knights, and have other obligations. That the Family Knights will come to the aid of the KPs doesn't mean that the aid will not come at a cost to the Family Knights. If the cousin of a PK comes to the PK's aid, he might well end up making a new enemy, that in turn the PK needs to help. Thus, the PK is still very important in terms of being a vassal knight among a limited number of vassal knights, and a man quite responsible for caring for his family... since the Family Knights will often have their own families to worry about. As for Players wandering the land with a retinue of Family Knights... I guess that can happen. But I certainly wouldn't let it happen. The rules state that the Family Knights arrive in an emergency. But the first two Phases of the GPC are constant emergency. What it will take to constitute an emergency in such a setting will have to be quite dramatic. My own rule of thumb for RPGs is that I don't switch the rules around or keep refining them simply because some Referee somewhere got steamrolled by his players into make decisions or calls that led to trouble. At some point I'm responsible for sorting this stuff out on my own, setting boundaries, and establishing the rules of the setting. The fact that Family Knights a) provide adventure grist and b) stand a chance of dying or going missing every year suggests to me that the rules, as they stand, for creating Family Knights are quite solid. They only become a problem once you put them front and center, as the KP's family. But they are the center of the KP's family. That would be his wife and children. Keep that the focuse, with the Family Knights a circle beyond that, and all should be good. _______________ * I am only referencing the KAP core rules. Call me nutty... but at some point I want to buy a game an play it... not get a PhD in a library of RPG material. (I have also begun to notice that some of the supplements and later additions to the core KAP rules are making some rules break down in some cases. I've decided to run-as-is and see what happens. I should also add that my take on running KAP is not to simulate history, but to add chapters to Le Morte D'Arthur. I am much for focused on the literary inspiration that trying to sort out every detail of a blatantly ahistorical history. Everyone's mileage will vary, of course.

I just realized, perhaps, a better way to ask what I'm looking for. If there were to be a KAP 6th edtion, what rules/adjustments would be incorporated into the 6th edition that alter the game in the most minimal way? That is, what is tweaked or altered already in the core rules, rather than wholesale added? Requiring Child Survival rolls only for the first 7 years (rather than 14) is a tweak to existing rules. It is not a new set of rules added. Atgxtg, thank you for your reply.

The Book of Records bumps the Trait total need for the Chivalry Bonus to 96. I recently read that the Book of the Estate alters the child survival rolls from the first 14 years of a child's life to the first seven. (A big change!) Is there any compilation of rules adjustments to the core rules anywhere? Or at least an index of such rules so people who wanted to find certain adjustments/improvements could know what thought had been put into the game since the last printing of the core rules? I'm not talking about whole new sets of rules that replace other rules. So, of course Book of the Estate replaces the economics of the core rules, and Book of Battle has a whole new battle system. I'm talking about tweaks the rules as could be found and used in the core rules that improve them in some way or reflect later thought in design for the core rules. The key for me is keeping the game as simple as possible, focusing on the adventures. Getting too deep into history or estate management isn't my thing. But if a consensus has built about how to improve the core game experience (better survival rates for children seems to be a thing everyone talks about) then I am interested in that. Thanks!

Awesome! Thanks! Does BoW rework the Marriate Tables and such to alter this distribution? That is, does it have tables to replace tables in KAP to reflect this change?

Thanks for the reply! I understand there might a thread or threads in the archive I can go look up, and if you want say "Go find them," I completely understand. But if you don't mind one more question, this clause makes me curious: "a change due to vassal knights being rarer than they were in earlier editions." I don't remember previous editions getting too deep into the woods about how many vassal knights there were. I am assuming this is an issue that arose from books like Book of the Warlord and people digging into history and create numbers for types of knights? (I don't own BoW.) The text and structure of the rules of each edition of the core rules of KAP really hasn't changed much over the years, so I'm curious about the idea that there was a set number of vassal knight before that could have changed. Again... thanks!

What was the reasoning from shifting the Glory from 50 to 200. It's been 50 for years. Not arguing against the change. Simply curious what the discussion/logic was.

Can you point me to which rules/text you are drawing from for this reading? Thanks!

I feel your pain.

I was asking about "initiates" last year. It still confuses me. Given the quotes and questions MMan posted above I'm still not seeing a clear answer to the matter in the posts that followed. The text in RQG suggests that being an initiate means having a position of authority within the cult. And further that most members of a cult do not have this authority and are lay members. And lay members do not posses Rune Magic. And yet a a lot of the support material for Glornatha suggests many, if not most, NPCs are in fact initiates, and/or even if they are not initiates they still have Rune Magic. Or something. If anyone has a clear way of squaring these details into a clear post I know I'd really appreciate it.

Good to hear! I wasn't sure how it would play. But with your success I'll run it this way when I get a chance to run the game.

For anyone who wants to read the thread it is here. nothing was really resolved on the matter. But as Atgxtg states ther is a list of reasons why it was 80 and why Greg wanted it to be 96. All sorts of things are discussed in the threat: the fact that Pagan Knights will have a harder time of becoming Chivalrous at 96; that the orginal bonus for being Chivalrous in KAP 1sst ed was simply Glory with no magical bonus (thus making Chivalry more important starting with KAP3; that Greg was thinking about all sorts of ideas for Chivalry, how to attain the bonus, what the bonus meant, but none of those were sorted out; that the random creation of early editions (as Atgxtg pointed out) made it harder to gain Chivalry out of the gate than the point buy systems of later editions; that using BoKL made it even easier to get it than KAP 5.x (and not everyone uses -- or should use -- BoKL, so it gets kind of complicated using it as a standard). In other words, changing the method of Chivalry bonus has several implications for anyone's game, and those implications weren't settled. You can grab a bunch of ideas and thoughts floated in the thread. And after that, as I said above, every GM will have to make their own decisions.

Greg wanted being a Chivalrous Knight to be A Big Deal. With the numbers set as they are in the various editions of King Arthur Pendragon a knight can probably become Chivalrous at values of 13 or 14 in some of the Traits. For some folks that doesn't feel right. Ultimately it is switch for how you want your game to play -- easier or harder to become Chivalrous. The rules say one thing, a supplement says another thing, and a single post from Greg years ago says he wanted to change the rules but never did. Pick what works best for you.

If your instinct is to stick with Loyalty you should probably do that. As I've noted elsewhere King Arthur Pendragon and The Great Pendragon Campaign work great as is. and KAP has worked great as is literally for decades. the additional bells and whistles can certainly be appealing. And for some who has played or run the game before the novelty of new rules and ideas certainly makes sense. But they are not needed. And in the best case the GM will pick and choose among all the new baubles for the items that make the most sense and which excite him. KAP already has so much going on with it's amazing rules as is. Try it out of the box for a while and see what happens.

I suspect I am in the minority around these parts, but I advise is to get King Arthur Pendragon 5.2, the Great Pendragon Campaign, and then stop buying for a while. Take the time to read through these books. Get a sense of what the game is, what you want to do with it, what excites you about it. Then ask yourself: "Is there anything else I really need to play this game? Do I feel like anything is missing?" Because the fact is, out of the gate all you really need is KAP. Seriously. I cannot stress this enough. KAP is a brilliantly designed piece of RPG design and it has all you need. Then, if you want some support (and it is good support!) grab GPC and you'll have a trove of advice and ideas for play. These two books alone get get you going and give you months, if not years of play. All the other books, while great, can swamp you. They put a microscope to certain details of the setting or history or mechanics... and if you are not interested focusing or expanding on all those details they can gum up the works for a game that works elegantly out of the box. But if you ask yourself "Do I feel like anything is missing to be able to run this for my friends?" then you'll most like find a resource in one of the supplements. Here is a link to a post someone wrote about The Essential List of King Arthur Pendragon Roleplaying Books. I am linking it because I happen to agree with it.

I think you might be wrong on this point. I say think only because I have found the writing of the RQG rules slippery, and I might be misunderstanding what you are saying. With that in mind: I asked Jason in the Big Thread of Rules Clarification how many physical attack a character may make in a round, and unless one is splitting the attack, the answer is 1. The lower striker rank lets you attack earlier, which could be very helpful and important. But it doesn't allow you a chance to cram more attacks in with that weapon.

Hello @Ian Cooper, I listened to your interview on the Grognard Files yesterday. Thanks, I really enjoyed it! One thing caught my attention: You mentioned that when your group first played Traveller (your first RPG!) you had a great time rolling up characters... and then didn't quite know what you were supposed to do with the game. But then, after playing games like Call of Cthulhu and others, you were able to go back and play it successfully. Could you list some of the qualities, tools, techniques that you brought to Classic Traveller that let you play it on your second go-around? I'd really like to hear about this! Thanks!

Agreed. I never suggested anything otherwise. You are phrasing this as if you are correcting something... but that is strange, since I never typed anything contrary to this point of view. Again... I have no idea why you typed this in the context of some sort of reply to what I wrote. I never said anything about contradicting the facts given in the setting in any of my posts. I have no idea what you are talking about. Not once did I talk about anything to do with some sort of nonsensical shifting of Staristcs through wishful thinking, let alone I have no idea why you think I'd blithely consider shifting Statistics because a PC moved to a new Homeland. As always when we interact there comes a time when I can only you assume you are skimming over my words, deciding what I wrote independent of anything I actually wrote, and correcting me on point s I never typed. That time has arrived in this thread.

Yes. That's why we use them. I would never suggest otherewise and did not suggest otherwise. Speaking of tables... in BoKL this is how Sarun is listed on p. 22 Sarum (City) [Salisbury], Cymric/British Chr. Not a big deal. But it is why I used it in my example. This is great stuff. And the kind of thing I am talking about. The BoKL can get us started. And then we run with it as story and circumstances grow.

Right. A lot of this is "soft" when it comes to rules and can only be determined by playing it out at the table, with everyone creating the effects and fallout of cultures meeting like this in each specific instance. Again, a few dozen pages of tables can only do so much. At some point we are on our own at a table to say, "Okay... this is what this means, this is how this is going to play out."

I have never thought it was exceptional, and never said otherwise. Your example is a completely normal situation and the kind of thing BoKL was designed to handle. if you go back to my posts you will see I am referring to Morien's example of a Roman COUPLE moving to Salisbury as being exceptional. Yes, it could happen. But how often is a game of KAP going to be driving down that road? The moment you start with that as a premise you are probably choosing to set up some extraordinary circumstances with some specific cultural conflicts in mind. No book of tables will help you with all that. You'll need to sort out how you want cultural tensions to get set up for that specific situation.