Morien

I am kinda partial to using the Trio from Book of Uther, especially if the PKs have had some encounters with them beforehand in Uther's Court.

We played our first playthrough of GPC (from Roman War onwards, since we had done tabletop with the Boy King up to Badon before GPC was published) using mainly Skype and IRC for chat and dicebot, and then phasing Skype out for TeamSpeak3. In our current playthrough (485 onwards, now at 535), we still use TeamSpeak3 for voice, since we had so much trouble getting everyone's voice to work in Roll20, but we use Roll20 for rolls and drawing on the campaign map to show where the knights are going, and so forth. We don't use a tactical map. I am also playing in a Pathfinder game, where the voice is handled with Zoom, and Roll20 is for tactical map combat. Alas, I do not have experience with other virtual tabletops.

Given how many changes there were between GPC and BotW, no one would blame you for changing things around. While I happily mine BotW castle tables and baron tables for ideas, I certainly don't feel constrained by them in game. Looking at my notes, I see I did use Sir Edar of Leicester in our campaign, but I took the "Baron of Lambor" to mean that he was a usurper, and portrayed him as such when the PKs met him during the Morgan's Marriage escort mission. Also, YPWV. Frankly, if your Pendragon Campaign is exactly following GPC, I would suspect that something has gone wrong! Your own story is more important than GPC, after all. Of course, my campaigns were already off the rails pretty quickly. The first campaign started pre-GPC, so I didn't realize that Robert was not supposed to be an adult during Anarchy, and I ended up killing him off during the Roman War. In the second campaign, the PKs decided to ally with Cornwall (Ellen marrying Prince Mark, who became the new Regent), ending in a fight against first Nanteleod and then Arthur, with Robert (who had switched to Arthur's side after being captured) dead in a battle against Prince Galegantis. Which left the Praetor (Steward) of Levcomagus (PKs' personal enemy) as the heir to Salisbury thanks to the marriage to Jenna that the PKs had orchestrated in early Anarchy. So the PKs ended up exiled to Cornwall, which worked out since the now-King Mark was happy to welcome the loyal knights to his court. Just to mention a couple of examples.

Yeah, I think you are right: http://satnightpendragon.blogspot.com/2008/02/499-capture-of-leicester.html Edar seems to have been one of the Player-knights in that campaign. It is not an EXACT match, like BotW Edar calling himself 'Baron of Lambor' while the PK Edar was Count of Leicester and an enemy of "the Count of Lambor". But it is close enough that I am convinced that you are correct, and that explains why "Baron of Lambor" is in quotation marks when he is first introduced in the Anarchy castle list.

The Marriage of Count Roderick: "Travel to Leir’s Castle to visit Sir Edaris, Duke of the Marche and his daughter, Lady Rosalyn. The trip from Sarum to Leir’s Castle in County Lambor via Corinium takes a week. Lady Rosalyn is an attractive girl (APP 15) of fifteen (b. 466). The Player-knights will easily pick up stories of her open-handedness in the Duke’s court (notable Trait: Generous). Rosalyn has a dowry of half a dozen manors and, having two brothers, is third in line to inherit." Book of the Warlord has Sir Edar, Baron of Lambor, ruling over Leir's Castle (Leicester) during Anarchy, whose position is confirmed by Arthur by 518. Easiest thing to make him Edaris' eldest son, even though the Duchy of the Marche gets dissolved (as Duchy of Silchester is after Ulfius' death/retirement). In 4e (531 AD), Barony of Lambor is ruled by Sir Blamore de Ganis, but Leicester is under Lindsey. So perhaps Edar had two daughters, the eldest getting Leicester and marrying the Duke of Lindsey, while the younger gets other territories and marries Sir Blamore. Then again, 4e still used territorial nobles, so this might not compare easily with BotW situation.

Yes. Hiking the Chivalric Bonus to 96 points rather than 80 makes a big difference in the armor levels. Also, have the NPKs switch to Warhammers (pollaxes) for +1d6 two-handed and +1d6 vs. Plate when the armor technology gets far enough. 5d6+1d6+1d6 = 7d6 starts hurting, let alone 8d6. Add +4d6 critical on top of that and Major Wounds will show up to wreck a PK's day.

The same text is already in 5.0, which predates BoB. I took that to mean whether to use your Inspiration to boost your Lance or your Sword skill. But it is possible that the idea of limiting Passions to a single round was already in Greg's mind back then. I know that I was very much stricter with the Inspirations after the PKs criticalled their merry way through all the Boy King Battles. Just pop the Loyalty (King Arthur) at the start and then cut your way through the enemies with Sword 30+... And of course, at the time we used 4e, with its follower's bonus, so that was usually another +6...

It is a change from the main book, where (5.2, p. 92) it is stated: "This Inspiration lasts for the length of the task at hand, but never for more than one full day." It is a reasonable assumption that if you are getting Inspired to 'Defeat the Saxons in this Battle', it would last for the whole battle since it is less than a day. However, this is very broken, especially with the +10 Inspired Bonus. It will turn every Battle into a series of criticals from the PKs, as we found out in our first playthrough during the Boy King Period. Which is why, I believe, that Greg changed it in BoB to last just one battle round. We use the one battle round or an extended melee rule nowadays in our campaign.

I think that would work quite well. I do like the fact that Energetic plays a role, although an argument could be made that it should be CON instead (physical stamina rather than a mind set). In the older editions, this is what happened when both combatants chose Defensive: the fight is resolved normally but the round takes an hour or so. It still doesn't counter tink-tink-boom effect, although at least it moves one tied criticals into a some kind of resolution.

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.