jeffjerwin

Actually it is 454 years from the Passion of Our Lord, in 32 AD, so the real date (misunderstood by Karr) was 486. Which is less off. I have just the Chronology that Morien mentioned on my harddrive but it's based on not on Malory but on the Post-Vulgate and Prose Tristan (and thus makes different assumptions about the order of the parts of the story). It runs from the 470s to c.542; I ignored the 486 date since I didn't want the knights mostly sitting around from 491 to 537/542. One could start Arthur's reign using the GPC, in 490, and end it in 542 by pruning or combining a few quieter years. 490-542 resembles the assumed dates used by late medieval chroniclers: 515-542.

It really doesn't matter that your STR is 16 if you fall 60 feet. Mechanically, yes, fights are in 90% of all scenarios. Here is where the story diverges from the rules: Lancelot is far more worried about crossing a bridge less than a foot wide than he is fighting mortal enemies. It is in fact a major source of the drama in the poem. His killing all of Meleagant's goons, less so. But as long as doing such feats remains a part of the stories, DEX has to stay. I suspect that a decent STR and SIZ is all one would need to be a run-of-the-mill RTK. Anyone wanting play a member of the elite (or really, do anything really interesting) has to have a character capable of more than fighting. In terms of APP 16 there are some good rules in Paladin for seducing strange women using one's APP, particularly the daughters of Pagan adversaries whilst one is imprisoned... this is a Romance cliche, of course, but it's valid.

I've been researching Lancelot -re-reading Malory's Book VI currently - and he uses all of these skills in his adventures. "Nothing that should happen that often" seems to happen all the time to him. He and Gawaine are both required to cross very narrow bridges over chasms (at Gorre and at the Grail Castle), climb trees (Gawaine in L'Aitre Perilleux and Lancelot when he fetches the sparrow hawk for Phelot's lady), jump out of windows and climb up to them (Gorre and Morgan's Tower), and so forth. I think these skills are crucial for the 'high-adventure'/fantastic/fairy element in the romances. Of course these are usually solo adventures, which slants things. Obviously the GM was hoping to challenge the player... The fact that KAP doesn't have a lot of physical clambering up and down things and acrobatics is actually a discrepancy between the game and the literature. Here are some generic scenarios that could feature these things: 1. Rescuing someone from a castle where you are heavily outnumbered, or escaping (unarmed!) from such a castle. Fighting the entire garrison is Valorous, but it is also Stupid. 2. Entering an Otherworldly palace or fortress with a slender or broken bridge (so many instances). Traditionally it seems the homes of fairies and enchantresses are guarded by precarious bridges with monsters - giants, lions, or dragons... and if you aren't escaping from or wooing such figures, why are you a knight errant anyway? 3. Climbing out of a cave you have been trapped in by a treacherous companion (see Torec for an excellent example) 4. Entering a swiftly revolving castle... a bit like a video game, but there are multiple examples of this, as well as gates that revolve like a mill-wheel. Of course, there's also no telling what sort of dangerous and foolhardy things a lady love could demand as well.

Borrow from Dunsany and Poe's fantasy stories?

This comes from his adaption of Karr's Arthurian Companion into the basis of the KAP Chronology. Note that later medieval 'histories' put the battle in 542. In reality, the Arthurian prose romances so thoroughly extended Arthur's reign that the game would be unmanageable if every year had several major events. In the Morte Artu, in fact, Arthur is nearly 100 years old, so it's not just in gaming that the storytellers saw the need to spread things out. That there are (at least) two full generations in Arthur's reign implied by the fact that Lancelot is born after him and Lancelot's son is an adult at the end of the story, in any case. Still, the 'original' prose romance timeline (if you're really curious Fanni Bogdanow did a lot of work on it) has many years dense with action (the Downfall happens in maybe 2 or 3 years max), with periods of inactivity. By extending the timeline Greg could allow for generational play, and by spreading the stories and episodes between years the game goes on a one year = no more than a session or two pattern. Curiously, the French romances put Arthur in the 5th century rather than the 6th. This is why Karr used a date, given in the Vulgate/Lancelot-Grail Quest, in the 450s for the Grail Quest. Greg added a century to her date.

Tristram did the whole outlaw in the forest thing, so it's not entirely true that no knights do this sort of thing. There are some other 'outlaw-knights' in folklore besides him (Fulk Fitzwarin comes to mind). Mainly the game has not supported this sort of thing, but we shouldn't reject these stories as inauthentic, because they assuredly are. Interestingly, many episodes in the romances specifically involve the knights being unarmored (there are multiple incidents in Tristram's life, but Lancelot caught in Guinevere's bedroom is another) and yet forced to fight. Having a decent DEX and some cunning are pretty important in these circumstances, and may well be the difference between life and death. I'd argue that these sort of stories, i.e, 'unprepared knight faces overwhelming odds' stories are so common that the fact they don't come up in the game is more an oversight than an intentional thing. Certainly they happen to the players in my game, whether escaping from an angry husband, an ambush inside the castle, or some other underhanded attempt by some low villain. PS. Of course, a high-DEX, high-APP knight may be precisely the sort of fellow to be caught in some lady's bedchamber away from his equipment... So the answer to my mind, is make a story that corresponds to what the PK is good at and wants to do. His friends can help with his escape, but the initial situation is perfect for this kind of character.

All of the courtly skills, moreover, including falconry, are heavily hierarchical. The appropriateness and detailed rules of each are constructed to expose one's social position and reinforce the power of the courtier. Only a peasant uses the wrong bird, and only a villain can't dance the courtly way...

Black Mountains suggest the Red King because the Red King is the descending, twilight sun, going behind the Western Mountains. Of course, GanEstoro is also associated with the Western Mountains, because he is the dark god of Carmania, and the Enkosiad is from Pelanda, to the east. The Red King is ignorant of the West because the West is his own Death, his drowning in the broth of the sacrifice/Sweet Sea.

Another dup?

You're right about APP, which is a real shame, since 'beauty' is a pretty (ha!) important theme in the romances. Maybe give a slightly disportionate Glory bonus for it? It wouldn't be the first time people got a bit of a boost in fame for simply being attractive. Also DEX, but aside from setting base combat skills according to it (maybe with +s and -s based on culture?) I don't have a good idea.

Bizarre duplicate post (see below)

I have always used Hunting for Stealth out of doors, and Intrigue inside. There are many examples of knights hunting without armor (including on foot, for certain types of game) in literature, as well as sneaking in or out of rooms. In fact, in the Tristram literature, these are iconic scenes. These type of skills would be central in a 'court-centered' campaign that is more inclusive of lady PCs, so I'd definitely accommodate them in the rules. My experience is that players spend points on skills they ended up using. But Intrigue, Hunting, Dancing, etc., will be increased by players if the campaign swings that way. Have a player knight fall in love with a lady would wants a perfect courtier (dancing, singing, gaming, orate, etc.), and see what happens.

In the Post-Vulgate the decline is linked directly to the Grail Quest and how it tears the Round Table apart, so in that regard the pestilence works well with an earlier date. The Post-Vulgate Quest itself (and the Perlesvaus) seems to show a countryside with many robber barons and ruins. There is also the synchronization of the timeline to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with the Yellow Plague being the 'Black Death' event. The subsequent mystical period of the Lollards and Richard II (and the second flowering of Middle English Arthurian romances) might then follow as the Grail Period. We all know the Downfall is the War of the Roses (this in fact was probably Malory's conscious sense of it). PS. Regarding illicit romance in a 'historical setting', well, the Tristan and the Dairmait and Grainne stories are pre-chivalric in origin (and a very old concept, really), so one could run a bunch of post-Roman cavalry or a warrior band and keep the whole sleeping with the chieftain's wife plot without making it 'romantic' per se. Of course it might be Moderatus (Mordred) rather than Lancelot.

The left-handed path of breaking all taboos is Vadeli, of course. They are, a twisted sort of anti-Brithini, aren't they?

Interestingly I started out... err, in the mid-80s when it was fashionable... interested in the so-called 'historical Arthur' and went from there into preferring the literary Arthur; the realism in my games is the realism of the medieval period, not of post-Roman Britain. I did run a 'historical' Pendragon game about twenty years ago but it was definitely your second example. Much of the detail in Arthurian legend comes from transferring events and stories from the Middle Ages backwards into the mythical past, where they can be fictionalized (and also avoid political consequences - the do-nothing Arthur is a critique of several historical kings). Truthfully, I am very fond of Morgan and Merlin and Lancelot and Guinevere and Tristram and Isolt, and none of these people, if they existed at all (Tristram has the best claim for it) lived in the same places and at the same time, so a rigorously 'historical' Arthurian campaign is only vaguely 'Arthurian' in terms of our expectations. The glory of the Arthurian epic is more in the imaginations behind it rather than 'facts'.

There's a scene in the Post-Vulgate where Tristram tries to take on forty knights. Palomides drags him out of trouble, and gets a bit of guff from his frenemy.

I have a large collection of UMBUM Russian models of medieval castles and buildings and they come with 15mm cardboard standees. I have an entire town and small army of little people (including lots of women, children, and clergy).

I know you're being facetious, but 'Gales' is even now the French name for Wales, and Ecosse, Scotland.

Don't forget the French names too. London is 'Londres' and sometimes 'Logres' in the romances. Oh, and Trinovant.

The other awkwardness of using 'translated' names is that Malory and the French sources he used freely use versions of the modern place names, so not only do we have to translate them into the KAP versions when we're using a history book or modern geography, but you also have to translate them when using the source material.

Strictly speaking, all the polytheists (Hindus and Pagans) I know are of the opinion that any one religion certainly does not cancel out another one. The theology maybe be mistaken, sort of, in terms of exclusivity, but they wouldn't imagine telling someone that their god or goddess doesn't exist. So I would emend your statement by saying, "that's what most monotheist religions think all the others are (or, for the broad-minded ones, at least the incompatible ones that can't be termed Abrahamic)." Edit: In Glorantha, as in a fair bit of non-monotheistic cultures, the 'wrongness' of a religion is in its strangeness, abhorrent practices, or incoherent motivations, not in the existence of its divinities or spirits or concepts. I admit, however, that most polytheistic Gloranthans think that the Invisible God is implausible and that many mystic paths are a bit recondite.

Arkham Now (https://www.chaosium.com/arkham-now/), an official Chaosium publication, already exists. You could certainly write things for the Repository, as klecser suggests, set in modern Arkham.

Arachne Solara offers the continued existence of the cosmos, and thus her 'nothing' that she gifts is a bit like Ra for the Egyptians: the preservation of all life; it's only nothing because we are accustomed to more easily imagined concepts like 'rune spells' and 'the rain in spring' that she seems ungenerous.

Welcome to Logres, Carter!

A long time ago I used it for Middle-earth. I think those notes are lost now, but it works well for fantasy with a psychological and epic component like that one. The Dragons of Britain zine from Stygian Fox has several adventures in it. It's available at Drivethru: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/2834/Stygian-Fox/subcategory/5060_32622/The-Dragons-of-Britain. There is also the Great Book of Pendragon Treasures, which compiles work from the late 90s listserve for KAP.