Morien

All in all, looks pretty reasonable. Some comments: Firstly, why did you ignore the count's personal retinue of 12 knights who live in Sarum? Surely the Marshal would have them to command, too. Secondly, depending how the PKs have consolidated Salisbury county, they might have access to more knights than 75. Thirdly, depending on what kind of invasion/raiding you are expecting when the army is away, that should inform how much men you wish to leave behind. Footsoldiers are fine defending castles, but they are less able to react quickly and chase down raiders. Stripping both patrols away might be a bad idea. Fourthly, there would be more vassal knights than 10, but I see you assume that 5 of them are unassigned PKs, and others would be tied up in garrisons & included in patrols. So I don't really have an issue with this one, just wanted to add this comment. 🙂

Yep, that is an option and the one that the players should take if they decide to go against their liege lord, as they are going against their vows anyway. At least this way, they minimize the honor loss. Granted, I get the idea here that the Anarchy has played out very differently from the 'default', what with the Saxon alliances. I would actually be more worried about the players ending up on the Saxons' side at Mount Badon, than whatever side they choose in the unification war. After all, one is politics, the other is existential. Also, who did Jenna marry? If that guy is siding with Arthur and Robert does not, then there is a good chance that Robert, even if he survives, will get disbarred for his treachery and the county goes to the pro-Arthur chap via Jenna. In our campaign, Robert was captured and switched sides to Arthur in 511, with Prince Mark denouncing him as a traitor and refusing to give up Salisbury. Robert died to an unlucky crit against Prince Galegantis in 512. Thus, Salisbury went after Terrabil to Jenna's husband, the Praetor of Levcomagus, who was a personal enemy of the PKs. Thus, the defeated PKs ended up relocating to Cornwall. Here it will be much harder, if they side with the Saxons, as the Saxon kingdoms end up being wiped out. A much better play would be to back Arthur up and then use those family connections to try and claim rulership of the newly reconquered Saxon county, since you are married to the princess. But this would require foresight that the players likely lack, and would not make so much sense given the circumstances as explained. That being said, hopefully the PKs will have younger brothers or sons of their own, who can try to revive the family fortunes during the Roman War...

In our campaign, Salisbury became a vassal of Cornwall and fought against Arthur until submitting after the Battle if Terrabil. Remember that the default GPC with Robert siding with Arthur is for you to change. Given the fact that you have changed Salisbury's alignment by having them ally with the Saxons, and Robert's trusted, high glory advisors telling him never to trust Merlin, he might choose to go against Arthur, too. I would let the Players decide which side they wish to be on and have Robert side that way. The Honor loss for betraying your life lord is big enough that very few Players would choose to do it.

https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/gem/index.htm Translation by Sebastian Evans (1904) If Arthur increasing his household and fame is concurrent with those 12 years, that would resolve one issue. There is still an issue of that extra year between Badon and the 12 years of peace that would need to be accounted for. The wars in Norway, Denmark and Gaul seem to be accomplished in the span of the next nine years (mainly in Gaul): "After a space of nine years, when he had subdued all the parts of Gaul unto his dominion, Arthur again came unto Paris and there held his court." Arthur then returns to Britain, at the beginning of spring. He receives the Roman emissaries at Whitsuntide, and then invades Gaul in August, wintering in Gaul. Arthur receives word of Mordred's treachery in the following summer, and heads back to Britain to meet Mordred at the battle of Camlann. So, the reconstructed timeline (as far as I can tell) is as follows: Year 1: Battle of Badon Year 2: Conquest of Ireland and Iceland Year 3-14: Peace and the gathering of the knights, assuming they are concurrent Year 15: War against Norway, Denmark and Gaul, Duel with Flollo. (Most generous assumption is that this year counts as one of the nine, although I don't think it should, based on the translation. Instead, it seems we should count nine years onwards from the end of the Duel, so we should be at the end of year 24 and Arthur returning on Year 25.) Year 16-23: War in Gaul (the other 8 years) Year 24: Arthur returns to Britain, receives emissaries, declares war on Rome, defeats the Romans in Gaul. Year 25: Arthur is informed of Mordred's treachery and returns to Britain. Battle of Camlann. Now I can see shaving maybe a year off, if you count Year 24 as the ninth year of the War in Gaul instead of as its own year, But this would still leave 23 years between Badon and Camlann, not 21. Counting also the war years of 2 and 15 as part of the 12-year peace is the only way I can make it fit 21 years, and that is a somewhat torturous interpretation of 12 years of peace. As I said, my reading would be the opposite to this generous interpretation, having Arthur winter in Gaul after organizing things and then return the following spring, i.e. Year 25, and Camlann happening in Year 26, 25 years after Badon. I am more than happy to admit that I am not reading the original Latin (nor can I) and the translation might be out of date. I am simply commenting on the translation I have easy access to.

Rather, it works fine enough in GPC, but less fine in post-BotW/BoU world. However, it can be made to fit that, if Uther is basically telling Gorlois that he can be the overlord of all of the Duchy of Cornwall, i.e. not just the Duke but the liege lord as well, as long as he acknowledges Uther as his King. Making him the equivalent of the territorially concentrated Duke that he was in GPC... Given that by that time, Uther has probably confiscated Gorlois' holdings in the rest of Logres and Gorlois is pretty much in open rebellion and has the support of the nobles in his Duchy, this is more of a face-saving compromise on both sides. But yes, that is a rationalization on my part.

Minor nitpick: In HRB, the 12 years of peace follows after Arthur has spent an additional year after Badon to conquer Ireland ("When the next summer came on he fitted out his fleet and sailed unto the island of Hibernia") and even Iceland (why would you bother?). "At the end of winter he returned into Britain, and re-establishing his peace firmly throughout the realm, did abide therein for the next twelve years." Also, it is not that obvious to me how long the gap between this peace and the start of Arthur's new expansionist urges were: "At the end of this time [the aforementioned next twelve years] he invited unto him all soever of most prowess from far-off kingdoms and began to multiply his household retinue... [snip] ...At last the fame of his bounty and his prowess was upon every man's tongue". So we are told that Arthur really started becoming more internationally-minded after those 12 years, but then there is just a vague 'At last', which to me would indicate passage of some significant amount of time. Granted, I didn't read HRB in such exacting detail to find out if there are chronological events that would pinpoint the exact total time interval to 21 years, nor did I start counting the winters from the end of the peace to Camlann. The actual Roman War part seems to happen in a single year (and quite late in the year, at that), with Arthur wintering in Gaul and then getting informed of Mordred's treachery the following summer. HRB does give a date for Camlann to be AD 542. I did not spot a date for Badon, on a quick look.

Tristram's birthyear, 501 in the Gamemaster Characters in GPC, is off by a decade. It should, IMHO, be 511, which then matches up with him being eighteen (as in Malory) when he duels Marhaus to the death in 529. Also, this fits with The Child's Mercy (Year 522) better when Tristram is 11 rather than 21! So that helps to shave of a decade from Tristram's life, even in a 'canonical' campaign.

Quick comment: I'd prefer to have all the skills and traits on the first page, so that I don't have to flip back and forth during normal game. We roll normal skills way more often than we roll any squire skills, for example, and crest and portrait is not that important for the player to stare at all the time; he ought to know them already. So Squire, crest and portrait can go to the second 'winter phase-y' page, IMHO. Also, Horse stats fit easily under the Stable in the second page to make room in the first page. You just need an additional box per stat line for the number of horses that you have.

If you are doing the standard 60 points into stats approach, that is almost what the +3 CON does, EXCEPT for the maximum value. That being said, most of the Players in my campaign have been more interested in getting their CON rather than their STR up. 6d6 at STR 15 and SIZ 18 has been enough for them, but CON 15 is almost a minimum requirement for them to keep those Major Wounds at bay, and a couple of them are rocking CON 21.

I think Atgxtg may have gotten Traits mixed with Passions... "E. Passions for Sons of Player Knights", p. 49. However, given that K&L doesn't offer any word on how to deal with the Sons' Traits, and KAP 5.2 treats Sons' Traits and Passions in the same way (inherit Father's values), I can very well see the argument that this Passion rule could apply also to Traits if rolled randomly. I'd still cap them at 19 or 20.

They are in the Book of Knights & Ladies, p. 50. https://www.chaosium.com/book-of-knights-and-ladies-pdf/ Or you can just ignore such fiddly things and create everyone with the same Cymric template. It is the story that matters, not the minor adjustments.

You mean Kelpie, GPC p. 387.

The Tarascon Castle is really cool, too. I had the pleasure of touring it a few years back.

Yep. Especially once you go outside of Merlin, Arthur, Guenevere and Lancelot.

Most likely this would not even have a fully unified Briton kingdom, but a loose coalition of petty kingdoms just as likely to backstab one another than fight the Saxons, with Arthur as a unifying commander needing to cajole, charm and intimidate the various petty kings to keep them in line. No heavy cavalry charges with lances. And yes, technology would be a chainmail byrnie for 8 points and a shield or just the shield and helmet (2+6) for the rank and file spearmen. The Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell would be the inspiration here, I am thinking. Forget about the continent, unless you are ditching Arthur and instead have Riothamus. Yep. Just get 4th edition (AD531 start), various regional and adventure books for adventures, and just have fun.

Alright, we finished the 'Father' generation. I pushed the characters to migrate to Brittany at the end of 457, since they or their fathers had been active in the Dissidents and the Rebels. This also meant that they got introduced to Aurelius a bit earlier, although they then were contacted to participate in the 2nd Vortimer Rebellion (and realized why Aurelius was so lukewarm about helping Vortimer). Given that our campaign game is already in mid-530s and I didn't want to spend too much time on this Prequel, I didn't go into as much detail as I could have. Had this been an actual prep for the game starting in 480 or 485, I definitely would have made a bigger deal of Aurelius' relationships with Gorlois and Uther. As it was, Gorlois and Uther sank a bit to the background. This, on hindsight, was a mistake, especially since I breezed through 470s due to time issues. It basically ended up being an almost monotonous mass of skirmish-skirmish-battle-skirmish-skirmish-skirmish-battle-skirmish-battle. By keeping more detail on how each year differs in actual events (Count Roderick coming to his own, Uther becoming Duke of the Vale, Gorlois fighting his own war in Cornwall and missing the Battle of Windsor because of it), the years would have distinguished themselved more. Adding some additional 'diplomatic missions' to Cornwall (maybe as messengers in 473, so that they can see the situation themselves and even meet Gorlois and Ygraine face to face) and Cumbria (the Wyrm thing and Uther's 'ultimatum' in 478) would have made Intrigue a more useful skill and again broken up the Saxon Raid monotony of 470s. So, on hindsight, I wish I had planned for two 3h sessions rather than one 4h session. That would have been easier for my vocal chords as well as given more time to expand on the events. Here are the results: Sir Carlain the Wrathful, the son of Sir Kian the Doomed (438-479) (38 years old, 3928 Glory) Family: 3 boys, 3 girls (one set of g+b twins) Claim to Fame: Battle of Wantsum Channel (360), March Veteran, His Hatred of Vortigern and the Saxons was his downfall Cause of Death: His health destroyed by the many major wounds that he took by throwing himself ferociously at his hated enemies, the final wound at the Battle of Frisia proved mortal in the end. (Also, very unlucky with Aging rolls, as was Kian.) Sir Hadrian, the son of Sir Magnus (438-472) (33 years old, 3397 Glory) Family: 2 boys, 2 girls Claim to Fame: Battle of Angers (300 Glory), March Veteran Cause of Death: Died fighting Saxon Raiders Sir Betlic, The Butcher on the Beach, the 2nd son of Sir Hector the Horse-Tamer (440-479) (39 years old, 5120 Glory) Family: 3 boys, 1 girl Claim to Fame: Battle of Frisia (1150 Glory), March Veteran (personal summons to war) Cause of Death: Glorious Death at the Battle of Frisia (479), turning the surf crimson with Frisian blood. Sir Alder the Bountiful, the son of Sir Alder the Valorous (436-478) (41 years old, 6160 glory) Family: 8 boys (one set of twins), 6 girls (one set of twins) Claim to Fame: Naval Raids (1060 Glory), Battle of Exeter (540 Glory), March Veteran (personal summons to war), Having LOADS of children Cause of Death: Glorious Death at Naval Raids, last seen on a burning Saxon ship, hewing down Saxons by the dozen. SYSTEM TWEAKS Dropping Valorous and simplifying Illness & Major Wound CON rolling into a single roll worked quite nicely. Hate Passion was definitely a bit of a poisoned flagon with a dragon, as it gave +5 to skill but also -5 to CON, making Major Wounds more likely. Also, if you were impassioned by Hate, you had to take the Glorious Death on a critical success, leading to a couple of players spending Glory Bonus Points to downgrade a critical into a normal success, instead. Another modification I'd do is to tie the Battle/Horsemanship roll results to the Battle/Raid Glory rather than roll that separately. For instance, if the battle is 1d6x30x2 Glory, I'd make it just: Fumble: Death in battle. Roll again to see how much Glory you got. If a 2nd Fumble, 30 Glory. Failure: 60 Glory Success (on roll 1-5): 120 Glory Success (on roll 6-10): 180 Glory Success (on roll 11-15): 240 Glory Success (on roll 16-19): 300 Glory Critical (20+): 360 Glory +100 (Champion) or +1000 (Glorious Death) This gets rid of yet another roll, and ties the results to the actual rolls the Players made for their characters. We had a couple of cases where someone rolled 19 (success) and then 1 on the Glory roll, while another player Failed and then rolled a 5, resulting in 2.5 times as much Glory as the high-success PK. This also makes the Hate Passion a bit more useful, especially at skill 15, as it turns 16-19 failures (60 Glory) to 16-19 successes (300 Glory), a gain of 240 Glory Points.

Book of Manor and Lordly Domains are obsolete. Book of the Estate and Book of the Warlord are clear on how these work: Demesne manor = a manor that is held by YOU directly. Provides 10% of CR as Discretionary Funds, as well as Army upkeep, court, family, etc. Enfeoffed manor = a manor that is held by YOUR VASSAL. Provides just the Army (servitium debitum) for the muster. Nothing else. Example: I am an estate holder with 10 manors (of £10 each for simplicity) and a vassal of Count Roderick of Salisbury. As far as Roderick is concerned, all those 10 manors are ENFEOFFED, since they are held by HIS VASSAL, Sir Morien. As far as I, Sir Morien, am concerned, only 2 of those manors are ENFEOFFED, held by Sir A and Sir B who are MY VASSALS, but the other 8 of those manors are DEMESNE, as they are held by ME directly. My budget is based on those 8 demesne manors (so £80 income, of which £8 is Discretionary Funds), but when the Count summons the Army, Sir A and Sir B join me with their 2 footmen each, bringing my total Army to the appropriate 10 knights and 20 footmen, which is my servitium debitum for a £100 estate.

So the fourth player who had to leave like an hour to the yesterday's session finished the Grandfather run today. The results were quite interesting, too. The ancestor criticaled Valorous and came close to criticaling Battle of Lincoln which would have led to a Glorious Death. But no, although he did gain 450 Glory from that, a nice chunk. He survived to fight in the Battle of Chalons, where apparently, he got ill from some disease (malaria? from the Roman troops?), as his health plummeted afterwards: aging rolls in 451 and 452 were brutal, 12 each, 453 was a 5, and the yearly CON rolls saw him ill more often than not. Furthermore, fighting against the Irish left him suffering Major Wounds each year, so by 454, his CON had dropped from like 13 to 5. He barely survived another bout of illness in the early spring of 455, and then suffered another MW whilst fighting the Irish in Cornwall, leaving him with CON 4 and an Aging roll to look forward to. Returning to Salisbury, he was contacted by a man who claimed to be putting together an uprising against the High King. Already high with fever, he figured that he probably wouldn't survive the winter, so he decided to take the risk of trusting this man. It turned out to be a mistake, as he was lured into an ambush and killed by the Vortigern loyalists (Intrigue Fumble). But at least he went down swinging rather than a slow death in his bed*. His son will start his run in 459 with Hate (Vortigern) 17... * Just out of curiosity, we did roll the Aging, and yep, -1 CON, dropping him to CON 3 and bedridden. So he would have missed out on the 456 uprising anyway. Sir Kian the Doomed (413-455) (41 years old, 2940 Glory) Family: 6 boys (one set of twins), 3 girls Claim to Fame: Battle of Lincoln (450 Glory), going from CON 13 to CON 4 in four years Cause of Death: Murdered by Vortigern Loyalists Sir Magnus, The Harvester of Huns (413-451) (37 years old, 3662 Glory) Family: 7 boys, 2 girls (one b+g twin set) Claim to Fame: Battle of Chalons (1360 Glory) Cause of Death: Glorious Death at the Battle of Chalons Sir ??? the Horse-tamer (407-454) (46 years old, 2776 Glory) Family: 6 boys (two sets of twins), 2 girls Claim to Fame: Battle of Lincoln (360 Glory), Horsemanship 21 Cause of Death: Illness, died in bed Sir Alder the Valorous (413-?) (43 years old in 457, 2450 Glory) Family: 2 boys, 6 girls (one set of twins) Claim to Fame: Battle of Lincoln (450 Glory), Valorous 20 Cause of Death: Still alive at the end of the Battle of Kent 457.

So I had three players testing this thing with me yesterday (remotely, of course). I will provide more numbers once I get their character sheets, since I neglected to ask for them yesterday, so I am just writing this from memory. We managed to get to the end of 457, with two grandfathers dead and one cursing Vortigern's name as he fled from the disastrous Battle of Kent. We had a short debriefing afterwards, getting the feedback from the players was very helpful. Much of the feedback is reflected in the System Tweaks below. We were also talking about when this 'Prequel Game' should be used. As I have stated before, I think frontloading (i.e. doing it first) the campaign with the family history, while it does happen before the character is knighted, is not a good idea. The BoSi rolling gets a bit monotonous after a while and there is a lot of information for the new player to ingest. On the other hand, KAP 5.2 kills the ancestors off so quickly that it hardly matters. Instead, here is what I would do (and the players seemed to feel this was a good approach): 1. Give the Players a basic idea what the world is, something along the lines of (for 480): "After the Roman legions left Britain, Britons chose a High King to lead them. After the murder of the High King, Tyrant Vortigern seized the throne and imported Saxon mercenaries to support his rule. He married a Saxons princess and gifted lots of Cymric land to the Saxon mercenaries, who brought their families to Britain, too. The Cymri rebelled, and were betrayed and murdered at a peace conference by the Saxons. The true heir, Prince Aurelius, returned from exile with an army and killed Vortigern. He defeated the Saxons but was unable to push them off the island completely. Skirmishing and warfare has continued for a decade, with High King Aurelius' brother and heir, Prince Uther, acting as Aurelius' right-hand man. The King's left-hand man is his best friend, Sir Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall. Your Liege Lord is Count Roderick of Salisbury, a great nobleman in his early 30s who has proven himself a valiant and skilled warlord in the fight against the Saxons." Helped of course if you can point to a map to show where the Saxons, Logres, Cornwall and Salisbury are. 2. Run the Bear Hunt intro. This basically gives the players some idea how the system works and who their characters are. Including of course some stuff about what being a squire and a knight is all about. 3. Run a few more sessions of adventures, etc, with the PKs as household knights. No need to worry about their manors and wider family yet; either the father is alive or there is an older brother who will croak without an heir at an opportune moment. 4. Then run the Family History (or this "Prequel Game"). Basically, once the Players are more familiar with the current state of the world and their place in it, they are better able to grasp how their family got here, and more than that, they are hopefully more eager to learn about this stuff rather than at the beginning. I consider myself a history buff, but even I would be getting antsy about 'when do we actually get to play the game' if there was a full session of family history up front. As an example, I have been advocating a 'mini-GPC' by taking the GPC Expansion (standalone or Book of Uther) and the Marriage of Count Roderick and running with them to 484 with the PKs as household knights. Then, at the victory feast of the Mt. Damen, roll or 'play' the family history, as the PKs reminisce about their dead family (fathers, but could be those big brothers, too). SYSTEM TWEAKS One big difference is that I went back to "Fumbled CON = death by illness" (or miscellaneous causes if we had wanted to go there), but at the same time, we used the Ancestor's Glory Bonus Points as Fate Points, turning any roll into a success after the fact at the cost of the Glory Bonus Point. This helped to counter the occasional fumble, but it was still not enough to make the Ancestors immortal, which was good. I had set up the "Prior 439" gameplay in a slightly simplified way (CON, Flirting, a skill of your choice giving 1d20 Glory on a Success, halved on a failure, doubled on a crit), but it was still too complicated given that I didn't have actual events for it; as one player commented: "I rolled Battle, but what battle was it, where, for what and against who?". So instead, I think I would skip the CON and Skill rolls, save for Flirting which is important for the marriage at the start and children afterwards (more of that later). Just do Flirting, yearly training and then a lump sum of Glory at the end, like 1d20 per year as it is in BoSi. This would make it simpler and save some time at the start, allowing us to get to the meat of the story quicker. We 'wasted' about an hour (might have been a bit more actually) on 'setup': 15 min getting organized, 15min explaining the system and chargen, 15min to run the eldest ancestor through is 6 year gap to get to when everyone was knighted, and then another 15min to get everyone to 439. So making this simpler would have saved roughly half an hour that was almost nothing else than rolling dice and making notes. Another change that I would probably make is removing Valorous. Sure, it acts as a gatekeeper for the Battles, but it is also a source of great frustration for the players when they fail in it, and it is an extra complication that we could do without, I am thinking. It will also make the family histories more fun, when the PK ancestors are in the thick of it. Adding more Player choice is a good thing, too. The CON roll at the start was a bit of a killer, if you had a low CON. I worried a bit that it would be double-dipping with the Aging rolls, and in one sense it is. Once you hit 35, you can't raise CON anymore, and you start spiraling down really fast once your CON drops to 10 or so, about -1 CON per year if unlucky. On the other hand, the only ancestor (thus far) who died of low CON was already in his late 40s, with a knighted son, so I am not too worried at the moment. Especially if I remove Valorous and suggest that people pump up their CON to 15+ ASAP prior to their character's 35th birthday. Speaking of advancement via the halved Yearly Trainings, it was pretty nicely balanced. As the characters seldom get more than one or two skill checks (my advice, roll them at the same time you roll the skill itself; if the skill is not a failure, you have the experience check roll right away to see if it goes up and that cuts down on the back and forth), and Battle checks come only when you participate on Battles, the main source of the increase is really just the Yearly Training. Sure, some characters did end up with 20 in Battle and one even had 21 in Horsemanship (appropriately enough that is his family characteristic skill, although I didn't give him the +5 since that would have been unfair), but that is OK. As for Battles and Raids/Skirmish, I had four 'risk categories': Boring Garrison: Just roll Horsemanship and see if it increases on a success. Normal Raid: Major Wound (-1 CON) on a Fumble. No death chance. Normal Battle, Severe Raid (ones with a killed by raiders result): Roll CON with +5/-5 on success/fail of Battle or Horsemanship. If this fail, you take a Major Wound (-1 CON). If the original Battle or Horsemanship is a Fumble, you die. Severe Battle (usually a lost one, the ones with 1-5 death chances like Chalons and Kent): Battle gets a -5 modifier. Then as above, but in addition, on a Failed Battle, roll Battle again (at that -5). On another Fail or Fumble, you die. Oh, speaking of Battles and Hate, one criticism was that Hate didn't seem to play a role. Which, fair enough, we didn't really get to experience yet as people were just gaining their Hates and I was winging it. Originally, I was thinking Hate would act as an activation roll for the Battle, but as seen from the above Valorous discussion, I would leave that fully for a Player decision. Instead, I think I would ask Hate rolls if the enemy is Hated, and then give +5 to Battle. However, they get additional -5 to the CON roll and if they roll a critical, they HAVE TO choose a Glorious Death. I think that would nicely balance things out and fit the theme of being powered by the Hate but also being brought down by it. For Intrigue, I figured that if the Players put skillpoints into the skill, they should benefit from it. So I just had them roll Intrigue and on a success, they got to participate in coronations, wedding, or were privy to the rumors, with criticals opening new options. No one Fumbled, yet, but I had my plans there, too. Especially now that the First Rebellion is over, Vortigern's Loyalists might be hunting down some Rebel ringleaders, especially ones vocal about hating the High King... Finally, I speak more of Flirting below, but the characters did end up with rather large families, around 8 each. Naturally, this is very dependent on dice luck, and all three had Flirting 10 or 15 at the beginning, increasing it over time. One thing to do is to add a modifier to lower the fertility rate as the wife gets older: I am thinking -5 at 35, and stop it altogether at 45. For simplicity, I used just the ancestor's age and stopped childbirth at 45. Actually, easiest way would probably just assume an average 5 year age gap between wife and husband, so that -5 when husband is 40, and stop it altogether when husband is 50. Yeah, simple and easy. Not that the large families are all that bad, since it means there are plenty of spares (two ancestors ended up with 6 boys each) or potential storyhooks (the third one had 6 girls, leading to a lot of teasing about having to find dowries for all of them, from the other players). (This is of course assuming the typical medieval gender roles, which might not be the case, in your Pendragon campaign. Nor ours, either, as we had 3-and-3 split for a while, and while now it has become 5-and-1, there are two daughters of the next generation already as squires.) STORY TWISTS As for how the thing went... Now, this was obviously more Rollplay than Roleplay (a point made by the players, too), given that we were breezing by years roughly every 10 min or so on average. But there were some funny and interesting things rising out of the random rolls. For example, one ancestor (who was about 6 years older due to the joining date of the player, to make the generations match better) managed to fumble the Flirting right after the birth of his scripted eldest son (ensuring each one had an heir at the latest when they turned 25), and since he had left his Flirting at a 'low' 10, he proceeded to spend the next decade without children. It was only when he criticalled his Horsemanship roll against some Pictish raiders that his wife, from the warrior people of the Berroc Saxons, thawed and welcomed him back to her bed (critical Flirting, too!). This then resulted in a slew of children in the next half a dozen years, including two sets of twins, with only one missed year without children (he had raised his Flirting to 15 during the 'Ice Age'). Of course, then he started grumbling about Vortigern and the Saxons in 448 or 449, which his Berroc Saxon wife took to be disloyalty (Flirting Fumble). No more nookie for you! As I had stated, for simplicity, that the childbirth rolls would stop when the ancestor hit 45, this only managed to spoil one Flirting roll. Naturally it should be the wife's age that matters, but I was trying to keep it simple rather than tracking yet another number. Another ancestor had his bumps in the marital bliss, when after that eldest scripted son the wife kept giving him daughters (6 of them in a row), with the player playing up the disappointment of the chauvinistic patriarch of the family who had wanted more sons. He finally got a second son, and then promptly Fumbled the next Flirting roll. We decided that obviously he had told his wife that she was not 'totally useless' after giving him a second son, and would you believe it that she dared to get upset about it! "Women, amirite?" We also had a stroke of luck when rolling the wife's homeland for an ancestor who started out of Dorset (a Roman, and this Dorset connection had been part of the family history from the start of the actual campaign). I was fully prepared to bring his son (the father of the original PK) in after the March, but the random roll gave him a wife from Salisbury! So I just killed the in-laws off and made her an heiress after the Battle of River Parrett, just to make things easy for myself. Obviously, it is much easier to have everyone in the same county and of the same age, since then everyone fits the same template, but it would be easy enough to have them just from the same region. That way you don't have to flip through the book. As for the politics, the ancestors sported rather high Intrigue skills (10+ from the start), so they were quite connected with the court events, rarely missing a coronation or a rumor. There was one critical at Constans' murder, and I gave the player a choice of helping to round up the Picts (extra Glory), dying Gloriously to try to save the King (Glorious Death) or actually helping to whisk the Princes off to Brittany (Glory, move to Brittany; you could flip this and use the Cambrian event to try to catch the 'kidnappers' instead)! To make things easy, the player selected the first option, but had this been a 'true' family background, he might have gone for the more interesting options. Perhaps helped a bit by the player knowledge where the world ended up in, the ancestors started turning anti-Saxon quite early (the one married to the Berroc Saxon taking some extra convincing from his friends to tip the balance). In 450, they even took some pride in being OG, Original Grumblers, who were grumbling against the Saxon influence before it was cool. Of course, they were promptly sent off to Chalons to die against the Huns, with one ancestor loudly proclaiming that this was bullshit, as he discovered that the whole expedition was made of critics of Vortigern's Saxon policies. That player managed to get a critical in the Battle of Chalons, and decided that this was a good place for his character to die Gloriously, cursing Vortigern with his last words. His two friends survived it, and there was a bit of a gallow's humor joke when they were sent against the Irish again and again to get more Major Wounds that Vortigern was digging his own grave by ensuring that his opponents would be veteran warriors. Alas, the eldest ancestor finally succumbed to ill health, his constitution wrecked by the numerous wounds suffered in battles, as well as his advanced age (late 40s). The lone survivor joined up the First Rebellion and survived it, developing a strong (15) Hatred of Vortigern. And is probably identified by the Loyalists as one of the Rebels to keep an eye on. We shall see what happens to him and his family in the future. This is where we ended the Grandfathers' generation. The scripted eldest sons are getting knighted in 459, but I think we have one from 453 (the eldest ancestor, due to the issue of the PK age as mentioned) and another in 457 (the grandfather married early and got a son early). The intent is to continue the next weekend with the Fathers' (of the original 485 characters) generation.

Brief explanation to those who might be surprised that we strayed from HRB: The events in GPC from 485 - 490 or so are not present in HRB (nor the previous 481-483). Instead, Gorlois is Uther's loyal Duke of Cornwall and present at Mt. Damen, urging Uther to attack. The battle is a smashing success and both Octa and Eosa are captured. This is followed by Uther visiting Alclud in the North. After he has returned to Logres, Uther sees Duchess Ygraine at his Easter court, which then sets the stage for the rebellion of Gorlois. I assume Greg wanted to have Excalibur's Peace and thus set Gorlois and Uther antagonistic from the first, and hence Merlin is the one who appears to advice Uther at Mt. Damen. This is also why Octa and Eosa manage to escape Mt. Damen, so that Gorlois can assist Uther in defeating them in the Battle of Lincoln later on, and hence set the stage for Uther laying his eyes on Ygraine. There is similar 'padding' in GPC in comparison to HRB, which doesn't even have Arthur's kidnapping nor an Anarchy. Instead, Arthur is 15 when Uther dies, and gets elected King straightaway. He then goes to defeat Colgrin at York, which happens like 20 years after St. Albans in GPC timeline. Then again, HRB sees Medraut rebelling while Arthur is fighting the Romans, so that cuts like 30 years from the end of the GPC too.

That would be easily modified by either making the last feast round or adding an extra round into a 'mandatory' Drinking round (the PK can pass and roll Temperate for a check, but then he doesn't get any Geniality for it), which the (non-knightly) ladies would not participate in. This would be in pre-Arthur times, though. With Guinevere setting the new style from mid-Boy King onwards, where this kind of heavy drinking is a bit frowned upon and Arthur showing the new custom by retiring with his Queen rather than staying to booze with the boys. As for where the women went, I would imagine that they retired for the night, and the men staggered to bed in the wee hours or passed out in the great hall.

Kinda of the same mind as BioKeith, albeit with some differences. Spouses might accompany the knights to things like the Spring/Pentecostal Court, if it is nearby at least (i.e. to Camelot from Salisbury counts as close). I don't see the wives travelling far to Uther's Spring Court, though. Travel is more dangerous than later under Pax Arthuriana, and Uther's court is pretty... frat party-ish. Local liege's Spring/Christmas court events, sure. Valets could and probably should follow the knights around. They are useless if they are left home, as they are supposed to be the Knight's servant, not the Wife's. So I would generally allow the Valet do his best pretty much in any feast the Knight participates in. If nothing else, he probably made sure that the Knight put on a clean tunic and all that sort of stuff.

It is possible to do this easily enough with Python, if you know how to write for and if -loops with it, but frankly, why bother? Are the NPCs literally side by side with the PKs so that their actions influence the PKs' success or failure? How many NPCs do you have, anyway? I'd simply go ahead and make a simple matrix: A Crit Win Partial Fail Fumble B Crit Win Partial Fail Fumble That gives you 25 possible outcomes, although probably closer to 10 (most doubled, of course, since you will get the mirrored results flipped and equal results on the diagonal), which should still be enough outcomes for all NPC needs. Just roll once at the start of the Battle and then get a suitably dramatic result, with the PKs possibly having a chance to save the guy if he is doing poorly, or vice versa, if he is doing great. Although I would be leery about doing the latter, since Badon is supposed to be a bloodbath, and it is hard enough to die in normal KAP battle as it is, without adding a 'GM character save' into the mix. Here are some suggested results for Badon Hill (A is the friendly, B is the hardest foe he is likely to face; we don't care about the mooks): All draws: A and B kill one another, the actual roll saying how legendary/silly it is. (I.e. crit-v-crit is a legendary duel after the A has left fields of corpses behind him, dying against a Saxon Badass of Note. Fumble-v-fumble, might mean skulking at the back and then dying against the first Saxon he comes across, although he gets the Saxon, too. Or maybe he fumbles the first charge and ends up thrown from his horse into the middle of the Saxon shieldwall, but manages to kill the Saxon he was lancing. A crit, B does anything other than crits: A survives, with some minor wounds and with a kill tally that depends how badly B rolled. A succeeds: partial, A gets a major wound; fail, A gets away with minor wounds; fumble, A kills plenty of Saxons A partial: Against a crit, he dead. Against a Win, he dead unless a PK saves him, and in which case he gets a major wound. In either case, he did OK. His descendants don't have to hang their heads in shame. A fails against a success or a crit: He dead. Easily so against a crit. A fumbles against anything but a fumble: He dead. He might die at the onset of the battle with a stray arrow hitting him in the eye, while he is scoffing that "the Saxon archers can't possibly hit even the barn door at this dist-" THUNK.

Book of Uther, p. 35.

Did you send the same reply by mistake?