Morien

I was actually thinking about the PLAYERS hesitating, not the PKs. To answer your question, though, if the female knights are rare, I could see a male knight hesitating, especially if he is chivalric. There is actually an adventure involving the ladies-in-waiting of Morgan Le Fey that explores this issue, in the Blood & Lust. However, I am not sure this is a big issue anyway, as usually you are supposed to take the knight as your captive anyway, rather than stab them in the face. So it would be more of a "Surrender, Sir Knight! I have the advantage!" and that advantage would stay even if she reveals that she is a woman. Then again, I subscribe to the notion that if it is a knight, it is a knight. Thus, female knights are treated as knights in the battlefield. You lose no Honor whatsoever for hitting them as hard as you can.

Admittedly one of the reasons for us to switch to flat criticals was to diminish the advantage of high damage dealers, including PKs. 6d6 is already a huge advantage in normal combat. Allowing them to hit 12d6 vs. 8d6 or 10d6 that normal people hit is just encouraging the Players to minmax the strength higher. But when it is a difference of 9d6 or 10d6, the minmax benefit is slightly lessened.

When you have Giants doing 12d6 on a normal hit (average 42 hp, a guaranteed MW for most people) and 16d6 on a critical (average 56 hit points, RIP), the players still dread getting criticalled against. The old 24d6 is pretty much impossible to survive, and due to the Giant usually either missing (losing the opposed roll) or criticaled (smash), it meant that either the PKs survived unscathed, or one or more of them were turned into pink mist. A berserker should not be able to regularly one-shot a knight in plate armor to death. If they critical and get very lucky with the damage dice, maybe then. A berserker already does 8d6 or more damage against knights. 12d6+ on a critical, and getting a bit lucky with the damage dice or the PK fails to get the shield, and even with a better armor, death is a possibility. It just isn't a (near) certainty, as it would be with 16d6+1d6 axe. The issue with berserkers and giants being one-hit-kill monsters is that there is nothing that the Player can do about it, save for have his character run away. And unless I, as the GM, want to have a 5% chance per roll of killing a PK off, that limits how I can use those monsters. I don't want to kill a PK each time they meet a giant (since the fight usually takes several rounds and the Giant is dividing its attacks, meaning several rolls per round), so under the old rules, I pretty much couldn't use Giants as opponents at all. We have been using 4d6 critical as a houserule for years now, and the Players are still dreading facing Giants and berserkers. The threat is still there. It is just more manageable rather than gamestopping with the constant PK deaths.

Oh, I don't doubt it. I was mainly curious if there would be a mental hesitation based on the sex of the opponent (mainly, if the opponent is a female; I am sure we all know the joke about the female CIA trainee). I mean, if someone is trying to kill your character, and part of the character's career is combat and killing the enemies (or capturing them, in case of knights), then probably that killing happens right back. But I have noticed, as I stated, that I need to make that extra adjustment if the GM is making a point of mentioning that the enemy happens to be a woman (especially in campaigns where this is rarer) or a minor (child soldiers being a thing in post-apoc especially). Naturally, if the woman in question has already proven herself to be a murderous psychopath and a leader of a local assassins' guild, that adjustments happens in a snap (D&D campaign)! But there is still that moment at the start. It is not something I have actually asked my players outright, but I have noticed that when the point is made that the opponent is more of a desperate non-combatant, the focus tends to shift from 'kill it until it is dead' to 'neutralize the threat, preferably without killing'. Which again makes sense: if you are threatened by a 14-year old holding a wooden club and you are in armor with a shield and sword, you are feeling much more able to take care of things rather than taking the first opportunity to kill the threat. Whereas if it is a 6d6 Saxon axeman, you have much less room to play nice, too. I have also noticed that the players tend to be more inclined to take prisoners in Pendragon than they are in, say, D&D. Partially of course because of the ransoms, but also, I believe, since Pendragon feels more real. Killing someone in a fair fight is one thing. Cutting his throat while he is lying unconscious takes another step in cold-bloodedness. (Also, some people are fishing for Merciful checks, I know it. ) In D&D, with its healing magic and regeneration, using "Cujo-rules" (shoot it until it is dead and then shoot it in the head some more just to be sure) becomes more of a survival tactic, as we have learned.

Not all things are equal to others. Simply because magic exists, it doesn't mean that all people are mages. But as you said, you don't care about that. Which is fair. Your Pendragon Will Vary, as Greg was prone to saying. Me, I like to keep the campaign a bit more grounded (up to a point given the faeries, monsters, and anachronistic society and technology; they are more of an overlay for me). IF the people in KAP are regular humans, then they, as a population, have some average characteristics that can be broken down by sex and by culture (or to use an outdated term, race, since BotK&L clearly posits that the cultural modifiers are genetic, not actual culture i.e. nurture). In KAP, there have been differences in the stats between male knights and female ladies (i.e. non-knights) since 1E. And since it is more useful to talk about what is in the books (or what is the case in real world) than just posit something specific to a single campaign, that is the example I used (as well as gave my own 'correction' to the stats), to see what the effect would be. Warrior women are exceptional people who are equal to men in strength and stature? Yep, no argument there. In fact, I argued that self-selection would likely ensure that they'd be better than the average male, even ignoring the determination to excel, although the male knights would probably been raised to be determined to excel, too, lest they bring shame on themselves and their families. But when it comes to PKs, by far the easiest and cleanest way to handle it is to use exactly the same character generation rules for male and female knights, regardless of sex. But if you just take the average of all women and the average of all men, if they correspond to the modern size differences that we see reflected through the ages, then yes, the female homo sapiens sapiens is on average smaller and weaker than the male homo sapiens sapiens. Of course, you don't have to make that assumption in the game. In your game world, all the women can be 6' tall amazons able to armwrestle just as well as any man. But then there can be some ripple effects from this. Gender roles might shift a bit. You lose the instinctive default that people have of gender roles in pre-modern times, shown in movies, when the difference in the physical strength mattered for agriculture, the daily life for most people. Also, if you make all combatants 50/50 male and women, the PKs will be putting female Saxon raiders to the sword, too, riding them down and putting them out of their misery afterwards. And... I think it is part of the cultural conditioning that we tend to accept male enemies being killed much easier than female enemies (just look at any Hollywood action movie, let alone a war movie, or a shooter game; naturally those are mainly driven by the proportion of men vs. women in those roles in the real world, too). I am not saying that it was all fun and games to be a female civilian in war times; it most certainly wasn't and isn't. What I am saying (and this probably says more about my own biases) is that at least for me (as a player), whether the game is post-apocalyptic Fallout with GURPS or way advanced technological scifi (with GURPS again) or generic fantasy with D&D, in all of those cases I need a moment to reset my brain from 'hitting girls is wrong' to 'it is an enemy trying to kill you, kill it first quick!' whenever the opponent is a female. And since it is my brain, it doesn't matter if I happen to be playing a female or a male character in those situations. I recognize that is a sexist bias to have: killing people is a bad thing, regardless of the gender (we are obviously talking about imaginary people here, characters in a story). That might be an interesting question, actually, if other people have a similar bias, and if that bias holds even if the player is female? And I wonder if that same bias is making me less likely to put female opponents up against the PKs in the campaigns I GM, unless I am really trying to make it into 'are we the baddies' -scenario, such as post-Lindsey and post-Badon 'revenge' campaigns on Saxon lands, fighting against boys, old men and women (with some warrior women sprinkled in, too).

Agreed with weasel fierce; women warriors existed in some cultures but they were not common as in a significant fraction of the army. Sieges, sure, drop stuff from the wall. In the more industrial age, guns are a great equalizer. Also the more massive armies of post-French Revolution meant that you are taking even teen boys off the street who might not be all that muscular compared to a grown woman. That was the usual cover for women in the civil war armies, pretending to be young man to explain the smooth cheeks and higher voice.

No need for PKs to roll damage. Yes, unless they are in the back, having retreated to get first aid and deliver prisoners. Enemy units roll opposed weapon skill. If they are outnumbered they need to divide the skill between PKs. Easiest to let PKs double up their attacks i.e one enemy rolling vs. two PKs. There used to be a unit size roll in 4e. It is likely a relic. Adding an event of PKs being outnumbered would help. I do it all the time with footmen. I ignore the events table and use the scripted events instead. Speeds up the game too. Non scripted battles I recommend prerolling and scripting in advance by yourself.

In our campaign, I made the distinction between the 'old mercenaries', the FitzGeralds, and the newer ones (Butlers, de Ganis). This was useful as it also made it easier to showcase the friction between the newcomers and King Anguish with his in-laws (I had Gerald marry Anguish's OTHER daughter, although on hindsight, having Maurice marry her would have been better. Oh well, I was following history on that one.). Anyway, this animosity is important, as it explains why the de Ganis blame Anguish for the death of Sir Hugo, and hence set up the situation for Tristram to champion Anguish, and thus win the hand of Isold for King Mark. I agree that Arthur's speculative landgrants are somewhat iffy, and I probably would ditch the whole Justiciar option and basically have Arthur be hands-off on Ireland. That makes any de Ganis operation there a purely mercenary one, just an attempt to landgrab and establish themselves as a new landed aristocracy. Arthur does stay hands-off Ireland anyway, but of course the historical parallel here is the Plantagenets expanding their power to Ireland. Then again, the other option is that the speculative landgrants would only apply to Irish kingdoms which choose to continue fighting against Arthur rather than submit to him in 530. That would make it more justifiable, as it could be argued to be more defensive in nature, using those self-funded mercenaries to keep the hostile kings busy and hence safeguard the Pale.

Not flintlock rifles. Smoothbore matchlocks (arquebuses). As I implied in my previous answer, the sorcerer in King Mark's service is possibly a Chinese alchemist (I made him explicitly so in our playthrough of GPC). So you get the whole Battle of the Engine during the Grail Quest, so clearly gunpowder exists. I didn't introduce arquebuses straight away. Instead, part of the peace deal with King Mark (in early Twilight) was that he handed over the secret of cannon-making and gunpowder, and what do you know, Mordred was placed in charge of the Camelot Cannonworks. Fast forward to Camlann and... Quote 7: "Where did Mordred get all these cannons?!" - Sir Caedmon's player "You do recall that he was in charge of Camelot's cannonworks, right? What do you think he has been doing this whole time?" - the GM. Quote 8: "Oh, you got to be kidding me..." - Sir Caedmon's player, as handgonners move to the front of Mordred's line and get ready to shoot on the charging knights. "He has been a busy little beaver, hasn't he?" - the GM, referring to Mordred's armament project. Anyway, by making King Mark's sorcerer basically a rogue alchemist, I got my introduction to gunpowder and then just let the accelerated timeline of KAP take care of the rest. Why aren't there cannons in Byzantine or Sassanids Empires? How do we know they do not have those? Maybe the gunpowder is an imperial monopoly in China and this guy worried that if he stays closer to the Silk Road, he will be assassinated. Maybe the Sassanid rulers felt that gunpowder was unchivalrous and refused to have anything to do with it (or even worried that it might be beneficial to the more technologically savvy Byzantines, and had the first alchemist killed). Maybe Justinian sending two Nestorian monks in 550 to China is not just an attempt to get the secret of silk manufacture but also the gunpowder, since he is paranoid and doesn't trust the turncoat (or had just the rumors from the Sassanid Empire via his spies). In any case, since the story is focused on Arthur and Britain, it hardly matters what is going on in Constantinople.

At the risk of derailing the thread I myself started... Slavery is morally wrong. Full stop. However, prior to it being made illegal in the UK, it was not only legal, but very profitable. So you had a lot of wealthy, politically influential men invested in the slavery. There is also a thing called ex post facto laws: making something illegal and punishing the people after the 'crime' has already been committed (and being legal at the time). So from the rule of law perspective, as well as getting the anti-slavery law passed, it was necessary to compensate the owners for taking away their property. It wasn't an apology, it was a tacit acknowledgement that when the government takes your formerly legal property away from you, they need to compensate you for it. Would it have been morally right to compensate the slaves for the work that they did without pay and the horrors of slavery? Absolutely, in my mind. I even think that it would have been Just to take that compensation right out of the money that the slave-owners were due for losing their slaves. But that would have been an example of an ex post facto law: punishing someone afterwards for doing something that was legal at the time. (Apparently ex post facto laws are technically legal in the UK, but I seriously doubt that Wilberforce & like-minded individuals would have gotten the anti-slavery bill passed without the compensation to the slave-owners.) The injustice, in my opinion, was allowing slavery back in in the first place, after it had been effectively abolished by the High Middle Ages in England. Which is why Arthur's Britain is mostly slave free, IMHO. Feudalism itself is very much not synonymous with chattel slavery: a serf was not a slave, but had rights.

BoU tried to clean up most of that.

Yep, quite agreed with this, as well as with the earlier idea of having some Hunnic visitors earlier. Arthur does fight the Romans and in GPC, they have Magyar horse archers at Saussy. Easy enough to make them Huns, especially since they use the same stats anyway. Also, when it comes to depictions, unfortunately the pictures in BoK&L are not that great when it comes to Huns... it looks more like a Spanish Conquistador talking to a Longbowman in a fantasy helmet. I'd definitely hope that they'd replace this with a more Turkic or even Mongolian look if the Huns come up again as a playable culture. Given that the Picts in Pendragon perhaps owe more to Robert E. Howard (IMHO, "Howard's descriptions of the later Picts portray them as very small in height, squat and muscular, adept at silent movement, and most of all brutish and uncivilized,") than Roman sources (tall blondes or redheads), I would be quite happy to see some East Asian / Mongolian features on the Huns. Of course, a mix of appearances would be best to represent the complex population mixture, as well as avoid accusations of racism of having Huns as the 'Yellow Peril', hence getting basically condemned for having tried to be inclusive. Portraying some Chinese merchants in Arthur's court, perhaps in Tournament or in Twilight would work, too.

Avars start their conquest of Pannonia around Twilight Period. Pannonia (Carpathian Basin) was ruled by the Gepids before that. Magyars shouldn't show up until latter half of 800s, and they settle in Pannonia at the end of that century. So they'd definitely be anachronistic. I'd much rather have Huns (or Bulgars, below) running around as mercenaries in the Roman armies that Arthur fights than Magyars. Bulgars have been around in Byzantine sources since late 400s, and are often used interchangeably with Huns, as you pointed out.

There is Sir Urre, from Hungary, later on. (Sniped by Leingod, by a minute while I was checking GPC!) However, the Huns probably had a good mixture of populations (and even their origins is also debated, with the majority opinion seemingly being a more Turkic than Mongol or a mix of the two) already by mid-400s, and were wiped out as a ruling power soon after Attila's death. That being said, Belisarius still used Hun mercenaries in his Wars, so they are still around in 500s. However, there is an adventure in GPC where I would be willing to bet money that the sorcerer in a king's service is coming from China...

Yeah, that has been a bit of a pet peeve of mine, too. Pretty much the same. Especially since we houseruled that Glory Bonus Points can be hoarded and used as Fate Points to give you a win in an opposed rolling or a success in an unopposed one, the Players have been doing that. They have mainly used them to avoid Major Wounds that would have dropped SIZ and STR, or if the passion roll failed or if they were critted against by a Giant or some such. Anyway, that tends to mean that they do not have that many Glory Bonus Points to spend to raising their combat skills crazy high. I think the highest one right now is 21, and it got up by a very lucky experience roll. Although we might have one semi-retired PK who has her main weapon skill at 22 or 23... But the Aging is chipping away at her stats, so... I tend to be pretty generous with Glory in active adventuring, too, so the Annual Glory hasn't gotten too crazy. But I am not giving Annual Glory for Religious nor Chivalric; instead they gain Glory for the high Traits. No double-dipping! The PKs probably net around a 50-100 or so from Annual Glory, and often 100 - 200 Glory from adventures & court & tournaments, depending a bit how lucky they get. No big battles anymore, so that Glory gusher has been closed off. Looking at our PKs at the end of 489, low 2000s is more of a norm, pretty much where you are. Around 150-200 Glory per year, all told, + Inherited, Knighting & Marriage Glory. The Battle of Lindsey is potentially a huge Glory source, as is Gorlois' rebellion and the Battle of St. Albans. At the end of 495, the surviving PKs had around 7000 Glory, give or take.

Yep, that is my reading as well.

Yep, fully agreed. The only way you can get 50/50 split is, I believe, if it is mandated by the birth order. Since it is a simple fact that if you take the average woman and the average man, the man is bigger and stronger and hence more suited for a combat-heavy career. That doesn't mean that there are not exceptional women who rise well above the average, or men who do not reach the average for the males. But unless you allow for self-selection, about average is what you get most of the time. Funnily enough, if you allow the women to self-select (they can choose to be non-combatant ladies or knights), but societal pressure would make the eldest child, if male, ALWAYS choose to be a knight, you would get female knights who would likely be much more competitive against men, attribute-wise. Because they would be the women who figured that they would be able to beat the boys in their own game and have stats to back it up. Perfect excuse to use the same attributes for all PKs, regardless of gender (or, if you'd do random rolls, you'd actually expect the variance amongst the female knights to be lower than with the men, but the maximum would be slightly lower, too; for example 2d6+6 male SIZ & STR, 1d6+10 female knight SIZ 1d6+9 STR, both coming to a summed average of 26 points). Of course, you wouldn't get anywhere near 50/50 split here. If we were to take the BoK&L attribute rolls as indicative of the female stat spread (I don't, by the way: 5 point swing in SIZ is huge), then women rolling 2d6+2 for SIZ and STR and needing at least a sum of 22 would be about 16% of the whole population. And likely you'd have to drop maybe half of them due to other considerations (brothers taking precedence, the woman choosing not to have a knightly career, etc). So something like 5-10%, at best, would be my questimate, based on the BoK&L rules. However, if the BoK&L stats are for LADY characters rather than the standard female overall, then it would make somewhat more sense just from the gamist perspective. The Lady character doesn't really need SIZ and STR (or something has gone horribly wrong), so those would be 'wasted points'. Alas, APP doesn't really gotten its due in previous editions, IMHO: just look at the previous threads where APP has been discussed (and credit where credit is due, Atgxtg was a loud proponent of making APP more useful and giving Ladies more to do in the game, but let's not derail this thread). Looking at the weight and height difference of modern Japanese people (using the Japanese here since they don't have the same obesity epidemic going on that many of us Westerners have, yours truly included in that number), the weight difference is about 20 lbs and height difference 5". SIZ tracks weight better than height, IMHO, and 10lbs per SIZ point sounds about right. So the SIZ difference, on average, should be 2 points, not 5 points, which, using the male stats as a baseline, should give us 3d6+2 (although I would actually argue that the BoK&L random SIZ for males is too high to begin with). Arguably, the STR difference should be a bit more, since while STR should track SIZ pretty closely in general, women have less upper body strength than a similar weight man. So maybe a 3 point difference there, which would make STR 2d6+2 roughly right. So, 3d6+2 + 2d6+2 > 22? 50% would have what I'd consider the minimum requirement to consider a career as a knight (if you get a choice). But let's ask a more interesting question... How many of them would be BETTER than an average man, and hence more able to convince their families that they should be allowed to get trained as a knight? In short, how many of them would have average SIZ+STR > 26 (average of 6d6+5)? About 10%. Since the female SIZ here is calibrated to the male SIZ, scaling the SIZes down by the same number would not change this result; neither would dropping a 1d6 from SIZ and adding +2 instead, making male SIZ 2d6+6 again. So, from this analysis, we would get about 10% of the women who would not only be competitive with the below-average male knights, but BETTER than the average male. If the female knights are drawn from this self-selecting pool, they would be opponents to be reckoned with. In short, not only would you expect that the female knight you are facing would be equal in combat ability to an average knight, you'd have more than 50/50 chance that any random male knight would be worse than she is, stat-wise. Suddenly, taking a female knight into your service starts to sound a whole lot better. But like said, there would be only 10% or so of them, and again, if only half of them get the opportunity to become knights, they would be relatively rare, about 5% (or even less if the lands are not onboard with this female knight idea). Which would still mean potentially 100-200 female knights running around in Logres (depending how many total number of knights Logres has) during Romance and Tournament (and probably many fewer during Uther's time). Or about 10 or so in Salisbury-owned lands and half of that in Salisbury county itself. Which would give more than enough 'cover' for the female PKs from Salisbury. (EDIT: Just as a quick footnote, the US military has about 20% women in the Air Force & Navy, 14% in the Army, and about 9% in the Marines.) Well, they did have the choice of renouncing the world and becoming monks. But as far as I know, it was more of a retirement option for many eldest sons. They were expected to become knights and raised in that ethos from the cradle; it would have taken real conviction to renounce their inheritance (since that is pretty much what it would have taken) and become monks instead. Granted, the same was true for the women as to what would be expected of them, which was not a knightly career. Family and societal pressures are real. Of course, one way to make female vassal knights more common even if the male primogeniture would generally hold sway: allow the inheritance by the eldest male even if he is not a knight himself, as long as he can produce one to fulfill his obligations. Suddenly, marrying a puissant female knight becomes a much more attractive proposition for the lower-than-average SIZ+STR heir, since you can only barely support yourself and your family from a single manor if you have to support an extra knight, too. Basically, train yourself up more as a steward, and let your warrior wife handle the asskicking.

Just to add to that... Pendragon Winter Phase doesn't end at 31st of December. There is a good argument that the new year actually starts in March 25th, Lady Day, as was the case in Medieval England, although in our games, I tend to be vague about it. Basically, Spring of the next year starts when the knights head out to do adventures/spring court after the Winter Phase! Anyway, there would be a good argument that there is like half a year after things calm down in October to the start of April, during which the female knight could have had her pregnancy and delivered the baby without any disruption to her normal duties.

Nonsense! It is good for the soul to play as an opposite gender now and again! Seriously, though, I fully agree, as I already mentioned. Yep. I would be fully in favor of this. Makes for a nice potential sibling drama, too, if one gets passed over. Didn't Roman law allow you to designate your heir anyway? Could easily be an offshoot of that. This would also make a big difference in the latter point you made about female NPKs. Just call the Children until they hit like 14, and we are good, I think. Same as with other excess males. This only turfs out 0.5 sons per vassal family, in average. That is roughly 200 men or so from a population of one million in Logres. I think they can find something to do. Yeah, as I said, it would be the case that more female NPKs would be 4d6 than 5d6, while for male NPKs the opposite might be the case. Allowing for the pick of the heir could help with this, since averages are just that, average. A slightly bigger and brawnier woman would be equal to the average man (whom we got as a random eldest son), so that would help. Of course, presumably you would be picking your biggest and brawniest son, too, if you wanted a male heir, which would mean that he'd be above average for a male, too. So yeah, there still would be a statistical difference, overall. That is where the transgenerational loyalty kicks in. The high Loyalty is worth more than the couple of more points in SIZ and STR. Also, with DEX helping to stay at horseback (as well as weapon skill defaults?), not to mention the dreaded initiative (grr), the female knights might have some edge in mounted and group combat to make up in part what they lack in brawn. As for female player-knights, I would just use male stats, no questions asked.

No, it was already in 3rd ed (p. 128, Passion Results Table): "Immediately go up one point in the Passion. An experience check is gained as well." Totally agreed that it was unbalanced as hell and one of the things we patched quickly in our house rules before it got out of hand.

100% agreed. It can be a very exciting game to deal with various obstacles, as long as both the GM and the Player are on the same page of what constitutes as fun. As an anecdote (trigger warning): A female gamer friend once told me about a character generation session for a campaign where the PCs mostly started out as low-level thieves in a crime-ridden slum... One of the GM's first questions to the two female players playing female characters, "So, how many times have your characters been raped while growing up?" I admit I was pretty surprised to hear that they ended up still making characters to that campaign and playing it (after making damn sure to include into their background that they were under the protection of an older master thief who was like a father to them). But I am glad that she did, since that is how I met her and became friends with her. Funnily enough, even though I made a monastery-raised cleric who was spreading the good word in the slums, the GM never asked me the same question, nor even how many times my character had been robbed and beaten up...

There is that, but you can also rely on a younger brother and his kids to take over, if you don't want to compromise. It is about the family, after all. Not in Uther's court, I agree. But I could see setting up Gorlois up as a more progressive warlord, if just to mess with the Players' minds. Since I am a bit of an EvilGM at heart.

Yeah, I don't give out checks for 'frivolous' rolls. I do, however, give out checks even from tournaments, even if the weapons are rebatted. I think fighting through a Grand Melee is good practice, worthy of a check if you succeed in your rolls (especially as we use our own homebrew roll X skills solo for it, rather than several rolls per skill).

As requested by MOB, I am starting a new thread on this topic. The starting off point is Roberto's post here: https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/12969-stay-tuned-in-the-coming-days-for-a-major-announcement-about-the-king-arthur pendragon rpg/page/3/?tab=comments#comment-202120 He stated that he would like to see about 50% females in the knights and the rulers/lieges. (EDIT: Just so we are crystal-clear... I am not saying that this is what the future of the line should be. Personally, I am happy with most noblewomen choosing to be ladies and just a select bunch deciding that being a knight is for them. I am mainly trying to see how this would impact on the game and gameplay.) So first of all, how to make that happen? That is easy: simply erase the male-preferred part of the primogeniture. The eldest child will be the heir, the second is the spare, and not only that, they will get trained as knights regardless of sex. Since the sex of the baby is for practical purposes 50/50, this would result in a 50/50 split between male and female knightly heirs and spares. However, what is the implication on the heiresses in this brave new world? You could of course still have a non-knight heiress, if she doesn't have any knightly siblings left... which actually might be more common than just not having brothers would be, if we assume that a typical vassal knight family can afford to knight a maximum of two children (the eldest + the spare with dad's old equipment). The way to make female lady heiresses more common would be to drop the requirement that they are trained as knights. But this would lead to male knights being more common than female knights, since the husband would very likely be a knight himself. So it would be incompatible with the (approximately) 50/50 split, while having some rare non-knightly heiresses wouldn't really influence the fraction that much. Another way to do this would be to say that the heir of the vassal knight needs to be a knight, but that of a Baron (maybe even an estate holder) can be a non-knight, as they will have a host of household knights and officers to take care of the fighting stuff. That would work, and give those rich heiresses for the RTKs to save and marry. How about non-heiress ladies? Well, you still have 50 percent of the knights having lady wives, and there are presumably the younger sisters of the heirs and spares. So you'd still have wife/amor candidates for the male PKs, and presumably the female PKs could have their pick of both knightly and esquire males. So as far as the PKs are concerned, the world might still be pretty close to the default male-preferred-primogeniture, rare-female-knights KAP. Sure, you have half of the knights who are actually women, but it is not as if you'd interact with the mass of the knights anyway as individuals. You can still have 'save the heiress' -adventure, and arguably, since you could more easily have non-knightly male heirs (since there is less of a push to have all males trained as knights), you could have 'save the heir' -adventures, too ('I just want... to SING!'). What might change a bit is that since now the knighthood is more of a quirk of birth order, you don't get the same self-selection that the rare-female-knights get. There is no reason to assume that the firstborn female baby would be bigger and stronger than the second-born. While female PKs should obviously be exceptions to this (that bit about not arbitrarily punishing players), there are physical differences in males and females on average that would result in the female knights being in a statistical disadvantage against their male counterparts (a reason why the sports are segregated in real world). Again, this would not matter that much to the PKs: they are usually going to be more exceptional than the norm anyway. It just means that the 4d6 damage band would likely be more populated, having both young male and many female knights in there. So you might see a small drop in the average damage in Battle opponents. Maybe. So, one thing I had not spoken explicitly about yet was household knights. Now, given how rare the vassal knights are in BotW (10-20% or so), it is clear that the household knights have to come from somewhere else, too. Funnily enough, dropping the restriction that only male (usually) become knights makes for a bigger pool of candidates. Still, expecting 5 knighted members per vassal knight family is a bit too much, especially as I just stated above that you probably can afford two. So you pretty much have to get other sources of household knights: allowing the household knights to marry and produce children, and the eldest children getting trained as a knight and inheriting the HHK parent's equipment would make the household knights more self-sustaining, as well as keep the sex ratio in check as it is again 50/50 which sex the eldest child will be. Even if only half of the HHKs would marry and produce at least one child, you would still get some replenishment, and the second children can act as spares if the eldest dies without children of their own. Promotion from the ranks might still be a thing (especially during the early periods of heavy warfare), and here we might actually see some self-selection of female warriors, as only the best would be competing for the promotion. On the other hand, you would expect more male candidates, simply because of the physical advantage mentioned previously. Still, this would not be a huge fraction in the end, either. What there pretty much would have to be on the lieges' side, though, is transgenerational loyalty. You are taking the son/daughter of your household knight (or your father's household knight) as your own household knight, since that is simply what is expected. This would no doubt lead to quite strong Loyalties on both sides, especially since if you are of the same age, those household knight children were probably your playmates and friends when growing up, too. Because it is true that from the liege's side of things, a male knight is logistically superior: bigger and stronger and hence a better fighter (more damage and HP), and while the pregnancy probably wouldn't be a huge issue for household knights (marrying later, and only some of them marry), it might be on the back of the head when deciding. So let's talk about pregnancy. The pregnancy of the higher nobility doesn't really matter (even assuming that a half of them would be female knights): they are a small minority anyway, and have marshals and household knights to do their fighting for them, and can easily afford the extra mercenary knight if the king is being an ass about it. If we have about 20% vassal knights, this would be about 10% female knights. Assuming that they would be out of action for, say, 3 months due to pregnancy, and they would be pregnant every other year (possibly an overestimate), and the birthdates would be effectively random through the year, you would get 1/8th of the female vassal knights who would be indisposed at any given moment of the campaigning season. Given that the vassal servitium debitum is 40 days, you would get about 7 month window that the female vassal knight might be within her 4 month 'maternity leave' period at some point in that servitium debitum. And that is assuming that you would have your whole army together for that 40 days, rather than having some of the vassal knights rotate as their servitium debitum ends. So this would give 1/4rd of the female vassal knights would be indisposed, or 2.5% of all of the liege's knights. Widening this to the household knights, we could assume, for argument's sake, that the household knights would marry late, say around 30 or so, if at all. The age pyramid would imply that the majority of the knights would be younger than this, so let's guestimate that only 1/3rd of the HHKs would be in the potentially marry age category at a given time. We suggested earlier that maybe only half of them actually do. Assuming an even split between male and female HHKs, we get 1/6th of the currently serving HHKs marrying, and 1/12th being females. In other words, we have roughly the same number of married female HHKs as married female vassal knights. So roughly, about 5% of all the liege's knights might be indisposed due to their pregnancy during a fixed 40-day window. So, as far as the 40-day campaign is concerned, this is no biggie: you probably would be leaving more than 5% of your knights to defend your landholdings anyway, act as castellans (a great position for those married female HHK), etc. While the HHKs would be expected to serve 365 days a year, as stated, garrison duty and especially castellan duty is not that incompatible with pregnancy. Sure, you wouldn't want to stick all your pregnant HHKs into the same castle, but you'd have roughly 1/8th of 1/12th of your household knights in their last trimester, or about 1%, at any given time. This is not really a concern (especially if you think that 5% of your household knights might be wandering in the forests, mad, due to a fumbled Loyalty (lord) roll... ). Even if you expand the maternity leave for the full year, you just double the numbers to about 10% of the liege's army, and at least half of that 10% would be well able to fight without issues if need be. Again, these are numbers that you'd expect to see being left home anyway to defend it. It would not have a major impact on the liege's army size. (EDIT: Note that the following issues of an individual female PK would apply even if she were the ONLY female knight in the game world. And if the GM made it deliberately difficult for my female character while ignoring similar things about the male characters, then I hope he would have been honest about it up front that he intended to make it an issue in game. So it would be my choice if I wanted to put up with it, play a male character instead, or walk away.) So what about the individual vassal knight? Sure, though would have that 3-month window when they would have significant issues from pregnancy. But that leaves 9 months of the year. Sure, the winter is not good for adventuring, but it might also coincide with the last trimester, too. As stated previously, I assume 1 pregnancy per 2 years, so even if the last trimester would take a 3-month chunk out of the 6-month or so of the prime adventuring season, you are still left with 75% of your total 12-months of adventuring time. So it is not such a big deal, unless the GM deliberately makes it one. What about raids? Yeah, those could be an issue. However, it would be very, very easy to ask the liege (who does owe you protection, I remind you) or a friendly PK or a neighboring NPK for assistance, if your manor happens to be on the edge of Salisbury and hence more exposed to raiding pre-Badon (after Badon, this is much less of an issue, unless you are playing the Levcomagus feud as a really hot conflict; frankly, as Chivalry takes hold, I wouldn't be surprised if they deliberately would AVOID manors with a pregnant knight or lady in them even if they would be raiding). But the same would be true for any male PKs who happen to be away from their manors to adventure in the Forest Sauvage, or be employed as mercenaries in some wars or be assigned on a mission somewhere farther away. Sure, non-pregnant female PKs might be doing the same thing in addition to being pregnant, but just saying that fixating on the pregnancy as the only vulnerability is not really fair. As for being targeted specifically because the enemy/raider knows that you are indisposed due to a pregnancy means that the enemy has some pretty good intel and the ability to act on it. So the same issue would be faced by any male PK who is low on his hit points and convalescing at home, potentially even unconscious at the time, or mad in the forest. Also, see the previous about asking for help. Heck, might make for a nice little RP/story hook, even, fostering cooperation and friendship between the neighbors. Being vulnerable 1/8th of the time is not huge, either, especially as it might coincide with Winter which is not a great raiding season, as well as our assumptions were pretty generous to begin with: for example, assuming a pregnancy every third year would change this number to 1/12th of the time, less than 10%. In conclusion: 1. If that is what you want, you can have a 50/50 split between male and female knights. 2. The game would still play pretty much the same, except the average NPK damage might come down a bit, due to the higher number of female knights. This might be more of a case for battles than anything else, though. 3. Pregnancy would not have a significant impact on the nobles' armies. 4. If the GM wishes to be difficult, the individual female PK can find ways to protect herself and her lands during the final trimester of her pregnancy. (EDIT: 5. Something I didn't underline earlier... Since the heir now can be male or female, this means that there is a 50 percent chance that you end up playing a gender different from your real world one. That will be a good RP exercise for all those male gamers out there who usually play male characters. After all, that is what RP is supposed to be, playing something you are not, right? OK, that was a bit naughty of me, but I do wonder how much of a holler would have been raised if instead of requiring female players to play a male character, it would have been vice versa? As for actual point, I think I would work with the Player in question: if they prefer playing a male/female knight, I'd just have the elder siblings decline the honor, die of illness or something, or, in the extreme case, just genderflip them.) As for the LGBTQ, this is probably even less of an issue, as sexuality has even less of an impact on being a knight. A gay knight presumably fights just as well as a straight one. The medieval church's doctrine and civil laws hardened over time. Early Medieval laws would just have slapped them on the wrist if caught. It was challenging the church dogma that would get you into trouble. However, given that KAP already has out and proud Pagans worshipping their own gods in public (literally demon worshippers as far as the historical medieval church is concerned), I'd have a hard time claiming that there MUST be a witch-hunt for gay knights. And would the existence of LGBTQ PKs alter the story in meaningful ways? Not really.

Yeah, we do that too, albeit again it is more of a homebrew. The improved family survival rules are in Book of the Estate, not in the Entourage, unfortunately.