Morien

See Djerf, BotW, p. 100.

Yep, Conservation of Characters is a good thing. It allows the PKs (and hence the players) have repeated interactions with NPCs, and hence form more of an attachment (or rivalry) with them. I can see that. From p. 7, it is clear that the intent is to basically populate the feast with NPCs for the PKs to interact with, in their own table, etc. There is a very nice adventure illustrating how such an interaction could be GMed (outside the BoF system): the Adventure of the Werewolf in The Spectre King (3e) and the Tales of Spectre Kings (4.5e reprinting with the Grand Tourney switched out for the White Horror) books. That being said, I would happily just recycle most of the NPCs (indeed, the p. 7 suggests most of them are the famous knights, heiresses and other important, recurring NPCs), and their Glory and exact skills do not matter all that much, I don't think. So I would be happy to just keep their stats pretty much the same from year to year, except maybe revise them every five years or so, if I felt it was important. Or if I wanted the PK actions in the feast to have done induced a change, such lowering a lady's Chaste due to particularly fine piece of Flirting, or a NPK training up his Gaming for a rematch with a PK. I definitely would not be tracking 100s of NPKs every year on the off chance that I might need one of them. Sure, if I have a recurring NPK who shows up five years down the line to challenge a PK, I would hike up his skills some, maybe add a couple of hundred Glory, but that is probably all I would bother doing. And if he doesn't show up again, I would not even touch his statline, since what is the point?

Oh hell no. I might update a recurring personal enemy of a PK when he shows up again in the story, but I seriously don't bother keeping year to year track of anyone, not even the main NPCs like Count Roderick, etc. Frankly, most of the time it does not matter at all if the Count's Glory is 5000 or 6000, or if his Sword is 17 or 18. As for the other family members, I keep track of age (and of course the familial connection and the current status/position, including marriage) and any children (I have my own system for this). But I don't bother with their stats unless the PKs face them in battle, nor their Glory. I might assign a Glory 'tier' to some of the NPCs, and it is possible for them to move up with time, but that is more story-driven than game-mechanics-driven. If I need the personal enemy of a PK to succeed in X, so that the plot can happen, then he will succeed in X, without rolling.

My understanding from the video and the ImpCon talk etc was that the idea is that the new modular GPCs of two Periods each can cover a single generation in a more manageable gulp. But nothing prevents the group from getting the other modules and making it intergenerational, which I agree is one of the things that sets KAP apart from most RPGs (and in a good way!). But it is a whole lot less intimidating for a new GM, and for the players as well, to commit to a 20 session campaign than to a 60 session campaign, let alone a 80+ session campaign that the current GPC is even at the 1 session = 1 game-year pace. A weekly game session, with some skipped due to schedule conflict and family obligations, the full GPC can easily take a minimum of 2 years to play through, which can be a lot. A 20 session slice, half a year. Much more manageable. Also, for some of the younger groups out there that might not have the same amount of disposable income as us older folks do, getting one double-period book rather than a full GPC might be a difference of affording it or not starting the game at all. (Of course, I am assuming here that the individual period books would be significantly cheaper than the grand tome was. Stands to reason.) That being said, I could see a 'speed run' option as well, although more for those who have the current GPC book. If you have it, why not use it? I think we just had a discussion about this in the Discord, about skipping some years (and even the whole Anarchy period) to cram a GPC campaign through quickly.

Alas, it is not in KAP. However, I agree with the sentiment (I think it was Voord 99 who said that in Discord) that since KAP is basically about playing 'good guys' (Chivalric Knights), and being Trusting is 'a good trait', trust in your fellow man and believing the best of them, it is better to err on the side of rewarding the Trusting rather than punishing them for not being paranoid enough (something many other RPGs fall into). Besides, it makes for a nicer gaming experience when the Players are not acting paranoid all the time. "No, the gazebo is not going to try to lull you into a false sense of security!" 🙂

It is not easy, if you don't have access to some nice stuff like tar and grease and other such things that will stick and burn long enough for the fire to spread to the logs. I mean, in principle you can just cart enough dry hay and bundles of sticks and pile those against a wooden building and light them on fire, and eventually the building will catch on fire, too. It is not as if you can just fire a couple of fire arrows and see the whole thing go up like kindling. Now the issue with this is that the gentlemen inside the keep (or the bailey) tend to have shall we say strong views about people tying to set their castle on fire, and they tend to send rather pointed (sometimes even barbed) objections to this course of action. Or throwing down some weighty arguments against the besieger, too.

I would imagine that there is a cap. After all, if you cram towers right next to one another... Congratulations, you have a very expensive, slightly taller wall. I think Gatehouses/Barbicans would be a special case, guarding the gate, but priced/modeled as a single unit.

Rydychan (i.e. Wallingford) Castle is quite complicated, which makes the default 'defense rings' of KAP a bit too simplistic. Those work well enough with isolated, perfectly concentric castles. But if you look at the actual pictures of what the castle would have looked like in the 14th century (such as shown in this museum page: https://www.wallingfordmuseum.org.uk/displays ), you can see that technically, you could assault the inner ring from the riverside*. As the castle is situated at the edge of the town, the town's walls at the very least would not enter into it. This is not meant as criticism of our fortifications expert, fulk, but just a recognition that the whole DR & DV system is an abstraction, and cannot, by its design constraints, capture every detail of historical castles. * = Such an assault would have to be amphibious, under enemy archer fire from the walls, so likely result in huge confusion (hence slow and unorganized) and high casualties. Then again, attacking a strong castle like (middle period) Wallingford head-on is a fool's gambit anyway...

Maybe. But if I am giving the PK access to slightly higher quality troops, I am going to make him pay for that, too. For example, the Saxon Warriors might be expecting some gifts from their generous chieftain if the year has gone well, and the Saxon ceorls might not be willing to put up with Squeezes. And I might be even asking for the PK to have Folk Lore at 10, to reflect the smaller societal gulf between him and his Saxon subjects. Frankly, being a LazyGMtm, I probably would sidestep this issue completely by not even bringing it up in a normal campaign context. Even in Berroc, the commoners are a mixture of Saxon and Cymric, definitely by Uther Period, almost a century after the Saxon arrival, and the warrior elite is fighting in the Cymric style and needing Cymric type social organization to fund the knight and the horses. As for Kent, Wessex, etc... By the time the Saxon lands are reconquered after Badon, there are not really all that much call for the peasant militias, and you probably would have forbidden the Saxon ceorls to own weapons and armor anyway, in order to make rebelling harder for them. So it likely would not come up there, either.

That tends to be my default GMing position as well. That being said: However, if that is explicitly not the kind of story that the Player wishes to tackle, my historicity scruples would make way for the Player's enjoyment. For example, I can very easily imagine a situation where the Player carries some emotional baggage from their own real-world experiences with prejudice and such, and would just like to relax and have some fun playing a roleplaying game. Sure, we could play something else than Pendragon, but if my choices are GMing D&D or KAP with the rougher edges filed off, I know what I am going to choose! * In short, while my personal preference is for a more 'authentic medieval' setting, it is not a strong enough preference to trump the Player enjoyment. Let's say, for example, that the Player wishes to play an openly gay character who can legally marry another guy, and adopt children as their heirs. Sure, it won't be historic medieval, but I am already allowing female knights with minimal fuss in our KAP campaigns, so I am pretty much over that bridge already. The legalized adoption does mean that the childless NPKs and PKs would be adopting heirs, but that might pave way for other story hooks, instead. And many PKs think they are immortal until they suddenly are not. 😛 Anyway, the inclusion of the gay acceptance and gay weddings and yes, even the legalized adoption will actually not matter one jot as far as playing the campaign and the adventures are concerned, but they are just window dressing for the setting. Now all that being said, another GM might feel much more strongly about the historicity aspect. Changing that in their campaign would diminish their enjoyment, and the GMs need to enjoy their game too, or they will stop GMing it (either by choice or by burnout). Or there could be other players who want to have the struggle and the more authentically medieval setting. So it becomes the session 0 negotiation at the gaming table, to see if it is a campaign that everyone will enjoy playing. And at sometimes, one may have to recognize that this particular campaign is not for them. * In our first KAP campaign, I did have one player (and a good friend of mine), who was adamant that she would not play a Christian nor a male character. Those were her non-negotiable requirements for the campaign. As it happened, KAP already has as a default the (Celtic) Pagans, who are very much ahistorical given the rest of the medieval societal tapestry that Pendragon world seems based on. And there was already a discussion about female knights, so it was easy enough for me to accommodate her and I certainly did not regret having her as a player in the campaign. Actually, she switched to a lady character for like the last half of the campaign, and accommodating a lady character in the adventures designed for knights caused me way more headaches than a female knight would have!

You mean survival, not surveillance. 🙂 Yeah, I am pretty sure I have commented elsewhere that I think the Followers' Fate (I think that is what it is called) roll in the skirmish should be an opposed roll (with all modifiers + a modifier on how the PKs do in their fights) between the PK commander and the opposing commander. As for the Battle System, you will get way too high casualties by rolling Followers' Fate every battle round. The results are too high anyway for a Battle, where casualties of the order of 20% was enough to get the army to retreat. The way I would do it in Battle is to tie the Followers' Fate directly to the unit commander's roll and how the PKs do in their own melee rolls. Say, for example: PKs Triumph (i.e. all of them win their melee rolls) = 2% casualties of the whole unit (including the PKs, who of course are immune from these casualties themselves) PKs Win = 5% casualties PKs Lose = 10% casualties PKs Are Crushed (i.e. all of them lost their melee rolls) = 20% casualties If the unit commander failed the Battle roll, double the casualties. If they fumbled, triple. If they critted, half. In the case of a 'fractional casualty', carry it over to the next round. Half of the casualties are wounded, retreating to the Back of the Battle for First Aid in the next battle round. (If the whole unit retreats to the back of the battle, they stick with the unit and are recovered, or they can be recovered when the unit does retreat to the Back of the Battle later). Of the other half, half are dead and the other half are captured, when fighting against civilized foes. When fighting against Saxons and the like, they are all dead. Something like that. Obviously, numbers from the top of my head, not playtested, etc.

This is hella strong, especially compared to other 'standard' solos in KAP 5.2. Just letting you know.

This is fine. You are allowed to flee from a terrifying monster. However, it also depends on the situation. You might lose Honor if you flee, deserting your friends, family members, liege lord... No dishonor, although again, depends a bit on the situation. If your liege lord charges ahead, you are supposed to do the same. If this happens in a general combat situation (i.e. you are expected to fight), then yeah, this is cowardly and costs you honor, unless the guy is like Lancelot. If you have been challenged, the honorable thing is to fight. If you have a liege lord/family member in trouble and you flee the battle rather than helping when you had the chance, yeah, society is going to judge you. This is fine. You are not expected to fight on after a Major Wound. Limp away, save yourself to fight another day before you pass out. Not enough, although if the cumulative effect drops you below half hit points, I would permit retreating to attend to your wounds. Although this would be more to the Back of the Battle rather than running home. Not OK, you are going to lose honor. Definitely losing honor, you coward! You are a knight, a warrior, of Those Who Fight! The responsibilities and the risks come with the perks! All above IMHO and all that. Also, creativehum already gave a pretty good response.

I think in our play-through of that Adventure, I explicitly made the gathering that of faerie folk rather than just peasants, so it had that magical component 'built-in'. But yeah, Magical Night would qualify, too. Well, there is also an argument that the PKs do NOT know this. As far as they know, they might be on a wild goose chase, all for nothing. Why not stop here and enjoy good company and fine food? Have some fun, rather than bounce in the saddle the whole night for some silly pagan ritual that won't matter and they are probably going to miss anyway... As it says on p. 85 (KAP 5.2): "Sometimes, though, behavior takes precedent over conscious intent. Most of us have experienced doing something without thinking, and a Trait roll duplicates that kind of situation." There is also the case on p. 86: "The Gamemaster asks Ambrut’s character to make a roll against his Merciful Trait,"; there is nothing magical in that situation, just a question if Ambrut will spare the life of a villainous foe. So clearly, there is a precedent for the GM asking the Player to roll for a Trait in certain situations to decide the actions of the PK. I do impose some 'mundane tests' on occasion as well, just like I might ask Valorous or Energetic rolls. You can't just decide to be Valorous (to continue the fight after a Major Wound) or Energetic (to stay awake the whole night during your Vigil); you'll have to succeed in the Trait, even if it is a simple mundane situation.

I believe historically, yes (or at least some donation of wealth). However, from the GMing perspective, I find it easier to handwave such things in the case of retiring PKs. After all, I want to make it EASY to remove those Too-Glorious-To-Die Heroes from the game, to give the younger generation a chance to shine and build their own stories. Now if someone was using a nunnery as an easy way to avoid paying for dowries for their sisters/daughters, well then, I might be a somewhat stricter about that. (I seem to recall a forum thread where a GM described a player doing exactly that.)

In our case, the usual way of passing the torch is by the parent dying in combat. However, we have had some exceptions to this, too. Technically, the title shifts when the parent dies (or becomes a monk/nun). However, if they are unable to fulfill their duties as a knight (i.e. to answer the muster) due to being bedridden, they need to provide a knight as part of their servitium debitum. Having their own heir serve in their place would make sense, and would allow to groom the heir to take care of the manorial management as well (technically, as their own parent's household knight). If they are still able to serve (retired to their estates), then they keep the title and the lands, and the heir continues as a household knight. The long period of being bedridden is one of the big faults of the KAP Aging system. Once you become bedridden, death should not be too far off. As said above, this has not been a huge issue for us, as we have had only one PK become bedridden (so far), but were it to happen again, I would most likely say that the character dies by the next winter phase anyway, just to make it quicker rather than have that former PK stick around as an invalid for a decade or two due to dice luck. They would continue as a household knight if the parent is able to continue fulfilling their duties. However, I'd be more than happy to let the PLAYER continue overseeing the manor itself. Sure, if the liege (and thus the GM) is fine with it. In our game, this kind of situation has happened when there are multiple manors and the (NPC) father was still hale and hearty. The heir took over one manor, while the father kept control of the other one for himself. Obviously, the main thing is to talk to the player and find out how they want to deal with the situation. Their characters and all that. I generally try to be as accommodating as possible to make the transition smooth and easy. Besides, as a LazyGM, I don't really want to bother with their ancestral manor and playing their former PK as an NPK.

I see where you are coming from, but I can easily come up with situations where inaction is a dishonorable choice. The easiest things to point to are: a family member, the liege lord or the host is attacked. Sure, you can just stand there and do nothing. But that would be dishonorable since by the rules of the society, you need to act even though it might be suicidal. Perhaps especially if it is suicidal. Throwing yourself at the dragon as a suicidal diversion so that your liege lord survives is the epitome of Homage [liege]. Furthermore, your oath of knighthood (at least if you get to the Round Table) might include clauses about protecting women (or at least noblewomen) and clergy, so sitting idly by would mean betraying your oath. Sure, YOU are not personally doing anything, but since you gave your word that you would protect them, you are in violation of your oath. I guess we will see how KAP 6 will handle these issues, but the above ones would be the ones where I could ding Honor for inaction without even thinking twice. Now the example you gave... It would depend a lot who were murdered, IMHO. If they were nobles (or peasants under the PKs' or the liege's or the King's protection), I could see the other PKs denouncing the murderer to their liege, if it was too late to do anything in the heat of the moment and too dangerous to oppose the guy (he must be EXTREMELY optimised if he can stand up to even a pair of normal PKs; outnumbering in KAP is deadly). Staying silent about it when they should reveal the murder could impact their Honor, IMHO. If the victims were Saxons (without safe conduct) or bandits, who cares? Cowardice is one of those touchy things, but I think the general rule of thumb is that if the beastie gives valorous penalties, it is a monster and the knights are allowed to exercise prudence (with the exceptions mentioned earlier). Same thing if they are outnumbered. But if they are outnumbering the murderer, then it is a somewhat different thing. That being said, keeping the campaign from PvP and TPK tends to be a good idea. KAP is a more robust system against TPK thanks to the families and the expectation of your character dying at some point over the course of the campaign, but it tends to be a bit of a speed bump and a mood killer anyway.

No. These bonuses (inspiration, religious, magic weapon) apply to the skill before splitting. Circumstantial bonuses (combined actions, positioning, mounted vs. unmounted) apply after you split the skill. The easy question is: does this bonus matter on who/where the opponent is, or does it apply to your skill regardless of what you are doing? If the former, after the split. If the latter, before the split. Example: You are fighting a horseman and a footman, while on a horse yourself. Clearly, the mounted vs. unmounted applies only on the footman, so it is applied only after you split your skill between the horseman (no modifiers) and the footman (+5/-5 after you split the skill). However, inspiration gives you +10 (or +5 in 6E) to your skill if you are inspired regardless of who you are attacking, so it modifies your base Sword skill, and then you split.

Excellent! Glad you all had fun. 🙂

Correct. The 1+3 is the standard in Logres, but even there it can vary. But it is the starting point to start varying from.

Sure. The GM can script the battle as much as they want.

Yeah, Trait rules are a bit wonky, which is why we have had so many threads on those rules across various forum iterations. I think I would impose the trait tests here (although I would definitely do the second roll as well). But like I said in the other thread, I would change the Traits some and make it a delay, not Out of the Story. But I can see the argument (especially in a Con Game) to ensure that all the Players get to the end to experience it. Speaking of Trait Rules and Famous Traits... When it comes to Famous Traits, if you allow the Player to choose when the character has a trait 5-15, you should allow him to choose to act according to the trait when it is 16+. It makes no sense that a Chaste 5 character can choose to be chaste 100% of the time and Chaste 16 character would actually be lustful: 0.05 + 0.15 * 0.2 = 8% of the time, and 5% of the time STRONGLY Lustful (fumbled Chaste). Instead, Chaste 16 should be able to choose Chaste (if non-Famous Chaste gets a choice) and only roll if the player wants the character to actually be Lustful; he needs to fail his Famous Chaste before he can choose Lustful.

White Horse is definitely more doable in a single session, and having some material that you can add to pad it if the players run through it too fast is good, too. One thing that you NEED to take care with the White Horse is that you cannot let the PKs to drop off at the first failed trait roll, or it will become a very very boring con game for the PK's player. There is a discussion about that in this Forum, I believe. I forget if you contributed to it, too? Of course, it is possible to do the opposite to the Grey Knight. You can easily cut the encounter with the Lady and the Bandits and just make the faerieland mess with the time so that the PKs need to race back to Camelot to get there in time. Or you can streamline some of the other encounters (like the initial court & tournament).

I'd rank them probably like: 1. Damage (rolled every time you hit an opponent; low damage might mean you can't hurt the opponent while high damage allows you to end fights quickly, on your own terms) 2. Knockdown (comes up every other time when you get hit or more often if it is low or enemy's damage is high, low Knockdown means you are spending a lot of the fight at a disadvantage) 3. Major Wound (the one thing that can end the fight in a single blow AND cost you stat points; however, usually a 'high enough' CON is all you need) 4. HP (if it comes down to who has a couple of hit points more, something has gone wrong already) ---- (bit of a gap here) 5. Healing Rate (if going by the book; in our house-rules, successful First Aid heals Healing Rate, not 1d3, and this makes Healing Rate significantly more useful, bumping it up to 4th place; that being said, HR 3 is MUCH better than HR 2 even with normal rules, and has saved some lives from the dreaded Degradation) 6. Movement (because it is usually handwaved away or you are sitting on your horse) So, using the current rules: SIZ: 1, 2, and 4. DEX: 2 (but high SIZ means you seldom have to roll DEX; a point in SIZ is MUCH better than a point in DEX), and 6 STR: 1, 5, 6 CON: 3, 4 and 5 This is pretty much what I tend to see in PKs' statlines: SIZ: 16-18 (at least until MWs and Aging start working on them) DEX: 8-11 STR: 15-18 (to get that sweet sweet 6d6 damage, and maybe a point of extra; THEN you can raise CON) CON: 14+ (we have a couple of players who are absolutely paranoid about MWs, and try to max out CON; granted, it does mean that they almost never take a MW) So yeah, I can see the point that even with my suggested changes, SIZ is still the King and DEX is the dump stat, but it does weaken SIZ and gives DEX a chance to do what it was meant to do: matter in Knockdown. If CON gets Healing Rate, I think it would become the second-most important stat, with the players starting to think in terms of 5d6 and high CON (HR 4 would be super useful with our house-rules), or 6d6 and only moderate CON. As I said above, currently it is 'get 6d6 first, and then raise CON'. I could see that shifting to 'start with high CON and 5d6, and then raise STR until you get 6d6'.

So STR now would give you HP, Healing Rate, Movement and Damage? 🙂 STR was already at least the second most useful stat, after SIZ, and this would enhance STR more and do nothing for APP. At the same time, this would nerf SIZ too much, IMHO. I agree that DEX would definitely benefit from this change, though, even though I don't quite agree with it, either. I forget if these are already mentioned in the old thread Ringan linked (I would not be surprised), but some suggestions: Knockdown score = (SIZ+DEX)/2 [boosts DEX, weakens SIZ] Healing Rate = CON/5 [boosts CON, weakens STR] Both are rather easy changes, and you can justify them easily enough.