jeffjerwin

6 hours ago, Morien said:

La Tavola Ritonda states that there were knights of the 'Old Table' (Uther's time) and of the 'New Table' (Arthur's time), but I admit, I have had the impression that the Italian stories read like prequel fanfic at times, with Uther's court being the bastion of chivalry and having the greatest knights and heroes, some of whom live to impossible old age and joust down knights like Lancelot during the Grail Quest. Since Uther Period is supposed to be gritty and might makes right, this doesn't fit with my conception of KAP Uther Court so well, even though we have some of those proto-chivalric heroes in Book of Uther.

In Wace I'm not sure that the king doesn't sit in the empty middle of the table (the boards being curved - this is the method used when Edward I and Edward III apparently resurrected the idea). There are even artistic renditions of this interpretation from the Middle Ages.

Uther's Round Table is a part of the Guiron, Meliadus and Palamedes romances, where its brutality and rough edges are a significant plot point. The Tavola Ritonda is riffing off of that.

Anyway, the Story of Merlin, the first part of the Vulgate, so a major piece of proto-Malorian canon, indeed states that Merlin made the table for Uther, and that it passed into Leodegrance's hands after Uther's death. Perhaps he was the most senior surviving knight, or maybe it last met in Carohaise for some reason before St Albans and was left there. Certainly the Guiron, Meliadus and Palamedes make clear that the 'Old Table' was still active until the twilight of Uther's reign. It is possible that the magic didn't work until Arthur gained the table. Certainly the 'names appearing' is an aspect we don't hear of with Uther's table. Since the Round Table is in part based on the Templars, and they appear in the 1120s in Western Europe, it seems appropriate that the RT becomes a full-fledged Order in Arthur's time [i.e., in the corresponding parallel century], and previously was a means of avoiding the problem of the Upper Table and Lower Table.

The Table's relationship to the Grail Table is explicit in most of the Grail Romances, so either it is centuries old (and perhaps the outer rank of the Grail Knights - compare the Grail Templars in Parsifal and the Round Grail temple in Parzival) or it was made in emulation of that table. The Grail King is specifically the true heir of Lucius, last native king of Britain, while Uther and his ancestors are Romano-British usurpers. "Bringing the Grail to Camelot" doesn't just heal the realm but hypothetically makes Arthur both Sacred King and High King. This fails, of course, but it is possible to see the Round Table as part of the accoutrements of the Grail dynasty/true king. Note, interestingly, that Welsh late medieval pedigrees and the English tradition make Igraine herself a member of the Grail dynasty (Percivale, for instance, is Arthur's cousin or nephew). Arthur would therefore have a better claim than his father, hence maybe that is why the Round Table 'activates' when he becomes its head.

1 hour ago, Khanwulf said:

So... Uther had a round table? When did this get established (KAP) and who were its members?

I do seem to recall something to the effect that this was so, in a source, and that the table was given to Leodegrance for safekeeping....

Also, where did Uther get the table from? Do we know?

--Khanwulf

Uther's Round Table was founded on the advice of Merlin, which is later explicitly connected to the Table of the Grail... It appears that Merlin enchanted it as a mechanism for creating a fellowship capable of retrieving the Grail. Why he wished to do so, besides the weight of prophesy, depends on whether Merlin's ambitions were sacred or profane.

Edit: here's the source, from the Estoire de Merlin: https://books.google.com/books?id=bHUWDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA391&lpg=PA391&dq="uther's+round+table"+merlin&source=bl&ots=c_dIiWy33M&sig=ACfU3U3Vsi3Y6iNSZ-ul9QImutMrvZbZnw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj_77HmtLrkAhVFSK0KHWKgAS8Q6AEwA3oECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q="uther's round table" merlin&f=false

Further Edit: One may wonder if the story of Stonehenge being Ambrosius' memorial eventually transmuted into the Round Table.

12 minutes ago, davecake said:

I equate Azerlo with Ty Kora Tek/Annara Gor - after the 'Lodril in the Underworld' story, she remains a goddess of the dead and guardian. I don't think she is generally equated with compassion, she only showed it to ViSaraDaran after he showed it to her, and there are no other stories about her showing compassion. And of course her cult includes necromancy.

Azerlo is Asrelia, the aged Earth, and compassion is not always distinct from death. It may be the 'treasure' she guards beneath the ground.

9 hours ago, Username said:

@jeffjerwin Thats interesting. I have two players that are about to start up lady characters. Though we're only in 506, so I was hesitant about it considering the social status of women at the time. Hoping they would wait more for the post-Arthurian period. I'll have to keep that in mind. Do you have any experience with a mixed group? Knights and Ladies?

I run a Romance-Grail-Downfall campaign in part to make the story interesting for Lady characters. Uther to Boy King adventures can have female characters doing things but it's, well, things like defending the manor from the Saxons in the absence of the menfolk, joining a secret witch society, or fighting the oppression of Uther's court, rather than inspiring one's knight to great deeds, engaging in fin'amor, or getting involved in the feud between Morgan and Guinevere. For female characters, the dark and gritty type game is a survival game. The romance type game gives them power.

9 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Considering how often ladies tend to accompany knights in the stories, maybe lady PKs should have an NPK champion to escort them that the players could take control of to handle combats, duels and the like? 

Yes.... more or less.

Other than that, which makes the romance solo for ladies a must (since usually the knightly lover would be this escort), the trick is to design adventures around the skills that ladies possess, such as Intrigue, Romance, etc... (courtly skills) and assign goals for the adventure (and Glory awards based on them) where the lady's escort's martial abilities and their own problem-solving provide the solution. Basically, all lady-oriented adventures will have 'problems' and 'solutions' that aren't necessarily addressed by combat. Also such pastimes as fashion, 'tournaments of love', 'courts of love', seeking a champion/lover etc. would have to be elaborated on and given Glory values. The model 'Ladies' in the Arthurian legends are great queens and noblewomen, usually rulers in their own right: just as with PC knights, the default lady character is the heir - though this means they usually lack surviving brothers. The other means of gaining Lady's Glory would be through serving as a handmaiden or lady in waiting to a queen. This means entanglement with the queen's private life, which might be rather adventurous.

4 hours ago, Morien said:

@jeffjerwin I'd be very curious to hear more about your campaign & play. Do you have a campaign webpage, or would you be interested in starting a new thread discussing the Lady characters?

I understand that it is a somewhat different dynamic when you have all the players playing, primarily, Lady characters. In our group, it has been more of a case of playing a lady knight (now 3 out of 6 knights), so it mostly plays the same way as a fully male knight group would, or one has played a lady healer type. The latter is obviously different when you have 5 (usually male) knights and 1 lady healer, the lone lady being more of a support character. Although in our first GPC playthrough, she managed to become quite influential, and the PKs became more of her personal bodyguards / henchmen.

4 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

That is very interesting. I'd love to hear how things pay out in such a campaign. Do you spend more time at court, or do the ladies accompany the knights on adventures? Do the ladies stay at home or in the base camp during a battle? 

One of the PCs is a skilled medic (she's a Moor with the Medicine skill) so she's generally on the scene, standing back, during fighting; she's saved the lives of several characters. They haven't gone into actual battles but in several cases the women have defended themselves when the men went down:  a giant was killed by the female PCs after the knights were badly hurt (by a bow and crossbow, they being hunting ladies). An evil knight was beheaded but he had been knocked out and the lady had criticalled her Vengeful.

We spend 1/2 our time at court. There are also secondary courts to visit on most adventures. They do go with the knights, but that's because the adventures are based on their jobs: carrying letters, finding Lancelot, accompanying the Queen when she's traveling. In the first adventure (I started in the 530s) they found Lancelot and rescued him from Sir Phelot (adapted from Malory). Obviously, it's a little unrealistic to have the Queen's servants wandering the woods considering how dangerous they are, but keep in mind that the romances have this sort of thing happening all the time: a lady recruits a knight to come with her on a dangerous errand. He does all the jousting, and she keeps track of the route and keeps him alive (kind of a like a squire, but with more agency).

There was discussion by the players of disguising themselves as men for traveling through dangerous areas, which hasn't happened yet, but since women (when the encountered NPCs are not wholly villainous) tend to be given the benefit of the doubt, there's been some excellent 'diplomatic' adventures. Another major advantage is that a Lady is much more likely to gain the trust of NPC women. They have already met (and had dinner) with Morgan Le Fay, who has a different attitude towards lone knights from ladies being escorted by knights, even if they work for her enemy Guinevere.

The biggest change in terms of the story is that the Ladies are in the thick of things in terms of awareness of Lancelot and Guinevere, and were admitted into the inner sanctum at the Castle of Maidens; this meant they are more aware of the ongoing plot, since these link to the Downfall and the Grail. The mediation of chivalry and its rules doesn't apply to Ladies: there is less need to be 'correct' and prickly on points of Honor, so dangerous situations are easier to defuse, though there have been some pointless duels started by the knights.

The main difference mechanically besides the fighting skills is the lack of armor, which is problematic when the opponent is evil. Any actual fighting they do is last ditch. I set up the adventures so there's lots of intrigue and female NPCs rather than wave after wave of ruffians and monsters. They are often doing the talking. The knight and lady combo seems to work fine when they're in synch, and these are brothers and sisters and close relations (all of the PCs are at least 2nd cousins of each other). Lady loves and Knightly loves would obviously be NPCs or the whole mystery of romance would be gone, but I could see wives and husbands being played by different players.

In general, I make sure that Personality Traits and Passions (and I'm generally aware of their stats) matter: you can't simply do what your sister tells you to, if it's uncharacteristic of your motives. But they generally have the same aims. There's also a unifying matter of everyone being related to Sir Kay, and thus having a trusted relationship with the King and Queen.

After we resolve our current adventure I will be running Meleagant's abduction of Guinevere, which will be interesting. The PCs will be defending the queen when her Maying party is attacked. We'll see if they are also taken captive or pursue the miscreant with Kay and Lancelot (and later Gawaine).

I do run games with multiple characters, in part because I have a small group (2-3 regulars) and in part because my regular players are all women and tend to prefer using a Lady as their main character. They use their character's brother or nephew as their knight and escort when getting around. The knight does the knightly stuff (tournaments, battles and challenges), while the lady makes important decisions... (They are handmaidens of the Queen, so they tend to get jobs like "take a letter here", or "represent the queen at some event", or "find Lancelot").

2 hours ago, Username said:

Neat, where is this from? I'd like to take a look. Is he already related to King Arthur somehow?

The Thidrekssaga, which also has a King "Artus" in "Bretangaland" (Brittany or Britain). They don't really cross paths, though Dietrich sends his nephew to visit Artus at one point, which doesn't go well (the nephew elopes with Artus' "daughter" who was intended to marry Dietrich instead - basically the Tristram story). Wade is mentioned, though not in a context that means he is a contemporary, in the 14th century Morte Arthur poem, from which Malory derives his mention.

37 minutes ago, Username said:

I mean this Wade.

Same guy. "Thidrek" is Dietrich of Bern/Verona. He becomes one of Dietrich's early followers in the 450s or so. Keep in mind his relationship to Weyland/Volundr, who is firmly placed in the first half of the 5th century by his association with Siegfried/Sigurdr and the Burgundian kingdom on the Rhine.

10 hours ago, Username said:

Thanks a lot, I kept passing over that section. Here's my list of Round Table Knights. I used the GPC as the basis for all of the dates, but there were many blanks to fill. I added Sir Wade based off of the folktales of Wade the Giant, I believe I had a plan to include Wayland the Smith. Anyways, this is here for critique (Am I missing anyone big? Or do I have any dates that would be wildly inaccurate? Many birth dates and death dates were based on impressions, the GPC where available, or some wikipedia research.) and for use if anyone wants a list of 80ish knights of the Round Table. I wouldn't mind adding another 20-30 to the list to fill it out some more. I would say that I haven't gotten the chance to look through the old supplements, though I know many of them will add a few knights.

Appendix of Knights of the Round Table ver. 0.5.pdf 429.14 kB · 2 downloads

Wade? He's one of Dietrich's men, though.

Pellinore is king of Gomoret and the Isles, not Listeneisse, which is another name for the Fisher King's realm.

Caradoc the Younger should be a round table knight after c.539, since his story takes place after the return of Percivale to Arthur's court.

Ywain de Cenel/Rivel, Aiglin des Vaus, and Keu d'Estraus are missing, Acanor the Ugly Brave, Helains the White, Meraugis, also.

1 hour ago, Username said:

\This has been a really interesting conversation though. I have never read the post-vulgate, but @jeffjerwin is selling me on it.

The Lacey edition is a bit pricey but in English. Note, however, that no French original has survived in full, and large portions were reconstructed by Fanni Bogdanow and others by the using the more complete Spanish copies. This includes the list of Grail questers, which appear in the Lacey edition without being 'corrected' from the somewhat garbled Spanish attempts at the names. The list from the armorial survives separately but by comparison with the Spanish list it's clear that the two derive from a common source, which must be the lost complete French Post-Vulgate.

The Post-Vulgate is a 'grim-dark' remake of the original Vulgate and it is there that the transformation of Gawaine from hero to heel occurs. It's very influential for Malory, but his book also includes a lot of stuff from earlier and English tradition: ultimately Malory's Arthur is the heroic king of English and Welsh legend, not the fading, cursed, king of the Post-Vulgate. If he had not adhered to this ideal, we might be playing a game with a different name...

2 hours ago, Tizun Thane said:

In the French Vulgate, they said that Leodegrance welcomed in his house all the surviving knights of the first Round Table after Uther's death, which explains the whole thing.

It's a good basis. BUT. The list of RT knights is not static. Each year, especially during the wars, you can suppose that a few died, retired in an hermitage, etc.  All the great names stay however until the last years.

Half the RTK are supposed to die during the Grail Quest, but few are named, all secondary (Bagdemagus, Calogrenant, Yvain l'Avoutre).

In my campaign, after 540, I considerer that the Round Table a complete. There is no room for the new heroes, which can generate frustrations.

Note that there aren't many surviving Round Table knights at Uther's death because of the violence of those years. It certainly isn't more than a few dozen, I think. A handful are depicted as not returning to the "New Table" in the Guiron-Palamedes romances. Some even become villains.

The problem here is that the magical names on the seats do not go away unless the knight dies. This means that absent knights can't be replaced right away until the enchantment fails. (Which I'll get to in a moment). This is one reason Arthur remains confident that Lancelot is alive when he's missing for years at a time.

The Table is linked by miracle or enchantment to the Grail Quest. One of the prophecies behind the Quest is that when the table is complete, that is, when every seat is filled, the Grail will manifest and the time for the Quest has come. We see this when Galahad safely sits on the Perilous Seat. The Round Table is in some way linked to the smaller table, also round, at the Grail Chapel, where there are 13 seats. Thus the 'completion' of the Round Table really belongs to that moment. If you mean that the Perilous Seat is not taken, I guess so... but I'd suggest 'nearly complete' or maybe a little over 140 members by then.

There is a much fuller account of all those slain in or during the Grail Quest in the Post-Vulgate, but yes, we don't know all their names. I wouldn't call Tristram or Erec secondary.

Replacement of living but rebellious knights only occurs in the Downfall, once the magic of the Table has been severed, as the Grail has left Britain. That's when the House of Ganis and their supporters are stripped of their rank.

5 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Unless you subscribe to my wacky theroy that Merlin and Uther prepared things for Arthur before Uther's death. So Leodegrance was responsible for selecting a core cadre of skilled loyal knights for Arthur. Maybe Uther even gave him some libra to finance the extra knights. 

At first I misremembered Merlin being opposed, but at most Merlin obliquely warns Arthur about Guinevere, doesn't he, and the Round Table is her dowry... he tells him she will be a 'mixed blessing' more or less. He makes no further attempt to dissuade Arthur, however. Of course this could be reverse psychology on Merlin's part.

56 minutes ago, Morien said:

Didn't Leodegrance's gift include like hundred of Cameliard knights as well already enrolled or something like that?

"And so Leodegrance delivered his daughter Guenever unto Merlin, and the Table Round with the hundred knights, " (Merlin having come to ask Guenever's hand for Arthur)

Sounds to me someone overinvested into household knights during the Anarchy & Unification!

Yeah, that's right. I was thinking of the thirty-two knights at the Battle of Carohaise, who end up in the RT right away.

3 hours ago, Username said:

I forgot about that! I have her book too. I'll take a look there.

About the list from the post-Vulgate and Vulgate and Prose Tristran, how many do you use? I have a list of, I think, 74 and it has most of the notables. Or at least names I recognize. How big do you run the Round Table? 

The GPC mentions the Round Table as having 150 spots. Do you try to rectify that with the large number of knights?

I'll take a look at the French Armorial. Thanks.

I take the French list as a basis for the Grail Quest and Downfall, but delete a few minor or unknown knights to include Malory's characters. Keep in mind there are empty seats up to the Quest (when there's one left, the Perilous Seat). I don't really like nailing down the exact list because you never know when you need to introduce a new character, though knowing when the major knights come in is useful. The GPC tells you the date for many of them. There's 32 initial members in 514, but Arthur starts adding members right away.

Gareth is somewhat older than Mordred, who is born in 512. Since Gareth is a 'boy' (16-18) in his 'Tale', it should take place in the mid-520s.

I have a list of all the RTKs mentioned in the Vulgate and the Post-Vulgate and there's a list of nearly 150 that appears in the Prose Tristan and Post-Vulgate Quest. It's the same one that was the basis for the "Armorial of the Table Round" that was circulated in the late Middle Ages. It has a lot of unknowns in it. These are supposedly the knights that swore to seek the Grail (a major aberration is the presence of King Ryons, but otherwise it's mostly a good source of names and heraldry).

Karr's King Arthur Companion gives a list of everyone mentioned by Malory (and I think Chretien). There's also a list at the healing of Sir Urre in Malory, though some people have 'come back to life' (this suggests that at one time this story was placed earlier in the timeline, I suppose).

There are some remarkable inconsistencies. First, many RTKs show up in the Story of Merlin in c.510 (which is partly adapted by Malory) and are still 'young' in the 530s. For the most part the more gradual timeline from the Post-Vulgate is used in KAP: a lot of the great knights appear in the 520s and 530s. I'd date Chretien's Erec to c.534-8 (two parts), the Charette to 534, Yvain to 538, and Perceval is in 534-9 in the GPC. Many of these works mention RTKs.

Edit: the French Wikipedia has the Armorial I mentioned above: this would be the complete table in the mid 550s: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armorial_des_chevaliers_de_la_Table_ronde

A lot of what we might call "robber barons" in the romances are knights who set up shop at a ford or crossroads and joust for ransom... Certainly Username is correct that others simply sally out of their castles to take on passing strangers. But the most insidious break hospitality and imprison people who stop in the castle by night. The classic robber baron encounter is really the last one, and if handled well, the player knights could turn the tables by pretending to be 'innocent travelers'.

Of course there are many ways to get inside a castle that don't involve a dragged out siege, as history, Robin Hood, and assorted movies will tell you.

1 hour ago, Morien said:

You mean mixed in with the text? Since I sure can't find a GM advice nor recaps of the rules as their own section.

Even less than the rules, it is the mind-set. Sure, if the players have a background in chivalric characters and Arthuriana, it is easy enough. But if they are coming in cold from a generic hack-and-slash murder-hobo campaign, it gets a bit more iffy.

And I did say: "straight off the bat". As in the very first introduction they get to KAP. No intro adventures, no White Horse, no TMoSR. That is a pretty big ask for a GM who has never GMed KAP before. I know I wouldn't want to try those as my first adventure as a GM.

Fair enough.

My dad started me and my brother in KAP 1.0 on "The Best Wine in the World" and I think we did the Gray Knight and the Tournament of Dreams shortly thereafter. A baptism of fire! We screwed up but it was fun...

The trouble, of course, is centering the game around the chivalric ethos, and making sure that Traits and Passions are a major part of the story (as well), in my view. A lot depends on getting the 'feel' right, including the importance of early mistakes and learning how to be a good knight the hard way (like Gawaine's and Pellinore's in the first Hunt for the White Stag). But I expect others will disagree with me.

The White Hart hunt and the Triple Quest would make an excellent adventure for the game, I think, as it introduces some key themes in the future plot.

2 hours ago, Morien said:

I agree that they are good adventures, but I wouldn't recommend them  to a group of new players & a new GM straight off the bat.

The edition of Mystic Tournaments printed by Green Knight has GM advice and recaps of rules in it (I don't have the first edition handy), so I'm not sure why not. However, yes, do the Hunt and the White Horse first. I would also suggest The Marriage of Sir Roderick, to be mixed in there, as a counterbalance to the fighting and adventuring, as it plausibly involves both knights and ladies.

58 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Yeah, but I'm not so sure if that means they weren't present. There is a tendency in period writers to ignore common things and people that everyone would know about - especially when it comes to servants. I don't doubt that there are times when knights go off alone, but I suspect that often a squire is probably there but not mentioned. Take Kay for example. We can all recall one of his squires, but I don't believe we ever hear of any other of squires throughout the saga, though doubtless he would have had them. 

There's also the possibility they were killed or injured and left behind early into the journey. Being a squire of a knight errant that takes on robber knights, giants, etc., has got to be somewhat perilous.

Hi Ellie!

1. Don't be afraid to let the PKs and PLs fail (and fail forward). Fixing mistakes and being imperfect people is part of this kind of story. Most of the interesting romances (Lancelot, Yvain, the Grail Quest) feature obstacles and minor (or even serious) defeats before the 'win' happens.

I'm very fond of the two adventures in Tales of Mystic Tournaments and the "Best Wine in the World" in the Savage Mountains book, though there may be some nostalgia going on there.

Edit: They feature interesting characters, moral quandaries, significant challenges, and strong female characters.

I'm also fond of the adventures I've written but they won't be in print for a while.

5 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I wonder if that is entirely true or deliberate. 

What I mean is that perhaps they had squires that weren't mentioned (i.e Lance scales the battlements to face off against a dozen guards; his squire steadies the ladder - no mention of the squire), or if they started out with squires but they got killed while adventuring (i.e. guard drops boiling water on Lance as he climbs the ladder, misses, and kills the aforementioned squire. Lance continues on the rest of the year without a squire).

Yeah but that feeds into the whole Masochistic Medieval Christianity thing. A holy person has to suffer to prove how devout and holy he really is. Not many Saints had a pleasant life.

 

I'm pretty sure that if they had their squires with them it might have come up. Also a squire would have been awfully handy for fetching help, treating injuries, or retrieving a horse, but every time, there's none mentioned.

Squires appear somewhat rarely in the romances outside of tournaments and pitched battles. For some probably reckless reason the knights seem to do without when exploring dark forests and rescuing maidens, though in Lancelot's case he shows a marked proclivity to wandering off alone. In fact, sometimes it's the maiden (compare the tale of Sir Gareth) or her dwarf who seem to do the squire's role. My current campaign has more PC ladies than knights so the ladies end up doing some of the squire's work (mainly patching up the poor fellow).

2 hours ago, Hzark10 said:

I agree, but if the squire does engage in combat...

And does it matter to whom one is squired to? In other words, does being the squire of Lancelot do anything to your glory level as compared to some household knight?

I am not as concerned about passive glory as that would be reduced as well.  

Lancelot went around without a squire much of the time... As did Percivale. They must have looked rather battered over time.

13 minutes ago, Luxus said:

In Tarndisi's Grove Colymars and local Elves have made the following pact: "Neither axe nor fire would be found in her grove; gods would not be called, nor sacrifice made. In return, she would provide Colymar with Nymie’s Counsel and provide her blessings to those who could gain them."

Does the part "gods would not be called" mean that 1) no runespells can be cast or 2) no worshipping ? With both options one has to call for his/her/it's god, but which option the text means?

This is from Heroquest adventure which we are using in RQG

I believe it means that only spirits may be summoned and bartered with in the Grove; of course dryads worship Aldrya as shaman-priestesses.

If you have your campaign start in 485 the Book of the Warlord has a pretty comprehensive list for Logres. A less complete listing for all of Britain is in the old Knights Adventurous, more or less (you'll have to skim through, there's no table of lords), which is for the 530s; the Savage Mountains and Beyond the Walls and Perilous Forest books also focus on the 530s and add detail to everywhere (but we have nothing (published yet) as detailed on Cornwall, Brittany, or Gaul). The Book of Sires has some information for outside Logres but it's sparse and focused on major events dating back to the time of Constantine and forward.

Too much detail would leave the GM with less space to improvise, of course.